Some thoughts on the age of the earth

The 2010 Ligonier National Conference just recently wrapped up and Ligonier Ministries has helpfully posted summaries of the different sessions (links provided below). Al Mohler gave a talk titled, “Why Does the Universe Look So Old?” In it he surveyed four major Christian views on the age of the earth: the 24-hour calendar day theory, the day-age theory, the framework theory, and the literary theory.

 

Mohler concludes that the literary theory ultimately rejects inerrancy and ought not to be accepted. He also argues that the framework theory does not properly take the sequential nature of Genesis 1:1-2:3 into account and also ought to be discarded. Mohler also discards the day-age view because he does not think it can account for the exegetical and theological issues related to the historicity of Adam and the Fall. This leads Mohler to take a 24-hour calendar day theory because of the exegetical and theological issues at stake in this debate.

 

This has been a heated topic in Christian circles for many years. I recently attended a conference on science and faith where during one panel several of the scientists and theologians involved confessed that a large part their time was usually spent answering questions about the age of the earth and those discussions almost always became confrontational. Views on creation have led to Old Testament Professors leaving both Westminster Theological Seminary and Reformed Theological Seminary in recent years.

 

A few years ago the PCA General Assembly commissioned a committee to study this issue and report back. This report was later adopted by the PCA as a guideline that Presbyteries may use if they wished for evaluating candidates for ordination. The committee looked at the following positions:

1. Calendar-Day – Argues that “day” in Genesis 1:1-2:3 refers to six literal 24-hour calendar days. 
2. Day-Age – “Day” refers to a period of indefinite time and the focus of the passage is on God’s creative activity but not a literal description of the time that creation took. 
3. Framework – Notes that there is a correlation between the spheres of nature created on days 1-3 and the inhabitants in days 4-6 (for example, seas on day 2 and the fish on day 5) and so this is a literary tool that Moses used to teach Israel about the Creator and to give them the divine pattern for work and rest but “day” is figurative in the passage. 
4. Analogical Days – Argues that the “days” are God’s work days and these are analogous but not identical to our calendar days so they refer to consecutive divine activity but not to a definite period of time. 
5. Other interpretations – The biggest one included here is theistic evolution.

The study committee concluded that all of the four major views could be harmonized with Scripture without compromising the essentials of our faith (notably theistic evolution is excluded here). They held that ministers must believe the following truths in order to be orthodox:

1. that Scripture is in the inerrant Word of God and is self-interpreting;
2. that Genesis 1-3 are fully historical;
3. that Adam and Eve were uniquely created as the first parents of the human race;
4. that Adam was the covenant head of the human race;
5. that the curse and resultant discord in the universe is a result of Adam’s first sin;
6. that the incomprehensible God has clearly revealed himself in nature;
7. and, that he revealed exactly what he intended.

I think that the above points are an excellent summary of an orthodox view of creation regardless of what position an individual takes on the age of the earth. I would highly recommend that everyone read the whole report because it is well written and covers these views pretty nicely.

 

Personally, while wanting to insist that we be careful not to major on the minors on debates within Christian circles, I take the calendar day position for epistemological reasons. Our fundamental premise is that we live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So divine authority and corresponding revelation is our first presupposition in every area of human activity. I think the reason that this issue in particular becomes so controversial and difficult is because it seems to us that general revelation (the apparent age of the universe) and special revelation (that the universe was created in a week) seem to conflict with each other. I’ve had several good exchanges on this topic with a seminary friend of mine who takes a position somewhere between framework and analogical day. At one point he made the observation, “Natural and special revelation speak with one voice. YEC’s [young earth creationists] tend to suppress natural for special and OEC’s [old earth creationists] tend to suppress special for natural.”

 

This is a very helpful point even though he was intentionally making a generalization. The most important statement is that natural revelation and special revelation speak with one voice. Our God is not double-minded; saying one thing through the things that he has made and another in his inscripturated Word (see Psalm 19). Those who hold to a calendar-day view do tend to focus on God’s infallible and inerrant revelation in Scripture and so take the position that whenever there is an apparent (though not real) conflict between special and natural revelation that it means special revelation must carry the day. While this is certainly an understandable assumption these same arguments were used against Galileo when he dared to argue against a geocentric model for the universe. So we need to be careful in recognizing that while Scripture is infallible and inerrant our interpretations are not.

 

OEC’s do tend to elevate natural revelation above special revelation by taking the conclusions from scientific (and/or literary) observation and using them as hermeneutical tools for interpreting Genesis 1-3. Rightly this observes that, while Scripture has much to say that applies to scientific endeavors, the Bible is not a science textbook and Genesis 1-3 is not intended to be an exact scientific description of God’s creative activity. The sad consequence here has been that the edge between trying to harmonize what God reveals in nature and Scripture and falling into doubting or rejecting the inerrancy of Scripture can be very thin and we’ve seen a number of Old Testament scholars in Reformed circles who have crossed that line in recent years.

 

Ultimately I think what we need to do is take into account the presuppositions that scientists are forced to work with when we evaluate their conclusions. Science cannot speak to history but only to the present and probabilities for the future. When a scientist concludes that the universe appears to be millions or even billions of years old we have to recognize that they make that conclusion upon the assumption that the things have been relatively constant for that whole period. Yet this is an unfounded and unprovable assumption (if nothing else the flood alone is a disruption to the constant order of the universe or the points in the Old Testament where God caused the sun to hold still or go backwards). This is simply the oft-repeated objection that science cannot prove the past and ultimately we should doubt what science tries to tell us about history. Speaking to what happened in the past goes far beyond the bounds of the scientific endeavor.

 

Where I believe this leaves us is searching for a reliable account of how the world came to be. The only place we can find this is in Scripture as God is necessarily the only witness to creation. This means that our interpretation of the age of the earth needs to be an exegetical exercise. The burden of proof is upon OEC’s to show, not that Genesis 1-3 allows for a creation period of longer than a calendar week, but that it requires a creation period of longer than a calendar week. This is why our epistemological standpoint is so important on this issue. It is not that we doubt God’s revelation in nature but we have to recognize our own limitations in interpreting nature scientifically. I’m perfectly willing to grant that Genesis 1-3 may allow for the earth to be millions or billions of years old. However I don’t see anything in Genesis 1-3 that forces that conclusion and the only reason I can see to make it is on the basis of scientific observation about the age of the universe, which we have already shown to be unreliable.

 

For this reason I think it best to accept the natural reading of “day” in this passage. Now insisting upon this point does not make us, as one Old Testament scholar suggested in a moment of weakness, cultish in refusing to deal honestly with scientific inquiry. It is not that we hold to special revelation and then shut out eyes and plug our ears when faced with the appearance of age from natural revelation. Instead we ought to question the unbelieving presuppositions that are brought to the scientific endeavor and used to reach conclusions about the age of the universe apart from Scripture. This is an opening for the gospel, in testifying to the coherence of special revelation and natural revelation and in insisting that God’s revelation as a whole is only properly understood when we have a mindset and worldview that bows to his authority as the Creator and Lord.

Other seminars from the 2010 Ligonier Conference:
Ed Stetzer - "The Brave New World of New Media"
Burk Parsons - "Taking Captive New Media for the Church"
Al Mohler - "The Hyper-Socialized Generation"
John MacArthur - "Why Did Jesus Have to Die?"
Michael Horton - "Is the Doctrine of Inerrancy Defensible?"
John MacArthur - "Does the Doctrine of the Divine Decrees Eliminate Human Will?"
R.C. Sproul - "What is Evil and What is its Origin?"
R.C. Sproul Jr. - "Why Do Christians Still Sin?"
Derek Thomas - "How Do We Know Which Interpretation Is Right?"
Steven Lawson - "Is the Bible Just Another Book?"
Alistair Begg - "Is the Exclusivity of Christ Unjust?"
Q&A Session
Burk Parsons - "Is Calvinism Good for the Church?"
Derek Thomas - "If God is Good How Could He Command Holy War?"
R.C. Sproul - "Can We Enjoy Heaven Knowing of Loved Ones in Hell?"

 

Jesus' Triumphal Entry in Matthew and Zechariah

Jesus’ Triumphal Entry in Matthew and Zechariah

By Matthew Pickens

Matthew makes numerous citations of and illusions to Zechariah 9-14 throughout his passion narrative. This pattern starts on the first day of that narrative with Jesus’ triumphal entry to Jerusalem. Matthew records this event in 21:1-11. He begins by citing Jesus’ instructions to the disciples to go into the village, bring a donkey and her colt to him, and explain their actions to anyone who asks by saying, “The Lord needs them.” (Matt. 21:2-3) Matthew then tells us that this is to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet (Matt. 21:4). He cites:

Say to the daughter of Zion,
'Behold, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’” (Matt. 21:5)

Matthew is citing Zechariah 9:9 with a couple of changes. First, Zechariah opens this prophecy (Zech. 9:9-13) with an exhortation, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!” Matthew instead writes, “Say to the daughter of Zion.” What he does is amend his quotation by mixing Zechariah 9:9 with Isaiah 61:11b. The reason he uses Isaiah’s “say” instead of Zechariah’s “Rejoice” is to change the focus of the citation to an evangelistic appeal to unbelieving Israel, which is the original audience of his Gospel.

