City of Defects (Part A)

Instead of God saying to Paul, I want you to go kill all those who worship at the temple of Diana in Ephesus to Ananias about Paul, I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake. Acts 14, 22, Paul now speaking to the believers, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith and saying we must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God as opposed to, again, go burn them on their altars. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of 1 Kings.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the Book of 1 Kings chapter 13 as he begins his message, City of Defects. The title, which is supposed to be informative, is City of Defects. This city is Bethel and we'll try to get right to it because we have a defective king, a defective man of God, and a defective prophet.

And that merits quite a bit of consideration. So looking at verse 1, and behold the man of God went from Judah to Bethel by the word of Yahweh and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. Well, Bethel needed a man of God, so God imported one. What we're going to find is a prophet that lives in Bethel and God bypasses him. So God has to import a man of God.

There was no one to be found that he could use evidently. Again, the local prophet had been compromised and that comes out in the story. For those of you familiar with it already, you know what's going to happen. Some cities have a multitude of churches, but they're not able to deliver God's word because they too are compromised. And this lesson is right here. Walk up to somebody that's a Christian and say, are you familiar with 1 Kings chapter 13? I think that many Christians would not be familiar with this chapter. Maybe if you started explaining it they would, oh yeah, yeah, I know that story.

But how many do not? It was at Bethel that Jacob had a life-changing experience with God, even though for Jacob it was gradual. But it was foundational.

He never forgot it. Genesis chapter 16, then Jacob awoke from his sleep. This is when the Lord visited him in the dream and said, surely Yahweh is in this place and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, how awesome is this place? Proper use of the word awesome, incidentally.

Now what's replaced awesome is literally, it literally has replaced it and it's awesome that it, anyway. He continues, this is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven and he called the name of the place Bethel, house of God. That's what Bethel means. I think it's very exciting that the house of God, he has this reverence, this fear, not terror, but reverence.

We shouldn't lose any of that. Another imported prophet about 150 years later will taunt the apostate Jews using Bethel to do it. Amos the prophet, he also was from Judah, in Tekoa, the particular village. He says, come to Bethel and transgress.

Imagine saying, come on down to church and sin with us as we pray towards statues and pray to human beings and things like that. God's identity and God's will, they're stressed in this chapter. This is a big chapter.

I don't mean lengthwise, I mean importance. The covenant name of Yahweh, 19 times do we read of his covenant name and of the word of Yahweh 12 times. This is emphatic for a reason. Jeroboam, it says here in verse 1, stood by the altar to burn incense. Well, he made his choice that he wanted God his way, so did the Burger King God. You can have it your way.

It used to be their slogan, right? When you invent your own religion, you do whatever you want to do and that's what he's doing and he's going to appoint the priests, he's going to appoint the rules and he's just making the altar. There's not supposed to be an altar in Bethel or anywhere else in Israel except Jerusalem. Also, the kings were forbidden to be priests, to offer up this incense.

King Uzziah will suffer leprosy trying many years later and he was a good king. Verse 2, then he cried out against the altar by the word of Yahweh and said, oh, altar, altar. Thus says Yahweh, behold a child, Josiah by name, shall be born to the house of David and you shall sacrifice the priest of the high places who burned incense on you and men's bones shall be burned on you. He cried out against the altar by the word of God.

This is the prophet that's sent from Judah. He's ignoring the human blasphemers. Why would he cry out to an inanimate object? Why not the people that are standing there? Well, the altar has a better chance of listening.

It's supposed to insult them. If you were standing there and say, excuse me, are you talking to me? I'm talking to the altar. What's the point of talking to you?

You're not going to listen. I'm not sent here only for you, but in demonstration that God has sent you an opportunity to repent. And so he singles out the altar, not Jeroboam, the king and said, oh, altar, oh, altar.

