The Lion's Share of the Prophets

New Years party animals?

I pray your New Years’ celebrations were beautiful and wonderful and fantastic. We had a great day… and here was the highlight for me:

This (party picture) was us last night.

No… wait. Wrong picture. This was us last night.

In bed around 10 pm. Party animals.

But this one time… in my 30s… we stayed up way past midnight.

New Years is a time of looking back across the year at what we have done… at what God has done.

And looking forward to what He has for us.

Look at what God has done in our church this last year. Teaching us to love our community, to get connected, and today we have relationships with folks in our community we never would have dreamed of last year.

What’s next for Next Step Christian Church?

We continue to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, no doubt. There is a verse out of our last series in Corinthians that just hasn’t let me go:

Pursue Prophecy

1 Corinthians 14:1 ESV

Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

This will be our guiding text for at least a few months.

Pursue love - that’s to love God and love others. It comes as a summary of all of 1 Corinthians 13. This is fundamental to who we are at Next Step, to who we are as followers of Jesus.

By this they will know we are his disciples: if we love one another.

From there, we seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit that filled and empowered Jesus’ ministry, to be like our Master… and that means using the spiritual gifts He gives us.

And, Paul stresses, especially that we may prophesy.

And we don’t do that often.

And maybe we don’t know how.

So let’s learn.

How does one learn to be a prophet? To prophesy? How about from “the prophets.”

So we are going to dive in to all the prophets of the Bible. Not every story, not every verse, certainly not every prophet… but we will hit most of them.

And on the way we are looking to learn: what does it mean to be a prophet, to prophesy, and how do I do it?

This is a year of bold witness.

This is a year of prophecy.

What is Prophecy?

Prophecy - hear from God, say what He says.

See God, show what you saw.

Super Hero Prophets

Now, there are lots of dangers as we enter into the world of the prophets. One of which is that the prophets we are reading about are the super heroes of the Bible. The famous ones. There were hundreds and hundreds of prophets in different seasons of Israel’s life. There were professional prophets, people who God used for a moment, people who God used for a lifetime, people of other vocations that God spoke through. Jeremiah was a priest, Amos was a shepherd...

But these are the guys whose word remained for thousands of years. The next prophets, Elijah and Elisha, they are prophets whose deeds, acts of miraculous power, super hero deeds… they echo through the ages.

That, in and of itself, is not prophecy.

A very real and present danger is for us to pursue this to get our spiritual merit badge. To stand up and speak for God and everyone admire how holy and spiritual we are.

That’s not holiness, that’s sin in us.

Prophecy is not about me getting the glory… it is about God getting the glory however He wants. Whether through my words, through my silence, through my actions, through my death.

The truly amazing thing is that God would use me at all: a broken, all-too-prideful, all-too-sinful vessel.

The Nameless Prophet

1 Kings 13:1 ESV

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.

What’s this guy’s name? We don’t know. We know only this, he was a “man of God.” Sent by “the word of the Lord.”

Jereboam was a king, the king of Israel who led the 10 northern tribes in rebellion against Rehoboam, the son of Solomon. Civil War and the Kingdom broke.

Jereboam was actually given his kingship by God… but He didn’t want his people going down to the temple in Jerusalem to worship, that would threaten his political power. So he made his own altar to God to worship where was convenient for his own political goals and ambitions.

God sends this nameless prophet to rebuke him.

1 Kings 13:2–3 ESV

And the man cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, “O 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.’ ”

This is a function of true prophecy, by the way, God authenticates His own word. That’s what all the cool miracles are about. It isn’t the prophets cool super powers, God will show His Word to be true. In that sense, you don’t have to worry about it. Like this:

1 Kings 13:4 ESV

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.

Jereboam stretches out to pit his power against God’s… and that hand withers. Instant Zombie Hand.

How fast do you think Jereboam changed his tune? “Quick, tear down the altar...”

1 Kings 13:5–7 ESV

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 the king 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.”

But God had given this nameless prophet very specific instructions, and he was wise enough to obey:

1 Kings 13:8–10 ESV

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.

Then here comes Nameless Prophet #2

1 Kings 13:11–17 ESV

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 this is the craziest thing to me in this whole story. Here’s this prophet, a true prophet as we will see. He says this:

1 Kings 13:18–19 ESV

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.

WHY????!

Why would he do that, just lie to him? Was he jealous, speaking lies in the name of the Lord? Why didn’t God strike Him dead on the spot?

