SERIES: Enlightening Epitaphs of the Kings and Prophets
The Man of God From Judah: Nothing Trumps a Word from God.
Introduction: Every Sunday I announce at the bottom of the outline what the sermon and the text will be for the following Sunday. Last Lord’s Day I noted that today I would be preaching on “The Man of God from Judah” from 1 Kings 13, and the epitaph I listed for this unnamed prophet was this: “He listened to a prophet of the Lord instead of to the Lord.”
Well, I’m still preaching on the man of God from Judah, but I’ve changed the epitaph. I got an email from my friend Ron Tate early in the week, and he had been studying 1 and 2 Kings on his own, staying just ahead of me. He wrote, “Chapter 13 was difficult to understand. In my simple mind it comes down to this: ‘Nothing trumps a Word from God.’” I liked that, so I borrowed it. If you’re a card player, you know that even a low trump card takes a high card in any other suit. But in the game of life, nothing trumps a word from the Lord. Another way of putting the same truth is that obedience to God’s Word is essential for spiritual victory.1
Our Scripture text is going to be read by four individuals. But let me first set the historical stage. The United Monarchy of Israel, after a little over a century under the rule of Saul, David, and Solomon, endures a bloodless civil war and is split into two nations. Jeroboam is chosen as the new King of Israel, that is the northern ten tribes, while Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, is left with only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, including the capital city of Jerusalem. You thought trouble in the Holy Land was recent, but it’s been going on for 3000 years! Jeroboam is worried that if he allows his people to go to Jerusalem to worship, they might waver in their loyalty and might once again give their allegiance to Rehoboam, so he decides to establish worship centers in two cities in the north–Dan and Bethel.
This is not equivalent to planting two new churches in order to expand worship opportunities for the people of God. This is a direct violation of the commandment of God for all Israelites to go up to the Solomonic temple three times a year to meet with God and receive atonement for their sins. Instead, Jeroboam sets up two golden calves in the cities of Dan and Bethel and calls upon his people to worship them. In fact, he leads them in this false worship, appointing anyone who volunteered to be a priest. Now please give attention to God’s Word from 1 Kings 13:
By the word of the LORD a man of God came from Judah to Bethel, as Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make an offering. He cried out against the altar by the word of the LORD: “O altar, altar! This is what the LORD says: ‘A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who now make offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you.'” That same day the man of God gave a sign: “This is the sign the LORD has declared: The altar will be split apart and the ashes on it will be poured out.”
When King Jeroboam heard what the man of God cried out against the altar at Bethel, he stretched out his hand from the altar and said, “Seize him!” But the hand he stretched out toward the man shriveled up, so that he could not pull it back. Also, the altar was split apart and its ashes poured out according to the sign given by the man of God by the word of the LORD.
Then the king said to the man of God, “Intercede with the LORD your God and pray for me that my hand may be restored.” So the man of God interceded with the LORD, and the king’s hand was restored and became as it was before.
The king said to the man of God, “Come home with me and have something to eat, and I will give you a gift.”
But the man of God answered the king, “Even if you were to give me half your possessions, I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water here. For I was commanded by the word of the LORD: ‘You must not eat bread or drink water or return by the way you came.'” So he took another road and did not return by the way he had come to Bethel.
Now there was a certain old prophet living in Bethel, whose sons came and told him all that the man of God had done there that day. They also told their father what he had said to the king. Their father asked them, “Which way did he go?” And his sons showed him which road the man of God from Judah had taken. So he said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.” And when they had saddled the donkey for him, he mounted it and rode after the man of God. He found him sitting under an oak tree and asked, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?”
“I am,” he replied.
So the prophet said to him, “Come home with me and eat.”
The man of God said, “I cannot turn back and go with you, nor can I eat bread or drink water with you in this place. I have been told by the word of the LORD: ‘You must not eat bread or drink water there or return by the way you came.'”
The old prophet answered, “I too am a prophet, as you are. And an angel said to me by the word of the LORD: ‘Bring him back with you to your house so that he may eat bread and drink water.'” (But he was lying to him.) So the man of God returned with him and ate and drank in his house.
While they were sitting at the table, the word of the LORD came to the old prophet who had brought him back. He cried out to the man of God who had come from Judah, “This is what the LORD says: ‘You have defied the word of the LORD and have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you. You came back and ate bread and drank water in the place where he told you not to eat or drink. Therefore your body will not be buried in the tomb of your fathers.'”
When the man of God had finished eating and drinking, the prophet who had brought him back saddled his donkey for him. As he went on his way, a lion met him on the road and killed him, and his body was thrown down on the road, with both the donkey and the lion standing beside it. Some people who passed by saw the body thrown down there, with the lion standing beside the body, and they went and reported it in the city where the old prophet lived.
When the prophet who had brought him back from his journey heard of it, he said, “It is the man of God who defied the word of the LORD. The LORD has given him over to the lion, which has mauled him and killed him, as the word of the LORD had warned him.”
The prophet said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me,” and they did so. Then he went out and found the body thrown down on the road, with the donkey and the lion standing beside it. The lion had neither eaten the body nor mauled the donkey. So the prophet picked up the body of the man of God, laid it on the donkey, and brought it back to his own city to mourn for him and bury him. Then he laid the body in his own tomb, and they mourned over him and said, “Oh, my brother!”
After burying him, he said to his sons, “When I die, bury me in the grave where the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones. For the message he declared by the word of the LORD against the altar in Bethel and against all the shrines on the high places in the towns of Samaria will certainly come true.”
Even after this, Jeroboam did not change his evil ways, but once more appointed priests for the high places from all sorts of people. Anyone who wanted to become a priest he consecrated for the high places. This was the sin of the house of Jeroboam that led to its downfall and to its destruction from the face of the earth.
This is a strange story indeed. In fact, it is one of those parts of Scripture that is often passed over in embarrassed silence. But remember, “all Scripture is God-breathed and is profitable.” There are obviously some things about this story that scream out at us, “Lord, that’s not fair!” Twice this true man of God from Judah has rebuffed efforts to distract him from single-minded obedience to God’s revealed will. Clearly, he could have received a handsome honorarium from the king had he agreed to go home with him, but he refuses. He even refuses the offer of an older, more experienced prophet, which also must have taken a good bit of courage. Why is he subjected to still a third temptation, one so convincing that almost anyone would be tempted to fall for it? And why does he have to lose his life for such a seemingly trivial mistake?
These are natural questions that arise in our minds. But what we must come to grips with above all else this morning is that disobedience to a clear word from God is never a trivial mistake. It is not our job to weigh the commands of God and decide which ones are important and which ones are optional. None are optional.
When God has spoken, absolutely nothing supersedes it.
Now this is true both of God’s predictions and of His commandments. Our focus this morning is going to be on His commands, but I don’t want to overlook the prediction that precipitated this whole incident.
What He prophesies will come to pass. The man of God from Judah cries out against Jeroboam’s idolatrous altar and predicts two things by the word of the Lord. That phrase, “by the word of the Lord,” is a technical phrase that identifies his message as clearly coming from God. This was not guesswork on the part of the man of God; it is not a strong impression; it is the word of the Lord. The first prediction he makes is that a person named Josiah would be born to the house of David and this king would sacrifice the very priests who were making sacrifices on Jeroboam’s altar. That prediction came to pass exactly as the man of God prophesied, but not until 300 years later! For the fascinating fulfillment of the very details of this prophecy, including the sacrifice of these very priests 300 years after their death, I encourage you to read 2 Kings 23, particularly verses 15-18.2 Later in our series Josiah will be the subject of one of our messages.
