The End of the Line

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Well, tell me if you’ve ever had this conversation. Actually, you don’t have to say anything. I’ll just know by the look on your face.

But if you’ve ever had this conversation at your house with your spouse, what happened to all the money in our checking account? Have you ever had that conversation? Where did it all go?

My wife and I have had that conversation a few times. Not that we’re rich, but I’ll tell her and have told her for years, we make way too much money to be this broke. Okay.

And it’s easy to do, no matter how much money you make, to realize you’ve got a little bit of a spending problem. And sometimes we’ll go through that. We’ll get a little more excited about spending than at other times.

And normally we’ll discuss it. Hey, we need to plan out a budget here. And, you know, the first time we had that conversation, we said, you know, we need to rein this in.

And we talked about a budget and then we went right along doing the same things we were doing. We weren’t in debt, but we weren’t in the red, but we were broke. We had that same conversation several times, several times, and we ended up still in the same situation over and over and over again because we knew it was a problem, but we didn’t take it seriously enough to actually do anything about it.

You know, there’s a difference. You can realize something is a problem, but not take it seriously enough to do anything about it and end up in the same problem. It wasn’t until we said, okay, enough talk about it.

Let’s just, we’re going to do it. We’re going to make out a budget. And we did that and things started to get better.

We had to take it seriously. We had to take the problem seriously enough to do something about it. Our politicians do this all the time.

They are, some of you may say our politicians, our elected leaders are good for nothing. No, they are exceptionally good at doing this, right? Recognizing that there’s a problem and doing precisely nothing about it, not taking it seriously.

That’s why we have and I looked up this number on thursday to make sure I had it right and I was way off It was way higher than I thought we have a 27 trillion dollar national debt I can’t even fathom that kind of money, right? I had to sit there and count out the The decimal places to make sure I was getting it right 27 billion seemed Low, man, we’re doing great. No 27 trillion with a t and and we hear people on both sides talk about how this is a problem This is a problem.

We need to one side will say well, we need to raise taxes to fix the problem The other side will say we need to cut spending to fix the problem. You know what they don’t do that They don’t do either. They just say we’ve got a problem, but they don’t take it seriously enough to do anything about it You know, we see that they’re they’re content to kick the can down the road But we see this with all kinds of problems. This is not about politics This is just illustrating something that’s common to human beings because we can do this with all sorts of things in our lives.

We see this with medical issues. You know, some of you ladies, you’ll ask for prayer for your husband, something he’s dealing with, and I’ll say, is he a pain about going to the doctor? Oh, and either you’ll say, oh yes, pray that he’ll go to the doctor, or no, he’s pretty good about it.

But sometimes, right, Charlotte, we can be a little stubborn about not wanting to go to the doctor. We develop a medical issue, and we think, nah, I know it’s a problem, but maybe it’ll go away on its own, right? Any of you other men guilty about that?

Some of you ladies maybe as well. We know in the back of our minds it’s a problem, but we don’t take it seriously enough to do anything about it until sometimes we let it go for too long and then we just have to live with it. That’s how mankind looks at a lot of things.

We realize it’s a problem. We realize it needs to be fixed, but we don’t take it seriously enough to actually do anything about it. And that’s how mankind looks at sin, among other things.

We know it’s a problem. We know it displeases God. We know it dishonors God.

We know it’s not right. But I mean, come on, it’s just a little, it’s just a little sin. It’s just a little bit.

Surely God’s got bigger fish to fry, right? God’s got other things to worry about. God’s got other things to deal with.

That’s how we look at sin. And notice it’s always our sin, or it’s usually our sin that we say, it’s no big deal. Everybody else, we’re quick to point Now, see what they’re doing, but with us, it’s just fill in the blank. It’s just a little bit.

That’s how mankind looks at sin. We see it as something that it’s a problem, but I’m not actually going to take it seriously enough to deal with it. That is not at all how God views sin.

That is not at all how God deals with sin. God takes sin seriously. God takes all sin seriously.

God takes my sin seriously. He takes your sin seriously. He takes the sin of our neighbor seriously, the sin in Washington, the sin in Hollywood, the sin in Nashville, the sin in Silicon Valley.

He takes it all seriously, even if we look at it and say it’s just a little bitty thing. And this morning, we’re going to look at an example of this in Scripture as we continue through the story of Nehemiah. There’s a, not Nehemiah, excuse me, I went back in time there a little bit, didn’t I?

Elijah, this is the last installment on this series about the life of Elijah and how we can learn from his life and from his example how to navigate in a world that has just completely lost its mind because he lived in a very similar world. We’ve talked a little bit about King Ahab, who was sort of Elijah’s nemesis. And King Ahab was guilty of a lot of things.

