1 Kings 22:51-53

HOMILETICS OF 1 Kings 22:51

THE POWER OF EVIL TO PERPETUATE ITSELF

I. That evil perpetuates itself by the force of parental training and example (1 Kings 22:52). Ahaziah was cursed with a wicked ancestry. The evil wrought by a wicked father may be counteracted by the influences of a pious mother, or vice versa. But where both father and mother are morally bad, and especially where the mother is the superior genius, no wonder that the worst features of their characters are reproduced and perpetuated in their children. It is a fearful calamity for children to be born of the ignorant, the idolatrous, the vicious. Parents have much to answer for who train up their offspring in sin. It is said that Plato, seeing a child doing mischief in the street, went forth and corrected his father for it.

II. That evil perpetuates itself when it is individually sanctioned and practised. “For he served Baal, and worshipped him” (1 Kings 22:53). Ahaziah made the sin of his parents his own, by his own free, voluntary act. He rejected the God of Elijah, of Micaiah, and of Jehoshaphat, of whom he must have heard, and he elected to serve Baal and worship him. He threw all the weight of his kingly authority on the side of the national idol. Evil is strengthened and extended by the independent action of every additional votary.

III. That the perpetuation of evil is offensive to God. “Provoked to anger the Lord God of Israel, according to all that his father had done” (1 Kings 22:53). Sin is not unnoticed, nor will it long go unpunished. Every act of iniquity provokes the Divine anger, and though God is slow to wrath and reluctant to punish, the day is approaching when terrible and complete vengeance will overtake the evildoer. The judgment which fell on the house of Ahab is a signal example of the ultimate fate of the impenitent wicked.

LESSONS:—

1. Parents are responsible for the moral condition of their children.

2. Sin is a germ that has the alarming power of propagating itself.

3. Evil, though powerful, is not omnipotent, nor will it for ever triumph.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

1 Kings 22:51. As regards his relation to Jehovah, which was the main point for every Israelitish king, Ahaziah was one of the very worst of them. This is marked, in the general description, by the fact that it is said of him, not only that “he did evil in the sight of the Lord,” and “walked in the ways of Jeroboam,” but that it is also added, “in the way of his father,” nay, even also, which is observed of no other king, “in the way of his mother,” the fanatical, idolatrous, and bloodthirsty Jezebel, who was still living, and perhaps controlled him even more than she had controlled his father. All the acts of God during the reign of his father, of which he had been eye-witness and ear-witness, the proofs of God’s power, long-suffering, and justice, even the tragical end of Ahab, had made no impression upon him. All had passed by him, and left no effect behind. For this very reason, then, in the first place, he is worse than Ahab.—Lange.

1 Kings 22:52. The curse of ancestral iniquity. I. Is ever displeasing to God. II. Pollutes succeeding generations. III. Is aggravated by voluntary adoption and individual practice of iniquity.

—It is bad enough, indeed, when one or the other of one’s parents is godless, but how much more when neither fears God? How can we hope for the good nurture of children in that case? The power of example is not greater in any relation than in that of parents to children. The way in which the father or mother walks has more influence upon the children than all the doctrines and teachings which they give them. It is not praiseworthy, nor a thing for which one can satisfactorily answer before God, if the parents and ancestors have been godless, or the adherents of a false religion, that the children should do the same, and follow in their footsteps. It will not suffice before God to say, “I believe what my parents and ancestors believed. They were of this religion, and I will not believe that they have been damned.”—Wurt. Summ.