Will You Be a Micaiah?
By The Rev. Cameron MacMillan, ‘16
“You can't make much of God's reputation if you aren't willing to risk your own." ~ Mark Batterson
After a few years of keeping peace with Syria, King Ahab of Israel got sick of allowing this barbaric enemy to dominate one of his territories, Ramoth-gilead. In a meeting with Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, Ahab inquires about his interest in teaming up against Syria for Ramoth-gilead. Jehoshaphat agrees, but only once the word of the Lord is sought. Mechanically, Ahab gathers his four-hundred prophets and asks if he should go to battle or refrain. They all agree: "Go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king" (1 Kgs 22:6). For some reason, Jehoshaphat is skeptical. Perhaps they reached a response suspiciously fast. Perhaps they just had "Yes-men" written all over their faces.
Either way, Jehoshaphat says, "Isn't there any other prophet we could inquire of?" Groaning with irritation, Ahab responds, "There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Micaiah the son of Imlah, but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil" (22:8). Micaiah . . . the notorious Debbie Downer, bearer of bad news.
The messenger sent to Micaiah tells him, "Look. Everyone is prophesying that the king will have victory. Can you please just go with the flow today?" Micaiah, unflinching, unmoved by pleas to compromise, firmly states, "As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I will speak" (22:14). Prophetic grit.
When Micaiah arrives in the king's presence, he tells him, "Go ahead. You'll beat them." King Ahab knows this is too good to be true. Glaring at the prophet, he says, "Am I going to have to make you swear to the truth?" Then Micaiah tells Ahab about a vision he saw in which God and his heavenly hosts devised a scheme to deceive the wicked king, and send him into battle to be destroyed: "The Lord has declared disaster for you" (22:23). Micaiah is struck by Ahab's servant and hauled off to prison. Ahab goes to battle, riding out comfortably and confidently on a warhorse of deception, and is killed by an arrow providentially guided between his armor scale and breastplate.
The Grace of the Lord Overflows
"Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so." As a father of a two- and four-year-old, it's a song I sing often, and one that still occasionally brings me to tears.
Before I knew Jesus as Savior and Lord, I was a drug abuser, an alcoholic, a party animal, a libertine. I waited tables for those ten years, spending the cash faster than I made it. Where's the next music festival? Concert? House party where I can hook up and smoke down? I have woken up hungover with my legs hanging out of the backseat of my car in a stranger's driveway. I have been arrested for (extremely) drunk driving. My upper body is covered in tattoos. If it made you high, I'd try it. If it made you drunk, I'd drink it.
In some ways, I thank God that he allowed me to live that way, because his grace and love toward me are a reality I will never fail to appreciate. Only a patient-hearted Father, filled with inveterate love would pursue a scoundrel like me. With Saint Paul, I can say, "the grace of our Lord overflowed for me...Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost" (1 Tim 1:14-15). Jesus came to save sinners. He is "full of grace and truth" (John 1:14), his mercies are new every day we wake up (Lamentations 3:22), he is "gentle and lowly in heart" (Matt 11:29). He is God, and "God is love" (1 John 4:8). Shout it from the rooftops!
Grace Lopped in Half by the Fear of Man
These truths are not hard for most of us preachers to preach. It feels good to say them. We know they are true. We know how crucial it is to make much of God's love. Probably most of our words barely touch on the depths of his love, linguistically limited creatures that we are.
And yet, I am worried. I am worried that many of us are preaching only this part of God's character. I am worried because I see a phenomenon that is widespread and potentially disastrous: Preachers who preach God's love and grace, but do not call people to repentance and holy living.
International House of Prayer (IHOP) founder and director Mike Bickle writes, "Today Bible teachers are perverting God's grace by reducing it to only a matter of receiving forgiveness and blessing without calling sinners to repentance. They justify ongoing sin and empower compromise and passivity by teaching that God continually smiles on us no matter what we do or continue doing."(1)
Here's what I've noticed: Preachers have simply become afraid to offend or cause discomfort in the lives of their listeners. They will lose people. They will lose dollars. They'll be called mean and judgmental. They'll be told they are unloving and harsh. So we avoid preaching the difficult truths of the Bible because we fear a damaged reputation. We don't want people saying bad things about us behind our backs, so we become paralyzed by the fear of man. It's the same fear that kept religious leaders in the Bible from acknowledging Jesus. "Many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God" (John 12:42-43). I recently learned that the word glory can refer to reputation. These religious leaders cared more about their reputation in the eyes of men than what God thought of their reputation.
Friends, it is this fear that cripples cross-centered, life-changing, God-glorifying preaching.
We need to preach grace. Every single time. But we mustn't forget that grace doesn't stop with forgiveness and justification. Paul wrote to Titus, "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age" (Titus 2:11-12). Grace trains us to renounce something. Grace teaches us to repent of something. The old life. The sin nature. The idolatry that is rooted deep in our hearts. If we don't preach the call to holiness (Lev 19:2; 1 Pet 1:15), we are lopping grace in half. We are in essence saying, "God loves you, you can be saved, but you don't need to worry about becoming like Jesus." That is like handing someone a birthday gift sawed down the middle. "Here's your half of a laptop. Hope you enjoy it." But grace is either the whole package--both overwhelming mercy and a transforming power unto holiness--or it is not biblical grace.
