Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Have You Sold Yourself? | Historical Books | 1 Kings 21

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Have you sold yourself? What idols are ruling your decisions? Are you following the pattern of Ahab? In today's episode, Jeff shares how 1 Kings 21 reminds us that Jesus sets us free from the tyranny of our idols. If you're listening on Spotify, tell us about yourself and where you're listening from! Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 Kings 21

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Mike Merrill decided that he wanted to make some extra money by selling something. But Mike didn't go the traditional route of a garage sale or listing things online like the rest of us. And that's because Mike Merrill was not trying to sell his possessions. He was trying to sell himself. Back in the year 2008, Merrill made the unconventional decision to divide his life into 100,000 shares to sell for $1 each.

Shareholders would not only get a return on their financial investment, but would also get to collectively influence the decisions that Mike made with his life, even decisions as personal as whether or not he should get a vasectomy. All of it was up for a vote to their shareholders. Almost 20 years since he started his IPO, hundreds of people now own shares of Mike Merrill's life. and shares are still being bought through his organization. Here's how he describes his endeavor on his website.

K. Mikey M is a crowd-based decision-making engine that controls the choices of a real person. You get shares and Mike Merrill vote on key decisions, participate in discussions, and strategize ways with other players to influence his actions. Your goal? Maximize your influence and shape the direction of Mike's life and projects. That's quite an endeavor to get involved with. When Mike Merrill put his life up for sale, he gave up his life to other people. His life decisions, his life direction is now divided among the shareholders who control his choices.

Now, I realize that most of us aren't planning to go public with an IPO to sell shares of our lives to strangers. But here's a thing. What Mike Merrill did explicitly, you and I do all the time implicitly. We all have this tendency to put our lives up for sale, don't we? Now, there's no formal price, but there is an informal negotiation where we hand over our influence for the sake of power, for the sake of control, for comfort, for the sake of approval. Our lives are for sale when we cut corners or cut down other people at work just to get ahead. When we compromise our core beliefs or our character to curry favor with a potential lover or a friend, that's us listing our lives on the market for outside influence.

If you were to examine the influences and the forces at play in your life choices, would it be fair to say that you might be for sale in some way, in some shape, in some form? The narrative of First Kings Chapter 21 gives us a window into the messiness of a heart that's been put up for sale. sail in the reign of Israel's king Ahab. And today we're not only going to see the wreckage that this creates in Ahab's life, we're also going to consider the collateral damage it creates in a community of people and how God responds. Now as we get ready to approach God's word in Scripture, let's slow down and ask for His grace, His presence, to be felt in our time. Heavenly Father, we pause and we thank you for the gift of life and breath. We thank you for you for

your word. We bring before you our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety and our excitement, our calendars and the things that we have planned, but also our contingencies and the things that are as of now unplanned. God, would you meet us in this space? Jesus, help us abide and remain in you as we engage with your truth here and now. Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in 1st kings chapter 21 and as we read your living word may it read us and restore us to life with you in jesus name we pray amen all right so first kings chapter 21 opens with a man named naboth who owns a beautiful vineyard and this is great for nabath but there's a problem this vineyard is in close proximity to the evil king of israel ahab who can see an abe who can see an abhorah who can see an

Abath's fruitful estate and wants it for himself. Ahab offered to barter or purchase Nabath's vineyard, but Nabath refuses, saying in verse three, The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my ancestors. Angry and dejected Ahab goes home and acts like an upset adolescent. Verse four says that he laid on his bed sulking and he refused to eat. His dramatic self-absorption is noticed by his wife, Jezebel. And after hearing about Ahab's rejected offer, Jezebel takes matters into her own hands,

declaring that she will get the vineyard of Naboth for herself. Now, what follows is a dramatic narrative of deception, where Jezebel frames Nabath as someone who rebelled against God and rebelled against the king, ultimately leading to his unjust death by stoning. And after the murder of Nabath, Ahab wastes no time and taking possession of the vineyard that he so badly wanted. Now, just a quick side note here, the overarching movements of this narrative here might remind you of another moment when a king of Israel saw something, wanted it, and paid whatever price he needed to to get it. Recall the coveting, the deception, and the murder that played out in David's awful descent to sin with Yoriah and Bathsheba. back in 2 Samuel 11 through 12.

