Naboth's Vineyard - You Didn't Hear This One in Sunday School - 1 Kings 21

this is one i do remember hearing in sunday school but it just kind of shows the the depths of uh of where people can sink to so it's not not the most pleasant story but it's in god's word so first kings 21 now nabith the jezreelite had a vineyard in jezreel beside the palace of ahab king of samaria and after this ahab said to nabath give me your vineyard that i may have it for a vegetable garden because it is near my house and i will give you a better vineyard for it or if it seems good to you i will give you its value and money but nabeth said to ahab the lord forbid that i should give you the inheritance of my fathers and ahab went into his house vexed and sullen because of what naboth the jezreelite had said to him for he had said i will not give you the inheritance of my fathers and he lay down in his bed and turned away his face and would eat no food but jezebel his wife came to him and said to him why is your spirit so vexed that you eat no food and he said to her because i spoke to naboth the jezreelite and said to him give me your vineyard for money or else if it please you i will give you another vineyard for it and he answered i will not give you my vineyard and jezebel his wife said to him do you now govern israel arise and eat bread and let your heart be cheerful i will give you the vineyard of nadeth the jezreelite so she wrote letters in ahab's name and sealed them with a seal and she sent the letters to the elders and the leaders who lived with nabath in his city and she wrote in the letters proclaim a fast and set nabeth at the head of the people and set two worthless men opposite him and let them bring a charge against him saying you have cursed god and the king then take him out and stone him to death and the men of his city the elders and the leaders who lived in his city did as jezebel sent word to them as it was written in the letters that she had sent out to them they proclaimed a fast and set naboth at the head of the people and the two worthless men came in and sat opposite him and the worthless men brought a charge against nabeth in the presence of the people saying nabath cursed god and the king so they took him outside the city and stoned him to death with stones and they sent to jezebel saying naboth has been stoned he is dead as soon as jezebel heard that nabeth had been stoned and was dead jezebel said to ahab arise take possession of the vineyard of nabeth the jezreelite which he refused to give you for money for nabeth is not alive but dead and as soon as zahab heard that nabeth was dead they have a rose to go down to the vineyard of nabeth the jezreelite to take possession of it then the word of the lord came to elijah the tishbite saying arise go down to meet ahab king of israel who was in samaria behold he is in the vineyard of navith where he has gone to take possession and you shall say to him thus says the lord have you killed and also taken possession and you shall say to him thus says the lord in the place where dogs lift up the blood of naboth shall dogs lick your own blood 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 flee are free in israel and i will make your house like the house of jeroboam the son of nabat like the house of basha 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 dog shall eat and anyone of his who dies in the open country the birds of the heavens shall eat there was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the lord like ahab whom jezebel his wife incited he acted very aboundly going after idols as the amorites had done whom the lord cast out before the people of israel and when ahab heard those words he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth on his flesh and fasted and lay in sackcloth and went about dejectedly and the word of the lord came to elijah the tishbite saying have you seen how ahab has humbled himself before me because he has humbled himself before me i will not bring the disaster in his days but in his son's days i will bring the disaster upon his house and that's our story tonight so if you know much about ahab and jezebel they are kind of a new low for israel and israel's kings they uh they set a new low by introducing baal worship in israel and they not only introduce baal worship but they kill all of god's prophets or at least jezebel does and now here they sink to another low of exploiting their own people like this this is a disgusting abuse of power that they show here so at the beginning of the story verses one and two ahab wants to buy the vineyard that's right next to his palace so ahab makes a generous offer for nathan's vineyard he makes what he thinks is a generous offer i'll i'll pay you whatever value is of it that that it has and uh and if you'd like a better vineyard i can find you a better one and give you that one but i'd just really like to have the vineyard that that you have right here it's right next to my palace it would be great for a vegetable garden for me i'll pay you whatever you want here for it so ahab makes what he thinks is a generous offer but uh nabeth refuses to sell the family land now in the united states you know it land is a little bit different for us here now than it is for them back then so here in the united states land is very plentiful it's bought and sold quite often sometimes the people are attached to their land and the houses and sometimes it gets passed down from generations but not necessarily lots of people live in in apartments that that they're just living for a while for a lot of people in the united states home is where you hang your hat you know land here is usually a little different than it was back then for the israelites land meant inheritance livelihood and it was even thought of as the year after life people wanted to be buried in your family land that was kind of how people thought of it i'm not saying that that was that was heaven or anything that's not what this means but being buried