Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Growing Up and Growing Smaller | Historical Books | 1 Samuel 25:36-43

Episode Date: May 16, 2025

As you grow up, are you growing smaller? Are you surrendering your life to God? What does it look like to grow in faith? In today's episode, Jeff shares how 1 Samuel 25:36-43 encourages us to live as dependent children of God. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 Samuel 25:36-43

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Growing up. This is how people commonly describe the process of aging and maturation over the course of life. When it comes to the stages of growth and human development, we really are growing up in terms of our physical stature. There are little children, and then there are the grownups. At an intuitive level, we sense. that our goal is to grow in an upward direction.

But this sensible nomenclature can cause us to assume that all growth follows an upward trajectory. When we assume this, we live like our purpose is to always become bigger, faster, stronger, more optimized. Life is always up and to the right in an arc of accomplishment. Even when we're done growing in inches, we're still trying to reach a higher altitude by growing up in every other sphere of existence. But what if real growth isn't always meant to take us higher and make us bigger? What if growth is sometimes trying to take us in the opposite direction? In the book Living Life Backward, David Gibson writes this.

Part of growing up in the world is learning to grow small. God intends us to be like children who trust their parents to know best because they can see what the children can't see and they know what the children are not yet able to know. For Gibson, a key part of growing up isn't connected to us becoming bigger, faster, or stronger. it's about us becoming smaller. But notice how for him, this process of growing smaller is inherently connected to our capacity to trust God as a good father. He's not talking about growing smaller physically, of course.

He's talking about growing smaller spiritually, becoming like children who can depend on God more and more and more. Want to grow in the journey of faith with Jesus and with others? Then Gibson says, grow smaller. Maybe this is a thought-provoking concept to think about, but for most of us, this idea of growing smaller is a nonsensical oxymoron. The idea that something or someone could grow while decreasing seems absurd. And yet the scene that we're going to encounter today, in 1 Samuel 25, it joins a chorus of biblical passages that cross-examine all of our assumptions

about what it means to grow with God and with one another in the journey of faith. As we get ready to engage with God's word, let's slow down and just ask for His grace, for his steadfast love to move through our time. Pray with me. Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life and breath. Thank you for your word. These are good gifts from you. We bring before you every part of who we are, every part of our lives today, our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety and our excitement, our calendars and our contingencies. We bring all this before you, God, and we ask you to meet us in the space. Jesus, help us abide in you as we engage with your truth. Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in 1 Samuel. And as we read these words, we ask that these words of yours would read us and restore us. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, if you missed yesterday's episode, I encourage you to go back and give it a listen because the first 35 verses of 1 Samuel chapter 25, they really set up important context for our passage

today. Here's a woefully brief recap, just as a reminder. In those first 35 verses of this chapter, we met a man named Nabil, who's described as both wealthy and worthless, a man who's harsh and badly behaved. He is the paradigmatic fool. And his foolishness is put on full display when he refuses to show hospitality to David and David's men, after they showed hospitality to Nabil's own shepherds. While David is on his way to lay down the hammer on Nabil, Nabil, Nabil, noble wife, Abigail, intercepts David and offers a gift of hospitality to cover the dishonorable

error of her foolish husband. David responds to this act of graciousness from Abigail by blessing her. And our passage today picks up in verse 36 when Abigail returns home to find Nabil feasting like a king and enjoying all of the excesses of his possessions. He is not a not only full of food and drunk with alcohol, he's full of himself and drunk on his own sense of magnitude. This is a key feature of the narrative to notice. Nabil fits the world's narrative of someone who has grown up, and air quotes there, grown up in the sense of increasing in power, pleasure, and strength. From his perspective, life is always up and to the right for him, keeps increasing.

But instead of using his power, his presence, and his resources to bless the Lord's anointed to bless David, he's using them to bless himself. The only direction he's moving is up and to the right in the eyes of the world.

As our passage moves on, we get to the next morning when Nabaal wakes up from his drunken stupor. Abigail relays the story of how she went to David. and secured peace for her household. We read in verses 37 through 38 that Nabal's heart died within him, and he became as a stone. Perhaps he experienced a stroke or heart attack.

