On the Spirit of Ahab

Much has been written about the spirit of Jezebel, and it is important to understand, recognize and deal with the spirit of Jezebel. But we find little has been written about the spirit of AHAB, and this as we shall see , is the REAL PROBLEM – today., much more dangerous than the spirit of Jezebel

Ahab and Jezebel are types of the worldly. We are to be Godly people, so we need to understand how this spirit of the worldly works so that we can destroy it. As it ALWAYS tries to creep in and must be destroyed ( as Ahab and Jezebel were destroyed). or it will destroy us. First we need to establish for certain that the Ahab-Jezebel example is in fact EVIL.

In scripture we know that the name relates to the character of the person. Ahab means – brother of his father – Omri (his father) means Heaped Evil. “and Ahab son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord (above ALL before him)” 1Kings 16:30. “and Ahab made an asherah, Ahab did more to provoke God than ALL the kings before him” 1Kings 16:33, 21:20, 21:25, 21:26. How Evil he was – to the extent that God said he was more evil that ALL the king before him put together. Ahab was the very personification of Evil!!

Jezebel means chaste? – Questionable chasity, dwelling. In othe words Jezebel was INDWELT with Evil. If Ahab is the very personification of evil and Jezebel is indwelt with evil, then certainly everything they do or stand for will be evil

THEIR MARRIAGE – Ahab and Jezebel
“As if it had been a light thing for Ahab to walk in the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, he took for his wife Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and served baal and worshiped him”. 1Kings 16:31
Their marriage was evil – Ahab married a daughter of EthBAAL (Ethbaal means with baal or baal’s man). So Ahab married the daughter of baal’s man and worshipped baal – very evil in the eyes of God.

“As if it had been a light thing to walk in the sin, he married Jezebel”, shows us that this was even more evil. Ahab took covenant with the ungodly things – is this not the very highest example of an evil marriage? Even though Ahab was an evil man, look what happened to him when he violated the scriptural guideline of being unequally yoked. (An Israelite was not to marry out of his race.) As King, Ahab was the example for the people. Deut 7:1-10 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to possess, and has plucked away many nations before you,the Hittites,the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you smite them: then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, or show mercy to them. You shall not make marriages with them; your daughter you shall not give to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son, etc.” This is equal to 2Cor 6:14

“Do not be unequally yoked up with unbelievers-do not make mismated alliances with them, or come under a different yoke with them (inconsistent with your faith). For what partnership have right living and right standing with God with inequity and lawlessness? Or how can light fellowship with darkness?”
He was drawn even further from God. This is the pattern that God wants us to see here. When a Christian marries an unbeliever, they are not to expect to bring them in, they are to expect themselves to be brought down.
Now let’s look at their marriage and see what Ahab did wrong and what he reaped from his evil deeds. You should stop here and read 1 Kings 16:28 thru 22:40 so that you fully understand the story.

LET’S LOOK AT AHAB
We find AHAB was the most evil man on earth up to his time. 1Kings 16:20
Then he married Jezebel, his most evil deed yet. 16:31
Even at this point it would not have been too late. Ahab could have chosen to take over his responsibility and serve God, but he chose to follow his wife and serve her gods. He submitted so fully to her that he built homes for her gods. See, she was already in control – he had abdicated his position. 1Kings 16:33 says “Ahab did more to provoke the LORD GOD of Israel to anger than all of the kings of Israel before him”. Even though Ahab was evil, we don’t have to be evil, we only have to disobey God’s word to allow this evil to come upon us. “Then he erected an altar and built a house for baal, then he built an asherah (shrine) and worshiped the ungodly thing.” 1Kings 16:33 By building a shrine (home) for the ungodlly thing, he was enticing others to worship the ungodly thing (false god). Deut 13:6-10 tells us that if anyone entices an Israelite to seek after or serve another god, he is to be killed. “But you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And you shall stone him to death with stones, because he has tried to draw you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” This is what we must do when the spirit of the ungodly marriage tries to attach itself to us – We must kill it. God’s word is clear, we must destroy any evil thing that tries to come upon us. 1Kings 20:13

God told Ahab that He would deliver into his hands for destruction the king Benhadad and his people. In 1 Kings 20:34 after God delivered Benhadad into the hands of Ahab, Ahab made covenant with and released Benhadad instead of destroying him. We see in 1 Kings 20:42 the terrible price that God required of Ahab for his disobedience – his life and the lives of his people. Do you get the picture? Either destroy completely this false spirit when it tries to come upon you or it will destroy your life and that of your family.

