Lying Spirit from God?

I Kings 22 may be one of the most difficult sections of Scripture to understand.  The text clearly states that “the Lord placed a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets.” I Kings 22:23

Or does the text really say this? I love finding controversial sections of Scripture.  The more difficult the more rewarding because they cause you to dig deeper and the deeper you go the more you begin to see the amazing beauty of the Word of the Lord.  Before I begin, I would recommend reading this chapter first.

           

God certainly would not sanction lying. Or would He?  Satan is the father of lies.  Titus 1:2 states “which God, who never lies…”  God did bless Rahab the harlot who lied about the two spies.  God did send an evil spirit to Abimelech in Judges 9:23.  In I Samuel 16:14 God sent and evil spirit to Saul.  In 2^nd Thessalonians 2:11 God sends those who refused to believe the truth, strong delusion.

 

A casual examination of I kings 22 reveals several interesting factors.  First that Ahab still has prophets.  In I Kings 18 Elijah has already killed 450 prophets of Baal.  But he didn’t kill the 400 prophets of Asherah.  The text doesn’t reveal why Elijah didn’t kill the rest of the prophets but it is possible that these are the prophets that God uses in chapter 20 to be the carriers of the lying message.  There are exactly 400 of them (22:6).

 

Another observation of chapter 22 reveals an interesting structure.  Note the following form that is found in verses 12 – 15:

 

            Go up and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.

            words of the prophets

            favorable

            favorably

            Words of the Lord (the Lord says to me)

            Go up and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.

 

You can see how this paralleled structure reveals beautiful symmetry except for the contrast between the words of the prophets and the words of the Lord.  The King of Israel is trying to discern whether to go into battle against the king of Syria.  400 of his prophets are telling him to go…the victory is his.  But one prophet is telling him otherwise.  Who should he believe?  Can you imagine having so many people confirming what you should do and just one person, a person you really don’t like, telling you the opposite?  Whose advice should you follow? I have found the people really don’t want to follow advice.  They are going to do what they want to do regardless.  Having someone agreeing with you just seems to bolster our pricked conscience, masking our guilt.  “of course you should leave him…you don’t deserve to be treated that way.” And the list of advice goes on an on, often contrary to the Word of God.           

To be continued….

 

(for those who are praying for my dad, this morning dad took a turn for the worse and needed to be placed back on the ventilator.  The doctors are concerned for possible organ failure again…this is discouraging because his kidneys had just started to respond to almost complete functioning.  Please pray for God’s will to be done and if my dad’s life can be used to bring glory to Him, to please spare his life.  I would love to serve with my dad…thank you for your prayers.)