There Is Danger In Evasion. Evasion, and trying to get around things, sometimes seems so sincere.

  We read in I Kings 13:1-10. Behold, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord, while Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense.

Jeroboam was concerned about turning the ten tribes in the north to idolatry, for if they continued with the Law of Moses and served the Lord, they would be required to come to Jerusalem three times a year to worship.

He did not want the King at Jerusalem to have anything more to do with these people, so he set about to give them another religion in order to isolate them from the worship at Jerusalem.


  While burning incense, he cried against the altar by the word of the Lord, and said, "O altar, altar, thus says the Lord, 'Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name; and you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.' "

Then he gave a sign the same day, saying, "This is the sign which the Lord has spoken, 'Behold, the altar shall be split apart and the ashes which are on it shall be poured out.' "


  Now it came about when the king hears the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar in Bethel, that Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, "Seize him."

But his hand which he stretched out against him dried up, so that he could not draw it back to himself.

the altar also was split apart and the ashes were poured out from the altar, according to the word of the lord.

Incidentally, that was literally fulfilled under Josiah, for they dug up he bones of the old idolatrous priest and they burned them out of the sepulchers.


  Ant the king answered and said to the man of God, "Please entreat the Lord your God, and pray for me, that my hand may be restored to me."

So the man of God entreated the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him, and it became as it was before.


Then the king said to the man of God, "Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward."

But the man of God said to the king, "If you were to give me half of your house I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water in this place.

For so it was commanded me by the water, nor return by the way which you came.' "

So he went another way, and did not return by the way which he came to Bethel.
I Kings 13-10.

  This was an outstanding event.

We can understand Jeroboam's anger, because he had been getting along fine with the idolatry, until out of the hatred southern kingdom of Judah the prophet came and prophesied against the altar, saying it would be split and the ashes spilled on the ground.

That was an amazing sign, and it happened just that way.

When Jeroboam stretched out his hand to say, "Seize him," his hand became withered and paralyzed.

Only the mercy of God restored it.


  After this event, Jeroboam did not return from his evil way, but again he made priests of the high places from among his people. He went right back to it, although the fear of God should have remained.

  Then a strange thing happened.

In verse 11 we read, ...an old prophet was living in Bethel; and his sons came and told him all the deeds which the man of God had done that day in Bethel; the words which he had spoken to the king, these also they related to their father.

And their father said to them, "Which way did he go?" 

Now his sons has seen the way which the man of God who came from Judah had gone.

then he said to his sons, "Saddle the donkey for me."

so they saddled the donkey for him and he rode away on it.



  So he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak; and he said to him, "Are you the man of god who came from Judah?" and he said, "I am."

Then he said to him, "Come home with me and eat bread."

And he said, "I cannot return with you, nor go with you, nor will I eat bread or drink water with you in this place.

For a command came to me by the Word of the Lord.

"You shall eat no bread, nor drink water there; do not return by going the way which you came:"

And this he said to him, "I also am a prophet like you ( this was true; he was a prophet), and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, "Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat bread and drink water.' "

But he lied to him.

So he went back with him, and ate bread in his house and drank water.

I Kings 13:11-19

You see, he was saying, "God spoke to me that you are to come with me."

Now God had already given the old prophet a word, but another prophet came and said, "Well, God gave me another word."

We will soon see what he did.


  Now it came about, as they were sitting down at the table, that the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back ( the prophet who had been evasive and led, even though he was a real prophet, lifted up his voice and prophesied a word to the disobedient prophet through whom all this sign had been wrought);

...and he cried to the man of God who came to Judah, saying, "Thus says the Lord, 'Because you have disobeyed the command of the Lord, and have not observed the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you, but have returned and eaten bread and drank water in the place of which He said to you, "Eat no bread and drink no water"; your body shall not come to the grave of your fathers."

And it came about after he had eaten bread and after he had drunk, that he saddled the donkey for him, for the prophet whom he had brought back.

Now when he had gone, a lion met him on the way and killed him, and his body was thrown on the

road, with the donkey standing beside it; the lion also was standing beside the body.
Verses 20-24.


  One would expect that the lion would have killed the donkey.

They reported it, and the man of God realized what had happened when he came there and found the lion had not disturbed the donkey nor eaten the prophet.

He, who had caused all this trouble, took the body of the man of God, laid it on the donkey, and brought it back to the city of the prophet, to mourn and to bury him.

He laid his body in his own grave and mourned over him saying, "Alas, my brother!"

