Destroyed By The Old Prophet

1 Kings 13

Jay Horsley

The 13th chapter of 1st Kings contains a story of almost unspeakable grief. It tells of an unnamed “man of God,” a prophet from Judah, who acted with courage and boldness in carrying God’s message to the sinful, but who was destroyed by the deception of an older prophet, a man he thought he could trust.

The first ten verses record the work and fidelity of a prophet from Judah sent north. At God’s command he went to the very alter of false religion and spoke God’s judgment against it during their worship service. Wicked king Jeroboam, who was offering the sacrifices of his newly made religion, called for God’s man to be seized for opposing him, but his hand withered as he gestured toward God’s man. This sign of God reminds us that God is with us when we speak against evil, even if He doesn’t immediately strike every hand raised against us. The mercy of God (and his servant) is immediately shown as the wicked king asked for the prophet to pray for his just withered hand. By the prophet’s prayer the hand was restored as immediately as it had been afflicted.

The rebellious king then wished to reward the prophet from Judah for healing him. He offered to take him to his palace for refreshments and gifts. Many “religious men” love access to important houses, rubbing elbows with leading men and are certainly not opposed to receiving gifts, but this man had a direct instruction to eat or drink nothing at all until he got back home. (vs. 10) That instruction implied a haste to get in, deliver his message and get out. So God’s man headed home.

If this chapter ended at verse 10 it would be highly instructive, uplifting and full of lessons for us to apply. But there is, as Paul Harvey always says, “the rest of the story.” There are 24 verses yet, all of them sad.

Vs. 11 introduces the unlikely villain, “an old prophet living in Bethel.” Since his hometown was the very center of this innovative new idolatrous worship which he had not known from his youth, he must have known it was wrong. Why didn’t this old prophet, or his more youthful sons, speak out against all these goings on? Truly, his sons were at that idolatrous worship service, for they immediately went home and told their dad all about it. If they were there but not to rebuke the evil, what were they doing? Obviously they were participating in it. Dad should have taught them better.

The old prophets asked his boys which way God’s man headed. Since he’d already heard from them all that had happened including the offer of reward and its refusal, and since he had to make such haste to catch him, he knew full well that God’s man was not to stay long near Bethel. He found God’s man and asked him to come home with him. (vss. 14,15) We aren’t told why he wanted this so badly. He may have had pure motives such as wanting to hear more about God’s message concerning idol worship, although the law and the previous events of the day should have been enough. He may have had selfish motives such as wanting to speak and reminisce with a younger man that reminded him of himself and his message for God in his younger days. He may have been jealous and wanted to find out why God chose an outside man to come a prophesy in his own backyard. He could easily have said to himself, “We don’t need no prophets coming up here from down south, no outsiders needed here, we got plenty of good prophets of our own.” He may have even had intentionally evil motives and wanted to get this man to disobey the instructions that he had been given so as to discredit him and his teaching against the worship at Bethel. But in the end his motives are not only unknowable but unimportant, for the result is the same.

At first, God’s man from Judah refused when he was asked to stay. He quoted God’s command about not eating and drinking the old prophet (vs. 17) just as well as he had to the king. (vs. 9) The old prophet then proved to be the instrument of Satan by lying about God’s instruction. He claimed that an angel had given him another instruction that contravened the clear teaching of God (vs. 18). The text says, “But he lied to him.” The younger man had not fallen to greed when offered rewards by the king, but fell to deceit by the mouth of an unfaithful prophet. The younger man believed the older and followed him back to physical and spiritual destruction.

