All right, we want to now look at some good counsel. We saw last time that Rhea Bohem and Jeroboam were guilty of following bad counsel. I do think that what comes up next, even though I may be straining a little bit to call it good counsel, nevertheless does stress the word of God and the significance of the word of God, not only for this immediate section, but for the entirety of the Book of Kings, first and second kings. So I'm going to do something a little bit unusual and just read to you for starters this rather weird story. I'm not sure, I know you've read it, but as I read it, I want you perhaps to focus on two prophets. There's the young prophet and there's also the old prophet. So maybe think about these two characters as we read this story. By the word of the Lord, this is, by the way, 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. Oh, 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 of Bethel, he stretched out his hand from the altar and said, sees 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 saddle 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 drink water in a 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 and Bethel and against all the shrines and the high places in the towns of Samaria will certainly come true. And we'll stop there for the moment. There's a bit more as we come back to Jeroboam but I want to ask what in the world do we make of this curious tale? Would you be prepared to teach a Sunday school lesson on this particular passage or to preach a sermon on this particular passage? Why is it there? What can we make of it? Well, as we pursue that question, maybe let's look at these two prophets that are mentioned, the young prophet from Judah who went up to Bethel and the old prophet who was in Bethel and see what kind of impression they make upon us. What impression do you get of the young prophet who went north? I think certainly he was bowed, verse 2, he cried out against the altar by the Word of the Lord and altar by which Jeroboam was standing. And so we get the impression that he was bowed. We see that he was divinely protected in verse 4 when Jeroboam reacted negatively to these words that have been spoken and stretched out his hand and said, sees him, the hand shriveled up. So God is protecting this prophet. His message, at least the early part of his message is divinely confirmed. He said in verse 3, this is the sign the Lord has declared, the altar will be split apart and the ashes on it will be poured out. Then in verse 5 we read, 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. So God confirms his word as spoken by this young prophet. If we want to continue, we might even assume that the man of God showed some measure of compassion. In verse 6, the king said to the man of God, intercede with the Lord your God and pray for me that my hand may be restored. Now, you can imagine some people would say, you know, you wanted to kill me. You wanted to seize me. No telling what you would have done, you could live with your shriveled hand. He might have said that, but the text doesn't say that. The man of God interceded with the Lord. The king's hand was restored and became as it was before. Now, moreover as we think about who this guy was, we see that he was able to withstand temptation in verses 7 to 10. The king invited him home, come home with me and have something to eat and I will give you a gift. Maybe he was a little suspicious. It does at least introduce a complicating element because the man of God in his reply mentions for the first time that he has been given instructions by God. Not only is he there to deliver the Word of God, the Word of the Lord, but he has himself been given a Word of the Lord, a command, a charge which he is to keep. You must not, this is verse 9, I was commanded by the Word of the Lord. You must not eat bread or drink water or return by the way you came. And thus he says, I can't come home with you and I can't eat with you and I can't even receive your gift because I have specific instructions from the Lord. Now, he makes a good impression, don't you think? I mean, I think he does, he's bold, he's divinely protected, what he says comes true, his word is confirmed, he seems relatively compassionate, he withstands the temptation offered him by this king. And yet, as we know, he will end his life dead on the road, things don't turn out too well for this particular young servant of God, this man of God who came from the south to the north. And this then raises a point of tension in the account as we read it, he comes to an abrupt end, why? Well, it's clear from what is explicitly stated that it was this young man's disobedience to a mishandling of the Word of the Lord. And that is the refrain that keeps coming back over and over in the chapter 10 times, the Word of the Lord, the Word of the Lord, that's the focus. And this young man was guilty of playing a little fast and loose with the Word of the Lord because having first turned down the king's offer, the royal offer, he does later accept an offer to go back with the old prophet to his house. What would have caused him to do that? Why would he first reject the invitation of the king and then when confronted by this old prophet who says, I took him 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. Why would he go back with him having refused the king? He led his guard down, maybe among friends. You know, maybe he thinks, well, I need to be on my guard when I'm faced by my enemy, the guy who wanted to kill me, the king, but this guy claims to be a prophet, like