At last the years of famine draw to their close, and again the word of the Lord comes to Elijah saying, " Go, show thyself unto Ahab; and I will send rain upon the earth." In the beginning of the years of drought the Lord had said to Elijah, " Get thee hence, and hide thyself "; now the word is, " Go, show thyself." There is a time to hide ourselves and a time to show ourselves; a time to proclaim the word of the Lord from the housetops, and a time to draw " apart into a desert place and rest a while." A time to pass through the land " as unknown," and a time to mingle with the crowd as well known " (2 Cor. 6:9). Such changes are the common lot of all true servants of the Lord. The Baptist, in his day, was in the desert " as unknown " till the day of his showing to Israel " as well known "; only to withdraw again from the public gaze in the presence of One of whom he could say, " He must increase, but I must decrease." This grace, which knows when to come forward and when to withdraw, finds its most perfect expression in the Lord's own path. He can gather all the city at the door of His lodging as One that is " well known," and rising a great while before day, He can depart into a solitary place " as unknown."
But such changes in the path of the servant, if they are to meet with a ready obedience, demand low thoughts of self and great confidence in God. This high quality of faith was not wanting in Elijah. Without raising a single objection he " went to show himself unto Ahab." His secret training had fitted him for the demands of the occasion. In the eyes of the king, Elijah was an outlawed man, a troubler of Israel, and to show himself to the monarch would be simple madness in the light of human reason. Could not God bring rain upon the earth without exposing His servant to the wrath of the king? Doubtless He could, but this would by no means meet the circumstances of the case. The rain had been withheld at the word of Elijah in the presence of the king, and the coming of the rain must also depend upon the intervention of God's prophet in the presence of the king. Had the rain returned apart from the public testimony of Elijah, he would at once have been set down as a false prophet and a boaster, and still worse, the deliverance would have been attributed by the prophets of Baal to their idol.
We are not left in any doubt as to the moral condition of the king. While Elijah journeys from Zarephath at the word of the Lord and for the glory of the Lord, the king takes a journey prompted by pure selfishness and with no higher object than the preservation of his stud. For three and a half years neither rain nor dew has fallen—the famine is sore in the land—king and people are proving that it is " an evil thing and bitter " to forsake the Lord God and worship idols. But what of the king? Has this sore calamity softened his heart, and wrought repentance before the Lord? Is he journeying through his kingdom seeking to alleviate the distress of his starving people and calling upon all to cry to God? Alas! his thoughts are occupied with his horses and mules rather than his starving people; and so far from seeking God he is merely seeking grass.
A weak, self-centered, self-indulgent man, controlled by a strong-minded idolatrous woman, he has become the leader in apostasy, and the avowed enemy of the man of God. And now, unmoved by the terrible visitation of the drought and the famine, the universal misery finds him still pursuing his selfish and frivolous life, alike indifferent to the sufferings of his people, and to the claims of God. Such is the picture of human depravity presented by the king.
But at this point another and a very different character passes before us. Obadiah was one who feared the Lord greatly, and who, in times past, had wrought a very. signal service for the prophets of the Lord, and yet, strangely enough, he is the governor of the king's house. What an anomaly that one who fears the Lord greatly should be found in intimate association with the apostate king. " It was not," as one has said, " that he was betrayed at times merely, nor was it that his way was stained at times, but his whole life evinces a man of mixed principles."
Both Elijah and Obadiah were saints of God, but their meeting is marked by reserve rather than by the communion of saints. Obadiah is deferential and conciliatory, Elijah cold and distant. What fellowship can there be between God's stranger and Ahab's minister? Another has truly remarked, " We cannot serve the world, and go on in the course of it behind each other's backs, and then assume we can meet as saints and enjoy sweet communion."
Obadiah tries to escape from a mission which in his sight is fraught with danger. " What," he exclaims, " have I sinned, that I should be sent to the king?" But Elijah had said nothing about sinning. Then Obadiah pleads his good deeds. Had not Elijah heard of his kindness in times past to the prophets of the Lord? However, it was no question of bad deeds or good deeds; the source of all Obadiah's trouble was the false position he was in. He was a man of the unequal yoke.
The Spirit of God takes occasion by this scene to depict the solemn results of the unequal yoke between righteousness and unrighteousness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial, he that believeth, and an infidel (2 Cor. 6:14-18).
