Bringing Jesus’ Finished Work Back Into Focus

1 Kings 12:26-33

Jeroboam was a friend of King Solomon who was prophesied over that he would someday rule 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel because of the sin of the nation. God was planning on removing the throne from the family of David temporarily to give to Jeroboam. When Solomon found out about this he sought to kill the young man, so Jeroboam fled to Egypt where he remained until the death of Solomon (1 Kings 11:40).

Solomon’s son, Rehoboam took the throne upon the death of his father and he alienated the people by threatening them with forced labor. This sparked a rebellion which brought Jeroboam out of hiding and into the throne over 10 of the 12 tribes. Only Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to king Rehoboam.

Rehoboam assembled an army of 180,000 troops to attempt to forcibly take the other 10 tribes back, but God spoke to him and told him not to start a civil war. Rehoboam obeyed and this act of nationalism brought a sense of pride to the people that Jeroboam viewed as a great threat.

Jeroboam sensed that the renewed pride in Israel would cause them to return to the house of Solomon and overthrow him as their king. He recognized the power that was found in the people worshipping in Jerusalem when he said, “If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah” (1 Kings 12:27).

There was a sense of the power and the glory of God at the temple in Jerusalem. When you saw its beauty and its grandeur, you could not help but be overwhelmed. The sounds of the sacrificial lambs being offered; the smell of the flesh being consumed by the fire of God and the waving of incense by the ordained priests would cause you to recall the stories of Moses and Aaron and the glories of the house of David. Jeroboam knew that too much exposure to the presence of the Lord would cause Israel to leave him.

His plan involved making two golden calves and setting up altars to them. He placed one in Bethel and the other in Dan. The calves were not sins within themselves, but the people began to sacrifice to them and to worship them, thus sin was the result (1 Kings 12:30). He even copied the final Jewish feast day, the Feast of Tabernacles, which was held on October 15; he held his on November 15.

Jesus stood in the temple at Jerusalem on the final day of the Feast of Tabernacles and announced that if anyone was thirsty, they could come to him and drink the water of life freely (John 7:37, 38). Tabernacle’s was a feast that was both memorial and prophetic. It looked back on the redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage and it looked forward to the dwelling of Israel as God’s chosen people over the whole earth. Removing this feast was a removal of the promise of God’s covenant. It was a dangerous breach against the “living water”.

Let nothing take your focus off of Jesus and His finished work. Satan will use this world to offer up other alternatives to your hope and your victory but only the powerful sacrificial work of Jesus at the cross provides your answer. Focus on what He has done for you, giving Him honor and glory for His miracle working power. The more you see His finished work, the more you bring Him back into focus, the more that it is finished in you!

The Worshipper Is Wise

1 Kings 4:29-31

When young Solomon sought God for wisdom, he did not request riches and fame for himself. He felt that as king of a great nation, he needed wisdom to govern; understanding to relate to people and their needs; and largeness of heart to show the compassion befitting a man of God. God granted him all of these things, and the riches and fame to boot.

When the author of 1 Kings relates to us the wisdom of King Solomon, he tells us that Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the children of the east country, of which the wise men would come at the birth of Christ, bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh. He was even wiser than all of those in Egypt, who were world renowned for their intellect in all things, including architecture and science.

More telling than his comparison to the wise men of the east or to the intellectual giants of Egypt is the author’s comparison of Solomon to the characters in verse 31 of chapter 29. It tells us that he was “wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in all nations round about”.

Who are these wise men that are named by the Holy Spirit? What made them so wise? Notice their occupations: Ethan the Ezrahite was the author of Psalm 89, which spoke of the arrival of the Holy One; Heman was the author of Psalm 88, “O Lord God of my salvation”, and the choir director under King David; Mahol is the father of three of these men named, and his name means “dancer” in the Hebrew. Two of these men are song writers, one of them a choir director and a third one, a dancer. Solomon’s wisdom is being compared to worshippers! God viewed those who wrote of His greatness and glory and danced before Him as the wisest men in the world before Solomon.

When the believer worships the Lord, they do it, “in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him” (John 4:23). Jesus takes the worship away from an object and a formula and makes it personal, coming from the heart of man. No worship is proper worship that does not have at its core, the truth, which is Jesus. He is the truth, so to lift up Him and His finished work is to worship in truth, and that is to worship in wisdom.

God viewed the wisest people in the world as those who sang and danced of His goodness. You and I as believers can worship Him for His goodness every moment of every day, in our hearts. True wisdom is found in true worship. Do you have a pressing need today? Worship Him, and watch wisdom flow in your heart of understanding.

Be as wise as a serpent and as harmless as a dove today. Remove an unholy fear of God and replace it, like Jesus did in the wilderness, with worship. “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Luke 4:8). Go in grace and favor!

The Still Small Voice

1 Kings 19:8-18

The prophet Elijah is a both an exciting and tragic figure of the Old Testament. His power and position are unquestioned, as John the Baptist would come sharing the same spirit and power, and Elijah himself would be with Jesus on Mt. Transfiguration. It is this dreadful 19th chapter that shows us a side to Elijah that is far too close to our own actions and attitudes from time to time.

The tragedy of Elijah is found in his perception of God. He runs from the evil Jezebel when she puts word out that she wants him dead for his actions against her prophets on Mt. Carmel. After journeying for a day, he finds himself at Mt. Horeb, “the mount of God” (1 Kings 19:8). It is called this because another name for the mountain is Mt. Sinai, which is the place that Moses received the law. By journeying to Sinai, Elijah is looking for God; and what he finds does not excite him.

God asks him why he is there, to which Elijah responds that he is the only true prophet left, and that everyone is against him (1 Kings 19:10). God invites Elijah to stand at the mouth of a cave while three separate natural wonders occur in front of him. The wind blows, breaking boulders to pieces; the earth trembles; fire falls. In all three instances, the Lord was not speaking, until the sound of a “still small voice” (verse 12).

The three miracles indicate three ways that God functioned under law. The breaking of rocks to pieces is indicative of the Word of God smashing the hard rock of man’s heart (Jeremiah 23:29); the earthquake is “quivering” in the Hebrew, like the tail end of a dart or an arrow that has struck through its victim (Hebrews 12:20); and the fire is always an indicator of the judgment of God. Elijah wants the mad, vengeful, angry God to appear, but God is in none of these things.

After this show, God asks the same question that He asked at first, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:13). Instead of seeing the still small voice as a softer side of God, Elijah answers with a word-for-word rendering of his earlier response. Nothing has changed, though he has heard the voice of God!

When a person is in a place where not even the voice of God can change them, then they are incapable of being used for the kingdom. God tells Elijah to go and anoint his successor, Elisha; a task which Elijah never really does. He throws his cloak at him in verse 19, but then asks Elisha why he is following him (1 Kings 19:20). This prophet has grown weary with those whom he is prophesying to, and God moves on to someone else.

Heed the still small voice in your life. God speaks to us as sons, not as slaves, and He always ministers His love and favor. His default position is mercy, not judgment; thus His voice will always sound merciful and loving. Be prepared to embrace His loving grace for you today, and then share that with those around you, whether they seem worthy or not.

Honor His Finished Work

1 Kings 18:17-38

This chapter from 1 Kings tells the story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven on Mt. Carmel. It is one of the most popular stories from the Old Testament, showing the power of the almighty God and His judgment against the false gods of this world. There are too many great things within the story to take much time trying to bring them out in a simple devotion, so I want to focus on one tiny aspect which made an enormous difference.

Elijah was certainly a man of faith and power, but James bears out that he “was a man subject to like passions as we are” (James 5:17). This verse falls within a passage on prayer and James is bringing out that though Elijah could pray and see great things happen, he was no different than you or I. Elijah had the same failures and temptations that we did, so his prayers were not being answered because he lived a holier lifestyle, or he spent more time with God. What was the reason that Elijah could pray and God would move?

When Elijah gave the challenge to the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, he allowed them to go first, praying to Baal to consume their sacrifice by fire. They prophesied and cried from the morning all the way until mid-afternoon with no response from their god. They had put maximum effort into their prayer, but they had received no results.

At the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, Elijah began his prayer to God for the fire to fall (1 Kings 18:36). As they say, timing is everything, and Elijah is obviously aware of what time of day that it is. In Israel, there were two sacrifices to God every day; one at 9 a.m. called the morning sacrifice, and one at 3 p.m. called the evening sacrifice. Both were symbolic of the coming Redeemer and His death as payment for man’s sin.

Jesus was placed on the cross at 9 a.m. and then died at 3 p.m., both corresponding with the timing of the daily schedule. Thus, the time of the evening sacrifice can be identified with the cry of Jesus at the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30). Any adherence to an evening sacrifice on the part of an Old Testament prophet becomes identification with the finished work of Jesus Christ, though Jesus had yet to come. Elijah waits until the time of the evening sacrifice to say a simple prayer, consisting of only 63 words in the KJV, and then the fire of God falls and consumes the sacrifice. There is no evidence of Elijah begging or screaming or making a great show during his prayer. These things were unnecessary, for Elijah had waited until the hour of “It is finished”, thus honoring the finished work. The fire does not fall because of Elijah; it falls because of Jesus!

Honor the finished work of Christ in your prayer life and watch God respond with great power. This does not mean that we don’t pray until 3 p.m., for the Old Testament was simply a shadow of things to come. You and I have the finished work of Christ in us at all times, so as we honor what Christ did for us at Calvary, we rest in that work. Your prayer life is only as powerful as the Jesus that you know. If you are always begging God with much pleading, then you send the message that God is slow to move and is waiting for your good works. In truth, the Lord is swift to move because of the work of Jesus at Calvary. Honor the cross and its work, and God honors you!

The New Prophecy

1 Kings 17:18

When we think of prophecy, we often think of the telling of future events to warn people about what is to come or to tell them what to do to prepare. This idea sounds a lot like fortune telling or psychic readings, which the world uses to try to see into tomorrow. For the believer, we have no need for someone to read our palms or stare into a crystal ball, for the Holy Spirit has revealed the hidden things to us (1 Corinthians 2:9, 10). In fact, Paul states further that we have not received the spirit of the world, “but the spirit which is of God; that we might know all things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Corinthians 2:12).

Deeper into his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul tells us the definition of a New Testament prophecy, stating that it will edify, exhort and comfort (1 Corinthians 14:3). To edify is to build up; exhort is to encourage; comfort is to calm and console. All prophecy will do one or all of these things to a believer. It will build up your spirit man and encourage you to continue onward and it will calm your raging soul.

When you hear something that is called prophecy that does not build your up or encourage you or calm and console you then you are hearing the voice of condemnation and judgment. This voice cannot come to you from your Father, for He has already judged everything in the body of Christ. If this be the case, then why does this type of “prophecy” still exist?

To understand why we still hear gloom and doom prophesied to us, we must first see that this type of prophecy previously existed. When Old Testament prophets spoke, they warned of impending judgment due to increased sin and iniquity. Their style was to warn mankind about the path that they were on, but this warning was due to the fact that the Old Covenant demanded that man pay for his own breaking of the law. Since Jesus came and completely fulfilled the law and all of its demands (Matthew 5:17), there is no more warning against man’s continued failures.

Old Testament prophecy did what the widow of Zarephath was scared of; it pronounced judgment and called sin to remembrance. When her son died, “She said unto Elijah, ‘What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?’” (1 Kings 17:18). The fact that she asks this question lets us know that the reputation of prophets was to remind people of the things that they had done wrong and to pronounce the judgment of God upon them.

Believer, rejoice that your sins are not being called to remembrance anymore, because Jesus has washed them all away!

Bringing Jesus’ Finished Work Back Into Focus

1 Kings 12:26-33

Jeroboam was a friend of King Solomon who was prophesied over that he would someday rule 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel because of the sin of the nation. God was planning on removing the throne from the family of David temporarily to give to Jeroboam. When Solomon found out about this he sought to kill the young man, so Jeroboam fled to Egypt where he remained until the death of Solomon (1 Kings 11:40).

Solomon’s son, Rehoboam took the throne upon the death of his father and he alienated the people by threatening them with forced labor. This sparked a rebellion which brought Jeroboam out of hiding and into the throne over 10 of the 12 tribes. Only Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to king Rehoboam.

Rehoboam assembled an army of 180,000 troops to attempt to forcibly take the other 10 tribes back, but God spoke to him and told him not to start a civil war. Rehoboam obeyed and this act of nationalism brought a sense of pride to the people that Jeroboam viewed as a great threat.

Jeroboam sensed that the renewed pride in Israel would cause them to return to the house of Solomon and overthrow him as their king. He recognized the power that was found in the people worshipping in Jerusalem when he said, “If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah” (1 Kings 12:27).

There was a sense of the power and the glory of God at the temple in Jerusalem. When you saw its beauty and its grandeur, you could not help but be overwhelmed. The sounds of the sacrificial lambs being offered; the smell of the flesh being consumed by the fire of God and the waving of incense by the ordained priests would cause you to recall the stories of Moses and Aaron and the glories of the house of David. Jeroboam knew that too much exposure to the presence of the Lord would cause Israel to leave him.