Because he loved that prophet, the man from Judah, he requested: "When I die, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried; and let my bones lie beside his bones"
( I Kings 13:30-31 ).

You cannot say that this man who cased all the trouble did not love the dead prophet.


  As much as I believe in body ministry, I believe that God sometimes speaks a word, and some who are very sincere set about to evade that word.

Sometimes, even in the name of submission they will become evasive.

They will try to work around it.

We ave seen that happen many times.

But the danger is going to be the man of God who lets evasion turn him away from a confirmed word that God gave him in the first place until there are modifications of god's word.

It is deceitful.

The old prophet finally died and his bones were buried beside the prophet from Judah.

He loved him very much.


  But I do not intend to die because I in some way evade a word from the Lord.

A man can be pushed into this evasion.

Under the pressure of the people he finally became angry and took the rod and smote the rock.

He smote the rock before, but this time he was not giving the glory to God, and he was not following in full obedience.

For that he climbed on Mount Nebo and saw the promised land, but he was not allowed to go into it.

It is not the people who suffer, but the man of God whom God is requiring, "Walk by the word that I give you."


  Lately I have found myself saying to people, "Do whatever you please. I gave you the word.

It is up to you.

You do what you please."

But, as for myself, I am not going to modify nor alter the word that the Lord has given me, a word that is usually confirmed at the very moment it comes.

Sometimes a person has received a word before, but circumstances seem to change it.

So, instead of believing, he decides it was a stupid word.

How many times has that happened?

Thousands of times, but if a man will stick with the first word he receives from God, and really stay with it, that word will come to pass.


  The verse said, "He lied to him."

I do not think he was intending to lie.

I do not think he was intending to have that prophet killed by a lion.

But he did, simply because of his evasiveness.

He probably thought, "Oh we must have him come and eat!

We just have to have him here!

Oh, I want him to tell me again how he rebuked Jeroboam and how Jeroboam's arm was withered.

I want to hear how that altar ripped open and the ashes fell on the ground.

I have to hear that!"

So he said, "Come to my house."

And he answered, "I can't come. God gave me a word."

"Well, I'm a prophet too and I know you are to come.

God told me you were to come."


  The lie- the evasion- that is not going to destroy me.

And you who are men of God must not let it destroy you.

I am not saying that we should be stubborn, but I am saying there must be a sense of integrity.

The word of God does not change at every full moon.

That are ways of finding your ministry, of finding out what God wants you to know, and walking in it.

All the more in this day we should give heed to this.


  In Matthew 24:4-5 we read about the end-time.

Jesus answered and said to them, "See to it that no one misleads you" ( there it is again ).

"For many will come in My name, saying, "I am the Christ," and will mislead many."

At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another.

and many false prophets will arise, and will mislead many."


  Verses twelve to fourteen read: "And because lawlessness is increased,most people's love will grow cold.

But the one who endures to the end, it is he who shall be saved.

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations, and then the end shall come."

There has to be a people who can endure in the midst of deception, in the midst of rebellion and the evasion that comes; a people who can endure and be faithful to the word that God gives them.


  We read further in verses 23 and 24: "Then if any one says to you, 'Behold, here is Christ,' or 'There He is,' do not believe him.

For false Christ and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect."

 Evasion, and trying to get around things, sometimes seems so sincere.

But we are in danger in this walk with the Lord, that in trying to expedite this tremendous tide of Gospel going to the ends of the world, we may lose the carefulness with which we walk by a word from the Lord.

We have to make haste slowly.

We have to get the word of direction and confirmation.

We have the imitative, and we have leeway, but let us be sure that we do not have a spirit of evasion within our heart.


  I know that at times God requires discretion on our part.

But I do not believe that is evasion.

When someone confronts you with a certain issue, I believe you can be discreet and keep quite, and this is wisdom.

The Bible has many references about that.

There could be evasion as you deliberately push the word of God into the course that you want it to follow.

How deadly it is to allow your self-interest to completely color your interpretation of the word of God.

As a prophetic community which is to be led by the Spirit of the Lord, we must give the utmost attention to find out what God is saying and then follow that line.

To be evasive could be very dangerous.

I think that it is not uncommon to see evasion.


  In addition to this Scripture we read in I Kings about the prophet being killed by a lion, we have the warnings in Matthew 24, and also the tales of deception in the book of Genesis, someone is really misleading someone else.

Several examples to read on your own are Genesis 12:10-20, 20:1-18, and 27: 1-23,25.


  In one example, Jacob's mother plotted with him to go out and kill a lamb and make a stew to take to the old father who was blind, in order to take the blessing away from Esau.

