Clough Manhood Series Lesson 37

Ahab: Unbiblical Solution Fails – 1 Kings 16:30ff

Some time ago and every once in a while we manage to connect with these; the first point in evangelism is God. We have said that basically the evangelistic message consists of four parts, that God’s here, what He’s like; then the problem of man’s rebellion against that God and His standard too; then redemption, and then response to that in faith. The first point in evangelism is God. What do you say to someone who does not think God is perfect; all of God’s attributes he views as imperfect. Well, as we will show in the first framework pamphlet when it’s out, and also during the basic’s class later on in basic two I believe we cover this, we’ll show you that when encountering that kind of an objection your first tactic is to go back and examine why he says it. Obviously if he is saying that God is imperfect it implies that he has a standard by which he’s measuring God. The next question to your friend would be is ask him by what standard is God imperfect. What is this marvelous yardstick that you have that appears to be able to discern that God, in fact, doesn’t meet it? And then start quizzing him on his position. That’s the way to work with that kind of a situation.

Now tonight we continue our study of the doctrine of the Christian man and as we do so we want to again summarize some of the qualities of the male as he is seen in the Bible. One of the great faults that I find with some of the works that are now coming out on the role of man from Christian circles, number one, they’re written by women; and number two, when they are written even by men what they do is they just parrot what the women’s book says in a reverse format, so what you’ve got is women have this character, man has this character. Well, that’s nice but with a little contrast. But what it sacrifices is the fact that the Scriptures look upon man in a different role than women. And this role difference is automatically negated by the very way in which the writing occurs; it’s always written as though the man is the opposite of the woman. Well, he’s more than just the opposite of the woman, he has his own thing that he does. And so that’s why we have tended to steer away from a direct contrast until the end of this series which will be in three or four weeks when we start into the Song of Songs and Ruth and there you’ll see the distinct differences between the man and the woman vis-à-vis each other. But right now we’re not doing that; right now we’re just trying to summarize some of the qualities of manhood given in Scripture and the way it is given in Scripture. It’s not given in Scripture as the reverse image of the female. It’s given as something in unto itself.

All right, the first characteristic which we’ll summarize, these are attempts as we go along, to work with these characteristics, summarizing them to various points, hoping that eventually these become useful. Another way of summarizing man, what we have done, is to say he subdues in the earth, and by conquest among other men. Whereas the women also subdues the man is always pictured as subduing by conquest among other men. This can be in direct competition or indirect competition, and this is just part and parcel of the man in the Scriptures. And if you have your eyes open you can see it’s part and parcel of any man that you know. But all men basically are looking at themselves and their performance versus their peers performance. And in fact, many men are much more competition conscious than their wives, much more competition conscious than women in general, in that sense, in that area of life.

Now this emphasis can be in three different areas when a man subdues by conquest and these three different areas are simply reflective of Genesis 9:25-27 which give these three or tripartite division of the human race. It can be more physically centered, in which case the man here would be conquering in the area of sports, in war, in basic technology in physically subduing the earth. That’s one zone or one emphasis, but it doesn’t mean that all men… a man still is a man if he subdues in other areas than just the physical. And so we have to be careful in our own day that we don’t read into this subduing thing just the physical subduing because it includes other ways. The other ways, two ways, the physical being more or less a Hamitic way of subduing things, the trend anyway, is spiritual subduing, through Shem, the Semitic way of subduing. How does a man spiritually subdue? And one of the most obvious things in the church age is through evangelism. Some men who may not be physical subduers are excellent evangelists and are doing a fantastic job in subduing, in probably a more strategic area than the men who are subduing physically. So man can still be a man Scripturally and subdue in the area of evangelism and teaching of doctrine, altering the ideas and the way people think by his teaching and preaching.

One has only to think of what I said in the fourth of July service when early 19^th century historians described the congregational clergy of New England in connection with a raid in the American Revolution of the black regiment. Now why would the congregational clergymen be called a black regiment of the American Revolution? Simple, because they had defended the cause of the colonials, they advocated revolution against the king. The evangelicals in New England, contrary to a lot of static you get today, were not Toreys, they were very ardent separatists from Britain, and in the name of Romans 13, advocated revolution. So therefore we have that subduing. There was an obvious case in our history when men subdued in a vast way spiritually.

And then man can subdue mentally and this would be the Japhetic trend, and this would be shown up in such things as men who make discoveries, men who organize people’s thinking, the philosophers, the men who do the thinking. Somebody has to do the thinking because if the civilization doesn’t have its thinkers it just simply doesn’t operate. I became aware of this recently in a discussion with one of the candidates for the 19^th district to Congress and we were discussing the role of government and several of us were there in the room and we were discussing with him what is your view of government. And it became very obvious that this candidate had not thought through at all what his role of government was. And he kept trying to respond, well, I believe this about this piece of legislation or that about that piece of legislation. And those of us who were in the room question him said sir, we’re not really too interested in the pieces of legislation because they’re going to be changed tomorrow; what we want is some predictability about the candidates and the only predictability we’ve got about the candidate is how do you think; what is your basic view of government, the basic view of law, the basic view of values; until we know these we don’t know really where you’re at; until we know that we can’t vote in faith and trust.

So men need to think through and there’s a great need for a man to be a man in the area of mental subduing, the Japhetic trend of Genesis 9:25-27. So men can be men and subdue in many different areas, so don’t just think of this subduing in a physical way.

However, the subduing can also have a divine viewpoint direction and a human viewpoint direction. And I think the easiest way to summarize the difference between these two attitudes is simply this, just one simple question for man to think through. After I subdue and after I build, can I lay it at the feet of Christ with pride, with a good spiritual sense of accomplishment, can I say Lord, here it is, and give it back to Him. And if what I’m doing is not the kind of work that I can turn around and give back to Christ, then I’m in the wrong kind of subduing. I’m carnal, I’m working in the wrong direction; I’m working, in other words, at cross purposes with the Lord if I’m ashamed of presenting whatever it is that I do before Him. See, that’s one area, one activity of the man described in Scripture, a central one.

The second area that is truly central in the Scripture besides subduing the earth by conquest among other men is the man’s “kingship” and we’ll put the “kingship” in quotes, because most men, none of us get to be king, but the “kingship” is a relative thing; it is expressed in the third divine institution of the home and the family. We have had over the many weeks that we’ve been in this manhood series numerous illustrations of why there is a chain of command of God, the male, and the family. One of the easiest to see examples and proofs of this in Scripture is the sign of the covenant, deliberately a male only thing, circumcision. When the Law of Moses is given it’s not addressed to the women, he doesn’t say in Deuteronomy 20, do this to a husband; you never find that kind of expression in the Law, because the Law is directed to the men, it says watch out for the wife or do this to the wife, but the Law is never addressed to the woman.

We have an example of Noah and we said one of the test questions a man can ask himself, just for orientation purposes, is theoretical one: if God were to destroy the earth tonight could it be populated through the wisdom of my family, my family alone, could we be another Noahic family; do we have enough corporate doctrine to handle the situation? If God destroyed every other living member of the human race tonight, could we still survive. Now that mentality ought to be with us as Christians. All this stuff about nuclear war and we’re afraid of it and because we’re afraid of nuclear war, therefore we’re going to compromise here, we’re going to compromise there, this just doesn’t have any place in the Bible-believing Christian thought. The Bible-believing Christian thought is I’m going to be righteous or unrighteous; I’m not going to be a yellow coward, before even a nuclear arsenal. If what is right is right, then I will risk nuclear annihilation to stand for what is right and trust that God can save the human race once again. The human race has survived many, many great disasters and this disaster that Noah faced was far greater than nuclear war. Nuclear war isn’t that bad, most people die off the first two weeks and after the fallout’s gone you can start and replace and rebuild. So it’s not the big bugaboo that everybody thinks; sure people get killed but name a war where people haven’t been killed.

In 1914 and 1915, in the early days of World War I everybody said ooh, the machine gun is the ultimate weapon, we can’t fight wars any more because we’ve got a machine gun. Have machine guns stopped wars? No. Well, that’s the same kind of thing; in 1928 we had the Kellogg-Briand Pact and that was supposed to end wars; it was sort of the SALT agreement of the 1920s and which Britain, the United States and Japan limited their naval tonnage to certain ratios, just like we do with Geneva today with our ICBM ratios; it’s the same thing. Did 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact stop World War II. No it didn’t, because when men are going to fight they’re going to fight regardless of pacts, treaties, or anything else, or even weapons. So the Christian man has lots of reasons for thinking over his kingship; for the fact then can God cause the human race to survive through him and through his family.

The other thing about the kingship of man is that this involved all sorts of things for him within the home. For example, we’ll see over and over again this involves the problem of having his wife as the helper, but that her help be screened by the Word of God and the man is responsible for screening his wife’s advice from the Word. Sarah had all sorts of ingenious plans for Abraham, we saw, and one those ingenious plans brought forth Ishmael, and brought forth the Arab situation, which we’re still with, and even Jimmy Carter isn’t going to solve the Arab/Jew problem because God is going to see to it that it’s never solved until it’s solved righteously by the Messiah. And this is not casting any aspersions at our President; it’s just simply saying that no statesman, whether it’s our statesmen or some other country, is basically going to solve the problem. The animosity is as deep as the election of God Himself. So we have that, the problem of screening the wife’s advice.

God held Adam responsible for Eve’s advice and God held Abraham responsible for Sarah’s advice and God held Moses responsible for Zipporah’s advice. So always the men are held responsible. They’re responsible to listen, because Sarah often times did come up, particularly toward the end of their marriage, did come up with some fine pieces of advice and God told Abraham directly, you listen to your wife; your wife has divine viewpoint; your wife on this point is right and you’re wrong, and I can’t get to you so I’m going to get to you through your wife, so listen to here. So in that role the woman’s advice is very desperately needed and the man accepts it, screening it by the standards of the Word of God.

Other things that are involved in this kingship, there’s the problem of the fact that everyone in his family ought to at least to be evangelized. Now this is an amazing thing, isn’t it, that we can have parents come up to pastors and it’s almost a joke around Bible-believing pastors in town how many Christian families come to them and ask them to lead their children to Christ. Now thank God somebody hasn’t said that to me… yet; there’s always the first time. And I’m not saying I wouldn’t do it but I’m saying you’re going to get a lecture first on why haven’t you done it, you know, what’s the problem. God has placed your children under you, not under me. My job is not in any way to teach your children; my job is basically not even to teach the wives; my job is to teach the men. So it is the man’s responsibility to see to it the evangelization of his children in his home. Maybe the wife will do the winning of the child to Christ in mechanics but the man still has got the spiritual responsibility to do it.

