2026-10-06
1 Kings 12:26-27 And Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.”
Jeroboam son of Nebat, an Ephraimite of Zeredah, whose mother was Zeruah, a widow, might perhaps never have known that he would ever be king over Israel until when he met the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite who prophesied to him that God was about to tear ten tribes from the hand of Solomon and give them to him. This wasn’t because Jeroboam was a better man, though indeed he had been an industrious man and Solomon had given him charge over all the forced labour in the house of Joseph (1 Kings 11:28)—it was an act of Sovereign decree and grace on the part of Jeroboam, and an act of God’s justice and wrath against Solomon who had forsaken the Lord his God and had gone after false gods to worship and serve them; Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of Moab, and Milcom the god of the Moabites. “He has not walked in my ways, doing what is right in my sight and keeping my statutes and my rules, as David his father did” (1 Kings 11:33).
God now promised Jeroboam saying: “if you will listen to all that I command you, and will walk in my ways, and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did, I will be with you and will build you a sure house, as I built for David, and I will give Israel to you” (1 Kings 11:38). When Rehoboam acted foolishly and Israel splintered, it was God who made Jeroboam king, fulfilling the word he had spoken through the prophet Ahijah. Yet after being king, Jeroboam suddenly became anxious, and now imagined how that if the people continued going to Jerusalem to worship God there, their hearts would turn again to Rehoboam king of Judah and they would kill him and return to Rehoboam. He therefore did an abominable thing; he set up two golden calves as idols and proclaimed to the Israelites that those were the gods that had saved them from Egypt and that they need no longer go to Jerusalem to worship God there (1 Kings 12:28), and that became a snare to the people of Israel (verse 30). Thinking to strive with a man, Jeroboam ended up striving with God, and he not only sinned himself but caused all Israel to sin with him, by turning towards false gods made with human hands.
Jeroboam hadn’t gotten the kingdom by his sweat or by blood, he hadn’t gotten the throne by the help of these calves which he now fashioned and worshipped—God had made him king; not by Jeroboam’s might or power but by God’s Spirit. Now, however, Jeroboam was foolishly trying to keep by his own strength, ingeniousness, and disobedience, what he had never been able to get by himself. How quickly indeed he had forgotten by whom he got it, and the conditional footing upon which the kingdom had been handed to him, “if you will listen to all that I command you, and will walk in my ways, and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did”.
Do we not all act just as foolishly? Having begun in the spirit, we now presume that we can finish by means of the flesh (Galatians 3:3). The thing is so straightforward as this: if human zeal and might did not get us us where are at, if it was God’s grace that granted us the seat of honour, if it was his mercy that so distinguished us and set us above all men, then human zeal and might will not help us keep that seat. “I have made and I will bear; I will carry and I will save” is God’s promise in Isaiah 46:10, “even to old age I am He, and to grey hairs I will carry you.”
Paul affirmed God’s dependability when in 1 Corinthians 1:10 he wrote: “He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.” Our present hope and future assurance rests upon the fact that God has done it before. God solemnly instructed the Israelites never to forget that it was He who had brought them out of their captivity in Egypt, that it was He who had parted the Red Sea and made a path for them amidst many waters, that it was He who had fed them with angel’s food in the wilderness—and if he had done all these things in times past, it was testimony enough that he could and would continue to defend, protect, and sustain them through every other adversity; if only they walked faithfully and obediently. It gets even better in the New Testament. Paul asks excitedly in Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
Prayer:
Omnipotent God and Merciful Father, thank you for giving us all that we need for life and for godliness. Thank you for the gift of life and our salvation. We know that whatever you have granted you will help us keep. Our prayer is that we will not act desperately and foolishly as King Jeroboam did. Help us in your great mercy and grace not to go the way that he did, as we are often tempted to. In Jesus Name. Amen.