Missed Opportunity: “The Enduring Cost of Ignoring Truth” – 1 Kings 21

 King Ahab’s reign is splashed over only a handful of pages in the Bible, yet his name and fame is remembered. His marriage to Jezebel, the openly pagan leanings in his administration are the stuff of legend. He always seemed on the wrong moral side of the compass. What he really did was ignore truth. Yet, it surely seemed as though his strategy was working… Before we look too deeply at the story in front of us, let’s consider the landscape of Ahab’s life, and what is recorded in the Word…

How will you fulfill your needs? Who can give you what you truly want when you don’t have a walk with God? How can you cover over the nagging sense that you are ignoring the truth that God is unhappy with where you are and how you are acting?

Step One: Get an Obsession instead of seeking God.

(21:1-2): It seemed in the text like a simple desire to expand on Ahab’s part, but in the larger look at his life, we find that Ahab BEGAN with excess(16:29-34), and did not react well to losing what he wanted.

• “After these things” (21:1): When God chastised Ahab, he didn’t focus on changing to please God, he focused on THINGS HE WANTED. People often find solace in THINGS (the physical world) when their walk with God (the spiritual world) is failing, or has fallen apart from disobedience. It is significant that 1 Kings 20 ends with Ahab “sullen and vexed” over God’s Word. He didn’t like what God said. He didn’t like being told that he wasn’t totally in charge and that he was accountable to God. God built a system to help him understand his place, but he didn’t like the system! Here was God’s system:

Dt. 17:14″When you enter the land which the LORD your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,’ 15 you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses, one from among your countrymen you shall set as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over yourselves who is not your countryman. 16 “Moreover, he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, since the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’ 17″ He shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself. 18 “Now it shall come about when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. 19 “It shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, by carefully observing all the words of this law and these statutes, 20 that his heart may not be lifted up above his countrymen and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may continue long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.

Note the warning signs that Ahab had blown through on the way to his trip back top Samaria and his garden. He selected a foreign wife, built an army for himself, and never took the time to write out, nor read, the Word of God for himself!

• “Naboth had a vineyard” (21:1): Accurately, Naboth’s family had the vineyard for generations. Though Ahab just became fixated on it, the property was not new. When we refuse to fix the hard things of our lives, we often wind up trying to fix the easier things… like buying a neighbor’s property. We feel ROBBED if we don’t get everything we want!

• “I will give you a better vineyard…or I will give you money.” (2:2): In real estate, I have learned one critical lesson: Everyone has a “walk away” price. We can offer a price we think is reasonable, but it doesn’t matter. The price is whatever the other party will agree to! 

Step Two: Lose the Obsession and Blame God.

(21:3): When I first read the story, I glossed over the reply of Naboth. Don’t do it! Take a minute and listen to what Naboth thought he was upholding by keeping this particular parcel of land.

• “The Lord forbid me” (21:3): It may sound like a simple “God forbid!” but it was much more than this. The sentence belies the sense that Naboth was protecting something the Lord had stewarded to him. He saw this as something God wanted him to keep. What was more, think about what Ahab heard from this… GOD doesn’t want to give me what I want. It is God’s fault I can’t have this object of my obsession. The hook was firmed planted in Ahab’s jaw, the enemy of his soul had him. When we believe that God is looking to keep us from the best, we are on the path to sin!

• “inheritance of my fathers” (21:3): This was a statement of CONVICTION, something Ahab lacked throughout his life! This was a statement to uphold the tradition of his fathers, and to be a man of honor. What a contrast to his next door neighbor!

Step Three: Act out when you don’t get your own way.

(21:4): Ahab took the news hard! Note the reaction:

• Sullen and vexed (21:4): The first reaction of Ahab would have been normal for a child! He “lay on his bed and faced the wall”. Oh please! He couldn’t eat because he didn’t get his way? Really! The furthest thing from Ahab’s mind was the will of God, or the way of God, or the wants and needs of his fellow human being. Ahab cared for no one but Ahab… so he pouted. When Ahab decided to act like a big baby instead of a grown man, he set into motion a horrible scenario of circumstances.

Step Four: Gather ungodly Allies.

(21:5-7) When God isn’t going to let you do what you want, what do you do? You find someone that will tell you that you are being denied your rights! You ally yourself with someone that wants to help fulfill your “need” even if the Lord hasn’t meant for you to have it. It may be a friend, or even a VISA card, but it will supply all your needs!

