1 Kings 13

[0:00] 1 Kings 13. Okay. As always, especially when we get into our historical writings, we've got to put things in context because so many times we're picking things up in the historical works kind of mid-story if we take our breaks in Scripture.

[0:16] We have come to one of those grand times in the history of the nation of Israel that really is pivotal, and that is the division of the kingdoms. So now you have the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. You have the tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the southern kingdom referred to as Judah, and the other ten tribes as the northern kingdom henceforth referred to as Israel.

[0:37] You know that that happened after the death of Solomon. A major result of that is because Solomon had this grand problem of a divided heart. We find in 1 Kings chapter 3 that it tells us now Solomon loved the Lord his God. And we have to take it at its face value that it declares that Solomon loved the Lord.

[0:55] Then we find in 1 Kings chapter 11, and Solomon loved many foreign women. So the same affinity that he had for the Lord is the same affinity they had for these foreign women.

[1:05] And then he married them and brought all this encristic worship together and began to really this place of Jerusalem, which was to be designated for the name of the Lord God, and to be a place of such monotheistic worship, becomes a hub of polytheism and all this other things being brought into it.

[1:24] So after Solomon's death, because God spoke to him twice, once at the beginning of his reign, and second after all the sin that had manifested itself, yet he kind of forsook what God had said and wanted to go his own way.

[1:41] So for David's sake, he didn't end Solomon's reign then, but when his son Rehoboam comes to power, that's when the kingdom is divided. And I would say all this to get us into this background, because we've left Rehoboam and the southern tribe behind for just a few moments, because we're focusing on Jeroboam, who is now the king of the northern tribes, the land of Israel.

[2:05] And Jeroboam, if you remember, they made him king. And one of the things that we noticed in that, it would have been in the 12th chapter, that there was no priest, there was no anointing, and there was no sacrifice or worshiping at the time of Jeroboam's coronation.

[2:23] So he's definitely a man-made king. So God ordained these things, okay? And the sovereignty of God, it happened just like God said it would. Jeroboam was going to take this throne.

[2:34] And God spoke to Jeroboam before all this and told him that this was going to happen as part of his judgment upon Solomon. You have to have all this hindsight or this backstory so that you can comprehend what's going on in this chapter, okay?

[2:48] You remember, Jeroboam was a valiant man, so much so that Solomon saw him and put him in charge of all the workers and laborers of his region.

[2:59] His region is the Ephraimites, who actually opposed the reign of Solomon at some point, and really the suppression that he brought down upon him. So it was Jeroboam who posed the question to Jeroboam about lightening the load.

[3:11] And I know we're given a lot of background, but you need to understand this. Long before the division occurred, God had sent a prophet to tell Jeroboam that he was going to divide the nation, that he was using it as a disciplinary action against the sin of Solomon.

[3:25] But God affirmed to Jeroboam that he would be king, and this is where we pay attention, that if he would walk in faithfulness, God would give him an enduring family, okay?

[3:37] This is not the Davidic covenant. This is not one of those salvific covenants that the Messiah is going to come through this line. This is a clear command of God to Jeroboam.

[3:49] If you walk in faithfulness and you obey me, I will give you an enduring legacy as a family. Your sons will reign in your place because this is my working, my doing.

[3:59] And all these things come about just as God says. Then, where we pick it up in the end of the 12th chapter, Jeroboam decides to maintain his kingdom instead of basing it upon the promise of God.

[4:15] God said, if you're faithful, the kingdom will last. He wanted to maintain the kingdom by making it easier for the people to worship in their locale. Problem is, is the northern kingdom didn't have Jerusalem. They didn't have a temple.

[4:26] They didn't have priests. They didn't have the Levites. They didn't have any of that stuff. So, he built two golden calves. He put one in Dan. He put one in Bethel. Bethel, Dan is the most northern part of the kingdom.

[4:36] Bethel is on the way to Jerusalem. So, if you're going to worship, hey, there's a more convenient place like a Dollar General, right? There's something on the corner. You can stop here. You don't have to go all the way to town. So, that's where the golden calf is in Bethel.

