Lessons Learned Too Late

Introduction

Good morning. Would you please turn to your Bibles to the 13th chapter of the book of 1 Kings? First Kings, the 13th chapter. It’s good to be with you again. I’ve been talking with Brother Harkwriter about when I was here last. We’ve agreed that it was six, eight, or ten years ago. Twelve years ago. I’m 59 years of age, and it’s amazing how I’ll be thinking about time. And I’ll think, well, this happened just three or four years ago, and then I’ll talk to my wife and she’ll let me know that it was uh 15 or 20 years ago. So I have no uh no sense of time anymore. But uh it’s go so good to be back with you again. I there’s uh a few faces that I remember, but uh please uh be patient with me.

Uh and uh I realize that while we may have met before, the the names uh sometimes may have uh may have uh been lost. I saw something on the television just the other day. It was saying that actually with elderly people, the problem is not that they become uh more demented as the time goes by. The fact is is that they they really just have so much information anymore, it takes them longer to retrieve it. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it. But uh it it’s it’s it’s the it’s the best explanation I’ve heard so far that that at least gives me some sense of sanity. When my wife and I have conversations very often, it is interesting. We have probably five minutes of conversation to have during each day, but it takes us all day to get it done because we can’t remember the names of the people involved.

So uh uh, but it’s so good to be back with you uh even after a 12-year hiatus. And it’s so good to see the good work that’s being done here, the improvements in your facility and the growth that that implies. So it’s wonderful to be with you again.

We’re talking this week about having a better relationship with God. And I think that is something that all of us strive for, but something that is necessary for us to continue to work on as we try, as Christians to be more and more like Jesus. In talking about having a better relationship with God, I’ve taken some lessons from the Old Testament. And that may seem a bit peculiar, but I hope if you if you pay attention closely, you’ll be able to see some method to my madness and be able to understand that in our relationship with God, people in the Old Testament were also striving to do that. And there are many powerful lessons in the Old Testament that can let us be able to find out how we need to do better in our efforts to please God and our efforts to serve Him.

And I think if you’ll concentrate on that ideal, it may be able to make a good translation, a good transition into our being able to apply those things here in the 21st century to things that happened long ago. This morning I’d like to talk about a lesson that emphasizes the importance of making sure that we pay attention to God’s word and do the things that God would have us to do. The story begins in the 13th chapter of the book of 1 Kings. And to give you a little bit of background on that situation, you see the kingdom just having recently divided. It had divided because Solomon, even though he had been given promises similar to David’s promises that God had made to him in 2 Samuel 7, God had made promises to Samuel in 1 Kings 9.

But the problem was they were all conditional on continued faithfulness. And Solomon hadn’t continued to be faithful in his service to the Lord. He had filled Jerusalem with idols, and it allowed the 700 wives and 300 concubines that he had to turn his heart and soul away from God in his service. The Lord rebuked him. In fact, told him that because of this, he was going to take away ten of the tribes from him and give them to Jeroboam the son of Nebat. And instead of accepting the judgment of God, he chases Jeroboam the son of Nebat out of the country and he flees to Egypt. After the death of Solomon, when his son Rehoboam goes to Shechem to be declared king by all the tribes, the tribes make some important suggestions to him.

They say, listen, you need to make things easier on us, because in the process of developing the Israelite empire, that if there was ever an empire that Israel controlled, it was during the days of Solomon. But yet it had cost them a great deal to be able to develop the civil government, the standing army, the uh efforts to be able to uh finance the elaborate court of Solomon. And the people said basically you need to not tax us so much. If indeed you’ll make things easier on us, then we’ll serve you and follow you and do what do what you would want us to do. But you’re gonna have to make it easier on us than your father did. Real Boom consults with uh his father’s advisors and they say you really need to listen to the people.

They mean it this time. Because unless you make things easier on them, they’re uh going to rebel. He also then listens to the counselors that grew up with him. Man, you could just imagine if they were university graduates, they were guys that went to university with uh with them. They were peers, they were people who had who had grown up with him, grown up with a similar status as he.

When I taught in uh college at Florida College for about nine years, I had a colleague there whose basic motto was don’t smile till Thanksgiving. He said, because it’s always easier to start out as a as a as a hard guy and back off toward the end and make people think that you’re uh you’re a sweetheart, than to start out as everybody’s friend and then have to tighten up later on and everybody thinks you’re mean. So there’s some merit to what these guys had to say. But the problem was as Rehboam wholesale listened to the advice of his peers rather than the elders who had served his father. And he tells the people when he comes back together, my little finger is bigger around than my father’s loins.

He beat you with whips, I’ll beat you with scorpions. And the people say, What do we have to do with you, oh you descendant of Jesse? To your tents, O Israel. And ten of the tribes rebel against Rehoboam, and in spite of his efforts to try to consolidate the kingdom, the Lord tells him to back off and not use his army because the Lord wouldn’t bless those efforts. That this has come from him, that the Lord wants ten of the tribes to serve as the kingdom of Israel, while the southern kingdom is called Judah after its largest tribe. Now, if everything had continued that way, everything would have been fine. The problem is that Jeroboam is not the kind of man of faith that David was.

Was that the people would continue to go back to King David’s city and the city of his descendants, and in their worship, you remember there were four times a year every Jewish male had to come up to the Lord at the temple, you know, during the feast of Booths, during the feast of weeks, which is called Pentecost in the New Testament. The feast of unleavened bread, of which the most important day was the Passover and the Day of Atonement. All of them had to come up before the Lord, and he was afraid that if they come four times before the Lord at the city of Jerusalem where David’s descendants rule, they’ll not continue to be loyal to me. And so he erects a calf at Bethel in the far southern border of the country, and a calf at Dan at the far northern border of the country, so that everybody will be closer to one of his shrines than they will be to Jerusalem.

At first, there doesn’t seem to be any effort to serve other gods. It seems to be that they’re trying to worship God in a way that he hasn’t authorized, which we know is not true worship. But he also then develops a new priesthood that includes people who are not of the descendants of Aaron of the tribe of Levi. He also has other festival days in which they are days that came out of his mind rather than ones that came out of God’s commands.

1. There Came a Man of God From Judah

That take place at Bethel in the southern border of the country, when he is executing finally the beginning of that new type of worship. It tells us beginning in verse 1. Now, behold, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord, while Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense. And he cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, O altar, altar, thus says the Lord, behold, a son shall be born to the house of David Josiah by name, and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and human bones shall be burned on you. And in 2 Kings 23, we see that exactly happening. Years before Josiah was even thought of.

Here the prophet of God mentions him by name and says he’s basically going to defile this altar by burning decaying bones on it. And even among the pagans, why even the ones that included human sacrifice in their worship, to burn the bones of somebody who had long been dead, who was decaying, was considered something that violated the shrine or the altar that they were burnt on. Well, he gave a sign the same day, saying, Thus is the sign which the Lord has spoken. Behold, the altar shall be split apart, and the ashes which are on it will be poured out. Here’s a new altar. You wouldn’t expect it to split open and the ashes pour out. But the king has had just about enough of this.

And so we see in verse 4, it says, When the king heard the saying of the man of God, he cried against the altar in Bethel, and Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, Seize him. But his hand which he stretched out against him dried up so that he couldn’t draw it back to himself. You talk about a visual aid. I uh am I am one of the lowest tech preachers that you’ll ever see. I rarely use PowerPoint. But I’ll tell you, if I could wither somebody’s hand in the audience, that would be a better visual aid, I think, than just about anything. And here you have somebody who, when the king speaks out against him and says, seize him his hand withers. Now, one thing you have to give Jeroboam is he is at least willing to temporarily repent.

And here, after the altar splits open, just exactly like the prophet had said it would do, the king in verse 6 says to the man of God, please entreat the Lord your God, and pray for me that my hand may be restored to me. So the man of God entreated the Lord, and the king’s hand was restored to him, and it became as it was before. Now I’ll tell you, if withering the king’s hand was a good visual aid, restoring it like it was before is an even better visual aid. So here you have of the day, all the days that the king would have wanted for everything to be focused on him and his new worship. You have a prophet from God unnamed, but who comes into Bethel and makes a very deep impression on the people to show that Jeroboam is not pleasing the Lord, and to show that God is displeased with the people going along with this kind of false worship.

Then the king said to the man of God, come home with me and refresh yourself, and I’ll give you a reward. But the man of God said to the king, If you were to give me half your house, I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread with you, nor would I drink water in this place. For so it was commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying, You shall eat no bread nor drink water, nor return by the way which you came. So he went another way and did not return by the way which he came to Bethel. I think this is a powerful story to me. It almost has in many ways the elements of a Western to it. I can just almost see, you know, here all of this takes place.

