So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”
1 Kings 12:28 (ESV)
At Solomon’s death, the nation of Israel divided. Judah and Benjamin selected Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, to be their king. The ten northern tribes rebelled and selected Jeroboam to be their king. 1 Kings presents this division of the kingdom and Jeroboam’s ascension to the throne as God’s response to Solomon’s heart being turned to idols because of his many wives (1 Kings 11:1-13). God explicitly chose Jeroboam to be the king of the northern kingdom (1 Kings 11:26-40).
The Golden Calves
Yet one of the first things that Jeroboam did was to create two golden calves and identify them as being the gods who had brought them out of Egypt. He also appointed a new set of priests and instituted new religious practices in imitation of what was mandated in the Torah (1 Kings 12:29-33).
Why did he do this? 1 Kings 12:26-27 tells us that Jeroboam’s motivation was fear. He was afraid that if the people under his rule continued to travel to Jerusalem to worship, they would eventually reunite with the southern tribes and reject him as king. So Jeroboam created an alternative. And he told his people that, instead of having to go all the way to Jerusalem, they could worship God at one of the two new sites he created, one at either end of his kingdom.
Notice what Jeroboam told the people here. You don’t have to go all the way to Jerusalem to worship. You can stay closer to home, where it is more convenient. Easy and convenient has a lot of appeal to most of us. The problem with Jeroboam’s reimagining of God is that God considered it as idolatry, the worship of a false god, and he was judged accordingly.
Reimaging God
This makes me wonder how often we reimagine God today as a golden calf. When I serve a god who requires little of me, am I serving the God of the Bible? Or a golden calf? Do I take to heart the instructions that Jesus and His apostles gave us concerning discipleship? Or do I water them down to make it easier?
It is worth considering if we are truly worshipping and serving the God of the Bible. Or a golden calf disguised as an imitation of God.