This is a tragic cycle that keeps wreaking havoc on the kings of Israel and on the people of Israel. They see, they want, they deceive to get what they want, and they destroy life along the way. It's the same pattern from the first rebellion in the Garden of Eden played out over and over and over again. Eventually the Lord commands our old friend Elijah to confront King Ahab and his sin.

After calling out Ahab for murder and promising judgment on Ahab, Elijah delivers a sharp critique to summarize what's happened in this narrative so far. Let's pick up in verse 20. Ahab said to Elijah, so you have found me, my enemy. I have found you, he answered, because you have sold yourself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord. Did you catch Elijah's assessment of Ahab's life? Yes, Ahab is an evil. evil king. He's compromised Israel's worship. He's coveted and he's been complicit in murder. But Elijah says that the root cause of all this is that Ahab has sold himself. It's interesting that we see a juxtaposition here between Nabath and Ahab here in this passage. Nabath is unwilling to sell something he received from the Lord. But Ahab is putting his very life up for sale to get the thing that he wants for himself.

Versus 25 through 26 repeat this phrase with an overarching statement about Ahab's life. We read this picking up in verse 25. There was never anyone like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, urged on by Jezebel, his wife. He behaved in the vilest manner by going after idols like the Amorites the Lord drove out before Israel. This critique of Ahab is also a critique of me. Maybe it's true for you too. Instead of putting my trust and my hope in the Lord, I continually put myself up for sale to who or whatever will give me a sense of power and control or comfort or authority or approval. Now, as a recovering people pleaser, this makes it really difficult for me to say hard but true things to people and a spirit of love.

It makes me live in fear of disappointing people I care about. It causes me to care about what other people think more than I care about what God thinks and what God says is true. I'm far more like Mike Merrill than I'd cared to admit. Far more like King Ahab than I'd care to admit. My fears, my desires reveal that my life is often up for sale. What about you?

How might your life have a kind of a for sale sign hanging over it? Could there even be ways that you're putting yourself up for sale under the auspices of religious activity or advancement? Because it's possible to look for power, control, comfort, and approval in the realm of religiosity in the church. First Kings 21 is a huge indictment on Ahab and on the prevailing wind of the human heart, the prevailing wind that causes us to list ourselves for sale to the highest bidder offering us the power of the control and the comfort and approval that we want. But there's a surprising element in Chapter 21 of First Kings that comes at the very end of the chapter. After Ahab receives the word of judgment from God, we read this in verse 27.

When Ahab heard these words, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth, and fasted. He lay in sackcloth and went around meekly. This is a huge change for someone like Ahab. He's responding to God's judgment with what seems to be a genuine sense of repentance. Verse 28 goes on to say this. Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite. Have you noticed how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself, I will not bring this disaster in his day,

but I will bring it on his house in the days of his son. It's significant here that God, honors the repentance, this unexpected reorientation of Ahab by delaying the just judgment he was meant to receive in his own lifetime. This unlikely and unexpected repentance of Ahab shows us that even in the worst seasons of sin and rebellion, repentance is still possible. Even if it seems like you've sold so much of yourself that you can never get yourself back, you're never too far gone. to return to God. And that's because ultimately, in the gospel, it's God who offers himself

to buy back those who have sold their lives away into sin. That's exactly why the Apostle Paul can proclaim in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 20, you are not your own. You are bought with a price. Because of Jesus' death, resurrection, and reign, those who trust in him are taken off of the market. they're no longer for sale.

They're secure in the hands of the one who freely gave himself, so they become daughters and sons in his kingdom. In the gospel, we're not influenced by shareholders who bought us to make a profit. We're influenced by the Savior who gave himself to make us his children. Heavenly Father, we come before you, and we confess the ways that we follow the pattern of Ahab, selling ourselves to gain the promised returns of power, control, comfort, and approval. Jesus, we depend on you and your sacrificial love for the power to not only free us,

but the power that helps us repent and turn from our sin. Holy Spirit, would you free us from the weight of selling ourselves so that we can receive everything we need, everything we long for from you? we pray this because of your grace for your glory in your story in Jesus name amen