And for our New Testament reading, please turn in your Bibles to the first letter of John, chapter four. First John four, and our reading will be verses one through six. 1 John 4, 1-6. Listen to this. This is the very Word of God. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
Little children, you are from God and have overcome them. For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world. Therefore, they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this, we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”
Now, as you turn to 1 Kings chapter 22, for our Old Testament reading, We’re going to see living examples of the spirit of error, living examples of false prophets, and a king of Judah who, in some capacity, was able to discern the spirits. So our reading is 1 Kings 22, verses 1 through 28. For three years, Syria and Israel continued without war. But in the third year, Yehoshaphat, the king of Judah, came down to the king of Israel.
And the king of Israel said to his servants, do you know that Ramoth-Gilead belongs to us and we keep quiet and do not take it out of the hand of the king of Syria? And he said to Yehoshaphat, will you go with me to battle at Ramoth-Gilead? And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses. And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, inquire first for the word of the Lord. Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about 400 men, and said to them, shall I go to battle against Ramoth Gilead or shall I refrain?
And they said, go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king. But Yehoshaphat said, is there not here another prophet of the Lord of whom we may inquire? And the king of Israel said to Yehoshaphat, there is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Micaiah, the son of Imlah. But I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil. And Jehoshaphat said, let not the king say so. Then the king of Israel summoned an officer and said, bring quickly Micaiah, the son of Imlah. Now the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, were sitting on their thrones, arrayed in their robes at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria.
And all the prophets were prophesying before them. And Zedekiah, the son of Jinnah, made for himself horns of iron and said, thus says the Lord, with these you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed. And all the prophets prophesied and so and said, go up to Ramoth Gilead and triumph.
The Lord will give it into the hand of the king. And the messenger who went to summon Micaiah said to him, behold, the words of the prophets with one accord are favorable to the king. Let your word be like the word of one of them and speak favorably. But Micaiah said, as the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I will speak. And when he had come to the king, the king said to him, Micaiah, shall we go up to Ramoth Gilead to battle or shall we refrain?
And he answered him, go up and triumph. The Lord will give it into the hand of the king. But the king said to him, how many times shall I make you swear that you speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord? And he said. I saw all Israel. Scattered on the mountains as sheep that have no shepherd. And the Lord said these have no master. Let each return to his home in peace. And the king of Israel said to Yehoshaphat, did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?
And Micaiah said, therefore, hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left. And the Lord said, who will entice Ahab that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, by what means?
And he said, I will go out and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, you are to entice him, and you shall succeed. Go out and do so. Now, therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets. The Lord has declared disaster for you.”
Then Zedekiah, the son of Shaniah, came near and struck Micaiah on the cheek and said, how did the spirit of the Lord go from me to speak to you? And Micaiah said, behold, you shall see on that day when you go into an inner chamber and hide yourself. And the king of Israel said, seize Micaiah and take him back to Ammon, the governor of the city, and to Joash, the king’s son, and say, thus says the king, put this fellow in prison and feed him meager rations of bread and water until I come in peace. And Micaiah said, if you return in peace, the Lord has not spoken by me.
And he said, here, all you peoples. That’s the reading of God’s word. Let’s pray once again for His blessing upon it. Father, we come again to Your Word and we remember that Your own Word testifies that the Scriptures were written for our instruction. So instruct us, we pray. That’s our prayer, and we ask it confidently but humbly as we pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I titled the sermon Minority Report. Minority Report. That’s what Micaiah brought to the king. And quite a minority he was, a very, very small minority, up against 400 or so false prophets. And he stood and delivered a contrary report, but the one that was true. Because sometimes the minority report is right, isn’t it? In this case, it certainly was.
These events that we just read about are the things that are going to lead up to the demise of Ahab. And if you think back, Ahab had won not just one, but two tremendous victories over Syria. And then in the wake of those two military triumphs that God had graciously given to Israel and to Ahab, they had rest. There had been no war between Israel and Syria for three years. But you may recall that at the conclusion of that second battle, when Ben-Hadad, king of Syria, was completely at the mercy of Ahab, king of Israel, they made a treaty.
