1 Kings 13:1–5

This "feast" of Jeroboam's imitated the Feast of Tabernacles, which God had commanded Israel to keep in the seventh month. The eighth was the month Jeroboam "devised from his own heart" — a heart always deceitful and desperately wicked. And how many practices and customs in the Christian world have come out of men's own hearts, with no foundation in Scripture! Instead of "Thus says the LORD," many seem to think that in spiritual things a person may do what is right in his own eyes. It is the thoughts of God's heart, not mine, that I am to heed and put into practice.

"Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make offerings" (v. 1). It goes without saying that the man who had invented his own priesthood, and ordained anyone who wanted the job, could not hold that priesthood in high regard. Under royal authority it had become a political tool in his hands. So there is nothing surprising in the king claiming the right to perform its rites as he pleased.

God, however, raised up a witness against this terrible evil. "By the word of the LORD," God gave this man light about the evil at Bethel. He learned that this evil was so hateful to God that the day was soon coming when God would deal with it in judgment (vv. 1, 2)... God warned him especially not to weaken his testimony by keeping company with the evil. He was to deliver his message, give his sign, and then leave.

The Lord sends a missionary into that land with words of judgment. "The word of the LORD" ordered it all: his commission, his ministry, and his conduct in his ministry. He comes out of Judah to Bethel "by the word of the LORD" (v. 1). He cries against the altar "in the word of the LORD" (v. 2). And "the word of the LORD" lays down how he is to behave while he is in that place doing that service (v. 9)... This provided for everything: he had only to keep to it.

The man through whom God gives His testimony counts for so little that the prophet is not even named 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 on whom God has stamped His own character. Such a man speaks for God; he speaks the very words of God. It is a high and solemn office. But it reduces the man himself to nothing and strips him of all confidence in the flesh.

While Jeroboam was standing beside his idolatrous altar in Bethel, God brought a prophet from Judah to pronounce His judgment against it. The message named Josiah of the house of David as the one who would carry out that judgment. More than three hundred years later Josiah carried it out to the letter (1 Kings 13:1–5; 2 Kings 23:15–18). The man of God then listened to the lie of the old prophet of Bethel and disobeyed, and judgment overtook him for it. This is a solemn reminder of the great danger of listening to men instead of to the voice of God, whatever those men have been and whatever they claim.

The man of God cries against the altar (v. 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 (Hebrews 13:10). God will judge wicked men who want to set up another altar alongside His own. A worship set up by man cannot last forever. Divine judgment will fall upon it. But when God destroys it, He will at the same time put the priests of this profane religion to death upon their own altar.

God's testimony and God's judgment did not delay. They came in keeping with His mercy towards His people. Prophecy at once reappears, for God's faithful love to His people never grows weary. His mercy endures forever. The testimony of His word does not fail. Prophecy is God stepping in with a testimony when the people go astray and the ordinary links between God and His people break down... With Jeroboam, the LORD defends the rights of His glory against the king himself and against his altar.

The man of God announced the unborn king by name and also what he would do, just as Isaiah announced the unborn King Cyrus and his work. Higher criticism has laboured in vain to destroy this great evidence of prophecy.

This prophecy is very precise. It names the man who would destroy Jeroboam's altar. In the same way the LORD named Cyrus hundreds of years before his birth (Isaiah 45:1). And why not, we ask? Where is the difficulty? Away with the foolish unbelief that would rob us of a priceless gift: the wide range of prophetic truth stored up in Holy Scripture!

The prediction that judgment would reach Bethel by a prince of David's line must not pass unnoticed. The LORD was very displeased with that royal house. Yet He had not abandoned His purposes for it. Josiah, in his work of destruction, is a picture of Christ. All Scripture points to Him. At His appearing He will judge and clear away all evil from Israel, and from the earth as a whole.

He goes to Bethel and condemns all this evil at its source. So he fulfils the prophecy once spoken before Jeroboam against the altar where that king had offered sacrifices... However, he spares the tomb of the man of God who had pronounced these things. Whatever this man's unfaithfulness had been, he recognises what had been done for God by him... In the same way, every Christian heart acknowledges what men of God in past times have done to serve Him. It respects their work, even though failures have marred it.

God can name His servants long years before their birth. He did so with Josiah. He did so with Cyrus, whom God used to help His people after the captivity (Isaiah 44:28; Isaiah 45:1). And this is the God who has chosen us in Christ "before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4).

The moment Jeroboam hears this he wants the man arrested. He stretches out his hand from the altar, saying, "Seize him." But the power of God was with the word of God.

Jeroboam set up this hateful system with his own hand. That same hand stretched out to seize the man of God. It dried up at the very moment the king thought he could silence the witness of the Lord and of His Word. He could not pull it back. It stayed stretched out in its threatening gesture against the man of God and against God Himself — a monument to his powerlessness.

At the altar he had built, in front of the calf he had made, the LORD showed His power. His arm stayed stretched out, showing what he wanted to do. But he had lost control of it. It is a striking picture of how helpless man is when he sets himself against God. That day the LORD made everyone see that He stood above the idols and was nothing like them.

Jeroboam had set up a religion he invented himself for his people. But clearly he had no real confidence in it. When his outstretched hand dried up, he asked the man of God from Judah to pray to "the LORD your God" that his hand might work again… His own religion might be useful for his political goals. But it was no use when his own body or his son's life was at stake!

It was a bold message, but delivered faithfully. It was aimed not at the king but at the priests, though the king seemed to feel that it applied to himself… Jeroboam had forgotten, or ignored, the warning God gave to kings almost a thousand years before: "Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm" (Ps. 105:14-15).

God shows here that He is God indeed. He keeps His loved ones, His witnesses, and defends them… We have nothing to fear when God sends us. No one on earth, however high his position, can seize us. If anyone is ever allowed to, it is only as far as God carries out His purposes through him.

The enraged king orders his servants to seize the man of God. The man of God is silent in the face of threats. When God strikes the man who threatened him, he acts in interceding grace.

The man of God did so, and in grace the Lord answered at once and healed his hand. What a lesson for Jeroboam — God is both a God of truth and a God of grace!

"Pray for me," said Jeroboam in alarm. Sadly, the unhappy man had never learned to pray for himself. In this he reminds us of Pharaoh (Ex. 8:8) and of Simon the sorcerer (Acts 8:24). He had felt the power of God at work, and it should have led him to repentance. But flesh learns nothing. He felt the consequences of his sin, but not the evil of it.