What came next for Micaiah is no surprise. He likely expected it, although it’s kind of odd that the guy who fashioned iron horns for himself seemed to be most offended of all. If you go through all the trouble of making a fool of yourself, at least have the decency to be silent when you get called out. It takes boldness and courage for one man to stand against four hundred, knowing that the king was likewise on their side, looking for you to validate them and him. It’s one of those instances that reveals the true nature of a man beyond any words he might speak or outwardly airs he might put on. Micaiah was a faithful servant and, in his obedience to God’s message, understood that divine validation is far more significant than human approval.
Men having no shame and doubling down on their foolishness is
not a new malady. It has been around since the beginning of creation because
one of the hardest things for an individual is to admit that they were wrong,
misled, deceived, or otherwise duped into saying or believing something that
was not factually true. And so they dig their heels in and become ever more
disjointed and aggressive, trying to defend an indefensible position. Their
ego, their pride, and their flesh just won’t allow them to humble themselves,
and so they descend into deeper deceptions to maintain their original position.
1 Kings 22:24, “Now Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah went near
and struck Micaiah on the cheek, and said, “Which way did the spirit from the
Lord go from me to speak to you?”’
I wonder if Zedekiah was still wearing the horned apparatus
when he struck Micaiah on the cheek. It holds no bearing on the overall
exchange, but it’s one of those things that’s easy to imagine and chuckle at,
given his reaction.
Micaiah did not react in the flesh. He did not hit back, he
did not attempt to defend himself, nor did he try to explain what he had seen
or give more information than what was previously shared regarding his vision.
There was no attempt at convincing Zedekiah or the others that he was indeed a
prophet of the Lord or that what he had seen was true. Micaiah’s duty was to
deliver the message, not to convince others of its authenticity. Once the
message was delivered, his duty was done, and any further discussion on the
matter was wholly unnecessary. God will defend His own words. He does so by
bringing them to pass, no matter how many stood against His messenger or how
vitriolic their reaction to him might have been.
Do your duty. Anything beyond that is God’s territory and not
something you should concern yourself with—the how and the when are up to Him.
What you must concern yourself with is walking in obedience and being faithful
in delivering the messages He speaks to you as He speaks them to you. Micaiah
understood this. It wasn’t his first rodeo, and he’d likely been in similar
positions before, given the king’s hatred of him.
I wonder if, during their previous encounters, after having
spoken a word of warning or repentance to him, Ahab went to his four hundred
prophets to inquire of the Lord whether what Micaiah had said was true. I
likewise wonder how many of them pandered to the king, hoping to gain his
favor, and assured him that Micaiah was making a mountain out of a molehill and
that the Lord saw his heart and intentions or that He understood the weakness
and frailty of man.
If you’re looking to circumvent the authority of God, you’re
bound to find someone who will give you license to do so. The same goes for the
Word as well. The caveat is that you won’t be able to use their words to
justify rebellion when standing before the Almighty because a thousand men may
say something different, but if God said it, that is the barometer and the
standard to which we must adhere.
‘God said’ should suffice in every instance. Well, so and so
said this and that, but what did God say? But you don’t understand. This person
has a doctorate in theology and is reimagining scripture for a modern audience.
All well and good, but what did God say? See how that works? You choose what
you allow into your heart, you choose what you allow into your mind, you choose
what you feed your spiritual man, and if it’s not the truth and the word of
God, the more time passes, the more the truth and the Word will seem foreign to
you.
It becomes like trying to drink lemonade after eating a bag
of Oreos. Your palate becomes so accustomed to the sugar that even though the
lemonade is not tart or bitter, it seems so because of what you previously
ingested. The truth of God’s word seems bitter to some because they’ve been
subsisting on a steady diet of fluff and self-centered, self-obsessed,
self-adulating, self-aggrandizing drivel that convinced them that they were the
center of the universe, and God exists to serve them, rather than the inverse.
Ahab had surrounded himself with lying liars, and when he
heard the truth, it grated and felt foreign to him.
1 Kings 22:25-28, “And Micaiah said, “Indeed, you shall see
on that day when you go into an inner chamber to hide!” So the king of Israel
said, “Take Micaiah, and return him to Amon the governor of the city and to
Joash the king’s son; and say, ‘This says the king: “Put this fellow in prison,
and feed him with bread of affliction and water of affliction, until I come in
peace.” But Micaiah said, “If you return in peace, the Lord has not spoken by
me.” And he said, “Take heed, all you people!”’
One of the most fascinating things to me when it comes to the
prophets of the Old Testament and the things they had to endure for speaking a
true word from the Lord is their reaction to the manner in which they were
treated for it. Micaiah didn’t try to defend himself, protest, plead his case, or
insist that he was being put in prison for nothing more than doing as Ahab had
asked.
If you expect a world full of lies to reward you for speaking
the truth, you’ve got another thing coming. You speak the truth fully expecting
to be hated, maligned, villainized, and made to seem less than human by the
godless who receive your words like nails on a chalkboard. Even among what you
suppose are God’s people, you will find those who will react as those of the
world because, lest we forget, Zedekiah was considered a prophet of the Lord
along with the other 399, and he was the one who mocked, then proceeded to slap
Micaiah across the cheek for daring to go against the grain. This is the
inevitable path of those who speak the truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment