2 Sam 16:12, Perhaps the Lord will look on my affliction and return good to me instead of his cursing this day." 
In our last consideration of this passage, we were seeing that there is always hope in The Lord. It is never a hope based on our righteous behavior or action in any manner whatsoever. There must be that humbleness of spirit within those who seek for The Lord to manifest His will and His plan in action. We can rely on Him to do all that He has determined in His absolute Faithfulness and Sovereignty. He always does everything for His people in perfect accord with what He has established before even the ages of eternity were put into place.
This morning, we will consider the fact that we can count on God to deal with all the insults and cursing and abuse that may be heaped upon us for the sake of His testimony and His name’s sake. In the passage this morning, we know that David was being cursed by Shimei with the truth of what he had done in regard to his adultery and his subsequent cover-up. This included his plotting of the death of Uriah. Shimei was correct in the statement that David’s hands were guilty of blood, however not in the sense of Shimei’s direct accusation. David had not taken the throne from the house of Saul. God had done that because of Saul’s disobedience.
However, David did have blood on his hands, so much so that he was prevented from building the Temple of The Lord, which was David’s greatest desire. He was innocent, therefore, before the specific accusation of Shimei.
David was counting on the Lord to show the truth and to turn those insults into blessings in the course of Jehovah’s timing and intervention. David set his heart on God. His hope and his faith and his integrity were ever unto The Lord. He was humbly contrite and seeking after the forgiveness of God in confessing and turning away from his sin. David did not try to justify his actions, but rather faced them and hated them as much as God hated that selfish abuse of power.
Instead of the cursing from the mouth of Shimei, David was seeking after the joy and the peace of the restoration of his relationship with Jehovah. Only God could so bring that into place. 
As a result, David was not willing to have the blood of another man upon his hands, and just took the cursing and the pain inflicted by those hurled stones. He let God bring forth that which only God could do. 
David knew that The Lord would establish that which would serve the divine plan and purpose of His will. Therefore, even in the midst of the verbal abuse and the physical assault of those thrown rocks, David counted on Jehovah.
This faithful unyielding reliance upon Yahweh to deal with those who would try to curse and defile and defame the people of God was established long before for the nation as a whole. In Gen 12:3, God gave a great promise to Abram, soon to be called Abraham. Jehovah made known that He would be the One Who would deal with those who would curse the work and the people with whom God was investing Himself.
Gen 12:3, And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." 
This was brought forth fully in the account of the failure of Balaam to curse the people as they were at the final stages of their preparation to enter into the Promised Land. This is recounted in Deut 23:3-5. God would not allow the vilification to be decreed upon His chosen nation by that pagan prophet. Therefore, those who sought to bring such a curse upon the Israelites were prevented from that vile act and remembered by The Lord for their sinister attempt.  
Deut 23:3-5, "No Ammonite or Moabite shall enter the assembly of the Lord; none of their descendants, even to the tenth generation, shall ever enter the assembly of the Lord, because they did not meet you with food and water on the way when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. Nevertheless, the Lord your God was not willing to listen to Balaam, but the Lord your God turned the curse into a blessing for you because the Lord your God loves you.
The Prophet Isaiah, in Isa 27:6-8, details how Jehovah worked to bring forth repentance and humbleness of heart and mind in this people who were blessed by God with everything. They had become proud in their excess and claimed that they were the ones who had created such vast fortunes. At the same time, they were setting aside the cries of the homeless and the widows and the orphans and the disenfranchised and the weary and the poor and the sick. 
Isa 27:6-8, In the days to come Jacob will take root, Israel will blossom and sprout; And they will fill the whole world with fruit. Like the striking of Him who has struck them, has He struck them? Or like the slaughter of His slain, have they been slain? Thou didst contend with them by banishing them, by driving them away. With His fierce wind He has expelled them on the day of the east wind. 
This nation of God was expelled just like those previous Canaanites, whose gods the Israelites worshiped in their idolatrous hearts. This was the nation that Balaam could not curse, but only bless even as he was paid to bring forth a vocalization of damnation upon the Children of Israel. 
God did not allow the cursing of His people for the sake of His testimony in the land. The people, themselves, brought this action of Jehovah to bring forth the contriteness of heart and the brokenness of spirit which would call to Him in their utter distress and seek Him in their hour of desperate need.
We now jump forward in our Bibles to the New Testament, in order to follow the pattern of what God establishes despite the vile and insidious abuse of those who belong to Him by the peoples of this world. Our Lord, Himself, encourages us in the need to count on Him when we are being thusly attacked because we will not deny Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. This is given to us in the midst of what we call the Sermon on the Mount. Matt 5:11+12.
Matt 5:11+12, "Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me. "Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Jesus directs our attention to that which really matters in the course of our walk on this earth. We will face persecution and defamation and false accusations by those who would seek to bring disgrace and disrespect and the discounting of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary. They will not countenance the truth and will seek to silence those who bring the gospel message to the masses whom this age has enslaved in their lies and subterfuge. 
Yet, through it all, we are to look to Yahweh and allow Him the freedom to show, by our living sacrifice of obedience and trust in Jehovah, just how exactly true is the Good News of the Salvation of Jesus Christ to any person who seeks Him. It does not matter how stained in transgression and wrongdoing is that sinner. Those who will call out to The Only Begotten of the Father will become a redeemed and cleansed child of The Most High God. 
This reality will not be silenced nor droned out by any force of evil with all those vile lies and clanging innuendos and sinister intentions. They may accuse and throw all manner of rocks and dust at those who bring forth the Gospel in lives that are lived unto God by the power of the Holy Spirit. All those falsehoods and defamations will only serve to show how much greater and stronger and wiser and vibrant is Our God.
The Apostle Paul gives us that passage which stands for eternity as the proven and faithful work of God to which we cling with all our hearts in the midst of the deepest storms of trial and tribulation. Please turn in your Bibles to a well worn page of scripture, Romans 8:28-34. There is such assurance throughout this passage in the terms that no matter how abusive and obscene and vicious may be the attacks and the curses hurled at us, we are covered and maintained and triumphant in our awesome relationship as the Children of God.   
Rom 8:28-34, And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 
The Apostle adds even more depth to this encouragement to those who belong to God in Jesus Christ with the manifested reality that is expressed in his second letter to the church at Corinth. In 2 Cor 4:17+18, we are shown the focal truth of what these earthly curses serve to produce in us. This is as we turn to Christ and obey and honor Him rather than letting our eyes and hearts wander from the path of Christ’s guidance.
2 Cor 4:17+18, For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 
And once again, in 2 Thess 1:6-8, the Apostle brings to the forefront the fact that God does not take these attacks and cursing hurled at His dear and beloved children lightly. There will come that day, in the perfect timing of Our Heavenly Father, when those who have so vehemently attacked His children, will reap the full measure of the consequences of their evil actions. 
2 Thess 1:6-8, For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 
But that is to be left to God, Alone. It is not our place to so judge, because we do not know how some may respond when they see the love of God that is expressed even to those who are so violently opposing the Gospel and its messengers. 
The Writer to the Hebrews details how God prepares His Children to not get disappointed or put off base by all the malevolent reactions of this age. In Heb 12:7-14, we are brought into the awareness that God fully works in the lives of His beloved children in order that we will be able to endure anything that will be hurled and launched against us by this age. 
Heb 12:7-14, It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.
God prepares us, through His loving actions of discipline and training, to be able to endure and overcome any assault of this world power. We are not just saved and then dangled as targets for the minions of wickedness to annihilate. We are brought, by the mighty working power of Jehovah, through those training grounds which enable us to face the worse of this age and still stand firmly rooted in the victory of Jesus Christ, Our Savior, Our Lord, Our Rock, and Our Refuge. That reality is to be evidenced through all in whom God has invested Himself by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit as our seal of His eternal redemption in place in us.
We close this morning with the further details of how we are to face everything in Christ Jesus as recounted by the Apostle Peter in his first letter. Please turn to 1 Peter 4:12-19. The apostle reiterates what Jesus told all of us as we read in His Sermon on the Mount. 
1 Peter 4:12-19, Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing; so that also at the revelation of His glory, you may rejoice with exultation. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. By no means let any of you suffer as a murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler; but if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not feel ashamed, but in that name let him glorify God. For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And if it is with difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner? Therefore, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right. 
Our lives are to reflect the One by Whom we have been saved. As He lived His life in perfect holiness and obedience to Our Heavenly Father, so should that be in evidence in us. We will not be perfect in the course of this walk, but that should be the goal. It should especially be the desire of how we deal with others, even those who would persecute and slander us. They should not find anything of such a nature as would warrant and justify their lies and defamation. We face it all in the victory of Jesus. We absolutely count on Him to deal with the manner of our protection, our uplifting, and our testimony to His glory and to His praise, Alone! So be it.
Perhaps the Lord will look on my affliction and return good to me instead of his cursing this day." Amen. 
This morning’s benediction is 1 Peter 5:6+7. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you. Amen.