[4:48] And then, he sets up an altar. And then, he mimics, and this is right at the end of the 12th chapter. Just as there were festivals in Jerusalem, Jerusalem, now there's going to be festivals in Israel or the northern kingdom.

[5:02] They're just going to be a month or a day late, just a little bit. And they're going to be like them, but they're not going to be them. So, he's kind of walking close to truth. And he sets up this worship, this false worship with these false priests, with these false altars.

[5:15] And that's where we're at. That's where we left it. Now, we say all that because the 12th chapter bleeds into the 13th chapter. So, I'm going to catch the last few verses of the 12th chapter so that I can read into the 13th chapter.

[5:30] And I want you to see it. So, let's pick it up in verse 32 of the 12th chapter. Jeroboam instituted a feast in the 8th month on the 15th day of the month. The Jewish feast is the 7th month on the 15th day.

[5:40] So, he's a month after that. So, he instituted a feast on the 8th month on the 15th day of the month, like the feast, which is in Judah. And he went up to the altar. Thus, he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves, which he had made.

[5:54] And he stationed in Bethel the priest of the high places, which he had made. Then he went up to the altar, which he had made in Bethel on the 15th day in the 8th month, even in the month, which he had devised in his own heart.

[6:04] So, there you go. Which he had devised in his own heart. And he instituted a feast for the sons of Israel and went up to the altar to burn incense. Here's our text. Now, behold, the reason that is, is because on that very day, when he was doing this, that he had devised in his own heart.

[6:19] At that moment. So, don't lose that. God sent this man. Okay? So, as he was doing that, now, behold, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord, while Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense.

[6:33] He cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, Oh, altar, altar, thus says the Lord. Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David. He said, Josiah by name.

[6:43] And on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and human bones shall be burned on you. Then he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which the Lord has spoken.

[6:56] Behold, the altar shall be split apart, and the ashes which are on it shall be poured out. Now, when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar in Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, And he sees him, but his hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up, so that he could not draw it back to himself.

[7:15] The altar also was split apart, and the ashes were poured out from the altar, according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the Lord. The king said to the man of God, Please entreat the Lord your God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored to me.

[7:28] So the man of God entreated the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him, and it became as it was before. Then the king said to the man of God, Come home with me, and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.

[7:38] But the man of God said to the king, If you were to give me half of your house, I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water in this place. For so it was commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying, You shall eat no bread, nor drink water, nor return by the way which you came.

[7:54] So he went another way, and did not return by the way which he had came to Bethel. Now when O prophet was living in Bethel, And his sons came and told him all the deeds which the man of God had done in the day of Bethel, The words which he had spoken to the king, these also they related to their father.

[8:11] Their father said to them, Which way did he go? Now his sons had seen the way which the man of God had came from Judah had gone. And then he said to his sons, Saddle the donkey for me.

[8:22] So they saddled the donkey for him, and he rode on it. So 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.

[8:33] Then he said to him, Come home with me and eat bread. He said, I cannot return with you, nor go with you, nor will I eat bread or drink water with you in this place. For a command came to me by the word of the Lord, You shall eat no bread, nor drink water there.

[8:47] Do not return by going the way which you came. He said to him, I also am a prophet like you. And an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.

[8:59] But he lied to him. So he went back with him and ate bread in his house and drank water. Now it came about, as they were sitting down at the table, that the word of the Lord came to the prophet, that says the old man, who had brought him back.

[9:11] And he cried to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, Thus says the Lord, because you have disobeyed the command of the Lord, and have not observed the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you, but have returned and eaten bread and drunk water, in the place of which he had said to you, Eat no bread and drink no water.

[9:27] Your body shall not come to the grave of your fathers. It came about, after he had eaten bread, and after he had drunk, that he saddled the donkey for him, now for the prophet whom he had brought back.

[9:38] Now when he had gone, a lion met him on the way and killed him. And his body was thrown on the road, with the donkey standing beside it. The lion also was standing beside the donkey.

