The inspired commentary on idolatry which we find in Romans shows us that it had its source in the corruption of the human mind and the haughtiness of the intellect. Accordingly, at the opening of 1 Kings 12 we find that it was the love of the world that erected the idolatrous altar at Bethel. Jeroboam thought it was the only way by which he could secure the kingdom. He did not deny, but rather corrupted, the religion of the people, making it serve his own ends.
At the opening of chapter 13 we learn how the Lord deals with this corruption. He sends His servant, under a fresh communication of His mind and a fresh anointing of His Spirit, from the land of Judah to the altar at Bethel, to denounce it and deliver the judgment of God against all who had connected themselves with it, but staying the execution of that judgment until the time of Josiah, the future king of David’s house. But He also gives a present pledge of such execution, for the altar was rent, and the ashes that were upon it were poured out. The judgment here pronounced was executed to the very letter (2 Kings 23), Josiah being prophesied of by name.
The Pledge – Long-suffering – Judgment
This is God’s common way: He pronounces judgment, but delays the execution, though giving a present pledge of it. The interval is called His long-suffering, and we know it is a time for quickening and gathering (2 Peter 3:1515And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; (2 Peter 3:15)). Enoch pronounced the judgment of the ungodly, and we know from God that this judgment is still to be executed, but the flood was a pledge fulfillment. The Lord pronounced the judgment of Jerusalem in Matthew 24, and we know from the very terms of the sentence that it is still to be executed, but the Roman invasion was a pledge fulfillment of it.
Jeroboam was indignant at the man of God who had pronounced this sentence against his altar, and he stretched out his arm as commanding his servants to lay hold of him. But the hand of God laid hold on Jeroboam, and his outstretched arm became rigid and withered. Then his mind is changed, and he sues the man of God to pray for the restoration of his arm. This is done; then he invites the man of God to come home with him to his palace for refreshment and reward. But in the spirit of Daniel he lets the king know that he may keep his gifts to himself and give his rewards to another. He leaves the scene of God’s curse and sets himself on the way back to Judah, having done the business committed to him by “the word of the Lord.” The altar and its fruits are left to meet the judgment of God in its season.
The Old Prophet
Now, however, the scene changes. We no longer see the man of God and the king together, but we are to see the man of God in company with an old prophet who at that time lived in Bethel. We are exposed to special temptations, if we live on borderlands or in equivocal circumstances and conditions. The old prophet, saint of God as he was, lived near the altar. The devil uses him, and with a lie in his mouth, he brings the man of God back from the road that was leading him down to Judah, to eat and drink with him in his house at Bethel.
Paul would pronounce an anathema upon even an angel if he dared to gainsay that word which he had received from God. But the man of God was not in this vigor of Paul. He surrendered the word which he had received from God to the word (as he judged it to be) of an angel, and he goes back to eat and drink in the place of which the Lord had said to him, “Thou shalt eat no bread nor drink water there” (1 Kings 13:1717For it was said to me by the word of the Lord, Thou shalt eat no bread nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou camest. (1 Kings 13:17)).
The Beginning of Judgment
And here another divine principle gets a very striking illustration. God is judging according to every man’s work (1 Peter 1:1717And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: (1 Peter 1:17)); that is, He is disciplining His people now. Judgment at the house of God has begun (1 Peter 4:1717For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:17)), and so it is here. The judgment on Jeroboam and his priests is delayed; the judgment of the man of God shall be immediate. He shall now be judged of the Lord that he may not be condemned with the world (or Jeroboam) by-and-by (see 2 Kings 23:17-1817Then he said, What title is that that I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God, which came from Judah, and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the altar of Beth-el. 18And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria. (2 Kings 23:17‑18)). The word falls in judgment on him, as he sits at the table of the old prophet eating and drinking, for he was eating and drinking judgment to himself. Shortly after, as he resumes his journey home to Judah, a lion meets and slays him.
How full of solemn meaning all this is! The judgment of the world is stayed; the discipline of the saints is proceeding. There was a personal pledge of the future judgment of the world, and there shall be now a present pledge of the future salvation of the saint. The altar was rent, as we saw, and the ashes poured out; so also the lion is not allowed to touch the carcass of the man of God or to lay his deadly paw upon the ass that had carried him. His body is reserved for final honor, though his life was a present forfeit to the holy discipline of God. It would have been the nature of the lion to kill the ass as well as its rider and to devour the carcass, but he acted as truly under divine commission in the death of the man of God as the man of God himself had acted when he pronounced judgment on the altar. What varied and instructive illustrations of truth all these things are!
Their Burial
The old prophet, too, is to be seen again. There was in him that which was of God, as well as that which was of nature and the flesh. But he was now old, and he had lived carelessly as a saint; he had taken up his dwelling in an unclean place. Satan uses him to corrupt his younger brother, a freshly anointed vessel of the Spirit. But still he seems to have been a “righteous man,” like Lot, though living in a Sodom. His lamentation over the man of God was genuine, as that of one saint over another—as genuine as the lamentation of David over Jonathan. It was the sorrow of a saint of God, and he charges his sons, when he should die, to bury him in the same sepulchre where he was now religiously laying the remains of him whom he calls his “brother,” the man of God.
All this speaks of the better nature in him. And when the hand of the Lord executes by Josiah the judgment he had now pronounced by the man of God, when the power of His hand comes to make good the declarations of His Spirit, and the day of the world’s doom arrives—this Jeroboam-world of which we are speaking—the hand of God respects the old prophet as it does the man of God. Josiah saves the sepulchre of these men and preserves the bones of each of them from the common penal burning, under which he was putting all others found in that unclean place around the altar at Bethel, as we read so fully and strikingly in 2 Kings 23.
All this gives us a lesson of very varied moral instruction. We see the way of God in the judgment of the world and in the discipline of His saint, we see the danger of living near Sodom, and we learn afresh that God’s Word must be clung to in the face of all and everything.
J. G. Bellett (adapted)