His plan involved making two golden calves and setting up altars to them. He placed one in Bethel and the other in Dan. The calves were not sins within themselves, but the people began to sacrifice to them and to worship them, thus sin was the result (1 Kings 12:30). He even copied the final Jewish feast day, the Feast of Tabernacles, which was held on October 15; he held his on November 15.

Jesus stood in the temple at Jerusalem on the final day of the Feast of Tabernacles and announced that if anyone was thirsty, they could come to him and drink the water of life freely (John 7:37, 38). Tabernacle’s was a feast that was both memorial and prophetic. It looked back on the redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage and it looked forward to the dwelling of Israel as God’s chosen people over the whole earth. Removing this feast was a removal of the promise of God’s covenant. It was a dangerous breach against the “living water”.

Let nothing take your focus off of Jesus and His finished work. Satan will use this world to offer up other alternatives to your hope and your victory but only the powerful sacrificial work of Jesus at the cross provides your answer. Focus on what He has done for you, giving Him honor and glory for His miracle working power. The more you see His finished work, the more you bring Him back into focus, the more that it is finished in you!

The Worshipper Is Wise

1 Kings 4:29-31

When young Solomon sought God for wisdom, he did not request riches and fame for himself. He felt that as king of a great nation, he needed wisdom to govern; understanding to relate to people and their needs; and largeness of heart to show the compassion befitting a man of God. God granted him all of these things, and the riches and fame to boot.

When the author of 1 Kings relates to us the wisdom of King Solomon, he tells us that Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the children of the east country, of which the wise men would come at the birth of Christ, bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh. He was even wiser than all of those in Egypt, who were world renowned for their intellect in all things, including architecture and science.

More telling than his comparison to the wise men of the east or to the intellectual giants of Egypt is the author’s comparison of Solomon to the characters in verse 31 of chapter 29. It tells us that he was “wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in all nations round about”.

Who are these wise men that are named by the Holy Spirit? What made them so wise? Notice their occupations: Ethan the Ezrahite was the author of Psalm 89, which spoke of the arrival of the Holy One; Heman was the author of Psalm 88, “O Lord God of my salvation”, and the choir director under King David; Mahol is the father of three of these men named, and his name means “dancer” in the Hebrew. Two of these men are song writers, one of them a choir director and a third one, a dancer. Solomon’s wisdom is being compared to worshippers! God viewed those who wrote of His greatness and glory and danced before Him as the wisest men in the world before Solomon.

When the believer worships the Lord, they do it, “in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him” (John 4:23). Jesus takes the worship away from an object and a formula and makes it personal, coming from the heart of man. No worship is proper worship that does not have at its core, the truth, which is Jesus. He is the truth, so to lift up Him and His finished work is to worship in truth, and that is to worship in wisdom.

God viewed the wisest people in the world as those who sang and danced of His goodness. You and I as believers can worship Him for His goodness every moment of every day, in our hearts. True wisdom is found in true worship. Do you have a pressing need today? Worship Him, and watch wisdom flow in your heart of understanding.

Be as wise as a serpent and as harmless as a dove today. Remove an unholy fear of God and replace it, like Jesus did in the wilderness, with worship. “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Luke 4:8). Go in grace and favor!

The Still Small Voice

1 Kings 19:8-18

The prophet Elijah is a both an exciting and tragic figure of the Old Testament. His power and position are unquestioned, as John the Baptist would come sharing the same spirit and power, and Elijah himself would be with Jesus on Mt. Transfiguration. It is this dreadful 19th chapter that shows us a side to Elijah that is far too close to our own actions and attitudes from time to time.

The tragedy of Elijah is found in his perception of God. He runs from the evil Jezebel when she puts word out that she wants him dead for his actions against her prophets on Mt. Carmel. After journeying for a day, he finds himself at Mt. Horeb, “the mount of God” (1 Kings 19:8). It is called this because another name for the mountain is Mt. Sinai, which is the place that Moses received the law. By journeying to Sinai, Elijah is looking for God; and what he finds does not excite him.

God asks him why he is there, to which Elijah responds that he is the only true prophet left, and that everyone is against him (1 Kings 19:10). God invites Elijah to stand at the mouth of a cave while three separate natural wonders occur in front of him. The wind blows, breaking boulders to pieces; the earth trembles; fire falls. In all three instances, the Lord was not speaking, until the sound of a “still small voice” (verse 12).

