1 Kings 18:3-4

The Governor of Ahab's House.

There are few things in these books of Scripture more surprising and suggestive than the position of Obadiah in She palace of Ahab. Consider—

I. THE AGE . We have seen that during this reign ( 1 Kings 16:30 , 1 Kings 16:33 ; 1 Kings 21:25 ), and especially in the capital city of Samaria ( 1 Kings 16:32 ), the wickedness of Israel had reached its zenith. From the accession of Jeroboam, and the schism which followed it, the northern kingdom had steadily gone from bad to worse, till its apostasy and impiety culminated under the malign influences of Ahab and Jezebel. Their joint reign marks a new departure in the religious history of the ten tribes. Hitherto men had worshipped the God of their fathers, though in an irregular and unauthorized way, and idolatry, though not unknown, had not been open and unblushing. Now, however, the whole nation, with but few exceptions, abandoned itself to the licentious worship of Phoenician gods, and the ancestral religion was proscribed, its altars were overthrown, and a determined effort was made to stamp out its prophets and professors.

II. THE PLACE . We should expect, consequently—what Elijah really believed to be the case ( 1 Kings 19:10 )—that to find a pious man we must search the land as with a lantern. We should expect to find some Abdiels, "faithful among the faithless found," but we should look for them away from the haunts of men, in "caves and dens of the earth," in the brook Cherith, or the cottage of Zarephath, or wandering about "in sheepskins and goatskins," etc. ( Hebrews 11:37 , Hebrews 11:38 ). But we should hardly hope to find them in the cities of Israel, in the broad light of day, in conspicuous positions, and least of all should we look for them in Samaria, where Satan's seat was, the fortress and citadel of Baal.

Or if we were so sanguine, notwithstanding the godlessness of the times and the genius of the place, as to count on some saints in Samaria, we should never betake ourselves to the great men ( Jeremiah 5:5 ); we should go in search of piety in the cottages of the poor. We should never dream of finding any followers of the Lord occupying an exalted station, living under the shadow of the palace, or in close contact with the determined and unscrupulous queen.

III. HIS POSITION . But if we were assured that even in Ahab's palace, under the same roof with Jezebel, a devout and steadfast servant of Jehovah was to be found, we should certainly have expected to find him in some insignificant servitor, some poor retainer of the place. That any high official, that a minister of state could retain his piety in that cesspool of corruption, that hotbed of idolatry and immorality, and at the very time that Jezebel was cutting off the Lord's prophets, would seem to us altogether out of the question. "What communion," we should ask, "hath light with darkness? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?"

IV. HIS PIETY . Yet we find that Obadiah, the intendant of the palace of Samaria, the trusted and faithful minister of Ahab, the "third ruler in the kingdom," "feared the Lord greatly" ( Obadiah 1:3 ), and, though surrounded by Baal-worshippers, never bowed the knee to Baal; though risking his life by his devotion to Jehovah, yet served Him truly, and succoured His prophets.

We have a parallel to this, and a still more striking instance of piety under the most adverse and discouraging circumstances in the New Testament. We have something like it, indeed, in the case of Daniel and the three Hebrew children; something approaching it in the case of Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward ( Luke 8:8 ); but we find a still closer analogue in the saints of Caesar's household ( Philippians 4:22 ).

When we remember that the saints of Rome were the talk, the admiration, the patterns of the early Christian Churches" throughout the whole world" ( Romans 1:8 ); that among the saints of Rome, those of the palace or of the barracks ( Philippians 1:18 ) attached to Caesar's palace on the Palatine, were conspicuous, at least ( Daniel 4:22 ) for their charity, for the crowning Christian grace of φιλαδελφία , the stamp and seal royal of the saints ( John 13:35 ; 1 John 4:20 ); when we remember, too, that this was in Rome, at that period the very worst city in the world, the resort—their own writers being witness—of all the knaves and charlatans and libertines of the empire; that this was in the year A.D. 63, when the palace of the Caesars was occupied by Nero, of all those born of women perhaps the meanest, basest, most infamous, most profligate; that this Nero was murderer of brother, murderer of mother, of wife, of paramour; persecutor and butcher of the Christians, sworn foe of goodness and purity in every shape, patron and abettor of every kind of abomination, according to some the "Beast" of the Apocalypse; when we consider that under his roof, in the pandemonium which he had created around him, saints were found, meek followers of the unspotted Christ, we cannot but be impressed with the fact that the wisdom of God has preserved for our encouragement two conspicuous instances—one under the Old Dispensation, one under the New—of fervent piety living and thriving in a palace under the most adverse circumstances, amid the overflowings of ungodliness. And these facts may suggest the following lessons:

