To Disbelieve or Disobey
Anything a Prophet Says is to Disbelieve or Disobey God
If prophetic words are viewed as God’s words in the
Old Testament, then we would expect to find some indications of moral
obligations placed on the hearers, obligations to hear these words and
unquestioningly believe them and obey them. In fact, several indications of
this sort are found in the Old Testament.
According to Deuteronomy 18:19, the Lord says of the coming prophet who
would be like Moses: “Whoever will not give heed to my words which he shall
speak in my name, I myself will require it of him” (Deut. 18:19).
When Saul disobeyed Samuel’s command to wait seven
days at Gilgal “until I come to you and show you what you shall do” (1 Sam.
10:8), Samuel rebuked him: “You have done foolishly; you have not kept the
commandment of the Lord your God,
which he commanded you … now your
kingdom shall not continue … because you have not kept what the Lord
commanded you” (1 Sam. 13:13–14). To disobey the prophet’s words is to
disobey God.
In 1 Samuel 15:3, God spoke through Samuel and
commanded him to destroy the Amalekites, and to “utterly destroy all that they
have.” Again when Saul disobeyed, Samuel asked, “Why then did you not obey the
voice (qôl) of the Lord?.… Because you have rejected the
word of the Lord, he has also rejected you from being king” (1 Sam. 15:19, 23).
To disobey a command of one of “the sons of the
prophets” who is speaking “by the word of the Lord”
(1 Kings 20:35) is to disobey “the voice of the Lord,”
and can lead to sudden death (1 Kings 20:36). When the people demand a king
instead of Samuel the prophet, God says to Samuel, “They have not rejected you,
but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Sam. 8:7): To reject
God’s prophet is to reject God.
The parallelism in 2 Chronicles 20:20 indicates an
equivalence between obeying God’s prophets and obeying God:
“Believe
the Lord your God,
and you will be established;
believe
his prophets, and you will succeed.”
In
fact, to reject a prophet’s words is to invite certain destruction by God (2
Chron. 25:16; Isa. 30:12–14; Jer. 6:10–11; 16:19; 36:29–31).
In summary, the words that a prophet speaks in
God’s name are throughout the Old Testament said to be words that God also
speaks. What the prophet says in God’s name, God says. To disbelieve or disobey
anything a prophet says in God’s name is to disbelieve or disobey God. (Wayne A. Grudem, “Scripture's Self-Attestation and the Problem of
Formulating a Doctrine of Scripture,” in D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge,
eds., Scripture and Truth [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1992],
24-25)