And part of the treaty included the stipulation that the cities that Ben-Hadad’s father had taken away from Ahab’s father, Ben-Hadad would restore. Well, whether he followed up on that part of the covenant or the treaty, to any degree, we don’t really know. What we do know is there was at least one city that had not been returned to Israel yet, and that was the city of Ramoth Gilead.
And it was a very important city. It lay on a very important trade route. If you remember reading anywhere in the Old Testament scriptures about a thoroughfare called the King’s Highway, Ramoth Gilead was right on it. It was an ideal place to charge tariffs. It was a place where commerce going back and forth among the nations could be regulated, taxed. It was an important city. It had been in the early days of Israel, it was one of those cities of refuge. to which a manslayer, if he was innocent of murder, could flee and find refuge. It was an important city. And it was still, by this time, under the control of Syria.
And Ahab has decided he’s not going to keep quiet about it anymore. But what we find in this passage is that God’s truth stands firm. But evil people go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” Borrowing language from the New Testament there. But God’s truth always stands firm.
But evil people go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. If you want my three points in advance, here they are. The first is, human counsels are deceptive and will fail. Human counsels are deceptive and will fail. Secondly, the Lord reigns over the nations. And third, the counsel of the Lord is true and will stand. So first of all, human counsels are deceptive and will fail.
We see Yehoshaphat here at the beginning of this passage. His name, by the way, means Yahweh judges. Yahweh judges. He is mentioned, we’ve heard his name once before in 1 Kings, very briefly, just in passing, really, back in chapter 15, verse 24. Yehoshaphat was the son of Asa. So when we read earlier about the death of Asa, The conclusion of his reign when he died, it mentions at that point that his son Yehoshaphat reigned in his place. He took the throne of Judah when Ahab had been on the throne of Israel for four years. It was in the fourth year of Ahab’s reign that Jehoshaphat became king of Judah.
And somewhere along the line, they both reigned for 20-some years, somewhere along the line, we’re told in just a few verses later in the text, we’ll get to it next week, Lord willing, verse 44 of 1 Kings 22, Jehoshaphat also made peace with the king of Israel.
And that was a first since the divided kingdom. Ever since the covenant people split into northern and southern kingdoms, they’d been at war with each other pretty much continuously. But Yehoshaphat made peace. And part of the way he did that, we won’t be looking at that together anytime soon. But in Second Chronicles 18, we find out that Yehoshaphat made a marriage alliance with Ahab. And as part of that marriage alliance, Yehoshaphat’s son married Ahab’s daughter. So now these two kingdoms are linked by marriage. And once we get to these events that we’re reading about tonight, that has already taken place. So they’re already in laws, you might say.
And so we see Yehoshaphat coming to Israel, coming to Samaria for a diplomatic visit. Gary Millar, writing in the ESV expository commentary remarks, no reason is given for the state visit of Yehoshaphat to the king of Judah. It may simply be that he is a slightly naive, idealistic, warm-hearted king who by instinct seeks reconciliation between the halves of the kingdom. He paints Yehoshaphat as a pretty good guy, and I think he was. Scripture says he was a good king. He did lots of good things. He was a reformer. But here he is in Samaria, which was the capital of Israel, visiting Ahab. And Ahab sees an opportunity. Ahab wants Ramoth Gilead back. And now, Yehoshaphat is right here on a state visit.
Yehoshaphat was a very respected king. If you read up about his accomplishments, you find that he walked in the ways of the Lord, he instituted many godly reforms in Judah, and as a result, the Lord blessed him, and the Lord placed the fear of him on the surrounding nations so that nobody attacked. Yehoshaphat. He had peace because God had sort of, to some extent, put the dread of himself but also of Yehoshaphat on the surrounding nations. And so there wasn’t any war during most of those days.