And I might add, for those of you who are young couples, you don’t lead your child to Christ in an instant; it’s a long process. And those of you who have just had your children ought to be starting now to preface them with prayer, even though the child can’t speak, have the child close to you as you pray orally to God, and let that child grow up never knowing any other comfort but you orally praying to God before him. And then as the child grows older you can start working on the attributes of God, and then after the attributes of God the child’s own conscience will eventually drive them to the parent; in most cases young children don’t need an artificial situation to be led to Christ. The situation will be born in and of itself spontaneously. We have had several couples in our congregation tell me that their child will come down all of a sudden with a grin on their face, that I accepted Christ. It wasn’t even a conversation at the dinner table, but you know that the wheels were turning in your child’s mind because you had input certain doctrines and then had watched certain things happen and the answer was clear to them. And so the Holy Spirit led them to Christ, almost even without you being there. So this is the responsibility of the man though in practice often it’s the wife that really does it.

Another thing about the man’s responsibility is the character development in his family, but again, thinking in terms of Noah, can God utilize my family unit to start a new community if He had to.

All right, those are two areas of the man, the subduing of the earth by conquest, this kingship thing which most men will experience kingship in their zone of their family and some in a higher more complicated sense. Then we could say the third thing about the man, summarizing from what we have seen, are certain qualities that we observe about men so far in the Scriptures. Incidentally, lacking from this list are the qualities we will observe in the Song of Songs and Ruth. But the one so far we can summarize really into four areas: first, a quality we see in Solomon and David, in that little opposition; we see the concentration upon the eternal objective, the focusing of the man. David, the father in this case, had the ability or exercised the capacity to view the eternal consequences of his life over against the immediate distractions of all the errors and the failures and this other stuff; he could look way ahead and see the eternal value of what he was doing.

That’s why we read so often that Psalm, “O LORD, I seek thee in a dry and thirst land where no water is. And that was the picture David had dealing with all of life, that even on Mount Zion with springs and wells it still was a dry and thirsty land. There is no resting place, ultimately in time. Only in eternity and that’s why David said, “Early in the morning will I seek Thee, O LORD.” So David had that zeal of having the eternal objective and he failed, he got involved with this, he got involved in that, he had this upset, he had that upset, he had this catastrophe in his home, he had that catastrophe in his home; there’s not many catastrophes, incidentally, in family living that David did not experience. David experienced the whole range of them and yet he came through, like God says, a man after His own heart. Why? He concentrated on the eternal objective. Solomon, on the other hand became deflected. Solomon allowed the details of life to swallow them up, so that’s one great characteristic of the man, and Christian men ought to aim for that. We’ve got to concentrate on the eternal objective; that’s where our meaning is and all the rest of if, including all of our screw ups and failures are all beside the point; we still have to concentrate on the eternal objective.

The second quality that we have observed, we’ve already mentioned this in passing is the appreciation of the need for women and their role, under the direction of the Word; appreciation for the need for the women and their role. We saw this with Abraham and Sarah and so on. And today we’re getting very sloppy about this and there’s a lot of cultural pressure that will be brought to bear on you as a man, particularly those of you in administrative positions in business organizations.

I just got a folder from Biola and I opened the thing up and here is this smooth folder here, it’s a great Christian university on the West Coast, a great school in the past, known for its teaching, The Bible Institute of Los Angeles, the great fundamentalist stronghold at the turn of the century and we turn open to this new department of psychology they’re forming and we have… and here is the chair person of our department, did you meet him? And here’s another prayer person. I said what is going on, of all the universities that ought to have a clear definition that a woman doesn’t chair departments, a man chairs it. Why? Because of the biblical role, that’s why. And so what do we have, the leading, the number one leading west coast fundamentalist university…, one of our former members, troubled with other things that were going on there went to the people and asked them, what is going on. Oh, the answer back was this is a new day, we’ve changed. You bet you’ve changed; there’s only one area they haven’t changed, they still solicit fundamentalist money and so it’s always interesting, we change all these policies but we never change the people who pay for them, so we still get dunned for money. Well, it’s going to go all the way back at their price as far as I’m concerned because I’m not about to contribute to an organization that is doing this.

Now I suspect the reason why this all goes on, and I suspect why a certain other Christian institutions are leaning in this direction is because they made a compromise many moons ago and the compromise the day it was made wasn’t noticed, except in a few Christian institutions like Bob Jones, and that compromise was that they began to accept federally guaranteed student loans and the other compromise that was made is that they had a lot of people on the G.I. bill in their student body, and then as the government increases its human viewpoint legislation it’s simply saying baby, you accepted federal support, we’re going to tell you how you’re going to run your campus and it doesn’t make any difference whether you’re a Christian fundamentalist organization or not because if you don’t play our game we’re going to withdraw our guaranteed student loans and we are going to withdraw the G.I. bill, so play the game with us or you’re going to lose. Now if you’re one of these massive PR organizations and you’ve built up this immense thing, and you’ve budget allocated for this department, this department, this department, what are you going to do when someone pulls the chains on you? See, you’re too far in, you’ve compromised already too far on down the line.

