And he did evil in the sight of the LORD, and walked in the way of Jeroboam, and in his sin wherewith he made Israel to sin. 1Ki 15:34
Jeroboam is a striking illustration of the fact that the natural man can neither fear God, trust God, nor love God. His spirit had never felt that awe and reverence toward God that checks sin and prompts to obedience. His sin was aggravated and presumptuous, because deliberate and against the light. God had told him that He would wrest from Solomon ten tribes, because of his idolatry, and give them to him; He told him He would make him a sure house if he would walk in the ways of David. Yet Jeroboam deliberately turned his whole kingdom to idolatry as a matter of policy.
It was a persistent sin. Twice God warned him of the swift ruin he was bringing to himself and all his people. The first warning was attested by miracles: his hand was instantly paralyzed and withered, and as quickly restored, the altar he had built was rent and the ashes cast out, and the prophetic messenger who disobeyed the command of God on his journey home, met speedy punishment; the second warning was attested by the death of his son, as was foretold. He would not repent, although the healing of his hand was a token of God's willingness to forgive him.
Jeroboam did not trust God. The remarkable fulfilment of God's promise of the kingdom, and the restraint of Rehoboam's expedition against him, was enough to show God's power to establish his house as He had promised; but his own reasonings prevailed. He forsook God to secure his kingdom; and yet his line perished with his son who was assassinated after a reign of only two years.
Jeroboam did not love God. David in exile longed for the courts of the Lord's house; the worship of God was sweet to him, and he laid aside his royal robes and kingly dignity to leap with joy before the ark, the seat of God's visible presence. Jeroboam was a stranger to such emotions, and his ambition led him to overturn God's whole order of worship and set up his own.
Men have a natural inclination to be religious; they also have a natural aversion to the true worship and service of God; therefore many still walk in the way of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. They follow ways which they have devised of their own heart; forsaking the altar and the blood of sprinkling, they turn to natural religion. Their apostasy may not be so sudden, deliberate, nor glaring, nor their ruin so tragic to the eye of man, but it is none the less real. Every voice that tells us that the way of God is "Too much" for us, is a voice of the seducer, and every step away from Calvary is a step toward the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat.
--The Gospel MESSAGE, 1915, page 10.
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