And so here’s a respected, even a feared, king in Ahab’s presence. And he decides he’s going to make use of this guy and of his armies. And so he speaks of how Ramoth Gilead belongs to us. And it did. And we sit here quietly while it remains in the hands of the king of Syria. Will you go to war with me so I can take back Ramoth Gilead? And Yehoshaphat agrees to join him in battle against Syria at Ramoth Gilead.
But in the very next verse, he also advises Ahab. He exhorts Ahab. to inquire of Yahweh. I thought something Matthew Henry said about this was edifying and helpful. He said, Yehoshaphat has not left behind him at Jerusalem his affection, his veneration for the word of the Lord, but both avows it and endeavors to introduce it into Ahab’s court. If Ahab drew him into his wars, he will draw Ahab into his devotions. Isn’t that neat? And so, Yehoshaphat’s trying to nudge his counterpart in the northern kingdom in the right direction. And so Ahab calls out his prophets, or at least what he called prophets, 400 men or so. He assembles them all.
They weren’t prophets of Yahweh, that much is certain. But what were they? Who were they? They may have been prophets of Baal. Or they might have been those 400 prophets of Asherah that we heard about several chapters ago. But they’re not. God’s prophets. They’re false prophets.
Look in your Bibles at verse 6. I want you to notice something there. At the end of verse 6, when the prophets speak to Ahab, So as they said, go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king. Do you see the typeset there in your English Bible for Lord? It’s capital L and lowercase O-R-D.
That means that the word being used there is not Yahweh, it’s not Jehovah, it’s not the memorial name of the God of Israel, it’s just the generic word Adonai. That’s who these prophets are prophesying in the name of, not Yahweh, but just the Lord, the Adonai, which strongly suggests that they were prophets of some false god, maybe Baal or Asherah. Now, later on, they do use Yahweh’s name.
Look at verse 11. Zedekiah says, thus says the Lord, and you see the typeset there. He’s invoking Yahweh’s name. And then the rest of the prophets do the same thing in verse 12. The Lord will give it into the hand of the king. See, they’re co-opting the name of Yahweh at this point. Why would they do that? Maybe it’s in deference to Yehoshaphat.
Maybe to try to sway his opinion, to win his favor, to persuade him that this indeed is what Yahweh was saying. Or maybe Ahab prompted them when they prophesied to speak in the name of Yahweh. Human counsels are deceptive and will fail. And these false prophets were being deceptive. They were being deceitful. They were claiming to speak in the name of Yahweh, but they did not speak in his name.
Yehoshua surmised that that was the case. He surmised that these 400 men were just yes-men for Ahab. I almost had to chuckle when I read the little study note in the Reformation Study Bible, commenting on that verse, verse 7. It says, Yehoshaphat said, is there not here another prophet of Yahweh of whom we may inquire? A little study note just says, Yehoshaphat is skeptical of Ahab’s prophets. I thought that was rather understated, but accurate, of course.
Well, Ahab says, yeah, there’s one, Micaiah. Now, in these days, Elijah is still alive. He’s still in the land of the living, walking the earth, prophesying. So is Elisha, certainly. Evidently, they weren’t available. The only one ready at hand was Micaiah. And so Ahab calls for him. Ahab’s assessment of Micaiah is not very favorable, of course.
I hate him. He never prophesies good about me. And you see how Jehoshaphat gently reproves him. Oh, let not the king say so. Don’t speak that way, my brother. He’s being so polite. He’s being such a good statesman. Maybe to a fault. But Micaiah is summoned. And while they’re waiting for Micaiah to come, Zedekiah steps up. He grabs center stage. He steps into the spotlight.
And he makes his prophecy. He made horns of iron. Of course, horns are symbols of power, maybe two horns, one to represent Ahab, one to represent Yehoshaphat. There are some scholars who think this is maybe a reference back to a prophecy at the end of Deuteronomy that had to do with the sons of Joseph and how it likened them to horns of a bull. The connection makes sense, but I think he’s probably giving Zedekiah a little bit too much credit. I doubt he had enough biblical literacy to even know about that prophecy in Deuteronomy.
