Ahab called Obadiah, which was the governor of his house.
Obadiah
There are men in sacred story, and in every history, who play a secondary place in the strange stirring drama of human progress--lieutenants to the great leaders--men with firm wills, stalwart hearts, gifts of energy, wisdom, and restraint. And behind these a great number who have no name in “storied page,” prophets who have no prophet renown, kings uncrowned, victors without honour, martyrs without a martyr’s fame, saints uncanonised, wise men who have no enrolment among the world’s sages! The glory of the firmament on a clear and radiant night is not fashioned of those few chief stars which flash with distinguished brightness, and catch the glance and win the admiration of the careless observer; but in the multitude of stars which are not chief--which wear not the most dazzling splendour--these bring their brightness, and those far off nebulous mists bring theirs. Were these to fail, how tame the heavens would grow! So in the Bible story--the glory is not concentrated in the chief men. All the interest of that history is not in those few who stand like giants among their fellows. There are men of less distinguished greatness who are worthy of observation, and will repay our study. The less known, and in some respects the less gifted men of Bible story have this interest for us: they are nearer to us--they are not set apart from us and hedged in by specialities of gifts or office, moving in a sphere in which we can have no place. Elijah stands like a mountain apart--lonely, grand, terrible--and though an apostle tells us “he is a man of like passions with ourselves,” yet the glamour of supernatural gifts separates him from us. But when we look at Obadiah, we see one who stands upon our level, who moves in our sphere. We do not stand in awe of him. Contact with him is contact of man with man, and no dazzle of the supernatural comes between us. We have only a feeble, broken outline of the man’s character. The sketch which the sacred narrative gives is very brief. He is Ahab’s servant, governor of his house. He is Jehovah’s servant, and in the palace where Jezebel is queen and Baal and Ashtaroth are the worshipped gods. The hints which this brief narrative affords us are suggestive of a noble type of man, fearing God, defending the weak, rendering all lawful service.
1. He was the honoured servant of an impious king, “governor of his house.” This was an office of great dignity and influence; that he reached it and held it is a witness alike to his integrity and efficiency. He was a careful, faithful, diligent servant to King Ahab. How came he to this high place? He did not purchase it by an unworthy deference; the fawning of the flatterer did not win it; the pliancy of an easy conscience did not secure it; “for he feared the Lord greatly: feared Him from his youth up.” Such a fear, if it does not secure steadfast principle in life and character, is a mere profession--an utter sham. Obadiah has reached this place in the straight lines of integrity, not by the crooked, wriggling line of policy. The lines of principle do sometimes land a man in the high places. He was an honoured servant, because he was efficient; he did not do his work with a slack hand because Ahab was an apostate king and Jezebel a heathen queen. His religion was the inspiration of his work--the condition of his efficiency. What he did, he did with his might. Religion is no excuse for inefficiency in any honest work to which men set their hands. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” That injunction concerns our work in the world as well as in the Church-U-concerns the keeping of accounts as much as keeping the Sabbath; the discharge of business obligations as truly as the fulfilment of religious duties. The irresolute, indifferent, and inefficient servant cannot be excused, because he has a gift in prayer. Idleness at the counter, at the desk, the bench, the anvil, is not to be excused because the transgressor is a zealous teacher in his class. Inability may be an excuse for inefficiency, but religion cannot be; it is the enrichment and endowment of a man’s nature; it should stir all gifts that are in him to a quicker energy, a finer power. What isthe witness of this to you and me? That we who are servants of the Lord, in fulfilling our earthly duties and obligations, should be diligent and faithful. It is a commendation of Christ’s religion which has been overlooked.
2. Obadiah was faithfully God’s witness in a degenerate court. As far as it was possible, he served his king; but there are no indications that he trifled with conscience, no signs in the narrative that he was unfaithful to the claims of God. He feared the Lord greatly--this is the witness of no shallow religiousness. In that unhallowed court he was a leaven of purity. In that degenerate age he was a witness for God. In those high places, where pleasure and passion held wild carnival, he exercised self-control, and strove to live a life true to God. He feared the Lord greatly. He who fails in this allegiance, though he stands amid the splendour that beats upon a throne, is yet a child of darkness. Understand it well. Obadiah had no gifts of prophet power--no unique spiritual gift. He was for the most part a man just like ourselves. Yet in the court of Ahab, where influences of evil must have gathered the force and fierceness of a stormy sea, he was steadfast and immovable. Little faith would have been shattered and swept away; a faint heart, a feeble zeal, could not have borne the strain. It is only in the possession of a full, rich, spiritual power we shall bear in life and character clear witness for God and for His Christ. If we are to thwart in any way such powers of darkness as are figured to us in this imperious Queen Jezebel, we must fear the Lord greatly; our love of Him must glow like the morning; our faith in Him must be steadfast as the stars; our zeal for Him burn like a concentrated fire. It is this thoroughness in Christian life which is the condition of resolute faithfulness--the root of working power and widening usefulness. (W. S. Davis.)
A noble character
Obadiah “feared the Lord.” That is to say, he was loyal to the Lord; the law of God was the rule of his life. He feared to sin; kept watch over his heart, held guard on his lips, and followed the commandments of the Most High. Obadiah “feared the Lord” from his youth. That is to say, this tree of righteousness, called Obadiah, was strong, widespread, and beautiful, bending with the fruits of goodness, because he was planted in the garden of grace when he was a sapling, a tender plant, whose childhood was given to the love and service of his God.