The three miracles indicate three ways that God functioned under law. The breaking of rocks to pieces is indicative of the Word of God smashing the hard rock of man’s heart (Jeremiah 23:29); the earthquake is “quivering” in the Hebrew, like the tail end of a dart or an arrow that has struck through its victim (Hebrews 12:20); and the fire is always an indicator of the judgment of God. Elijah wants the mad, vengeful, angry God to appear, but God is in none of these things.

After this show, God asks the same question that He asked at first, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:13). Instead of seeing the still small voice as a softer side of God, Elijah answers with a word-for-word rendering of his earlier response. Nothing has changed, though he has heard the voice of God!

When a person is in a place where not even the voice of God can change them, then they are incapable of being used for the kingdom. God tells Elijah to go and anoint his successor, Elisha; a task which Elijah never really does. He throws his cloak at him in verse 19, but then asks Elisha why he is following him (1 Kings 19:20). This prophet has grown weary with those whom he is prophesying to, and God moves on to someone else.

Heed the still small voice in your life. God speaks to us as sons, not as slaves, and He always ministers His love and favor. His default position is mercy, not judgment; thus His voice will always sound merciful and loving. Be prepared to embrace His loving grace for you today, and then share that with those around you, whether they seem worthy or not.

Honor His Finished Work

1 Kings 18:17-38

This chapter from 1 Kings tells the story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven on Mt. Carmel. It is one of the most popular stories from the Old Testament, showing the power of the almighty God and His judgment against the false gods of this world. There are too many great things within the story to take much time trying to bring them out in a simple devotion, so I want to focus on one tiny aspect which made an enormous difference.

Elijah was certainly a man of faith and power, but James bears out that he “was a man subject to like passions as we are” (James 5:17). This verse falls within a passage on prayer and James is bringing out that though Elijah could pray and see great things happen, he was no different than you or I. Elijah had the same failures and temptations that we did, so his prayers were not being answered because he lived a holier lifestyle, or he spent more time with God. What was the reason that Elijah could pray and God would move?

When Elijah gave the challenge to the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, he allowed them to go first, praying to Baal to consume their sacrifice by fire. They prophesied and cried from the morning all the way until mid-afternoon with no response from their god. They had put maximum effort into their prayer, but they had received no results.

At the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, Elijah began his prayer to God for the fire to fall (1 Kings 18:36). As they say, timing is everything, and Elijah is obviously aware of what time of day that it is. In Israel, there were two sacrifices to God every day; one at 9 a.m. called the morning sacrifice, and one at 3 p.m. called the evening sacrifice. Both were symbolic of the coming Redeemer and His death as payment for man’s sin.

Jesus was placed on the cross at 9 a.m. and then died at 3 p.m., both corresponding with the timing of the daily schedule. Thus, the time of the evening sacrifice can be identified with the cry of Jesus at the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30). Any adherence to an evening sacrifice on the part of an Old Testament prophet becomes identification with the finished work of Jesus Christ, though Jesus had yet to come. Elijah waits until the time of the evening sacrifice to say a simple prayer, consisting of only 63 words in the KJV, and then the fire of God falls and consumes the sacrifice. There is no evidence of Elijah begging or screaming or making a great show during his prayer. These things were unnecessary, for Elijah had waited until the hour of “It is finished”, thus honoring the finished work. The fire does not fall because of Elijah; it falls because of Jesus!

Honor the finished work of Christ in your prayer life and watch God respond with great power. This does not mean that we don’t pray until 3 p.m., for the Old Testament was simply a shadow of things to come. You and I have the finished work of Christ in us at all times, so as we honor what Christ did for us at Calvary, we rest in that work. Your prayer life is only as powerful as the Jesus that you know. If you are always begging God with much pleading, then you send the message that God is slow to move and is waiting for your good works. In truth, the Lord is swift to move because of the work of Jesus at Calvary. Honor the cross and its work, and God honors you!

The New Prophecy

1 Kings 17:18

When we think of prophecy, we often think of the telling of future events to warn people about what is to come or to tell them what to do to prepare. This idea sounds a lot like fortune telling or psychic readings, which the world uses to try to see into tomorrow. For the believer, we have no need for someone to read our palms or stare into a crystal ball, for the Holy Spirit has revealed the hidden things to us (1 Corinthians 2:9, 10). In fact, Paul states further that we have not received the spirit of the world, “but the spirit which is of God; that we might know all things that are freely given to us of God” (1 Corinthians 2:12).

