1 Kings 20:40

Ahab, like David when Nathan came to him, is compelled to pronounce his own judgment (v. 40). He was blind; the bandage he saw over the prophet's eyes was the bandage he had over his own eyes, and he did not even know it! All at once the word of God echoes in his ears like a violent wind of judgment: "Because you have let go out of your hand the man that I had devoted to destruction, your life shall be for his life, and your people for his people" (v. 42).

Ahab probably thought the man was begging him for mercy about his forfeited life or the ruinous fine... He made the same fatal mistake that king Saul made when he spared Agag. Calling the enemy of Israel "my brother," and taking him up into his chariot, may have sounded good and looked generous to men like himself; but in God's eyes it was unpardonable disobedience, and he and the nation would suffer for it.

Mercy is not always of God. There are times when God's honour is at stake. Then mercy is a curse. It is merely human, it follows nothing but self-will, and it is all the more deceitful because it looks so fair. To spare the enemy of the Lord at such a time is to fail completely to meet the Lord's will and the Lord's glory. God alone can show us when mercy is right, and when it is fatal.

"As your servant was busy here and there, he was gone," 1 Kings 20:40. These are not the words of an idler but of a busy man. They contain the startling confession of having missed everything that could make his activities worth anything. The prophet uses them to stir up in King Ahab some sense of the enormous blunder he had made. He had missed the opportunity of his reign.

The heart may also become like a dusty main road. All the traffic and bustle of worldly business passes over it, until the cloud of dust hides the Master from His servant's eyes. He Who matters so much to us is gone from our thought.

In so-called Christian service the danger is just as real. It is easy enough to be "busy here and there" in work we enjoy, until the service occupies the heart instead of the Master... One day Christ will review our short life, with all its busy activity, at His Judgment Seat. What a tragic discovery for a soul to make there, beyond all words: "While I was busy here and there He was gone." Such a soul is saved, yet only as through fire, and finds that the Master counts the labours of a whole busy lifetime as nothing, because they were not done in communion with Himself.

The Word also says that Ahab was "vexed." The king's grief was not the kind that leads to repentance, but to vexation... Once a person really knows the Word, as Ahab did, he can no longer distract himself by doing evil. The Word is there now. He cannot shake it off. It gnaws at the heart and gives him no rest... The prophet had said, "Your life shall be for his life." He did not say when. What if it were today? Or tomorrow? There is good reason for being "sullen and vexed."