Don't Forget the Gospel

707 Today's Prime Time Devo comes from 2Sa 23:18 Now Abishai the brother of Joab, the son of Zeruiah, was chief of another three. He lifted his spear against three hundred men, killed them, and won a name among these three. 19 Was he not the most honored of three? Therefore he became their captain. However, he did not attain to notoriety of the first three. 2 Sam 23:18,19) The other three were mentioned in verses 8-12, but we don't find a lot of information about their exploits in Scripture. That's not the case for Abishai. We have read of him before and his exploits while serving David. The first mention was the time he volunteered to go with David into the camp of Saul. They were able to sneak in all the way next to a sleeping Saul and Abishai wanted to thrust Saul through with a spear, but David restrained him. Abishai and his brother were also involved in the slaying of Abner (who had killed his brother Asahel) It was Abishai who wanted to kill Shimei for his verbal outburst against king David, when they were fleeing Jerusalem, but again David restrained him. There were other exploits mentioned as well. There can be no doubt that Abishai was a great and mighty warrior, but sometimes a little over-zealous. We would do well to learn from the mistakes of Abishai and season our zealousness for the Lord with mercy and grace. I can't help but think of the Apostle Paul in his pre-conversion days and his zealousness as a Pharisee. He freely admitted in Php 3:6 his zealousness in persecuting the people of “The Way.” But then Jesus met him on the road to Damascus and everything changed. Jesus met him with grace and mercy and Paul became a spokesman for the grace and mercy of Christ to the Jew first and then the Gentile. From that day forward he determined to preach nothing but Christ crucified. Let us learn to do the same. Preaching Christ crucified involves the Law, (it is our breaking of the Law that put Him on the tree) but let us not leave out the sweet message of the Gospel, with the sure promise of forgiveness and eternal life for all who believe!