A man of God, a new prophet, comes out of Judah, where the Lord was yet maintaining a light for David. He comes to Bethel to prophesy against Israel at the very moment that the ten-tribe kingdom has been formed.
“Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense” (1 Kings 13:1). It goes without saying that he who had made his own priesthood and had consecrated anyone who wished to be (1 Kings 13:33) could not have this priesthood in very high esteem. Subordinated to the royal authority, the priesthood had become a political instrument in his hands; and there was nothing surprising in the king arrogating to himself the right to carry out its rites according to his own pleasure.
The man of God cries against the altar (1 Kings 13:2), not against the idol. For man to imagine that he can replace God’s altar is more hateful in God’s eyes than anything else he can do. God’s altar is unique; this He has proclaimed before all. Believers have but one altar, Christ, the Lamb of God (Heb. 13:10). God will judge wicked men who want to set up another altar alongside His own. A worship instituted by man cannot subsist forever; divine judgment shall fall upon it, as upon the harlot of the Revelation. But God will not destroy it without at the same time putting the priests of this profane religion to death upon their own altar. The man of God announces a king of the seed of David, Josiah, who would overturn the high places of Israel, calling him by name three hundred fifty years prior to his day (1 Kings 13:2); he gives a present sign of that which would happen in years to come: the altar is rent and the ashes upon it are poured out.
The hand of the man who had established this odious system, the very hand which is stretched out against the man of God in order to seize him, is dried up at the very moment the king thought to suppress the witness of the Lord and of His Word. The hand which he is unable to bring back to himself again remains outstretched in his menacing gesture against the man of God and against God Himself as a monument to his powerlessness. But upon the king’s request the man of God intercedes that the judgment might temporarily be set aside, and that Jeroboam might be granted more time to repent (1 Kings 13:6.)
God shows here that He is God indeed; He preserves his loved ones, his witnesses, and defends them. He is for us as He was for His prophet, and who can be against us? What security for the testimony! We have nothing to fear when God sends us. No one, not even the highest authority on earth, can seize us, and should this power be granted to one, it is only in the measure in which the purposes of God may be realized through his instrumentality. Such was the case with Elijah, with the apostles Peter, John, Paul, and with all the Lord’s servants.
The value of the man by whom God renders testimony is so insignificant that the prophet is not even called by name in this account. He is simply a man of God—but what a title!
A man of God is a servant who represents God before men and upon whom God has impressed his own character. Such a man speaks for God, speaks as the oracles of God: an august and solemn function, but one which reduces man to nothing and removes all confidence in the flesh from him. Moses and David are each called a man of God; this name is also applied to the prophets in a time of ruin. Timothy was a man of God. 2 Timothy 3:17 shows us that he was prepared for his commission by the Word; 1 Timothy 6:11 shows us that he could not carry it out except by bringing his life and conduct into accord with what he was proclaiming.
The king’s violence had returned against himself; but Satan does not regard himself defeated; he comes onto the scene and seeks to use Jeroboam as his instrument. “Come home with me, and refresh thyself, and I will give thee a present” (1 Kings 13:7). Let us beware of the favors of the world even more than of its threats! If the man of God had accepted the king’s testimony of gratitude, it would have been a act of disobedience that would have dishonored the Lord. Jeroboam no doubt was ignorant of what God had prohibited His servant, but Satan was well aware of it. The profane king did realize that if the man of God would accept his hospitality and reward, he would in some measure connect himself with the king who had dishonored the Lord, and would thus tacitly declare that things were not as serious as he had first thought. Thereby his testimony would be annulled, as Satan well knew. But the prophet remains faithful; he follows the example of Abraham with the king of Sodom and accepts nothing; he obeys the word of the Lord and is not tempted by the greatest of temporal advantages. “If thou wilt give me half thine house, I will not go in with thee; neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place: For so was it charged me by the word of the Lord, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou camest” (1 Kings 13:8-9).
Whether he understands the charge given him by the Lord or not, the prophet’s path is simple: God has spoken to him; he must obey. He must not return by the same path; that would be to deny that the ways of God are without repentance. And the prophet obeys.
At Bethel there was an old prophet who was not living there by command of the Lord, for the Lord was not using him in His service, but he was living there with his family. Perhaps, we might even say probably, he had nothing to do with Jeroboam’s false religion, but his presence alone at Bethel sanctioned what was going on there, a thing which the prophet from Judah understood. Whether he wanted to be or not, the old prophet was associated with the evil, and the result of this association was that he, a prophet, was not in the secret of the thoughts of God. He learns them from others — from his sons who repeat the words of the Lord to him. God manifests neither Himself nor His thoughts to a servant found in an association that dishonors Him. No revelation was made to him; another was employed while he remained barren for the work of the Lord. How could he prophesy against Bethel when he was used to living there?