But he steps up and says, with these you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed. And all the prophets join in. And as Micaiah is coming, he’s being prepped by the messenger The escort, you see that in verse 13. The words of the prophets with one accord are favorable to the king. Let your word be like one of them and speak favorably. More evidence that human counsels are deceptive. And we’ll see how they will fail. And Micaiah’s initial words when he first has the opportunity to speak. They seem to align with the 400.
Look at verse 15 again. After Ahab inquires of him, invites him to speak, he says, go up and triumph. The Lord will give it to the hand of the king. You notice he didn’t say, thus says the Lord. And Ahab seems to perceive. We don’t have the benefit of seeing his body language, hearing his tone of voice, anything like that. But Ahab knew.
Ahab knew that Micaiah was just mocking the others. He was deriding them. So when he said, go up, Matthew Poole said, Micaiah’s meaning is plainly this. It’s as if he is saying to Ahab, because you do not seek to know the truth, but only to please yourself, go to the battle, as all your prophets advise you, and test the truth of their prediction by your own costly experience. And it makes Ahab uncomfortable. You notice that he recognized that Micaiah was being insincere.
That’s why he says what he says in verse 16. And yet, he accepts those exact lies from the mouth of all of his 400 prophets. He’s walking into a trap. He’s openly admitting that he knows what they’re saying is a lie. But when Micaiah says it, he says, tell me the truth. Tell me the truth.
Ahab was an evil man, and we see him as a poster child of going from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. And the German reformer by the name of Bugenhagen said this. He said, the world wants to be deceived. Have you ever thought about that? The world wants to be deceived. The world suppresses the truth, and in order to do that, they have to welcome deception. They have to believe a lie. But human counsels are deceptive, and they will fail.
Well, secondly, the Lord reigns over the nations. Those are words I pulled right out of Psalm 47. Psalm 47, verse 8. And this passage shows us that. The Lord reigns over the nations. Try to imagine the scene. look at what it says in verse 10. The kings of Israel, the king of Israel and Yehoshaphat the king of Judah were sitting on their thrones arrayed in their robes at the threshing floor of the entrance of the gate of Samaria and all the prophets were prophesying before him. So they’re all decked out in their royal robes they’re seated on their royal thrones and they’re at the gate of Samaria. That was the place of judgment. When kings, when magistrates sat to hear cases and to render judgments, when the elders of a city would hear cases and render judgments, they would do it at the gates of the city.
And here are these two kings. One is a guest. One is at his capital city. And they’re sitting there in their glorious royal robes, prophets surrounding them, proclaiming oracles, giving counsel. This is an example of what we would speak of in human terms as the halls of power. This is where all the authority is centered. You’ve got two monarchs sitting there.
But Micah sees a vision. And it describes a different scene. And that scene with these two kings sitting together to human eyes, to eyes of the flesh, might have looked really impressive. But the scene that Micah sees is the Lord sitting on his throne in the courts of heaven and the host of heaven standing all around him on his right and on his left.
There’s wonderful drama in this passage, but you see how the vision portrays heavenly counsel as if the Lord God were seeking advice. And maybe that causes us to scratch our heads a little bit, but remember this. The Scripture provides this dramatic enactment for us, expresses things in these sort of dramatic ways. But the Lord God does not need nor does he seek counsel from his creatures, which is what Paul was getting at in Romans 11 when he’s concluding those amazing three chapters, chapters 9 through 11, speaking about God’s sovereignty and the salvation of sinners And as he wraps it up with this burst of doxology, he draws from Old Testament scripture and kind of combines, does a mashup of some of the prophetic words. And he says, for who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? God doesn’t need a counselor. He doesn’t seek counsel. But the Spirit portrays this scene in order to instruct us. It’s a dramatic, prophetic portrayal of divine things in human terms.
