IN considering this passage as we may be enabled, let us notice three things:—
- I. The faithfulness of the prophet sent to Bethel.
- II. The unfaithfulness of him who had been faithful.
- III. The way taken by God to vindicate His own glory.
I. The prophet’s faithfulness.
As we see, Bethel was the scene of the incidents set before us in this chapter. This place is mentioned early in the Word of God; it was called Luz at first, but came to bear the name, Bethel, signifying “the House of God,” where God made Himself known. This was the place to which Jacob came as a lonely, fleeing fugitive, with the intense feeling that heaven and earth were against him. It was his spiritual birth place. There the Lord appeared to him as the Covenant God of Abraham and Isaac and made a covenant with him. He found him in Bethel and turned Jacob’s mourning into joy and peace.
Bethel was the place also where Jacob’s espousals were renewed, after he returned from Padan-aram. Though he tarried long at Shechem and deferred the fulfilling of his vow to the God of Bethel who had directed him to return, we find him saying to his household:—“ Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean and change your garments, and let us arise and go up to Bethel.” In going back there, the Lord revealed Himself to him and was to his soul as the latter rain upon the earth. Bethel was again made to him the House of God where he was revived and quickened, and his soul fed in communion with God. It was also the place where God’s instituted worship was set up. He had formerly set up the stone for a pillar and had poured oil upon it. He now built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord. We have thus in connection with this place, the substance of all that the Church is to God’s people in every generation of time.
But Scripture makes evident that purity of worship did not abide in Bethel. There are many indications given about the declension of true worship there, so that we find the name of the place changed by the Spirit of God in the prophet, from Bethel, the House of God, to Bethaven, the House of Iniquity, of Vanity. This was emphatically the case in the days of Jeroboam, who filled up the cup of its iniquity by setting up open idolatry. When the Lord gave over to Jeroboam ten of the tribes of Israel and made him king over them, He promised to make him a sure house if he would keep God’s commandments. He, however, turned his back on God’s counsel and gave himself over to a worldly policy, which was in direct opposition to the commands and will of God. The fear of losing the people if they should continue to go up to worship at Jerusalem, took possession of him, and he took steps to prevent this. Though Bethel was only a few miles from the Temple where God had put His Name, Jeroboam introduced there the calf-worship which he had probably learned from the Egyptians, and passed this counterfeit worship as the true worship of Jehovah. Did he keep the people by this carnal and God-dishonouring device? No, and neither will men in this generation keep the people by imposing on them their own will-worship in place of the worship commanded in God’s Word.
The Lord who is zealous for His glory and who would have the sinner warned to turn from his wickedness, sent this prophet from Judah to witness against this false worship. His work was to deal with this perversion and mockery which was being constituted in the name of religion. Arriving at Bethel as Jeroboam was just consecrating the altar and worship, the prophet ignored the person of the king and treated him as a mere nonentity. Instead of addressing him, he cried against the altar, solemnly pronouncing the curse of God upon it and declaring that a king of the House of David, Josiah by name, would be raised up, who would sacrifice the priests of the altar upon it and burn the bones of those who partook of it. This prophecy was fulfilled in the spirit and in the letter by King Josiah, about three hundred and fifty years after it was spoken. The prophet also gave a sign for the certainty of its fulfilment, even that the altar would be rent immediately and the ashes thereon poured out.
Exasperated by the boldness of the prophet in his presence and the contempt cast upon his lewd religion, Jeroboam stretched out his hand to order the arrest of the prophet. By the judicial power of God, his hand became palsied and powerless and the sign given was fulfilled upon his idolatrous altar. There is nothing that will bring down the pride and pomp of man like the correcting hand of God upon him. Men will puff up and swell, when it is only their fellow mortals who withstand them. It is otherwise when the Lord lays His hand upon man with rebukes; his beauty wastes away like a moth. It was thus with Jeroboam, he becomes a suppliant, asking that his hand be restored. There was nothing in his prayer in the way of confessing his wrongdoing and of turning back to the ways of God. He now tries to win the prophet by flattery and by a promise of reward. The servant of God in obedience to his duty refused both food and present. He had the Lord’s express command for so doing. “Eat no bread, nor drink water, nor turn again by the same way that thou camest.” Would he be entertained where his God was dishonoured and His Word flouted? Would he eat their bread who were placing their abominations before the Lord? Would he turn back by the same way, when there were no signs of the people turning back by repentance and obedience to the truth? The prophet had a work from the Lord to perform and right nobly and faithfully did he act to the glory of God both, in the letter and in the spirit of his message showing how severed he was from this shameful and sinful apostacy.
