Last year during my daily reading I read this passage in 1 Kings 13, and I have been chewing on it ever since.  I have to do a devotion at a meeting next week so I pulled this passage back out and started making some notes.  Then a few days later a friend posted an article from Albert Mohler about a book that was released a few years ago and it was a confirmation that this this was what I needed to speak on.  Read it here http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/01/27/the-shack-the-missing-art-of-evangelical-discernment/ . This book was made into a movie and is about to be released next month, hence the timing of posting an article written 7 years ago.  The popularity of this book and others like it among evangelicals is disturbing and indicates a severe lack of comprehension of God’s Word and What His Word teaches. It seems many professing Christians don’t have even a basic understanding of the Gospel.

I skip through several verses but I encourage you to go and read the entire passage.

1 Kings 13:1-34 (ESV) ¹ And behold, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the LORD to Bethel. Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make offerings. ⁷ And the king said to the man of God, “Come home with me, and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward.” ⁸ And the man of God said to the king, “If you give me half your house, I will not go in with you. And I will not eat bread or drink water in this place, ⁹ for so was it commanded me by the word of the LORD, saying, ‘You shall neither eat bread nor drink water nor return by the way that you came.’ ” ¹⁰ So he went another way and did not return by the way that he came to Bethel. ¹¹ Now an old prophet lived in Bethel. And his sons came and told him all that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. They also told to their father the words that he had spoken to the king. ¹² And their father said to them, “Which way did he go?” And his sons showed him the way that the man of God who came from Judah had gone. ¹³ And he said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.” So they saddled the donkey for him and he mounted it. ¹⁴ And he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak. And he said to him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?” And he said, “I am.” ¹⁵ Then he said to him, “Come home with me and eat bread.” ¹⁶ And he said, “I may not return with you, or go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place, ¹⁷ for it was said to me by the word of the LORD, ‘You shall neither eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by the way that you came.’ ” ¹⁸ And he said to him, “I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water.’ ” But he lied to him. ²³ And after he had eaten bread and drunk, he saddled the donkey for the prophet whom he had brought back. ²⁴ And as he went away a lion met him on the road and killed him. And his body was thrown in the road, and the donkey stood beside it; the lion also stood beside the body.

Reminds me of 1 Peter 5:8. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. In our culture we are surrounded by people that claim to know the way of God, but many, or probably most are not speaking from the true source of God’s Word.  They are speaking from their own thoughts, their own ideas of how things ought to be, using proof texts to make their point sound as though it’s God’s Word.  That’s what this prophet did!  Vs. 18 “I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD” “But he lied to him”

We see this happening in books and movies like the Shack, but every “Christian” book we read or movie we watch, every sermon we hear, every radio program, every podcast, every song we hear, every conversation we have with professing believers must be held up to the light of God’s Word and where what we hear isn’t consistent with His Word must be rejected.

Keeping in mind that we can be wrong, that we can have a misunderstanding of the Word, we need to stay first of all in Scripture and prayer, we also need to be in constant and close fellowship with others who are in the Word regularly (it’s what we call the church).  This serves to keep us lined up with scripture, and to correct our brothers and sisters in Christ from falling away as well.

Al Mohler says in his article about the Shack “All this reveals a disastrous failure of evangelical discernment. It is hard not to conclude that theological discernment is now a lost art among American evangelicals — and this loss can only lead to theological catastrophe.”

So what this prophet experienced in listening to someone who was promoting his own agenda we can too if we aren’t careful to listen closely to God’s Word.  But this has been going on for a long time, Genesis 3:1 (ESV) Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” Satan has been twisting God’s Word from the Beginning, and he continues to do it today many times through people who call themselves evangelical Christians.