The second prediction of the man of God from Judah is given as an immediate sign that the first prediction would eventually come to pass. He said, “The altar will be split apart and the ashes on it will be poured out.” And that’s exactly what happens while Jeroboam is standing there with his shriveled and paralyzed hand. Sometimes what God predicts happens immediately; sometimes what God predicts takes a long time to happen; but whether long-term or short-term, God’s Word is always fulfilled. You can count on it.3
What He commands must be obeyed. The Lord had told the man of God from Judah not to eat or drink or return by the way he came. The will of God in this matter was perfectly clear to him, for twice he himself spells it out. Is God’s will always as clear to us? No, not if you’re talking about which direction to go home from work. But on most important issues it is. Should we lie, steal, cheat, get drunk, commit adultery, or covet? No. Should we treat others with respect and love and the same kind of care and concern we want to be treated? Yes. There can be no doubt that God has spoken on these matters, and He has spoken clearly.
But let’s bring this a little closer to home for those of us who consider ourselves to have high moral standards. In an email this week Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Community Church offered five truths that probably everyone here would agree with, at least intellectually:
You were planned for God’s pleasure (worship).
You were formed for God’s family (fellowship).
You were created to become like Christ (discipleship).
You were shaped for serving God (ministry).
You were made for mission (evangelism).
But in all honesty, how many of us creatively disobey the “commands” to worship, fellowship, spend time in the Bible and in prayer, serve one another, and share our faith? We get so caught up in the West County lifestyle that we don’t have time for these commandments of God. We rationalize our spiritual apathy and suffer greatly because of it.
There are many rationalizations besides busyness we use to disobey what God tells us. Several of those factors are found in this story and I want to address them individually.
No relationship justifies disobedience. Did you notice what the old prophet said to the man of God after he first refused to come home with him? “I too am a prophet, as you are.” “Hey, man, we’re equals. We’re both ordained. In fact, I’ve been ordained a lot longer than you. Do you think I would ask you to do something if it weren’t OK with God?” But, friends, ministerial credentials are no guarantee that a person is speaking for God. Some clergy are just blind guides of the blind.
If you look back at verse 11, you discover that this old prophet was living in Bethel. Last week we discovered in 2 Chronicles 11 that when the northern tribes split from the south and Jeroboam was chosen as King, all the priests and Levites and godly people abandoned their positions and possessions and fled south to support Rehoboam. Why then is this old prophet still in Bethel, a center of idolatry in the northern kingdom? The best reason I can come up with is that this old prophet has sold out to Jeroboam. He is probably an apostate prophet.
From time to time I meet an older pastor, say in his late 50’s (I know that’s really old, but occasionally a preacher does reach that advanced stage), who is part of a denomination that no longer holds to biblical authority and whose leaders are not even embarrassed by the radical heresy that is regularly taught in their seminaries and in many of their pulpits. But the old pastor I’m talking about still believes the Gospel and personally embraces the truths of the Christian faith. In the course of the conversation, I will ask him, “Tell me, why do you stay in a denomination with which you have virtually nothing in common?” And I get an answer something like this: “Well, I’m just a few years from getting my pension, so I just try to isolate myself from the denomination. I don’t bother them, and most of the time they don’t bother me.”
Now there may be good reasons for staying in an apostate denomination (like being a missionary in the darkness), but getting one’s pension is probably not one of them. I wonder if something like that wasn’t the reason the old prophet had stayed in Bethel. Perhaps he was already getting a pension from the King and wasn’t willing to leave his position and his possessions to go south like the godly priests and prophets did. In fact, he might even get a raise from the King if he could manage to deceive and destroy this young whipper-snapper prophet who had embarrassed Jeroboam.
The point I think we need to learn from the claim of the old prophet (“I too am a prophet, as you are,”) is that relationship should never be allowed to trump the Word of God. And don’t think that doesn’t happen in the church today! The Bible makes it crystal clear that a believer should not marry an unbeliever. Yet I often hear people saying, “But what if I really love him and he treats me well?” Or, “What if she’s showing some interest in spiritual things? I’m just sure she’ll eventually become a Christian.” Or, “I know a case where a friend of mine married an unbeliever and the person became a believer, and now they attend church together.” The fact remains, God’s Word says a believer should not marry an unbeliever, and no relationship trumps the word of God.
