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Micaiah & Ahab's False Prophets

God's Holy Book

Mar 26, 2017


by: Jack Lash Series: God's Holy Book | Category: Scripture | Scripture: 2 Kings 22:1–14

I. Introduction
A. Two weeks or maybe three on this story
B. Story
1. Divided kingdom
2. Unholy alliance between Ahab and Jehoshaphat
C. 1Kings 22:1–14 For three years Syria and Israel continued without war. 2 But in the third year Jehoshaphat the king of Judah came down to the king of Israel. 3 And the king of Israel said to his servants, “Do you know that Ramoth-Gilead belongs to us, and we keep quiet and do not take it out of the hand of the king of Syria?” 4 And he said to Jehoshaphat, “Will you go with me to battle at Ramoth-Gilead?” And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, “I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses.” 5 And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, “Inquire first for the word of the LORD.” 6 Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said to them, “Shall I go to battle against Ramoth-Gilead, or shall I refrain?” And they said, “Go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.” 7 But Jehoshaphat said, “Is there not here another prophet of the LORD of whom we may inquire?” 8 And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the LORD, Micaiah the son of Imlah, but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil.” And Jehoshaphat said, “Let not the king say so.” 9 Then the king of Israel summoned an officer and said, “Bring quickly Micaiah the son of Imlah.” 10 Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah were sitting on their thrones, arrayed in their robes, at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria, and all the prophets were prophesying before them. 11 And Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made for himself horns of iron and said, “Thus says the LORD, ‘With these you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed.’ ” 12 And all the prophets prophesied so and said, “Go up to Ramoth-Gilead and triumph; the LORD will give it into the hand of the king.” 13 And the messenger who went to summon Micaiah said to him, “Behold, the words of the prophets with one accord are favorable to the king. Let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favorably.” 14 But Micaiah said, “As the LORD lives, what the LORD says to me, that I will speak.”
1. Jehoshaphat's visit to Israel to hobnob with Ahab
2. Ahab’s proposal to go to war together against Syria to take back the city of Ramoth-Gilead
3. Jehoshaphat is willing but wants to consult some prophets first.
4. Consulting Ahab's 400 prophets – Jehoshaphat isn’t satisfied since the 400 are clearly Ahab’s personal prophets who tell him what he wants to hear. (When Jehoshaphat asked if there was a prophet of Yahweh around, it was obvious what he meant.)
5. Summoning Micaiah
6. Consulting Micaiah
7. Micaiah's warning about going to war
8. They go anyway
9. Micaiah's warning comes true: Jehoshaphat dies on the battlefield
II. Explanation
A. Why does Ahab have 400 prophets?
1. Why would a wicked king who cares nothing about God have prophets at all?
a. Not to find out what the Lord wanted.
b. But to justify what he wanted to do to those who did believe in the Lord.
2. And then why have 400 of them? Isn't that a bit much?
a. We think that if everyone else agrees with us we must be right. How can 400 prophets be wrong?
b. To deceive people into thinking he was serious about wanting to know the Lord’s will.
3. Why did he choose all yes-men?
a. Because he really wanted to do his own will, not the Lord’s.
4. He was willing to pay dearly to be able to do what he wanted and have others think he was serving the Lord.
B. V.11-12 Zedekiah uses a prophetic sign – e.g. Acts 21:10-12 Agabus and Paul’s belt
III. Application – The same thing has been happening all through history.
A. Just because people say they’re seeking the Lord’s will doesn’t mean they actually are seeking the Lord’s will.
B. When there are a lot of religious people around, some folks don’t like to blatantly and publically disobey God. They don’t want to suffer people’s disdain and disapproval. But they still want to do what they want to do. Therefore they go to great lengths to justify what they do before others.
1. How many times people justify their adultery or their fornication or their homosexual acts or their use of pornography or their unbiblical divorce by some kind of argument that it’s OK with God!
2. I recently heard a pastor justify prostitution from the Bible. And when Jesus told the woman caught in adultery to “Go and sin no more” He meant “Go and no longer commit the sin of thinking that adultery/prostitution is wrong.”
C. The power of a council of experts
1. There is nothing like a council of experts to make us feel secure. Ahab had 400 prophets to tell him what he wanted to hear because it is especially helpful in protecting us from the sting of God's truth to have teachers who we can surround ourselves with who are willing to tell us what we want to hear.
a. 2Timothy 4:3 “The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”
b. And a good business man sees the opportunity. “I can make a lot of money giving these people what they want.”
2. And so there are very effective counterfeits, adapted to look like the real thing.
a. Just like Zedekiah’s prophetic sign in v. 11-12: And Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah made for himself horns of iron and said, “Thus says the LORD, ‘With these you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed.’ ” 12 And all the prophets prophesied so and said, “Go up to Ramoth-Gilead and triumph; the LORD will give it into the hand of the king.”
b. “You want prophecies about winning against Ramoth-Gilead? We can give you that. You want prophetic signs? We can do prophetic signs.”
