Three Short Devotionals

This week I have thought about what to write, and I couldn't decide.  Couldn't narrow it down.  Couldn't discern one particular thought.  So tonight, I will lay down three separate devotional thoughts, and see if they have anything in common.  Maybe one will reach you where you are right now. Maybe you are searching for something to share at an upcoming talk, and you, like me, can't decide what to speak about.  Feel free to use one of these ideas, or maybe one of them will spur you on to your own study and the Holy Spirit may lead you to a thought or idea that He has for you to share.  Maybe one of these thoughts will be a stepping-off point for you, maybe not.

Here is what has been on my heart.

When King Ahab Obeyed The Lord

You probably remember Ahab as a wicked king.  He was a nemesis to Elijah the prophet.  He had married Jezebel, who turned his heart away from God.  However, there was a time in his life when God used him to defeat an enemy of Israel.

That enemy's name was Ben-Hadad.  We read about him in 1 Kings.  He was king of Syria after the nation of Israel was divided.  In chapter 15 we see a treaty between Ben-Hadad and Asa, the king of Judah.  Asa had been at war against Baasha, then king of Israel.  Asa was afraid that Jerusalem would fall to Israel and the kings of Aram (Damascus) and others.  So he took all the treasures of the Temple at Jerusalem, and sent them to Ben-Hadad with a plea for help.  Syria had apparently been helping Israel in their war against Judah, and Asa was asking Ben-Hadad to switch sides, and to fight against Israel instead of against Judah.  Beh-Hadad agreed, and targeted the king of Israel, and killed him.

Fast forward to the reign of Ahab.  In 1 Kings 20 we see that Ben-Hadad sent a message to Ahab, basically saying, "You know you wouldn't be king if not for me."  Ahab responded that he did, in fact, know this.  Ben-Hadad sent another message to Ahab, king of Israel:  "You and your entire family are mine.  Your wives and your children are mine.  And very soon, my army will come and occupy Samaria, and my servants will go house to house and carry away anything and everything that is desirable."

Ahab was frightened by this threat.  He went to his advisers and the elders of Samaria, who all told him he would need to stand up for himself.  Ahab sent a message to Syria saying no, you can't walk all over us.  We will fight you rather than have you come and occupy our land and carry away our wives and our children, our gold and our silver, our households and our servants.  This is where it ends.

The name Ben-Hadad means "Son of the mighty one".  Hadad was a mighty warrior in the book of Genesis; Ben-Hadad may have been his descendant, or he could have been named for an idol, a false god named for the original warrior Hadad.  In any case, Ben-Hadad was full of himself.  He sent a message to Ahab that said, "May the gods to so to me and more also" if the armies of Syria do not descend upon Samaria, and wipe them out as easily as picking up handfuls of dust; the whole city will be carried away, even the ground on which it stands.

I love Ahab's response.  He said, "Let not him who girds on his armor boast like him who takes it off." (1 Kings 20:11).  In other words, show me more than words; show me what you got.  Before the fight, it's all words.  After the fight, we'll really know who won.  If you beat me, then you can boast after the fact.  But until then, shut your mouth.

After Ahab had sent this message, a prophet came to him and said, "God will give you victory."  You will go up and defeat this toad, and God will give him into your hand.  Ahab went up into the mountainous regions where the Syrian and Aramean armies were stationed, and they routed them.  The Arameans ran, but re-assembled in the flat-lands.  They said to themselves, "Their gods are gods of the mountains, therefore they were stronger there than we; but let us fight them in the plains, and surely we will prevail." (1 Kings 20:23)

Don't ever underestimate the power of God.  The Syrians and Arameans formed the battle lines.  "And the sons of Israel camped before them like two little flocks of goats, but the Arameans filled the country." (1 Kings 20:27b).  The army of Israel killed 100,000 of their enemy that day.  Ben-Hadad fled to a fortified city, and sued for peace.  He sent a message to Ahab: Please let me live.

Can you imagine?  This man who had been so full of himself, whose name means "son of the Mighty", who had been so cocky and arrogant in his original messages, now is pleading for his life.  Ahab sent for him, and Ben-Hadad stood defeated before him.  He promised to return the cities of Samaria that had been taken in war-time.  He even promised Ahab that he could have streets in Damascus--he could come in and occupy the city, just as Ben-Hadad had done in Samaria.

What's sad is that Ahab agreed.  He called Ben-Hadad his brother.  He made a covenant with him, and let him go.  A prophet came and admonished Ahab, saying that God had delivered your enemy into  your hand, and you let him go.  "Because you have let go out of your hand the man whom I had devoted to destruction, therefore your life shall go for his life, and your people for his people." (1 Kings 20: 42).

God had put it on Ahab's heart to stand up and fight.  He had gone from a humble leader of an occupied land to a victorious field general under the direction of God.  But when it was time to finish the fight, Ahab proved he was no better than his enemy.  He gave up too soon.

Friend, trust God.  Philippians 1:6 tells us that even if we feel defeated, we can stand, "Being confident of this very thing: that He who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ."

When God Worked Out His Will For The Shunamite Woman

After Ahab died, and after Elijah was taken into heaven, the prophet Elisha was ministering in Israel.  He had a servant named Gehazi, and they knew a woman in the area of Shunam.  This woman was apparently from a family of means, since she held some prominence in the area.  Whenever Elisha would travel through the area, she would invite him into her home to eat.  She finally told her husband to build a room up on the roof of their house, so that when Elisha came over to eat he could stay in his own room.

Elisha wanted to do something nice for her, but she said she had everything she needed.  He asked Gehazi what should be done for her, and Gehazi said she was barren; she had no children.  Elisha promised her a son, a miracle baby, since the woman's husband was quite old.  Sure enough the woman bore a son, and was very happy.  However, when he was about 4 years old the child died.  The woman sent for Elisha, asked why he had allowed her to bring a child into the world if God was going to take the child from her like this.  Elisha went and prayed over the child, and he lived.

The story of Gehazi goes south a bit.  You will recall that the captain of the Syrian army, a man named Naaman, had leprosy.  He came to Elisha and asked to be healed.  Elisha told Gehazi to tell him to wash in the Jordan River 7 times.  Naaman did it, and was healed.  Out of an abundance of gratitude, Naaman offered lavish gifts to Elisha--silver and gold and new clothes.  Elisha refused the gifts, and sent him away.  But Gehazi got greedy, and ran after Naaman and said that Elisha had changed his mind, and he would take 2 talents of silver and 2 changes of clothes, please.  Naaman gave them willingly, and went on his way.  Elisha, however, knew the heart of Gehazi, and said that God would punish him for his greed and his deception.  The leprosy that had been on Naaman, now was on Gehazi.  He was sick with leprosy the rest of his life.

Now that we know the back-story, let's look together at 2 Kings chapter 8.  Elisha told the Shunamite woman to leave her home, as a severe famine was coming.  She left, and lived among the Philistines for seven years.  Seven years later, when the famine had lifted, the woman came back home.  Someone else had taken her husband's property.  "And she went out to appeal to the king for her house and for her field." (2 Kings 8:3).

Can you imagine what was going through her mind?  Shunem was a small village in the Jezreel Valley, in the territory of the tribe of Issachar.  The law of Moses did not give much protection to widows.  Perhaps she was thinking about pleading for possession of the land on behalf of her son.  Maybe she was counting the years until Jubilee, when the land could legally be restored to its family of origin.  Whatever her strategy, she was probably steeling herself for a long, drawn-out battle.

2 Kings 8:4 says, "Now the king was talking with Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, saying 'Please relate to me all the great things that Elisha has done'."  Now, there is no space between verse 3 and verse 4, but it makes you wonder what was going on in this situation.  Gehazi had leprosy, and no self-respecting Israelite (much less a king) would willingly go up to a leper and start a conversation.  And why now?  What prompted the king of Israel to inquire about the history and the signs and wonders of Elisha?  And just as the Shunemite woman was coming to plead her case?

Gehazi was in the middle of telling the king all about the miracles of Elisha.  Just as he got to the part where the boy had been raised from the dead, here comes the boy's mother.  "My lord, O king," Gehazi exclaimed.  "This is the woman and this is her son, whom Elisha restored to life." (2 Kings 8:5).  The king verified it with the woman, then appointed an officer of the court to see that justice was done, and more.  "Restore all that was hers and all the produce of the field from the day that she left the land until now." (2 Kings 8:6, emphasis added).

Friend, God knows what you need.  He is able to do abundantly more than we can ask or think. (Ephesians 3:20).  When you are in a situation that looks impossible, God can work it out.  "For we know that God caused all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)

To Be Resurrected, We Must Die

I recently had dental surgery.  A tooth had to be pulled, and the tooth must be replaced.  I cannot spontaneously regenerate a tooth, so one must be implanted.  I could not do the implant on the same day that the tooth was pulled, so a bone graft had to be inserted into the void left in the jaw.  When it is healed, fused together with my jaw, then a post can be inserted so that a permanent replacement tooth can be attached.

When the dentist took the bone chip out of what looked like a medicine bottle, I asked her what it was and where it came from.  I wanted to know if it was bone from a cadaver, or if it was man-made.  She checked the invoice, and confirmed that it was cadaver bone.  That means it once belonged to a living, breathing person.  That person is now dead, but a part of them lives on in me.

Modern medicine has given us many examples of reusing tissue from deceased donors to prolong the life (or the enjoyment of living) of those in need.  Organ transplants are pretty routine nowadays.  Every once in awhile you hear of a parent who has lost a child, but because the child was an organ donor, the mother can hear the heartbeat of her child in another person's chest.

Even before organ transplants were pioneered in the 20th century, grafting has been done in agriculture for centuries.  Farmers and fruit growers know that you can cut off a branch from one type of tree and graft it onto another, and it will continue to bear fruit according to its kind.  A cherry tree branch will continue to bear cherries, even after it is grafted to a peach tree.

After my dental surgery, where another person's piece of bone was implanted into my jaw in hopes that it will graft together to form a solid base on which to do further surgery, I came away with this thought: out of death, life.  Jesus said in John 12:24, "Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls ito the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."  He was speaking of His resurrection, which would not have been possible without His death.  If Jesus had come to Earth, waved His hand over us and blessed us, and then was immediately transported back to Heaven, His mission would not have been complete.  It was only in His death that He could say, "It is finished."

Some say that the Resurrection was not necessary, that the death of Jesus was all that was needed to atone for our sin.  Some even question whether the Resurrection even happened.  The Apostle Paul argued that the resurrection of the dead is only possible because of the Resurrection of Jesus.  "For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins." (1 Corinthians 15:15-16).  He goes on to say that we must put ourselves to death in order to be raised with Him, and not only once, but every day.  "I affirm, brethren, by the boasting n you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily." (1 Corinthians 15:31).  What does he mean there?  Paul explains it in his letter to the Church in Galatia:  "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)

We must die to ourselves daily, in order to be used by God living in Christ Jesus, His Son.  In case we slide back into sin, we must crucify the flesh each day.  Just like the person who donated the bone chip for my dental surgery, or the one who donated the heart, liver, kidney or lungs transplanted in other living body, a death had to occur to be useful in the resurrection of another.  In the same way, we must die to ourselves in order to one day be resurrected into the presence of God, the One who made us.  The only way that can happen is through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, the One who died for  us.

God is my Pastor

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  --Psalm 23:1

Hi, God.  How are you?  I, um, just wanted to come talk to you a little bit about, well, about everything.  You see, things aren't going so well for me.  I guess You know that.  My job is so stressful.  And when I come home, my family--well, let's just say it's been better.  Our finances are in free-fall, and whenever we try to discuss it we always end up fighting.  It's affecting everything, even the bedroom.  I don't know, I've just always wanted more than this.

I don't know, it's like we are hurtling down these class V rapids in a leaky boat with no way to steer or stop.  If we do struggle to shore for a brief rest, it's like we're in a desert--no shade, no respite from the blazing sun, until we're sucked back into the water, over our heads and heading for class VI rapids just around the corner.

Who stole my joy?  My soul is so empty, God.  It seems like every temptation known to Man is hitting me from every side.  Under this constant barrage of fire, it's no wonder I fall.  There, I said it.  I have failed, over and over again.  Why, in God's Name, do you still love me?

I'm afraid.  Every night I lie awake in bed, afraid to die, but dreading life.  Each morning I think, "What fresh Hell is this?"  I feel so insecure, like Evil has no boundary, nothing to keep it from swallowing me up.

I just want to hide myself from everyone and everything.  They all expect me to smile and act like nothing is wrong.  I try, I really do.  More often than not, however, I don't have it in me.  I got nothing.

There is nothing good in me, no love in my life.  I don't want to be here any more.

Have you ever felt like that?

A couple of days ago I was reading the Bible, and I came to Psalm 23.  For some reason, I tried to understand it better by thinking of how it might be different if God was not my shepherd.  I read it opposite of what it says, as if I were going through life on my own, in my own way.  Apart from God, each of the six verses would read something like the six short paragraphs above.

The thought occurred to me that another word for "shepherd" is the word "Pastor".  The Spanish translation actually says it--El Señor es mi Pastor, literally "the Boss, or Lord, is my Pastor, my Guide, my source of encouragement and moral teaching.  I was mulling this over in my mind for a couple of days, wondering how I could write about the alternative meanings of the 23rd Psalm.

Then the Lord really blew my mind.

There was a guest speaker at our church this weekend.  He said something simple yet profound.  He said that you sometimes have to give up what you want, so that God can give you what you need.  Sometimes you have to set aside what you think you know, so that God can reveal His truth.  He referenced Genesis 22:1-18, where God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

We all know the story.  Abraham goes up the mountain with Isaac, takes wood for a fire, and builds an altar.  He must have been thinking that God was asking the impossible.  Wasn't this the son of promise?  Wasn't this the child that he and his wife had dreamed about for 70 years?  Wasn't this the boy that the angel was sent to prophesy about, and about whom God Himself had said he would have descendants that would outnumber the stars in the sky?  When Abraham obeyed, it must have taken an extraordinary amount of faith.  What relief there must have been when, as Abraham raised the knife to kill his own son, that the angel of God stayed his hand.  God provided an alternative, a ram that got caught in a nearby thicket.

When David said, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want," most people translate it as a promise that His children will not lack for anything.  I don't think it would be too much of a stretch, given the command of Jesus in Matthew 16:24, to give a new meaning to this verse.  Jesus said, "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me."  That is, you must set aside your own wants and desires, and follow close to Him.  "I shall not want" has a double meaning.  "I will not lack for anything," only because "I will lay aside my own desires" and allow God to speak in your life.

The guest speaker at church said this:  How can you expect to hear from God if you are consumed with your own goals, desires, wishes, and needs?  A friend of mine confessed that sometimes he longs for that time in his life when he didn't have anything.  He had no steady job, so he filled his days with serving God only.  He didn't have a car, so he didn't have to worry about a car payment, or gas, or insurance.  If he needed anything during that season of life, he would work a temporary job until he had the money to get it.  It was as if God provided all his needs.  Now that he is older, he has a family, so he has to have a steady job; he needs a car to get to the job to provide for his family; he needs gas and insurance to operate the car to get him to the job to provide for his family; and on and on it goes.  This is how consumerism can consume you, and destroy your relationship with God.

If we really believed Philippians 4:19, "And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus," it would relieve us from the worries of the world.  We would no longer be focused on making a buck and we could focus more on being used by God to accomplish His will.  We would be more attuned to hearing His voice.

When Adam conversed with God in the Garden, what do you think they talked about?  God gave Adam a job to do (name all the animals for one), so part of the conversation was a job review of sorts.  "And what did you name that animal, Adam?"  Part of the conversation had to be Adam asking questions, and then hearing God respond directly to him in an audible voice.  While we don't live in anything resembling Eden, we can still converse with God.  We can still bring Him our problems or our questions.  He can still be our Pastor.  Just like a Pastor, we don't have to wait to see Him at weddings or funerals.  His Pastoral ministry would be more effective if we talked with Him daily, and if we set aside our own agendas and really, really listened.

Truth or Consequences

For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again, but the wicked stumble in time of calamity.  --Proverbs 24:16

In life we are taught to learn from our mistakes.  Marilyn Monroe said, "I believe that everything happens for a reason.  People change so that you can learn to let go; things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right; you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself; and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."  I don't know whether she ever trusted Jesus in her life, but I do know she died young of an apparent drug overdose.  That one mistake, or series of mistakes leading up to that decision, proved fatal for her.  It was a decision she could not learn from.  Her words sound good, but they proved shallow.

Don't you sometimes wish that God would give you such wisdom that you could avoid all those costly mistakes you keep making over and over again?  Calvin Coolidge said, "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.  It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity."

I want us to look today at three examples of people in the Bible who lacked wisdom, or discipline, or both.  All three of these people are introduced to us in the book of 1 Kings.

We all know the first one.  Solomon is known as the wisest man who ever lived.  Just before he took the throne from his father David, he spent a day making sacrifices to God.  A thousand burned offerings were made by Solomon that day.  That night, God spoke to Solomon, and promised to give him whatever he asked.  Solomon said he was a mere child, not knowing how to go out or to come in (1 Kings 3:7).  He was about to undertake a huge task, one that he felt ill equipped for.  His simple request pleased God:  "So give Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people to discern between good and evil.  For who is able to judge this great people of Yours?" (1 Kings 3:9).