[9:49] And behold, men passed by and saw the body thrown on the road, and the lion standing beside the body. So they came and told it in the city where the old prophet lived. Now when the prophet who brought him back from the way heard it, he said, It is the man who disobeyed the command of the Lord.

[10:04] Therefore the Lord has given him to the lion, which has torn him and killed him, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke to him. Then he spoke to his son, saying, Saddle the donkey for me. And they saddled it, and he went and found his body, thrown on the road with the donkey and the lion standing beside the body.

[10:19] And the lion had not eaten the body, nor torn the donkey. So the prophet took up the body of the man of God, and laid it on the donkey, and brought it back. And he came to the city of the old prophet to mourn and to bury him. He laid his body in his own grave, and they mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brother.

[10:33] After he had buried him, he spoke to his son, saying, When I die, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried. Lay my bones beside his bones. For the thing shall surely come to pass, 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.

[10:51] After this event, Jeroboam did not return from the evil way, but again he made priests of the high places, for among all the people, and anything who would, he ordained to be priests of the high places.

[11:03] This event became sin to the house of Jeroboam, even to blot it out and destroy it from off the face of the earth. 1 Kings chapter 13. I know we gave a lot of back story, but I want you to see, I want you to see this evening, a warning against disobedience.

[11:18] A warning against disobedience. Now before we get too out of shape, I want you to understand that the prophet is a warning against disobedience, not only in what he says, but also how he dies.

[11:31] This is one of those instances where we look and go, oh, that's unfair. Well, who are we to say to the potter, right? God is sovereign. We need to understand these matters, and we need to know what's going on.

[11:41] But God really, hopefully we'll understand it by the time we're done. God is giving a clear warning in word and deed about the dangers of disobedience, and he's giving it to a gentleman who has already heard the word of God, that is Jeroboam, who is in the act of leading in false worship.

[11:58] At the very moment that he instituted it, at the very moment of this feast, which he devised his own heart, at the very moment that he's beginning the feast is when this prophet comes, and he makes this declaration.

[12:10] So we're going to see these things. We're going to see this warning against disobedience, not only in how he said, but also in how he died. And we'll understand it. As Warren Wiersbe says, the man's message and the man's method are both the same thing.

[12:25] He's doing the same thing here in the manner of his life and in the manner of his speech. So we want to see the warning and we want to understand it because God is getting something across. Unfortunately, we'll go ahead and understand.

[12:36] You know, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story, Jeroboam doesn't listen. So we know that, and he doesn't respond to that, but we'll see the outcome of it in just a minute. The first thing I want you to notice here is a declared word.

[12:49] There is a declared word. So it says that at that moment, while Jeroboam is about to burn the offering, as he's actually burning the offering, because there's already ashes on this altar, at the very moment that he's standing beside the altar, the man of the Lord comes from Judah.

[13:07] God had a messenger, right? So we understand this. This is where we understand the sovereignty and the grace and the mercy of God. Okay, so it was God's ordained plan that the kingdom would be divided.

[13:20] And it was God's choice that Jeroboam would be king of the divided kingdom to the north. Though they made Jeroboam king, God had already proclaimed that he would be king.

[13:32] God had given him the word in advance that he should walk in obedience. God was already responding to his disobedience by sending and commissioning the man of God to go declare the word of God.

[13:44] So God is displaying his grace and mercy here because much like Solomon, God speaks repeatedly to this one individual. This whole concept, and I know I've said this before and we need to understand it, this whole concept that the Old Testament God is a big mean judging God that everybody's dying and the New Testament God is a God of love is so false.

[14:04] It couldn't be further from the truth because every time we open up scripture, we see the mercy and the grace and the patience and the long-suffering nature of the Lord our God. What we do have is the curtains pulled back in the Old Testament that show us the end outcome of man's sins and that is the disciplinary action of God which he takes after his long-suffering is warranted him.

[14:25] So we understand this. We see that God has declared to Jeroboam prior to his becoming king and now in the very moment when he is about to institute this feast, this man of the Lord shows up from Judah.

[14:39] Now if you remember when the kingdom is divided and they said to your tent, so Israel and they go there and everybody that is faithful to the Lord stays here, this man shows up and he walks into the presence of this false worship.

