1 Kings 21:20

THE REBUKE OF SIN

‘And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? And he answered, I have found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.’

1 Kings 21:20

We are like Ahab: we hate to be reproved—it is so troublesome, it is so annoying. When the Church, or her ministers, or the voices of individual consciences rebuke some fault which has grown old among men, they look on the messengers of God very much as Ahab did on Elijah, and they know not that, all the while, it is God of Whom they are complaining.

I. God’s Providence permits no soul to do wrong without warning, nor, having sinned, to be at peace without rebuke. However depraved, however steeped in vice, however abandoned, or however innocent hitherto, at each step downward God meets the individual soul. It may be by circumstances, by personal loss, by bereavement, by the voice of conscience, by a thousand other ways, God stands in the way, willing rather that men shall be turned from their sin and be saved. All through the history of God’s revelation, as it is recorded in Holy Scripture, this principle is apparent; in the sight of the people Noah was building the Ark of Salvation, the sign of wrath to come. The people of Sodom were first rebuked by the presence of Lot. In Egypt, Moses warned Pharaoh after almost every plague. On the night of Belshazzar’s overthrow there appeared the mysterious hand on the wall writing his doom. King Herod had no rest in his adultery with his brother Philip’s wife.

II. The way of God is to withstand wilful sin.—Daily we pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,’ and most surely He does so, if men would only see and take advantage of His warnings. He makes no difference between the hardened sinner and the honest though weak disciple. Whenever you hear of a determined Ahab, you hear of a fearless Elijah. Or, if it be a David who has forgotten himself, there is always at hand a Nathan to warn him by a parallel case, and to say, ‘Thou art the man.’ Or, if there be no man to speak, God will speak in other ways: trouble, sorrow, sickness, loss, are all the silent messengers of the Almighty, and in the silence of the night, or the solitude of despair, when the heart cries out, ‘O God! wherefore is all this come upon me?’ the still small voice of conscience strives within you, ‘Hast thou not forsaken God and broken His commandments?’

III. Every obstacle which confronts the deliberate sinner is surely the sign of the Lord’s Presence. It is like the angel of the Lord standing before Balaam, with his sword in his hand, whom Balaam could not see until his eyes were opened. And so, when a man sets about a deliberate sin, he may expect obstacles put in his way, because we know while God hates the sin He loves the sinner, and would warn him and save him. Or suppose that he has committed the sin that, like Ahab, he has killed and taken possession, or like David when he caused Uriah to be killed, or like Herod who was living in his sin—still God leaves him not alone, and an Elijah, or a Nathan, or a Baptist appears when least expected, and his pleasure becomes bitterness.

Rev. S. J. Childs Clarke.

Illustration

‘God deals with us in many ways. Our experience, open and secret, is full of circumstances of His providential warning and correction; but do men always profit by these warnings? How do they look upon them? Some are angry, as Cain, who we read was “very wroth, and his countenance fell.” Some scoff as the men of Sodom did, who said, “This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge.” And some are defiant, as Pharaoh—“Get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more; for in that day thou seest my face thou shalt die.” And some, while complaining of their lot, are submissive for a time, but after awhile harden their hearts, as in the case of Ahab, who for a time was penitent. And some repent with tears, as St. Peter did. When the Master turned and looked upon him he saw in that look not the rebuke of an enemy, but the love of the true Friend and Saviour. God grant that in sickness or bereavement, loss or sorrow, or when the Church, her minister, or the voice of conscience speaks to rebuke some sin, we may perceive not the visitation of an enemy, but the guiding Hand of our Heavenly Father.’