And he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak. And he said to him, "Are you the man of God who came from Judah?" 

And he said, "I am."

Then he said to him, "Come home with me and eat bread."

And he said, "I may not return with you, or go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place. For it was said to me by the word of the LORD, 'You shall neither eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by the way you came,'"

And he said to him, "I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, 'Bring him back you with into your house that he may eat bread and drink water.'"

But he lied to him.

I Kings 13:14-18, ESV

 

The setting for the passage above is as follows: Israel had split into two nations and were now known as Israel and Judah. Israel's king had gone bad and had made idols for the people to worship, so God sent a prophet from Judah to warn the king of Israel. God told that prophet that once he had delivered the message, he was to return home by a different route and to make sure that he neither ate nor drank while he was in the territory of Israel. The prophet, referred to as "the man of God" was obedient to the LORD's instruction and was successful in passing along the warning. God even performed a great miracle through this prophet that did at least temporarily turn the king of Israel from his sins.

 

But when an old prophet from Israel heard about what the man of God had done, he went after him. We can see of the unfolding of events in the passage we just read. The old prophet was able to convince the man of God to turn from the final part of his mission and come back with him to eat and drink. This is where we read one of the most impactful statements of the Bible:

"But he lied."

 

We are not told why the old prophet lied and I suppose it really doesn't matter. What does matter is that the man of God disobeyed the Lord and was killed for his disobedience. Now this will seem outrageous to some of us. We will try to defend the man of God with statements like, "What if God had really spoken through the old prophet?" or, "It wasn't the man of God's fault for acting upon words that he trusted. After all, how could he know that the man had lied?"   

 

We could come up with a hundred more excuses for why the man of God should not have been held responsible for disobeying the LORD - especially when he thought he was obeying Him, but all such excuses would prove hollow. The fact is that God had already made His will plain to the young prophet, and no amount of lies, deceits or subterfuges should have convinced him otherwise. The fact is that the young prophet - this man of God - should have known better so God held him accountable for that error in judgment at the cost of his very life.

 

And, of course, there is a critical lesson in this historical account for us, if we will just pay attention to it. Here, then, is at least part of that lesson:

 

We have the Word of God fully available to us in the form of the Bible. This Word tells us everything that we need to know. But, sometimes, it is hard work for us to actually go to the Bible and read God's Word for ourselves. We tell ourselves that the Bible is too big or that we are too busy or that no one but the experts can really understand the Bible, so we defer our knowledge to others. Often times, like that young prophet, we listen to those who tell us what we want to hear. Don't you know that the man of God was tired from his travels. Don't you know that he was hungry and thirsty - probably hungrier and thirstier than he had ever been before. 

 

In short, he was vulnerable, and the old Prophet took advantage of that vulnerability. We don't know the old prophet's motivation. Maybe he was jealous. Maybe he felt sorry for the young prophet and decided to tell him a "little white lie" so that he could ease the man of God's discomfort. Maybe the old prophet was just misguided, or maybe he was simply evil. None of these possibilities matter, nor did any of these "reasons" give the young prophet a reasonable defense. The bottom line is that he disobeyed God - someone whose power he had just witnessed first hand - and the penalty for that disobedience was his life. 

 

And the lesson for all men for the rest of time should be clear: When we have a choice between God's Word and the words of men, go with God! This is not a lesson that God reveals to us because He is mean - just the opposite! God knew that there would be people who would lie to us for any number of reasons. Furthermore, He knew that we would trust some of those people to the point where we would be tempted to be deceived by that lie. Maybe it's because they were older and seemingly wiser, maybe it was because they were telling us something that we secretly preferred over His instructions, but whatever the reason, it would never be an acceptable excuse in the eyes of the Lord. God is not being mean in this - He is protecting us!

 

So, how then can we be safe? Is there any way that we can avoid be deceived by the compelling lies of men? And the answer is clear. We can avoid being misled by the lies of men if we will simply do this one thing: Get it in writing! And that written explanation that we have is the Word of God - the Bible. And it is enough!