[14:51] He's at Bethel. Bethel is a pretty important place in the Old Testament but he comes there and he walks in and he declares this message and the word is declared and it's declared with clarity and it's declared with purpose.

[15:07] He says, O altar, O altar, right? He's looking at the altar and he gives this prophetic word that there would be one from the family of David that would rise up and burn the priest on it and he names him by name, Josiah.

[15:20] Now, Bible scholars, some Bible scholars will tell you that that was probably added later, that the name was added later. I don't tend to agree to that. Some people will tell you this so you kind of confront it with one of two things.

[15:33] Either this prophet knew the man's name a hundred plus years before his reign or someone that was a scribe that was translating scripture by hand later said, oh, and his name was Josiah.

[15:44] I added it later. I tend to think that God calls him by name much the same way that you see Cyrus being called by name as being the king that would issue a decree that they could go back out of Babylonian captivity.

[15:55] I think God is being very clear here. Some will say that we don't see this because 2 Kings tells us when Josiah does this. He does these very acts and it is not declared there in 2 Kings where it says the prophet that was called by name.

[16:09] I don't think that absence is enough to attest the reality that exists in here. I think God in his sovereignty, if he knew Jeroboam was going to be king, also knew there would be a king named Josiah who would do these things.

[16:20] I think God is speaking with clarity and God is speaking with purpose and God is bringing it about so that when it does, we go, oh, wow, there it is. That's exactly what God said would happen. So anyhow, this prophet comes and he declares that this altar is going to be full of human bones and these things come about, by the way, just like he says.

[16:39] Josiah comes in and he burns the priest's body on this altar of false worship and this judgment act of God. So again, when we get to that, you know, because we're more than a century removed from that, so hold on to this because when that time passes, we can't say, oh, man, God is so mean.

[16:55] Look what he had Josiah do. He killed all the priests. No, you can say, look how patient God was because a century prior to this, God had given them opportunity to repent. Right? Remember these things. And much like when we said when the people came out of Egypt and they came into the Canaan, we said, oh, well, they're coming in and they're fighting all these battles and they're pushing these people out of their land.

[17:12] Right, but you fail to remember that at Shechem, when Abraham called upon the name of the Lord, he was doing so much more than praying. He was wandering around the land, calling upon the name, to call upon the name.

[17:24] I know I'm giving you a lot of information, but it's Wednesday nights and you can handle it, right? It's the same thing that we find in the book of Genesis where it says that the descendants of Abraham began to call upon the name of the Lord.

[17:35] To call upon the name means to proclaim the excellencies of the Lord God. That's a good way, right? It's so much more than prayer. It is to proclaim the excellencies of the Lord God's name.

[17:46] So Abraham was walking around the land of Canaan preaching. 400 years later, God says, they didn't repent, so now I'm going to judge them.

[17:58] God will not be mocked. He's not a big mean God, but he is a true God. He's a faithful God. Right? So anyway, same thing here. This prophet comes in and he makes this declaration.

[18:09] The word of God is clear. Now, we understand that it is not just Jeroboam who gets a word from the Lord. Because the prophet himself, who had come from Judah, he says, he was a man of the Lord who came by the word of the Lord.

[18:22] That is, it was the word of God that moved him and it was the word of God that he declared. This is important. God moved him by his word. God had given him a clear word.

[18:34] When these things come about, we're not going to get to the testimonial sign in just a minute. Just save that for just a minute. We're talking about the word here. Okay? So he declares this to Jeroboam and everything comes about as he said it was and Jeroboam's like, oh, we'll come back, you know, I want to, words are important, by the way, we were talking about this to Braden earlier today that the word of God is important in its wording and you need to pay attention to that because Jeroboam, when all these things happen, said, would you cry out to the Lord, your God?

[19:00] Did you catch that? He didn't say, would you cry out to the Lord God? He just said, would you cry out to the Lord, your God? He wasn't owning that words are important. So anyway, Jeroboam says, won't you come back to my house? I'll reward you because Jeroboam is making priests out of people, right?

