“And He shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin” (I Kings 14:16).

There are a number of men in Biblical history (e.g., Saul, Solomon) whose careers started out with great promise and ended in great tragedy. Perhaps the saddest case of all was that of Jeroboam. In addition to our text, there are at least 14 other places where he is charged with causing Israel to sin (I Kings 15:26; etc.).

Yet Jeroboam could have been a great leader for God. “The man Jeroboam was a mighty man of valor: and Solomon seeing the young man that he was industrious, he made him ruler over all the charge of the house of Joseph.” Furthermore, because of Solomon’s apostasy in his old age, God told Jeroboam: “Behold I will rend the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to thee” (I Kings 11:28,31).

But when Jeroboam finally did become king over the ten tribes, he feared that the faith of his subjects, centered as it was in Jerusalem, would cause him to lose control, so he established a substitute religion for them, nominally theistic, but actually pantheistic, “and this thing became a sin” (I Kings 12:30). Initially similar to the true faith set forth in the Mosaic laws, this idolatrous pantheism soon became as licentious as the Baal worship of the heathen, and God had to remove them.

One can easily note an American parallel today, not merely in one leader, but in a multitude of educational, political, and religious leaders. Like Jeroboam, they have for several generations departed from the God of their fathers, substituted the idolatries of modern evolutionary humanism, and have “made America to sin.” The day may come when, like Israel, the Lord removes America out of His sight, because of its dissembling leadership. HMM