And instead of rebuking and condemning this liar face… God actually speaks through the liar-face prophet, this time for real:

1 Kings 13:20–22 ESV

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 of which he said to you, “Eat no bread and drink no water,” your body shall not come to the tomb of your fathers.’ ”

God spoke through the very “prophet” who tricked him into disobedience to call out his disobedience. And this “your body shall not come to the tomb...” that isn’t a far-off prediction of where he will be buried.

1 Kings 13:23–25 ESV

And after he had eaten bread and drunk, he saddled the 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 it in the city where the old prophet lived.

Oh, Aslan!!!

Oh… no!

Instant penalty for his disobedience. As Aslan says, “I am not a tame lion.” No kidding! God isn’t kidding around when He says He requires obedience. More about that later.

1 Kings 13:29–32 ESV

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.”

Where is the focus here at the end? Not on the prophet’s sin or failing. The “word of the Lord” stands. It is still true. It is not less true because the man who delivered it. And, wonder of wonders, the “man of God” is still honored because he did this one thing right.

He heard from God… and he said what he heard. He was a faithful and bold witness, even if just for a moment.

Takeaways

Don’t mess with lions

There’s a lot of lessons we can take, here. Obey God or get killed by a lion.

We might read that as unfair, but God’s always been clear: “the wages of sin is death… eternal life is a gift from God.” Undeserved by definition. We deserve death-by-lion, we praise God for life in Jesus. Hallelujah!

Don’t eat in Samaria

What did God say to the man of God? “Don’t eat or drink in Samaria.”

We don’t know how God spoke to the “man of God.” How God speaks is going to be one of our major questions as we study the prophets. The Bible says “God said” a lot and doesn’t always reveal the method or the means of His speaking.

But somehow this man had a word of God he knew was from God. Enough to say “No” to the King of Samaria.

When you have a word that you know is from God, you can’t compromise it. You don’t turn away from it.

We have a HUGE advantage over this guy and all the prophets we are going to read about it. A crazy gift from God, an authoritative collection of things God said to people over the last several thousand years. Checked and checked and rechecked. Authenticated by miracle, by confirmation of other prophets, men of God, by Jesus himself… and then by the power of the Holy Spirit through the working of the early church.

We can check the “word of God” we hear against the “Word of the Lord” we know to be true.

Which leads to our next takeaway:

Don’t believe everyone who says “God told me...”

Why did the old prophet lie? We can guess and speculate, but we don’t know.

We know this: the man of God from Judah shouldn’t have listened. He already had a word of God.

I’m sure he was hungry and especially thirsty on the dry near-desert hills of Israel. He wanted what the old man said to be true.

Remember those words of counsel from 1 Cor 14? This is true whenever someone comes to speak before the church, including me. You, disciple of Jesus, have the responsibility to listen carefully… and to ask “is this God speaking?”

1 Corinthians 14:29 ESV

Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.

There’s prophetic speaking… and there’s prophetic listening.

Don’t listen to everyone who says “this is the Word of the Lord.” Test it against the Word of the Lord you already have.

God can speak to and through me.

There’s a lot we can take away from this story. But here is why we started our journey through the prophets here.

Before we see Elijah, the GOAT of prophets. Before Elisha, double-spirit inheritance, more miracles than Elijah himself. Bald super-hero.

Before the prophets whose words ring with such power that they have been preserved and copied for centuries and millennia...

That’s a high bar, maybe a bit intimidating to even hope to aspire to. We don’t look at those prophets and think “that could be me.”

These two nameless prophets say this to us:

“The old man is a mixture of curiosity, dishonesty, accuracy, and conviction.”

The nameless prophet is a mix of boldness and obedience with uncertainty and doubt leading to sin and death.

And now I recognize myself in the prophets of the Bible.

If God can use these chuckle-heads, He can use me.

They messed up, they lied sometimes, they got it wrong at times, they got murdered by lions sometimes.

I hate it when that happens!

And yet,

1 Kings 13:1 ESV

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.

There is a man of God. I want that to be said of me.

And the “Word of the Lord” came to him. And he proclaimed it boldly.

He heard what God said. And He said it.

That is to the glory of God. Not this guy’s glory, he is dead and we don’t know his name. But all glory to God, to Yahweh, to Jesus.

That’s what we are about this year.

May we hear from God. May we learn to listen. To recognize His voice. To catch sight of Him in dreams and visions and life.

May we hear the Word of the Lord. May we read deeply and regularly. May we test every “new word” against His tried and true Word.

And then, with confidence and boldness, may we speak God’s Word after Him.

To encourage His people.

To equip His disciples.

To give God all the glory. Amen.