Second, Matthew omits “righteous and having salvation is he” from Zechariah’s prophecy. “Having salvation” is probably better translated in the NRSV as “victorious.” This explains Matthew’s omission of this line. While from the time of his baptism until his passion Jesus works many miracles in Matthew’s Gospel his true victory is achieved in his resurrection. Because that has not yet happened at this point in Matthew’s narrative he omits the line about victory. The same is true in the parallel text in John 12:15-16.

The whole passage and its connection to Zechariah 9 helps to stress several important truths about Jesus’ work. First, the primary import of Jesus entering the city while riding on a donkey is not to emphasize his lowliness but rather his kingship. Normally pilgrims traveling into Jerusalem for the Passover celebration would walk into the city. Jesus rides into the city as a king. Matthew explicitly tells us that Jesus does this in order to fulfill what the prophet wrote, “Your king is coming to you.”

Second, as Jesus enters the city riding on a donkey this tells us something about the nature of what he comes as a king to accomplish. He does not enter Jerusalem on a mighty war horse. This would show that he comes into the city intending to conquer or as a returning king who has conquered. Instead he comes on a donkey because the purpose of his kingship is to speak peace. Zechariah follows this verse by writing that Yahweh “will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off and he will speak peace to the nations.” (Zech. 9:10a-b) Jesus comes into Jerusalem as the King whose rule is from sea to sea and to the ends of the earth (Zech. 9:10c) but he does so in order to speak peace to all the nations.

Third, Matthew, by the line he omits, leaves us looking for how Jesus will also be the victorious king from Zechariah. The triumphal entry builds the anticipation of the ultimate victory that Jesus accomplishes in his death and resurrection. He comes as king to speak peace to the nations but he will only do this by first waging war against Satan, sin, and death and his method of waging war is by his perfectly righteous obedience to the Father in dying for the sins of his people. The songs of the pilgrims heighten this anticipation as they cite Messianic prophecies about the promised Davidic King, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matt. 21:9b citing Psalm 118) Jesus comes in the name of Yahweh, wielding the very power of Yahweh, and in his person Yahweh is present. Jesus comes having salvation and accomplishing it in the events that mark the end of his first advent with his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. Palm Sunday is a time where we draw our attention to Jesus as the coming and triumphant king who accomplishes peace, as, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 5:1)

Where is God in the Earthquake?

Where is God in the earthquake?
By Matthew Pickens

Events like the recent 7.0 earthquake that occurred off the coast of Haiti raise a lot of questions about the sovereignty of God and human suffering. Most estimates place the number of dead between 50,000 and 100,000 and that number may continue to rise as relief efforts are hampered by the chaos in the area. How should Christians respond to such tragedies?

First, our attention should be drawn to the fact that while Christ’s great work of redemption has been accomplished it has not yet been perfected. Paul reminds us that the creation itself groans for the revealing of the children of God (Rom. 8:19). Tragedies like this earthquake remind us that this present world as polluted by the consequences of Adam’s sin is far short of the new heavens and the new earth to be revealed when Christ comes in glory and God himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes (Rev. 21:1-7).

Second, while we reject the comments made by Pat Robertson that this earthquake was God’s judgment on Haiti we do have to acknowledge that disasters like this are a sign of God’s final judgment for sins. Jesus points to events where unjust persecution or disaster should be understood as a warning of the true and perfect divine judgment that is to come (Luke 13:1-5). We should understand that even horrific disasters like what happened in Haiti work like the trumpets in revelation. The blast of the trumpet is not the judgment itself. But it calls out a warning that the judgment is coming and summons all men everywhere to repent.

Third, we have to remember that God is sovereign over the earthquake. God does not need us to defend him by making him less than perfectly sovereign over all things. Scripture clearly asserts God’s omniscience (Ps. 139; Heb. 4:11-13; Is. 46:10; 1 John 3:20), omnipotence (Ps. 115:3; Is. 14:24, 27; 46:10; 55:11; Luke 18:27), and absolute sovereignty (Rom. 11:33-36; 1 Tim. 6:15-16). We cannot say that this earthquake was something that God could not prevent or did not foreordain according to his perfect plan.

However it is exactly this point that ought to give us hope in the face of such tragedies! Because God works things out according to his plan we know that there is a good purpose to our pain even when we do not understand that purpose (Rom. 8:28). If God is not sovereign over the earthquake then there is no hope for one day when such disasters will never occur in the new heavens and the new earth. It is only because we believe in God’s sovereignty that we can trust that God has a good purpose for the evil that happens in this world. The proof of God’s goodness in the face of suffering is the cross of Jesus Christ. God ordained all that happens in this world but that means he ordained a world he would enter in human flesh and blood and personally suffer the consequences of sin. If God did not spare his own Son but gave him up for our salvation then we can be confident that he will also graciously give us all things (Rom. 8:32).

The prophet Jeremiah also once faced a situation that led him to question God’s goodness. Through the whole book of Lamentations he weeps over the horror he has witnessed. Yet right in the middle of his lament he calls to mind the faithfulness of God:

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;they are new every morning;great is your faithfulness.“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,“therefore I will hope in him.” (Lam. 3:22-24)

So the way that we need to respond to the earthquake is to believe that God is good and to put our trust in him. Along with this we know that God’s message to the people of Haiti is to repent and to believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The best answer to the earthquake is to point to God’s mercy, kindness, and love as they were demonstrated at the cross and then to comfort God’s people with the words from the Heidelberg Catechism:

(Q. 28) What advantage is it to us to know that God has created, and by his providence does still uphold all things?

That we may be patient in adversity; thankful in prosperity; and that in all things, which may hereafter befall us, we place our firm trust in our faithful God and Father, that nothing shall separate us from his love; since all creatures are so in his hand, that without his will they cannot so much as move.

Canonical Order to the OT

Here is an interesting essay written by Jim Hamilton, professor of Old Testament at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on the blog of Russell Moore, professor of church history at the same. It's a good essay and I recommend heading over to check it out. Hamilton is arguing that we should start publishing English Bibles using the Hebrew canonical order of the Old Testament rather than the order that we commonly know in our English Bibles. Here is a link to a site with a table comparing the two orders.

Hamilton has three major reasons that he thinks we should use the Hebrew Tanakh order. (1) There is not a "Christian" order to the OT. The orders used in the writings of the church fathers tend to differ and the two main teachers responsible for our current order, Origen and Jerome, tried to order the Hebrew Bible according to the Alexandrian standards of genre, author, and chronology. (2) This fits with the Protestant exclusion of the Apocrypha from the Old Testament. The Reformers did this following the Hebrew Bible rather than the Septuagint or the Vulgate. So Hamilton thinks we should do the same with order. (3) The Hebrew order is the one acknowledged by Jesus and the NT writers, specifically Matthew, Luke, and Paul. See his article for the proof texts on this.

Those of you who sat in my Old Testament Biblical Theology class at Shady Grove this past Spring may remember that we studied the Old Testament using the Hebrew order of the canon. That said, I'm not sure that I would go so far as advocating either our present English or the Hebrew order for publishing as a law just as I wouldn't recommend that people tear the pages out of their Bible and rearrange the order themselves. The reason is that I'm not sure that any canonical order is mandated by Scripture, which as we know is the only rule for the interpretation of Scripture. To clarify, while we hold that the canon is inspired and all the books belonging to it are inspired I don't think that we want to go so far as to say that the canonical order is inspired. That is the only reason that I can think of for making a rule out of a certain order of books. So I would rather use what we've learned of the Old Testament canonical order in the Tanakh as an interpretive help than as a rule. I think that this is a better way to use passages like Luke 11, 24, Matthew 23, and Acts 23 that hint at the Hebrew order. This is Scripture interpreting itself in giving us a key to understanding that the entire Old Testament canon; the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms; testifies to Christ's person and work.

Now I do think that when we use the Hebrew order there is a more natural and logical flow to the Old Testament canon. For example the Hebrew order includes Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings in the Former Prophets to describe the history of Israel and Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Books of the Twelve (what we know as the twelve minor prophets) in the Latter Prophets to comment on that history. I think that this is a helpful way of reading the OT as we read the account of God's dealings with his people and then the explanation of those dealings and the promises of God's future covenant relationship with his people. In the Writings we see the order of Proverbs, Ruth, and Song of Songs. This is helpful in teaching us about marriage as Proverbs closes with a description of the "virtuous wife" who is to be sought, Ruth gives an explicit picture of that woman, and then Song of Songs portrays the marriage relationship. I also think that there are a number of explicit ties between Chronicles at the end of the Hebrew canon and Matthew at the beginning of the New Testament canon.

So my advice is to learn and practice reading the Old Testament as a whole this way and to keep this order in mind whenever you read an Old Testament text to help in understanding the passage in its context. In other words, one hermeneutical tool is to think of the text in light of Christ by reading it within its proper context and purpose as a part of the whole Old Testament; this is what we could call a "Christotelic" interpretation of the Old Testament (though I don't entirely mean that term the way that Peter Enns uses it). But I'm not sure that I would mandate publishing Bibles with this order as if it were required somehow; certainly at least not until someone writes a new song to help teach children the books of the Bible. :-)

If this topic does interest you then there are a couple of other works that you can check out. Stephen Dempster's book Dominion and Dynasty is a biblical theology of the Old Testament that uses the Hebrew canonical order (although not the exact same order linked to above). Paul House's Old Testament Theology also does this although I will warn you that this is a pretty hefty theological tome that does not make for easy reading. Bruce Waltke's An Old Testament Theology is not written using this order but he does make reference to it as he examines the Old Testament and is sensitive to it so this is an excellent example of the approach I advocated above. Finally, Miles Van Pelt from RTS Jackson has a series of lectures on biblical theology that you can download for free.

A lying prophet and the true Word of Yahweh

A friend recently brought up the question of what is going on in 1 Kings 13. This is a very odd passage in a lot of ways. We have a supposed prophet of God who lies to a man of God and that lie ultimately leads to the death of the man of God. Yet the lying prophet is not condemned in the account. Why is this?

You can view the passage here if you want to follow along. First, we need to keep in mind that the chapters breakdowns are not inspired but are the work of an interpreter and it seems to me that 1 Kings 13 should be read in the light of 1 Kings 12:25-33. Those verses form a prologue to this section as they reveal the disobedience of Jeroboam as ruler of the northern kingdom (also see the covenant God makes with Jeroboam in 1 Kings 11:26-40). The epilogue to this section is 1 Kings 13:33-34 where the author tells us that Jeroboam and his priests refused to heed the warning in this account.

With that prologue and epilogue in mind the chapter breaks down into four scenes with two parallel tracks going along. I’m not sure how to do two columns in this format so I’ll place them one after the other. Just keep in mind that these are parallels and so scenes 3 and 4 are following the pattern and echoing the content of scenes 1 and 2 (verse numbers in parentheses).

Track 1

Scene 1

1. Jeroboam standing by the altar (1)
2. Calling against the altar (2)
3. “Thus says Yahweh” and quotation (2)
4. Sign: the altar will be torn down (4)
5. The altar torn down (5)
6. Three-fold repetition of “by the way” (9-10)

Scene 2

7. Introduction of the “old prophet” (11)
8. Old prophet hears about the man of God (11)
9. Old prophet commands his sons to saddle his donkey (13)
10. Old prophet goes and finds the man of God (14)
11. Old prophet persuades the man of God to return (15ff.)
12. Old prophet’s speech to the man of God (15-18)

Track 2

Scene 3

1. Old prophet and man of God sitting by the table (20)
2. Calling against the man of God (21)
3. “Thus says Yahweh” and quotation (21)
4. Sign: the man of God will not be buried with his ancestors (22)
5. The man of God’s body thrown down (24)
6. Three-fold repetition of “by the way” (24-25a)

Scene 4

7. Reintroduction of the old prophet (25b)
8. Old prophet hears about the man of God (26)
9. Old prophet commands his sons to saddle his donkey (27)
10. Old prophet goes and finds the man of God (28)
11. Old prophet returns with the man of God’s corpse (29)
12. Old prophet’s speech to his sons (31-32)

When viewed this way we see that the purpose of emphasizes the necessity of obedience to the word of Yahweh. This fits with the whole pattern of Kings. Kings is a Deuteronomistic history where what happens to Israel and Judah is a direct fulfillment of God’s covenant curses for their disobedience to the covenant. So the word of Yahweh promising blessing and cursing and the fulfillment of the prophetic word carries great weight in the writer’s account. This is particularly evident in this passage. We’ll take some time to analyze each of these scenes.

Scene 1 – This scene sets the conflict in the chapter. The man of God and the word of Yahweh are set against Jeroboam and his altar (signifying all of his false worship practices). This first scene also serves to identify the man of God with Jeroboam. The writer tells us that just as the man of God had a word from Yahweh for Jeroboam he also has a word from Yahweh for himself. The narrator then shows us that the disobedience of the man of God is a possibility even as the man firmly rejects Jeroboam’s offer.