It completely destroys the moment that the king had in mind, and then just as swiftly as he came into town, you see him quickly leaving, and you can just almost hear. You know, like sometimes those westerns will have somebody whistling in the background or something like that as they go. And you can just see people saying, Who was that masked man? I don’t think he was wearing a mask, but who was that guy? What did he well I can’t tell you? It doesn’t even tell us his name here in Scripture. And if the story had ended right there, it would have been a wonderful story in the Word of God. It would have been a great story of victory. It would have been a story that would have inspired us all to recognize that you can’t tamper with the kind of worship that the Lord has demanded.

2. He Listened to a Lie and Believed the Lie

And I hope that’s the lesson that we learn from it. The second part of the story reads like a nightmare, though. He tells us now there was an old prophet that lived in Bethel, verse 11. And his sons came and told him all the deeds which the man of God had done that day in Bethel. The words which he had spoken to the king, these also they related to their father. And their father said to them, Which way did he go? Now his sons had seen the way which the man of God came from Judah had gone. And he said to his sons, Saddle the donkey for me. So they saddled the donkey for him, and he rode away on it. Here is a prophet of God that lives in Bethel, who instead of being instructed to go and interrupt this worship service.

We see him coming and hearing about what happened. You can just imagine how it warmed his heart and how he wanted to meet this young man of God who had come and done such wonderful things. So he went after the man of God and found him setting under an oak. And he said to him, Are you the man of God who came from Judah? And he said, I am. Here he comes and finally catches up with him. And he’s sitting under probably one of those terabinth oaks. You’ve probably seen pictures of them in Palestine. They, you know, have thick branches. Often they’re wider than they are tall. And you can just see them out of the desert, providing shade. And here you find this man of God, I bet in retrospect, he wished he hadn’t stopped and taken a little bit of refreshment there in the shade of this tree.

Because the border with Judah was not far from Bethel. Certainly not very far from this oak tree where he stopped to rest. But that’s where he encounters this older prophet. And he said to him, Come home with me and eat bread. And he said, I can’t return with you, nor go with you, nor eat bread or drink water with you in this place. For a command came to me by the word of the Lord, you shall not eat bread nor drink water, nor return by the way which you came. I want you to notice there is a consistent pattern in this story that lets us understand that the man of God knows what the rules are. God has told him, don’t eat bread, don’t drink water in this place, and don’t go back the same way that you came.

It’s pretty simple. But notice the older prophet, for motives I can’t even imagine. And verse 18 says, I also am a prophet like you. And an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with you to your house that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied to him. So he came back with him and ate bread in his house and drank water. Remember when I was living in Thomasville, Georgia many years ago, back in the early 80s, my son, who’s now 35, was at that time just a little boy, four or five years old.

And there was a little boy next door who was a little bit older than our son. And he wasn’t a bad little boy. He was just an uncontrolled little boy. You’ve seen situations like that where it’s not really the kids’ fault, it’s the parents’ fault. But this kid ran up and down the neighborhood, got into our mail one time. And the only way we found out about it is his mother came and showed us some pictures of our family. That he had apparently gotten out of some of our mail, and uh she, of course, uh rebuked the boy for it, probably not as severely as I would have. But uh he was just into everything. And so we told, we told our son, don’t go play in that boy’s yard unless you have permission from us.

The very next day I see my son playing with that little boy in his yard. So I think very quickly. Did I did I give him permission? Why no? That leaves one other legitimate possibility. I go check with my wife. Did you give our son permission to play in that little boy’s backyard? She said no. So I go outside and I call my son and I say, uh, Jesse, come over here. Um you remember the talk that we had yesterday about playing in this yard without our permission? Oh, yes, sir. Did you get permission from me to play in the backyard here? No, sir. Did you get permission from mama to play in the backyard there? No, sir. Well, why are you playing in the little boy’s backyard?

And he said, Because he told me to.

And I had to take my son home, and we went in his room. And I spent a few minutes with a switch, explaining to him why he needed to fear me more than he feared that little boy. Why he needed to do what I said more than what the little boy said. You know, that might have been a good lesson for this young prophet here, don’t you think? But here, this man tells him something different than what God tells him, and he listens to the man who is supposed to be a prophet of God, even though the man lies to him. Verse 20, it says, Now it came about as they were sitting down at the table that the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back, and he cried to the man of God and came from who came from Judah, saying, Thus says the Lord, because you’ve disobeyed the command of the Lord and have not observed the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you, but have returned to eaten bread and drunk water in the place which he said to you, Eat no bread and drink no water, your body shall not come to the grave of your fathers.

