I.Wickedness involves others, trying to make them its dupes, its allies, and its scapegoats. Jeroboam proposed to hoodwink the Lord’s prophet. Iniquity is a brag, but it is a great coward. It lays the plan, gets some one else to execute it--puts down the gunpowder train, gets some one else to touch it off--contrives mischief, gets some one else to work it--starts the lie, gets some one else to circulate it. Jeroboam plots the lie, contrives the imposition, and gets his wife to execute it. Stand off from all imposition and chicanery. Do not consent to be anybody’s dupe, anybody’s ally in wickedness, anybody’s scapegoat.
II. Royalty sometimes passes in disguise. The frock, the veil, the hood of the peasant woman hid the queenly character of this woman of Tirzah. Nobody suspected that she was a queen or a princess as she passed by; but she was just as much a queen as though she stood in the palace, her robes encrusted with diamonds. Glory veiled. Affluence hidden. A queen in mask. A princess in disguise. When you think of a queen you do not think of Catharine of Russia, or Maria Theresa of Germany, or Mary Queen of Scots. When you think of a queen you think of a plain woman who sat opposite your father at the table, or winked with him down the path of life arm in arm--sometimes to the thanksgiving banquet, sometimes to the grave, but always side by side, soothing your little sorrows and adjusting your little quarrels. “Mother, mother!” Ah! she was the queen. Your father knew it. You knew it. She was the queen, but the queen in disguise. The world did not recognise it.
III. How people put on masks, and how the Lord tears them off. It was a terrible moment in the history of this woman of Tirzah when the prophet accosted her, practically saying, “I know who you are; you cannot cheat me; you cannot impose upon me; why feignest thou thyself to be another?” She had a right to ask for the restoration of her son: she had no right to practise that falsehood. It is never right to do wrong.
IV. How precise, and accurate, and particular, are God’s providences. Just at the moment that woman entered the city the child died. Just as it was prophesied, so it turned out, so it always turns out. The sickness comes, the death occurs; the nation is born, the despotism is overthrown at the appointed time. God drives the universe with a stiff rein. Events do not just happen so. Things do not go slipshod. In all the book of God’s providences there is not one “if.” God’s providences are never caught in deshabille. To God there are no surprises, no disappointments, and no accidents. The most insignificant event flung out in the ages is the connecting link between two great chains--the chain of eternity past and the chain ofeternity to come. (T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.)
A hearer in disguise
I. We have before us the occasional hearer. Jeroboam and his wife did not often go to hear Ahijah. They were not people who went to worship Jehovah; they neither feared God nor regarded His prophet.
1. This occasional hearer was totally destitute of all true piety. Most occasional hearers are. Those who have true religion are not occasional hearers.
2. The second remark about these occasional hearers is, that when they do come, they very generally come because they are in trouble. When Jeroboam’s wife came and spoke to the prophet, it was because the dear child was ill at home.
3. This woman would not have come but that her husband sent her on the ground that he had heard Ahijah preach before. It was this prophet who took Jeroboam’s mantle and rent it in pieces, and told him he was to be king over the ten tribes. That message proved true; therefore Jeroboam had confidence in Ahijah.
4. They had one godly member of their family, and that brought them to see the prophet. Their child was sick and ill, and it was that which led them to inquire at the hands of the Lord.
5. But there is one sad reflection which should alarm the occasional hearer. Though Jeroboam’s wife did come to the prophet that once, and heard tidings, yet she and herhusband perished after all.
II. The useless disguise. Jeroboam’s wife thought to herself, “If I go to see Ahijah, as he knows me to be the wife of Jeroboam, he is sure to speak angrily, and give me very bad news.” Strange to tell, though the poor old gentleman was blind, she thought it necessary to put on a disguise. There was a Judas among the twelve; there was a Demas among theearly disciples; and we must always expect to find chaff on God’s floor mingled with the wheat. After the most searching ministry, there are still some who will wrap themselves about with a mantle of deception.
III. The heavy tidings. Sinner, unrepenting sinner, I have heavy tidings for thee. The wrath of God abideth on thee.(C. H. Spurgeon.)
