Monday, June 30, 2014 

Reading for the day: 1 Kings 12, 13, 14 

Are you listening to “yes” men? To people who tell you what you want to hear even if it  is not true?

In our reading for today, we read of two examples of people following the advice of people who told them not what they should do, but rather what they wanted to hear. Rehoboam, who is a foolish, oppressive dictator, does what at first seems to be the “wise” thing to do. He seeks council with his father’s old advisors and they give him sound advice. But then Rehoboam doesn’t seem to like what he heard, do he goes to his cronies and asks them for their advice. They tell him just what he wanted to hear and so foolishly he follows their advice, becoming the oppressive and despicable dictator that scripture shows him to be.

The second one is a little harder to detect, but it is there as well. The “man of God” (we don’t have a name for him), comes from Judah to Bethel and condemns Jeroboam who is making a sacrifice that is not pleasing to God. (I don’t want to go into all the reasons why this is bad, just suffice it to say, he was wrong, very wrong it what he was doing).

Well, of course this condemnation makes Jeroboam very angry at the “man of God” and puts the “man of God” in danger. Even when Jeroboam sounds like he wants to welcome him into his home, the “man of God” is still listening to God and obeying him and refuses. God tells him don’t eat or drink anything and don’t go home by the same route. Unfortunately, this makes the next few days very difficult for the “man of God” and he finds himself hungry, thirsty and heading down a more difficult path towards home.

Now into the story comes a certain old prophet. One might think on the surface this is a good thing, but if you think about who this old prophet is, he has been serving King Jeroboam and so it makes sense to understand, he is not a prophet of God, but rather of the false gods that Jeroboam has put into place.  Another thing that points to the old prophet’s unworthiness is the understanding that he is lying to the “man of God”, he never consulted God and there was no angel that came and spoke to him. He is telling the “man of God’ what he wants to hear and so, rather than staying true to God and God’s message, he jumps on the chance to satisfy his hunger and thirst. And the rest of the story tells us what a bad decision it was.

So my question again is “are you listening to only people who will tell you what you want to hear or are you search for the truth?” It is up to us to determine if what someone is telling us is from God or not and how can you do that? Ask yourself is this in line with what the Bible tells us and the only way you’ll know what the Bible says is to read it. So I applaud all of you who are reading through your Bible and it is my prayer that we will not be deceived when someone tries to persuade us to follow false teaching.

Blessings

Pastor Kathy