You’re not going to be buried with your kin folks. And it came about after he had eaten bread and after he had drunk that he saddled the donkey for him, for the prophet whom he had brought back. And when he had gone, a lion met him on the way and killed him, and his body was thrown on the road with the donkey standing beside it, the lion also standing beside the body. And behold, men passed by and saw the body thrown on the road and the lion standing beside the body. So they came and told it to the city where the old prophet lived. Sad story.

So you’re going to die today. And you’re not going to be buried with your fathers. And as he finishes eating, he saddles up his donkey and leaves. And a lion meets him and kills him. And I want you to notice some things that are a little interesting about that. The lion killed him, and his body was thrown on the road with a donkey standing beside it. Beside the body.

Why would a lion attack a man? Because he’s hungry. Does the lion eat this prophet? Nope. What do you think a donkey would do if a lion was around and it had its master on its back and a lion came along? If the lion attacked the master, the donkey would run off and say, Good, it got my master instead of me. Actually, the donkey wouldn’t have said anything. That’s part of his thought processes.

Not that I think like a donkey, but that. You know what I’m talking about. And the donkey would be out of there. But I want you to imagine the strange scene of a dead man laying there. The lion just walking around, not eating the body. The donkey’s standing around there, like he and the lion are old friends. I made an impression on everybody. When the old prophet hears about it, he goes and has the body of the young prophet taken and buried in his tomb and tells his sons that when I die, I want you to bury me in the same place where the young prophet has been buried. A sad story. A story of a man who’s a good man, a story of a man who’s a sincere man, a story of a man who had so many things going for him, but yet the problem was he listened to a lie and believed the lie.

And it cost him his life.

3. God Doesn’t Contradict Himself

And I’d like to just let you understand a few of these in reference to our theme of having a better relationship with God. Let’s see what we can learn as we close this lesson from this particular story. The first thing we need to understand is that God doesn’t contradict himself. Yeah, many people in the religious world who somehow think all kinds of things that are contrary to what the Word of God says and somehow do not seem to notice the incongruity. God does not contradict himself. He doesn’t tell one person, don’t go and eat bread and drink water in this place and don’t go back by the way that you came, and then tell somebody else to tell him something different. If God has told us something in his word, if he’s outlined something in reference to his authority, if he’s given us instructions in his word and we do otherwise, we have done something that contradicts the word of God rather than God being the one who contradicts himself.

Let me give you just a couple of examples of that.

You know, you hear today among a lot of people that in the religious world the only thing that matters is love. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love. And I tell you, love is very important. God is love. We need to love one another. We need to be people who are exemplary in reference to our love for one another, so that people will be able to see that Christ lives in us. But I want you to notice a passage in the 14th chapter of the book of John and verse 15. John 14 and verse 15. There it tells us, if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. Isn’t that interesting? Some people say, love is what is matter, what matters. In fact, I remember one place where I preached, there were people who left the congregation because they said that I was preaching on obedience too much.

I realize that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I realize that the grace that God makes available through Jesus Christ is necessary for all of us. All of us need mercy at the hands of the king, but when he tells us, if you love me, you’ll keep my commandments. What do you think we ought to try to do with every fiber of our being? Obey his commandments, do his will, do what he tells us to do. There’s some people who say, Well, the church really isn’t important. I’ve heard people say that today.

Church is the body of Christ. Christ is the fullness of him that filleth all in all. And there are some people who say, Well, it’s not important. How many people do you know say, well, really, you know, there are all kinds of churches. You can basically find one that you like and just stick with it. Do you know in the fourth chapter of the book of Ephesians in verse 4, it talks about there being one body? And we could go on and on and on where people think that the Bible has contradicted itself. Even to the point of the basic doctrine of the reformation, that we are saved by faith alone. And the only time the expression faith alone is used in the Word of God is where it says in the second chapter of the book of James in verse 24, for it is by works a man is justified, and not by faith alone.

Or faith only.

4. Religious Leaders Don’t Always Tell the Truth

But let me tell you, there are some who are just liars. Who know that they’re teaching contrary to what God has said, and for whatever reason? Just like I can’t explain this older prophet’s reasons. I can’t explain the reasons why some religious leaders don’t tell the truth today. But for some reason, you have people who don’t tell the truth.

The book of Galatians is a fascinating book because it begins so differently than the rest of the epistles of the Apostle Paul. You notice how usually the apostle Paul will begin and he’ll give a very formal type introduction. He’ll talk about how much he thinks of the congregation and all that he’s done in working with them. And the first chapter is usually spent in reference to the prayers that he’s prayed for them, the good things that he wants for them. And even the church at Corinth, you remember in 1 Corinthians. It’s a while before he gets around to talking about the division that is a problem with them. Notice he barely says hello in Galatians. And in verse 6, he says, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another.

Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even though we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what you preach we preach to you, he is to be accursed. As we’ve said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed. For am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were striving to please men, I would not be a bond servant of Christ. He says, Let me tell you what, if anybody preaches to you a gospel contrary to what we preach to you, even an angel.

You remember what this prophet, older prophet said? An angel talked to me. Do you realize there are religions that are based on people saying angels talk to them? Islam is based on the fact that Muhammad claimed that angels spoke to him. The Mormon religion is based on the fact that Joseph Smith claimed that angels spoke to him. And yet it tells us here by the Apostle Paul’s words, though we are an angel from heaven should preach anything different than what I preach to you, let it be accursed. And just in case you didn’t catch it the first time, let me say it again. You see, religious leaders don’t always tell the truth. So what we have to do is to make sure that we’re living our lives in such a way so that we study the word of God and don’t trust men with your souls.

Make sure that even the things I tell you, even the things that all your preachers tell you, that you always compare to the Word of God. I don’t think any of us would lie to you on purpose. But do you know your soul is going to be, it’s eternal destiny will be determined one of these days by how you did what God would have you to do rather than whether somebody told you wrong or not. They’ll be punished too. But we need to make sure that we use the only way that we can make ourselves bulletproof against error, and that is to make up our minds that we’re going to follow the word of God and we’re going to do exactly what it says, not trusting other men, but trusting the word of God.

5. Sincerity Is No Excuse

Another thing that I think is what we can learn from this particular passage is the fact that sincerity is no excuse. I’ll tell you, if there’s anything that has really risen in my lifetime, it’s the fact that even among some people who claim to be New Testament Christians, the idea is that if somebody is sincere, then that’s bound to be okay with God. That sincerity is an excuse. Well, it doesn’t work that way in a lot of areas of life, but somehow people tend to think that it works in spiritual matters. I want you to notice in the seventh chapter of the book of Matthew, Matthew 7, beginning in verse 21. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

But the people were wrong. In fact, Jesus says, I never knew you. I see nothing in the young prophet in the story that we’ve talked about today that would give any other impression than the fact that he was someone who was serious about doing what God would have him to do. Was sincere in the mistake that he made. But even though he was sincere, he still lost his life to teach us an important lesson. And we need to make up our minds that we’re going to understand that as well. We need to be sincere in what we believe and what we think. But it’s also very important for us to be sincerely right in making sure that we do what the Lord would have us to do.

Conclusion

And not just people who, based on our sincerity, think that that’s going to usher us on into heaven. We’ve got to be people who are those that are sincere. But people who allow that sincerity to make us show our love for the Lord by obeying his commandments. There are many other lessons we could have drawn from what we’ve talked about today. But I hope one of the things that you’ll remember in developing a better relationship with God is to learn from the lesson that this young prophet died to teach you. And that is that God’s word needs to be at the heart and core of what we are and what we do and what we believe. If it’s not, then we may be people who find ourselves in the situation in which we’re assuming God contradicts himself, which he does not.

In which we’re assuming that religious leaders always tell the truth and they don’t. Which we’re making the false assumption that simply because somebody’s sincere, they’re all right with God, there are many people who are sincerely wrong. And we need to make sure that what we do is sincere, but also something that is investigated thoroughly in reference to the Word of God so that we can be right in the Lord’s sight. Let’s dismiss with a word of prayer. Lord God, we thank you so much for this day you’ve given us. We thank you for the blessings in it, especially we thank you for the blessings that we enjoy in Christ. We thank you for your word which you’ve given to us as lamp to our feet and light to our pathway.

And we’d ask that you help us to learn from the many lessons that are provided in your word to be able to put greater confidence in the things that you’ve said, to make up our minds that we’re going to be absolute subjects to your kingdom and show our obedience and our love for you and the things that we do and the things that we say. We’d ask that you bless this gospel meeting this week, and we’d ask that you help our worship today to be offered in spirit and in truth. Forgive us of our sins, Father. Help us to always look to you for guidance through your word and through the example we see in your Son, and help us to have forgiveness as we come to you in confession of our sins and in repentance of them, so that we might be able to stand pure and clean in your sight, and we might have a better relationship with you as we look to your word and allow it to be our guide in all things practical and religious.

In Jesus’ name, amen.