That’s why it was so magnificent, at the time I didn’t see what was going on, at the time when Bob Jones University made their stand I thought it was just a case where Bob Jones had not accepted blacks and the ACW was mad at them for that and Bob Jones refused still; after that point was reached to accept blacks. Well, that I considered to be quirky, about just Bob Jones. But the problem was that they saw something deeper than that; they saw that they were not going to get involved an inch in federal money. I can well remember the CBS interview they had with Bob Jones Jr.; it was during the student riots during the Vietnam War when this thing first erupted, and the big news on CBS was that Bob Jones University police were being armed with automatic weapons and they interviewed Bob Jones, surely Dr. Jones, what is the meaning of this, arming your campus police with automatic weapons? What do you have these guns for Dr. Jones? And I remember Dr. Jones looking very calmly at the CBS reporter, I have guns for the reason that anybody has guns, to shoot people. And obviously he was just simply saying that we’re not going to permit riots on our campus and if we have to shoot people to maintain order we will shoot people to maintain order but we will have order. And later on when it came to the fact the government said okay, we pull all your loans. Pull them, said Bob Jones back to the press, with the result that immediately they put out an appeal for alumni and they developed their own loan fund. So if the students need loans they have private sources to get the money from. Then the feds got mad at them for that, they couldn’t get them that way so then they came in the other way and said okay, we’re going to pull all your G.I. bill unless you conform to federal policy. Pull our G.I. bill baby, we’ll set up another thing. So they set up another loan fund for all the G.I.s so when the G.I.s need some money they take it out of a private source. And this way Bob Jones has maintained their integrity over against this little creeping insidious kind of loan.

So I suspect when you see this we have the case of where men in high places have allowed themselves to be undermined. It’s the quality of the male soul, the appreciation for the needs of women and their role that’s being compromised.

The other thing that we saw, the other two qualities that we saw in the man so far has been the kind of biblical toughness in the man, and it isn’t anarchistic bullying. The kind of toughness the Scriptures speak highly of is the kind of toughness portrayed in Hebrews 11; the men who are tough because of their endurance under the sovereignty of God. Because they’re basically trusting men, men who had fait in God’s plan, they are tough men, and we have read in connection with the McCauley’s description of the Puritans and what a tough individual the Puritan was, so he still bearing the ridicule, even today in the classroom of many lesser people.

The other quality we’ve seen in the biblical man is the tenderness from appreciation of God’s grace; not a sentimentalism, but nevertheless a sensitivity. Joshua showed this. Remember the scene with Achan, and he doesn’t just slam Achan into the ground; he has sympathy for Achan even though he must execute Achan and it’s because Joshua had a very clear perception of the fact that there but by the grace of God he goes. And so the man gets this sensitivity because of his perception of God’s grace; he gets his toughness because of the sense of his protection of God’s sovereignty.

Now tonight we’re going to begin a study and we’ll continue it on Ahab and Elijah; so let’s turn to 1 Kings 16; these are two good men to contrast, they form a very high contrast. One of the great Southern Baptist Bible teachers of a generation ago was a man from Tennessee, called Dr. Lee, and one of his most famous sermons was on Ahab, an I’ll never forgot, we had to listen to this in seminary on a tape recording, and I’ll never forget that sermon because he compared Ahab to a toad and the description has always stuck henceforth in my mind. Well, we’re looking then at the toad, 1 Kings 16. Ahab, in the history of Israel and once again we want to relate this to our divine viewpoint framework, Ahab reigned during the decline of the kingdom. Ahab was in this period of Old Testament history. And during the decline of the kingdom we have various doctrines being emphasized. We have, as this tribe demonstrates the doctrine of confessing and the doctrine of idolatry; these are strongly surfacing in the text as we go through and study this portion of history.

Ahab was a man who became king of the northern kingdom, again background for those of you who are a little shaky on Bible history, there were two kingdoms in Israel, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom after 930 BC was called Israel; the southern kingdom called Judah. Before 930 all of it was called Israel. So when you see the word “Israel” in your Bible always relate it to the time in which it was written or you may be misled. The northern kingdom broke away, as we said, after Rehoboam and his ridiculous policies, almost had a bloody civil war, and therefore as a result forever after that we had a kind of animosity between these two kingdoms. Now the northern kingdom went from bad to worse very quickly. The northern kingdom started out bad under a king by the name of Jeroboam; if you read 1 Kings and 2 Kings you’ll see this phrase again and again, “the sin of Jeroboam,” “the sin of Jeroboam,” “the sin of Jeroboam,” now what’s the sin of Jeroboam. The sin of Jeroboam was the fact that Jeroboam was a politician at heart and he was worried about people going south across the boundaries to worship in Jerusalem, because though God had authorized two kingdoms He had not yet authorized two worship centers.

Well now how would you feel if you’re king of the orange area here on this map, and all of your subjects have to traipse three times a year in big pilgrimages south across that boundary into the other kingdom? I think it would give you a sense of uneasiness, frankly, to appreciate Jeroboam’s problem. But Jeroboam was to trust God’s sovereign will that said Jeroboam, I’ve given you the kingdom, it’s secure, I’ll take care of it, just do what I tell you, please. Well Jeroboam couldn’t do that and so he had a brilliant idea of innovation, got a modern solution to a modern problem, and so we’re going to form a worship center at Bethel and we’re going to form another worship center up here at Dan. And that way, you see, if someone has a problem for their car they can reach the nearest convenient filling station, either in the north or the south, we make it convenient for attendees.

Well, this was totally unauthorized by God and because this artificial sanctuary was established, these twin sanctuaries, forever after there was a certain chastisement of the northern kingdom. One thing led to another until the days of Ahab, when things got really bad. Let’s read 1 Kings 16:28, “So Omri slept with his fathers, and was buried in Samaria; and Ahab, his son, reigned in his stead.” To the secular world, non-biblical documents of the ancient near east record this dynasty as the dynasty of Omri. So it was known outside of Israel by this name. [29] And in the thirty and eight year of Asa, king of Judah, began Ahab, the son of Omri, to reign over Israel; and Ahab, the son of Omri, reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty-two years. [30] And Ahab, the son of Omri, did evil the sight of the LORD above all who were before him.” So the downhill decline of the kingdom continues. [31] “And it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat,” that’s the twin unauthorized sanctuary, “a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that he took to wife Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him.”

