Jeroboam: Expediency or principles

Jeroboam: Expediency or principles

This Sunday, I was privileged to listen to a message by Pastor Lim on the life of King Jeroboam, the first king of Israel in the Divided Kingdom. Jeroboam is first seen in the days of King Solomon, in a time when God raised up adversaries against him and did not let him reign in peace any longer because he had become idolatrous and unfaithful to the Lord on account of his many wives. In the north and south, there was the threat of Hadad the Edomite, and Rezon of Damascus, and from within there was this threat from Jeroboam, who had rebelled against the king,

Now Jeroboam was found to be a mighty man of valor, and industrious in the service of King Solomon, so the king promoted him to become ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph. This made sense because he was from Ephraim, and the people of Joseph would be likely to accept him. However, a prophecy came to Jeroboam from the prophet Ahijah who foretold that God would give 10 tribes of the Kingdom of Israel to him, and promised him that if he would obey God’s statutes and commands and do what was right in his sight, he would have a lasting kingdom, like that of King David. Thus, if Rehoboam son of Solomon was seen to be born with a silver spoon, Jeroboam was seen to have been handed the kingdom on a silver platter.

Regarding the promise of God to Jeroboam, we need to first realize that it was conditional. If Jeroboam were to walk uprightly before God and follow God’s ways, he would be greatly blessed. A lot of promises in the Bible are conditional. For example, “seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well”. We will receive all that we need and more but the condition is that we must first seek God’s righteousness. Similarly, Jesus told His disciples “If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, whatever you ask for will be given you.” The condition is to remain in Jesus and let His words remain in us. The result is that whatever we ask for in prayer will be answered. If our mind is focused and committed on God’s will, whatever we ask for will be in accordance to God’s will, and God will always answer Yes and Amen for His will to be crystallized.

Some people may misinterpret that God’s blessing is always conditional, and based on our works. The point here is not about earning a right to blessing. The point is about faith and faithfulness. Faith in believing that what God says will come to pass and faithfulness in seeking to follow God and His ways according to our faith. A common finding among new and older Christians is that when a Christian is young, quite often he finds God answering his prayers always easily, almost effortlessly, but when a Christian grows more mature, sometimes the answers come more slowly and that is because God wants us to become more mature and patient as we grow up in Him.

So Jeroboam had indeed a very bright future to look forward to. All he had to do was to be committed and faithful o God. Unfortunately, he did not, and was cursed instead of blessed.

As to the actual event where he became king, it came about as a result of King Rehoboam’s foolishness, who did not appreciate the conscripted labor of the Israelites from the 10 tribes that had so painstakingly fueled King Solomon’s constructions, but actually suggested he would more vicious than his father. Jeroboam as chief of the conscripted labor quite naturally was seen as the natural leader by the disillusioned Israelites. Looking at the history of Israel and Judah, we can see that there was always a growing conflict between the North and the South. It may not have been spoken out loud, but it was there. All this while, the kings, Saul, David and Solomon had always been from the South, and not surprisingly most of the development all happened in the South, near Jerusalem. This is strangely similar to the concept in East Malaysia and Peninsular Malaysia where East Malaysia provides great oil income to Malaysia, but watches most of the development  take place in Peninsular and in particular, the Klang Valley. Hence, it did not really take much for the Israelites to rebel against their brothers.

Now once he obtained power, King Jeroboam quickly took a human political view of things and did what was expedient or convenient rather than what was right. Now in those days, as is now, politics and religion were greatly intermixed, and King Jeroboam quite logically feared that if Jerusalem remained the centre of worship for the people of Israel, they would eventually see him as an imposter and Rehoboam as the true king. Therefore he took matters into his own hands to build his own

Listening to very unwise counsel, King Jeroboam set out to establish a new centre of worship in Israel by building two golden calves. These calves are reminiscent of the abomination built by Aaron and the people during the time of Moses. Perhaps also, Jeroboam was inspired by the Egyptian practices when he fled from King Solomon to Egypt. And so the people abandoned the true worship of God in Jerusalem and settled for detestable objects of worship that were clearly against God’s law. Jeroboam had set before them a far more convenient way to worship and they would no longer have to travel all the way to Jerusalem to worship God.

For us too, the temptation may come to go for expediency or convenience rather than follow God’s principles. Making things more convenient is not wrong, and is part of progress, but we have to be sure that we do not end up like Jeroboam and choose convenience to the point of forsaking God’s principles altogether.

As a result of his actions, King Jeroboam who had been offered the opportunity for a lasting and blessed kingdom instead became a byword and had his entire line cut off because he turned away from God.

May the Lord help us always be faithful to Him, and not forsake Him for convenience or fear or any reason. In Jesus name, Amen.