• “He said to her” (21:6): It all begins with enlisting a friend that has no mooring to the truth. They can tell you what will please you, because the truth doesn’t bind them. They have some other interest at stake, and can be enlisted to tell you what you want to hear.

• “Do you now reign over Israel? (21:7): With no thought of how it would affect Naboth, Jezebel showed her true colors. People with power often have a heightened sense of entitlement. People with power may abuse that power to get what they want.

• “I will give you the vineyard of Naboth” (21:7): There is the HEART of the passage. Ahab would GET from Jezebel what he could not GET from God. When we trust someone else to give us what God has, for reasons we don’t understand, withheld from us, we go in the wrong direction. Don’t forget, Ahab should have been working on his walk BACK to God, but instead he was attempting to “fill the void” with fulfillment from another.

Step Five: Defend Deception as truth.

(21:8-16) Jezebel set out to destroy Naboth and take his territory. Ahab knew that she was up to things that were illegal and immoral. Yet, he sat by and acted like it was all kosher.

“in Ahab’s name” (21:8): She used a false authority.
“proclaim a fast” (21:9): She used a false religious behavior.
“two worthless men” (21:10): She brought in false experts.
“you cursed God” (21:10): She offered a false accusation.
“men of the city” (21:11): She made false allies.
“stoned him” (21:13): She forced a false judgment.

At this point maybe you are asking an obvious question… Why not just have the man KILLED? Because that is not the way this DECEPTION works. Ahab had no stomach for such Machiavellian behavior. He needed…a deception. He needed to FEEL OK about doing wrong. He could only do that if he winked at a progressive series of lies that were spun by a black-hearted immoral woman. A huge deception is just a large pile of small lies.

Our mortgage crisis is nothing more than this. Our bailouts are nothing more than this. We are lying to ourselves and then selling the lie that our lie is the truth. We DO have the right to live better than we can afford. We DO have the right to sign our names to agreements and then blame the people that gave them to us. We aren’t responsible for failing to pay for what we bought because we wanted too much and saved too little….

Step Six: Sell yourself to the wrong cause.

(21:17-26) Enter the voice of truth from God through the prophet. Notice how the entry was greeted:

• “O my enemy!” (21:20): Ahab never got the idea that HE was the problem. He blamed God’s messenger, not his behavior!

• “sold yourself” (21:20 AND 25): Elijah calls it clearly – “You have sold out to a lie!” That is the moment of truth in the story. Ahab is confronted with the reality that he has now fully grabbed a lie, and lived it out. When it is clearly pointed out to him, he has a choice.

What do I do now? How can I respond if I find that I have been ignoring the truth?

(21:27-29) (Dr. R.G. Lee wrote):“And, with these words, making Ahab to cower as one cowers and recoils from a hissing adder, finding Naboth’s vineyard to be haunted with ghosts and the clusters thereof to be full of blood, Elijah went his way — as was his custom so suddenly to appear and so quickly to disappear. Ahab had sold himself for nought, as did Achan for a burial robe and a useless ingot, as did Judas for thirty pieces of silver which so burned his palms and so burned his conscience and so burned his soul that he found relief in the noose at the rope’s end. And when Ahab got back in the chariot to go back to Jezebel — the vile toad who squatted upon the throne to be again with the beautiful adder coiled upon the throne — the hoofs of the horses pounding the road pounded into his guilty soul Elijah’s words: “Someday — the dogs will lick thy blood! Someday the dogs will eat Jezebel by the ramparts of Jezreel.” God had spoken! Would it come to pass?”( R. G. Lee) Ahab chose to change his pattern. He chose to face God and take responsibility.

• Tore his robe: He had to tear off the layer of false pretense. Ahab tore the robe that showed he was king. He wasn’t king. Kings were supposed to be law abiding, and care for their charges.

• Put on sackcloth: He saw what he had done and saw that it was something he needed to own publicly. Private change wasn’t enough for this enormous wrong.

• Fasted: He lost his appetite, just as he did when he couldn’t get what he wanted. He realized that even with the vineyard he didn’t have what he wanted. He wanted peace in his heart with God.

• Went despondently: He stopped his normal pattern of sin. He called a halt to his wrong behaviors.

What can I expect from the repentance?

1)       God will acknowledge real repentance and He is moved by your heart becoming honest – even after a long season of sin (21:29).

2)       Don’t anticipate the sin’s effects will all be swallowed up in a moment. If you continued in sin through the raising of your children, they will still suffer some of the effects of that, etc.