1 Kings 21:2-16 And Ahab spoke to Naboth, saying, Give me your vineyard, that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near to my house… Walking in the garden, what do we see? 1. Covetousness. God's brand is upon covetousness. Contentment is a Christian duty. Not sinful is the desire for comfort, for sufficiency; it is the inordinate desire that is sinful. Does the prosperity of another pain us? Do we desire for our. selves that which belongs to another? Then we are breaking the commandment — "Thou shall not covet." 2. Covetousness disappointed. Ahab has met with an unexpected master. The band of sycophancy had been wont to obey him — to hasten at his word, to answer to the silent solicitation of his eye. But here is a man that denies him, who has a denial from the word of the Lord. Let us beware. This sin is under the special reprobation of God. It was the sin in Eden, and by which Eden was lost. It was the sin of Achan. It was the sin of Gehazi. It was the sin which has branded out of use among names the name of Judas. Was Ahab disappointed? Alas, for him! 3. We see his covetousness successful. He gets what he desires. Jezebel finds her husband, and learning the cause of his depression sneers with imperious scorn upon him. "What is done by another for us is done by ourselves." Are we willing to profit by the dishonesty or hard dealing of others? Then you are not clean of their sin. Adam plucked not the fruit of the tree, though "he did eat" (Genesis 3:6) of it; yet upon him as well as upon the woman came the curse of the Almighty. Jezebel's sin was Ahab's; he winked at its enactment, and took of its guilt-gotten spoil. If we wittingly profit by others' sins, we must share in their condetonation too. 4. Covetousness detected and doomed. Ahab walking in that vineyard — his at last — meets "an hairy man, girt with a girdle of leather about his loins." It is Elijah the Tishbite. If there was one man in the whole world he had rather not have met it was Elijah. But there he is! his unquailing eye troubling him — detected king — to the deepest depths of his weak, wicked soul. Elijah is the king! Ahab cowers before him. He is found out. And the prophet, the truest, though sternest friend that he has ever had, Ahab esteems an enemy. Is the lighthouse on its wave-washed, rocky ledge the mariner's enemy, because it tells through the black and stormy night of the wrecking perils that lurk around the shore? Because it tells of danger, shall it be hated and assailed with angry epithets by those who sail the sea? (G. T. Coster.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard, that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house: and I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it; or, if it seem good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money. |
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