Jeroboam’s Depravity
1 Kings 14
starts us off in tragedy. Jeroboam’s boy
(probably a young adult by this time in Jeroboam’s reign) falls fatally
ill. Of course, Jeroboam is no doubt
concerned about the status of his empire and whether or not his son will be
able to rule the empire. So Jeroboam
turns to the prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah.
Now, let’s
stop here and examine this story while laying out all the facts. First, Jeroboam is the one who set up the
temples in Dan and Bethel. But when the
chips are down, who is it that Jeroboam turns to? He turns to a prophet of the Lord in
Judah. If nothing else, this makes
Jeroboam a hypocrite. It also shows the
depravity of what he had done with the establishment of the northern temples in
that he had intentionally cut off the access that his people had to the true
God. He obviously knew what he had done
because when he really needed truth he himself turned to Judah!
There can
be no wonder that God held him in such judgment. God had stripped 10 tribes away from Rehoboam
and given them to Jeroboam, who had no reason to expect them to come his
way. Jeroboam could have turned the
people to the Lord. He could have turned
them to give glory to God. But this is
not what happened. Jeroboam turned the
people that God had given to him away from the Lord. Indeed God had every right to hold him in
judgment.
This story
reminds me of the story in Mark 1:40-45 that we studied this morning in Bible
Study. In the story, Jesus cleanses a
leper. After making the leper whole again,
Jesus asks simply that the leper follow the law. What does the leper do? He brags to just about everyone except those
in the temple. He had every reason to go
and worship God and give God the glory, but that is the one thing that he does
not do. So often this is the case with
us as Christians and followers of God.
We pray and pray for relief. When
it comes we jump up in celebration and completely abandon giving God the glory
and coming into His presence to worship Him.
So often we fail to honor God and remember Him in the same way as we see
in the leper from the Gospel of Mark as well as Jeroboam in this tragic story
of the end of his life.
True Prophet
So
Jeroboam does send his wife in disguise to the prophet in Judah. I don’t want to make too much of this story,
but it is neat to hear that a blind prophet of God was not fooled by some
disguise! When said that way, we really
see the foolishness of the wisdom of this world. Jeroboam has his wife get into a disguise to
go fool some man who couldn’t see because of his age anyway! Sigh.
We human beings can be so dense some times.
The neat
part is that this poor blind man easily sniffs out the deception because the
Lord is on his side. Since his message
comes from the Lord, he is not deceived.
The prophet gives the wife of Jeroboam the message that God has designed
for her to hear.
The other
neat part of this story is that it really shows just what the world thinks
about God and God’s servants. They think
that a shallow surface level disguise is able to confuse God and his
servants. Furthermore, they must think
that God is bound by His servants and not the other way around. That is to say that Jeroboam must have
thought if he could trick the prophet into giving a favorable prophecy that God
would have to honor it. But neither is
true. God takes the lead over the
prophets, not the other way around. God
is not fooled, God delivers the message that God wants delivered. You cannot fool God with some simple
disguise; you cannot trick God’s prophets into forcing God’s hand.
Gone in a Flash
To end
this chapter we have the tale of Rehoboam, who led the people of Judah away
from the Lord. It is significant to
notice how the Lord used Egypt to bring judgment upon Rehoboam and the people. All the work that Solomon toiled to bring for
his glory was gone in a heartbeat. The
Egyptians plundered the house of the Lord and the house of the king. All that Solomon struggled to achieve, all
that he had managed to gain through his political maneuverings, all that the
lust of his heart had brought into Judah was sent away with a simple act of the
Lord’s hand.
The Lord
dismissed all the trappings that Solomon once thought were important. God had told Solomon that it wasn’t the
building or the furnishings that really mattered to Him. God had told Solomon that there wasn’t
anything that He was more concerned about that humble and submitted obedience
to His ways. God cares about the human
heart, and as He demonstrates in this story He is ready and willing to cast
aside the trappings of this world. What
are they to God?
God begins
the long process of humbling His people.
He humbled Rehoboam as He tried to humble Jeroboam. But it was not time for the people to
listen. Their fall into the ways of the
world was not yet complete. Oh, how
pitiable are we who fall from grace, who receive God’s discipline, and who do
not heed the opportunity to repent.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment