Spiritual
Failure Leads to Political Failure. 1 Kings 13:1-34
When the northern kingdom split from the southern kingdom and they
appointed Jeroboam to be the king he began to think about how he could secure
his dynasty, forgetting what God said: “If you obey me and walk with me I will
establish your house.” He wants to establish his house on his own terms and he
is afraid that if the people in the north keep going down to Jerusalem every
two or three months for one of the pilgrimage festivals, such as Passover,
Pentecost, Yom Kippur, that they would see the splendour of the temple, the
splendour of the blessings that God had given the southern kingdom, and he
would lose his power base. So he completely forgets the objective divine
viewpoint that God had given him, informing him that God was splitting the
kingdom and he wasn’t going to put it back together, and so we see that in his
soul he is enslaved to the darkness of human viewpoint. That is the same picture
that Paul gives in Romans chapter six where he talks about the fact that we are
all born slaves to the sin nature because there is nothing else that we can do;
that is the only nature that any human nature has when they are born. They are
born with a sin nature and even though they can chose to do moral things or
immoral things it all flows out of the sin nature and we are born, as Paul
says, slaves to unrighteousness. In the darkness of sin every human being is
enslaved in his soul. The only way to have soul freedom comes by responding to
the grace of God. In the Old testament they believed that God would send a
Messiah, a saviour who would redeem them and establish a kingdom; in the New
Testament we look back to the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross and we
trust in Him, so that in Galatians chapter five we are told that we have
freedom. Christ has set us free from the tyranny of sin and unrighteousness. So
it is only when there is an external category of righteousness, an external
category of right and wrong, that we can live and establish and implement
within a culture, that there can be true freedom. That can only come from the
influence of believers as they function as salt in life within a fallen world.
We will never “redeem the culture”; it is impossible, it is a silly phrase. The
culture is the cosmic system. But we can have an impact and provide that which
gives stability to the culture, that which gives an objective frame of
reference for the culture.
Jeroboam has rejected that. In negative volition civilisation after
civilisation rejects the truth and substitutes the fantasy of the rebellious
creature, and then attempts to live his life and construct all of society
around the fantasy concept that is antagonistic to the will and the Word of
God. Jeroboam now has to justify what he has done. He is then operating on the
arrogance skills and not only is he involved in self-deception, he is now
involved in self-justification and is going to establish his self-justification
on the basis of a religious framework. At the very centre of every system of
thought there has to be a focus and an explanation of ultimate reality, and
that ultimate reality is either that there is nothing or there is God, or some
sort of god. That is the only option. So the very core of any thought system
rests upon some idea related to religion, to some sort of spiritual ideology.
That then informs everything else whether it is the divinity of the ancient
Egyptian kings or whether it is based upon the truth of God’s Word as was seen
in the influence on the
We have to recognise that at the core of every political system, every
thought system, there is some sort of religious idea. Jeroboam recognised this
and he knew that he had to shift the spiritual orientation of the people in the
northern kingdom or he would possibly lose everyone if they kept going down to
In order to justify their positions they began to attack the very
foundations of the American republic. Other myths developed: the
What we have seen if we sit down and analyse the trends of the last
forty years is that is within the so-called evangelical or fundamentalist
church the Christian influence has been fragmented by an incredible amount of
false ideas about the Bible, about salvation—core doctrines that once weren’t
even debated in many of these circles forty or fifty years ago are now questioned
at the very seminaries that were the bulwark for those doctrines. There are
positions in theology today that didn’t even exist then. The arrogance is
palpable, and it is because everyone is doing what is right in his own eyes.
The Christians have become as influenced by the relativism of the culture
around them as the ancient Israelites were during the period of the judges, so
that the average Christian and the average theologian today is no different
from his counterpart in the secular world—he doesn’t think biblically anymore,
he thinks in terms of the relativism of the culture. When the leadership has
fallen into relativism and the pew has fallen into relativism then the voice
from the church has been stifled. That is exactly what has happened. There is little
influence from Bible doctrine today, there is no understanding of objective
truth or objective standards, and when there is no objective truth and
standards the soul becomes enslaved to its own lusts. The people then have only
one value system and that is “whatever makes me feel good, whatever stimulates
my emotions, whatever gives me a sense of stability and happiness, even if it
is not real, as long as I have the façade, the dream, the hope that everything
is just going to work out; don’t confuse me with any facts, I don’t want to
analyse anything, I don’t want to know the truth, I just want to feel good.”
That is the trend of today.
In contrast, when there is a large influence of Bible doctrine—which is
what western civilisation saw coming out of the Protestant Reformation, what
This is the situation we see with Jeroboam. He is promoting the public
lie: this golden calf is the god who delivered them from slavery in
There are three key characters in chapter thirteen: Jeroboam the 1st;
the unnamed prophet called the man of God; the old prophet. They key doctrine
that is emphasised here is the importance of the Word of God and maintaining
the integrity of the message of God. When that integrity is lost then the
nation is going to crumble and the leadership is going to crumble.
1 Kings 13:1 NASB “Now behold, there came a man of God from
Background: Jeroboam came to the throne (the nation had split to the
north and the south) in 931 BC. He will be on the throne for 21 years. In 722,
approximately 210 years after the split,
It was in this context that there was the fulfilment of this prophecy.