And it also depicts the overruling authority of God. Because down below, you had kings making decisions in their courts, surrounded by their courtiers. And all that seems very impressive to the eyes of man. But God’s throne room supersedes and overrides and excels all earthly authority. God can use any resources he pleases. He works through means. And that’s really all this vision is teaching us. God works through means. And he can use any that he pleases. Everything is at his disposal.
This scene of God seated on his throne kind of brings up the psalm passage that I used to kind of articulate my second point. And the full reading of Psalm 47, verse 8 is this. God reigns over the nations. God sits on his holy throne. And in his sovereignty, God is removing Ahab from his throne. Verse 17.
After Ahab adjures him to speak the truth, he says, I saw Israel scattered on the mountains as sheep that have no shepherd. In other words, their king is gone. Their shepherd, their king, has been taken away. The Lord said, these have no master. Let each return to his home in peace.
The Lord, our God, he removes kings, he sets up kings. So he’s in charge, he’s in sovereign control of the big picture things that go on in the world. When you watch the news and you’re troubled by what’s going on in the world, remember God is sovereign over these things. All the big things, the things that are too high for us, the things that we have no control over, God has control over those things. But he’s also sovereign over the minutia, the little things, like the flight of every arrow that’s shot from a bow in battle. And that’s what we’re going to see next time. He’s Lord, he’s sovereign Lord over the course of an arrow that finds its target in the abdomen of Ahab. The Lord reigns over the nations.
And then finally, the counsel of the Lord is true and will stand. That’s our third point. The counsel of the Lord is true and will stand. In contrast to human counsels, which are deceptive and will fall. The counsel of the Lord is true. and his counsel will stand.”
It was God’s purpose for Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead. So that’s why he asks in this counsel in heaven, who will entice Ahab that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? God is the one who declares the end from the beginning. He is the one who accomplishes all his purpose and is portrayed in Micaiah’s vision as if there was this heavenly war counsel.
And so one spirit, one said one thing, one said another, amongst the heavenly host there. And then this spirit came forward. I will entice him. The Lord said to him, by what means? And he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all of his prophets. He said, you are to entice him. You shall succeed, go out and do so. What’s going on there? Who is this spirit? Well, it can’t be one of the holy angels. This was the deceiver. This was the father of lies. You might think, wait a minute, I thought this was in heaven.
What’s he doing there? Well, remember, he showed up in the garden in Genesis three, He showed up in the presence of God when the sons of God were presenting themselves before the Lord in Job chapter 1 and chapter 2. He showed up in Zechariah 3 to accuse Joshua the high priest before the Lord and say, he’s dressed in filthy rags. You’re a priest.
So he’s the one who’s going to go be that deceiving, lying spirit in the mouth of Ahab’s prophets. The Lord had decreed that Ahab’s prophets would lie and that Ahab would be deceived. But remember, Ahab wanted to be deceived. Keep that quote from Ugenhagen in mind. This fallen world, they want to be deceived.
They don’t want the truth because the truth condemns them. Ahab hated Micaiah for the very reason that he spoke the truth. He was more concerned with how the message makes him feel than he was with hearing the truth. And isn’t that the case for men and women in our day? given the choice between the truth and a message that makes them feel good, they’d rather have that. They’d rather be deceived. They’d rather embrace a comfortable lie than hear the truth.
And so Micaiah announced Ahab’s downfall in verse 23, and that was fulfilled in passage that Lord willing we’ll look at next week, verses 34 and 35. which just shows that the counsel of the Lord, counsel of the Lord is true and it will stand. And Micaiah received abuse for speaking the truth, for being faithful to Yahweh. That prophecy They hated me without a cause, was fulfilled in the lives of so many of the prophets and ultimately in the life of Jesus Christ himself. He was faithful to the Lord. He spoke the truth and people abused him for it. People hated him for it.
Micaiah sought to honor the Lord, not to follow the crowd. Even though he is one prophet against 400, he didn’t side with them, he didn’t cave. And he sought to honor the Lord rather than pandering to power. Two kings sitting before him, apparently with a mind to go up to Ramoth Gilead. But he didn’t change his message. He was faithful. He was faithful to Yahweh. He faithfully delivered the minority report. He stood alone, just as many centuries later, our Lord Jesus Christ would do.