No claims of authority justify disobedience. Look at the next thing the old prophet says to the man of God from Judah: “I too am a prophet, as you are. And an angel said to me by the word of the Lord: ‘Bring him back with you to your house so that he may eat bread and drink water.’” Wow! How can you argue with that? Not only does he claim to have heard from an angel, but the angel also supposedly spoke “by the word of the Lord.”
This is the argument that finally breaks down the defenses of the man of God and leads him into disobedience. And this is the kind of argument that is causing so many in our day to follow false teachers into all kinds of heresy. But the Apostle Paul warned us in the first chapter of Galatians, “Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:8)
Now clearly Paul’s point is hypothetical because no angel from heaven would ever preach another Gospel, but even if he did, he has no authority to change what God has established. The fact is that an angel did not speak to the old prophet–he was lying about it, as the story makes clear, so the man of God had no business relying on a second-hand report about a revelation from some angel when God had made His will known to him in the first place.
There are all kinds of claims to religious authority being made today. Every cult on the face of the earth is the result of someone claiming to have heard new revelation from God–truth that directly contradicts what He has already spoken. Even within the Christian church we have many today who are claiming, “The Lord told me this” and “The Lord told me that.” The other day I caught a few minutes of a bizarre sermon from a popular TV preacher who was having his congregation of thousands chant, “I will never be poor another day in my life,” supposedly on the basis of a revelation he had received.
There is an authority crisis in the church today, and that authority crisis is directly related to an abandonment of our one true and reliable authority–the Word of God. I have never commented publicly about the tragic scandal that has been front-page news every day for months now, but I think it may be appropriate for me to do so this morning. I grieve for our Roman Catholic friends as they endure the pain of one account after another of fallen priests, and as they endure the scorn that is being heaped on the whole church because of the sins of some. But I want to say this morning that I believe this scandal is ultimately a crisis in authority. It is a moral crisis, for sure–the lives of countless victims have been ruined and untold damage has been done to the cause of Christ because of human sin–but the root problem is that the Catholic Church has too often replaced the authority of God’s Word with the authority of the church hierarchy. Let me explain.
I submit to you that the very requirement of celibacy for the priesthood is a rejection of biblical authority. There is not a shred of teaching in the Bible that requires clergy to be unmarried, and so long as that requirement remains, the Catholic Church is going to suffer both a shortage of priests and sexual scandal among those who do become priests. The Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 7 that “it is better for a man to marry than to burn with lust,” and that goes for priests and pastors as well as lay people.
In addition, the Church has also abandoned biblical authority in regard to church discipline. As we saw in our study of 1 Corinthians, God requires the church to discipline its members–to the point of removing them from ministry and even excommunicating them when the offense is severe or when they are unrepentant and remain a danger to others. Hopefully the recent meeting at the Vatican will restore a more biblical process of church discipline, but rationalizing the sin or covering it up at all costs, as has been done in the past, clearly violates God’s Word.
Now let me caution you to be gracious in speaking with your Catholic friends about these matters. The Catholic Church has no corner on these sins, nor is it alone in failing to stand on biblical authority. We don’t need any Pharisees throwing stones here! Larry Crabb made an excellent point last weekend when he stated that our pharisaical ways are as offensive to God as the sins we are condemning. But we can speak to the sins of the church without being prideful; in fact, we must.
Our own church has gone through some painful experiences of discipline, and each time we have heard from a few, “You’re not being gracious!”, or “Why not just forgive and forget?,” or “He who is without sin should cast the first stone.” But I’d a lot rather have a few people think we’ve been ungracious than to disobey God’s commands and end up bringing disrepute on the name of Christ. That doesn’t mean we are willing to sacrifice individuals for the sake of the organization. We believe in restoration, and we practice it when possible, but not at the expense of truth or at the expense of other potential victims.4 A former pastor of ours who was disciplined for adultery is now back in ministry in another church, but only after thorough repentance, complete healing, and full disclosure to the new church. I am delighted to report that he’s doing wonderfully.