And one of the glaring things toward the end of Ahab’s life that he was guilty of was being complicit in a murder. Now, he kept his hands clean technically, but I think he knew what was going on. There was a man named Naboth.

There’s a man named Naboth who owned a vineyard next door to the palace. And King Ahab said, I really would like to have that land because I’d like to make it into a vegetable garden. I can sympathize.

Somebody had a nice big piece of land next to me for a vegetable garden. I’d want that too. So he goes to Naboth and he says, why don’t you sell me the vineyard?

Now to us, that sounds like a reasonable request. You realize that there were laws in place in Israel where certain pieces of family property, they couldn’t just sell. They could lease it out to you until the next jubilee, the next 50-year cycle when everything had to be returned. But Naboth said, I can’t sell the property.

He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to part with it. He didn’t want to lease it.

But Ahab was also asking him to do something that wasn’t permissible under God’s law. See, Israel, unlike a lot of the countries around them, had laws that were higher than the king. Queen Jezebel came from a pagan country where whatever the king said went.

But in Israel, there was a higher law where even the king himself was not above the law, sort of like our constitution as it’s supposed to be, that our elected officials can’t just do whatever they want. King Ahab was under the law of God where he could not just do whatever he wanted to do. There were restrictions.

So he’s asking Naboth to do something that he didn’t want to do and that he really couldn’t do. And so when Naboth told him no, King Ahab, the most powerful man in Israel, went back home and he pouted. Now we had some discussion this week at our house over pouting.

We told one of our children, you were pouting in your Wednesday night class. I was not. I was just upset.

Were you showing it? Yes, that’s pouting. All right.

So he goes back and throws a fit. He goes back and acts pitiful until Queen Jezebel comes and says, what’s wrong? And he says, Naboth won’t give me his vineyard.

And she says, oh, baby, mom, I’ll take care of it. That’s his wife, but you get the idea. She’s babying him.

You just run along, I’ll take care of it. And knowing what kind of cruel person Jezebel was, I’m sure Naboth knew what was about to happen. Ahab knew what was about to happen.

But he just said, oh, okay. Jezebel goes out and orchestrates an elaborate plot to have Naboth murdered. She sends sealed letters forged in Ahab’s name out to the leaders of Naboth’s village and says, set him at a seat of honor.

And then have two false witnesses come and say that we heard him blaspheme God. We heard him speak treason against the king. Have them, when he’s up in front of everybody, have them turn on him and make these false accusations.

And when they do, you know what’s supposed to happen? He’s going to be stoned to death. And so she puts this plan in motion.

She has it carried out. Naboth is dead. And she comes to Ahab and says, go get your vegetable garden.

And Ahab, he’s good with this. He knew what was going to happen. He knew what his wife was like and her pagan ways from her Phoenician upbringing.

He knew what she was like, what kind of brutal person she was. But he had his vineyard for a vegetable garden. He got to keep his delicate little hands clean and he was happy.

God, however, was not happy. And God sent Elijah to deal with it. The Bible tells us how God dealt with this situation.

And so we’re going to be in 1 Kings this morning. 1 Kings chapter 21. 1 Kings chapter 21, and we’re going to start at verse 17.

If you’d stand with me, please, as we read from God’s word, if you’re able to. 1 Kings chapter 21, verse 17. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, Arise, go down to meet Ahab, the king of Israel, who lives in Samaria.

There he is in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone down to take possession of it. You shall speak to him saying, Thus says the Lord, Have you murdered and thus taken possession? And also taken possession?

And you shall also, excuse me, And you shall speak to him saying, Thus says the Lord, In the place where the dogs lick the blood of Naboth, Dogs shall lick your blood, even yours. So Ahab said to Elijah, Have you found me, O my enemy? Understand what happened there.

God told Elijah to go down and talk to Ahab. And so he goes down there with the message. and as soon as he finds Ahab in Naboth’s vineyard, Ahab looks up at him and says, oh, not you again.

What message have you brought from God this time? Calls him my enemy. Still in verse 20.

And he answered, I have found you because you have sold yourself to do evil in the sight of the Lord. Behold, I will bring calamity on you. I will take away your posterity and will cut off from Ahab every male in Israel, both bond and free.

I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam, the son of Naboth. And like the house of Basha, the son of Ahijah, because of the provocation with which you have provoked me to anger and made Israel sin. And concerning Jezebel, the Lord also spoke, saying, The dog shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.