me, and he's come with a revised version of the Word of the Lord. And therefore, maybe I can be a little more free with him and what harm can he do after all? In fact, we could have some good shop talk. Okay. Maybe out of respect or deference to this older man who claimed to have a Word of the Lord and he was deferring to age. Yeah, perhaps it could be that, carelessness among friends, deference to age. What else might be at work here? Yes. Well, he certainly failed to pray. At least we don't hear that he inquired of the Lord to say, you know, which is it? Have you really changed what you told me if so? Could you please tell me rather than my just taking the Word of this other prophet? Yes. Yep. Okay. He was found taking a break under an oak tree. Maybe he was just thirsty and hungry and was therefore more susceptible to temptation. Yeah, Michael. Yeah. It raises the question of how he had received the Word of the Lord in the first place. Did he receive it directly from the Lord or did he receive it perhaps from another spokesperson, another old prophet? And now he's, you know, encountering a second old prophet and is used to gaining his knowledge of the Word of the Lord. That way possibly it may be that it may be that his first refusal was based on a little bit of self interest in the first place. Maybe he read an ominous message in this and I will give you a gift is rather unspecified gift might not be something that he would necessarily enjoy had he taken that first invitation. And so maybe he was suspicious. Maybe that's what warded him off. And he used the charge that God had given him as an excuse not to go back with the king. It's just possible that he, there's a slight distortion in his own reporting of the Word of the Lord. And I'm not certain of this, but it does seem that when he reports what the Lord says to him in verse nine, 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. There's an element missing in that report of just what the Lord had said that is found in his other responses earlier in verse eight. He says, even if you were to give me half your possessions, I would not go with you nor eat nor would I eat bread or drink water here. The Hebrew says in this place and later when he's responding to the old prophet in verse 16, he says, I cannot turn back and go with you nor can I eat bread or drink water with you in this place. Now, if he's adding that, I'm not certain about this, if the initial charge that God had given him did not include in this place, and that's just a careless addition, it may open the door to an argument being lodged by the old prophet. Well, fine, I mean, but you could have it in my place, maybe not in this place, but maybe in my place. Maybe he's beginning to be a little casual with his precise recollection of what the Lord had charged him. That's not certain, but we do see it in other places in scripture. For instance, when Eve is confronted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, it seems clear that she is maybe adding a little to the prohibition that they were not to eat from. The tree of the knowledge of good or evil, and she says, we're not even to touch it. You know, the kind of sharpening God's command, even beyond what the Lord had initially said, maybe something like that is going on. Or maybe the prophet, as incredible as this might seem, is simply disbelieving that it is incumbent upon him to keep the letter of the law as God has commanded him. You know, maybe he thinks, well, I wasn't to go back with the king. Certainly, that would have been very compromising, but in this instance, I am hot tired and thirsty. Maybe I can go back. There's a warning here. Sometimes familiarity with the Word of the Lord can breed content. The more success that one enjoys, and the more expert one becomes in his particular field or in his trade, the easier it is to become careless about the basics. And it might be that on the heels of this fantastic success, which the young prophet has just enjoyed, where he really made some dramatic pronouncements and saw some dramatic things happen, that now he's thinking to himself, yeah, after that big victory, I deserve a break today. I can go back with the old prophet. What's it going to really hurt? I did the big thing that God asked me to do. I don't need to be so punctilious about all the details. And it's easy to begin then to play fast and loose with the Word of God. I think you see that happening in the lives of Christian leaders. It's a danger in the lives of Christian leaders, and those of you in this class, probably most of you are included in that particular category. It is a very dangerous thing to be concerned to train new believers in the basics, but to somehow take upon ourselves the attitude, well, I know that so well, I'm almost beyond that. I can sail rather close to the wind and not be in that great danger because I know that so well. I would never stray too far. Familiarity over familiarity can breed contempt. So what we're learning from this young prophet that regardless of past successes, misshandling God's Word will have its consequences. It can bring us or others to ruin. There's never a time when we can become careless with what God has said. Yes. The question is, what in the world motivated the old prophet to lie to the young prophet ultimately costing him his life? Was it professional jealousy or what might it have been? That's a good transition to what we need to look at now. We need to look at the old prophet because he figures very prominently in this story. In fact, it would not be a