The Full Monty:
1 Kings 22:1-28 To read if you have time to take-in the whole story
The Continental Option:
1 Kings 22:10-14 Read this if you only have time for the key episode
One Shot Espresso:
1 Kings 22:14 ‘But Micaiah replied, “As surely as the Lord lives, I will say only what the Lord tells me to say.”’
When you have a significant message to communicate, it’s helpful to give the job to someone you can trust. If global soft drinks giant Pepsi had used a more reliable translator for a major marketing campaign in Taiwan, they wouldn’t have inadvertently declared a zombie apocalypse. As it was, their slogan, ‘Come alive with the Pepsi generation’, became ‘Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead’. A Miami t-shirt maker didn’t do much better promoting the Pope’s visit to Spanish speakers. Instead of the planned ‘I saw the Pope’, shirts were printed proclaiming, ‘I saw the potato’: el Papa (masculine) is the Pope; la papa (feminine) is the potato. Even trying to avoid confusion by swapping words for pictures doesn’t always help. A drug company launching a new remedy in the United Arab Emirates used a three-image cartoon to convey their product’s benefits. Their first picture was of someone looking unwell. The next showed the same person taking the medication. The third showed them looking well. What could be clearer? If only they’d remembered that in the Arab world people read from right to left.
None of these mistakes were in the message itself. These were tried and tested commercial messages worked out in the greatest of detail, but they weren’t delivered as they should have been. Communication is about a double confidence: confidence in knowing what it is you have been asked to say, and confidence in knowing how to say it so that it will be received and understood. ‘A messenger you can trust is as refreshing as cool water in summer’ Proverbs 25:13 (CEV) says. Reliably passing on the message you’ve been given is a surprisingly important role. Those who do so are not always remembered for it. We are quick to celebrate the big wheel who composed the message but all too often we forget the small cog who passed it on. It is on the faithfulness of small cogs, though, that the largest machines turn.
A small cog
The prophet Micaiah is so small a cog that we barely know his name. He only gets one major scene in the Bible, a confrontation with King Ahab, recorded in 1 Kings 22 and mirrored in 2 Chronicles 18, yet he is a character with much to teach us. The story presents him as one who will pass on directly and reliably that which he is given. This requires enormous courage for two reasons.
The first is that he is called to speak truth to power. Micaiah’s unwelcome news is for a tyrannical king well-known for his short temper and vindictiveness. There is nothing that makes the sharing of such news an obvious career choice. The second is that he is swimming against the tide. In contrast to his one honest message, there are 400 prophets happy to tell lies. Before he is even on the scene, these shallow sycophants have told the king exactly what he wants to hear. Micaiah is the only one who is properly in tune, and he’s going to sound jarring against their symphony of optimistic eloquence. Does he really have to rain on their parade? It’s good to speak the truth, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be lonely.
Prophets don’t end up in prison because they themselves are unpopular, they are locked up because God gives them unpopular news to convey
It is helpful that we know so little about Micaiah because it enables us to focus on the one thing we do know. He is a dependable messenger. His brief appearance on the stage of history teaches us a few things:
The prophet is called to live in two worlds
Ahab’s world is all too real to Micaiah, as his spell in the king’s jail, surviving on starvation rations undoubtedly brought home to him (v27). But God’s realm is still more real to him. When he shares his vision with the king, he is describing a heavenly reality that, like the apostle Paul centuries later in 2 Corinthians 12:2, he has seen and experienced. He is, in a literal sense, an eccentric - centred outside the circle of the immediate and obvious. This is why he is so graphically contrasted to his 400 fellow prophets. They speak selfevident truths because they have no capacity to see beyond them. Micaiah sees further and deeper because his is proficient at looking into the mysteries of God. We aren’t told by what habits and disciplines the prophet has come to this place, but it is clear that he has arrived there nonetheless. Like Daniel opening his Babylon window to look towards God’s promise, Micaiah has learned to see beyond his immediate surroundings. We will never have courage in the presence of men and women unless we have confidence in the presence of God.
The prophet is called, above all, to faithfulness
Micaiah passes on what God gives him. He is neither the origin nor the author of that which is spoken. Like a tape deck in a recording studio, Micaiah is asked to capture, without distortion, the word God has for Ahab. He needs to be a clear channel, one who can confidently discern what God is saying. Prophecy is a process of finding God’s signal in the midst of the world’s noise. It is the one who has learned to be faithful to this process who can speak confidently. When Jesus said in John 5 that he would only do what he saw his father doing, he showed himself to be a prophet in this sense. We admire Micaiah for his willingness to speak out against the tide of opinion, but in a very real sense the hard work was done long before this. It is the boldness with which he discerns the word of God that sets the prophet up to be assertive when he most needs to be. He is secure enough in his belief that God has spoken that, like Martin Luther, he can say, ‘Here I stand - I can do no other.’
The prophet will not always escape the impact of his message
Micaiah knows, as all prophets know, that he will be blamed for his negative message. His ironic pretence at joining the other prophets in their empty flattery (v15) shows that he is fully aware of this. He knows that the news heading towards Ahab is not good and that Ahab will take it out on him, and yet his prior commitment to relaying clearly that which God has shown him leaves him no choice but to speak (v14). Prophets don’t end up in prison because they themselves are unpopular, they are locked up because God gives them unpopular news to convey. This doesn’t mean that if you are unpopular / imprisoned / oppressed it is by definition because you conveyed God’s word. Sometimes you’re unpopular because you’re a jerk. However there are times when it is by holding to what God has said that you invite opposition, and in these times you have no choice but to endure. I have been in situations in which I am so convinced that God has spoken that I have had to hold steady, even in the face of doubt and denial from those around me. There have also been times, though, when my claim to have heard God is based more on bluff and wishful thinking than on reality. In such cases I can ride my prophetic high horse as much as I want to, but it won’t get me anywhere. God is committed to his word, not to my reputation. ‘Thus says the Lord’ is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, and it shouldn’t be used as such in our churches.
Micaiah’s 400 fellow prophets show us that those who fail to discern God’s word for their situation are destined never to rise above the ordinary. They will echo the shallow baying of the false prophets around them, because they have no other source. It is equally dangerous, though, to insist on invoking God’s authority even when he hasn’t really spoken. Those who do are destined to hurt themselves and others, walking into battles no one has called them to. True maturity, true faithfulness, lies in walking the narrow road between these two extremes: growing in confidence in recognising God’s voice and having the courage to stand on what you’ve heard.
Take Away
Two easily digestible tweet-sized bites
Thought:
Don’t lose your shirt over a word God hasn’t really spoken - but if he has, be ready to risk prison and persecution for the high calling of being a faithful messenger.
Prayer:
Give me the courage God, when you have spoken, to hold my own against all opposition. When you have not, give me the wisdom to hold my tongue.
Gerard Kelly is co-founder, with his wife Chrissie, of the Bless Network – a mission and training agency at work across mainland Europe with a hub community in Normandy, France (blessnet.eu). Follow @twitturgies for Gerard’s popular twitter prayers and see his blog at godseesdiamonds.tumblr.com