There is a third factor that is often used to justify disobedience to God. And I’m lumping several related issues together here:
No reason, intuition or emotions justify disobedience. Our society is split on whether reason is king (that’s modernism) or intuition and emotions are king (that’s more postmodern). Most of our culture would choose one or the other, either “I must do what reason tells me is right” or “I must do what my heart tells me is right.” But the fact is, neither one should be allowed to supersede a clear word from the Lord.
I want you to turn with me to 1 Kings 20. We’re skipping over quite a few years and several kings, but the brief story here is so relevant to our text today that I think we should consider these two accounts together. Ahab is now King of Israel and is being threatened by his northern neighbor Syria or Aram. Their king Ben-Hadad (well known in ancient history for his part in the great battle of Karkar), is threatening the nation of Israel with a large and powerful army. In his initial encounter with Ben-Hadad, Ahab obeys God, and God gives him a significant victory. He then obeys God a second time and God gives him another victory. In fact, he actually captures the Syrian king and takes him hostage.
But then Ahab disobeys. Despite God’s order to execute Ben-Hadad, Ahab decides to negotiate a deal instead. In exchange for land and trade concessions, he agrees to let Ben-Hadad go. Now pay attention to the unique means God uses to teach Ahab that his disobedience is inexcusable and fatal. Let’s begin our reading at the end of verse 34:
So he (Ahab) made a treaty with him (Ben-Hadad), and let him go.
By the word of the LORD one of the sons of the prophets said to his companion (a fellow-prophet), “Strike me with your weapon,” but the man refused.
So the prophet said, “Because you have not obeyed the LORD, as soon as you leave me a lion will kill you.” And after the man went away, a lion found him and killed him.
The prophet found another man and said, “Strike me, please.” So the man struck him and wounded him.
Satisfied with his wound, this prophet covers his head with bandages (presumably with the blood oozing out) and waits alongside the road for Ahab to come by. The king stops his chariot when he sees this badly wounded man, and the prophet tells him this fictitious story: “I was in battle when a prisoner was placed in my charge. I was told that the penalty for letting him escape was my life or a talent of silver. Well, I got busy and all of a sudden the prisoner was gone. Do you think the judgment is fair?” And Ahab responds, “Sure it’s fair. You agreed to it, didn’t you?”
Then the prophet removes his head bandage and Ahab recognizes him as a prophet. He informs Ahab that the fictitious story is about him. He has let Ben-Hadad escape and God is going to make him pay with his life. (And, as a matter of history, Ahab is later killed in another battle with Ben-Hadad, which would never have happened if Ahab had done what God told him). But not only does Ahab lose his life for disobedience; so does this poor prophet who refuses to slug another prophet, just so the first prophet can act out an object lesson for King Ahab!
Again, I think we must assume that prophets had a God-given capacity to discern the voice of the Lord. Once God’s will was discerned, there was nothing that should interfere with obedience, nothing whatever. But this prophet in chapter 20 allows other considerations to interfere with his obedience. Perhaps he thought, “It’s not reasonable to strike another person; besides he might hit me back and I can’t afford any time off work.” Or “Intuition tells me that God would never want me to do anything violent; surely He was joking.” Or “This prophet is my friend, and I’m not going to treat a friend that way. My emotions won’t allow me to do that.”
Normally speaking I would agree with all three of those statements. Under normal circumstances reason, intuition and emotions are all God-given controls that help us govern our behavior and behave in a civil manner. But they cannot be allowed to trump a word from the Lord.
In our day reason and intuition and emotion are all being used in a heavily orchestrated media campaign to convince us that homosexual behavior is OK. And many in the church are falling for it. In fact, when Monsignor Eugene Clark preached at St. Patrick’s cathedral last week and rightly related the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church to the fact that homosexuals are openly tolerated in the priesthood, he was excoriated by the press, and even his own ecclesiastical superiors refused to back him.