Solomon's wisdom was known far and wide.  People from all over the world would come to hear him speak, to hear his answers to difficult questions.  These foreign visitors would bring with them gifts of gold and silver, which Solomon would put into the Temple treasury.  Speaking of the Temple, Solomon spent seven years and billions of dollars (in today's money) to build the Temple.  When he was finished, he spent thirteen years--almost twice as long-- building his own palace in Jerusalem.  Despite his God-given wisdom, there seemed to be a little skewing of his priorities there.  Sure, at the dedication of the Temple, Solomon had made sacrifices to the Lord of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep over 14 days (see 1 Kings 8:63-65).  Nevertheless, his heart was set on his own house, and expanding his influence.

He started marrying the daughters of the surrounding kingdoms, in order to form alliances with them.  It made perfect sense--the king of Egypt would not make war against Israel if Pharaoh's daughter was wed to Solomon.  The same with the kings of Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and others.

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, "You shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you, for they will surely turn your heart away after their gods."  Solomon held fast to these in love.  --1 Kings 11:1-2

Solomon was apparently a very loving guy, because he had 700 wives, all of them princesses.  This was to show his superiority to other nations.  He also had 300 concubines, to show his superiority to the people of Israel.  His house was so big, and his family so numerous, can you imagine what it cost to feed and clothe the king's household, including servants each year?  Much more, I would think, than the value of what he had sacrificed to God.  His heart was turned away from God and toward the foreign gods all of these princesses brought with them.

If only Solomon had been disciplined enough to follow God's laws, then he could have avoided the traps that God had warned him about.  God was not pleased, and in 1 Kings 11:9 and following, He let Solomon know about it.

So the Lord said to Solomon, "Because you have done this, and you have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and will give it to your servant.  Nevertheless I will not do it in your days for the sake of your father David, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son.  However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen." --1 Kings 11:11-13

Consequences.  Even the wisest man in all the world suffered consequences from disobeying God.  I have two other quick stories about men who faced consequences for their actions.  But first, a quick side-story.

I met a man last week whose name is Caleb.  I immediately recognized it as a Bible name, and told him it was a name he could take pride in.  Almost apologetically, he explained that the original meaning of the name was loyal or faithful, but now it refers to a dog (because of the characteristics of a dog, e.g. loyalty and faithfulness).  He said that over time, the meaning of the name has changed.  So he could be proud of the original meaning, but the contemporary meaning not so much.

I mention this because Solomon had a servant, a mighty warrior in his army, named Jeroboam.  His name could mean "whose people are many."  Perhaps he was born to a servant of the king and was named in honor of Solomon.  However, the name also came to mean "the people will contend."  It is this second meaning that has significance later in his life, and will lead to consequences.

Solomon chose his son Rehoboam (meaning "a people has enlarged" or "who enlarges the people") to be the heir to the throne.  Rehoboam's first act as king was to ask the people what they wanted.  Their answer was simple--they wanted tax relief.  Sure, being ruled by Solomon was a great thing, and the treasury of the temple was enlarged by gifts from all the dignitaries who came streaming through.  But building the Temple with stones hewn from quarries in Israel, lined with cedars imported from Lebanon, then overlaid with gold--all that was expensive.  Not to mention the building of the palace, and the upkeep of the royal family.  There were over 30,000 forced laborers serving the king, and it must have been very costly.

Rehoboam sought counsel with the elders in his cabinet.  They agreed, and advised him to lower taxes.  If he did, they told him that the people would love him and would serve him with all their heart.  Not content with that advice, he sought out counsel from his posse, younger men who had little experience and less sense.  They told him that acquiescing to the people would be a sign of weakness.  Unless he wanted to appear vulnerable, he had to make a stand.  "Tell them they ain't seen nothing yet.  If they thought Solomon's taxes were too high, just wait." (my loose translation).

This is where the ten tribes of Israel split from the two tribes of Judah.  Just like God had promised, Jerusalem and Judah had a king in David's family to rule over them.  But the bulk of the Israelites rebelled against Rehoboam, and set Jereboam as king over them.  But Jereboam knows that Jerusalem was not only the civic capitol of Judah, but also a religious center.  So he set about building civic and religious centers in the Northern Kingdom that were cheap copies of what God had set up in Jerusalem.  He told the people it was not necessary to go all the way down to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to God--they could do it locally.  He set up a temple in Bethel, at one end of the country, and one in Dan, at the other end.  Unfortunately, he set up idols, golden calves, for the people to worship and to offer sacrifices.  Jereboam also knew that the tribe of Levi, the priestly tribe, was loyal to Jerusalem and to the temple there, so he appointed his own priests who were not of the tribe of Levi.  Finally, since the people were used to holy days, he set up similar holidays to coincide with the days of feasting in Jerusalem.

