Can I pray for you in any way? Send any
prayer requests to OurChristianWalk.com.
In
Christ, Mark
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy
word.
Now Jehoshaphat had great wealth and
honor, and he allied himself with Ahab by marriage.
Some years later he went down to see
Ahab in Samaria. Ahab slaughtered many sheep and cattle for him and the people
with him and urged him to attack Ramoth Gilead. Ahab king of Israel asked
Jehoshaphat king of Judah, “Will you go with me against Ramoth Gilead?”
Jehoshaphat replied, “I am as you are,
and my people as your people; we will join you in the war.”
But Jehoshaphat also said to the king
of Israel, “First seek the counsel of the Lord.”
So the king of Israel brought together
the prophets—four hundred men—and asked them, “Shall we go to war against
Ramoth Gilead, or shall I not?”
“Go,” they answered, “for God will give
it into the king’s hand.”
But Jehoshaphat asked, “Is there no
longer a prophet of the Lord here whom we can inquire of?”
The king of Israel answered
Jehoshaphat, “There is still one prophet through whom we can inquire of the
Lord, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but
always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah.”
“The king should not say such a thing,”
Jehoshaphat replied.
So the king of Israel called one of his
officials and said, “Bring Micaiah son of Imlah at once.”
Dressed in their royal robes, the king
of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah were sitting on their thrones at the
threshing floor by the entrance of the gate of Samaria, with all the prophets
prophesying before them. Now Zedekiah son of Kenaanah had made iron horns, and
he declared, “This is what the Lord says: ‘With these you will gore the
Arameans until they are destroyed.’”
All the other prophets were prophesying
the same thing. “Attack Ramoth Gilead and be victorious,” they said, “for the
Lord will give it into the king’s hand.”
The messenger who had gone to summon
Micaiah said to him, “Look, the other prophets without exception are predicting
success for the king. Let your word agree with theirs, and speak favorably.”
But Micaiah said, “As surely as the
Lord lives, I can tell him only what my God says.”
When he arrived, the king asked him,
“Micaiah, shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I not?”
“Attack and be victorious,” he
answered, “for they will be given into your hand.”
The king said to him, “How many times
must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the
Lord?”
Then Micaiah answered, “I saw all
Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd, and the Lord said,
‘These people have no master. Let each one go home in peace.’”
The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat,
“Didn’t I tell you that he never prophesies anything good about me, but only
bad?”
Micaiah continued, “Therefore hear the
word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the multitudes
of heaven standing on his right and on his left. And the Lord said, ‘Who will
entice Ahab king of Israel into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death
there?’”
“One suggested this, and another that.
Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice
him.’”
‘By what means?’ the Lord asked.
‘I will go and be a deceiving spirit in
the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.
‘You will succeed in enticing him,’
said the Lord. ‘Go and do it.’
“So now the Lord has put a deceiving
spirit in the mouths of these prophets of yours. The Lord has decreed disaster
for you.”
Then Zedekiah son of Kenaanah went up
and slapped Micaiah in the face. “Which way did the spirit from the Lord go
when he went from me to speak to you?” he asked.
Micaiah replied, “You will find out on
the day you go to hide in an inner room.”
The king of Israel then ordered, “Take
Micaiah and send him back to Amon the ruler of the city and to Joash the king’s
son, and say, ‘This is what the king says: Put this fellow in prison and give
him nothing but bread and water until I return safely.’”
Micaiah declared, “If you ever return
safely, the Lord has not spoken through me.” Then he added, “Mark my words, all
you people!”
So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat
king of Judah went up to Ramoth Gilead. The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat,
“I will enter the battle in disguise, but you wear your royal robes.” So the
king of Israel disguised himself and went into battle.
Now the king of Aram had ordered his
chariot commanders, “Do not fight with anyone, small or great, except the king
of Israel.” When the chariot commanders saw Jehoshaphat, they thought, “This is
the king of Israel.” So they turned to attack him, but Jehoshaphat cried out,
and the Lord helped him. God drew them away from him, for when the chariot
commanders saw that he was not the king of Israel, they stopped pursuing him.
But someone drew his bow at random and
hit the king of Israel between the breastplate and the scale armor. The king
told the chariot driver, “Wheel around and get me out of the fighting. I’ve
been wounded.” All day long the battle raged, and the king of Israel propped
himself up in his chariot facing the Arameans until evening. Then at sunset he
died.
2 Chronicles 18
This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to
God.
Have you ever known anyone who only
wants to hear what they want to hear?
I know I have and it seems like I have
seen it more during my many years of ministry more than in any other instance. Maybe
that is because so many people who claim they follow God only want to accept
some of what God brings them. They allow their own desires interfere with their
full loyalty to the One who gave them life and continues to sustain them. This
happens in a couple of ways:
1. A person’s will and way becomes more
important than God’s.
Be a believer long enough and you will
realize that your will and God’s will are completely different if you choose to
pursue worldly pursuits over holy, divine ones. The world can have a powerful
pull on us, ever encouraging our flesh to rebel against the guidance of the
Spirit and placing us at a juncture where we need to make a choice. Jesus, in
talking about the worldly matter of money, said that no person can follow two
masters (Matthew 6:24). Either we follow God or our own ways, the ways we want
to go. When we choose to go our way, then this leads to the second issue.
2. A person who chooses to follow their
own will and way adopts selective hearing.
When we’re chasing after our own wants,
we only want to hear what supports those efforts. In other words, we refuse to
accept any suggestions that would deter us from reaching our goal and getting
our way. Often times, this begins to show itself in the life of a believer when
they decide to pick and choose what parts of God’s word they will follow and
what parts they will deny. If the word of God agrees with them, then it’s
accepted. If not, it’s rejected or downplayed. In the worst cases, a person who
claims to believe in God doesn’t read the Bible at all because everything they
read criticizes them and that just doesn’t fit into their plans for success.
They only want reinforcement and not condemnation.
Friends, if what I just wrote describes
you, then I pray you will pay close attention to the story of Ahab in 2
Chronicles, Chapter 18, and see how the sin of selective hearing will get you
in deep trouble with God.
We know from the scriptures that Ahab
was the king of Israel at the time Jehoshaphat was king of Judah. You’ll recall
that during the reign of Solomon’s son Rehoboam, Israel divided into two
kingdoms after inner civil disagreement. The northern kingdom of Israel
included ten of the twelve tribes, all but Judah and Benjamin who formed the
southern kingdom. They had mostly been at odds with one another from that point
on but as we see in Chapter 18, Jehoshaphat chose to align himself with Ahab through
marriage.
We read where Ahab had his heart and
mind set on attacking Ramoth Gilead and wanted Jehoshaphat and his forces to
join him and his army to do so. Jehoshaphat committed himself and his kingdom
to join Ahab but did so on one condition:
Ahab was first to seek the counsel of
the Lord.
Uh-oh. I don’t think that was part of
Ahab’s plan. If it were, then Ahab would have said to Jehoshaphat, “Come and
let us pray unto the Lord to see what he would want for us to do in the matter
of Ramoth Gilead.” No, Ahab had his mind set on doing what he wanted to do but
he needed Jehoshaphat and so he went along with the request.
Ahab first summoned four hundred of his
prophets and asked them, “Shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I
not?” The prophets gave Ahab an answer he wanted to hear saying, “Go, for God
will give it into the king’s hand.” Jehoshaphat was not as convinced and asked
Ahab if he had any prophet of the Lord to ask. From this, we get a sense that
all of Ahab’s prophets were pagan and not connected to the Lord although we’ll
see that they were not immune to His influence.
Ahab tells Jehoshaphat he does have one
prophet of the Lord, Micaiah, but it’s obvious that he never used him. In fact,
Ahab admitted he hated Micaiah because he never prophesied anything good about
him. Translated, Ahab was really saying that when the Lord spoke to him, he
never liked what he heard and so he rejected the Lord by rejecting his
messenger.
After Jehoshaphat rebuked Ahab for his attitude,
Micaiah was summoned. Before his arrival, Ahab’s prophets continued to predict
a victory over the Arameans, saying that the Lord would deliver it to Ahab, a
message that Micaiah was encouraged to repeat by the person Ahab sent to get
him. You can almost sense what is going on here right? Micaiah was asked to
simply be a “yes man” and tell Ahab what he wanted to hear, to say words that
would cater to his selective hearing.
Micaiah’s words revealed that he was
the only true prophet in the room:
“As surely as the Lord lives, I can tell him only what my
God says.”
And so Micaiah entered the presence of
Ahab and was asked, “Shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I not?”
Micaiah’s answer and Ahab’s response reveal a lot about what their typical
relationship was like. For after Micaiah tells Ahab to “Attack and be
victorious for they will be given into your hand”, Ahab gets angry and says, “How
many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name
of the Lord?”
