A Plan of His Own

TODAY’S SPECIAL: 1 Kings 12:25-33

TO CHEW ON: "The king made two golden calves. He said to the people, 'It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.' " 1 Kings 12:28

Jeroboam went to live in Schechem and ruled Israel from there. The prophet had told him he would be a successful king if he obeyed God. Even so, Jeroboam began to be afraid. His people would go back to Jerusalem to worship. What if traveling back to Jerusalem would make them want Rehoboam as their king again?

So Jeroboam made a plan to keep that from happening. Instead of encouraging the people to worship God in the temple in Jerusalem he set up calf idols nearby – one in Dan and another in Bethel. He told the people, "Here are the gods who brought you out of Egypt." Then he chose people who weren’t in the Levi tribe to be the priests. They offered sacrifices to the golden calves.

Jeroboam also invented new festivals. At festival time, the people now went to Dan or Bethel instead of Jerusalem. In no time the people who had chosen Jeroboam as their king had forgotten all about God and were up to their necks in idol worship.

Everything went along fine until Jeroboam’s son got sick. Jeroboam feared he would die. He got his wife to disguise herself and go to the prophet Ahijah – the one who, years earlier, had predicted he would be king.

Tags: worship trust prophecy memory verse Israel idols 1 Kings