1. " Let every man, wherein he is called, there abide with God " ( 1 Corinthians 7:20 , 1 Corinthians 7:24 ). The temptation to desert our post, because of the difficulties, seductions, persecutions it affords, is peculiarly strong, because it presents itself under the garb of a religious duty. We think we shall "one day fall by the hand of Saul" ( 1 Samuel 27:1 ). We fear the temptation may be too strong for us, and we consult, as we fancy, only for our safety, in flight. But we forget that "every man's life is a plan of God;" that we have been placed where we are by Him, and placed there to do His work. We forget also that His "grace is sufficient" for us; that with every temptation He can make a way to escape ( 1 Corinthians 10:13 ); that He will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able to bear; and that flight under such circumstances must be mere cowardice and faithlessness. It was a great mistake of the hermits and the religious of a past age to leave the world because it was so wicked, for this was to take the salt out of the earth, and to leave it to corruption. If the men who alone can leaven society shut themselves up in a cloister or a study, it is simply leaving it to the devil to do his worst. This is not to fight, but to flee. Except these abide in the ship, how can it be saved? ( Acts 27:31 .) It is egregious selfishness to hide our candle under a bushel, lest perchance the blasts of temptation should extinguish it. Obadiah was called by the providence of God to be governor of Ahab's house. The post must have been one of extreme difficulty, of constant trial and imminent peril. We see from Obadiah 1:10 , Obadiah 1:14 the kind of man he had to deal with, and how, from day to day, he carried his life in his hand. But he did not desert the state of life into which it had pleased God to call him. /Is considered that he was there for some good purpose; that he had a work to do which only he could do, and he resolved to stop and do his duty. Perhaps he remembered the ruler of Pharaoh's house, and the deliverance he wrought for Israel ( Genesis 45:7 , Genesis 45:8 ), Anyhow, he waited and endured, and at length the opportunity came. When Jezebel would exterminate the Lord's prophets, then the steward of the palace understood why he had been placed in that perilous and responsible position. It was that he might save much people alive ( Genesis 1:20 ). Then he did what, perhaps, only he could have done—took a hundred of the Lord's prophets, hid them in two eaves, and fed them with bread and water.

2. The saints make the best servants . It is scarcely less strange to find Ahab employing Obadiah than to find Obadiah serving under Ahab. Some have seen herein a proof of the king's tolerance, but it is much more like a proof of his sagacity. Whether he knew of Obadiah's faith may be uncertain, but we may be sure that he had proved his fidelity. It was because Obadiah was "faithful in all his house" that he was retained in this position. It was not to Ahab's interest to have a Baal-worshipper at the head of his retainers. Bad men do not care to be served by their kind. They pay piety and probity the compliment—such as it is—of encouraging it in their dependants and children. They find, as Potiphar did, as Darius did, that the God-fearing bring a blessing with them ( Genesis 39:5 ). For if there is no special benediction of their basket and store, of their fruit and fold ( Deuteronomy 28:4 , Deuteronomy 28:5 ), yet they are guarded against peculation and waste ( Luke 16:1 ). How many, like Ahab, have found that those who share their sins or pleasures cannot be entrusted with their goods; that if they would have faithful servants, they must have God-fearing ones.

