Trapped In Death Cave

No good deed ever goes unpunished.

I’m sure that is how Obadiah felt. As he was
serving as the house overseer for the wicked King Ahab, he had risked his life to protect the prophets of the Lord from the wrath of Queen Jezebel. He holed them up in a cave, provided them with supplies, and divided them up so they couldn’t be as easily discovered. This act of kindness had put him in danger for years.

And then he had stumbled on the most wanted man in Israel, the prophet Elijah.

“He said, What sin have I committed, that you are giving your servant into the hand of Ahab to put me to death?”

1^st Kings 18:9

Ahab had searched far and wide for Elijah. Now Elijah wanted Obadiah to go and tell him that he had been found. Obadiah could see how bad this could go. What would happen if he told Ahab he found him and Elijah wasn’t there? What would happen to those he was protecting? Had Ahab found out about his saving the prophets? Would he kill him? Obadiah had done the right thing and now it seemed he was going to pay the cost for it.

But that wasn’t in God's plan. God was going to take care of the situation. Obadiah's goodness wasn’t punished it was about to be justified.

In the wicked world today, we can feel like Obadiah. In trying to do right it feels like we get grief coming and going. Those in the wrong attack us for what we do, others attack us for not doing enough. We feel trapped in a no-win situation like those prophets hiding in those caves.

We need to remember the word of Hebrews 6:10, “For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.” Doing good may not make your life easy in the moment but it will be recognized by God. Serving God and his people may not be easy but it will be worth it!

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

The Other Peter Principle

Simon wasn’t very good at his job. For most folks, fishing is a hobby a good time on the lake even if you get skunked. Not so for the professional fisherman. A day without a catch means no product to sell, no money collected, and nothing to bring home to the wife and kids. Those days seemed to happen a lot to Simon. Maybe I’m wrong but all I can go by is the history we have on him and every time we have it recorded, he caught nothing, at least on his own. You would have to be hard headed to keep at it with all that failure. No wonder he got the nickname of rock. So perhaps, that’s why when he got the chance at a new career he jumped at it. Well, not so much a new career but a different form of the old one. He would still be fishing just going after a different kind of fish. This time he would have a boss, one that had shown him, even in his old job, a better way to do things. And that made all the difference. Simon didn’t al...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog