My brother, my sister, do you know that mistakes always happen when we try to take over God’s role in a situation or when our careless efforts to correct another person’s errors lead us to the same or worse errors?
Today, let’s look at a Bible character to understand how we can fall back, make mistakes, or even run away from the truth of the gospel and end up missing our blessings or delay God!
In today’s passage, let’s focus on Jeroboam, who received a clear direction from God and yet chose his own way. Thus, his disobedience was not caused by his ignorance of what God wanted, rather it grew out of stubborn selfishness. Yes, my friend, even clear warnings are sometimes very hard to obey.
During the construction activities, Solomon noticed the leadership skills of young Jeroboam and he made him a foreman. Now God also spoke to Jeroboam through his prophet Ahijah to tell Jeroboam that he was going to take away the kingdom from the descendants of David because of their disobedience and He was going to give Jeroboam 10 tribes to reign as king. But God also warned Jeroboam that if he did what Solomon did (refusing to obey God), He would destroy his family. No doubt that Solomon heard this prophecy, so he wanted to kill Jeroboam, the future king. Fearing death, Jeroboam fled to Egypt to hide, where he remained until Solomon’s death.
Rehoboam, Solomon’s heir had now taken over the throne, but he was very unpopular among the people who rejected him, so ultimately, God’s prophecy was fulfilled when 10 tribes chose Jeroboam as king. Now problems began: instead of seeing the fulfilment of God’s promise as a motivation to obey God, Jeroboam decided to do all he could to secure his position as king: he set up idols in Israel to keep people away from the Temple in Jerusalem; he appointed priests who were not from the tribe of Levi, and he relied more on his own cunning ways than on the promises of God! He ended up moving his kingdom away from the God who had allowed him to become king, forgetting that God had warned him of the consequences of such an action (his family was going to be destroyed!).
My brother, my sister, let’s see how Jeroboam’s little decisions made him create sin! Yet the consequences of sin are guaranteed in the Bible. Although the timing of these consequences is difficult to predict, when we disobey God’s commandments and no immediate disaster happens to us, we should never be fooled into believing that we can get away with disobeying God because God does what He said He would do (whether it be good or bad!). Being saved for eternal life through Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross does not remove the consequences of our sins. Let us all allow Jeroboam’s example to remind us of this: our selfish little decisions can cause us to miss out on great opportunities and God’s promises.
Stay blessed in Jesus’ name.