WWUTT 654 False Prophets vs True Prophets?

False Prophets and the Wisdom Jehoshaphat Lacked

The Old Testament prophets didn't spout off random stuff and sometimes their prophecies happen and sometimes they didn't. Whatever they said came from God and it happened, or it didn't come from God, when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. In our study of 2 Chronicles, we begin today in chapter 18, continuing the story of King Jehoshaphat, who we started talking about last week. We finished up the story of King Asa, and then his son Jehoshaphat reigned in his place.

Like his father, Jehoshaphat was a righteous king. We read in chapter 17, verse 3, the Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the earlier ways of his father David. He did not seek the Baals, but sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments, and not according to the practices of Israel.

Therefore, the Lord established the kingdom in his hand, and all Judah brought tribute to Jehoshaphat, and he had great riches and honor. And then we read in verse 10, the fear of the Lord fell upon the kingdom of the lands that were around Judah, and they made no war against Jehoshaphat.

Now even though he was a righteous king, he still lacked discernment in some areas, particularly when it came to his relationship with Israel. Now we already read that he didn't seek after the Baals like Israel did.

Instead, he walked after the commandments of the Lord God as his father David did. But nonetheless, Israel was Judah's fellow kinsmen. After Solomon, you had the kingdom split. The northern kingdom was Israel, the southern kingdom was Judah.

And Jehoshaphat felt like, you know, we should try to make amends with one another, not fighting each other like Abijah and Jeroboam did. Rather, we need to have a partnership. So he became allies with Ahab, who was the king of Israel at the time that Jehoshaphat was reigning in Judah.

And that really was not a relationship that Jehoshaphat should have tried to develop. We read in chapter 18, Jehoshaphat had great riches in honor. We already read that in chapter 17 as well. And he made a marriage alliance with Ahab.

After some years, he went down to Ahab in Samaria, and Ahab killed an abundance of sheep and oxen for him and for the people who were with him and induced him to go up against Ramoth Gilead. Ahab, king of Israel, said to Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, will you go with me to Ramoth Gilead?

He answered him, I am as you are, my people as your people. We will be with you in the war. Now this reference to a marriage alliance at the start of chapter 18, this was between Jehoshaphat's son, Jehoram, who married Ahab's daughter, Athaliah.

And this happened some years before this exchange here, talking about going to war with one another. This was an attempt to try to make peace between these two kingdoms that had been at odds with one another for the last 50 years.

And it just, it simply was not wisdom on Jehoshaphat's part. In fact, it will eventually be his downfall. We started chapter 18 by reading Jehoshaphat had great riches in honor. Why was it necessary to have to repeat that when we just read about that in chapter 17?

Well, it's to show just how reprehensible it was that Jehoshaphat would then try to make this alliance with Ahab. He didn't need to. There didn't need to be this alliance. Israel was wicked. They were worshiping the Baals and false gods.

Jehoshaphat, along with Judah, was attempting to honor the Lord. So why were they partnering with those who were worshiping idols? And we see already how persuasive Ahab could be with Jehoshaphat, convincing him to fight with him in this battle against Ahab's enemies.

But Jehoshaphat speaks up first in verse four and said to the king of Israel, inquire first for the word of the Lord. Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, 400 men and said to them, shall we go to battle against Ramoth Gilead or shall I refrain?

And they said, go up, for God will give it into the hand of the king. But Jehoshaphat said, is there not yet another prophet of the Lord of whom we may inquire? And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, there is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Micaiah, the son of Imla.

But I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but always evil. And Jehoshaphat said, let not the king say so. And the king of Israel summoned an officer and said, bring quickly Micaiah, the son of Imla.

Now, the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, were sitting on their thrones arrayed in their robes, and they were sitting at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria. And all the prophets were prophesying before them.

And Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, made for himself horns of iron and said, thus says the Lord, with these you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed. And all the prophets prophesied so and said, go up to Ramoth, Gilead, and triumph.

The Lord will give it into the hand of the king. So Jehoshaphat recognizes that these prophets, for lack of a better term, are full of it. These guys are just willing to say whatever would flatter King Ahab, the king of Israel, which is why he says, is there another prophet that we could ask about what God is saying here?

Because all these guys just seem to just lavish praise upon you. And I don't necessarily think that we can trust their word. So while Jehoshaphat lacked discernment in this alliance that he made with Ahab, he nonetheless had enough discernment to recognize these guys were actually false prophets.

And all of them saying nothing but sugary, nice things that would please the king and suit his fancy, which is not too unlike the way modern charismaticism does prophecy today or the New Apostolic Reformation or those churches that have been influenced by the NAR.

All the prophecy that they do, quote unquote prophecy, it's as much prophecy as these guys were doing prophecy, but all the prophecy they do is sugar sweet. It's all good news. Nothing is ever going to be negative.

So you'll hear from these guys, oh, the Lord loves you. He wants to bless you. And these are the blessings that you're going to receive today or this week or this year or something like that. And it's usually very ambiguous to like when you hear from some of these guys, hey, the prophetic word for this year is breakthrough.

