2 Sam 20:16, Then a wise woman called from the city, "Hear, hear! Please tell Joab, 'Come here that I may speak with you.'"
	This morning’s reading highlights something which is often taken for granted. There is an aspect of our lives that needs more intensity of purpose and practice. We need to seek after the Lord to make it evident that we are considered wise by the manner in which we study the every aspect of life singly through the lenses of the vision of that which will honor God. 
That is the reality of true wisdom. It is not necessarily what this world classifies as wisdom of the sages or the geniuses or those who have learned through experience that which is useful in this age. This world respects and venerates those who possess some gift of insight greater than others through the use of human intellect. The vile purpose is to promote the ability to see those elemental details which keep the mind and the eye of humanity focused on the minutiae of the plight of mankind. 
But the wisdom from God is not based on what the keen eye observes in the detailed examination of the human psyche in action. It is far more complex than that, while at the same time much less focused on the effects that the movement of nature has on the affairs of human interaction. No, the wisdom of God is fully directed at the reality of seeing the Hand of God in operation, day in and day out in full accordance with that which will show His glory in all His creation. 
What God calls wise is the one who knows God with some understanding, although it may seem limited and meager. That true wisdom will always be absolutely in line with the Word of God because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, the wisdom that is from The Lord will always be brought forth in the light of the given Word that God makes available to all who know Him in any measure whatsoever. There will be a studied emphasis that will highlight how God is working through the manifested giving of the Holy Spirit making known the depths of the heart of Jehovah as detailed concisely in the scriptures. 
Accordingly, that wisdom can always be found and supported by the Bible in the full context of how it shows forth the plan and the purpose of The Lord God Almighty. This is vital for us to understand in any seeking after that which will be considered wisdom by the Lord. It will never rely on a twisting or violation of His Word through any cherry picking of scripture as a means of making a statement seem to be true. 
Anything that is offered forth as the spiritual wisdom of God must be proven throughout the depth and breadth of the Bible. It will not just be based on an obscure interpretation of a passage that has been twisted and formed into something which seems to support the proscribed iteration. Too many, so called prophets, have gone forth proclaiming this or that without any true wisdom of God evident in the support of His Word as it is opened and maintained by the active power of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, one key aspect to the reality of the wisdom of God is that to have and to use it requires a cherished knowledge of the Word through prayer and study and reading and ingesting it. True wisdom is through seeking after the Holy Spirit to make His Word life in us. 
The crucial truth of wisdom is that it comes from God through the working power of His Spirit as it is sought after with all the core essence of the one who would so spend such time and energy to gain a better and deeper relationship with Yahweh. A wise person is one who, through such intensity of prayer and study, spends much time ingesting the truth of His Word in intimate communion with The Father, with The Son, and with The Holy Spirit.
Let’s briefly consider one of the many prime examples of wisdom that is held within the Word of God. We will return to the consideration of Abigal, whom the Bible holds forth as a glowing example of the wisdom of God displayed at precisely the correct and most necessary time. 
1 Samuel 25 contains the account of the interaction between Abigail and David, before he was to take the throne. His men had been taking care of the shepherds of Nabal, in the wilderness regions so that nothing untoward would happen to them. The men of David were hungry. Accordingly, David sent them to Nabal for some sustenance at the time of the shearing of the flock. Nabal was callous and ungrateful and insulting to David’s men, despite the fact that they had so protected his flocks and shepherds. 
David was incensed and prepared to take his revenge upon this ungrateful cur and every male in his household. This is where the Lord brought to the forefront the wisdom instilled in the wife of Nabal, Abigail. She understood what was taking place and how to defuse David’s anger for the sake of the testimony of the Lord that David would be once he ascended to the kingship of all Israel. The slaughter of this fellow Hebrew and all his family would have been a tremendous stain upon David’s growing reputation as a man whose heart was after the Lord.
Please turn to verses 23-31 of 1 Samuel Chapter 25. Let us read together the wisdom of God that was brought to the forefront to diminish the anger and the frustration that was fueling the soon-to-be king of the nation. 
1 Sam 25:23-31, When Abigail saw David, she hurried and dismounted from her donkey, and fell on her face before David, and bowed herself to the ground. And she fell at his feet and said, "On me alone, my lord, be the blame. And please let your maidservant speak to you, and listen to the words of your maidservant. Please do not let my lord pay attention to this worthless man, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name and folly is with him; but I your maidservant did not see the young men of my lord whom you sent. Now therefore, my lord, as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, since the Lord has restrained you from shedding blood, and from avenging yourself by your own hand, now then let your enemies, and those who seek evil against my lord, be as Nabal. And now let this gift which your maidservant has brought to my lord be given to the young men who accompany my lord. Please forgive the transgression of your maidservant; for the Lord will certainly make for my lord an enduring house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you all your days. And should anyone rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, then the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living with the Lord your God; but the lives of your enemies He will sling out as from the hollow of a sling. And it shall come about when the Lord shall do for my lord according to all the good that He has spoken concerning you, and shall appoint you ruler over Israel, that this will not cause grief or a troubled heart to my lord, both by having shed blood without cause and by my lord having avenged himself. When the Lord shall deal well with my lord, then remember your maidservant." 
	Abigail approached this entire situation in the wisdom that proceeded forth from her understanding of that which pleased and honored Jehovah. The first aspect was that she put herself before David as the one who was guilty. She took the blame upon herself and willingly made herself the point of the wrath of David rather than the intended annihilation of all the males of her household. This is the heart that lays down one’s life for the sake of others, a true act of the living wisdom of God.
	The second revelation that Abigail was a very wise woman of God is that she understood what was as stake for David as the chosen one to sit upon the throne of Israel. She knew what the Lord had stated about David as a man whose heart was after the honor and the praise and the adoration of Jehovah. Therefore, she pointed out, with all wisdom, the encouragement to David of what his rash action would bring.  