in your family land was very important to people back then they wanted to remain with their families even in death that was the idea there so land was more than just sentiment you know my parents and grandparents grew up here you know it was more than that this was a family's sacred share in god's promised land there's lots of ink in the bible that's just about land allotments to different tribes and that's not for small reasons the land really belongs to god and the people are its tenants and this land that is god's promised land is every family's share in this this promised land this promises that god has so native is not just being selfish or stubborn this is not what's going on here he's not just being no i'm not selling you the land no he's not having a bad attitude here this is his family's share in god's inheritance this is his identity that's his livelihood it's his belonging and it's his ownership so god's law in fact i i didn't realize this to this extent until i've studied this this week but god's law designed to keep land within a family if you look through the mosaic law the law was designed that families would be able to keep their land and to keep it through generations land was not an arbitrary thing one piece of land is good as good as another no you you wanted your your family land um one one person that i found actually translated verse three this way it is forbidden me by yahweh to give you the inheritance of my fathers so there's there's something about the law here in leviticus 25 it says the land shall not be sold in perpetuity for the land is mine for you are strangers and sojourners with me and in all the country you possess you shall allow a redemption of the land if your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold and then there's this year of jubilee that this same chapter talks about where after this many years then the land is going to revert back to its rightful owner god's law really was designed to keep land in the family this was important god's law is also to kings saying to them you are no better than anybody else so ahab is by god's law no better than all of his citizens and it's expressly put this way in deuteronomy 17 18 18-20 is it's on the screen here it says when he sits on the throne of his kingdom he shall write for himself in a book a copy of the law approved by the levitical priests and it shall be with him and he shall read in it all the days of his life if you're a king you're supposed to study that law every single day why that he may learn to fear the lord his god by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes and doing them that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers he is the under the same law as everybody else you are king you are not above the law you are under the law just like everybody else is so you study this law so that you follow this law is kind of what deuteronomy 17 is saying here by contrast verse 7 here it's excuse me five introduces jezebel and then in verse seven jezebel's wife said to him do you now govern israel jezebel came from a pagan nation where kings owned everything in phoenicia where she comes from the king was basically above the law the king was like a master and the citizens were like slaves and so if a king wanted something he just took it that's how it worked kings had like divine right from the gods to do whatever they wanted to and so that's why jezebel says what she says here aren't you the ruler of this nation shouldn't you just be able to take whatever you want who's king around here i mean come on you're acting like a pathetic loser here if you can't get yourself this land that you want i'll get it for you she's used to being in a royal family where if you want something you just take it and if somebody gets in your way you just get rid of them like that and as bad as ahab was jezebel with her phoenician canaanite religion they had a particular brand of religion that was particularly despicable um i won't get into that a lot right now but but she introduced a particular kind of bail worship that was particularly nasty ahab might have been a halfway decent king except he married a pagan there's there's some hints that ahab was at times going in the right direction or starting to turn in the right direction but he married somebody who is thoroughly and completely pagan who was sworn a sworn devotee of bale and asherah so if you look in the story of ahab ahab might have repented after uh the whole incident at mount carmel where god answered with fire and the prophets of baal couldn't get fire to come from the sky ahab was kind of turning around but not after jezebel found out and ahab here in this story ahab was he was acting really immature like a spoiled child they can't get what he wants but he wasn't about to off navith that wasn't on his mind that was on her mind to do that there's a moral lesson here that we should maybe briefly mention how important it is to marry somebody who is godly ahab had a couple times where he was going in the the less bad direction at least but he married somebody who was thoroughly pagan somebody who had no regard for the true god at all and no regard for the law at all and because of who he married he was dragged down verse 8 really can sum up their whole relationship she takes his seal and his his signatures basically and she basically takes over his job and does in his name all of the bad things she kind of takes over verses 9 through 16. it's uh the whole despicable process commandments number nine number six and number eight are broken let's just take off all of the ten commandments here it's not enough to violate the first couple let's go all the way down the line ahab broke number 10 by coveting his his neighbor's vineyard and then from there it goes to bearing false witness to murder to theft it's let's just cover all of the commandments let's just break them all and then when she comes back and says hey guess who died guess who's land you can take over why don't you go take