And then Zedekiah, whose name ironically means Yahweh is my righteousness, Zedekiah unjustly struck Micaiah. Again, if you try to picture the moment, all these prophets were saying, go up. The Lord will give Ramoth Gilead into your hand. And then in comes Micaiah. And he proclaims this devastating prophecy against Ahab. You can imagine people squirming, fidgeting. And so Zedekiah has to rescue. He has to save the moment. He has to fix this. So he goes up and he smacks Micaiah, tries to take control. And then Ahab remands Micaiah to prison. And he seems very confident of his eventual return and of his victory. But what Micaiah says is, if you return in peace, the Lord has not spoken by me.
Hear this, all you peoples. That could be translated, hear this, all you nations. See, the message of the Lord God, the message of the gospel, the message of Christ is for all the nations. And this message, the truth of God, is for all the people. were all called upon to hear.
The Lord had spoken by Micaiah, and Ahab did not return.” Because the counsel of the Lord is true, and it will stand. Ultimately, Micaiah did not speak in accord with the false prophets, as the messenger encouraged him to do. But he did speak favorably. He spoke a favorable word. Had Ahab heeded his words and not the deceptive words of his yes-men, perhaps Yahweh would have spared him. He’d spared him before. He’d been merciful before. Which brings up a question for us, one that we can ask and answer as a form of application.
If someone is going a dangerous way, is it not a kindness to warn them of the danger? That’s what the gospel does, isn’t it? It warns people about sin’s deceitfulness. It warns people about sin’s penalty and about the coming judgment. and it points them to the Savior of sinners, the Lord Jesus Christ, and urges them to repent, urges them to believe. Is it not the greatest kindness of all to bring this message to people who will perish without it? Gospel words are the most favorable words. Well, I mean, As I close, make a couple of other points of application.
We’ve got this very godly king in the text, Yehoshaphat. He was a godly man. As I mentioned, he was a reformer. He undid a lot of things in Judah that ought not to have been done. He walked in the ways of his father, David. And what we see him doing in this passage is encouraging his counterpart in the northern kingdom to inquire of the Lord. Godly Yehoshaphat gave this exhortation to Ahab. Remember when Joshua and the people of Israel were first beginning their conquest of the land, they were deceived into entering into a covenant with the Gibeonites.
And how did that happen? They failed to inquire of the Lord. They did not ask counsel from the Lord, it says. They saw the evidence. They suspected that maybe these Gibeonites might be trying to pull the wool over their eyes, and maybe they’re being deceitful. But they examined the evidence, they talked it over, and they went ahead and made a treaty. They made a covenant with some of the very people they were supposed to destroy. And the reason was they didn’t inquire. They didn’t ask counsel from the Lord.
So the way to apply this one way to apply this text is make it your regular practice. To seek godly counsel and to inquire of the Lord in prayer. In the matters that pertain to you in your life. And then finally. Look with me again at verse 14 and let’s consider Micaiah’s resolution. He said, as the Lord lives what the Lord says to me that I will speak. Let that ever be our resolution as well.
What the Lord says to us, we will speak. Without addition, without diminution, without alteration. How many times in God’s words does he say, do not add to my words, do not take away from my words. The Lord Jesus said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. stand firm on his word, and commit before God to always proclaim his full counsel. Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, thank you so much that we have the great assurance and the great confidence and peace and joy of knowing that we serve a God whose counsel is true and will forever stand. We thank you that Jesus, our Savior, spoke the truth to us, even things that in our flesh we don’t want to hear. Lord God, may we be faithful to warn others of the wrath to come, to warn them to flee from that wrath by turning to Christ in repentance and faith. Oh, Lord, we thank you for our Savior, and we pray that you’d help us to faithfully serve him. We ask it in his name. Amen.