The Way That Leads to Death

2. November 2009 by Annette Colon-Alvarenga.

1 Kings 13 is an incredible story about a prophet of God (The Man of God). The story tells us about a prophet - we are not told his name - who is given some very specific instructions by God about a message he is to deliver to Jeroboam, King of Israel. God was very specific with His instruction to the prophet that he was “not to eat bread or drink water or return by the way [he] came” to meet the King.

After the fulfillment of the prophesy, King Jeroboam invites the prophet to go with him to eat and receive a gift. But the man of God was obedient to God’s instruction and did not go with him.

On his return, the man of God took another way home as God had instructed. When he stopped in Bethel, an old prophet who had heard what had happened with King Jeroboam, went out to meet him. He went out to the man of God and invited him to go home with him to eat. The man of God told him what God had instructed him. At that, the old prophet tells the man of God that he too is a prophet and that an angel had appeared to him and told him “by the word of the LORD: `Bring him back with you to your house so that he may eat bread and drink water.” (v. 18)  Of course he was lying but the man of  God, instead of heeding the direct instructions he personally received from God, believed the old prophet. The irony is that while they are eating and drinking,  the old prophet delivers to the man of God a prophesy about his impending death for defying God’s specific instruction.

There is a lesson here that we cannot ignore. God continues to speak to us through His Word and  through persons He places in and around our lives. And many times we are happy to follow His instruction. But every now and again, the competing voices of our culture want to send us in another direction. Whether it’s at school, in the workplace, or through friendships we maintain with those who do not yet know or understand God’s ways (and even with those who supposedly know His ways), the temptation can cause us to wonder whether maybe, just maybe there is another way. But as we can see with what happened in this story of the Man of God, failure to follow God’s specific direction for our lives can bring about a devastating end.  Perhaps the end result in this story seems a bit harsh, but there is simply no justification for heeding the word of men if it is in contradiction to God’s Word or instruction.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. Proverbs 14:12; 16:25.

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