Whenever agnostic or atheist people talk bad about religions and holidays, they say that there is no difference between the Christian holy days and the pagan holidays.  They create a false equivalency. God will deal with them the same way he dealt with Jeroboam.  Here is the consequence of Jeroboam's sin.  An unnamed prophet, a man of God from Judah, who showed up at Bethel during this ersatz feast.  This man of God spoke out publicly against Jeroboam and the altar that he had built.  Jeroboam extended his hand to point to the prophet, and gave a command: Seize him!  No one moved, because the king's hand was shriveled up and useless. I can imagine an audible gasp going on throughout the crowd.  As this was happening, the altar split open and the ashes from the sacrifices spilled onto the ground, just as the man of God had warned.

Jeroboam immediately sought God's help, asking the prophet to pray for him to restore his hand.  How many people cry out to God when tragedy strikes, only to forget about Him once things return to normal?  The prophet did pray, the king's hand was healed, but he did not change his heart.  He continued to worship the golden calf and to lead the people away from the Lord their God.

The last story of consequences has to do with the prophet, the man of God who had traveled to Bethel (which, by the way, means "house of God") to confront the king of Israel.  Once Jeroboam saw that he had been healed, he invited the prophet to his palace for a meal.  "Come, eat with me," he said.  The prophet declined, saying that he had received strict instructions not to eat or drink anything until he had returned to Judah.  His message had been delivered, so he left Bethel to go back home.

Now an old prophet was living in Bethel; and his sons came and told him all the deeds which the man of God had done that day in Bethel; the words which he had spoken to the king, these also they related to their father.  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 Judah  had gone.  Then he said to his sons, "Saddle the donkey for me." So they saddled the donkey for him and he rode away on it.  --1 Kings 13:11-13

This old man, who may have once been a prophet of God, chased down the man of God from Judah, and asked him to break his fast.  The younger man declined, saying that God had told him not to eat or drink until he had arrived back in Jerusalem.  The old man said that God had given him a vision earlier that day, that the young man should come to his house and eat bread and drink water.  Although it was a lie (1 Kings 13:18), the older man persisted.  He said he was a prophet, too.  He could be trusted.  God had given him a message, too, and it would be an affront not only to the old man, but to God Himself to decline the invitation.

No sooner had the young man eaten and drunk that the old man received a word from the Lord.  The young man of God had been disobedient, and he would die for his sin.  Chagrined, the young man got on his donkey and left, riding back toward Judah.  On his journey, a lion attacked him and killed him, leaving the donkey standing there.  Some men passed by, and reported to those in the city that they had found a man's body lying on the road, and a donkey standing beside him, with a lion standing over the dead body.  The older man, the false prophet, went to get the young man and bury him.  The old man told his sons that when he died, he wanted to be buried in the same tomb that they buried the young prophet in, because the word of the Lord had been with him, and the old man realized that all he had said would come true--Jereboam's places of worship would be torn down, his altars dismantled, and the idols would be destroyed.

Okay, so to sum it all up, the wise make mistakes; the foolish make mistakes; and even the holy make mistakes.  All of those mistakes come with consequences.  God will deal with each man according to his works.  However, because of the grace of God, the blood of His holy sacrifice covers those who seek Him, and who are faithful to Him.  At the time 1 Kings was written, it was the blood of bulls and goats that justified men, and covered their sins.  Today, it is the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God who was slain for the sins of the whole world.

In a sense, we are all Calebs--dogs who do not deserve to be in the presence of a Holy God.  By His grace and mercy, though, He offers forgiveness to those who are loyal to Him.  It all depends on where your loyalties lie.  If you are given a word from God, do not be deceived by those who claim to have received a contradictory word, because God will not contradict His Word.  If you are given responsibility over the lives and livelihoods of other people, like King Jereboam, stay faithful to the God of your fathers.  Do not try to make cheap copies of the true way that God has shown you--do not fall for the false equivalency of the world.  Finally, after amassing all the wisdom the world has to offer, do not abandon His guiding principles outlined in Scripture.  If He said it, He will bless you for following it.  If not, you will be like the vicious dog guarding the house, chasing away the mailman--you might just drive away someone who is bringing you a blessing from God.