God is good. God is good. We affirm it every Sunday. We share it in our cell groups when we meet during the week that God is good. He's full of compassion.
He's full of mercy. He's full of patience. All of these traits are immeasurable in Him. They are beyond tracing out, the Bible says. But the Bible also says that God is just.
The Bible also says that He is righteous, that He judges sin, that He cannot stand the sight of it, that He cannot stand it. God is just. He is righteous. Now we love the fact that God is good. We love the fact that He loves.
That He is love personified. But it doesn't sit well with us quite as easily that He is just. It is true that we experience God as patient, as merciful, compassionate, very very patient, and long suffering. It's an old biblical word, long in suffering. But it's also true that His compassion has a limit.
There's a moment in time when God says that is enough. He draws the line and says you will go no further. And that limit is not insignificant. It is very significant. We find examples in the Bible of Sodom and Gomorrah.
The cities that were burned down because of wickedness. We hear about King Belshazzar, the king in the book of Daniel that was told, you have been weighed and you have been found wanting. We hear of Ananias and Sapphira in the New Testament that were struck down. Moments of God's judgement, these moments of God's judgement are shocking to us. This morning we're going to be looking at the issue of sin and judgement.
Now, I'm sure you didn't come to church and go, yes, I'm gonna hear a sermon about sin and judgement. But that's what I love about preaching series. That's what I love about working through books in the Bible because you have to deal with this stuff. It's much easier to preach on love than it is to preach on judgement. But this is where we're at.
We come to another incident between Ahab, Jezebel and Elijah. You see, Naboth is a simple farmer on the outskirts of the capital Jezreel. And, Ahab's royal palace is in Jezreel. We see that he looks out and sees this vineyard, nice walking distance away. Close.
He can go for a morning stroll down there if you wanted to. And he starts desiring this property. He starts coveting it in his heart. And he goes to Naboth and he very reasonably says to him, listen, I'm willing to trade a a vineyard for this vineyard. I can give you a better one than this one.
I can give you gold for it. I will pay you for this. Naboth says to Ahab, I'm not gonna do it. This has been in our family line for generation upon generation upon generation, and I'm not gonna give this to you. I'm sorry.
And then classic Ahab throws another hissy fit. Turns away, he just stumbles into it. I don't know if you can just imagine him. Sullen, the Bible says. Sullen.
And he goes and he lies on his bed and it's just like a 13 year old girl. Sorry if there are 13 year old girls here. But lying on his bed, facing, the Bible says, away from everyone else. So he's you know, the door's here. He's facing that way to the to the wall and he refuses to eat.
And Jezebel obviously finds out about this and she goes to him and asks him what's the matter? And he goes, well, Naboth doesn't wanna sell his vineyard to me. And she says to him, well, who are you?
Aren't you the king of Israel? Aren't you the the mightiest man in the entire kingdom? And here you are getting pushed around by this simple farmer. Don't worry. I'll handle it.
Now, if you've ever read Macbeth, the Shakespearean play, this is what it was based on. Lady Macbeth, who was the prominent strong figure in that whole story, she had the ambition, she had the drive to make her husband king. It's based on this. And so Jezebel does what she does best and she organises things. She writes in Ahab's name. She stamps the envelopes with Ahab's signet ring and seals it.
And she asks for Naboth to be falsely accused of blasphemy and treason. All of those accusations, all of those charges are capital punishments. She organises that two scoundrels, the Bible says, be placed around him, opposite him when this accusation is made. According to Jewish tradition, two people had to testify to someone to be found guilty. So she organises these low life scumbags, probably paid off to do this.
Elijah, in the meantime, is not in this story. He remains out of the picture until now. It's almost as if God is giving Ahab and Jezebel just another bit of time to repent, to turn back to him. But with that little bit of length, they hang themselves. They show that they have no change of heart.
They've experienced the the the droughts, the three years of no rain at the word of God, and yet their hearts haven't changed. And Elijah comes to Ahab and pronounces God's judgement on them. No more patience. No more opportunities for repentance. Your end has come.
That's a pretty big story. And there are three things that this story, this account teaches us in scripture. The first thing is the distinction of of sin. As people who understand the Bible, we understand that sin is sin. Sin is rebellion against God.
It is putting our own needs and our desires above God and and stripping him of his authority over our lives. That is what sin is. Whether it is murder or whether it is adultery, whether it is entertaining lust in our hearts or stealing, sin is sin. It is all the same. There is however a distinction which we see here between how sin is committed.
According to scripture, there are sins of commission, commission, or sins of omission. The sin of commission are sins that are willingly committed. They have been made against our better judgement. We know that this is wrong and yet we pursue it anyway. We know what God's will is, yet we do it anyway.
In this story, we see Jezebel's decision to commit murder, to bring false accusations against someone is a sin that is, committed in full knowledge. It is a sin of commission. She planned very carefully for this. She would've known the law of God against killing someone falsely. Even though she wasn't a believer, even though she worshipped Baal, she was that well acquainted with Jewish law, with God's law, that she made sure there were two witnesses to testify against him, according to Jewish law.