Now this woman became an incarnation of evil for all down through history—Jezebel! I don’t know of any family who’s ever named their daughter Jezebel, but if one has, we hope that they (a) didn’t do it with prophetic insight, or (b) pray for the poor girl. Now this word, “Ethbaal” that’s used here is explained by a scholar who wrote a very famous dissertation in this period of history on the northern kingdom and Baalism and so on, Dr. Leo Brunner [sp?]] of the University of South Africa. “The meaning of Ethbaal is apparently ‘with him Baal.’ The idea the name intended to convey was that the person enjoy the favor and protection of Baal.” Now this is who the king who worships under Yahweh, he marries a convinced Baalist; it’s not a Ruth situation for Jezebel says well Ahab, I’ll follow your God wherever you want. Far from doing that Jezebel says hey, Ahab dear, you will follow my god wherever I want; it was completely reversed. According to Josephus, “Ethbaal was king of the Tyrians and Sidonians.” Tyre is a more specific appellation where Sidon is a more intensive one. Menander, the Ephesian, stated that Ethbaal was a priest of Astarte who came to the throne by the murder of a usurper. The zealotry of Jezebel is perhaps understandable if we remember that she was educated as a daughter in the home of a famous priest of Baal. Her fanaticism can be attributed to her early environment and training.”

And so here is a girl trained from early childhood to become a fanatical devotee to Baal. And so Ahab, in 1 Kings 16:32, capitulates, notice, violation again of the man ruling his own house for God. Obviously Jezebel, as we know from her character later, gets her way. One of the tantrum types that she’s going to have her way or she’s going to raise hell until you give her her way. And so she apparently put pressure on him and said so verse 32, “And he reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria. [33] And Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did more to provoke the LORD God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him,” so now he sets up, not just an unauthorized pseudo worship Yahweh center; now he sets up one, not only is it not authorized, it’s not even dedicated to Jehovah; it’s dedicated to Baal, explicitly.

So now that shows you the inside of the home life of this man, let’s look at a few other things that were going on at that time. 1 Kings 17:1, “Elijah, the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years; but according to my word.” Now let’s be a little sympathetic, at first, with Ahab, so you can kind of experience by imagination the problem he was in, and if you do this, it’s kind of a necessary exercise of imagination to appreciate what’s going to happen later on. But just imagine, here’s a guy, here his administration starts out, what does he get hit with right away? Drought, which causes famine. Now, of course this drought which causes famine is a working out of the sovereignty of God; it’s a working out by rule in the Mosaic Law in Leviticus 26, we won’t turn there but Leviticus 26 gives five steps of discipline on the nation Israel. When the nation Israel was to go in rebellion against the Torah, then God said I will discipline you, stage one, the first level of discipline, and if you don’t straighten up then I will discipline you seven times more so He adds the second magnitude of discipline; if you don’t straighten out I’ll discipline you again, on down to the fifth degree of discipline which wound up in the exile, I’ll just kick you out of the land, and you’ll stay out of the land until you learn the lesson that I want you to learn.

Well, part of these cycles of discipline were droughts and famine, and that’s what’s being imposed here, it’s not an accident, it’s a deliberate chastening of God, but he doesn’t see it that way, he just sees it as a political problem. Now Ahab had another problem. 1 Kings 20 and 22, and we don’t need to turn there, we’ll just summarize it quickly; Ahab had a foreign policy problem. So here is his economic home problem, he had a foreign policy problem in that he was getting the beginnings of invasions of the northern kingdom, particularly from Syria. So when you read your paper and read about President Assad of Damascus and the Syrians with the Israelis tangling again in the Middle East just understand it’s been going on for a few centuries, all the way far back here into the 8^th century before Christ. So the Syrian-Israeli problem has been sort of a background. You’ve got to study the backgrounds, just not cruise in and think we’re going to have a negotiated treaty. These things are too deeply rooted in history for this kind of thing. So that was his second problem. Domestically he had a broken down economy because his economy was agrarian, you can’t have drought in an agrarian economy, as we know around here, without severe results. His second problem was the invasion.

And then he had a third peculiar problem, 1 Kings 18:4 and this one really bugged him. The jury was poor Ahab, in the middle of a broken down economy, in the middle of this pressure from foreign nations, and when you have a civilian country and you have all these people say to you, internal pressures, the external pressures, what does every politician want? What was every leader need? He needs unity, doesn’t he? He needs some sort of esprit de corps in the country. Well, then Ahab turns around and looks at the esprit de corps and he finds treachery. “For it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, that Obadiah,” who happens to be one of his administrators, “took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.” And this is one example of many in this series, in this section of the Bible, where Ahab’s policies were being undermined by the pro Jehovah group. So we have the pro-Yahweh or pro-Jehovah team that were acting as his opposition, and he couldn’t get unity. Every time he’d lay down a policy this rival group would start fighting him on it, always malcontent, discontent with something, always opposing him, always fighting him, always trying to attack him. So Ahab was up to here with three massive problems.