Deeper into his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul tells us the definition of a New Testament prophecy, stating that it will edify, exhort and comfort (1 Corinthians 14:3). To edify is to build up; exhort is to encourage; comfort is to calm and console. All prophecy will do one or all of these things to a believer. It will build up your spirit man and encourage you to continue onward and it will calm your raging soul.

When you hear something that is called prophecy that does not build your up or encourage you or calm and console you then you are hearing the voice of condemnation and judgment. This voice cannot come to you from your Father, for He has already judged everything in the body of Christ. If this be the case, then why does this type of “prophecy” still exist?

To understand why we still hear gloom and doom prophesied to us, we must first see that this type of prophecy previously existed. When Old Testament prophets spoke, they warned of impending judgment due to increased sin and iniquity. Their style was to warn mankind about the path that they were on, but this warning was due to the fact that the Old Covenant demanded that man pay for his own breaking of the law. Since Jesus came and completely fulfilled the law and all of its demands (Matthew 5:17), there is no more warning against man’s continued failures.

Old Testament prophecy did what the widow of Zarephath was scared of; it pronounced judgment and called sin to remembrance. When her son died, “She said unto Elijah, ‘What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?’” (1 Kings 17:18). The fact that she asks this question lets us know that the reputation of prophets was to remind people of the things that they had done wrong and to pronounce the judgment of God upon them.

Believer, rejoice that your sins are not being called to remembrance anymore, because Jesus has washed them all away!

Bringing Jesus’ Finished Work Back Into Focus

1 Kings 12:26-33

Jeroboam was a friend of King Solomon who was prophesied over that he would someday rule 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel because of the sin of the nation. God was planning on removing the throne from the family of David temporarily to give to Jeroboam. When Solomon found out about this he sought to kill the young man, so Jeroboam fled to Egypt where he remained until the death of Solomon (1 Kings 11:40).

Solomon’s son, Rehoboam took the throne upon the death of his father and he alienated the people by threatening them with forced labor. This sparked a rebellion which brought Jeroboam out of hiding and into the throne over 10 of the 12 tribes. Only Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to king Rehoboam.

Rehoboam assembled an army of 180,000 troops to attempt to forcibly take the other 10 tribes back, but God spoke to him and told him not to start a civil war. Rehoboam obeyed and this act of nationalism brought a sense of pride to the people that Jeroboam viewed as a great threat.

Jeroboam sensed that the renewed pride in Israel would cause them to return to the house of Solomon and overthrow him as their king. He recognized the power that was found in the people worshipping in Jerusalem when he said, “If this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the LORD at Jerusalem, then shall the heart of this people turn again unto their lord, even unto Rehoboam king of Judah, and they shall kill me, and go again to Rehoboam king of Judah” (1 Kings 12:27).

There was a sense of the power and the glory of God at the temple in Jerusalem. When you saw its beauty and its grandeur, you could not help but be overwhelmed. The sounds of the sacrificial lambs being offered; the smell of the flesh being consumed by the fire of God and the waving of incense by the ordained priests would cause you to recall the stories of Moses and Aaron and the glories of the house of David. Jeroboam knew that too much exposure to the presence of the Lord would cause Israel to leave him.

His plan involved making two golden calves and setting up altars to them. He placed one in Bethel and the other in Dan. The calves were not sins within themselves, but the people began to sacrifice to them and to worship them, thus sin was the result (1 Kings 12:30). He even copied the final Jewish feast day, the Feast of Tabernacles, which was held on October 15; he held his on November 15.

Jesus stood in the temple at Jerusalem on the final day of the Feast of Tabernacles and announced that if anyone was thirsty, they could come to him and drink the water of life freely (John 7:37, 38). Tabernacle’s was a feast that was both memorial and prophetic. It looked back on the redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage and it looked forward to the dwelling of Israel as God’s chosen people over the whole earth. Removing this feast was a removal of the promise of God’s covenant. It was a dangerous breach against the “living water”.

Let nothing take your focus off of Jesus and His finished work. Satan will use this world to offer up other alternatives to your hope and your victory but only the powerful sacrificial work of Jesus at the cross provides your answer. Focus on what He has done for you, giving Him honor and glory for His miracle working power. The more you see His finished work, the more you bring Him back into focus, the more that it is finished in you!