There is something more serious yet. This old prophet becomes an instrument of ruin for the ruin of the Lord’s witness (1 Kings 13:11-19). What was his interest in acting thus against him? It was this: If the man of God would listen to him, it would be like a divine sanction of his position at Bethel.
The same thing happens in our day also. More than one servant who should be separated from evil enters into association with another servant who is not, there in the very place where God is being dishonored. The old prophet does not think of the consequences for his brother of the course of unfaithfulness in which he is engaging him. A false position makes us selfish and lacking in uprightness.
The old prophet catches up with the man of God on the road that goes out from Bethel. To his request, “Come home with me, and eat bread,” he answers just as categorically as he had answered Jeroboam (1 Kings 13:16-17). “I am a prophet also as thou art,” replies the old prophet, “and an angel spoke to me by the word of Jehovah saying, Bring him back with thee into thy house, that he may eat bread and drink water” (1 Kings 13:18)—and the Word adds: “He lied unto him.” But how could the man of God lend an ear for even an instant to this lie? How could he imagine that there could be contradictions in the word that God had addressed to him?
And yet, this is what unfaithful Christians tell us in order to justify their bad walk in their own eyes. Everyone, they tell us, understands the Word differently. “I am a prophet also!” But no, thank God, His will can only be understood in one way, and who can understand it but the one who is separated from evil in obedience to the Word?
By appealing to brotherly love the old prophet succeeds where the king’s offer had failed. “Then he went back with him, and ate bread in his house, and drank water” (1 Kings 13:19). The old prophet was a pious and respectable man. Why should not the man of God believe what he said? But however pious he might be, should a man’s word have more weight than the word of God? The prophet from Judah is ensnared by the age and authority of his brother prophet and by his sympathy for him. Let us ask ourselves seriously what role these ties play in our religious life when the question of obedience to the Word is placed before us.
The old prophet is severely chastised for his lie (1 Kings 13:20-22), for he becomes God’s instrument to pronounce, against his will, the condemnation of his brother who had trusted in his word. He is obliged to judge in another the evil which he himself had committed. “Forasmuch as thou hast disobeyed the mouth of the Lord, and hast not kept the commandment which the Lord thy God commanded thee, but camest back, and hast eaten bread, and drunk water in the place, of which the Lord did say to thee, Eat no bread, and drink no water; thy carcass shall not come unto the sepulcher of thy fathers” (1 Kings 13:21-22). If the lie of the old prophet was punished, how much more the disobedience of the man of God who had been put in an even more intimate relationship to Him by His office and the Lord’s revelation.
Who does not recognize himself in the features of the man of God? “Thou hast disobeyed,” says the Lord. Who does not recognize himself in the features of the old prophet? Art thou a prophet also? Very well, the moment is coming when you must pronounce a curse upon your own work and punishment upon those whom you have led astray! And what will be left to you? Will it be a crown?
(1 Kings 13:23-26). The serpent, disguised as an angel of light, had seduced the man of God. Now he finds a lion on his path. The extraordinary circumstances of his death force one and all to recognize the divine intervention. The lion is not permitted to do more than to fulfill the word of the Lord. The old prophet, instrument for the fall of his brother, is the witness of the consequences of this fall. How this ought to have reached his conscience and filled his soul with sorrow and mourning (1 Kings 13:29)! His work is reduced to nothing and judged, but God uses this to bring him back; he himself is not lost. “When I am dead, then bury me in the sepulcher wherein the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones. For the saying which he cried by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, shall surely come to pass” (1 Kings 13:31-32). His soul is restored before he dies, and he seals the testimony of his brother against the altar of Bethel by his own, extending this testimony to all the high places in the cities of Samaria. Be our unfaithfulness what it may, God will not leave Himself without a witness. The weakest, the most guilty among us may become its bearer, if he repent. In his death the old prophet testifies to his association with the man of God (1 Kings 13:31).
But no testimony stops the idolatrous career of Jeroboam (1 Kings 13:33-34). He sets his heart on the religion he has invented more than on the word of the Lord; and yet this infallible Word had declared all to him beforehand by the mouth of Ahijah. He had been able to verify it by what had happened, had received its blessings without any positive result for his soul — he was about to make acquaintance with its judgment.