Reading: 1 Kings
20:1-34
I
do not remember this but my Mom told me that when I was a toddler I reached up
and grabbed the handle of a pan on the stove, pulling the hot water in the pan
down upon myself. It was fortunate that
I did not receive any scarring from the burns but it must have hurt
tremendously. Mom said she had told me
not to touch the stove or any thing on it.
She always said it was “hot” but I still grabbed that handle. Did I need to experience it for myself? Was it just willful disobedience? I do not know. All I do know is that there was a
long-lasting effect to my disobedience.
I must have been miserable for days until the burned skin healed and my
Mom would have shared in that misery with me as she cared for me.
We
surely do not always know when or how far our disobedience can affect those
around us. Take for instance King Ahab,
one of the most wicked and evil kings of Israel. In 1 Kings 20 we see that, when faced by an
enemy with forces greater than his own he did not seek out God’s counsel but
rather the counsel of men (vs. 7). When
God then sent him a prophet to tell him that He would deliver the full
multitude of King Ben-hadad’s forces to him King Ahab even questioned how (vs.
14). One of the things that amazed me
about this whole story is that when King Ahab stood victorious over King
Ben-hadad he did not kill him, after all Ben-hadad had taunted him and taken
his treasures, women, and children! No
King Ahab made a deal with Ben-hadad and sent him on his way. King Ahab’s greed, to gain cities and land in
Syria,
had a long-lasting effect on his own life and we see what God has to say about
it in 1 Kings 20:35-43.
“A certain man of the sons of the
prophets said to his neighbor, At the
command of the Lord, strike me, I pray you.
And the man refused to strike him.
Then he said to him, Because you
have not obeyed the voice of the Lord, behold, as soon as you have left me
a lion will slay you. And as soon as he
departed from him, a lion found him and killed him.” -1 Kings
20:35-36
If
your neighbor came to you and told you that God says you should hit and wound
him how would you react? I know I would
be aghast and refuse too. Yet this man’s
neighbor was a prophet and prefaced his request “At the command of the
Lord…” This neighbor knew that he lived
next to a prophet. In his day and age
prophets said and did odd things to gain Israel’s attention towards
God. Here came this prophet to him
asking him to strike him but making it clear that it was not just a whim
request but a “command of the Lord”.
This neighbor’s disobedience brought a long-lasting result, his own
death. The prophet found another man and
this one obeyed, striking and wounding him.
The prophet then threw ashes upon himself (usually a sign of mourning in
Israel
but in this case a disguise) and waited at a place he knew the king would pass
by. Sure enough, King Ahab passed by and
the prophet told him an allegorical story about letting a man go who he was
supposed to keep charge of at the cost of his life if he did not. When the king told him he got what he
deserved then the prophet then removed the ashes from his face and the king
recognized him as one of the prophets.
The prophet then told him that because he let Ben-hadad go instead of
killing him that his own life and that
of his people would be forfeit. King
Ahab’s disobedience had a long-lasting effect on not only himself but also on Israel as well.