Thus says the Lord Yahweh. The double pronunciation of the altar, unmistakable, emphatic and passionate demonstrates. It's an appropriate touch on the part of the prophet vocalizing what was in God's heart, the shock, the dismay, the disappointment. It is also, of course, a rebuke towards this altar and the one that is further to the north in the tribe of Dan, both of them instituted by this King Jeroboam. The whole system of false worship in northern Israel is being rebuked.

This is the ground zero for that rebuke. He says, behold, a child Josiah by name shall be born to the house of David. King Josiah will be born 300 years from now. Not from now, from the time here that this prophecy was made. This is one of the most remarkable, predictive prophecies in all the Bible. He's named. He is a righteous king and a great reformer. There are those that try to somehow undo this.

They don't, they cannot. He didn't mean Josiah. Who did he mean? Wilt Chamberlain? I mean, he's a basketball player, long gone. But anyway, God would raise up a Judean king to obliterate and dishonor this piece of junk altar that's in the promised land in the northern kingdom that was supposed to, was given a chance by God to do it the right way since Rehoboam and Solomon had done it the wrong way. Josiah will be king for 31 years. He will leave five, he will leave one of the five great revivals of the Jewish kings, all of them Judean, not recorded in Kings, but recorded in Chronicles. And he will die prematurely on the battlefield. Even as great a king as he was, he overstepped.

He went where he should not have gone. And Jeremiah's heart will be broken over that, as will many of the righteous. It continues here in verse 2, and on you he shall sacrifice the priest of the high places. Josiah would come along 300 years later and slaughter the illegitimate priests on this very altar. Again, one of the most remarkable prophecies in Scripture.

He's not the only one like this. Cyrus the king is another one we find in Isaiah 45, but this is just incredible. And he's predicting also the actions of this king, not just saying, hey, somebody named Josiah is going to be born. He's saying, Josiah is going to be born, he's going to be a king, he's going to deal with this altar.

And you can, that's not a self-fulfilling prophecy, you just don't have the ability to get all those ducks in a row. And he fulfills it to the letter so that we read in 2 Kings chapter 23, as Josiah turned, he saw the tombs that were there on the mountain, and he sent and took the bones out of the tombs and burned them on the altar, and defiled it according to the word of Yahweh, which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words. Now, this is 300 years later that the historian is talking about, looking back, Josiah is looking back 300 years and said, the man of God called this moment and I'm now fulfilling it. And then it says, he executed all the priests of the high places who were there on the altars and burned men's bones on them, and he returned to Jerusalem.

Pretty thorough, no nonsense. He was purging the land as best he could of the devil's influence in religion, which would then influence morality. He says, those who burn incense on you, this non-Levitical priest of course, appointed by Jeroboam, the men's bones shall be burned on you, disrespect to the dead idolaters. Well, they offended God. In Leviticus 26, God says, this is what's going to happen if you don't listen to me. Here's one portion from Leviticus 26, I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and cast your carcasses on the lifeless forms of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you. Pretty serious stuff.

I'm going to hate you for this. Because they're bringing in the child sacrifices, I mean these people were, they were evil, what they were doing because of their religion. This is going on, India's having a big problem with this, this revival of Hinduism in India. Shutting down orphanages so that they can have a resort for cows, seriously. I mean sacred cows, you know, they can go there and they can die. Well, what about the humans?

They don't count. Only Satan can engineer such nonsense as that. We have a lot more just to come in these first nine verses. But here's one of the great differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The New Testament life is more difficult. That's why legalists like to run to the Old Testament and sort of ignore the New Testament because they think they can get away with it, with this facade. Acts chapter 9, instead of God saying to Paul, I want you to go kill all those who worship at the temple of Diana in Ephesus to Ananias about Paul, I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake. Acts 14, 22, Paul now speaking to the believers, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith and saying, we must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God as opposed to, again, go burn them on their altars. The big difference between the New Testament turning the other cheek with grace and love and the directives of the New Testament, Old Testament, which was to preserve a people for Messiah to come according to the prophecies so that we would have a more sure word of prophecy so when you get in front of someone you say, listen, nobody's got these prophecies but us. We can say that because of how God arranged the Old Testament and to reason with people, which those who just, there are people that just don't care about reason.

