WWUTT 459 Listening to False Prophets?

Not everyone who says they're a Christian, or claims they hear from God, or even quotes a passage of scripture, understands the Word of the Lord. We must understand it so that we can test everything when we understand the text.

WWUTT Introduction and the Need to Test Claims by Scripture

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. We continue our study of 1 Kings. Today we are in Chapter 12. We have finished up the story of Solomon, which takes up the first 11 chapters of 1 Kings, ending with Solomon's apostasy, which we looked at last week.

He fell away from the Lord. His heart was with his pagan wives and the gods that they worshipped, and likewise Solomon built temples to those false gods. So God told Solomon that he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and God was going to take his kingdom from him.

But this would not happen in his lifetime. It would happen while his son was on the throne. For the sake of the covenant that God made with Solomon's father, David, he would preserve one tribe for the house of Solomon, and that would be the tribe of Judah, which would become the southern kingdom.

The northern 10 tribes would become the northern kingdom, and they were going to go to Jeroboam. The prophet Ahijah came to Jeroboam and explained to him everything that was going on with Solomon, and as long as Jeroboam loved the Lord his God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength, then God would bless him in his ruling over the 10 northern tribes of Israel.

So we're going to see how that plays out in the story today. And by the way, we've got 10 tribes that make up the northern kingdom, and the one tribe that remains with the house of Solomon. There are 12 tribes of Israel, so who's getting left out?

Well, the tribe of Benjamin lived in the vicinity of Jerusalem, so by proxy, they were included with Judah. So they didn't end up in the 10 northern kingdoms, they ended up in the same territory as Judah.

So they just were not as territorial as every other tribe was. So here we are in 1 Kings 12, Rehoboam, who is Solomon's son, went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. And as soon as Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, heard of it, for he was still in Egypt where he had fled from King Solomon, then Jeroboam returned from Egypt.

And they sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, your father made our yoke heavy, now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you.

And he said to them, go away for three days, then come again to me. So the people went away. Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the old men who had stood before Solomon, his father, while he was yet alive, saying, how do you advise me to answer this people?

And they said to him, if you will be a servant to this people today and serve them and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever. But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him, and he took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him, and he said to them, what do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, lighten our yoke that your father put on us?

And the young men who had grown up with him said to him, thus shall you speak to this people who said to you, your father made our yoke heavy, but you lighten it for us. Thus shall you say to them, my little finger is thicker than my father's thighs.

And now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions. Boy, there's a great solution to that, right?

So you have the older, wiser men who served with Solomon and gleaned from his wisdom and told Rehoboam to be a servant. Treat these men kindly. Be like a servant to them, and they will serve you. That's really excellent advice, especially when you consider that Christ our King said to us, if you want to be great in God's kingdom, you must learn to be a servant of all.

So this was similar advice that was being told to Rehoboam, but he didn't listen to the older, wiser men. He listened to the young idiots. So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king said, come to me again on the third day.

And the king answered the people harshly and forsaking the counsel that the old men had given him. He spoke to them according to the counsel of the young men saying, my father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke.

My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions. So the king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord that he might fulfill his word, which the Lord spoke by Ahijah the Shillonite to Jeroboam, the son of Nebat.

So all of this is happening exactly as the Lord said it was going to happen through the prophet Ahijah, because God ordained that these things were going to happen. That's exactly what that paragraph there in 1 Kings 12 is saying, that it was the Lord's will that this would take place, that Rehoboam's heart would be hardened in this way.

And he would listen to the idiocy of the young men who led him in really terrible wisdom. So now in verse 16, and when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king, what portion do we have in David?

We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel, look now to your own house, David. So Israel went to their tents, but Rehoboam reigned over the people of Israel who lived in the cities of Judah.

Then King Rehoboam sent Adoram, who was taskmaster over the forced labor, and all Israel stoned him to death with stones. And King Rehoboam hurried to mount his chariot to flee to Jerusalem. So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.

And when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over Israel. There was none that followed the house of David, but the tribe of Judah only.

And this has kind of been the story in Israel ever since Moses was leading them. There's always been kind of this distinction between Judah and the rest of Israel. Of course, we know that it's from the tribe of Judah that the Messiah is going to come.

So they're very distinct in that way. But we've also seen how when Joshua led the people of Israel into the promised land, only the tribe of Judah really continued to lay siege upon those southern cities while the rest of Israel did not continue to conquer those pagan cities as they were instructed to do.

And then when David became king, Judah recognized him as king, but the rest of Israel did not. They were expecting somebody from the house of Saul to be their king, and eventually they did recognize David as their king as well.

So now that David has died and Solomon has died, now we're seeing that distinctive split between Judah and the rest of Israel again. So verse 21, when Rehoboam came to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin, 180 ,000 chosen warriors to fight against the house of Israel to restore the kingdom to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.

So here you see Judah and Benjamin together. But the word of God came to Shemaiah, the man of God, say to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all the house of Judah and Benjamin and to the rest of the people.

Thus says the Lord, you shall not go up or fight against your relatives, the people of Israel. Every man returned to his home for this thing is from me. So they listened to the word of the Lord and went home again, according to the word of the Lord.

Then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and lived there. And he went out from there and built Penuel. And Jeroboam said in his heart, now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David.

If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their Lord, to Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam, king of Judah.

So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, you have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And he said one in Bethel and the other he put in Dan.

Then this thing became a sin for the people went as far as Dan to be before one. He also made temples on high places, we've talked about how evil that is, and appointed priests from among all the people who were not of the Levites.

And Jeroboam appointed a feast on the 15th day of the eighth month, like the feast that was in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar. So he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he made.

And he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places that he made. He went up to the altar that he made in Bethel on the 15th day in the eighth month, in the month that he had devised from his own heart.

And he instituted a feast for the people of Israel and went up to the altar to make offerings. So he's making false gods. He's making up his own holidays. He's making up his own priesthood. Jeroboam did not do what the Lord had said to him, that if he loved God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength, God's blessing would be upon Jeroboam.

But here he has raised up false idols. He did one better than what Aaron did when Moses was up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments and then Aaron was given all the gold from the people of Israel and made a golden calf.

And he said to the people of Israel, behold, your God who led you out of Egypt. Well, Jeroboam did even one up from Aaron. He made two golden calves and still said something very similar. He said, behold, your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

And so this is who Israel worshipped or this is what Israel worshipped, these false gods, these calves. And by the way, so what we're going to get into next through the rest of First Kings is the rest of the monarchical reign between Solomon and the eventual exile into the hands of the Babylonians.

And in that span of time, Israel had 20 kings and Judah had 20 kings, but none of the kings of Israel, none of the kings of the northern kingdom were ever righteous, starting with Jeroboam and then 19 more kings down the line.

There would never be a single righteous king who would sit on the throne of the northern kingdom. There would be a few in the southern kingdom, but not many. And so it kind of shows how Solomon's apostasy has affected all of Israel and Israel's hearts are turning further and further away from God, Israel being both the northern and southern kingdom.

I'm kind of including everybody in that. So First Kings chapter 13 here. And behold, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel. Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make offerings and the man cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, Oh, altar, altar, thus says the Lord, behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and he shall sacrifice on you the priests of the high places who make offerings on you and human bones shall be burned on you.

And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign that the Lord has spoken. Behold, the altar shall be torn down and the ashes that are on it shall be poured out. And when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar at Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, Seize him.

And his hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up so that he could not draw it back to himself. This is like a it's like an Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark sort of a moment where he's he's pointing at this guy and saying, Seize him.

And his hand just dries up. It's like it's skeletizes right there, just like the guys around the ark sort of melted in in the Indiana Jones movie. I don't know what made me think of that. But anyway, verse five, the altar also was torn down and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign that the man of God had given by the word of the Lord.

And he said to the man of God, Entreat now the favor of the Lord your God and pray for me that my hand may be restored to me. And the man of God entreated the Lord and the king's hand was restored to him and became as it was before.

And the king said to the man of God, Come home with me and refresh yourself and I will give you a reward. And the man of God said to the king, If you give me half your house, I will not go in with you and I will not eat bread or drink water in this place.

For so was it commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying, You shall neither eat bread nor drink water, nor return by the way that you came. So he went another way and did not return by the way that he came to Bethel.

So what this man of God prophesied would eventually come true. A king who would rise up in Judah, whose name was Josiah, who would indeed tear this place down and burn the priests who were sacrificing at these false altars.

They would be burned on that particular altar. There's a what video where we talk about that, by the way. It's the what video on abortion in the Bible if you want to look that up and find out how that ties in with abortion when you watch that particular video.

So verse 11 now, something is going to change in the story of this man of God that we've been reading about. Now an old prophet lived in Bethel and his sons came and told him all that the man of God had done that day in Bethel.

They also told to their father the words that he had spoken to the king. And their father said to them, which way did he go? And his sons showed him the way that the man of God who came from Judah had gone.

And he said to his sons, saddle the donkey for me. So they saddled the donkey for him and he mounted it. And he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak. And he said to him, are you the man of God who came from Judah?

And he said, I am. Then he said to him, come home with me and eat bread. And he said, I may not return with you or go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place. For it was said to me, by the word of the Lord, you shall neither eat bread nor drink water there nor return by the way that you came.

And he said to him, I also am a prophet as you are. And an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord saying, bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied to him.