[19:14] And if you got a priest who can do things like this, you got a priest. So won't you come back to the house and I'll give you a reward. Now the prophet from Judah tells us the word of the Lord that was declared to him.

[19:26] He says, I can't do it. Hold on to this because without this, it makes no sense. The rest of the account makes no sense. God has declared to me, you shall eat no food, you shall drink no water and you shall not return the way which you came.

[19:39] Right? Very clear word. As clear as he was in what was going to happen on the altar, God was equally clear to the man from Judah. He was moved, propelled by the word of God.

[19:52] God had declared to him, go declare this and leave. Very clear. As a matter of fact, he repeats that word again in the passage because what we find, God had spoken clearly.

[20:11] He'd given clear guidelines. He'd given a clear judgment. He'd given all these things. So you have the declared word. Second, you see a displayed sign.

[20:24] So the prophet comes with a word. Side note, other than the Shekinah glory falling and the Lord God speaking to like Solomon audibly, no miracle has been recorded since the life of Samuel up to this point.

[20:43] It's a pretty big gap. Okay? The miraculous was not that rampant. By the way, I want you to pay attention in your historical study of the Old Testament.

[20:55] They become a lot more prevalent after the division of the kingdom. Think Elijah and Elisha. Right? God is declaring the truth here. This is where we begin to see prophets that are arising. The school of prophets comes up and you begin to see the miraculous testimonial signs.

[21:12] But anyway, and it's all because it's based upon this same principle. God declared a word and then he validated the word with a testimonial sign.

[21:24] He validated it by saying this. The prophet says, this is what's going to happen. Josiah is going to come and he's going to burn bones upon you. And so that you may know the altar will split and ashes will fall out.

[21:35] That's the sign. Okay? This is a testimonial sign to the authenticity of the word. Because what was going to happen, the judgment, is years in the future.

[21:50] And it would be really easy for people to go, oh, well, I mean, it's been a couple years and that hasn't happened yet. It's more than a century coming. And yet he says, so that you may know that I'm not just saying something.

[22:03] I'll give you, God is giving you a testimonial sign so that you will understand the weight of what I'm declaring. This is important because God, again, in his sovereignty, in his mercy, in his grace, when the prophets come with a word of the Lord, they also come with a validation of that word.

[22:21] Right? Jesus, the signs were never used, the miraculous signs of Jesus were never used to draw men. The signs were to authenticate what he has said.

[22:35] They are testimonial signs to the reality or the validation of the word. People are not saved by miracles. Okay? If that was the case, all 5,000 men, so about 10,000, would have been flooding and not allowed that.

[22:52] And one of the greatest falling aways, someone once said, and I can't remember who it was, mine fails me, is that Jesus was probably the worst at attracting crowds because every time he got a crowd, he ran them away.

[23:04] Right? He fed the 5,000 and they came back to him again. He says, you're not seeking me because of what I said, you're seeking me because of what I did. And then he says something very hard. He says, I gave you food to eat, but you don't need that food. What you need is the bread from heaven.

[23:15] He says, oh, yeah, give us that bread. He said, I'm the bread. Whoever eats of my flesh and drinks of my blood shall have eternal life. And he says, and everybody left him. So the miraculous does not save, does not redeem.

[23:26] It's not a matter of seeing with our eyes. Right? The miraculous event of salvation is the change of heart that happens because the Lord God Almighty replaces our heart of stone with a heart of flesh.

[23:38] That's the miracle of salvation. He does a sovereign work of redemption. But what we see here is this sign is given to validate what he's declared. And King gets mad, sticks his hand out, and then there's another sign that just validates the sign that's about to take place.

[23:52] And his hand becomes paralyzed and he can't draw it back. And this is where we get this whole, you know, pray to the Lord, you're God for me. And God restores it. And then the altar burst open and the ashes come out. So everything that he said validates the word that he has declared.

[24:07] Now, keep in mind with this because not only is Jeroboam seeing this, but so too is the prophet. Right? He's there. God is using him.