possession of it instead of instead of like tearing his clothes and mourning at what awful thing just happened he says huh all right sounds good to me gets up and he goes to take possession of the vineyard it's kind of a moral lesson here too so it's a phrase you've probably heard before power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely the way that jezebel pulled those strings there she basically had some power and it corrupted and it's interesting how when elijah comes up to king ahab he says hey you found me my enemy he sees elijah who represents god's word not as a friend but as an enemy sinners see god's word as their enemy if you are if you are not paying attention to god's ways and you don't care about god at all then this and everything god has to say is your enemy you don't want to hear what this has to say it's repulsive to you this is just annoying this is just judgmental this is just old-fashioned this is your enemy if you care nothing about god elijah came with a word from the lord and ahab right away knew he wasn't going to like it verses 21 and 22 this is what god said through elijah ahab's family would disappear into history in the previous chapter ahab was told you were going to die you you didn't do what god said you were going to die and now okay not only are you gonna die but your whole family is gonna disappear from this earth your whole family and again family was your identity you're a family first and then an individual second so you entirely are going to disappear from this world you took this is basically what elijah god is saying through elijah you took not only a person's life but you took a whole family's inheritance ahab had to get rid of an entire family to take possession of this land there's a verse that comes up a little later that talks about not only nathan being stoned but also his sons so it was probably more than native that was stoned you just killed off a whole family so that you could take possession of that so you know what this same thing is going to happen to you now your whole family is going to be gone and verses 23 and 24 nobody's going to have a proper burial now this this one is was harder for me to understand because in in my mind i'm thinking you know if i'm if i'm dead you know if i don't have a proper burial or whatever you know what what's that to me i'm dead you know but but for them this was really important you wanted to be buried with your family in your family land as it says in kings a lot he rested with his fathers this is what you wanted and basically what this means is that nobody's going to care that you're gone nobody's gonna care they're gonna walk by your corpse on the road and they're gonna be like eh who cares you're gonna become like the garbage that dogs and vultures eat that's what you're going to become and back then i'm not saying you know the true believers but back then in the ancient near east in general it was widely thought that a proper burial ensured a good afterlife so basically this is kind of like saying you're going to health a little bit verses 25 and 26 there's a parenthesis there ahab was the worst of the israelite kings it just takes a moment here to just say okay ahab and jezebel this was the low point here the i mean look at what the stuff that he has done i mean he's even exploiting his own people and doing stuff like killing nabeth so he can take his vineyard ahab was the worst of the israelite kings now i think it's interesting where they put this or where god has put this in his word right there's this parentheses there this is kind of the low point ahab is the worst of the worst and if you were reading along this part and and you and you got to this parentheses and you real it read again okay ai was the worst of the worst it might have been able to end there and you would have just think okay ahab we stop at this low point but then there's kind of a surprise in the next verses it could have stopped there but it doesn't ahab was the worst of the israelite kings but then in verse 27 there's a kind of a turnaround ahab humbles himself he's like sorry now he's not sorry enough that he says well maybe we should get where to bail worship too and maybe i should find some way to restore this land to some relative of nabith of some kind so it can sort of stay in the family a little bit so he's he's not a full-on repenting but but he does humble himself he believes enough to know that he's in trouble and this is not going to go well he does humble himself and then god sees this and he says elijah you know what hey look at what ahab's doing look at how he's humbling himself like this that means something god eases the punishment because of the humility here god god pulls back on that a little bit you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna give him a a quiet life i'm gonna give him a quiet life ahab humbled himself and so you know what i'll bring it in the days of his son then and ahab actually ended up getting a proper burial if you look at the rest of it the the prophecy that dogs would lick up his blood that was still true but he did get a proper burial christ in our salvation everything every story talks about christ and our salvation this is not there's more than just moral lessons here but we can see here and all the book of kings for that matter earthly rulers are untrustworthy and they are capable of the worst atrocities we are fortunate enough to live in a time in a place where there is a government that is a democracy that is run by three branches of government that are supposed to have checks and balances on one another and all of this kind of stuff so that so there's no dictatorial sort of rule like this but lots of people in history had people over them that had absolute authority that could take whatever they wanted that could kill as much as they wanted and there's even some places like that even today and we are fortunate enough to live in a time like this but earthly rulers are untrustworthy and they are capable of terrible atrocities like this one and even if you look through the book of kings and chronicles even the best of the kings they made some very serious errors we're supposed to read through this and say okay i can't put my trust in any earthly person or earthly system i can only trust the lord so psalm 146 3-5 put not your trust in princes and the son of man in whom there is no salvation and then it goes on to say blessed is he whose help is in the god of jacob whose hope is in the lord his god our trust needs to be in the lord every person even the best of them are going to let us down so don't put your trust at least not your full trust in any human person israel's hope and ours is in is in the coming heavenly king their hope was in jesus christ to come and be a king our hope is in jesus christ who is still coming and he is going to to rule and reign their hope and our hope is the same it's in the same person the same king and this king for them and us is coming he was coming once for them and he's coming again for us jeremiah 23 5-6 behold the days are coming declares the lord when i will raise up for david a righteous branch and he shall reign as king and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land in his days judah will be saved and israel will dwell securely and this is the name by which he will be called the lord is our righteousness he is coming and he is coming again and he is going to rule well unlike ahab here who's kind of the opposite of everything jesus would be ahab ruled for personal gain christ rules to serve and share this is something biblically that that i see all the time is how is how if you want to lead if you want to follow christ then you need to learn how to serve how to be be humble how to do the lowest of work how to pay attention to the least regarded of people do the do lowly stuff learn to serve learn to share this ruling and leading is not for your personal gain and if you look at even just how jesus jesus operates he's not only going to going to come to save us but when all is said and done we're going to get to rule with him he's going to not only save us and give us an amazing kingdom of new heaven and new earth he's we are co-rulers with him he's going to share his throne with us bring it to we get to share in all of his privileges this is far above and beyond just plain old justification salvation from our sins we get to enjoy all of his privileges and then at the end of the story here for god a little humility goes a long way this ahab just had a little bit of humility there he didn't repent completely but he did show some humility and that went a long way just that little bit of humility and this is very consistent with a lot of what we know of the lord psalm 51 the sacrifices of god are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart oh god you will not despise isaiah 66 came to mind here this is the one to whom i will look he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word ahab was doing some trembling at the end there he knew that he was in trouble or jeremiah 3 god is calling his people return faithless israel declares the lord i will not look on you in anger for i am merciful declares the lord i will not be angry forever only acknowledge your guilt that you rebelled against the lord come on come on people i want to be merciful to you just acknowledge your guilt that's all just do that ahab does that here he acknowledges that he is in the wrong and we have a picture here even though it's not a complete repentance or anything here we do have a picture here of at least humility where we can see how god receives even the worst sinner who repents now again ahab wasn't full on repentance but we can see here how god receives and responds to even the worst of sinners and we know that anyone who turns to jesus christ even the worst of sinners that's out there they can be made clean there's somebody out there who's broken every one of god's commandments his or her entire life and that person has a change of heart and humbles themselves before the lord god will receive that person your sins are washed away the blood of jesus covers you and no matter no matter who we talk to anybody has that salvation who repents and comes to the lord ahab was the worst but god received his humility and so just i want to leave us with this thought just the way the text was going here at the very end here you you would have thought that ahab was the lowest of the low and that that that story should have ended right at that parentheses there that should have wrapped up his his reign right there and then there's this little end where he humbles himself do not give up even on the worst of sinners if there's somebody that you know that you care about who you who is on your heart and you are burdened for them who knows what can happen yet who knows don't give up on them keep praying for them keep witnessing to them because they just might have a turnaround towards the end even unexpectedly let's have that hope then let's bow our heads and let's pray lord god in heaven it's wonderful to know that even the worst of sinners can can come to you and repent and and believe and that you will take their sins away lord we all know people who are not walking in your ways and people who are turning their back on you or thinking they can go without you lord don't let us give up on any of those people we pray that they would always be on our hearts and minds and that lord your testimony of your your grace and how wonderful you are would always be on our lips to them and that lord you would turn these people even as you did ahav and more so into complete repentance and that they would be saved we pray all things in jesus name amen

Channel: Aaron Vriesman

Views: 24

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: sermon, Christian Reformed Church, preaching, Bible, Reformed, good for listening, listenable

Id: 6CxgbgVaLk0

Length: 32min 9sec (1929 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021