In other words, every time that Ahab
wanted to hear one thing from Micaiah, the thing that would match his desires,
he would only get something he didn’t want to hear because Micaiah was speaking
in the name of the Lord and the Lord’s will was never what Ahab’s was. That’s
what made this proclamation from Micaiah so puzzling and frustrating to Ahab.
He knew that Micaiah wasn’t telling the truth because his prophecy was in
agreement with the pagan prophets, something I sense had not happened before.
Pressed by Ahab, Micaiah brought a different
vision, one of Israel scattered like sheep without a shepherd. In other words,
the people of Israel were going to lose their leader and that leader was none other
than Ahab who predictably did not take this message well. “Didn’t I tell you
that he never prophesies anything good about me, but only bad?” Ahab lamented
to Jehoshaphat. Given a choice to receive a false prophecy of victory and a
true prophecy of him dying, Ahab chose to accept the word he wanted to hear and
that word was not the word of the Lord spoken by Micaiah who was not yet done
delivering God’s message to Ahab. He continued to share the following:
“Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting
on his throne with all the multitudes of heaven standing on his right and on
his left. And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab king of Israel into
attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’”
“One suggested this, and another that. Finally, a spirit
came forward, stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice him.’”
‘By what means?’ the Lord asked.
‘I will go and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all
his prophets,’ he said.
‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the Lord. ‘Go and
do it.’
“So now the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of
these prophets of yours. The Lord has decreed disaster for you.”
With these words, Micaiah revealed God’s
plan completely to Ahab. He obviously was sending judgment on Israel’s king who
the scriptures said the following about:
Ahab son of Omri did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than
any of those before him. He not only considered it trivial to commit the sins
of Jeroboam son of Nebat, but he also married Jezebel daughter of Ethbaal king
of the Sidonians, and began to serve Baal and worship him. He set up an altar
for Baal in the temple of Baal that he built in Samaria. Ahab also made an
Asherah pole and did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel,
than did all the kings of Israel before him.” 1 Kings 16:30-33
God was not going to stand for a leader
over his people to shun Him in favor of false gods and idol worshipping. Ahab’s
disrespect and dishonoring of the Lord, his refusal to listen to any word of
the Lord but rather pursue his own desires, was his downfall, even though we
sense he thought he could beat the rap. After all, he believed he was in
control of his circumstances. After all, he was king.
The problem was that he was up against
the King of kings.
Ahab, maddened by Micaiah’s prophecy,
had the Lord’s prophet thrown into prison and persecuted through harsh
punishment. Scripture tells us that he was only allowed to have bread and water
until Ahab returned, something that Micaiah proclaimed would never happen. They
would be the last words of the Lord that Ahab would hear and ignore as he and Jehoshaphat
went to Ramoth Gilead for war.
What happens when they get there shows
just how crazy Ahab was. Because before the war starts, Ahab decides to
disguise himself while encouraging Jehoshaphat to wear his royal robes. Can you
tell what he was up to? He was so bent on preserving himself that he was
putting Jehoshaphat out there to be killed in his place! Ahab’s plan was that
when the Arameans saw Jehoshaphat in royal clothing, they would simply kill him
and Ahab would survive. Such are the schemes of someone who tries to rebel
against the word of God and get what they want.
As we read on, we find that Ahab’s plan
nearly worked. The king of Aram had ordered his men to not fight anyone but the
king of Israel and when they saw Jehoshaphat, they thought he was the one and
went to attack him. But Jehoshaphat called on the name of the Lord, something
Ahab refused to do, and in return, the Lord drew the Arameans away from
Jehoshaphat as they saw he was not the king of Israel.
So how would Ahab fare? Would he get
off scot free?
Not quite as he would learn that the
word of the Lord is truth, and he learned it in fatal fashion. For our passage
tells us that an Aramean soldier randomly shot an arrow in the air and it hit
Ahab between the breastplate and the scale armor. In other words, it was a shot
that penetrated the place where Ahab was vulnerable and wounded him severely.
He wouldn’t make it into the next day for as the sun set, so did Ahab’s life
and rule. Indeed, the people of Israel were left without their shepherd, just
as God had promised.
Friends, Ahab is a sad case of what
happens to anyone who chooses to turn from God’s word and way, to anyone who only
listens to what they want to hear from the Lord. His life serves as a warning
from God against selective hearing and we would be well served to pay attention
because if we don’t He will have the last say and we will see the sun set on
our life, just as Ahab did on his.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you
feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
No comments:
Post a Comment