1 Kings 12:25-33: a reflection

25Then Jeroboam built Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and lived in it; and he went out from there and built Penuel. 26Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the kingdom will return to David’s house. 27If this people goes up to offer sacrifices in the LORD’s house at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, even to Rehoboam king of Judah; and they will kill me, and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.” 28So the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold; and he said to them, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Look and behold your gods, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” 29He set the one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. 30This thing became a sin, for the people went even as far as Dan to worship before the one there. 31He made houses of high places, and made priests from among all the people, who were not of the sons of Levi. 32Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like the feast that is in Judah, and he went up to the altar. He did so in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made, and he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places that he had made. 33He went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, even in the month which he had devised of his own heart; and he ordained a feast for the children of Israel, and went up to the altar to burn incense.

Jeroboam has just been given ten tribes to rule, but he is afraid. He reasons in his heart: if the people keep going up to Jerusalem to worship, their loyalty will drift back to the king of Judah, and I will lose them, and my throne. So, out of that fear, he manufactures a convenient alternative: two golden calves, set up in Bethel and Dan, so the people need not go to Jerusalem at all. He reshapes worship itself to protect his own position.

Notice what drove him: fear, and self-interest. Jeroboam was not seeking to know and serve God; he was managing a counterfeit of God to secure what he wanted. He appointed his own priests, invented his own feast in a month he devised in his own heart, and bent the whole apparatus of religion to serve his political needs. It was worship built around his interests rather than God's truth.

That temptation is subtler and closer than golden calves. We can, out of fear or self-interest, quietly reshape our picture of God and our practice of faith to serve what we want, endorsing what we had already decided, soothing our fears, protecting our position, a god made in the image of our interests. The true God is not ours to manage or remake. When fear tempts you to bend your faith to serve your own security, resist it. Do not manufacture a convenient god; trust and obey the real one, even when it costs you.

Lord, keep me from Jeroboam's sin, reshaping my faith out of fear and self-interest to serve what I want, and making a convenient god in the image of my own security. You are not mine to manage or remake. When fear tempts me to bend my faith to my interests, help me trust and obey the true God, whatever it costs.