[24:19] And we understand everything that has happened. That is, God has said it and God has validated it. The greatest offense for the gospel, most people tell you, if you're really critical of scripture and critical of the gospel, they'll tell you the door on which the gospel hinges is the resurrection.

[24:44] Because if the resurrection is true, then we have to go back and everything Jesus said is true. And if everything Jesus said is true, then everything that he put the stamp of approval upon, everything, that great testimonial sign of the resurrection validates everything else.

[25:02] In the case here with Jeroboam and the prophet, the prophet has just witnessed, along with Jeroboam, this validation that God means what he says, it's going to happen. And so the word of God could not be doubted.

[25:17] Not only the word that was delivered to Jeroboam, but the word that was delivered to the prophet as well. And the question is, how are we going to respond to that? Which gets us to the third thing. The third thing that we notice is a decided rebellion.

[25:30] It is a decided rebellion. Now we enter into the story which kind of makes us scratch our head and that is the old prophet. It says the man left and he went back another way. But I want you to notice that even in the account of the old prophet it says here's this old prophet who's living in Bethel.

[25:47] Now we can stop right there. There was also an old prophet it says who was living in Bethel. The reason that's important is because when the kingdom was divided, northern kingdom, southern kingdom, every faithful follower of the Lord God, the Levites, the priests, and prophets went south.

[26:09] And the reason they went south is because that's where the temple was. And they knew that true worship could only be where the temple was. That's where the Shekinah glorified. The fact that this old prophet who's not an invalid, he rides a donkey twice.

[26:24] He picks up a dead man and puts him on a donkey. I don't know why he keeps making his son saddle his donkey but he's at least capable of riding a donkey. Right? The fact that this capable old prophet is living in Bethel, the seat of false worship, should tell us something.

[26:45] It should tell us he's got a heart issue. And we shouldn't be surprised when we see what happens. But not only do we notice that's where he's living, we see that his sons come in and tell him everything that he did.

[26:59] And I almost missed this when I was reading it the first several times. It says that his sons came in and told him everything that this prophet from Judah did. And then it says, and they also told him everything the prophet said to the king.

[27:14] Now what had the prophet said to the king? Though you give me half of your house, I cannot come because the Lord my God has told me I cannot eat food or drink water or come back the way which I have came.

[27:26] So this old prophet knows. Because that's what his sons have declared to him. He gets his sons to sell his donkey, he gets on the donkey and he goes and he finds the way that he went and he finds him underneath an oak tree.

[27:38] He says the same thing to the man. Come back and eat. You know, why don't you come back and get something? And the man from Judah says the same thing. He says, the Lord told me I should not eat bread nor drink water nor return the way which I came.

[27:50] The Lord told me. Now, we know it's unfair. It seems unfair at least on human terms because here's another prophet, quote unquote, old prophet. And this old prophet looks at him and says, but an angel of the Lord told me a word of God that I should come get you and bring you back and give you something to eat.

[28:10] And then the scripture tells us he lied to him or he deceived him. We don't know why he did it. The motives really doesn't matter, by the way. Don't get caught up on the old prophet. I know we want to point fingers and say, well, the old man lied and he shouldn't have lied and it's his fault that the prophet died.

[28:25] No, it's not. It's not his fault. Because the man from Judah made a decision to go back with the old prophet.

[28:37] Though the decision was a contradiction to what God had declared to him before. Friend, listen to me. If God had told him a clear word before, shouldn't he have stopped and waited on a clear word then?

[28:51] He said, well, that man told him. Well, if God had spoke to him personally before, then God can speak to him personally. It is a personal responsibility for every action because it is human nature to say, well, I was just going longer.

[29:09] That's what they told me and that's what they said. There's a church that we meet in the book of Acts, the Berean church that goes home and studies the scripture to make sure what Paul was declaring to them was real. Those are the true believers, right?

[29:20] You don't want to get caught up and I've told this, this is why I always like, I want you to open your Bibles, I want you to open your scripture, I want you to see it. If you call me with a question or anything of that nature, it's always the same thing. If people call me and I've had this question before or they wait and they want to talk to me afterwards and they want to do this, you know, sometimes I don't like calls on Sundays just to be honest with you, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evenings because none of my Sunday evening calls are ever really good.

