“Doubting God”

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son.”

(1 Kings 11.11-12)

Solomon reigned over Israel’s brief golden age, in which the nation enjoyed unparalleled material blessings, honor, and peace.  But Solomon grew complacent, and was drawn away from God, who had given him all these things.  As a result, God made the above decree.  When Solomon died and his son Rehoboam was set to take over the kingdom, the dissident leader and expatriate Jeroboam returned, to carry out God’s plan.  Naturally, Rehoboam tried to avert this course of events and cement himself on the throne of Israel.  He attempted to frighten his subjects into submission, but failed miserably.

And when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king, “What portion do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel! Look now to your own house, David.”

(1 Kings  12.16)

Clearly, this plan didn’t work.  Instead of accepting Solomon’s son as their new king,

when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. There was none that followed the house of David but the tribe of Judah only.

(1 Kings 12.20)

Jeroboam was in a good position!  God had told him beforehand (1Ki 11.26-39) that he would receive the kingdom, and now he’d been given an overwhelming vote of confidence by his subjects.  Even if he’d harbored doubts when first told of God’s plans for his future, seeing is believing!  He could not have forgotten such an incredible and apparently unlikely prophecy, nor failed to have noticed its fulfillment.  Yet he began to worry about the stability of his position, almost immediately.

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.”

(1 Kings 12.26-27)

Now, let’s think about this.  God had given him firm assurances.  In the first place, he’d predicted,

“And I will take you, and you shall reign over all that your soul desires, and you shall be king over Israel.”

(1 Kings 11.37)

This much had already been fulfilled.  Then, in the the same breath God had said,

“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)

Standing between these two promises, Jeroboam managed to see with his own eyes that God knows the future and keeps his word, and yet to doubt that God knew the future or would keep his word!  And where did his faithlessness lead?

So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan.

(1 Kings 12.28-29)

That does not look like a man listening to all that God commands, walking in his ways, doing what is right in his eyes, or keeping his statutes and commandments.  The most sympathetic interpretation possible would be to say that Jeroboam wasn’t intentionally violating the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20.3), but merely intended for these idols to represent the Lord, God of Israel.  But of course, the second commandment is,

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image…. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…”

(Exodus 20.4-5)

There’s no weaseling out of that one; but someone might raise a partial defense of Jeroboam, saying that, while mistaken, he thought this only meant a prohibition on idols representing other gods—those outlawed in the previous commandment.  This, too, falls flat.  In the same chapter, God said, “You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold” (Ex 20.23).  In the first and most basic set of laws God gave to Israel, he expressly prohibited exactly what Jeroboam later did.

In fact, in addition to being wrong on its face, the cult Jeroboam built around these two idols led his subjects straight into imitation of Canaanite idolatry, lawlessness, oppression, cult prostitution, and human sacrifice—which were the reasons for which God eventually destroyed the nation (cf. 2Ki 17.7-18).  Because he was afraid to lose his kingdom, he set it on the path toward destruction.

Jeroboam’s story is worthy of our attention, in part because he’s a sympathetic character.  He was given incredible promises by God, but he recognized his own limitations and felt insecure, as we often do as well.  Rather than trusting God, he employed consequentialist reasoning without even the benefit of God’s foresight, and then presented to the people a different reason—convenience.  Thus he led them astray.  Both reasons were bad; but both were persuasive!  We must be on guard against such doubt and transgression, today.

Jeremy Nettles

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