Scene 2 – This scene introduces a third major character in the old prophet from Bethel. The writer clearly tells us that the old prophet lied to the man of God in telling him to come back to his house, eat bread, and drink water (v. 18). These three things are the three that the word of Yahweh to the man of God specifically forbade. Without the writer’s insertion that the old prophet lied we would be left to wonder along with the man of God whether or not an angel actually had brought a message from Yahweh to the old prophet. Instead we have a narrative perspective tells us this is another temptation for the man of God to disobey the word of Yahweh. In Kings, Jeroboam has received multiple warnings from Yahweh to be obedient and has had multiple opportunities to disobey. The same is now true about the man of God in 1 Kings 13. He has repeated the word of Yahweh twice directly, twice indirectly, and now disobeys the command word-for-word (19). So now we are to wonder what will happen to this disobedient representative of God.

Scene 3 – This parallel section of the story now has the man of God in the position of being the subject of an oracle of divine judgment, further driving home the comparisons between the man of God and Jeroboam. The introduction of the lion and the donkey drives the action in this scene. After the man of God is killed the donkey stands beside his corpse just like Jeroboam stood beside the altar. The thrown down body of the man of God now echoes the torn down altar. The narrator is subtly calling Jeroboam an ass. Just like the donkey could not stop the lion, Jeroboam is helpless and dumb to stop Yahweh’s judgment and must stand by and await his fate. So at present the lion does not eat the donkey and Yahweh leaves Jeroboam on his throne. But the presence of the lion by the corpse and the donkey points to the pending judgment that is coming on Jeroboam.

Scene 4 – This scene should draw our attention to the significance of the lion. Several times in Kings, lions represent God’s judgment on those disobedient to his word (1 Kings 20:36; 2 Kings 27:25). In both of these passages, the focus is judgment upon the northern kingdom rather than the southern. So the lion here represents the promise of Yahweh’s judgment upon the sinful northern kingdom of Jeroboam (remember that the refrain for the later kings in the north is that they walk in the way of Jeroboam who made Israel sin). So this passage does not make us wonder if Yahweh will judge Jeroboam but instead tells us that Yahweh has judged Jeroboam and now comes to carry out his sentence.

In conclusion, we’ll summarize the message of 1 Kings 12:25-13:34 in its original context and then draw out some implications for God’s people today. First, the focus of the passage is Yahweh’s judgment on Jeroboam for leading Israel into sin with his religious reforms. The man of God represents Jeroboam. He is given chances to obey or disobey and ultimately chooses disobedience to the word of Yahweh. This means that Yahweh’s judgment is carried out against him just as it is being carried out against Jeroboam. Second, the passage warns of the consequences of disobeying God’s word. The ultimate end will always be destruction. The faithful man of God becomes unfaithful and is cast down. Jeroboam, who was once a favored instrument of Yahweh, has become disobedient and will also be cast down. The wicked king ultimately remains unmoved by the events in this chapter and so confirms Yahweh’s judgment on him (1 Kings 13:33-34). Finally, the passage instructs the reader that there is not any excuse for disobedience to the word of Yahweh, not even a lying prophet. When Yahweh has spoken his people are to respond in faith and obedience or to suffer judgment.

There are a number of implications that we could draw from this as God’s people today. I’m just going to focus on one because this post is already so long. Paul wrote to the church in Galatia:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Gal. 1:6-9)

The certainty of God’s word in the book of Kings is echoed throughout the rest of Scripture. Obedience to the commands of God always means life and disobedience always means death. This has been true ever since the Garden of Eden. 1 Kings 13 dealt with God’s national judgment on Israel for their disobedience to the covenant. Yet the gospel also points us to the covenant of grace and the promise of redemption. The divine command is to repent and believe the gospel. Obedience means justification unto eternal life but disobedience means condemnation unto eternal judgment (John 3:16-21). Paul warns his readers that they must be obedient to the word of the covenant, to the gospel, that has been committed to them by the apostles of Jesus Christ and must not turn aside to a new or different gospel. No angel and no true minister of the word will ever preach a different gospel then what is contained in Scripture. Like the man of God, we are warned to live according to what God has spoken and not according to the words of men or angels. This should instruct us to constantly search the Scriptures to make sure that we dwell in the word and that we seek out and believe the good news contained in it.