Now, don’t think of this as just Ahab’s problem for a minute, back up a moment. Every man has his own kingdom, doesn’t he, after his own area of his dominion, his family, his home, his marriage, to a degree his business, whatever that genre is where man reigns. So think of yourself in Ahab’s shoes; here you face these kinds of situations and you get one of two ways to go in this situation; you’ve got an option before you. You’ve got an option of saying, in this case, I want to get unity to face the disastrous condition; I’m going to try my works route; if I try the works system I want to solve my invasion problem, I can’t solve my invasion problem until I have armies, I can’t get my armies together until I get cooperation, and people support the army. And so therefore the first thing to do is to secure unity, so if I start with a works option, my first step is to obtain this unity that’s needed.

Well, let’s see what that would do; let’s pretend we’re in Ahab’s councils, we’re discussing this option before the leaders. Well, Ahab, first of all, this plan that you have to secure unity would have to do what to the pro-Yahweh group? Eliminate them, the pro-Yahweh group is the source of the disunity from Ahab’s perspective. So the first thing we’ve got to do is stamp out the Yahwehists. And incidentally Ahab, there are a number of fringe benefits, namely, Jezebel will be happy; first quarrel they had, that you’ve come to her aid and support Baalism as a state religion. The other thing that would happen is that if you got real unity and you broke the back of the pro-Yahweh group, think of it Ahab, there’d be no temptation to go to Jerusalem any more. These pilgrims that are so stubborn they won’t go to your authorized state centers at Bethel and Dan, they keep still going across the border to Jerusalem. All that would stop if we just destroyed the pro-Yahweh party. And then, Ahab, you know, Baal, everybody does this, Baal’s the god of the fertility; he’s personified fertility in nature, and so surely if you please him he will end the drought and solve your economic condition. So it looks like, Ahab, is if you got a good deal here with this unity, but first you get your unity, you solve your esprit de corps and you solve your economic difficulties.

So Ahab has that, which involves elimination for the pro-Yahweh group. Now to eliminate the pro-Yahweh group you eliminate the leaders of it; that’s how you bust a group up. You don’t bust a group up by wiping out every member of the group; all you do is destroy their leadership and the group dissolves; this is the way it is always, communists do this all the time. That’s what they’re doing in Cambodia now, simply systematically going through and eliminating all the village leaders; once they’ve eliminated them everybody is just… it’s very, very easy to control. So who would be eliminated by this policy? All the prophets of Yahweh, and we’ll see next time we get together there’s a famous confrontation between Elijah and Ahab.

Now that’s one way he could have gone, the works route. The other way he could have gone at this point if he’d straightened himself out is go the grace route. Now in the grace route it involved a little, kind of, trust because here you’ve got the famine, you’ve got the invasion here, you’ve got all this dissent for the pro-Yahweh group; this is going to do… a solution on this basis is not unify the nation at all, purify it. Bring it under the standards of the Word of God, and this could mean that you would have to side with the minority will, because the Yahwehists were in a strong minority but it would mean that that minority would have to rule by force the northern kingdom. There’d have to be a reformation from [can’t understand word] all the way to Jordan, from Bethel to Dan. The authorized centers of worship would have to be destroyed. Jezebel would have to be angered but you’d get the right people on your side, plus God! And that’s a majority in anyone’s life. So that would be the fallout from the grace approach.

Well, we know, of course the story, he went the works approach. And when Ahab chose the works approach he fell into idolatry. He became stronger in it and this idolatry manifested itself in two directions, only one of which we will look at tonight. We’ll look at this one tonight because it has implication for us today as Christians and we’ll look at the next one later because it eliminates the ministry of Elijah. The one was a deification of nature; that was Baalism, but Baalism wasn’t the only sign of idolatry in 1 Kings. There was another one, so common in fact that the modern readers of the text can read through it and never see it, yet it stands right out in front of his face. And what is that idolatry; the deification of man or the state, or statism. Ahab was a protalitarian statist, he believed, like so many people today, ever discuss a particular problem, ever try to argue a case, well let the free market do something, stop the regulation of minimum wages and raising price controls and all the rest, and what’s the argument people always give you, every time? Well, if the government doesn’t regulate it who will? I could suggest one or two people, two in fact.

So, in fact, there is a sovereignty that shows forth in history and men, when they use that excuse, if the government doesn’t do it who will, ought to be answered very quickly, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That’s who will. Oh, oh but we can’t really trust…. Why not? You’re saying that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit do not actively control history? You see, this is the problem with statism; the reason the conservatives are losing in this country is because religiously there’s an undercut. We will never see a return to freedom in the United States as believers as long as the citizenry of this country are basically statists in their mind, they are humanists in their faith. It is a religious problem, they can’t trust God; that’s why they have to trust the government. We don’t understand how you can [can’t understand words] someone by saying no government control, let the whole thing go. Oh… ! This kind of a response, because those men are faithless. For them it’s either government of chaos; government is their god.

Now the classic text that exposes statism for what it is is 1 Kings 21; this ought to be ranked, for those of you who are active politically, along with several other Scriptures; I can think of two immediately that you ought to have, and meditate upon these time and time again as you become active in your particular area and circles of study. One of the classic references is 1 Samuel 8, that’s the warning about the protalitarian government, we coved that in the fourth of July service, the second one is 1 Kings 21, and the third one is Romans 13. Those are three major texts of the Bible loaded with political doctrine and wisdom. Let’s look at 1 Kings 21:1, “And it came to pass after these things, that Naboth, the Jezreelite, had a vineyard, which was in Jezreel, close to the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria. [2] And Ahab spoke unto Naboth, 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 for it a better vineyard than it; or if it seem good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money. [3] And Naboth said to Ahab, The LORD forbid me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto you. [4] And Ahab came into his house and he sulked because of the word which Naboth, the Jezreelite, had spoken to him; for he had said, I will not give thee the inheritance of my fathers. And he lay down upon his bed, and he turned away his face, and he would eat no bread.” Poor Ahab! See what kind of a guy this clown is.

