Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Year 1, Day 355: 1 Kings 14

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.

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