FBC Daily Devotional – December 8, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:06

Well, a good Wednesday to you. Hope your week is going well. We're in the middle of it now, and boy, the month of December is moving apace, isn't it?

00:15

Heading quickly toward Christmas and then the conclusion of the year. Well, today we're in 1

00:22

Kings chapter 22, and let me ask you this. What kind of preaching do you most appreciate?

00:32

What kind of preaching do you gravitate to? Who are your favorite preachers and why?

00:38

Okay, now I ask that question because there are two types of preachers that are revealed in this passage in 1

00:47

Kings 22, and the heart of the king, Ahab, indicates which of the two he prefers, and that tells us a great deal about the heart, about that king, about that individual.

01:02

Point being that the kind of preachers that you gravitate to and you hold up as your favorites, that will tell you a lot about your own heart.

01:13

So let's look at that, all right? So you've got the Micaiahs. He is a prophet of the

01:19

Lord, and Ahab says, I hate him. I can't stand that preacher.

01:25

Well, why not? Why don't you like him? Oh, well, Ahab goes on to explain.

01:31

I hate him because he always prophesies evil against me. He never tells me what

01:37

I want to hear. You see that in verse 8. Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, is with Ahab, the king of Israel, and they're contemplating going out to a battle.

01:48

So they want to hear from a prophet. You know, is this something, well, Jehoshaphat wants to hear from a prophet of the

01:55

Lord, knowing whether or not this is a good idea. So Ahab says, well, yeah, there's this one prophet of the

02:03

Lord, but I can't stand him. I hate him. It says this in verse 8. It says there's still one man,

02:10

Micaiah, the son of Imla, by whom we may inquire of the Lord, but I hate him.

02:16

Why? What's the matter with him? Do you not like the sound of his voice? Is he not have good charisma?

02:24

Is he boring? What's the matter with this preacher? No, I hate him, he says, because he doesn't prophesy good concerning me, but evil.

02:33

In other words, Micaiah was a faithful preacher who would confront

02:39

Ahab with his sin and let Ahab know, listen, your sin is going to cause you problems.

02:46

It's going to bring, it's going to have some terrible consequences in your life. So Ahab says,

02:51

I hate that guy. I don't want that. I don't like to listen to that guy. Well, Jehoshaphat says, well, we need to listen.

02:59

We need to hear what he has to say. Well, in the meantime, there are some other prophets, some other preachers, and these are

03:05

Ahab's favorites. These are the guys he likes to watch on television. He tunes them in on the radio and these are his favorites and they're represented by Zedekiah.

03:17

Okay, so the question is, should we go out to this battle? Should we go fight this battle?

03:22

That's the question Ahab wants to know, Jehoshaphat, they want the answer to that question. So along comes the personality preachers, the positive message only preachers.

03:33

And one of them is a guy by the name of Zedekiah. And so Zedekiah, we read in verse 11, it says, he made himself horns of iron.

03:43

He got himself an object lesson, made himself horns of iron. And he says, thus says the

03:48

Lord with these, you shall gore the Syrians until they are destroyed.

03:55

Well, when Micaiah finally comes, Micaiah says, that ain't what's going to happen.

04:02

You're going to be defeated by the Syrians. They're going to destroy you. And of course,

04:09

Ahab doesn't like that message. So he has Micaiah put in prison until he comes back from war, which by the way, doesn't happen because Micaiah was telling the truth.

04:20

The other guys were false prophets. They were, they were liars, but they made him feel good.

04:26

They made Ahab feel good. They made him feel like, oh, I can do this. He made him feel, gave him all kinds of confidence and assurance that he could go forth to battle and he could be victorious.

04:36

So off they went to battle because they listened to his favorite preacher, the one who only made him feel good.

04:43

The one who only told him what he liked to hear. You see, there's, there's a problem with preachers in our day too.

04:50

There are some who will not, they will not confront sin.

04:56

They will not say, thus saith the Lord, what you're doing is wrong.

05:02

What we're doing as a nation is wrong. What we're doing as a people is wrong.

05:07

This is sin and God's going to chasten us or punish us or judge us for this sin.

05:13

Those are the kind of preachers that are true because they're telling the truth.

05:20

There are other preachers who would never think of doing such a thing. All they do is spout positive things, you know, to make you feel good, make you pumped up and excited and confident so that you can go forth and to conquer.

05:35

Confident that God's just going to shower great blessings upon you. You're going to be filled with health and wealth and prosperity and everything's going to go fine for you if you just put, but put your mind to it, you know, because after all, you know,

05:51

God will bless anything that you do. Which are the kind of preachers that you prefer?

05:59

Those who will tell you the truth or those who will make you feel good? Uh, you know, let's, let's not be

06:06

Ahabs. Let's just be people who want to hear what God has to say, whether it hurts or whether it heals.

06:14

Sometimes we need the hurts. Sometimes we need the healing, but we need both.

06:21

So let's watch our hearts. Be careful that we don't despise those who tell us the truth.

06:30

All right. So Father, we do thank you for this passage that challenges us and gets us to think about ourselves and our own reaction and responses.

06:38

When we hear a preacher or a message that steps on our toes and makes us uncomfortable and confronts us with our own sin.

06:47

Lord, help us to appreciate that because then we have something to turn from and to turn to you about.

06:54

So Lord help us to appreciate the right kind of proclamation of your word.

07:01

And this we pray in Jesus name. Amen. All right. We'll have a good rest of your