perplexing story at all had he not entered the scene in verse 11. The young prophet had just gone and made a pronouncement against the altar in Bethel and God's Word had proven true and he had gone home. There would have been nothing really strange about this particular account, but there is something strange about it, and it's brought about by this old prophet who has described in the translation of the NIV says a certain old prophet. In the Hebrew it says, one old prophet. If the young prophet made a good impression, I would say the old prophet doesn't make such a grand impression on us initially. He doesn't have any access to supernatural knowledge. He doesn't seem to be a highly functional prophet because he's having to be told everything. His sons come home and tell him what happened. He has to ask questions which way did he go and kind of think prophets are supposed to know. So if he is indeed an old prophet, he's not really firing on all cylinders at this point. Furthermore, instead of speaking truth, which is of course the task of a prophet, he actually lies in the narrator rather rarely comes right out and tells us the guy is lying. He usually leaves that to us to discern, but in this case he wants to make it clear. He's lying. He didn't receive a word from the Lord. He's lying. So he doesn't make a very good impression, yet it still remains a question in my mind as to whether we are to regard him as a false prophet or not. Is he in fact a false prophet because we have to weigh up the fact that God does ultimately speak through him, make pronouncement through him, and we have to make something of that. So maybe these initial words, this words of introduction, one old prophet, which are a little unusual. Typically that kind of detail, even that minimal detail is not given. Usually it would simply hear there was another prophet or something like that, but this is one old prophet. Now what do those few adjectives tell us? What do we learn from one? Well the answer is there must be a bunch of them. Well it doesn't say one of a bunch, it just says one. So in a sense it could be expressing his isolation. You know, there's one. Now he's also old. What would that suggest about it for trying to kind of figure out who this guy is? It could be senile. Yes. Yes, it could be. He's been around for a long time. He's an old prophet. Now what would that say in the context? Yeah, he could have been the answer is he could have been an active prophet in days past and seeing this young prophet he is maybe drawn to him in some strange way. See something maybe that he wants new. I think that when we read there was one old prophet in Jeroboam's kingdom. He's isolated. He's old. He predates Jeroboam. I think this suggests that he may well have been a true prophet, you know, a prophet of Yahweh. Not one of these guys that Jeroboam is set up, not one of his priests or one of his functionaries or one of the, you know, a servant of Jeroboam, but an old man who is who's gift as it were has fallen into disuse. He's isolated alone and perhaps fearful. He's in a tough situation. Perhaps he had wished to do better and this reinforcement from the south as this young prophet may have encouraged him that maybe I'm not utterly alone. Now something intrigued him and he went after this guy. He at least showed some interest and some recognition of the true word of God. He wanted to know if it were true or not. What else can we say about it? He goes after the young man. Yes. Now, okay, the comment is that it's curious that having been told by his son exactly what this young prophet had said. The old prophet as soon as he determines that this is the young prophet from Judah, the first thing he says is come home with me and eat. And so it's as if he's laying a trap for him. He's tempting him right away. Now what might motivate that? What might have motivated him to do that? Yes. Okay, yeah, that's an interesting idea. Maybe the old prophet is saying, look, I've been lying low, low these many years and I don't need you to get up here and blow my cover. You know, I could easily be associated with you and Jeroboam could deal with both of us. You're going back home south and I have to continue living here in the north or something. It could be something like that. What other possibilities are there? Yes. The young man might have reminded the old prophet of himself in his earlier days. Now, remember, remember, this old prophet is surrounded by false prophets, false priests. He's bound in his isolation. He's bound to be rather suspicious. So when he issues this invitation, come back, come home with me and eat. What do you anticipate was the response he desired to hear? I hear a mixed answer. Okay, one possibility is he wants him to say, fine, I'll do it. Otherwise, he wouldn't have encouraged him with the lie. That's possible. What other possibility is there? Yes. Another possibility is that he is testing him and he's actually hoping that he will say no because see, this old prophet seems concerned, at least we see a developing focus in the old prophet's life on the word of the Lord. And later in the chapter, he'll be talking about the word of the Lord is going to come true. We know it now. It may well be that he's just testing the guy and wants to see, will he say no? Will he refuse me? Right. Okay, if I can shorten and thus do injustice to your comment, you know, for the sake of the tape going on here, either way, the old prophet is establishing a test by which he may learn whether this young prophet is really in contact with the true God and thus