I Kings 22:14 And Micaiah said, As the LORD liveth, what the LORD saith unto me, that will I speak.
I love good news! I love bright mornings, good coffee, smiling faces, and good reports, but sometimes I don’t get good news and sometimes it is not a sunny day. Here is the thing: your choice today is not between good news and bad news; your choice today is between true and false. The fact is, you usually do not determine whether the news you hear is good or bad. What matters is discerning right from wrong.
Ahab was a man who knew what he wanted. He wanted to go up to battle against the King of Syria. He knew how to do it. He wanted to join forces with a companion king, and he knew what had to be done to make it sound legitimate. He had to ask the so-called prophets of God, who were really bankrolled by Ahab himself, their advice as to what he should do.
Well, the prophets of God were “yes men.” They gave him good news, positive news, affirmative news. The problem is that what they said was false. They said, “God is with you. Go up and do exactly what you want to do.” That sounded positive, but it was not positive because it was not true. It was a lie. Reluctantly he asked one more prophet, Micaiah, what he should do. The reason Ahab did not want to ask Micaiah’s counsel is because, as Ahab said, “He doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.”
Ahab was not talking about a prophecy that was morally virtuous or morally evil. He was saying that Micaiah would give him a negative rather than a positive answer. We are talking about positive news or negative news. Now “positive” and “negative” are relative terms. For instance, last Sunday I had bacon and Brussels sprouts for lunch. It was awesome! Maybe you don’t like Brussels sprouts. So whether Brussels sprouts are good or evil in that context is totally a matter of taste. Taste is not absolute. So, maybe I think that Brussels sprouts taste good, and you think they taste evil.
The problem is that truth and falsehood are not relative. Something is not good because I wish it to be, nor is it bad because I merely think that it is. It is what it is, and what we have done in this modern world is to impose an ethic of tastes onto the question of whether or not something is true or false.
Good or bad in that sense is something that is related to my opinion. True or false is not related to my opinion. If I step off the end of a tall building, everyone knows what will happen. I can think I will fly, but I will not because there is a truth called gravity.
Micaiah, the one prophet who was true to God, said, “As the LORD liveth, what the LORD saith unto me, that will I speak.” In the end, Ahab died because God gave him up to his own way. God gave him up to the lie he wanted to hear, and the lie sent him to his grave.
So, “positive” and “negative” are relative, but truth is not. Today, the choice is not between positive and negative. You will not have the choice between good news and bad news. The choice will be between truth and falsehood. The greatest good comes to those who seek what is true, not what they want.