[29:44] I just don't like it as a pastor. So, it's just what happens, right? People get upset and it hasn't happened in a long time but people call me Sunday evening and I'm like, oh yeah, great. Woo, alright, phone's ringing at 8.30 or 9.30 at night, awesome.

[29:57] And so, you know, I answer it and it was just about, man, you know, in your message today you said this, this, this, this, and this and I've been out of shape and sometimes I get upset and I always had the same answer.

[30:07] So, if you call me and you have the same answer, I want you to know or the same response and I want you to know it too. Is that what the text says? And if the answer is yes, I said, then we don't have anything to discuss.

[30:21] If they say, I don't know, I say, well, when you go and open up the text, call me back. That's, that's my response and I don't mean it to be cold because we don't want to get caught in this.

[30:36] It is my responsibility. I have a huge responsibility. The pastor has a huge responsibility. First Timothy chapter five, the elders who rule well work hard at preaching the word truth, right?

[30:49] It's my responsibility. If I ever preach a ordination service for pastors, it is that. It's the responsibility to rule, which doesn't mean authoritatively dictate, but to set the example and to teach and to proclaim the truth and to equip the saints for the work of the ministry of Ephesians 4.12.

[31:05] That's my responsibility and I stand before the Lord God in that weight. but it is your responsibility to go back to the word and see what God is speaking to you.

[31:17] Just like this, we would say, well, that man was deceived by that younger one. Yes, but he made the decision to go contradictory to what God had already declared to him. Therefore, God is justified in his dealings with the young man from Judah because I don't care how godly an individual appears.

[31:36] If they're wrong, they're wrong. And he was easily decided and he made that decision. He made that decision and he went, he went back.

[31:49] Now, we need to say that because God is also justified in his judgment to Jeroboam and Jeroboam's family because Jeroboam makes the decision to ignore the word of God.

[32:02] So God would have been unjust if he had disciplined Jeroboam and overlooked the sins of the prophet. We have to see that God is just on all levels.

[32:19] No favoritism here. It is the word is delivered and the expectation is obedience. So we see this. He goes back and then we get to the last thing and that is delivered judgment.

[32:33] Delivered judgment. So you have a declared word, you have a displayed sign, you have a decided rebellion because he made the decision to rebel much like Jeroboam makes the decision.

[32:44] We'll see it in just a moment. Actually, let's go ahead and see it. It says, after this event, Jeroboam did not return. He made a decision. The prophet sinned by returning, Jeroboam sinned by not returning.

[32:56] He didn't go back. He didn't do what God had asked him to do. So now we have delivered judgment. Listen, in all ironies, as this man of Judah is sitting at the house of the old prophet, the old prophet actually receives a word from the Lord God.

[33:13] That is, God is not limited in whom he can use. Even this lying old prophet living in Bethel, God speaks truth and that's why I've always said we don't need to get carried away when God uses us.

[33:27] God speaks to roosters, donkeys, and lying prophets. Okay? God is not limited in whom he can use. While he is sitting there, the word of the Lord comes to him and says, you will not return to the tombs of your fathers, which is an utter disgrace for the people of Judah, but if they don't return, if they don't die in their hometown, they can't be buried among their own relatives, it's just an utter disgrace and he's going to say your death is going to be a disgrace.

[33:54] They don't know how soon it's going to be but they know this is a reality. He gets this word, again we have this delivered word and now he again gets his sons to sell the donkey and the man from Judah goes along and he says he's met by a lion and the reason we know this is a judgment of God not just some strange circumstances because what happens, the lion mauls the prophet and kills him and then sets beside him.

[34:20] So you have a dead prophet, a donkey, and a lion hanging out on the road. the lion does not do what is natural. That is, the lion doesn't kill the donkey and the lion doesn't devour the man.

[34:39] So again, this is a sovereign act of judgment from God. It's another sign that is being displayed even in his manner of death because if there's just a dead man on the side of the road, people go, oh well that's strangers, this dead man on the side of the road but what happens is this lion is here, this lion is sitting beside the prophet and the donkey.