II. The unfaithfulness of him that had been faithful.
We are further told how the fine gold became dim and defiled; how he who at first showed himself obedient and faithful, came to perform an act of disobedience which meant his own ruin and the weakening of the cause of God. There was in Bethel an old prophet. The fact that he was named on the sons of the prophets made him a power for good or for evil. Unhappily his influence was for evil. He was like many in our day, a man of peace, of such peace as would allow king and people to trample God’s Word and worship under foot without raising a public testimony against their work. As a prophet, he was a trustee over the things of God, over His Word and worship. To him as a professed servant were committed the oracles of God. We do not know to what extent he was a trustee over the funds and property of the Church. There are times when one is called to forsake houses and lands and all temporalities for the sake of God’s cause and glory. There never will be a time when ministers, office-bearers, and members will be held guiltless in neglecting their duty as trustees for the truth in order to retain their trustee-ship over money and property. There were women in persecuting times who died as trustees of truth committed to them, while they handed over the trustee-ship of the babes sucking their breasts to the care of others and to the Lord whose witnesses they were.
The old prophet did not go to the idolatrous worship himself, but he allowed his sons to attend there. It was no grief to him that they should accustom themselves to the modern way of worshipping God which was fast becoming so very popular. Parents who are not concerned about their children frequenting places of worship where the whole truth is not honoured have become unfaithful themselves, and the fruits of such carelessness and indifference about their children’s best interests must be grief and misery in this world and if grace prevents not, in eternity. His sons told him all that happened and how the truth of God had prevailed that day over the lying inventions of men. No sooner did he grasp the meaning of the details given him than it became his fixed purpose to do all he could to cause the faithful servant of God to become one like himself.
Ascertaining the direction taken by the prophet from Judah, he goes after him and overtakes him as he sits weary and faint for lack of food. He invited him back to Bethel to rest with him in his house and refresh himself with food. He thus tempted him to a double act of disobedience. (1) Going back to the place he had set his back upon. (2) Having his portion with those among whom he was forbidden to have his portion. He refused but not with the vehemence with which he refused the king. “I will not go,” was the form he then used; now it was:—”I may not go.” He, however, repeated the warrant once more for refusing to have friendly dealings with the truth-forsaking Bethelites. His destroyer now deals with him as Satan does when he transforms himself into an angel of light. He emphasizes his own prophetic character and maintains that there is no difference between them. Not only was he a prophet, but he had God’s Word to give him to prove that the prophet from Judah ought now to do the very thing, which he formerly said he ought not and would not do. The Word of the Lord now said:—”Bring him back with thee into thy house that he may eat bread and drink water,” but he lied unto him, and it was not long until the man came to lie unto himself and to his duty. I note two things about this temptation. 1. It was presented as the very mind and will of God. 2. It fitted in with the prophet’s present condition. (1) He was wearied out and the change presented seemed to afford gratification. (2) He hungered and thirsted after the very things held out to him. To comply with this invitation he had in it the things he desired for himself. When he set out from Judah, Self was out of sight and the glory and truth of God were everything to him. He was no longer single-eyed and the desire for self-gratification blinded him to the imposition practised upon him and thus he came to impose upon himself.
We have here a solemn lesson for every generation and for every individual and it was never more needed than it is in our day. We see men who were like this prophet, in zeal, in singleness of purpose, despising honours, comforts and preferments their gifts and abilities might bring them in this life, and wholly devoted to the vindication of God’s cause in a backsliding day. We see some of them turning back and taking their portion contentedly where they declared they would never be found as long as men there continued in their forward way. What has happened? These men like the prophet from Judah have been imposed upon and they have imposed upon themselves. There were two questions which, if the prophet had asked and weighed well, would have kept his feet from falling, for they kept the feet of some in many a generation from falling. (1) Have the people in Bethel, king and subjects, honestly and sincerely given up their idolatry; have they whole-heartedly turned back to the obedience of the truth? (2) Can God change His Word when men have not changed their ways? The will of God as He reveals it to his servants is like Himself, unchangeable, when His Word calls upon them to take up a certain position with relation to others with whom the Lord has a controversy. Nothing less than the ending of that controversy by repentance before God and man will afford those to whom God’s will has been revealed, a reason to alter their attitude. The prophet from Judah went back with his seducer and made himself a spectacle for friends and enemies as a man who went back on God’s Word to him. We are not told whether his feelings were sad or joyful. Feelings have little place in such matters as these. They are simply matters which concern what is right and what is wrong. Various opinions are held concerning the question:—Was the old prophet a man who truly feared God? Some think that he was, on the ground that God spoke through him, but that reason is by no means conclusive. We do not believe that any true child of grace will father a lie on the God of truth. Such a sin comes very near if it does not touch the sin against the Holy Ghost. His lie was deliberate; it was a word given as the truth of God, knowing well that God never gave it. The child of God may be left to commit many a grievious sin through ignorance and also against light, but it is difficult to conclude that such wrongdoing as this could be committed by one in whom the Lord had placed a witness to the authoritative Word of God.