Jeroboam is one of them. For example, an evolutionist. You could just say, open the window, look outside and you tell me, can you make this stuff up? Can you just make up trees, a different variety of trees, grass growing, different varieties of birds?

You have scavengers, you have predators, you have vegetarian birds. I mean, you just have this whole cycle and you're just saying that somebody just made this up, chance made it up? It's irrational. This is the devil's dirt and we are supposed to be very serious about this. That's why Paul says we suffer doing the work, trying to preach the gospel to people who don't want to hear it and yet out of that group of people who don't want to hear it, they get saved, many of them, or else we wouldn't be here this evening. Verse 3, and he gave a sign the same day saying, this is the sign which Yahweh has spoken, surely the altar shall split apart and the ashes on it shall be poured out. Of course, they're going to repair this and that will give Josiah the altar he needs to fulfill the prophecy, but he's saying just in case you don't believe me, because you're not going to be here. Nobody knows how long it is in this group, the prophet, God has not disclosed how long it would take before Josiah would come along. We know it's 300 years because we have the scripture, but they didn't know.

He could have felt he's coming tomorrow. Well, the prophet is saying, just so you'll know that my talk is not cheap because it is God's message to you, I'm going to back it up and by verse 5 we find that it comes, it happens, the altar splits just like he said, which you would think Jeroboam would say, well that's not a coincidence, but he does not. Again, the evolutionists or other people who believe in these things, these theories, these ideas that are just flawed through and through, you'd think that the facts would mean something to them.

The facts didn't mean anything to Jeroboam, didn't mean anything to Judas Iscariot. Well, the priests, speaking of these ashes, were to pour, the legitimate priests in Jerusalem were to take the ashes from the burnt offerings to a clean place and dispose of them there. Here, the ashes remain because the place is corrupted, it's defiled, it's contaminated, and it speaks of that. The ashes are the evidence of something that has been spent and in the case of proper religion before Yahweh, it was dealing with sin. The sin had been dealt with and what was left was the ashes and God had them properly cast away.

I'll come back to that hopefully. Verse 4, so it came to pass when King Jeroboam heard the saying of the man of God who cried out against the altar in Bethel that he stretched out his hand from the altar saying arrest him. Then his hand which he stretched out toward him withered so that he could not pull it back to himself. So he looks like a Venus de Milo with arms. You know the statue.

She doesn't have any arms so how do you know what she was doing with him, right? Alright, anyway, he's stuck. He's just there like a garden ornament and as soon as he recognizes that it's a prophet, what does he want to do?

He wants to censor him. We see this today. Idolaters are violently intolerant of rebuke and our message of truth is offensive no matter how we deliver it. We can do it, you know, as the prophet Amos did. Sure, come on down and send from sarcasm or we can be very gently and say, listen, the Lord loves you.

The goodness of God leads to repentance. They have a response for that. We just have to deliver it as told saying arrest him. Judicial censorship. This is the law of the king which is the law of the land and guilty people, therefore, censorship of truth if it goes against their lifestyle. Well, God paralyzes the prosecutor's hand. Verse five, the altar also was split apart and the ashes poured out from the altar according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of Yahweh. Now, I mentioned we're going to come across 12 times that this man of God, the word of God and we're going to constantly hear the man of God referring to this prophet. Let's not forget that when things get pretty hot around him from the judgment, anyway, this authenticates his message that indeed it came from God. Ezekiel said it this way. Now, Ezekiel comes over 400 years later almost and he says to the people he's ministering to, as for them, whether they hear or whether they refuse, they are a rebellious house, yet they will know that a prophet has been among them. I just love that. God says to the prophet, look, don't worry about what they're going to do with the message. You deliver the message. What they do with it, that's between them and me, but they're going to know a man of God was there.

I just love that. Anyway, and the ashes poured out from the altar as he said, leaving no room for doubt you would think. Sin makes a person stupid. Sin makes us dumb. We look for ways to justify the sin.

