Sometimes when someone hears the truth, they still don’t want to receive it. They still do what they want to do. It happened in the past and it will happen again:
“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear“ (2 Tim 4:3).
It’s an age old prospect. If you don’t like what you hear, go listen to someone else. It reflects the heart of someone who does not really want the truth or really want obedience to God. They actually just want affirmed in their own choices.
Israel was split in two. The King of Israel, Jehoshaphat was ruling the south and King Ahab was ruling the north. Jehoshaphat decided to go to Ahaz and try to partner up to take back the cities that the Arameans had taken. So when he arrived there Ahaz agreed, but Jehoshaphat first wanted to consult the prophets.
Ahaz brought in the prophets in his land that were not of Yahweh. They prophesied victory and success, just what Ahaz wanted to hear. But Jehoshaphat asked if they could find a prophet of the LORD. Ahaz gritted his teeth as the only he knew, Micaiah, had prophesies that weren’t very favorable. People want to hear good and positive things, and not always the truth.
Micaiah was summoned and asked to prophesy. He did and it was positive, but perhaps it was in a sarcastic tone. Ahaz knew immediately it wasn’t what he really heard from the LORD.
When Micaiah actually prophesied what the LORD told him, it was not to go to battle and not to go to war. Rather everyone was to return home.
Ahaz didn’t like this. And Jehoshaphat who had been trying to seek the LORD didn’t like this either. But isn’t that like us all? When we hear from the LORD something we want, we don’t ask twice. But when it’s something we don’t want, we want 20 confirmations and even then we act?
Both Jehoshaphat and Ahaz went off to war anyway. They took off after Jehoshaphat but he anounced he wasn’t Ahaz. A random arrow struck Ahaz anyway and later in the day he passed away. The dogs licked his blood and the prostitutes rubbed it on their bodies just as the LORD had prophesied.
When we ask of the LORD something, are our hearts inclined to obedience? Do we want our way more than we want the will of the LORD? Do we want what we think is best?
It seems so easy…just obey the LORD. But sometimes it is a fight with our will. A fight with doing what we think is best and maybe we just heard the LORD wrong.
But at the end of the day if we don’t have obedience and trust in the LORD’s ways, what do we have left?
It’s dangerous to reject truth.
