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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Dean Cullinane

Why Did God Kill His Own Prophet?

Father in heaven, Lord we thank you for your Sabbath day, this day that you have set apart, that you have made different to the rest, and we're told that we should expect a greater blessing on the Sabbath than any other day.

And So as we open Your Word this morning, Father, it is our desire to see Your character in ways that we haven't seen yet.

We thank You for the messages of the Scriptures that we've been told have been written that we may learn from them.

And Father, we ask that you would do something special this morning.

Father, all of us here have sinned against you and against heaven.

And Lord, we are not worthy to be called your daughters or your sons.

But Father, your Son, Jesus Christ, will forever be worthy to be called our Savior.

And so we ask that He would speak to us this morning.

So I'd like for you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Kings chapter 13.

Now I remember 1 of the first times that I was reading through the scriptures, I've been in Adventist for about 8 years now, so it was definitely within my first year.

I'm reading through 1 Kings chapter 13 and something happens that just catches me off guard altogether.

If you know the story, spoiler alert if you don't, but God kills his own prophet.

And really for this message today, I just want to look at why.

I just want to look at why does God kill His own prophet?

Because the first time I read this, that was deeply troubling to me, deeply troubling that God would kill his own prophet.

So let's read through some of the story to get some context.

First Kings chapter 13 verse 1, And behold, there came a man of God out of where Judah by the word of the Lord unto Bethel and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense and he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord, behold a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee.

And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign which the Lord hath spoken.

Behold, the altar shall be rent and the ashes that are upon it shall be poured out.

And it came to pass when King Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God, which had cried against the altar in Bethel, that he put forth his hand from the altar saying, lay hold on him and his hand, which he put forth against him, dried up so that he could not pull it in again to him.

The altar also was rent and the ashes poured out from the altar according to the sign which the man of God hath given by the word of the Lord.

And the king answered and said unto the man of God, Entreat now the face of the Lord thy God and pray for me that My hand may be restored unto me again.

And the man of God begged the Lord, and the king's hand was restored him again and became as it was before." And then verse 7, and the king said unto the man of God, Come home with me and refresh thyself and I will give thee a reward now We have the habit of sometimes reading through the scripture and just taking it in and and reading on and reading on and reading on But if you were to truly picture this you'll notice that there's something that that just is rather strange The man of God shows up rebukes the King Jeroboam for his idol worship, and the King, you know, points at, for his soldiers, points at the man of God that he may be taken away.

His hand just withers away to the point where he can't bring it back in.

And after the man of God prays that it's restored to him, the king then says, okay, great, do you want to come back to my house for lunch?

I get that he's grateful, oh, I've got my hand back, awesome.

But it just seems a little bit, what's the word I'm looking for?

I'd probably invite him to 1 of your houses, so I'm not going to be there, just in case something like that happens again.

But he's like, no, no, no, come back to my house.

Now the response in verse 8 is something that's definitely noteworthy.

And the man of God said unto the king, if thou will give me half of thine house, what's half his house?

He's not talking about chopping it down the middle and they'll have 1 side each.

If you'll give me half of your kingdom, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place." So the man of God, the prophet is saying, no matter what you offer me, I'm not going to go back to your house and sit down and eat bread and drink water, which again is a very strange response.

Why are you so against going back to his house and eating bread and drinking water?

I mean, I know it's not the ideal potluck, but at least at that time it was pretty decent.

For so it was charged me by the word of the Lord saying eat no bread nor drink water nor turn again by the same way that thou came.

So he went another way and returned not by the way that he came to Bethel.

So the man of God essentially says this, I can't go back to your house, I can't eat with you and I can't drink with you because God told me not to go back the way that I came, not to eat and not to drink.

So now, now it's clear why the old prophet, why the man, sorry, why the man of God is saying or doing what he's doing.

But the question that I had when I read this is why on earth would God say that in the first place?

Why would God say to the man of God, I mean of all commands, I would understand if he said when you go there make sure you don't get involved with any of the women there because, you know, it's kind of the theme of the Old Testament.

He says, he says, he says, when you go there, Make sure you don't go back the way that you came, and make sure you don't eat any of their food, and make sure you don't drink any of their water.

Now, we know, if you've read the story, again, spoiler alert if you haven't, that he does do this, and he's killed because of it.

And so, when I was reading it for the first time, or the first few times, the conclusion that I came to was that God told the man of God not to go back and eat the bread and drink the water to test whether the man of God was truly faithful.

That's the conclusion that most come to in this story.

And that's the conclusion that I outrightly reject.

That God would just arbitrarily test someone just to see if they're really being faithful or not.

And here's some of the justification behind that reasoning.

It was not a short journey to go from Judah to Bethel.

He didn't have a vehicle either by which to make his trip.

He would have had to travel and travel and travel.

And he's told, hey, man of God, we don't know his name, man of God, make sure you don't eat, make sure you don't drink.

After a long trip, we had a long trip down to here from Northern California.

What's maybe 2 of the top 5 things that you like to do?

After a long journey, if there's anything that you'd want to do, it's refresh yourself.

But he's told that's the 1 thing that he cannot do.

What do you mean he can't eat and he can't drink?

It just seems a little bit unfair at first glance.

Verse 11, Now there dwelt an old prophet in Bethel, and his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel.

The words which he had spoken to the king them they told also to their father.

He's an old prophet now I think that this old prophet the word old here it literally does mean that he was he was he was old like he was An elderly man, but I think there's also the connotation that he was a former prophet.

He's an old prophet, but he's a former prophet.

How do we know that he might be a former prophet?

How do we know that this prophet isn't faithful?

It just says that he's he's the old prophet But but up until this point of the story, let's say that you hadn't read the rest of the story yet And we're in verse 11 Is there any proof there that we could that that might suggest that this prophet is an apostate prophet anyone?

Exactly if there's a prophet in Bethel already, right?

And there's idol worship going on in Bethel, why wouldn't God just call the prophet in Bethel, Right?

But you know, he has to go the whole way and call the man of God from Judah to come down when there's apparently a prophet right there.

They're with the king at the false worship service now now the old prophet doesn't go himself You know he's kind of nominal a little bit Just kind of stays at home doesn't really need to go to church kind of thing But his sons go he's still interested because because because when the sons come back.

He's like hey, what happened at church today?

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Why Did God Kill His Own Prophet?

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