3. It is only the power of God could keep men holy in Ahab ' s or Nero ' s palace . Coleridge has somewhere said that there are two classes of Christian evidences—Christianity and Christendom; the system in itself, its pure morality, its beneficent teachings, and its results, its conquests, and achievements in the world. For it is altogether beyond the power of human nature to work the moral changes which Christianity has wrought either to convert men or to preserve them from falling. That a man who is notorious in his neighbourhood, the talk and terror of the country side, a chartered libertine, an ame damnee, or even like St. Paul, a persecutor and injurious; or like Augustine, or John Newton; that such an one should be suddenly stopped, transformed, ennobled, should preach the faith which he once persecuted—this is very difficult to account for on human grounds. And that men with every temptation to sin, everything to lose and nothing to gain by godliness, worldly interest, pride, passion, shame, everything combining against religion— that these should, nevertheless, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, live soberly, righteously, and godly ( Titus 2:12 ) in the Sodom around them—this is no less a miracle of Divine grace. The influences that preserved an Obadiah, a St. Paul, a Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia ( 2 Timothy 4:21 ) must have been from above. We know only too well what human nature, unassisted by grace, is capable of. We know it tends inevitably, not to bear a rich crop of virtues, but, like the cereals, to degenerate, to run to seed. In Socrates and Seneca—"half-inspired heathens "we see it at its best, and yet how wide the gulf between Nero's preceptor and the saints of Nero's household. When we see our nature, planted in a hotbed of grossness and profligacy, nevertheless yield the "peaceable fruits of righteousness," then we know that the hand of the great Husbandman must, if silently and unseen, yet assuredly, have been at work.

4. If religion held its own in Ahab ' s or in Nero ' s court, it will hold its own and win its way anywhere . How can we ever despair of our religion so long as we have such proofs that it is the "power of God unto salvation"? Society, both in England and on the continent of Europe, may be very godless; it may be changing for the worse; we may be preparing for an outbreak of Communism, Nihilism, Materialism, Atheism; the masses in our large towns may be very brutal and besotted and animal, may be utterly estranged from religion in every shape; but, whatever England is like, and whatever Europe is like, its state is nothing like so desperate as was that of Rome under Nero. The savages to whom we send our missionaries, again, no doubt they are debased, sensual, apathetic, or even hostile to our religion; but are they really worse, is their case more hopeless, than that of Ahab's or Nero's subjects? And if the days of persecution are not ended; if in China, and Melanesia, and Turkey the sword is still whetted against the Christian, can we find among them all a more truculent persecutor than Jezebel, a more savage and unprincipled inquisitor than Tigellinus. But we cannot pretend that our sufferings are anything like theirs. No longer are the prophets hunted like partridges; no longer are they clad in the skins of wild beasts, or dipped into cauldrons of pitch; no longer do we hear the sanguinary cry, Christianos ad leones . And yet, despite those terrible mockings and scourgings, those agonies in the amphi-theatre, those privations in the caves, religion, in Samaria and in Rome alike, held its ground. In Israel, seven thousand true-hearted confessors would neither be tempted nor terrified into bowing the knee to Baal. In Italy, the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church; neither Nero, nor Decius, nor Diocletian could hinder the onward march of Christ's baptized host, and now it is matter of history how one day the empire woke up to find itself Christian.

5. If men could be saints in Ahab ' s and Nero ' s palace, they may be saints any where. How constantly do men plead the adverse circumstances in which they are placed as a reason why they cannot serve God. Sometimes it is a godless street or wicked hamlet; sometimes it is an irreligious household or infidel workshop; or their trade is such, their employers or associates are such, that they cannot live a godly life. But the example of Obadiah, the example of those saints of the Praeterium, convicts them of untruth and of cowardice. They cannot have greater temptations or fiercer persecutions than befell those Roman Christians. If they proved steadfast, and lived in sweetness and purity, which of us cannot do the same wherever we may be placed?

6. The saints of Ahab ' s and Nero ' s courts shall rise up in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it . In a wicked city, in an impure court, through fire and blood, they kept the faith. Christianity is now established in the land. Kings are its nursing fathers. Its holy rites are celebrated freely and openly. Yet how many dishonour or deny it! how many are ashamed of their religion! With what shame will they meet the brave confessors of the past I They will need no condemnation from their Judge ( Matthew 12:41 ; John 5:45 ).