Note that in 1Kings 18:4 , Jezebel had killed off all of the Lord’s prophets except the 100 that Obadiah had hidden. Who is in charge here? Isn’t it amazing that even in the midst of all this wickedness there is a godly man present? Obadiah, the governor of Ahab’s house was a godly man. God’s presence is always available to those who will serve Him without question. We need only to recognize it and avail ourselves of It. Next he allowed his wife to take over (do her own thing). 1Kings 21:7 Then he allowed her to act in his name under his authority. 21:8 Then he allowed deceit in his name (authority). 21:9-13 . All authority is given of God. Romans 13:1b says, “For there is no authority except from God -by His permission, His sanction; and those that exist do so by God’s appointment.” also see prov 8:15 . Next he allowed her to control him, he did as she told him to do. But he finds he is responsible for all that is done by his authority (name). “For there was no one who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord as did Ahab, incited by his wife Jezebel”. 1King 21:25 See the principle here? The authority given by God belongs to the one to whom He gives it. He is fully responsible for what he has responsibility over. He cannot allow himself to be led (incited) by anyone or any thing, other than God. He can abdicate his responsibility – he can delegate his responsibility, but he cannot escape responsibility for his area of authority. He is held accountable to god for it! Men – we must understand this godly principle.

See, the problem was AHAB. If he had exercised his authority properly (himself), if he had feared God, he would have been concerned about what was being done in his name and he would have controlled Jezebel, thereby making her spirit fruitless. But since he did not, he had to reap of her fruit, as well as his own. He was responsible and was held accountable by God. And we see both of them meet horrible deaths because of the sin of Ahab. Understand; it was not the sin of Jezebel that was responsible for their fate, it was the sin of Ahab. We must recognize that the sin of omission is as deadly as the sin of commission. Not doing something that is required of you by God is just as serious as doing something that God has told you not to do. 1Kings 20:42 “Thus says the Lord, `Because you have let go out of your hand the man I had devoted to destruction, therefore your life shall go for his life, and your people for his people.’”

In Bible days one of the worst things that could happen was to be eaten by dogs (no grave, no memory of you), another was to be eaten by the birds. No grave – no memory- forgotten as if you never lived. And this is precisely what God pronounced on Ahab and Jezebel and their people for their ungodly acts. Ahab was responsible! Even though he abdicated his responsibility, GOD held him responsible. 1King 21:19,23,24 “Thus says the Lord, `In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick your blood, even yours.’ Also the Lord said of Jezebel, `The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel. Him of Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat, and him who dies in the field the birds of the air shall eat.’”

LET’S LOOK NOW AT JEZEBEL
The first mention of her is 1 King 16:31, when Ahab married her – telling us it is his worst sin so far. “As if it had been a light thing for Ahab to walk in the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, he took for wife Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and served baal and worshiped him.” What a wonderful recommendation for a wife, to be the greatest sin of the greatest sinner. Her first act we find in1 King 18:4, “While Jezebel was killing off the Lord’s prophets”, destroying the very word of God. Then she feeds the false prophets 1Kings 18:19, thereby supporting (with the king’s authority) the false. Next we find her willing to go to any means to support her wicked, vengeful, evil ways, by threatening the life of God’s prophet, Elijah, 1 King 19:2. Now she is really feeling “her authority” and usurps the king’s authority 1Kings 21:7-8, by doing things only the king has a right to do. Next she becomes a murderess and false accuser 21:9-13, playing God in the king and other lives. Now she is really rolling on the downward path – in 21:15 and 21:25 , she is shown as the driving force in things evil in the sight of the Lord. “For there was no one who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord as did Ahab, incited by his wife Jezebel.” We find later on she is referred to only for her evil.
2Kings 9:22 “And he answered, `How can pea ce exist, as long as the fornications of your mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?’” (Have you ever heard the name of Jezebel used in a complimentary way?) She is noted for her idolatry and witchcraft.

But she dies a horrible death. 2Kihgs 9:33-37 says she is destroyed – gone – forgotten. Only her evil deeds remain -“And he said, `Throw her down!’ So they threw her down, and some of her blood splattered on the wall and on the horses, and he drove over her. When he came in, he ate and drank, and said, `See now to this cursed woman and bury her, for she is a king’s daughter.’ They went to bury her, but they found nothing left of her except the skull, feet, and palms of her hands. They came again and told Jehu. He said, `This is the word of the Lord which He spoke by His servant Elijah the Tishbite, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel. The corpse of Jezebel shall be like dung upon the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel, so that they shall not say, `This is Jezebel.’”
Oh,if only Ahab could have understood the ways of our God. If only he had loved himself and his wife enough to turn to God, recognizing that his authority, therefore his very existence was subject to God. Look at the grief his people and even the world up to and beyond today, would have been spared, had the spirits of Ahab and Jezebel been controlled by the Spirit of the Living God.

This is a serious problem in the earth today – Many Leaders and (other husbands) have abdicated their throne of responsibility before God, thus accepting the spirit of Ahab and allowing the Jezebel spirit to reign. If we are going to see a turn around in the church of our Lord then the leaders will have to assume their responsibility in the manner prescribed by scripture and as given by the Holy Spirt, by serving the people of God and not allowing these EVIL spirits to take root.

Pleas Note: I am not endorsing the EVIL controlling methods of so many of todays “leaders”, as this is as devastating to the church as is the sin of abdication. A true leader leads by SERVING and setting the example for the rest to follow. Real authority is quiet and seldom seen.