Someone told me the other day about a brochure that was being distributed by a church group advocating homosexual marriage. On the cover it read, “Everything Jesus said about homosexuality.” The inside was blank because Jesus never addressed the subject. The inference was that if Jesus didn’t address it, there must not be anything wrong with it. But the fact of the matter is that the words of Jesus are not the only words of God; in fact, the words of Jesus are no more authoritative than the words of Paul, for “all Scripture is inspired of God.” The fact is homosexual behavior is addressed clearly in both the OT and the NT in many places, and the Bible makes it absolutely clear that homosexual acts are sinful and detestable to God. Are we going to allow reason and intuition and emotions to determine our theology of human sexuality, or are we going to allow the Word of God to determine it? That’s the question.
No religious instincts justify disobedience. Just a few weeks ago we talked about how Saul made this very mistake, and the prophet Samuel had to rebuke him and say, “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.” (1 Samuel 15:22). Friends, that’s still true today. To obey is better than going to church, to obey is better than prayer, to obey is better than witnessing. The point is not that you can only do one or the other, but rather that if you do any of those things without obedience, they are spiritually worthless.
So far, we have spent all our time demonstrating from these two OT stories that when God has spoken, absolutely nothing supersedes it. But there’s a second point which, though very brief, is just as clear in these accounts:
When God’s Word is clear, disobedience is taken seriously by God.
The man of God from Judah lost his life due to his disobedience.5 The prophet in chapter 20 lost his life for the same reason and by the same means. I must tell you I’m very glad God doesn’t deal with disobedience as abruptly and harshly today as He did in Jeroboam’s day; my suspicion is that my audience would be very small. (But of course, there would be no one in the pulpit either, so it wouldn’t matter). But the fact that God doesn’t operate the same way does not mean He no longer considers disobedience serious. Just as much is said about the importance of obedience and the consequences of disobedience in the NT as in the OT. And even today I see the sad consequences of sin in many people’s lives, including my own; much of that is the Lord’s discipline. I see broken lives, broken families, all kinds of addictions, wasted potential. It would be very dangerous indeed for us to conclude that God doesn’t care anymore when we violate His known will.
Now there is one more very important issue I want to address:
How do we know when God has spoken?
There is no doubt in these two stories that the prophets who were killed by the lions knew what God had said. In the first account the prophet himself flatly says so. In the second story it says, “By the word of the Lord one of the sons of the prophets said to his companion, ‘Strike me with your weapon.’” There’s that phrase again, “by the word of the Lord.” He knew the message came from the Lord. So neither prophet could argue that he didn’t know what God’s will was. He could only try to rationalize his disobedience because of other considerations.
God doesn’t speak in the same way today as He did then. Oh, some people claim He does, and that’s why you hear a lot of them saying, “God told me x,” or “God told me y.” But I don’t believe it. I see no evidence in the church today that God is speaking in the same manner He used with the OT prophets. In fact, the Bible actually tells me I should not expect that. Hebrews 1:1 says, “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” Jesus is the ultimate revelation. And how do we find the truth about Jesus? Only through the Bible, the written word of God. I am tempted to say that through this book and only through this book can we know what God has spoken. But that’s not quite accurate.
God speaks to individuals through His Holy Spirit. He gives them individual guidance and insight and direction. I have no doubt about that because the NT speaks frequently of a believer being “led” by the Spirit, and I have experienced it myself. But there are certain caveats I would immediately attach to that statement. First, the direction a believer receives that way is personal–i.e., direction for his own life, not direction for the whole church. Second, God will never give personal direction that contradicts the written Word of God. When that TV preacher the other night was telling his congregation that God had told him that it is a sin to be poor, I can state without any fear of contradiction that he was either lying or deluded, because God cannot contradict Himself, and the Bible makes it absolutely clear that one can be in great poverty and spiritually rich at the same time.
I also believe the Holy Spirit may speak through the spiritual leaders of a church to give direction tothat church, but not for the universal church. The clearest way God speaks to us, individually and corporately, is through His Word.