1 Kings 21:5, “But Jezebel, his wife, came to him, and said to him, Why is thy spirit so sad, and you et no bread? [6] And he said to here, Because I spoke unto Naboth, the Jezreelite, and said unto him, Give me thy vineyard” and he wouldn’t give it. [7] “And Jezebel, his wife, said unto him, Do you now govern the kingdom of Israel? Arise, and eat bread, and let thy heart be merry. I will give you the vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite. [8] So she wrote letters in Ahab’s name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles that were in his city, dwelling with Naboth. [9] And she wrote in the letters, saying, Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people. [10] And set to men, sons of Belial, before him, to bear witness against him, saying, Thou didst blaspheme God and the king. And then carry him out, and stone him, that he may die. [11] And the men of the city, even the elders and the nobles who were the inhabitants of the city, did as Jezebel had sent unto them, and as it was written in the letters that she sent unto them; [12] They proclaimed a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people.”

[13] “And there came in two men, sons of Belial, and they sat before him; and the men of Belial witnessed against him, even against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, Naboth did blaspheme God and the king. Then they carried him forth out of the city and they stoned him with stones, so that he died. [14] Then they sent to Jezebel, saying, Naboth is stoned, and is dead. [15] And it came to pass when Jezebel heard that Naboth was stoned, and was dead, that Jezebel said to Ahab, Arise, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite, which he refused to give thee for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead. [16] And it came to pass, when Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, that Ahab rose up to go down to the vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite, to take possession of it.” And everything was happily ever after until [17] “the word of the LORD came to Elijah.”

Now read on the surface, this story looks like it’s just a piece of theft; and that’s the way I often read it, just a piece of theft, here’s somebody thieving somebody’s property and God is angry at it. But after studying this a little bit longer and becoming more familiar with the maxims of law, I discovered that 1 Kings 21 is deeper than just a theft. This is not just theft. Notice in verse 2 the proposition. What is the proposition? The proposition is that the state offers just compensation for private property which the state wants. Does that have a familiar ring to it? If you happened to be here years ago when Lubbock had a farm in the way Loop 289 and they wanted Loop 289 to go through one of the best, most fertile fields. Do you think you could have any power to stop the state from taking your farmland? Absolutely not. The principle is a pagan one that has part and parcel of American law, the problem of imminent domain. It’s a very serious thing and all Scripture is against the doctrine of imminent domain. Imminent domain is basically pagan. It’s a symptom of people who trust the state. The same arguments of imminent domain is the argument made time and time again, well if the government doesn’t regulate it what would happen?

Now let’s just see what imminent domain says. One comment on law says this: “it would surprise most American landowners today, as it often does, those who cannot meet their property taxes, to learn that the state owns the land outright. Owners in fee simple have possession only of rights in real estate, not the real estate,” the technical word is fee simple. These words are the words of a pagan idea that forms the basis of American law. It goes back to the British crown; when the colonies were first set up, the land on which the colony was, was not owned by the colonist; it was owned by the crown, and the king owned the land and therefore the land was not that of the colonials, and the state therefore owned the land. What the colonialist bought was right of usage of the land, but they didn’t buy the land.

Now that’s exactly the way you are; your house, my house, this property right here, basically we have only bought the rights to use it, we haven’t bought the property, and you haven’t either. And you’re my think your family has great land holdings; they don’t. The state of Texas owns the land; your family has only purchased temporary rights to use it. Try not paying your taxes and see what happens. Well, what happened was that the British crown owned these lands and then, as some of you know, the Puritans took over England, they defied the king, and under Cromwell there was about to become a reformation in imminent domain, because there was a famous case in New England that happened during this time period. A man by the name of John Eliot, who was a Christian missionary to the Indians, went out into New England and said this: The Indian owns the land under his feet and therefore we, as white men, cannot dispossess the Indian from his land. Therefore we will teach the Indian how to raise a Christian culture. He even wrote a handbook on Biblical law applied to the Indians.

And John Eliot tried for years and years to set the Indians up with biblical principles so they could farm and become a viable part of the American colonial structure. But his efforts went on during the reign of Cromwell. Now Cromwell in the restoration was replaced by the old kings of England, they came back to the throne, Charles II in particular, he became so upset at the inroads that John Eliot was making against the law of imminent domain that he had all the books burned. And this shows you there was a deliberate attempt in the history of English law to impose imminent domain on the American colonies. And the American colonies absorbed this and finally in the case of Mann versus Illinois that went to the Supreme Court, when the immanent domain first began to really exercise power on American jurisprudence the Supreme Court said, “In England from time immemorial this principle has held.” So you see, the history of imminent domain is a history of the importation of a pagan anti-biblical concept that has come into American law; we sit with it, we can’t do without it apparently now, but we share with the fate of Ahab the doctrine of imminent domain.

Now we mention this because in 1 Kings 21:2 Ahab does offer just compensation, and people say well, wait a minute, what are you fussing about; look, who cares if I own a farm land the state can offer me just compensation, isn’t that enough. Not if God has given you the land, which is the argument in verse 3. “The LORD forbid it to me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto” the state. God gave it to me. So in this case imminent domain could not be followed because the property was given by God.

Now, what application does that have for us? It’s very simple. In the second and third centuries of this era you know the great Christian persecution; the Christians thrown to lions and so forth. But how many realize that one reason the Christians were thrown to lions is over a principle that is now rearing its ugly head once again in America, the principle of whether the state shall tax the church. The early Christians were persecuted, not because they refused to pay taxes; not because they refused to pay taxes on property, but because they refused at one point in history to pay taxes on the church organization. They refused to accept licensing by the state for their religious organization. You know why? The argument sounds so that we hardly hear it today; today oh surely the state’s got to regulate, after all, you know, we’ve got all these cults, now let’s just define what real religion is and we’ll let the state legislate, because after all, if the state doesn’t do it, who will? You know, there’s no such thing as providence operating in history, it’s just chaos outside of where we can personally control everything. And so they say why not let the state tax the church and the state license the church. But the early Christians spotted a fluke in that particular argument. They said just a minute, for the state to tax the church and for the state to license the church implies that the church exists by who’s commission? See. The right to license and the right to tax implies the right to rule.

See, if you grant me religious freedom, you have already said religious freedom proceeds from you. No it doesn’t! I refuse to accept the grant of religious freedom because it’s not yours to give me; it’s God’s. Thus argued, incidentally, the Puritans against James I, and against others, over this very issue. They refused to accept the theme of religion given to them by the state, on the basis of the fact that it wasn’t the state’s to give them. Who but the Puritans would have thought of that clever argument. But you see, it’s a deathly issue because if we say the state has the right to license us, and if we say that the state has the right to tax us, we have said that we exist by permission of Kaiser, and that’s blasphemy.

We exist because of the risen ascended Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and no person who truly loves the Lord and knows the Word of God can ever, over his dead body, permit the state to tax something in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and to license that same thing that is on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. When that happens there is going to be blood spilled in the streets, and if I have to help it I will. We will draw the line at that point, and evangelicals across the country who know the law are already studying the issue. Blood will flow when the state tries to license and the state tries to tax; it will flow for the reason of 1 Kings 21; it is a violation of imminent domain. We exist by Christ’s permission, not by Caesar’s and we refuse to accept even freedom of religion granted to us by the state. That has to be clear. And that’s a violation of freedom if we allow this to go on. But evangelicals who don’t know Bible doctrine most likely will let it go on.

That’s one of Ahab’s idolatries. Now let’s conclude the matter by pointing to Ahab’s great and grand accomplishments. Ahab took the works solution to his problem, let’s see what happens. Remember what his problems were? Famine, invasion and dissent. Let’s look at these. 2 Kings 4:38, this is a picture of that same northern kingdom years later. This is in the days of Elisha, and you’ll quickly see in verse 38, “And Elisha came again to Gilgal. And there was a dearth in the land,” that’s a famine in the land; have things changed? No.

In fact, extra-biblical reference taken from a rabbinical writing says this about the famine. This is stylized, but it does describe the intensity of this dearth. “In the first year everything stored in the houses was eaten up. In the second the people supported themselves with what they could scrape together in the fields. The flesh of clean animals sufficed for the third year. In the fourth the suckers resorted to unclean animals. In the fifth to reptiles and insects. In the sixth a monstrous thing happened that women, crazed by hunger, consumed their own children as food. In the seventh year men sought to gnaw the flesh off their own bones.” Had Ahab solve the famine problem. Hun-uh. Why? Because the famine was there because of God’s sovereignty, not because of Baal. Neither Baal nor the state could solve a God-placed problem.

2 Kings 13:20, had he stopped the invasion problem? Maybe his clan did that. “And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year.” Verse 22, “But Hazael, king of Syria, oppressed Israel…” So sorry, didn’t solve that problem either. Did he solve the problem of dissent? No, two prophets, Amos and Hosea continued the grand tradition of Elijah.

But some things did happen to Ahab. Turn to 1 Kings 22:32, the prophet said Ahab, you’ll die and as we’ve mentioned again and again, in the Bible there’s almost a gruesome playfulness with death of apostates. There’s almost a relishing to go through the details of how Judas Iscariot died. In church history how Arius died. And here in 1 Kings “And it came to pass, when the captains of the chariots…,” this is in the middle of a battle, “perceived it wasn’t the king of Israel,” he’s disguised, thinking he could away from the arrows of the enemies, [34] “A certain man drew a bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of his armor. Wherefore, he said unto the driver of his chariot, Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host; for I am wounded. [35] And the battle increased that day … and the blood ran out of the wound into the inside of the chariot. [36] And there went a proclamation throughout the host” to retreat. [37] “The king died, and was brought to Samaria, and they buried the king in Samaria. [38] And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria, and the dogs licked up his blood; and they washed his armor, according unto the word of the LORD which He had spoke.” The prophet said the dogs would eat his blood.

The second thing that happened to Ahab is found in 2 Kings 9:7. Ahab might have thought well, I’ll die but my dynasty will go on. No Ahab, sorry about that too. Jehu is commissioned by Jehovah, and it says “you shall smite the house of Ahab, thy master, that I might,” God said, “avenge the blood of My servants, [the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the LORD, at the hand of Jezebel].” [8] “For the whole house of Ahab,” that is the whole dynasty, “shall perish; and I will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel. [9] And I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam…. [10] And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there shall be none to bury her. And he opened the door, and fled.” And Jehu went on and carried out the sentence of execution. So that was a real winner, wasn’t it; a man with real good qualities, who chose to really solve his problems under that famous refrain, “if the government doesn’t do it, who will?” Well, it appears from these last few verses the government didn’t do too good a job.