She knew it. She knew it. That's a sin of commission. Jezebel knowingly committed that sin of murder and false accusation. Then, there's the sin of omission.
One that no one talks about. This is the one that no one is, really comfortable with with discussing because it is a sin of, oh, I didn't know. I didn't know. It's insidious in our hearts. This is the the sin of not doing what we should have.
When we know the right thing to do and don't do it, that is a sin of omission. And we see that in the example of Ahab. After throwing his tantrum, he lets Jezebel do the dirty work. Naboth is a simple, man, innocent, and he is unjustly killed. But Ahab distances himself and says, my hands are clean.
I'm just concerned about my veggie patch. He may have thought, you know, I'm just picking up a property from a man who has met a tragic end. But surely, he must have known what was going on. Surely, he must have known. In his decision not to prevent the murder of Nabors, he committed sin.
He committed the sin of omission, not doing what he should have done. By letting Jezebel get her hands dirty with murder, Ahab thought that he was going to be considered not guilty in the eyes of God. K. Jezebel might get the rap for this, but I'll be fine. But he was just as complicit according to God as Jezebel was in the murder of an innocent man.
Then we come to the second point about sin and judgement. We see here that there is an end to God's patience. There's a time that comes for every single one of us where God says enough is enough. For every single human being, enough is enough. And yet no one knows when that is because we also know that God is patient.
Not wanting anyone to die, but everyone to come to faith in Jesus Christ. God, in gracious patience and mercy, waits for us to hear His voice and obey. People hear the gospel of salvation and don't respond, yet God waits. People hear the good news of Jesus and they walk away unchanged out of a church service and yet God waits. In fact, God's patience sometimes even frustrates us.
When people do evil against us, when people sin against us and hurt us, we pray, God, do something about this guy. Do something about this person who's hurt me. Why aren't you? Why do you just let it go? We get frustrated at God's patience when bad stuff happens to us.
In fact, Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 8:11, because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of men are given fully to do evil. In other words, because judgement is delayed and there's no direct cause and effect, people say, wow, this is pretty good. I didn't get a slap on my wrist immediately. I'll just keep doing this. I'll just keep going on with it.
And there's so many examples, so many examples in life where you can see this. This week you may have read in the newspaper of a lady who's been jailed for six years for Centrelink fraud. She got a $2,000,000 payout in her account and immediately went on a spending spree. Now, started with just using a little bit when nothing happened, Started paying off her mortgage and going on holidays and and all that sort of stuff. The temptation, because she wasn't directly punished, was to keep going on with stealing this money.
It's the same for us when it comes to God's judgement. We make all sorts of excuses to stay away from God's conviction. We rationalise so much. We excuse our wrongs on the basis of delayed punishment. Well, we say nothing's happened so far, so I'm safe.
Maybe. Maybe God doesn't know. It's true that you and I don't know at what point God will say that's enough. We don't know when that's gonna happen. But if you read your Bible, you read of Sodom and Gomorrah, and you read of Israel's exile to Babylon, you read even of Ananias and Sapphira in the New Testament, you know that when God draws a line, He draws the line.
Bible says there's no remedy from that. There's no healing from that. There's a time when God's patience finally does run out. Don't be fooled when the Bible says that God is long suffering, that it means that God is everlasting suffering. There's a time when God says enough is enough.
The third thing we see is that God keeps His promises. God keeps His promises. Even the ones we wish He wouldn't keep. We should never forget that when we read that part of scripture in Ahab and Jezebel's case, they were so powerful. They were so rich.
They were so influential. They had so much authority, and that authority was corrupted and wicked. With that much power, it seemed that their wickedness was almost unstoppable. They could kill a man, they could set his death up, and then just stroll in and take his possessions. They thought they were invincible.
Yes. This drought had come, and for three years there was no rain in the land of Israel. By God's word, Elijah said, no more rain. And then ultimately, when the rain came and the people repented, they still hadn't changed. Why?
Because they were king and queen and they always had water. They would have always had water. The poor farmers, they would have died. The orphans, the widows, they would have died, but they always had water. They thought they were invincible.
There was no direct effect on them. So there was no genuine repentance to God. God spoke to Elijah and Elijah proclaimed that Ahab and Jezebel would be punished for their evil. And that this judgement would be truly horrifying. It would have been so bad for a Jew to hear.
To have your body outside, to be eaten by dogs was the most horrendous thing for any Jew to experience. To even imagine a family member going through that would have just ripped your heart apart. It was disgusting. It was vile. But God sent warning after warning after warning.
And they endured a three year drought for their wickedness and God had mercy. Yet they still didn't turn from their sin. When they murdered an innocent man, a simple farmer for a piece of land, God said, enough. And he promised. He promised that they were gonna pay for that crime.
And God kept the promise. And we're gonna have a look at that in the next chapter. Chapter 22:29, we read that Ahab gets killed. Maybe we won't read the whole thing, but in paraphrase, he was killed by an arrow that someone just randomly shot into the sky. There was no intent to kill anyone.