This is going to be the year of breakthrough. That's what the Lord has revealed to us. What does that even mean? You can you can take anything and make that apply to breakthrough. That doesn't mean it's it's some sort of prophetic word.

None of these guys are going to confront you and say, hey, you are in some sort of sin and the Lord has revealed to me that you were in this sin. And if you don't repent of it, well, this is what's going to end up happening to you.

They'll even tell members of their congregation that if they're going to prophesy, it's supposed to be positive. I don't know if you remember back to an episode I did a little over a year ago involving Nabeel Qureshi, who had made a visit to Bethel Church in Redding, California.

This was while he had stomach cancer and he was looking for some kind of healing. Unfortunately, we know that was eventually what took his life. The stomach cancer ravaged his body and eventually he did die.

But while he was there at Bethel Church, he was hoping, you know, maybe he would experience the Holy Spirit and receive some kind of miracle. And even he was kind of skeptical about prophecy that was being done there, had nothing but positive things to say about Bethel Church, and there's really nothing positive to say about it.

But he still was a little bit uneasy with the way that they handled or talked about prophecy. Chris Vallotton, who is one of the co-founders of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, was even coaching people.

And Nabeel heard him say this, that when you prophesy, it just needs to be positive. We only do positive prophecies. Negative prophecies were in the Old Testament. Today we do positive prophecies. And this is how he was encouraging the people within Bethel Church to prophesy.

And so that's what we see here as well. It's really ironic that Chris Vallotton would say, hey, negative prophecy was Old Testament. We do nothing but positive prophecy. Because here, that's all these guys are doing before Ahab is false positive prophecy.

It's Micaiah who's going to come along and deliver a different word. So in verse 12, the messenger who went to summon Micaiah said to him, behold, the words of the prophets with one accord are favorable to the king.

Let your word be like the word of one of them and speak favorably. Kind of sounds like what a leader of Bethel Church might tell their congregation, right? But Micaiah said, verse 13, as the Lord lives, what my God says, that I will speak.

And when he had come to the king, the king said to him, Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth Gilead to battle or shall I refrain? And Micaiah answered, go up and triumph. They will be given into your hand. And he's mocking the king.

He's imitating what the rest of these prophets are saying. And we can see that by King Ahab's response. Verse 15, the king said to him, how many times shall I make you swear that you speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?

And so then Micaiah said, I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains as sheep that have no shepherd. And the Lord said, these have no master. Let each return to his home in peace. And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me but evil?

And Micaiah said, therefore, hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne and all the host of heaven standing on his right hand and on his left. And the Lord said, who will entice Ahab, the king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead?

And one said one thing and another said another. And then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord saying, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, by what means? And he said, I will go out and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.

And God said, you are to entice him and you shall succeed. Go out and do so. Now, therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these, your prophets. The Lord has declared disaster concerning you.

And that's the way that we should consider prophecy today. By the way, if somebody claims to have received some word of the Lord, oh, blessings will be upon you. God is going to do this for you. No, on the contrary, there is a lying spirit that is upon their lips.

For we read in Hebrews one, one and two, that long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he has made the heir of all things.

We know the word of God through the word of Christ, which we have written down in the Bible. He is not speaking to your mind unless what's coming to your mind are the passages of scripture that you have memorized.

God is not speaking to you out loud unless what is being spoken to you out loud is the Bible being read to you out loud. This is how God communicates with us. And the Bible says so explicitly. So beware anybody that comes to you claiming to be a prophet of God and that God has revealed to them some prophecy for you.

Now, this particular passage and what it is that Micaiah saw and what he relates to King Ahab, this is truly what prophecy is. It is revealing something. It is the Lord revealing to his prophet something that the human eye ordinarily would not be able to see.

With any human senses, God revealing to a person what is otherwise hidden and more specifically to his own prophet, what would otherwise be hidden. We tend to think of prophecy as being something in the future.

And we can't see the future, but God knows all things because he has ordained all things. And so he tells a prophet the future and then the prophet tells the king or the people or something like that.

That's only partly what prophecy is. That's not entirely a full description of prophecy because here Micaiah is being a prophet and he is revealing something prophetic to the king, but it's already happened.

This is something that already took place. It's not something that's going to happen. Well, it is pertaining to something that's going to happen in the future. Ahab is going to fall in battle, but the exchange between God and the spirits that came before him is something that had already transpired.

And yet it was a prophetic word. So Micaiah is revealing something to Ahab that human beings are not privy to. We don't see these counsels of the Lord and spirits before the throne. We're not allowed to see that because the curse that is upon us, we have been separated from God.

All of this transpires behind a veil that we can't see through. And on the day that Christ returns, what happens on that day is not that Jesus is on the edge of space. And then when the father says, okay, it's time for you to go back, he travels all the way across space to get to earth and we see him coming in the sky.

That's not how that's going to go. Rather, what will what will happen is the veil that presently separates heaven from earth will be lifted. And then we will see the glory of Christ coming with his fiery angels in vengeance, as is talked about at the start of second Thessalonians.

Those who are in Christ will be delivered from that wrath. We will meet him in the air. But then Christ with his angels will come through and inflict judgment on the whole earth, judge the earth with fire.

