and he cried to the man of God that came from Judah, saying, Thus saith Jehovah Forasmuch as thou hast disobeyed the word of Jehovah, and hast not kept the commandment that Jehovah thy God commanded thee,
The man of God from Judah had refused a king's table and a king's reward. Then he sat down to eat with a fellow prophet, in the town God had sent him to condemn. Mid-meal, God's word arrives — spoken aloud by the man who lied to get him there.
The charge rests on a command he knew and remembered. His failure was not ignorance. A second voice simply gave him a reason to set the first word aside.
The word of God was clear: he was neither to eat nor to drink there. He knew it, and he remembered it. But there seemed to be another message, a reason to set the Lord's command aside. God did not take back His word when the prophet disobeyed it. This also teaches us a lesson. Whenever God has made His will known to us, we must not let any later influence call it into question — not even an influence that comes in the form of the word of God. If we were morally nearer to the Lord, we would feel that the only true and right position is to follow what He told us at first.
The old prophet's good standing was part of the trap.
By appealing to brotherly love, the old prophet succeeds where the king's offer had failed. 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 carry more weight than the word of God? The prophet from Judah is trapped by the age and authority of his brother prophet and by his sympathy for him. Let us ask ourselves seriously. What part do these ties play in our own religious life when we face the question of obedience to the Word?
No messenger outranks a word God has already given. One writer supplies the answer the man of God never gave.
If the word of his Lord had been living in him, he would have said at once: "If ten thousand prophets and ten thousand angels told me to go back, I would count them all liars. I would call them agents of the devil, sent to lure me off the holy, happy path of obedience." That would have been a wonderful reply. It would have the same heavenly ring as the apostle's glowing words. He wrote: "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed."
The voice that announced the judgment was the voice that had caused the sin. That one arrangement punished both men at once.
God punishes the old prophet justly: He makes him expose his own double-dealing by pronouncing judgment on the man of God. The man of God has his own lesson to learn. If he values his brother's word above the word of God, then the very person who drew him into disobedience becomes God's instrument to expose his sin.
Our instinct says the liar deserved the heavier punishment. One writer explains why it fell the other way.
If the man of God was false to God, God would be true to the man of God — true in a most painful way. And note, dear friends, it was entirely righteous. It is a righteousness that matches God. In our foolishness we would have thought, "Surely the old prophet is the one who is going to die for this." Not so, but the man of God. For it is those who ought to know best who, if they fail, God chastens most.
The judgment had a limit.
It is not that his spirit did not go to the Lord. We are sure it did. But his body still did not reach the tomb of his fathers. The Lord did deal with him, and dealt with the body so that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord.
The chastening is not God's last word on these two men.
So it comes about that three hundred and fifty years later, Josiah carries out the word of the Lord given by the man of God. He burns the bones of the false prophets. But he spares the grave of the man of God who came from Judah, and the grave of the old prophet of Bethel. Through their unfaithfulness the people of God may come under His chastening. But through the faithfulness of God they will not share in the judgment that overtakes the world.
- Known — The command was plain, and he remembered it. His sin was not confusion. He let a later voice cancel God's first word.
- Kind — Threats and rewards failed. Warmth, age and office succeeded. The softest appeal was the deadliest.
- Claimed — Ten thousand prophets, or even an angel, cannot reverse what God has already said.
- Exposed — God made the deceiver announce the sentence. That punished the liar and showed the listener where his real authority lay.
- Chastened — The stroke fell hardest on the man who knew most. It touched his body, not his spirit. Centuries later his grave was still spared.
but camest back, and hast eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which he said to thee, Eat no bread and drink no water; thy carcase shall not come to the sepulchre of thy fathers.
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