A fellow priest and blogger said it like this:
It is so tempting to preach the love of God, without the call to love the holiness to which God calls us. We can be lulled into a sense of self-satisfaction when people pat us on the back for not being “that kind of preacher” that does not speak of a God who is interested in what goes on in our business practices, or bedrooms, or relationships, or personal habits. When we offer nothing but the love of God for the messes we are in, without the promise our resurrection offers for deliverance and rescue from that mess, then, frankly, we are merely proclaiming an anemic, impotent, dysfunctional religious view that is immature and self-serving. (2)
That pat on the back he mentions is a satanic temptation for every preacher and teacher of the Word. Preaching to receive pats on the back is to be in the pulpit for the wrong reasons. "Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly" (Jas 3:1). I take those words very seriously. I will one day stand before a holy God and give an account. God will ask me, "Did you preach and demonstrate my love and compassion? Did you heal the sick, cast out demons, and set captives free?" But he will also ask me, "Did you call my children to holiness? To depart from their sin and wickedness and pursue a love relationship with me? Did you caution people from becoming hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Heb 3:13)? From growing cold in their relationship with me (Rev 2:4)?"
The Beauty of Holiness
One of the reasons we avoid preaching the call to a holy life is we think holiness is a yucky word. It reeks of moralism and legalism. Holiness means DO NOT...
But this is a misunderstanding of holiness. To be holy means to be set apart. To be unique. To be anointed by God for a special purpose. Holiness is life-giving. To be holy is to be godly which is to be close to God which is what we were created for. Jesus said, "If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love" (John 15:10) and "You are my friends if you do what I command you" (John 15:14). Holiness is about friendship with God, with our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus.
Holiness is beautiful because it means we kill sin in our lives, not to merely avoid hell, but to draw close to the God who loves us. If we don't keep this in mind when preaching holiness, we will become stale and oppressive. John Wesley said, "Sour godliness is the devil's religion." Amen. But you can preach holiness without being sour. Wesley of all people knew this! You can speak stinging and challenging words without being oppressive (although some people will label you that way). True holiness brings about the peace, love, and joy of the Holy Spirit. It keeps us in fellowship with God. It enables us to enjoy his presence more than we enjoy the fleeting pleasures of this life.
If we keep these things in mind, we will want to preach holiness.
Will You Be a Micaiah?
King Ahab wanted to hear only messages of affirmation, so he kept his distance from the only prophet who would unabashedly speak the truth. King Ahab would be happy in most Christian churches today. He would not be challenged to repent of his wickedness. He would not be invited to exchange his personal idols for the knowledge and love of God. He would be fed positivity and affirmation without any call to change.
Pastor (and I speak to myself here too), will you be a Micaiah in a world full of preachers who refuse to preach the whole counsel of God? Will you sacrifice popularity to speak the truth in love? Would you start preaching in a way that caused half of your congregation (and income) to make a quick exit if that is what God called you to do? Will you get on your knees in the prayer closet and desperately seek a word from the Lord of heaven and earth for your people? Will you emerge with a fiery, Holy Spirit empowered boldness and say, "As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I will speak"?
If ever we lived in a day where "people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions" (2 Tim 4:3), it is now. People want to hear that a little drunkenness here and there is okay; that gay marriage is acceptable in God's eyes, regardless of what his word says; that God is so into you, he giggles when you sin against him; that you can have Jesus and go along with where the culture says we must go.
Will you swim upstream against popular preaching that tickles ears, but leaves heart unchanged? Will you get hungry to see people turn from their addictions to this world and declare Jesus Lord of their lives? Will you tell the truth--that God is gracious and compassionate, but will not leave the guilty unpunished (Exod. 34:6-7)? Will you preach Jesus Christ, and him crucified?
I pray you will. I pray I will. I pray that we will gladly accept what our Lord Jesus Christ prayed over us two-thousand years ago: "I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world...Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth." (John 17:14,17). If we speak what he has given us to speak, his joy will be in us, and our joy will be full. Lives will be changed. People will be set on fire for God. They will go deep in their intimacy with Jesus. And you and I will be able to stand before our heavenly Father and say what Jesus himself once said, "I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do" (John 17:4). What a privilege to be a bearer of grace and truth!
The Rev. Cameron MacMillan, ‘16, serves as rector at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Maitland, in the Diocese of Central Florida.
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(1) Mike Bickle, God's Answer to the Growing Crisis: A Bold Call to Action in the End Times, p.153.
(2) Covenant: A Weblog of The Living Church, Is There More to the Christian Life than Grace?, Russell Levenson, Jr., June 1, 2020. (https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2020/06/01/is-there-more-to-the-christian-life-than-grace-a-pentecost-reflection/)