What we must understand is that prophecy in the Scripture has certain
guidelines. There were certain tests that were established in the Law so that
the people would know whether a prophet was really speaking from God. These
tests are found in Deuteronomy 13 and 18. The one that relates to this is found
in Deuteronomy 18:20-22 NASB “But the prophet who speaks a word
presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he
speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’
Jeroboam, like most tyrants, became immediately angry and he has to shut
down anyone who is speaking in opposition. 1 Kings 13:4 NASB “Now
when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the
altar in Bethel, 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
could not draw it back to himself.” At the same time the near fulfilment occurs
and the altar splits apart and the ashes on the altar are poured out on the
ground indicating that the altar has now been desecrated and showing that God
has completely rejected Jeroboam’s religion, sacrifice and altar. It is a sign
from God the Jeroboam is completely outside of God’s will and does not have any
authorisation for this. The king is only concerned about his arm and
immediately begins to beg the prophet to heal his arm. 1 Kings 13:6 NASB
“The king said 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.” This is typical
human viewpoint. People want to use God for their own personal pleasure and
agenda but they don’t want to submit their will to God at all. In grace we see
God heal him. God’s grace always operates within judgment.
1 Kings 13:7 NASB “Then the king said to the man of God,
‘Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.’” God
had told the prophet not to eat, not to stop, to go there and come back because
He didn’t want him to a) be distracted from his mission, and b) He didn’t want
there to be any suggestion that he was beholden to or in debt to the king for
any reason at all. So the man of God says: [8] “If you were to give me half
your house I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water in
this place. [9] 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.’” He
understands the integrity of the message. Up to this point the prophet shows
integrity.
The fulfilment of this: 2 Kings 23. This is one of the five most
incredible prophecies in all of the Old Testament. If ever we are teaching that
the Bible is evidence of the Word of God this is one of those passages to
indicate that. This chapter describes all of the things that Josiah was doing
in order to purify and reform the apostasy that had occurred in the southern
kingdom and to remove all of the influence of all of the idols and false
worship centres. Then in verse 15 we read: NASB “Furthermore, the
altar that {was} at Bethel {and} the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat,
who made Israel sin, had made, even that altar and the high place he broke
down. Then he demolished its stones, ground them to dust, and burned the
Asherah. [16] Now when Josiah turned, he saw the graves that {were} there on
the mountain, and he sent and took the bones from the graves and burned {them}
on the altar and defiled it according to the word of the LORD which the man of
God proclaimed, who proclaimed these things. [17] Then he said, ‘What is this
monument that I see?’ And the men of the city told him, ‘It is the grave of the
man of God who came from
What happens in the rest of the story shows what happens when we fail to
maintain the integrity of God’s Word, when we are not consistent in
interpreting it and applying it. We now have an old prophet, confused,
mixed-up, apostate, mystical; there is a lot that we don’t know about this old
prophet. All we are told is that he lived there in
1 Kings 13:12 NASB “Their father said to them, ‘Which way did
he go?’ Now his sons had seen the way which the man of God who came from
Now the old prophet is speaking in verse 18 NASB “He said to
him, ‘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.” This is a test to see if the unnamed prophet will maintain the
integrity of God’s Word as a prophet. He failed and so he is going to die. He
will be mauled and killed by a lion because he fails to maintain the integrity
of the Word. Rather than say, “God told me to do this” and refuse to change his
mind no matter what kind of experience the old prophet has, no matter what kind
of visions he saw, no matter what miracles he may claim to validate his message
from God, he says “I know that God told me not to eat or drink with anyone but
to go straight home, so whatever you say is wrong.” But rather than letting
doctrine determine his thinking and evaluating the situation he succumbs to
this lie on the basis of experience.
This goes right to the second test that God established for evaluating
revelation in Deuteronomy chapter thirteen. This is one that applies to many
things today, especially within the charismatic movement. Deuteronomy 13:1 NASB
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a
wonder…” He says this is what God said to me, an angel appeared to me, I healed
someone, this miracle occurred. Notice in this passage that Moses doesn’t say
it is a false miracle or that it is deceptive. He accepts the miracle as
legitimate. [2] “and the sign or the wonder comes true…” He actually predicted
something, there is a healing that occurred, etc. “… concerning which he spoke
to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let
us serve them’
Deuteronomy 13:3 NASB “you shall not listen to the words of
that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to
find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
When the old prophet hears about this in verse 26 he realises what has
happened and he understands it correctly. That is what is confusing about it.
On the one hand he is deceptive and seemingly confused, and on the other hand
he recognises that this is from the Lord. 1 Kings 13:26 NASB
“Now when the prophet who brought him back from the way heard {it,} he said,
‘It is the man of God, who disobeyed the command of the LORD; therefore the LORD has given him to
the lion, which has torn him and killed him, according to the word of the LORD which He spoke to
him.’ [27] Then he spoke to his sons, saying, ‘Saddle the donkey for me.’ And
they saddled {it.} [28] He went and found his body thrown on the road with the
donkey and the lion standing beside the body; the lion had not eaten the body
nor torn the donkey. [29] So the prophet took up the body of the man of God and
laid it on the donkey and brought it back, and he came to the city of the old
prophet to mourn and to bury him. [30] He laid his body in his own grave, and
they mourned over him, {saying,} ‘Alas, my brother!’ [31] After he had buried
him, he spoke to his sons, saying, ‘When I die, bury me in the grave in which
the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones. (That is what Josiah
is referencing in 2 Kings 23) For the thing shall surely come to pass which he
cried by the word of the LORD against the altar in
What is the conclusion of all of this in relationship to Jeroboam and
the political situation in