III. The way taken by God to vindicate His own glory.
The prophet from Judah was not left long without being made to see that he had committed himself to a course which practically nullified his former obedience. This was a mercy to himself, that he should not remain deceived, and it was to the glory of Him who had sent him as His ambassador. (1) The lying prophet is made to tell the truth, and to denounce him for his waywardness even while the bread of disobedience is still in his mouth. “As they sat at the table, the Word of the Lord came unto the prophet that brought him back. And he cried unto the man of God that came from Judah, saying, ‘Thus saith the Lord, Forasmuch as thou hast disobeyed the mouth of the Lord and hast not kept the commandment which the Lord thy God commanded thee, but camest back and hast eaten bread and drunk water in the place of the which the Lord did say unto thee, Eat no bread and drink no water; thy carcase shall not come unto the sepulchre of thy fathers.'” If he had no doubt before about being out of the path of duty, the disobedient prophet was given a sudden and rude awakening out of his delusion. Still it was good for him to be corrected in the act of disobedience; much better then than to have the horrors of an accusing conscience on a dying bed as many had before him and since, or to be condemned with the world at last. In all probability, he had a miniature Day of Judgment in his conscience, as he sadly mounted the ass provided by the old prophet and resumed his interrupted journey homewards.
If a prophet on whom the Lord has bestowed intelligence and grace will not carry out instructions, God will find among the most ferocious and untamable of the brute creation, an agent which will render exact and perfect obedience. God’s messenger was now, a lion, sent to meet the prophet, one that would not fail nor exceed his work. Coming upon him in the way, he dragged him off the ass and slew him, but in such a way as to offer little indignity to the body by mutilation. We are told that the flesh of an ass is deemed a choice portion by a lion and in ordinary circumstances, the ass would become the lion’s victim. But in this case, an unseen Hand restrained the brute from going beyond its commission. Men passed by, but the lion’s business was not with them and they were allowed to go on unscathed. He had to stand guard over the body of one of God’s servants, disobedient as he had been, and over the ass that was to carry him to his burial. He remained at his post till the old prophet arrived, permitted him to handle the body in order to carry it back to the city, and, relieved by Him whose obedient servant he had been, went his way and was seen no more.
The old prophet carried the body back to Bethel and buried it in his own grave. They mourned over his violent death but there is no indication that they laid to heart the part they had in bringing this misery on him and on themselves. Whether the old prophet had the true fear of God or not, there was much of the spirit of Balaam about him. He would like to die the death of the righteous and to have his latter end to be like his. He believed that nothing which the prophet from Judah had spoken would fall to the ground and this was the reason for the directions he gave to his sons. His conscience made him fear, and not without just cause, that Josiah, in fulfilling God’s Word would count him among the idolaters, and he cunningly made provision so that his old bones should not be burned. “Bury me,” he said, “in the sepulchre where the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones: for the saying which he cried by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria shall surely come to pass.” We find the prophet Hosea using words to the same purpose:— “The inhabitants of Samaria shall fear because of the calves of Bethaven; for the people thereof shall mourn over it and the priests that rejoiced on it . . . The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel shall be destroyed : The thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars ; and they shall say to the mountains, cover us ; and to the hills, fall on us ” (Hosea x. 5).
These prophecies were amply fulfilled by King Josiah when he was raised up to make a thorough reformation throughout all the land. We are told that “ there was no king before him that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses ; neither after him arose there any like him.” While engaged in destroying all the high places along with the altar at Bethel, he gave orders that the bones in the sepulchres should be burned upon the altar to pollute it. Noticing a title on one of these sepulchres he asked whose grave was that. Learning that it was the sepulchre of the prophet from Judah who had uttered the prophecy that was being then fulfilled, he spared his sepulchre, thus making the ruse of the old prophet who is said to have come out of Samaria, completely successful.
One would think that such clear indications of the displeasure of God would have brought Jeroboam and his people to a better mind. We are told that it did not bring about the least reformation. When men are set upon their idols, neither Word nor Providence will turn them from their evil ways. God gave him and his people over to hardness of heart and they continued in their false worship and wicked ways till they were cut off, and the house of Jeroboam destroyed from off the face of the earth. We would do well to ponder this passage of God’s truth and cognate passages and try to lay to heart the ways by which men forsake God and the awful consequences which follow a departure from Him. The call of God’s Word is everywhere a call to return by repentance.
If two angels were sent down to earth, one to rule an empire, and the other to sweep a street, they would have no choice in the matter, so long as God ordered them.—C. H. Spurgeon.