dispensing the true Word of God because in fact, though the young prophet disobeys and comes back, he ultimately ends up dead on the road, which itself is a confirmation. That he was in God's service because God disciplines him for his disobedience. God doesn't discipline necessarily in the same way. Those who are not in his service for their disobedience. So either way, this old prophet is learning something about the new prophet and this old prophet as we see as the chapter progresses himself does, even though he lies initially, laying a trap and it maybe was a malicious trap. It may be unjustified, certainly to lie to him is unjustified, but I think you can, I tend to think that maybe what he was doing was saying, you know, I've been alone so long, I've learned that I can't trust anybody and I want to know if you're for real. So I'm going to claim to have received another word of the Lord and if you buy that, I'll have to suspect you because you know, God is not a man that he should change his mind. You know, he's not just going to be changing back and forth and if you hear one word of God that seems to contravene this other that you yourself have received and have proclaimed that you have received, then at least you should do some soul searching, maybe some praying, maybe some checking before you just come back with me. So he may have been testing him in that way. Of course, the young prophet fails the test, pays the price, but the old prophet learns through that that he wasn't the service of the true God. It was a true word of God that he had spoken. Yes. Right. Yeah, I think there's, yeah, that's an interesting comment. Again, I'll abbreviate it, but there's kind of an application of this kind of thing to today where we have the word of God. We have the word of God to us. And if someone comes along and says, yeah, I know, I know that that's what that says, but you know, God is speaking to me and I really feel and you're an exception or we say to ourselves, you know, my situation is really exceptional. I know that God forbids this that or the other thing, but you know, life is complex and I'm really a special case. And then it's kind of like saying, I've received a special word of the Lord that overrides the word already received. And that's a very dangerous thing. Yeah, interesting comment. Well, as we continue to trace the experience of this old prophet, we see that he too begins to show compassion. Even after he stands up and receives the true word of the Lord and has to pronounce judgment on him in verse 20. This is what the Lord says. You have to find the word of the Lord and have not kept the command or the charge 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. We don't hear that the young prophet protested and said, but you told me that you had received a word. I mean, he must have felt, well, yeah, I guess I should have checked that out. You tricked me, but he doesn't even say that, but then it says when the man of God had finished eating and drinking, the prophet who had brought him back saddled his donkey for him. Elsewhere in the, you wonder, what's all this saddling of donkey is going on in this particular chapter? Elsewhere it's always the old prophet who's telling his sons, go saddle my donkey. And here he does the lowly thing. He saddles the donkey. In other words, even at the moment of pronouncing judgment on this young prophet, he serves him. And I think perhaps with tears, he saddled the donkey and said, I'm sorry that I had to say this to you, but I recognize that you are a man of God. And God has his expectations of you and God is disciplining you. In fact, you're not going to make it home, but nevertheless, I'll send you off on my donkey. And on his way, of course, he meets a lion in the road. The lion kills him. His body is thrown down on the road with both the donkey and the lion standing beside it, which is, of course, rather unusual sight. And people begin to stop and wonder at this, because the lion seems to be in some way restrained. He's not just acting like a lion, because usually a lion would go ahead and devour the body or mall the donkey. And he did neither. Now, when the prophet who had brought him back, this is verse 26 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 malled him and killed him as the word of the Lord had warned him. So he did, of course, mall the prophet and killing, but not the donkey, which would have been equally edible, I imagine. The prophet said to his sons, saddle the donkey for me. So he's back to allowing his sons to do that task, which he had done for the prophet and then he went out and found the body. And he brings it back, and he identifies with his ruined colleague in verse 30. It says, then he laid the body in his own tomb, and they mourned over him and said, oh my brother. Again, see, this indicates, I think this indicates, this one old prophet was not a false prophet, but was a true prophet who had allowed his ministry, as it were, his gift to fall into disuse. He was isolated alone inactive, and yet the very ruin of the young prophet became the means of this old prophets renewal. And so, I mean, there's a very interesting mixture of God's working with the young prophet who is brought to ruin by his disobedience, and the way in which the observation of the old prophet of the way God works with this young prophet is actually the means by which the old prophet it seems is renewed. And so, he ends by saying, oh my brother, and after burying him, he says to his sons, when I die, bury me with this prophet, because this is a real