1 Kings 22:34

Cheating God

And the king of Israel said,... I will disguise myself, and go into the battle.... And a certain man drew his bow at a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness. 1 Kings 22:30; 1 Kings 22:34.

Do yon ever play at dressing-up? Of course you do. It is one of your favorite games. You girls love to get hold of some grown-up clothes. You parade up and down in your borrowed finery, tripping over your long skirts, but admiring yourself tremendously all the while. And you boys are not above the game of dressing-up either. When you were very tiny the gift of a soldier's outfit in miniature made you happy for days, especially if the outfit included a sword or a drum.

What is half the charm of being a boy scout? Is it not just the wearing of that fascinating scout hat? And is not half the pleasure of being a girl scout or soccer player the wearing of the uniform?

Dressing-up is a game that never loses its freshness.

And it is a game played not only by boys and girls. It is a game played for our amusement by actors and actresses. It is a game played in grim earnest by the men of our Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). To be able by dressing-up to disguise themselves and appear as other people is absolutely necessary for them. It means the safety of the messages they carry, and it often means the safety of their own lives.

Our story today is the story of a king who dressed up to save his life. But it was not man that he was trying to deceive, it was God.

His name was Ahab. He was king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and a very splendid and mighty monarch he was in some ways. He was a brave warrior and an energetic ruler, and he strove hard to make his nation powerful and famous. He was a great builder too. He built a marvelous palace of ivory the like of which never before was seen. He built also a beautiful temple.

And that brings us to the weak point in his character. For, alas! King Ahab's beautiful temple was not built in honor of God. It was built in honor of the false god Baal. Ahab knew perfectly that God was the one and only true God, and yet he built a temple to Baal because his wife wanted him to do it. She was a heathen princess called Jezebel, and matters stood like this. Ahab ruled Israel, but Jezebel ruled Ahab. And although Ahab knew he was doing wrong, he stifled his conscience and went on doing it

God gave him chance after chance to change his wicked ways. God sent him Elijah, one of the greatest prophets in Bible history, to warn him to repent. But Ahab deliberately closed his ears to Elijah's messages, and went on sinning and teaching his foolish people to imitate his sins and worship idols too.

It fell on a day that Ahab had a State visit from his neighbor the good king Jehoshaphat, the king of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. King Jehoshaphat's son had married King Ahab's daughter, so the two kings were related by marriage.

Now, some time previously King Ahab had been at war with Benhadad, the king of Syria. Ahab had beaten Benhadad and Benhadad had solemnly promised, as the price of peace, to return to Israel certain cities which Benhadad's father had seized in an earlier war. But Benhadad had failed to return one city called Ramoth-gilead. So Ahab suggested to Jehoshaphat that, now that they were united by marriage, they might be united in warfare too. He asked Jehoshaphat to be his ally and go with him to fight the king of Syria and regain Ramoth-gilead. Jehoshaphat was quite willing to help, but he said to Ahab that it would be well to inquire of God if He approved, and if their plans would be successful.

Now Ahab was not sure if God would approve of their plans, and he was afraid to hear what God might have to say on the subject, so he gathered together four hundred prophets who, he knew, would prophesy what he desired a good ending to the war. But he purposely did not send for the one prophet who, he knew, would speak the truth at all costs a prophet named Micaiah.

Jehoshaphat somehow was not satisfied with the fair promises of the four hundred who all foretold a great victory. Their words were too fair. So he asked

Ahab if there were not still another prophet in Israel. “Yes,” said Ahab, “there is. But I hate him, for he prophesies evil about me, not good.” But Jehoshaphat pleaded that Micaiah also should be consulted, and so he came before the king. And, as Ahab feared, he told the truth; and a very unpleasant truth it sounded, for he said that Ahab would be killed, and his army would have to retreat.

Naturally Ahab was rather upset at such a terrible prophecy, but he went on with his preparations; and he and Jehoshaphat went up to Kamoth-gilead. There Ahab did what he thought a clever thing. He dressed up as a common soldier and went into battle disguised instead of wearing his kingly robes. It wasn't that he was a coward. Not a bit of it! But he thought that if he were dressed as another man than the king of Israel, God would not know him, and the prophecy would not come true.

Now, as it happened, Benhadad had set apart certain of the mightiest men expressly to look for Ahab. They had orders to seek him out and fight with him only. When these men saw Jehoshaphat in his kingly armor they mistook him for Ahab, and for a time they pursued him; but later they found out their mistake and stopped the chase.

Meantime a common soldier, who had been aiming at nobody in particular, shot an arrow into the crowd on the battlefield, and that arrow sped straight for the disguised king and pierced between the joints of his armor. It pierced so deep that Ahab knew he was dying. Then he did a brave thing. He got his men to prop him up in his chariot while the battle swayed to and fro. But at sunset he died and a cry rose from the hosts of Israel, “Back to your homes and your cities!” So the people retreated and Micaiah's prophecy was fulfilled.

Now I think the story of Ahab tells us two things.

1. The first is that we cannot deceive God. We cannot cheat Him as we can cheat our fellow-men. Whatever we wear, and whatever we may be doing or saying, God sees the real us. He knows when we are saying one thing aloud and thinking another secretly. He does not look at what we appear, He looks at what we are. He looks straight into our hearts where our motives and intentions are hidden, and He sees them and not the deed that the outside world sees. And it is the motive or intention that God gives us credit for, not the outward deed.

Once there was a certain man who dropped half a sovereign instead of a sixpence into the collection bag (there was a huge difference in value between the sovereign and the sixpence). He was greatly concerned about it, and actually went the length of trying, after service, to recover it. But the man in charge of the collection rebuked him, and told him that what had been given to God should not be asked back again. “Oh! well,” said the mean man, “I'll get credit for it in heaven.” “Will you?” said the other. “No, you'll get credit only for the sixpence you intended to give.” It sounded rather hard, but it was true. You can never cheat God.

2. The second thing the story of Ahab tells us is that there is no such thing as chance. Everything is ordered by God.

When George Washington was a little fellow (this is not the axe story!) he ran out to the garden one spring morning and stood in amazement before a bed of cabbages whose tiny green shoots formed the letters of his own name, “George Washington.”

“Father, father!” he shouted, “do come and see this!”

“What is the matter?” asked his father.

“The cabbages are coming up and writing my name!” cried George.

“Very odd!” said his father.

“But who did it?” asked the boy.

“I suppose they just grew so,” said his father. “Don't you think they came up that way by chance?”

“Oh they couldn't!” said George. “They couldn't possibly grow that way unless someone had made them.”

“Eight, my boy,” said the father. “I planted these cabbages like that just to show you that nothing grows by chance. There is someone who plans everything.”

No, boys and girls, there is no such thing as chance. There is someone behind everything. Everything is the result of order. And God is behind that order.