So he went back with him and ate bread in his house and drank water. And as they sat at the table, the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back. And he cried to the man of God who came from Judah, thus says the Lord, because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord and have not kept the command that the Lord your God commanded you, but have come back and have eaten bread and drunk water in the place in which of which he said to you, eat no bread and drink no water, your body shall not come to the tomb of your fathers.

And after he had eaten bread and drunk, he saddled his donkey for the prophet whom he had brought back. And as he went away, a lion met him on the road and killed him. And his body was thrown in the road and the donkey stood beside it.

The lion also stood beside the body. And behold, men passed by and saw the body thrown in the road and the lion standing by the body. And they came and told they told it in the city where the old prophet lived.

And when the prophet who had brought him back from the way heard of it, he said, it is the man of God who disobeyed the word of the Lord. Therefore, the Lord has given him to the lion, which has torn him and killed him according to the word that the Lord spoke to him.

And he said to his sons, saddle the donkey for me. And they saddled it. And he went and found his body thrown in the road and the donkey and the lion standing beside the body. The lion had not eaten the body or torn the donkey.

And the prophet took up the body of the man of God and laid it on the donkey and brought it back to the city to mourn and to bury him. And he laid the body in his own grave. And they mourned over him, saying, alas, my brother.

And after he had buried him, he said to his sons, when I die, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried, lay my bones beside his bones. For the saying that he called out by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel and against all the houses of the high places that are in the cities of Samaria shall surely come to pass.

After this thing, Jeroboam did not turn from his evil way, but made priests for the high places again from all the people. Any who would, he ordained to be priests of the high places. And this thing became sin to the house of Jeroboam, so as to cut it off and destroy it from the face of the earth.

And this was even done in the sovereignty of God. So it's an interesting story here between this prophet and the man of God. The man of God goes to Jeroboam, warns him about what it is that he is doing.

Jeroboam backs down. He invites the man of God back to his place. The man of God says, no, I can't do that. The Lord told me not to. This prophet hears about what it is the man of God said and what he did at Jeroboam's high places.

So he goes and finds him and says, hey, come home with me. So the prophet is from Jeroboam's territory and the man of God is from Judah. For whatever reason, the story doesn't give either one of their names, but both of them were prophets.

It just distinguishes them by one being called the man of God and the other one being called a prophet. So the prophet invites the man of God back. The man of God says, no, God told me not to do that.

And the prophet says, well, you know, I'm I'm a man of God, too. And the Lord appeared to me through an angel and said, hey, it's all right. So you can trust me and you can come back with me. But instead of the man of God inquiring of the Lord, he listened to this prophet, didn't even test his words to find out if he was telling the truth or not, and went back with him and thus became his demise, that he would not be allowed to be able to lie with his father's.

But he was killed by a lion on his way back home. Now, the the reasoning for the prophet doing what it was that he did and Jeroboam's motivation when he invited the man of God back to his house, they probably both had the same thing in mind.

They wanted the loyalty of the man of God so that it would delay the destruction of God upon them. Jeroboam didn't want God's wrath to come down on him. So if the man of God came back to his house, he would be safe.

And so likewise, this was the case with the prophet at Bethel. It's not a righteous thing that he did, even though he was a prophet. In no way is the story being painted here that it was good that he lied to that man of God.

That that isn't the case at all. His heart was just as dark as anybody else in the region of Bethel. And nonetheless, the Lord did reveal things to him, just like God revealed things to Balaam, the son of Beor that we read about in the book of Numbers.

But Balaam was not a godly man in any way. So so anyway, this prophet is the same thing. God would show him things doesn't mean that he was a godly man. So he he led the man of God astray. And instead of the man of God listening to the word of God, he listened to the word of this false prophet and he met his end.

So the lesson that we would derive from that is that we don't just listen to anybody who claims to be speaking a word from the Lord. We have to test it according to the word of God. And where do we find that?

We find it in the pages of Scripture. The Bible is the word of God. So don't just automatically believe anything that anyone tells you, even if they say they are a Christian or God appeared to them in a dream or I read the Bible and it says this and I'm telling you that it says this.

We all need to go back to the scriptures. We all need to learn how to read the scriptures so that we might know how to test what anyone says, whether they are speaking righteousness or unrighteousness.

We examine it all according to the word of God. As we read in first John four, one brothers test the spirits. For there are many false prophets that have gone out into the world. Lord God, I pray that we would know how to handle the word of truth rightly, that we would not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to be sure that what is being spoken to us comes from God and not from the enemy of God, the devil.

Thank you for bringing us to salvation through the gospel message of your son, Jesus Christ, and help us to remain steadfast in it, preaching it and defending it as we go. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

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