1. Obadiah takes his orders from the apostate king. Elijah takes his directions from the Lord and moves and acts according to the commands of the Lord. Obadiah, though indeed he may fear the Lord, is not used in the service of the Lord, and gets no directions from the Lord. Ahab is his master, Ahab he has to serve, and from Ahab he takes his directions. Thus in this time of natural calamity he fritters his time away in the trivial work of seeking grass for his master's beasts.
2. He lives at a low spiritual level. Being in the way on his master's errands, " Behold Elijah met him." In the presence of the prophet, Obadiah falls on his face addressing him as " My lord Elijah," indicating that he is conscious of the lower level on which he lives. Obadiah may dwell in the palaces of kings; Elijah in the lonely places of the earth, companion of the widow and the fatherless; nevertheless Obadiah knows full well that Elijah is the greater man. The high positions of this world may carry with them earthly honors, but cannot impart spiritual dignities. Elijah will not even recognize that Obadiah is a servant of the Lord. To him he is only a servant of the wicked king, for he says, " Go, tell thy lord, behold Elijah is here."
3. Obadiah's sad reply clearly reveals that he lives in craven fear of the king. The servant of a selfish autocrat, he shrinks from a mission which may incur his wrath and summary vengeance.
4. Not only does this unhallowed association keep Obadiah living in fear of the king, but it destroys his confidence in God. He recognizes that the Spirit of the Lord will protect Elijah from the king's vengeance, but, for himself, he has no faith to count upon the protection of God. A false position and an uneasy conscience have robbed him of all confidence in the Lord.
5. Lacking confidence in the Lord, he is not ready to be used by the Lord. He shrinks from a mission in which he can see danger and possibly death. Three times he repeats that Ahab will slay him. He seeks to be excused the mission, pleading the wickedness of the king on the one hand, and his own goodness on the other.
How different the attitude of Elijah. Walking in separation from evil, he is filled with holy boldness. Not, however, that his confidence was in himself, or his separate walk, but in the living God. He can say to Obadiah, " As the Lord of Hosts liveth, before whom I stand, I will surely show myself unto him today." How solemn, that Elijah is compelled to address a saint of God in the very terms in which he had addressed the apostate king (1 Kings 17:1; 18:15). Obadiah, standing before the king; is filled with the fear of death; Elijah, standing before the living God, is filled with calm and holy confidence. In faith in the living God he had warned the king, of the coming drought; in faith in the living God he had been sustained in secret during the years of drought; in faith in the living God he can once more face the king, saying without a trace of fear, " I will surely show myself unto him today."
Obadiah had passed through no such training. His had been the path of ease rather than the path of faith. He had moved in the crowded scenes of the city as the head official in the court of the king, and not in the solitary places of the earth as the faithful servant of the Lord. His sphere has been the king's royal palace rather than the widow's humble home.
In the eyes of the natural man, how desirable the position of Obadiah with its ease, and wealth, and exalted station, and how distressing the lowly path of Elijah with its poverty and privations. But faith esteems the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. Elijah found greater riches amidst the poverty of the widow's home than Obadiah enjoyed amidst the splendors of the king's palace. May we not say that, at Zarephath, there were unfolded before the prophet's vision " the unsearchable riches of Christ," the meal that never wasted, the oil that never failed, and the God who raised the dead? No such blessings fell to the lot of Obadiah. Truly he escaped the reproach of Christ, but he missed the unsearchable riches of Christ. He escaped the trial of faith and lost the rewards of faith.
Of Moses, in a yet earlier day, it could be said, " By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible." So here we may surely say of Elijah, he turned his back on the world of his day, not fearing the wrath of the king, and, with his vision of the living God, he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. All this was wanting in Obadiah. He may have feared God in secret, but he feared the king in public. He never broke with the world, and he had no vision of the living God.
Apart from the world, in holy separation to God, the prophet Elijah is in touch with heaven, and sees unfolded before his eyes the wonders of grace and the power of God. To these heavenly wonders Obadiah is a complete stranger: identified with the world and associated with the apostate king, he can only mind earthly things, and thus, while Elijah is seeking the glory of God and the blessing of Israel, Obadiah is seeking grass for horses and mules.
Having delivered Elijah's message, Obadiah drops out of the story, while Elijah passes on to fresh honors as a witness of the living God, to receive at last a passage to glory in a chariot of fire.