1 Kings 21:20-21
“Ahab said to Elijah, “Have you found me, O my enemy?” He answered, “I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord. Behold, I will bring disaster upon you. I will utterly burn you up, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel.”
Under God’s direction, Elijah finds Ahab at Naboth’s vineyard … a place that dramatically represented Ahab’s wickedness. It is the place that Jezebel acquired for Ahab by conspiring to murder Naboth, the rightful owner of the vineyard.
Ahab and Jezebel rejected God’s covenant with Israel. They ignored the warnings of the prophets of God, going so far as to have the prophets killed. They ignored the three and a half year drought that God sent. They ignored Elijah’s defeat of the prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel. Ahab and Jezebel defiantly ignored God’s standards.
As scripture says in the book of Hebrews: “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4: 13). When God’s patience finally comes to an end, judgment is swift and severe for the wicked. “He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing” (Proverbs 29.1).
The time for judgment had finally arrived. Here was the Lord’s pronouncement:
“And I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the anger to which you have provoked me, and because you have made Israel to sin. And of Jezebel the Lord also said, ‘The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the walls of Jezreel.’ Anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and anyone of his who dies in the open country the birds of the heavens shall eat.” (1 Kings 21.22-24)
Ahab and Jezebel ruled wickedly, and they thought they ruled with impunity. They were wrong. The core principle is this: Don’t equate the delay of consequences with the absence of them. “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7).
The Lord is calling.