1. Obadiah’s goodness makes us wonder. He lived in an age and in a country when and where” goodness was sadly scarce. The wonder is that King Ahab would have this man by him, much more that he should commit the highest office and the most important trust into his hands. Obadiah’s presence must have been a standing rebuke to the selfish and sensual king. If I wonder that Ahab would have him about him, I wonder more that Obadiah was willing to stay. The corrupt atmosphere of Ahab’s shameless court must have been a rank offence to him. Then why did he not go? The Prophet Elijah, wandering alone among the glens of Thisbe, or the rocks of Horeb, or by the waters of Cherith, or the coasts of Zidon, would be glad, poor outlaw, of a little congenial company. Why doesn’t Obadiah join him? Because “he feared the Lord greatly”; and both patriotism and religion, loyalty to the interests of his country and the honour of his God, bound him to his post.
2. I find still further cause for wonder, in that the goodness of Obadiah had been maintained during his residence in the court of King Ahab. I marvel at it. I know what comes to a statue of white marble exposed to the corrosive fogs of London. I know what happens to the rippling music and the silver beauty of the summer brook when it falls into the turbid river rolling its dull waters in sullen silence to the sea. I know the fate of May flowers when the blast of the cast winds blow a malison on their beauty. I know, too, by sad experience, what comes to human hearts and consciences when fierce and fiery, or subtle and winsome temptations ply their evil power. This man, this one man Obadiah, “feared the Lord.” He shone like a solitary star in a murky midnight sky. He bloomed like a lily in a bed of thorns.
3. The goodness of Obadiah gives me further cause for wonder in that it grew and ripened under unfavourable treatment. It is said of him, that he “feared the Lord from his youth.” The guiding principle of his whole career was the fear of God. There is no doubt that his religion met with some shrewd blows and sore bruises as his beard grew; and that as he advanced to mature manhood, the world, the flesh, and the devil, hit both hard and often at the man who would be good in spite of them. “Now Obadiah feared the Lord greatly.” Instead of descending a valley, he has been climbing the hill. Instead of lapsing into silence with broken strings, his life-harp vibrates with richer melody and a holier psalm. The way of duty is not only the way of safety, but it is the way to more perfect goodness and increasing strength.
4. I find further cause for wonder in Obadiah’s simple faith in the supernatural, the miracle-working power of God. “Go, tell the king,” said the stalwart and hairy Tishbite, “Behold, Elijah is here.” “Nay,” said Obadiah, “Ahab has hunted for thee high and low to kill thee, that at the ebbing of thy blood the wells and rivers may flow again. If I send him here, the Spirit of the Lord will carry thee away, and the king will slay me.” Poor superstitious, old-fashioned, simplehearted Obadiah! And yet the simple soul, palace governor though he be, thinks that Elijah can be suddenly spirited away; that the laws of nature can be tampered with, gravitation suspended, and a miracle can be wrought by a fancied Deity whom every one regards as an exploded myth!
5. I find still another wonder, still another lesson in the piety of Obadiah: his noble deeds of kindness to others at great cost and danger to himself. (J. J. Wray.)
Standing alone
Mr. Jackson Wray finely compares Obadiah to a scene he once saw on the west coast of Africa. Crossing a barren tract of country, he beheld a fair and stately palm tree springing up from the desert sand. Its graceful shaft rose to a height of near a hundred feet, crested with a coronet of leafy splendour, rich with clusters of ripening fruit. All around it was stunted brushwood and dwarfish thorn. It stood alone in solitary magnificence. Even so was Obadiah in King Ahab’s palace.
Grace superior to the forces of environment
“A great city spoils everything within its circle, and you say it has the same effect upon character, and that a low type of character is excusable when you consider a city environment. No. That won’t do for us. I rejoice to think that the grace of God makes a man triumph over the worst circumstances. Scientists say it is impossible for anything to exist and come to perfection except it has proper conditions. If you are to have the rose you must have the sun, and if you are to have the fern you must have the shade, and for the willow the watercourse. Suitable conditions, or life and perfection are impossibilities! Well, I suppose it is so, but I rejoice to say that breaks down when you come to character. This very day I can show you lovely roses growing in cellars; I can show you the purest of lilies in the miriest of places; I can show you the palms of the East growing in Lapland; in other words, to drop the imagery, I can show you the purest and noblest of men and women under circumstances that seem altogether unsuitable to a pure and noble life. Don’t say that because your environment is this or that, therefore you must be a this or that mean creature. The Kingdom of God is within you, and can set circumstances at defiance. (W. L. Watkinson.)
Unheroic Christianity
The poor man must often have been in a great strait to reconcile his duty to Jehovah with his duty to his other master, Ahab. And Elijah shrewdly hinted at it when he said: “Go, tell thy lord, behold, Elijah is here!” Imagine a courtier of Oliver Cromwell trying to be true to the Commonwealth and to the cause of the exiled Stuarts! The life of policy and expediency is a species of rope-walking--it needs considerable practice in the art of balancing. There are scores of Obadiahs everywhere around us, and in the professing Church. They know the right, and are secretly trying to do it, but they say as little about religion as they can. They never rebuke sin. They never confess their true colours. They find pretexts and excuses to satisfy the remonstrances of an uneasy conscience. They are as nervous of being identified by declared Christians as Obadiah was when Elijah sent him to Ahab. They are sorry for those who suffer for righteousness’ sake, but it never occurs to them to stand in the pillory by their side. They content themselves with administering some little relief to them, as Obadiah did to the harried prophets, and whilst they conceal that relief from the world, they put it in as a claim to the people of God for recognition and protection, as Obadiah did (verse 13). They sometimes are on the point of throwing up all to take up an uncompromising attitude, but they find it hard to go forth to suffer affliction with the people of God so long as they are well provided forwithin the palace walls. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