It just went up and it found a piece, a chink in his armour. The arrow bolt went through. It mortally wounded him in his chariot. He told the chariot driver to drive out of the battle. But he sat and bled to death in the chariot.
Dogs, eventually, they buried him, were licking the chariot and the blood, like Elijah had said. We'll also have a look maybe at 2 Kings. We find an account of Jezebel's death. 2 Kings 9. This one we might just read because it's a bit shorter.
But it's just as shocking. 2 Kings 9:30. Then Jehu, who became the new king after Ahab, went to Jezreel. When Jezebel heard about it, she painted her eyes, arranged her hair, and looked out the window. She's trying to impress this guy.
She's gonna seduce him. As Jehu entered the gate, she asked, have you come in peace, Zimri, you murderer of your master. He looked up at the window and called out, who is on my side? Who? Two or three eunuchs looked down at him.
Throw her down, Jehu said. So they threw her down, and some of her blood splattered on the wall and the horses as they trampled her underfoot. Jehu went in and ate and drank. Take care of that that cursed woman, he said, and bury her for she was a king's daughter. But when they went out to bury her, they found nothing except her skull, her feet, and her hands.
They went back to and told Jehu who said, this is the word of the Lord that he spoke through his servant Elijah the Tishbite. So the most horrendous death. Elijah says, will be eaten by dogs and lo and behold, she gets betrayed by her chamber servants, the eunuchs, who in the palace chuck her out of the window, she dies, she's trampled on by horses, smooshed into the ground, and then wild dogs come and eat her. I mean, what a terrifying horrendous death that is. They only find her skull, her feet, and her hands.
There's nothing to bury. Everything else had been eaten by stray dogs. It was exactly what had been prophesied by Elijah would happen. God keeps His promises even the ones we don't want him to keep. When God says he's gonna do something, he will.
Even if he promises judgement on sin. Remember God is both loving and just at the same time. In fact, God wouldn't be loving if he wasn't just. If God allowed sin to go on and on and on, if he allowed evil to win, he wouldn't be very loving. If he didn't correct the power of sin, he wouldn't be loving us.
God keeps his promises. God promises that Jezebel and Ahab would die. For Jezebel's horrendous sins, she dies a particularly nasty death. God is faithful to his promises. Now for us, this might seem a bit grotesque.
And it might not sit very well with us that God caused these things to happen, even if it was against this terrible woman. It can make us actually feel quite scared. What if God is gonna do that to us? What if God draws a line and says that is it. My patience has run out.
The great comfort in knowing that God keeps His promises on judgement is that He keeps His promises on salvation as well. In the book of Lamentations, when Judah is exiled finally for their idolatry, for giving up on God, for rebelling against Him. When Judah is sent away to Babylon, Jeremiah the prophet mourns and laments and he writes an entire book called Lamentations. In that book, in chapter 3, Jeremiah says, great is Your faithfulness, O God. Faithfulness?
Faithfulness at a destroyed city, at a people taken away, of men and women killed and raped. Faithfulness. He almost destroyed the people He said He loved. But Jeremiah realises something about God's keeping of His promises. If God promised to send Israel into exile and warned them that it would happen if they did not repent, if God then allowed that to happen, then His promises of restoration, His promise of redemption, His promise of mercy is just as true.
If He allowed that to happen, then He will make sure that this happens. God was faithful to His promise of judgement and therefore God would be faithful to His promise of forgiveness and restoration. That is why Jeremiah could say, great is Your faithfulness. Sin, God isn't playing games. God isn't playing games.
So we shouldn't play games with God because He's not our homeboy. Because in the end, He wins. And He wins it His way. And when He says that's enough, God promises that He will judge sin. He will judge people's actions.
He will judge the nations. That's a promise. And they will be punished even if it's not in this life, but in the next. When it comes to sin, God doesn't play games and He promised that He will end sin. But we have the blessed assurance.
We have the magnificent promise that mercy is on offer. You are not forsaken. We are not irredeemable. Yes. You've been punished for your sins, but the glorious truth is that Jesus Christ received our Jezebel punishment.
Jesus Christ became like Jezebel. His blood splattered on the cross. Jesus was thrown out. He was trampled on. His body was destroyed.
Because He was guilty? No. Because we are. Because we are. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, the Bible says.
To those who have realised their sin, both the sins of commission, what we do willingly, and the sins of omission, the sins of not doing what we should have done, God holds out His grace. The promise of forgiveness is as real as the promise of judgement. As real as the punishment of Jezebel and Ahab, so real as the reward for those who strive to cling to God, who see Him as their only way out, who forsake their lives of sin. Jesus Christ, sent by God the Father, came not to judge the world but to save it. No matter how dark, no matter how desperate and evil this world may seem, no matter how much sin we have committed or how much we have suffered at the receiving end of sin, there's always the bright shining light of hope that Jesus Christ forgives, that we can be redeemed.
Promise is that while we are more sinful than we ever dared imagine to be true, we are more loved and accepted than we ever dared to hope. That is the gospel.