God speaks to the Church through the Bible, the Word of God. This book is God’s book in the way that no other book in history is. This is the living and powerful Word of God. This book contains all you need to know to live a godly life. This book contains all the doctrines you need to know. God has spoken in this book, and if God has spoken, it is our responsibility to obey. And not merely obey but obey from the heart.
Let me ask you this question: Is there some clear teaching or truth from God’s Word that you have ignored because of some relationship or some false claim to authority. Have you violated His revealed will on the basis of your own reason, or intuition, or emotions? If so, what will you do about it after hearing this message? I want to suggest a course of action. I urge you to cease and desist immediately, to confess your disobedience, and to commit yourself today to follow God’s revealed will no matter where it takes you. That’s really not very risky, friends, because God won’t take you anywhere that is harmful.
Conclusion: I want to draw your attention to one particular commandment of God which is always fatal if you disobey. And that is His command to repent of your sins and be obedient to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8 says, “when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels, He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.” What does it mean to “obey” the Gospel? It means to repent of our sins and place your faith in the fact that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and to trust Him and Him alone for our eternal salvation. I call upon you today to obey the command of Scripture to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” (Acts 16:31).
If you are already a believer in Jesus Christ, I warn you as well that God expects explicit obedience from His children–not tolerance of sin, not reasoned arguments, not religious excuses, but obedience.
Let’s pray. Father, we can’t obey on our own. We are incapable because of our tendency toward sin. Only by the power of Your Spirit is it possible for us to live obediently to Your Word. Fill us with Your Spirit. Help us to surrender our hearts and lives completely to His control. Amen.
DATE: April 28, 2002
Tags:
The Word of the Lord
Obedience
Authority
Reason
Intuition
Emotions
1. I would call obedience “necessary but not sufficient” for spiritual victory. That is, one can’t have spiritual victory without it. On the other hand, obedience by itself is not sufficient to produce spiritual victory–one also needs the heart dimension.
2. In the seventh century B.C. a descendant of David was born whose name was Josiah. He became king at age 8, started a revival at age 18, and then began to sweep the country clean of idolatry. The problem is, if Josiah wasn’t born until three centuries after Jeroboam, how could Jeroboam’s priests be sacrificed on the altar in Bethel. Well, let’s see how God accomplished that as we read from 2 Kings 23:15-18.
Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin–even that altar and high place he (Josiah) demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the LORD proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.
The king asked, “What is that tombstone I see?”
The men of the city said, “It marks the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and pronounced against the altar of Bethel the very things you have done to it.”
“Leave it alone,” he said. “Don’t let anyone disturb his bones.”
The millstone of God’s justice grinds slowly, but it grinds exceedingly fine.
3. By the way, the most important prophecy in all of Scripture is Jesus’ prediction that He will come again, will wipe out all rebellion and cut off evil-doers from the earth, and will receive the family of God to spend eternity with Him in heaven. It hasn’t happened yet, and some people scoff that it will never happen, but do you want to take the chance that He was just kidding, based upon the track record of biblical prophecy? I wouldn’t if I were you. There’s actually a very good reason why Jesus hasn’t come back yet–and that’s to give you more time to repent of your sins and turn in faith to Christ (2 Peter 3:3-10).
4. Restoration to ministry is not commanded in Scripture. I believe restoration to ministry is generally allowed (2 Corinthians 2:5-11 is a key text, especially if this is speaking of the same person for whom discipline was demanded by Paul in 1 Corinthians 5), but it should never be the expectation of the fallen minister that he be permitted to lead God’s people after moral failure. The Free Church does not restore pedophiles to ministry because it involves the kind of pathology for which healing can likely never be assumed.
5. The fact that he did not just have bad luck on his way home is made clear by the note in verse 28 to the effect that the lion and the donkey were standing beside the man’s body, and “the lion had neither eaten the body nor mauled the donkey.” Clearly this was God at work.