Jacob wrapped the skin of the kid on his arm so it appeared like the hairy arms of Esau ( Genesis 27 ).

That was deception.

They did not have a sense of integrity.

It was evasion.

Jacob would do anything to get the blessings of the Lord.

It was good that he was hungry for the Lord, but the New Testament opens up something you had better understand.

A man is not crowned except he strive lawfully ( I Corinthians 9 ).

One obtains the prize, but the end does not justify the means.

That is why I am not in certain money making ventures.

The attitude that anything goes as long as it comes out all right is not the truth.

God does not need anything laid in His hand when someone has done every evasive thing and gone against principles for it.

The further we go in this walk with God, the more careful we must be to follow the principles God has taught us and walk with integrity in them.


  In Genesis 12 and 20 we are told that Abraham said about his wife, "This is my sister."

Of course she was a beautiful woman.

Afraid that someone would kill him, he offered his wife.

She said, "Yes, I am his sister."

That woman moved right into the palace, and in chapter 20 God said to Abimelech, "I have kept you from touching her," but it does not say that in chapter 12.

I do not know whether Abraham allowed another man to have intercourse with his wife because of the evasive spirit that hit him, or not.

I know this, that the minute it was known that she was married to Abraham, the king himself said, "God forgive me for what I have done to this woman," and he gave them a thousand pieces of silver
( chapter 20 ).


  Abraham, with his desire to be clever, and in his evasiveness, saw a great humiliation come against him.

And I have a feeling that the reason Abraham waited so long was not an endurance contest, but it took about that long to work some of those qualities out of him before God was ready to fulfill a promise.

I am not talking down Abraham.

You have watched God delay promises for you too.

And you had better face the fact that there may be something evasive in you.

You may be listening to a word from the Lord and still trying to work the whole thing out with your own clever ways.


  I am saying, let us throw ourselves on the mercy of the Lord, for the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it? ( Jeremiah 17:9 ).

And let us say, "O Lord, Thou desirest truth in the inward parts" ( Psalm 51:6 ); "forbid that we should become evasive, Lord, forgive us for it."

There may be times of discretion, when we hold or peace and keep our mouths closed, but God deliver us from the evasiveness that becomes a lie that the enemy could use to bring confusion to the people of God.


  I wonder if God could not have delivered Jacob so that he would not have had to go through the process of deceiving and being deceived, until finally he had to come back and face it.

"Esau, here I am.

I've sinned against you.


Forgive me"  ( Genesis 33 ).

Esau forgave him, but in the meantime Laban had taken great advantage of him.

Jacob worked seven more years for one sister and got the other sister.

He worked seven more years for Laban to get the right one and his wages were changed seven times.

He finally took off with old Laban after him, and if God had not intervened, Jacob would have received what he deserved.


  Was that evasive?

Yes!

Jacob started out deceiving his father, with his mother's consent and help, with the skin of a kid.

When he was an old man he Joseph, the son that he loved so much, a coat of beautiful colors.

Therefore, to deceive the old father, the brothers likewise killed a kid and let the blood saturate the garment which they then brought back to him.

Jacob said, " My son is dead," and he went into grieving ( Genesis 37 ).

His own evasiveness caught up to him.

The deceitfulness of his own heart came back to him.

This is going to be the great occurrence of the end~time, as we read, "In the last days people will be deceiving and being deceived ( II Timothy 3:13 ).

Something within us must cry for the truth so we will not be deceived by false prophets or anything else.

Neither will the word have a shaded meaning.

It is not going to be deviated one way or another.

The Lord will lead us by a clean, pure path because of the integrity of our heart.


  Have you ever gone to someone in the body to get a word, and not liking it you went to receive another word from someone else?

Do not shop around to see who will give you the best word, the word that you want to hear?

Don't do it.

If there is a word, go right back to that person and say, "I have a question about it.

I have a doubt about it.

Will you check it with the other brothers?

Will you seek the Lord?

I want confirmation.

If you are right and you have a word from God, I will submit.

If you are wrong, I want you to find out about it, because you will answer for it.

I need a word."

Lay a responsibility upon the men of God to speak with integrity and carefulness: not to counsel with you and listen to what you want and let it go that course.

Let's listen to what God has to say.


  O Lord, there is not a vindictiveness in us, we want to walk humbly before You, but we do not want a lion to kill us, nor be caught in any evasive trap.

We want to walk in the integrity of our heart.

Help us to do it, in the name of the Lord Jesus.