Either way, it seemed as if the life was taken from him. And about 10 days later, the text says, The Lord struck Nabal, and he died. When David hears about the death of Nabal, he blesses God in verse 39. and this is what he says. Praise be to the Lord, who has upheld my cause against Nabal for treating me with contempt.

He has kept his servant from doing wrong and has brought Nabal's wrongdoing down on his own head. Let's pause here at verse 39. This is a huge statement from David, and it serves as a thesis statement for this entire passage. It illuminates who the story is really about.

When reading these things, verses, it's tempting to look over the events and deduce that Abigail is the hero of the narrative. And in a real way, let's be honest, when it comes to human agency, Abigail is for sure portrayed as the noble figure. She's wise, she's brave, she's humble, she's able to not only protect her family, but also protect David from incurring guilt over killing a fellow Israelite. So yes, Abigail is awesome here. But don't miss this. The praise of verse 39 is not directed toward the nobility of Abigail. It's directed toward God alone. God is the one who upheld David's cause. God prevented David from killing Nabal. God is the one who sent Abigail to David to begin with, as we read in verse 32.

After reading or hearing this passage, the ancient Israelites who found first heard this, wouldn't necessarily be amazed by any one human character here. They would be amazed by the consistent character of God. And they'd see how the consistent, faithful character of God changes people's lives, changes their behavior. You can see it here in the contrast between Nabal and David. So in the story, Nabal only trusts in himself. And therefore, because he only trusts himself, only cares about himself, He has to grow bigger and faster and stronger. He has to assert himself.

He has to win the game of life, even when it means trampling on others, even trampling on David. In his hubris, he imagines himself to be bigger than he really is, and he's eventually exposed as a fool. Now, David, on the other hand, is led to a place of trusting God.

And instead of asserting Him, himself, he humbles himself before Abigail and ultimately before God who sent Abigail to him. Instead of trying to win the game of life, he surrenders his life to his creator king. Instead of trying to grow bigger than he really is, he grows small in light of God's greatness. And in his humility, he proves himself to be worthy of the crown of Israel. This scene in 1 Samuel gives us a vignette of what it looks like. to grow in faith by growing smaller before the God of steadfast love. But this is key.

According to verse 39, the only way to grow small is to really trust the character of the one who is bigger than us. Again, I want to go back to Living Life Backward by David Gibson, his excellent book about Ecclesiastes. If you've never read it, highly encourage you to stop what you're doing, download it, barred from the library, living life backward. It's awesome.

But let's go back to what Gibson wrote when he connects growing small with trusting God. Here's what he writes. Here's the thing. The relationship of trust is built on the character of the parents. If the parents are good and wise and kind, then the child who cannot see the end from the beginning has nothing to fear. David is able to humble himself because he trusts in God's justice. and grace. He can't see the end from the beginning, but he has nothing to fear, because he's

depending on the one who controls the end and the beginning. For us and for God's people throughout world history, this passage counters the narrative of our cultural moment, which suggests that real growth is always up into the right, like Nabal, that it's about more and more certainty, more and more control, more and more greatness for ourselves. But in this passage, God's faithfulness through Abigail shows David and you and me that it really is possible to grow smaller, to grow by having a childlike faith

that is slowly, imperfectly, inching toward greater and deeper trust in our Heavenly Father who loves us, who loves you, Not a future or hypothetical version of you that doesn't actually exist. The Bible's talking about a father who loves the real you, the you that exists right now as you listen to this. That Heavenly Father loves you.

Now, if that's who God is as your Heavenly Father, then what could it look like for you to grow smaller in the coming days? How might that increase your capacity to not only trust, God, but also be tender toward other people. That's the kind of growth that brings glory to our creator, that shows love to our neighbors, and cultivates deep joy in our hearts. Heavenly Father, out of the abundance of your love, would you form us into the kind of people who grow smaller and smaller as we grow older and wiser? Jesus, help us receive your love, and as an act of trust in you, help us give your love to others around us today.

Spirit, help us do all of this by your grace for your glory and your story. In Jesus' name, amen.