And as Christians, you've got to watch it too because we're quick to also do this fallen nature thing. Anyway, to dispose of the ruin, the contamination of the sin depicted in the ashes. This was the job of the Levites. And here again, with them not being removed, the idea is your sin is still there, but when God's people were to remove these ashes, it was Isaiah 38 17, it would be a fitting verse, speaking to God, he says, you have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption, for you have cast all my sins behind your back.

They're ashes and you've taken them out of the city. This is actually Hezekiah speaking. Isaiah records it and this is when God spared his life and he just pours out in his gratitude.

Thank you, Lord. And Hezekiah was one of the great kings of the Hebrew kings. Anyway, their contamination, their defilement is retained in the ashes spilling out on their altar. This part of the imagery there, verse 6. Then the king answered and said to the man of God, please entreat the favor of Yahweh your God and pray for me, that my hand may be restored to me. So the man of God entreated Yahweh and the king's hand was restored to him and became as before.

So the king wanted his arm back, but God wanted the king back because Jeroboam was a good king, a good man when he was serving in Jerusalem. That's why the prophet Ahijah was sent to him. But he became an apostate and we're going to hit that pretty hard in a minute. The treatment of apostates versus unbelievers, there is a difference. We don't have the same treatment for the two. Apostates get severe treatment for a good reason.

Super dangerous they are when it comes to souls, snatching souls. Anyway, here's his opportunity for repentance, but his heart was set on sin. The prophet did not smite the king. God, again, intervened, interfered. God struck him, but the prophet doesn't ask God to withdraw the strike, the smite. He asked the prophet to intercede on his behalf, which the prophet does. And we read, so the man of God entreated Yahweh and the king's hand was restored to him and he became as before. So the prophet's office is over the king when the prophet is on assignment. When the prophet is on assignment, he is higher than anybody in the land. After his assignment, though, he goes back to being one of the subjects to the king. There are three miracles in just these few minutes of time and yet no repentance.

The paralyzed arm, the split altar, and then the restored arm. You would think that the king would say, this is spooky. Facts don't matter to people who just love their sin and are determined not to submit to God. That's why they'll, anyway, verse seven, then the king said to the man of God, come home with me and refresh yourself and I will give you a reward. From arrest him to invite him. He should have said, Lord forgive me a sinner. He doesn't get there. So what we have here is Satan transforming himself in front of a prophet from lion into a fox.

From a lion into a fox. Balaam would have made an appointment to come back in a week. He said, I can't come right now. I was told to go back to Jerusalem, but I'll be back in a week.

You have the loot ready. And of course we know the story of Balaam the prophet. Anyway, offering gifts to prophets was not unheard of in this, amongst these ancient people, even the Jews. We see it in the book of Samuel and we see it in the book of Kings. Nahum, you know, offering gifts to Elijah and Elijah said, no, thank you. And Gehazi, Gehazi said, oh, by the way. And of course he was smitten with leprosy too. Also not uncommon was the prophets refusing the gifts. Abraham told the king of Sodom and Gomorrah, you keep your gifts because you won't say Abraham, I made Abraham, not a thread or a sandal strap do I want from you. I mean, I was scathing.

And the king, of course, the character that is, he probably, you know, as those type of people are, you can insult them with the truth and it just bounces off of them. Try insulting a journalist. Say, ooh, why would anybody want to talk to you?

Just go look for somebody else. They won't say, you know what, you're right. We just go and make money off of other people's tragedies and horror and it's wrong. Now they won't do that. If you want to get nauseous, go to the Newseum.

I don't know if it's still there, but anyway, any chance I can get to rebuke that nasty center. It's a museum that the news media has in Washington DC that shows all of their, you know, look at all the stories we reported on. Somebody else's sorrow, but we made a lot of money from it. You have no right to suffer privately with those guys. Anyway, Elijah, as I mentioned, Daniel, Daniel told Belshazzar, keep your gifts for yourself or give it to somebody else. I don't want it.

Here's what the handwriting means. You're done. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

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