c. They will dress like the real thing, they will build church buildings that look like real churches, they will meet on Sunday mornings just like real churches, they will call their gatherings worship services, they will use Bible verses to teach their heresies, they will go to seminaries and earn theological degrees.
d. "You want sacraments? We do sacraments. You want music? We do music. You want Christian jargon? We can use Christian jargon." The form is all there, it is the reality that is missing, it is only the truth that has been left out.
e. And just as false prophets in the days of Ahab were a dime a dozen, so there are many false preachers today, who speak in the Name of God but not according to His word, but according to what men want to hear. It was the vast majority back then, maybe it is the vast majority today.
D. This story helps us to grasp the great lengths people will go in order to justify their sin!
1. What great lengths we go to in order to cover up a lie we tell or our an act we know is wrong.
2. How much hatred we justify by how terribly we’ve been treated.
E. There’s a part of each one of us that cares more about what people think of us than about what God thinks of us.
1. I have the same struggle. It’s so easy to care more about whether people think I’m a godly man than whether I really am a godly man.
2. It’s easy to care more about whether I’m a successful pastor than whether I’m a faithful Christian.
F. And you see, all this affects the way we handle the Bible, just as it affected the way Ahab handled the prophecy of the Lord.
1. We want a Christianity that is like an old shoe, one that slips on easily, without any effort or discomfort.
2. But the truth hurts. The truth makes difficult requirements of us. The truth corrects our thinking.
3. But there are methods we can use to make God’s truth be more comfortable. We can use the Ahab method! We can find people who support our opinions and preferences.
a. And if we find enough of them, then it begins to seem like a valid option at least!
4. But even if we get everyone on earth to agree with us, we can still be wrong, dead wrong.
5. You can’t determine theological truth by counting noses. This is not a democracy. God is king. You have to believe what He says.
a. What others think can direct your study of Scripture. But what God says must be the final judge.
6. The Pharisees were the experts in the law but Jesus reproved them most of all. They were using the Scriptures for their own profit and to achieve their own will. They weren’t really seeking the Lord, as Romans 10:3 says, they were seeking their own righteousness instead of seeking the Lord’s righteousness.
G. A Christianity that does not squeeze you and disturb you and erect barriers between you and many of your inclinations is not worth anything.
1. Because God is love, one of the kinds of messages He often sends are messages to keep us away from that which will destroy us. That was God’s word to Ahab through Micaiah.
2. But we’re human. Our hearts are deceitful and corrupt. We don’t always like what He says. His Word seems to be ruining our fun.
3. And so many times Christianity seems stern and gloomy and restrictive. That's exactly what Ahab said when the subject of Micaiah's prophecies came up: “I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil.” (2Kings 22:8)
4. Should we get rid of smoke alarms because they have such a bothersome piercing sound?
5. Should we eliminate the red lights on the dashboard that tell you when the engine is overheating because they are so disturbing when they go on?
6. Should we remove those red blinking lights on the tops of radio towers because it so restricts the options of airplane pilots when they are flying at night?
H. John 3:19-20 Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
1. But in each of us there remains in us a remnant of this aversion to the light of God's truth.
2. It is hard for us to admit our sin to others, but it is ever so much harder for us to have others admit our sins to us.
3. We hate being confronted with sin just like Ahab did, we do not want to hear the painful truth, we prefer the comfortable illusion. We would rather be somewhat disengaged from reality rather than to be faced with painful facts.
I. The important distinction between speaking in the name of the Lord and speaking according to the word of the Lord.
1. Using God's name to advance our own position is a great sin.
2. It is bad enough to seek our own selfish purposes. But double woe to that man who uses the name of God to do so.
3. Jeremiah 5:30-31 "A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land: The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way. But what will you do in the end? (NIV)
J. It may seem like Where’s Waldo?
1. There may be 400 voices telling you what you want to hear, and only one voice telling you what you very much don’t want to hear. But that may be the voice of God. There’s only one Waldo.
K. So, how do you distinguish your own opinions and preferences from the truth of God’s word? How can we escape from the tyranny of yes-men prophets and preachers?
1. It will only happen if we believe that going your own way ends in death, even though it feels like life — just like Ahab.
2. It will only happen if we believe that God’s word is life. “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Phil.1:21)
3. The gospel is offensive because we want to do what we want to do and are offended that God says that that will end in death.
4. Accepting a savior and repenting of sin means someone else is going to be boss, someone else is going to tell me what to do.
5. In order to accept it, you have to really believe that you need to be saved and that only He can do it. You have to believe that God's way is life and that any other path is going to hurt us.
6. You have to believe that God is your friend and not your enemy. And that He tells you what He tells you not because He is trying to hurt you but because He loves you.
7. Only then will we prefer God’s truth to our own lives.