man of God. The message he declared by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethalon against all the shrines on the high places in the towns of Sumeria will certainly come true, and that message had included the desecration of the bones of the priests. And this prophet wants to be with this man's bones rather than someone else's, he identifies with him. He learned from the others' failure, the word of the Lord will certainly come true. In short, then the old prophet was revived by the failure and even the death of his colleague, and he may have been, we don't know, he may have been the one to preserve this story. It's always curious to wonder about, how was this story retained? Well, the old prophet would have been one who knew what went on, and he would have known that he lied. Yeah, Michael. Right, the question is, when he mentions in verse 31, when he says, when I die, could that be an anticipation of God's judgment on him for lying? Well, I'm not sure in that, you know, all of us anticipate some day dying, so it may be something as simple as saying, you know, I know that ultimately I'll die, and when I do, I want to be buried with this man. And certainly there are more sins to all of our charts than that lie. So I'm not sure that's the focus in this particular instance. But I do think the story is interesting for several reasons. One, because it stresses simply by the dent of repetition, the word of the Lord, and that the word of the Lord is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. It's not something to be trifled with, it can bring great renewal, but it can also bring about one's ruin. And even for servants of God, they can find their ruin, I'm talking about their temporal ruin, I'm not talking about losing their salvation or anything else, but I'm talking about they can find their ruin by being dismissive of the word of God. And so the young prophet is ruined in this story, even after all that he accomplishes, whereas the old prophet is dealt with graciously by God, despite his falling into inactivity, despite his lying, God uses this circumstance to sort of bring him back to his senses and to re-embrace the importance of the word of God. So even in the ruin of the one prophet, we see God graciously at work on behalf of the other, and I think the question that then arises is, so why is this story told here? You know, what does this have to do with Jeroboam? Remember, even with re-emboam, Jeroboam, what does this have to do with Jeroboam? Well, I think that last few verses in the chapter make that clear. In verse 33 it says, 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 with the sin of the house of Jeroboam that led to its downfall and to its destruction from the face of the earth. Even after this, you see, I think what is going on here is meant in this context to be an object lesson to Jeroboam, the word of the Lord is important. The details of the word of the Lord are important. What he says is to be observed and obeyed. It's not good enough just to erect altars of your own design, it's not good enough just to appoint priests of your own choosing. You can't invent festivals that you happen to want to celebrate. The word of the Lord is what is important. His word has been given, you must observe it or there will be certain ruin. But even after this, Jeroboam did not change his evil ways. So I think that is why this strange story is told in the first place. It is stressing something about what transpired in the life of Jeroboam. He had opportunity to come to his senses and to change just as the old prophet had done and yet he didn't. And so the sin of Jeroboam, just as the faithfulness of David will become not legendary in a fictional sense but will become a recurring motif in the books of kings. So that the wicked kings of Israel, of the north, sin as their father Jeroboam had done. He will become the quintessential sinner even as David becomes the quintessential man of God, a man after God's own heart, a man who pleases God. Then, as the story continues and we won't have time to get into this in any detail, having after this very weird story, we come back to a focus on Jeroboam and his rejection and his death and then a focus on Reaboam's idolatry and death and that brings chapter 14 to a close. Now, are there questions, comments, observations in just a few minutes before we take our next break? Anything further you want to ask or say about this section? Right. Yeah, the question is, was it a big deal in ancient Israel to be buried with your fathers as opposed to remaining unburied and we mentioned also that they sometimes speak of bringing the bodies back to be buried even out of Egypt? Joseph wanted his bones to be brought back to the land of promise and buried there. Yeah, it does seem to be both in terms of simple respect for the dead. I don't know how far to take it in terms of any kind of mystical identification with the fathers, but certainly it was considered bad and inappropriate for a body simply to be left out, not buried left at the mercy of the elements and of the wild beasts. Back in second Samuel, we remember I think Rizpa who, when her sons had been killed, went to considerable effort to keep the vultures, for instance, from getting to their bodies. So there was a concern for what was to be done with the bodies of the dead and to be left lying on the road in this fashion was something of a disgrace. Other comments or questions? All right, well let's stop here and take our next break and when we come back we will look at an episode in the life of Elijah.