Behind Enemy Lines

Would you have suspicions about the genuineness of someone’s Christian faith if you heard that he was pulling a wage in 2023 from the Kremlin, or on the government payroll in the days when King Herod was slaughtering the sons of Israel (Matthew 2:16-18), or was serving as Jezebels make-up artist in Samaria? Would it bother you to learn that the persecuted pastor’s wife had just landed a part time job cleaning a Glaswegian abortion mill?

As believers, we understand that cleaning the inside of the cup is more important than cleaning the outside (Matthew 23:25-26). But this does not mean that the outside of the cup is unimportant. As Paul writes concerning ruling elders within the church,

Moreover he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. (1 Timothy 3:7)

The word of God also cautions us about having any association with even the appearance of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:22, 1 Corinthians 15:33). And yet, before we jump in to make a judgement about the sincerity of a brother’s faith, the Bible gives us multiple examples of God-fearing believers turning up in the company of, and even employed by, horrendously wicked people.

The midwives of the Hebrews, most likely Egyptian women and not Hebrews, who would be unlikely (though it’s certainly not inconceivable) to commit genocide against their own enslaved people (see Dennis Pragers’ explanation here), held office in Pharaoh’s wicked government (Exodus 1:16). Yet even while drawing a paycheck from Pharaoh, the Bible commends the faithfulness (and the defiance) of these God-fearing women.

Obadiah was employed as no less than the house governor (1 Kings 18:3) of one of the most evil kings of Israel, Ahab, whose hands, along with those of his wife, Jezebel, were thoroughly stained with the blood of the prophets (1 Kings 18:13).

It was from those bloody hands that Obadiah was getting his daily bread. From all outward appearances it would not be hard to position Obadiah as someone who was compromising his faith by providing aid to a sworn enemy of God’s people. Whatever else might have been going on behind the scenes, this would not look good on the resume of someone hoping to volunteer as the local synagogue Sunday school teacher.

Yet, what was going on behind the scenes, what the majority of faithful Israelites may not have even known, was that Obadiah was secretly spending his wage to hide and feed Israel’s persecuted prophets.

For it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah took an hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water. (1 Kings 18:4)

Obadiah provides us with a very good reason to withhold harsh judgement on a brother when we don’t have all the facts of the case.

The same would also hold true for Rahab, Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:5-9), Klaus Schwab’s house painter, or any number of centurions working under Nero yet following Christ.

Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. (Romans 14:4)

This does not mean that we are to withhold all judgement. A Christian Pastor endorsing perversion from the pulpit should be called out for what he is. A bad man.

But a good man, like Obadiah, working behind enemy lines in the service of the Lord is just as likely to exist these days as a bad man, like Judas, working for the enemy while in the service of the Lord.

As in the days of Israel, we live in peculiar times and things are not always as they seem. And so we are wise to think carefully and consider all of God’s Word, both it’s commandments and its examples, before we rush on in and crucify the wrong guy.