And so that's what will that's what will happen on the day that Christ comes back, is that what separates heaven from earth will be lifted and then corrupt earth will not be able to stand that glory that will be revealed, which is why the earth will be consumed in fire.

But anyway, let's come back to prophecy, though, the whole concept of prophecy, the book of Revelation is prophecy and it reveals things to us that we cannot see, not just things in the future, which is the way that we tend to think of the book of Revelation, but also things in the present and things in the past.

John gets to see not only stuff that's going to happen, but stuff that has already happened and how it pertains to the present and also to the future. Just to give you an example of this, chapter 12, where John says, a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of 12 stars.

She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns and on his heads, seven diadems.

His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she bore her child, he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.

But her child was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1260 days. Well, this is in reference to Christ, right?

This has already taken place. The woman is Israel, the chosen people of God. The child that she gives birth to is Jesus Christ, a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. And her child was caught up to God and to his throne.

This is everything that had already happened prior to the cross, leading up to the cross and then Jesus ascension into heaven. That's what we're reading about there in Revelation 12. And this is a vision that John has been given to see something in a spiritual light, whereas the way that we have read that story in the Old Testament all the way up to that point has been in more of the more from the vantage point of mankind.

John gets to see it from the vantage point of heaven. And he is privy to see things that are otherwise hidden from human eyes and experienced with human senses, which is why revelation is so difficult to comprehend, because John is trying to put into human words things that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor man been able to understand.

John has been given a chance to be able to see these things, and he uses Old Testament prophetic language to describe what it was that he saw there, because there are numerous Old Testament references in the book of Revelation.

Anyway, I'm going through Revelation right now with with our youth class that meets on Wednesday night. So that's why those things came to mind. But that's a that's a true understanding of prophecy. It's not just understanding the future or being shown the future, which is what we tend to think of prophecy as being.

But that's only an aspect of prophecy. God is telling to his prophet something that humankind would otherwise not be privy to. And so that's what Micaiah has shared with Ahab. In verse 23, after Micaiah spoke, Zedekiah, the son of Chenaanah, came near and struck Micaiah on the cheek and said, Which way did the spirit of the Lord go from me to speak to you?

And Micaiah said, Behold, you shall see on that day when you go into an inner chamber to hide yourself. And the king of Israel said, Seize Micaiah and take him back to Ammon, the governor of the city, and to Joash, the king's son, and say, Thus says the king, Put this fellow in prison and feed him with meager rations of bread and water until I return in peace.

And Micaiah said, If you return in peace, the Lord has not spoken by me. And he said, Hear all you peoples. There you go. Micaiah is saying, How do you know a prophet is true when what a prophet has said is going to happen comes to pass?

If what I have said does not happen, then what I have said to you was not revealed to me by God, but by an evil spirit. However, if what I have said to you does happen, then the ones that are truly influenced by evil spirits are all these other guys, which, of course, is what Micaiah saw in his vision, that there was a lying spirit put on the tongues of all these other prophets, whereas what Micaiah was saying was truly from God.

There's no such thing as mistaken prophecy. Prophets don't come up with stuff and then go, Oh, well, I guess I was mistaken. If it truly came from God, it happens. If it doesn't happen, it didn't come from God.

And that person's not a prophet. They're a liar. So now, verse twenty eight, the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, went up to Ramoth Gilead and the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, I will disguise myself and go into battle.

But you wear your robes. What a pal. Right. What a friend. And the king of Israel disguised himself and they went into battle. Now, the king of Syria had commanded the captains of his chariots fight with neither small nor great, but only with the king of Israel.

As soon as the captains of the chariots saw Jehoshaphat, they said it's the king of Israel. So they turned to fight against him and Jehoshaphat cried out and the Lord helped him. God drew them away from Jehoshaphat for as soon as the captains of the chariots saw that it was not the king of Israel, they turned back from pursuing him.

But a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel between the scale armor and the breastplate. Therefore he said to the driver of his chariot, turn around and carry me out of the battle for I am wounded.

And the battle continued that day and the king of Israel was propped up in his chariot facing the Syrians until evening. Then at sunset, he died. And that was a story we read about in first Kings as well.

The death of King Ahab, who died exactly as Elijah said he was going to die. And of course also the way that Micaiah said that Ahab was going to die. Let's conclude with prayer. Our Lord God, we thank you for what you have revealed to us in your word and help us to know and discern what is right and true according to what your Holy Spirit communicates to us through the Bible, through the pages of scripture.

Let us not be led astray by anyone else's false prophecy, but only that which is truly come from God. You have said in your word that you speak to us today through the word of Christ, and we have it all written for us right here in the Bible.

What else could we need? Who else's word would be able to fill up what the Bible lacks? Psalm 46 .1, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. And as the psalmist concludes, the Lord of hosts is with us.

He is our fortress. And so God protect us from the false philosophies of this world, those things that sound plausible but are not truly from you. Help it be your word that is written upon our minds and hearts and helps to govern our thinking and our direction and our paths.

For your name's sake and to the glory of your name, we pray and ask these things upon us today in Jesus name. Amen.

Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .tt .com.