…Please forgive the transgression of your maidservant; for the Lord will certainly make for my lord an enduring house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you all your days. And should anyone rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, then the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living with the Lord your God; but the lives of your enemies He will sling out as from the hollow of a sling. And it shall come about when the Lord shall do for my lord according to all the good that He has spoken concerning you, and shall appoint you ruler over Israel, that this will not cause grief or a troubled heart to my lord, both by having shed blood without cause and by my lord having avenged himself. 
	In the further detailing of the active wisdom of God being manifested in this situation as recounted in verse 32, David was wise enough to listen to this astute woman. There was a softness of heart in this man to hear the voice of wisdom as it was proclaimed. David might have chosen the path of many of the men of his age who set aside anything that a woman said as merely emotional babbling and not worth consideration. 
However David was filled with enough perception to know that God speaks through His chosen people, be they male or female, bond or free, Jew or Gentile. Therefore he willingly listened to this woman as she expounded the truth that he needed to hear.
	1 Sam 25:32, Then David said to Abigail, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me, and blessed be your discernment, and blessed be you, who have kept me this day from bloodshed, and from avenging myself by my own hand. 
	The truth of the matter was that God used His wisdom instilled into Abigail to prevent David from making a terrible mistake that would haunt his installation upon the throne of Israel. This woman knew what God had said about David being anointed as the next king of Israel. As well, she knew that God would not be pleased with the action that was the intention of David’s rashness. She put herself at the foot of the shepherd, thus taking upon herself the blame for the whole situation because she knew that David was risking his very path to the throne with this action of anger and pride. 
	Another time, when he was king, there was the use of the wisdom of a woman to keep David from showing himself as a bitter and vengeful father. He had sent away his son Absalom, whom he dearly loved, because of Absalom’s horrible action of the killing of his step-brother. This was all tied up in the course of the consequences that were a result of David’s great sin before the Lord with Bathsheba. However, at this point, David was still dealing with his anger and mourning at the loss of his murdered son intermingled with his love for Abaslom.
	Joab, the counselor to the king brought forth a woman, considered to be wise, to snap the king out of his doldrums which were greatly affecting the course of his decision making. This was another of those times when David would hear the voice of the forgiveness of Jehovah through that of a woman who knew the God of Israel and sought to make it known for the sake of the king moving forward as The Lord so set forth.
	Please turn in your Bibles to the 14th Chapter of 2 Samuel. We will begin reading together verses 1-3.
	2 Sam 14:1-3, Now Joab the son of Zeruiah perceived that the king's heart was inclined toward Absalom. So Joab sent to Tekoa and brought a wise woman from there and said to her, "Please pretend to be a mourner, and put on mourning garments now, and do not anoint yourself with oil, but be like a woman who has been mourning for the dead many days; then go to the king and speak to him in this manner. "So Joab put the words in her mouth. 
	Joab set his words into the ears of this woman, but she was wise enough in the knowledge of the ways and the working of Jehovah to set before David that which was from the heart of God. This is recounted in verses 12-20 of this 14th Chapter. 
	This wise woman freely admitted that Joab had given her words to speak, but she accounted it to the wisdom of God in the heart of David to discern that which needed to be done. She was a mouthpiece, initiated by the action of Joab, but wise enough to put forth that which would show David the wisdom of God for the sake of the ruling and the overseeing of the nation of The Lord.
	2 Sam 14:12-20, Then the woman said, "Please let your maidservant speak a word to my lord the king." And he said, "Speak." And the woman said, "Why then have you planned such a thing against the people of God? For in speaking this word the king is as one who is guilty, in that the king does not bring back his banished one. For we shall surely die and are like water spilled on the ground which cannot be gathered up again. Yet God does not take away life, but plans ways so that the banished one may not be cast out from him. Now the reason I have come to speak this word to my lord the king is because the people have made me afraid; so your maidservant said, 'Let me now speak to the king, perhaps the king will perform the request of his maidservant. 'For the king will hear and deliver his maidservant from the hand of the man who would destroy both me and my son from the inheritance of God.' "Then your maidservant said, 'Please let the word of my lord the king be comforting, for as the angel of God, so is my lord the king to discern good and evil. And may the Lord your God be with you.'" Then the king answered and said to the woman, "Please do not hide anything from me that I am about to ask you." And the woman said, "Let my lord the king please speak." So the king said, "Is the hand of Joab with you in all this?" And the woman answered and said, "As your soul lives, my lord the king, no one can turn to the right or to the left from anything that my lord the king has spoken. Indeed, it was your servant Joab who commanded me, and it was he who put all these words in the mouth of your maidservant; in order to change the appearance of things your servant Joab has done this thing. But my lord is wise, like the wisdom of the angel of God, to know all that is in the earth." 
	… Yet God does not take away life, but plans ways so that the banished one may not be cast out from him. Please consider the wisdom stated in this verse. This is where we all were apart from Christ Jesus. Because of our sinful nature, born in transgression, we were banished from the presence of Our Most Holy and Righteous God. We could never come before Him unless He did something to make that a possibility. That is what He did in the giving of His Only Begotten Son to redeem us unto Himself, placed into His presence as His very own adopted children. This heart of God was to be the heart of the king for his son, as it is to be our hearts with all who need to be seen as one of God’s own.
	That is a wisdom beyond the reaches of human thought and understanding, but is the very heart of God for each one of His wandering and forlorn children. We are very wise when we deal with others in the manner with which God so deals with us. That is the manifested course of how the wisdom of The Lord indwells His people in the course of our walk with Him on this sojourn we call life. So be it and amen.

This morning’s benediction is Eccl 3:14. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. Amen.