Then the messenger who went to summon Micaiah spoke to him saying, “Behold, the words of the prophets are uniformly favorable to the king. So please let your word be like one of them and speak favorably.” But Micaiah said, “As the Lord lives, what my God says, that I will speak.” (2 Chronicles 18:12-13)
After 400 false prophets of the god Baal had unanimously proclaimed that a great victory would be secured in the campaign of Israel and Judah against Ramoth-Gilead, Micaiah, a true prophet of the Lord, was summoned to deliver his prophecy concerning the plan. Not wishing for King Ahab’s already sour disposition toward the one true prophet in his kingdom to worsen, the messenger sent to retrieve him urges the man of God to step in line and join in with the 400 sycophants singing the victorious rally cry within the king’s throne room. But Micaiah, like every true prophet of God, can speak neither good nor bad except as the Lord leads him. “What my God says, that will I speak“, he answers.
Anyone who speaks on behalf of God, if they truly do so, will never be a popular person, at least as the world considers such. The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and it cuts deeply into all who hear it (Hebrews 4:12). It is a living, healing salve to those who love God but to the natural man it is hated and despised. Micaiah knew that by telling King Ahab the truth, that the king himself would in fact die in the battle that he was now planning, he would further incur the ruler’s wrath and that his own treatment would suffer because of it. But in the words of Martin Luther, he knew that “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe” and that enduring a king’s anger is nothing compared with the loss felt in disappointing the King of Heaven.
We may not be actual “prophets of God” standing in the courts of kings, uttering dire warnings against insolent monarchs who defy our Lord, but we are entrusted as children of God with the Word of God and must be careful stewards with that which we have been given. We are not at liberty to bend, alter, or water-down what God’s Word says, even if it goes directly against what the world believes to be right or wrong. Today, Bible-believing Christians are called upon more and more to abandon “outdated” and “intolerant” morals in the name of acceptance and compromise, to fit in with the popular worldviews which reject the truths that God has clearly spoken. May we always remember that it is neither safe nor right to do so.
[Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible (NASB) © The Lockman Foundation and are used by permission.]