The dog shall eat whoever belongs to Ahab and dies in the city, and the birds of the air shall eat whoever dies in the field. But there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do wickedness in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife stirred him up, and he behaved very abominably in following idols, according to all that the Amorites had done, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel. So it was when Ahab heard these words, that he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth on his body and fasted and lay in sackcloth and went about mourning.

And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, See how Ahab has humbled himself before me. Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the calamity in his days. In the days of his son will I bring the calamity on his house.

You may be seated. So Elijah went and he was obedient to God to take this word to Ahab, something that would have been very uncomfortable to do, yet he was willing to go and be obedient. And this was not the first time.

Elijah had a pattern here of being obedient to God, of standing up for what was right, of proclaiming what God’s word said and calling sin, sin. He was obedient. And obedience to God and His Word means that the world won’t have to guess where we stand.

You know, sometimes something will happen and you’ll think, oh, I wonder what so-and-so thinks about that. You know, there are certain things that nobody has to wonder about, about where I stand or what I think about it. As a matter of fact, in my house, there’s very little that they have to wonder about where I’m going to stand because I’ve expressed my opinion on nearly everything, right?

My wife is emphatic, yes. The other day, I’ve told some of you this already. The other day I went to the doctor’s office and something happened to me that’s never happened before.

I’m filling out the paperwork and the records person asked me, after we’d already gone through the demographic information, I’ve talked about my wife and soon to be five children and they’d asked me my job and all this. They asked me what gender I identified as, what was my sexual orientation and what were my preferred pronouns. And that’s never happened to me before.

And I was telling my wife this story later, and she’s like, and I can tell you exactly what face you made. And she was right. My wife knows me well enough to know not only where I stand on things, but how I react to things as well.

You know, my children don’t have to wonder, where does daddy stand on me running out in the middle of the street? Because I’ve made my position on running out in the street very, very clear. You know, there are certain things that because we stand with God, the world should not have to wonder where we stand.

And so when Elijah showed up because of his track record of willingness to be obedient to God, not just here and there, but consistently being willing to be obedient to God and being consistently willing to say, this is what God’s word said. Notice that when Elijah showed up in the vineyard, Ahab didn’t have to say, well, how do you feel about this? Because Ahab didn’t have to ask, I wonder how God feels about all this.

He knew. And so as soon as he saw Elijah, he knew where Elijah was going to stand because he knew Elijah stood right with where God was. And so his reaction is not one of surprise to see Elijah.

Because you read through the stories that we’ve been through, every time Ahab messes up, Elijah’s right there. And he’s right there with a word from God. See, he already knew.

And folks, if you and I are consistently obedient to God and His Word. I’m not saying we’re going to be perfect people. There’s no such thing.

But if it’s the pattern of our lives to try to be consistently obedient to God, the world is not going to have to wonder where we stand on things. Your friend who’s having an affair is not going to have to wonder, are you okay with it? Are you in support of this?

Your family member who’s destroying their lives with alcoholism isn’t going to have to wonder where you stand on it. And we could go through all the list of things that God says, are going to hurt you that are becoming more and more accepted in our world, people are not going to have to wonder where we stand if we consistently stand with God. If we’re obedient to Him, they’re going to know that we stand with Him.

Elijah just needed to take sin seriously enough to show up where God told him and to be willing to say what God told him. And that’s why Elijah was so committed to God that when he showed up, Abraham, excuse me, Ahab, I’m having trouble with names up here today. That ever happened to y’all?

I feel like I’m talking with my kids and going through roll call of all their names and the dogs trying to get the right one. Ahab knew immediately that it was the end of the line for him. He knew he’d been caught.

God saw it. God wasn’t happy. And that’s why Elijah keeps showing up at the worst possible times for Ahab.

And the reason why God kept sending Elijah to call out Ahab, every time Ahab pulled some boneheaded move that he thought he was going to get away with and thought God was just going to be okay with, the reason why God sent Elijah to deal with all of that is because God treats sin as a serious matter. God always takes sin seriously. God treats sin as a serious matter, and so should his people.

And you see here, God had a long track record of disciplining Israel over their sin. And he talks about this in verse 22 that we read already. And he gives some examples, some previous examples.

And these are not just examples taken at random from the history of Israel, these are the two previous dynasties before Ahab’s. Before Ahab’s family came to power, the two previous royal families had been disciplined in Israel in the way that he’s talking about doing with Ahab. There’s Jeroboam, who in 1 Kings chapter 12 built idols.

In chapter 13, he abused God’s prophets. In chapter 14, God warned him through the prophet Abijah that he was going to overthrow his house, not Abijah, but that God was going to overthrow the royal family, the house of Jeroboam, as we call it now. He’d been warned, because of your idolatry, because of your wickedness, because of your violence, God is going to overthrow the royal family and put in a new government.

