Changing God’s Mind?
5 min read
12 “As for you, go back home. When you set foot in your city, the boy will die. 13 All Israel will mourn for him and bury him. He is the only one belonging to Jeroboam who will be buried, because he is the only one in the house of Jeroboam in whom the LORD, the God of Israel, has found anything good.”
— 1 Kings 14:12-13
The story of Israel in their idolatry is hard to read. It is even more difficult to preach on. But the truths we learn in this history is so important for us to heed today and every day. They are given to teach, rebuke, correct, and train us so that we may become thoroughly equipped to live in faithfulness and receive the blessings of God in His kingdom (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
The idea of God’s sovereignty is especially difficult to comprehend when we read accounts like this of Jeroboam. If God is sovereign, did He raise up Jeroboam to be the king of Israel so that their idolatry would be exposed? So that He could punish Israel and even this innocent boy for their idolatry under the leadership of Jeroboam? So that God could teach the world, and especially His people a lesson—you better not mess with ME!
Some people would say, “Yes,” that that is absolutely the case. But if the word of God is given to us for its rhetorical effect—that is, to teach, rebuke, correct, and train us—then what is the lesson that we are supposed to learn from that?
Are we supposed to become paralyzed in the fear of the Lord, as in the parable of the talents, where the servant given one talent feared His master’s sovereignty and so buried the treasure in the ground? Obviously not.
Even if God is sovereign like that—engineering the circumstances so that evil and idolatry can come into the world simply to demonstrate His holy wrath—we are all supposed to behave as if we have the free will to avert God’s wrath.
In a way, we could say that that is the rhetorical lesson of the whole Bible. Because God has told us how things will end. No matter how hard we fight against it, evil, greed, idolatry, and selfishness will overtake the world, and then Jesus will come back and restore all things to the goodness of God.
The lesson of Jeroboam’s son is really difficult to swallow, but it is a critically important one to accept and embrace.
Even if the world around us is falling apart because of idolatry, we are called to remain faithful. Not only that—and brace yourselves here—even if we die as a consequence of the world falling apart all around us because of idolatry, we are called to remain faithful.
The boy’s reward was this: “he is the only one in the house of Jeroboam in whom the LORD, the God of Israel, has found anything good.”
Any other reward in this life is rubbish (garbage, refuse, crap) in comparison (Philippians 3:8).
Father, You are good. Forgive me for my shallow, worldly ways and thinking. Change my heart so that the surpassing goodness of knowing You and being known is my greatest reward. In Jesus’s name. Amen.