Scripture Daily

Context No. 589 of 4322 · 1 Kings

Context · Reflection

1 Kings 13:18-22: in context

18He said to him, “I also am a prophet as you are; and an angel spoke to me by the LORD’s word, saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.’” He lied to him. 19So he went back with him, ate bread in his house, and drank water. 20As they sat at the table, the LORD’s word came to the prophet who brought him back; 21and he cried out to the man of God who came from Judah, saying, “The LORD says, ‘Because you have been disobedient to the LORD’s word, and have not kept the commandment which the LORD your God commanded you, 22but came back, and have eaten bread and drank water in the place of which he said to you, “Eat no bread, and drink no water,” your body will not come to the tomb of your fathers.’”

This is a strange and sobering story. A man of God had been sent with a very clear command from the LORD: deliver his message, and then eat no bread, drink no water, and do not return by the way you came. He obeyed at first, even refusing a king's hospitality. But then an old prophet catches up with him and says, I too am a prophet, and an angel told me by the word of the LORD to bring you back to my house to eat and drink. The text adds four devastating words: he lied to him. And the man of God, persuaded by this new and impressive-sounding revelation, goes back and eats and drinks, disobeying the plain command he had already been given. For that, God's word comes and pronounces judgment on him.

The story is hard, and its severity is meant to make one point unmistakable: a clear word from God, already given, is not to be overturned by a new revelation that contradicts it, however credible its source seems. The man of God knew exactly what God had told him. What undid him was letting someone with apparent spiritual authority, an older prophet, a claimed angelic message, talk him out of a command he already had. He trusted the impressive new word over the plain old one, and the new word was a lie. He should have held to what God had clearly said and tested everything else against it, but the confident religious voice was enough to move him off it.

That is a live danger for anyone who wants to obey God. I can know clearly what God has said, in his word or to my conscience, and then be talked out of it by a plausible, spiritual-sounding voice offering a new angle: surely God would not really require that, an exception applies in your case, someone with authority says otherwise. When a persuasive new word contradicts a clear command of God I already have, do I test it against what he plainly said and hold my ground, or do I let an impressive spiritual voice talk me out of an obedience I already knew?

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