God is the time-keeper. He says: “Now.” We wonder we can not go just when it is convenient to ourselves. We think we see the exact juncture when it would be right to go, but if we went just then a serpent would bite us on the road.
We want to go to Heaven, but God says: “Not yet.”
We want to begin the battle, but God says: “Wait.”
In the eighteenth chapter of the first Book of Kings we read:
“And it came to pass, after many days, that the word of the Lord came to Elijah in the third year, saying: ‘Go, show thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the Earth.’ And Elijah went to show himself unto Ahab. And there was a sore famine in Samaria.”
Think of waiting “many days” and doing nothing! But what if waiting be the best working? What if we can best do every thing by simply doing nothing? There is a time to stand still and see the salvation of God.
Mark another thing in these verses. The Lord said “Go,” and Elijah went. Not Elijah “objected,” Elijah “reasoned,” or Elijah “pointed out the difficulties,” but simply Elijah “went.”
That is the true ideal of life.
Always be ready.
Contrast with this the case of Jonah. Elijah had no fear of Ahab. He who fears God can not fear man. If you go up to your duties in your own strength, you will find them difficult; if you come down upon them from high communion with God, you will find them easy.
The governor of the house of Ahab was called Obadiah. The word Obadiah means “servant of Jehovah,” and it would seem to have been a true description of the man, for we read that “Obadiah feared [or reverenced] the Lord greatly.”
It is possible for a man to be very bad in one direction and very tolerant in another. It was so in the case of Ahab. He was the worst of the kings of Israel, yet he kept a governor over his house who feared the Lord greatly.
The Lord causes the most wicked men to pay His religion the homage which is due to its excellence. A bad king employs a good governor. He who himself disobeys Jehovah yet engages a servant who fears the Lord greatly. The thief likes an honest man for steward. The blasphemer likes a godly teacher for his child. The great speculator prefers an unspeculative man for book-keeper. It is thus that virtue has many unconscious votaries.
He who is the slave of idolatry becomes an easy prey to the power of cruel tempters. We do not know that Ahab was a cruel man, but we do know that Jezebel was a cruel woman, and Ahab was greatly influenced by his passionate and sanguinary wife. Ahab’s provocation of the Lord may have been in the direction of idolatry alone; but to be wrong in your conception of worship is to expose yourself to every possible attack of the enemy. To pray in the wrong direction is to be weak in every other.
Ahab was a speculative idolater; Jezebel was a practical persecutor. Ahab showed that speculative error is consistent with social toleration. You must distinguish between Ahab and Elijah in this matter. It was Jezebel who slew the prophets of the Lord, and Ahab knew that his servant, Obadiah, had hidden fifty of these prophets in a cave; and yet Ahab kept Obadiah in his service. But redeeming points do not restore the whole character. “One swallow does not make a Summer.”
In the same character may be met great faith and great doubt. Obadiah risked his life to save fifty of the prophets of the Lord, yet dare not risk it, without first receiving an oath, for the greatest prophet of all! This mixture we find in every human character. “How abject, how august, is man!”
In Ahab, Obadiah, Elijah and Jezebel we see a fourfold type of human society. There is the speculator, the godly servant, the far-seeing prophet and the cruel persecutor.
Society has got no farther than this today. The Ahabs of the age are leading us away into speculation that ends in idolatry and in infinite provocation of the Lord; the Obadiahs of the age are still praying, and serving God, and saving even the worst households from the wrath of Heaven; the Elijahs of the age are still hurling their divine thunders through the corrupt and stagnant air, and piercing with lightning shafts the gloomy and threatening future; and the Jezebels of the age are still narrow, bitter, indignant, vengeful and sanguinary.
O wondrous combination! So checked, so controlled, by invisible but benignant power! Speculative error has its counterpart in actual cruelty, and patient worship has its counterpart in daring service.
We sometimes hear that Ahab was a covetous man. Are we quite sure that the charge is just and that it can be substantiated?
This charge is based on the affair of Naboth’s vineyard. How could Ahab be covetous? He proposed terms, saying:
“Give me thy vineyard, that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house, and I will give thee a better vineyard than it; or, if it seems good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money.”