Wearing the horns

 This week's verses are 1 Kings 22:10-14:

 Now the king of Israel and King Jehoshaphat of Judah were sitting on their respective thrones, dressed in their robes, at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria. All the prophets were prophesying before them. Zedekiah son of Kenaanah made iron horns and said, “This is what the Lord has said, ‘With these you will gore Syria until they are destroyed.’” All the prophets were prophesying the same, saying, “Attack Ramoth Gilead! You will succeed; the Lord will hand it over to the king.” Now the messenger who went to summon Micaiah said to him, “Look, the prophets are in complete agreement that the king will succeed. Your words must agree with theirs; you must predict success.” But Micaiah said, “As certainly as the Lord lives, I will say what the Lord tells me to say.”

Sometimes religious life can look like a weird circus.  In these verses, the tribes of Israel were divided and had fallen into sin. The kings of the two separated halves of Israel had a summit and invited prophets to give them direction on whether to attack their common enemy in Syria.

The prophets put on a wild religious show full of noise and costume props. Unanimously they told the kings what the kings wanted to hear. But the kings knew there was another prophet out there named Micaiah who always told the truth. They wanted him to proclaim blessings for them too, so it could be official. They sent a messenger to him and told him not to confess anything that wasn't edifying and positive. They wanted a unanimous gathering of faith that things would be as they demanded. But that's not what they got.

Micaiah told them “As certainly as the Lord lives, I will say what the Lord tells me to say.”. He wasn't working for either of the two kings but for God. He paid a severe price for his obedience, because the kings threw him into jail for it, but I believe God rewarded him in the end. He was the only faithful believer in that room that day.

I don't know if the horn-wearing pantomime prophets just really wanted to believe that Israel would defeat Syria or whether they were only putting on a show for the kings. I don't know if they were practicing a kind of witchcraft where they might imagine a majority vote would somehow compel God to do their will. All I know is they were not speaking God's word, and they were really determined to not be contradicted.

Have you ever encountered a situation like that? I've seen people falsely proclaim healing and resurrection over people who had recently died, people making false "prophesies" about who would win the US elections, and even crazier stuff than that. It's one thing if God is actually saying something, but it's quite a dangerous other thing if it's just your emotions or stubborn determination that's doing it. That's how you get people killed.

There are definitely cases in the Bible where God speaks through pantomime and proclamation and even just loud noises. The difference between those situations and the situations with the prophets in these verses is that the prophets in these verses were not hearing those things from God. It was all them. And Micaiah rightly rejects it.

But how would we navigate a situation like that? Would we be as confident as Micaiah in knowing whether God's will was being spoken or not? Would we have the boldness to speak out, especially if that could turn to violence and financial ruin for us? I think most of us would keep quiet and play along, and that would put us in the same class as the rowdy horn-wearing false prophets.

So how do we get to be more like Micaiah? It's not easy. We need to spend a lot of time in Bible study and prayer to understand who God is and what he is like. Micaiah didn't have Netflix or a cable sports subscription. We have no idea how he spent his time or how much was spent in prayer and devotion. But we can be sure it wasn't ninety minutes every Sunday and nothing in between.

Reading more of the chapter, we see that this wasn't the first time that Micaiah had spoken truth to power. He actually had a track record of speaking uncomfortable truths. It wasn't just to be edgy and shocking. Most likely he had made a decision early on to be faithful with the information God had given him, even if it wasn't always possible to package it up in a way people would like to hear. Fear of man took a back seat to fear of God.

I guess the last question is, do we actually want to be like Micaiah?  He delivered God's punchline that gave meaning to the calamities that would follow, but at quite a high cost. He lost basically everything for not playing along in a farce that the kings wouldn't have rejected either way. Is obedience to God worth that to us? Are we willing to be faithful in the details even when it's so seemingly pointless and expensive?

So meditate on that this week: What would I do in Micaiah's shoes? Would I consider it a good deal if I did what he did and got what he got? And if I do consider it a good deal, would I be willing to train as he trained, both in truth-telling and Bible-studying for the rest of my life? Or would I rather wear the horns and play the fool instead?