No Hiding From Judgment

Ahab, king of Israel, was killed in battle by an arrow that found its way between the sections of his armor. This was, of course, in the days when great leaders led their troops into battle and fought bravely alongside them. But Ahab did not die leading his troops into battle or fighting bravely.

Ahab went into battle against the nation of Syria alongside his ally, Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah. Witnesses to the battle, however, would have reported to have seen only Ahab fighting alongside his warriors. It was not that Jehoshaphat was cowardly and had ducked out of the battle or that he was weak and had been killed early on. In fact, when Ahab first asked Jehoshaphat to go with him into battle, Jehoshaphat answered, “I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses.” In other words, he was more than ready to aid the king of Israel in this venture.

One would have witnessed only Ahab’s presence and not Jehoshaphat’s on the battlefield because the king of Israel had persuaded Jehoshaphat to impersonate him. Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, had his sights set on Ahab and Ahab knew it, so he asked Jehoshaphat to disguise himself to draw off the enemy attackers. Meanwhile, Ahab had disguised himself as a common warrior.

But God also had His sights set on Ahab. Ahab was an evil king: Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the LORD than any of those before him. (1 Kings 16:30). And even though Ben-Hadad was fooled by Ahab’s disguise, God wasn’t. That arrow that killed him was not the arrow of a hero of the Syrian forces who took aim at his nation’s greatest enemy and slew him. It was the arrow of an unnamed Syrian archer shot at who he probably thought was just another enemy soldier, if he was even thinking of who his target was at all.

Covering our sin, disguising it the way Ahab disguised himself, trying to avoid God’s judgment the way Ahab tried to avoid it, is futile. Maybe Ahab was completely unaware that his judgment would come regardless of how hard he tried to escape it. But we know better. We know that through Jesus Christ our sins are forgiven. But we must confess our sins with hearts that are truly repentant. We cannot be cleansed of sin we disguise or cling to. There is no hiding from judgment for our sins. In Christ, thankfully, we do not need to hide from it.