And so there was a general named, I’m sorry, his son Nadab did the same thing. Jeroboam’s son Nadab did the exact same things with the idolatry and the wickedness. And so there was a military leader, an officer named Basha, who overthrew King Nabot, the son of Jeroboam, and he murdered the entire royal family.

Sometimes they would do that in the ancient world because they didn’t want anybody left from the previous bloodline who could come in and claim the throne. And so just as God warned, he said, if you don’t turn back from this, here’s what’s going to happen. God warned him, and Basha stepped in and fulfilled the prophecy.

But then Basha did the exact same thing. He encouraged idolatry, and the prophet Jehu warned that they were going to suffer the same fate. Hey, you’re in office today because Jeroboam and Nadab did this, and you’re in office because they were so wicked, but now you’re following in their footsteps.

Be warned, the same thing can happen to you. And Basha didn’t believe them, and so his son, Elah, came along, did the exact same things, followed in daddy’s footsteps, and was overthrown by a military officer named Zimri, who then killed the entire royal family in 1 Kings 16. And it was in one of these coups, when Zimri was overthrown, that Ahab’s father Omri came to the throne.

So realize that these are not just two examples pulled at random from history, from the history of Israel, as far as God taking sin seriously. These were the very reasons why Ahab was king on that day to begin with. Because the previous two royal families had for generations rejected God.

And they had been warned, and they had been warned, and they had been warned. And I’m not even sure that God said here that I’m going to punish you and have your whole family murdered. I think God just took his hand of protection off of the royal family and let nature take its course.

And now Elijah’s telling Ahab the same thing. You’ve had too many warnings, and now the same thing’s going to happen to you. God was just as serious about dealing with sin in Ahab’s house as he had been with Jeroboam’s house and Basha’s house.

He tells him in verse 20, you’ve done evil. You’ve embraced idolatry. You’ve embraced wickedness.

You’ve embraced violence. There’s been bloodshed. God was very unhappy.

He said, you’ve sold yourself to do evil in the sight of the Lord. You haven’t just done, it’s not that Ahab was a good person who did a few bad things. That’s how we like to think of ourselves.

The Bible says we’ve all fallen short of God’s holiness. None of us are good in God’s sight. But Ahab here in particular, he had brought himself into complete and total bondage to evil.

He said, you’ve done evil. And so he should not think that he was going to get away with it like he’s somehow special. You know, I know the previous two royal families have been overthrown and bad things have happened, but I’m Ahab, I’m special. No, no, no. The same thing can happen to you that happened to Barabas family and that happened to Basha’s family. He wasn’t going to get away with it.

He was going to be dealt with just like everybody else. Jezebel in particular was going to be dealt with for her cruelty. Elijah warned that she was going to die and she was going to die in a brutal way.

And it describes the birds and the dogs and all the things that we read. She was going to be punished for her cruelty because this whole family was in rebellion against God. The whole family was in rebellion against God.

You know, sometimes we’ll look at things in the Old Testament and we’ll say, why did deal with entire families that way? Why did God deal with entire villages that way? Entire groups of people?

And it’s hard for us to understand. But my best explanation of it is what we see here. Ahab’s son followed in his footsteps.

Basha’s son followed in his footsteps. Jeroboam’s son followed in his footsteps. I think God knows, but I know God knows, the direction these people are going to take.

God knew that the family was not going to change directions. If God had seen that the family was going to change directions, I think he would have shown some grace like he did in the southern kingdom. But God knew where they were headed.

They were in rebellion and they were going to continue in rebellion against God. And we see even here, we know that God is gracious. We see it even here because Ahab’s response to all of this is he puts on sackcloth.

If you don’t know what that is, it’s like burlap potato sacks. I can’t imagine that would be fun to wear. You’ve really got to be sorry for something to wear that as a way of showing somebody how sorry you are.

So he’s sitting on the ground, he’s crying out to God, he’s wearing burlap, and God says he’s humbled himself. Now, we know from the way he acts in the next chapter, and I’d encourage you to go read that later on, we know that it’s a very shallow repentance. It’s just momentary.

It’s more about being sorry for getting caught than realizing that God is right and he’s wrong. But at least there’s an expression of repentance there. And so God demonstrates some grace.

He said, yes, the royal family is going to be overthrown, but because he’s humbled himself, because he’s shown this humility, because he’s shown this measure of repentance, it won’t happen during his lifetime. He wouldn’t have to watch his whole family be overthrown. God is gracious, but sin is still a serious problem and it has to be dealt with.

So Ahab repented to an extent and God delayed the judgment, but the price still has to be paid. When it comes to sin, a price always has to be paid. Yes, God is gracious.

God is gracious. God is loving, and He will show mercy, but He’s also just, and a price always has to be paid. So God was willing to show that measure of grace to say, we will delay this a little bit, but the sin still had to be dealt with, and it would be dealt with.

When Ahab’s son took the throne and did the same thing that his father had done, God said, it’s enough. It’s enough. The sin has to be dealt with.

And what you and I need to understand from story is that God always takes sin seriously, even little sins. You might say, well, murder’s not a little sin, right? But Ahab’s not the one that murdered Naboth.

Ahab just knew something bad was going to happen to Naboth. I don’t know, maybe he gets hogtied and put on a boat to somewhere else. Maybe he’s murdered.

Ahab’s sin was, he just really didn’t care. He didn’t care what happened to Naboth. He didn’t care what Naboth had to suffer as long as he got what he wanted.

And that sin was sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back. After a lifetime of idolatry and brutality, God said, it’s enough. I’m not going to let this go.

You may think you’re getting away with it because I haven’t overthrown you up to now. There’d been some consequences, but God, I believe, was still giving them opportunity to repent. But God finally said, it’s enough, and we’re going to deal with this sin.

When it comes to sin, there’s always a price, and it always has to be paid. And somebody was going to pay the price for Ahab’s sin. Now today, we need to understand that God takes sin seriously.

We as Christians need to remember that. And we need to get ourselves together. Not as saying, clean up your life so God will love you.

If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, if you’ve already trusted Him as your Savior, He already does love you and He already does forgive you. So it’s not about earning your salvation. It’s about walking in a way that’s pleasing to Him.

But we as Christians need to stop excusing our own sin. And I’m not calling out anybody in particular here except me. But we need to quit excusing sin.

We need to quit saying, oh, it’s all right, when it comes to ourselves. We need to take sin seriously in here so we can take sin seriously out there. And we can come with the moral clarity to the world that’s lost its mind and say, this is what God says.

It is sin and God takes it seriously. Because when we can point to the seriousness of sin in God’s eyes, then we can point to the reality that sin always has a price tag attached. And no matter how long it takes, no matter how long that sin sits on layaway, the price will always be paid.

Even though it was delayed in Ahab’s situation, even though it’s delayed in some of our lives, the price will always be paid. And people today, our neighbors, our friends, our loved ones, maybe some of you sitting here who don’t have a relationship with Christ, who’ve never had that sin forgiven. There are two ways that that sin can be paid for.

That sin can be paid for through an eternity separated from God. That can be our punishment. That can be the price we owe is eternity separated from God in a place called hell.

And people say, well, that’s just a scare tactic. The truth is scary sometimes. And Jesus himself described the fire and the suffering of hell.

And I think all of that is going to be horrific. But the worst part I can imagine about hell is the eternal separation from the love of God. I think many of us in this room would attest you can walk through just about anything.

You can endure just about anything when you’ve got the presence and the love of God with you. But imagine being separated from Him and His love for all eternity. And that’s the price of it.

That sin has to be paid for. The only other option to let Jesus pay for it for you. And that is why Jesus came to earth in the first place.

God the Son became a man to live among us, to live a perfect sinless life, so that when He paid the price of sin, He wasn’t paying the price of His own sin. He wasn’t doing anything for Himself. He was paying the price of my sin and yours.

And our sin was nailed to the cross with Him. He took responsibility for it. He was nailed to that cross, He shed His blood, and He died paying the entire price.

Bearing the full penalty, bearing the weight of God’s wrath, His justice towards sin. God took sin seriously at the cross and showed us that the price has to be paid. But the good news is that you and I don’t have to be the ones to pay it.

Jesus paid the price. The price is there. The judgment is certain.

But Jesus has already paid the price. And if you’ve never trusted Him as your Savior, what that means for you today is that because we have all sinned, big sins, little sins, things that we don’t like to call sin, anyway we’ve disobeyed God. We’ve all done it.

And we’re all separated from Him because of that. And we could remain separated from Him for eternity. Or we could trust Jesus to pay the price.

This morning all there is for you to do is to talk to God and admit that you’ve sinned. Admit to Him what He already knows. Admit that you’ve sinned and you need a Savior.

Admit that you can’t save yourself. And acknowledge that you believe that Jesus died on the cross. Pay for your sin to pay the price and that He rose again to prove it.

Once you acknowledge that sin and once you trust Jesus as your Savior, all you have to do is ask God for the forgiveness. And He grants it. And the price is paid on your account.

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