[34:59] Why the donkey didn't run away is strange to us as well other than the fact that God is doing something. He's getting attention because if you want to get everybody's attention, put a donkey and a lion and a dead man together on the side of the road and all of a sudden everybody comes back to where he came from which was where?

[35:13] Bethel. He comes back to Bethel and everybody's talking about the fact that there's a man out there dead and a lion and a donkey are sitting beside him doing nothing. That gets everybody's attention. So now, everybody's like, who is that man?

[35:24] The old prophet goes, that's the man who stood before Jeroboam. So now everybody knows this man who delivered this message that Jeroboam probably wanted to forget about. The whole town's talking about it because a lion and a donkey are sitting beside his dead body out in the road.

[35:37] God has a way of getting people's attention. So the old prophet goes and gets him and brings him back and buries him and he shows him some honor and buries him and we understand and he says, oh my brother, my brother and again, we scratch our head but again, it's the desperate heart of man.

[35:49] The heart of man is desperately wicked and it gets tossed to and fro like the waves of the sea of the book of James says. This man is unstable in all of his ways. We understand this, right? And he declares that everything this man said is surely going to happen.

[36:01] How do you know that? Because he died the judgment that God had declared to him. God was definitely at work in all the circumstances and now it is unmistakable everybody in Bethel has heard of what has just happened and then we read that Jeroboam did not return.

[36:18] He couldn't hide it away or forget it away because now it's become public notice. What happened beside an altar now is talked about on the street corner because this man died in such an unlikely way but Jeroboam did not return from his evil way but again, he made priest of the high places from among all the people anyone who would.

[36:41] So he said, did anybody want to be a priest? I'll make you a priest. Mocking God and coming up with his own form of worship and then we read this event became sin to the house of Jeroboam even to blot it out and destroy it from off the face of the earth.

[36:59] Just like the prophet from Judah dies, Jeroboam and his whole house will die as well. Why? Because this is a warning against disobedience but it's not just a warning for them.

[37:14] The word of God is clear. God is more than gracious in validating it to us. Most attested book in all the history is scripture and I'm wrapping up.

[37:27] It's the most attested book. Scientifically, historically, archaeologically. Manuscripts. More manuscripts for this than Homer's Iliad. I mean, multiple times more.

[37:39] You have more reliability telling you that the authors of scripture wrote the authors of scripture than you do that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. You have manuscripts closer to date in the original writings of the Gospel of John and Luke and other portions of the Old Testament than you do of Homer's authoring of the Iliad.

[38:01] It's like 600 years after Homer supposedly wrote the book. I'm not doubting that he did. But after Homer wrote the Iliad in the Odyssey, some 600 years passed before we get the copy closest to the original. It's nowhere near that in scripture.

[38:13] Just a couple of decades after the originals are authored that we have manuscripts. God has validated his word over and over and over and over and over again and the reality is there's still clear warnings about disobedience to scripture.

[38:29] This isn't just historical writings of oh man that poor prophet was deceived by an old man and got killed by a lion. No, it means that when God declares his word he expects his people to heed it. And these things have application today.

[38:45] God is so gracious and kind over and over and over and over and over again. He doesn't just ask us to walk in blind faith. We're not asked to walk in ignorant faith.

[39:00] Faith is the assurance of things hoped for the confidence of things unseen. It is something that we can be certain of and something we can be confident about.

[39:11] Why? Because God is validated over and over and over again. The only question that we have in response is do we really heed that danger or do we just look at the word of God as something that we can give or take whenever we want?

[39:26] It's a tough question especially when we read writings like this. I mean a man that he was using to bring warning to a king.

[39:37] He held it a high standard and when he decided to rebel God brought certain judgment. Why should we think that God is any different today when scripture tells us that God is the same yesterday today and tomorrow and we see that recorded for us in 1 Kings 13.

[39:55] Thank you my brothers. Thank you.

[40:33] Thank you. Thank you.

[41:33] Thank you. Thank you.

[42:04] Thank you.