It mattered not that this teaching was given to the younger man in a private meeting. Yet today some think you can fellowship a man (especially if he’s older and respected) so long as his doctrine is held “privately, not proclaimed publicly” and if he isn’t “divisive” about it. Thus, some notable brethren have been able to maintain a good name and good standing in spite of teaching doctrines that destroy. I have had personal experience with this. On April 9, 1990 at 9:00 a.m. I was invited to a private study with W.L. Wharton at his hotel room in Amarillo, Texas. Bro. Wharton’s teachings on marriage, divorce and remarriage were not widely known to brethren in the Panhandle at that time, but some of his friends had known for years. That summer his teaching became known to all who cared to know it when he publicly supported Jerry Bassett in his divorce/remarriage error in public debate in San Antonio. But at the time of my meeting with Bro. Wharton, he was widely regarded and held in high esteem by all the faithful brethren that I knew of. What happened at my study with this noted brother was as inevitable as it was crafty. The elder, widely respected brother, tried to convince me, a student still in the university, just beginning to preach, and unsuspecting, of error on divorce and remarriage. What would have been the results to me personally and to all my subsequent hearers had I been convinced by his error? How many adulterers and other false teachers would I be in fellowship with today? And what would I have taught and led my hearers to do?

The man of God from Judah quickly met his tragic fate, for even as he sat at the old prophet’s table and ate his bread, the old prophet was used by God one more time. He was told mid-bite, “Thus says the LORD, 'Because you have disobeyed the command of the LORD, and have not observed the commandment which the LORD your God commanded you, but have returned and eaten bread and drunk water in the place of which He said to you, "Eat no bread and drink no water"; your body shall not come to the grave of your fathers.” (vss. 21,22) Lies destroy. False teaching causes death. He was told that he would not be buried at home. He just may not have realized how soon his burial will be.

The younger man belatedly headed home, this time with the old prophet’s help. Instead of impeding his progress with lies, he saddled his donkey for him. (vs. 23) The judgment of God met the disobedient prophet quickly. A lion met him and killed him. (vs. 24) Passers-by saw the his body in the road with the lion and the donkey standing beside it. They reported back to Bethel what had befallen the man who so few hours before had pronounced God’s judgment on the wicked king and his idolatry. They must have shook their heads wondering what could have transpired to so quickly to cause God’s judgment to fall on him too.

The old prophet heard the report and ordered his boys to yet again saddle his donkey and he rode out. He found the younger prophet’s body and brought it home amid great declarations of grief. (vss. 28,29) He lamented over the man his lies killed and called him “brother.” (vs. 30) He buried the man in his own grave, fulfilling God’s word that the man would not be buried in the grave of his fathers. (vs. 22) The old man even instructed that at his own death he should be buried in the same grave with this man he now realized he destroyed. One wonders if modern “older” false prophets mourn to such a degree when younger men of God are led into infidelity by their false teachings. For as surely as the prophet of God laid dead in the road, many have gone on to spiritual death by the errors that some of their professors and other spiritual forefathers whom they trusted sowed within them. Like God’s man of Judah, they believed the lies.

Finally we note the closing verses of the chapter. “After this event Jeroboam did not return from his evil way, but again he made priests of the high places from among all the people; any who would, he ordained, to be priests of the high places. And this event became sin to the house of Jeroboam, even to blot it out and destroy it from off the face of the earth.” (vss. 33,34) The evil God’s man went to stop continued and was the ruin of many. Yes, the truth of God’s judgment in splitting the alter and withering the king’s hand remained unchanged, but the messenger who delivered the message to them was not only discredited but dead. Men inclined to evil need much less excuse than that to disregard the preaching of truth. As the older prophet had been useless in stopping the evil from starting in his own backyard, now he helps contribute to its continuance. He was not only ineffective for good, but became an active instrument of evil by speaking contrary to God’s word to just one man.

1 Kings 13 teaches us that not every prophet speaks the truth of God and that not just public proclamations against error are needed. Fidelity to the truth in private situations among those that you trust is also needed. “If your brother, your mother's son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods' (whom neither you nor your fathers have known, of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end), you shall not yield to him or listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him.” (Deut. 13:6-8) As the deceived man of God found out, fidelity to the truth is the only way to make it safely home.