Be careful how you live!
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· 16 viewsNo one escapes from God's eyes and justice. He will do what He promises.
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Read 2 King 9:14-37
Have you ever wondered why something painful is happening to you, specially if you are trying to follow God?
Have have considered the possibility that those might be the consequences of past actions?
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_th5U5hRu8k
Has not God forgiven me? Yes! He has forgiven your sins and spare you from the eternal consequences of them. But we have to understand that we have to deal with or suffer the temporary consequences.
If you commit a crime and repent, God will forgive you but not necessarily spare you of going to jail. If you abuse the temple, you’ll suffer the consequences. If you mistreat people, you’ll be mistreated.
Jesus taught His disciples what is called the Golden Rule:
“In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
On these verses, we find three reasons why you have to be careful in how you live:
No one escapes from God’s eyes.
No one escapes from God’s eyes.
Everything had began about 15 years before. A wicked king with an even more wicked wife, stole the property of a poor man. Ahab, the king, wanted a vineyard that was close to his palace. He went to see the owner, named Naboth, with intention of buying it from him. Naboth refused to sell it to the king. Disappointed (“sullen and vexed”) because he couldn’t get what he wanted, Ahab, like a spoiled and capricious child, went to cry to his wife Jezabel. She told him, “Do not cry my baby, I will give it to you”.
She wrote letters to the city elders instructing them to judge Naboth. She even paid false witnesses to accuse Naboth of cursing God and the king. The elders sentenced Naboth to death by stoning. Naboth was murdered!
Jezabel brought the news to the king: Naboth is dead! Take over the vineyard! The king gladly took possession of the property. They probably thought “No one knows about what we did!” How wrong they were! God knew about it!
1 kin 21:16-19
When Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab arose to go down to the vineyard of Naboth 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 is in Samaria; behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth where he has gone down to take possession of it. “You shall speak to him, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Have you murdered and also taken possession?” ’ And you shall speak to him, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, “In the place where the dogs licked up the blood of Naboth the dogs will lick up your blood, even yours.” ’ ”
God also knew that the intellectual author of the crime was Jezabel, his wife.
1 kin 21:23-24
“Of Jezebel also has the Lord spoken, saying, ‘The dogs will eat Jezebel in the district of Jezreel.’ “The one belonging to Ahab, who dies in the city, the dogs will eat, and the one who dies in the field the birds of heaven will eat.”
God had heard and seen it all! There’s no way we can escape from his eyes; He is omniscient ans omnipresent.
God may seem to delay, but He does not forget!
God may seem to delay, but He does not forget!
As the years passed, they thought they could get away with murder, but no one leaves without paying the bill, someone has “to pay for the broken dishes” (“los platos rotos”).
God may delay, but He does not forget!
About 3 years after killing and stealing the property, Ahab, king of Israel, and Jehoshaphat, king of Juda, got together and decided to unite forces and go to reconquer Ramoth-gilead from the hands of the Arameans. Fearful for his life, Ahab consulted the false prophets. They gave him a good a prediction: You will defeat them!
But Jehoshaphat, who feared God, asked Ahab to consult with a man of God. Reluctantly, they brought Micaiah. When Ahab heard the dire words of Micaiah devised a plan to escape death: to disguise himself as a common soldier and let Jehoshaphat to dress in royal armor. He thought, “the Arameans will go against the one in royal armor, and I will escape”.
When the Arameans cornered Jehoshaphat and found out that it was not Ahab, they turned and did not kill him.
1 kin 22:34-35
Now a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel in a joint of the armor. So he said to the driver of his chariot, “Turn around and take me out of the fight; for I am severely wounded.” The battle raged that day, and the king was propped up in his chariot in front of the Arameans, and died at evening, and the blood from the wound ran into the bottom of the chariot.
1 kin 22:37-38
So the king died and was brought to Samaria, and they buried the king in Samaria. They washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria, and the dogs licked up his blood (now the harlots bathed themselves there), according to the word of the Lord which He spoke.
Ahab was succeeded by his son Ahaziah (Ocozías) who died a couple of years later. He was succeeded by Joram.
Twelve years after the death of Ahab, God chose a man, Jehu, a captain in the army of Joram, king of Israel and grandson of Ahab, to overthrow him.
God sent Elisha to Ramoth-gilead where, again, the armies of Israel and Judah were defending it from the Arameans, to anoint Jehu for a purpose: to finish with the house of Ahab, as the Lord had promised.
God’s promises are fulfilled to the letter.
God’s promises are fulfilled to the letter.
Ahab never imagined how he would die! You may call it a chance, but it was not an arrow that accidentally wounded him. God was behind the event; God has to fulfill His word.
What happened to Ahab after he was wounded? Exactly what God had said:
So the king died and was brought to Samaria, and they buried the king in Samaria. They washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria, and the dogs licked up his blood (now the harlots bathed themselves there), according to the word of the Lord which He spoke.
1 kin
Twelve years later, Jezabel might have thought she had escape from God’s hands.
The second one to die was Joram, grandson of Ahab:
2 kin 9:24-25
And Jehu drew his bow with his full strength and shot Joram between his arms; and the arrow went through his heart and he sank in his chariot. Then Jehu said to Bidkar his officer, “Take him up and cast him into the property of the field of Naboth the Jezreelite, for I remember when you and I were riding together after Ahab his father, that the Lord laid this oracle against him:
Jezabel was next: she was thrown down a high window by her own servants. Jehu ordered them to throw her down:
He said, “Throw her down.” So they threw her down, and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on the horses, and he trampled her under foot.
2 kin 9 33
Jehu’s intention was to bury her, but that is not what the Lord had said,
2 kin 9:35-36
They went to bury her, but they found nothing more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands. Therefore they returned and told him. And he said, “This is the word of the Lord, which He spoke by His servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, ‘In the property of Jezreel the dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezebel;
The last to die were his seventy sons. Jehu sent letters to the leaders of Jezreel: “if you are with me, behead all Ahab’s descendants. The leaders comply with the order:
2 kin 10:7
When the letter came to them, they took the king’s sons and slaughtered them, seventy persons, and put their heads in baskets, and sent them to him at Jezreel.
2 kin 10
So Jehu killed all who remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all his great men and his acquaintances and his priests, until he left him without a survivor.
God had fulfilled His promises to the letter!
May these truths serve you as a reminder of God’s presence and justice and help you to consider your future actions.