1 Kings 14:16

The Lord would shake Israel so hard that He would uproot them from the land He had given to their fathers. He would scatter them beyond the river (Euphrates), because Israel's idolatry had provoked His fierce anger. Israel would be given up because of the sins of Jeroboam who made Israel sin. God's unsparing anger and vengeance against Jeroboam's sin stood in great contrast to Ahijah's first message to him.

Could David have spoken like this of himself? No — neither he nor any other man. But God had disciplined him as a son whom one acknowledges, and the discipline had borne fruit. … But to Jeroboam He says: "But you have done evil above all who were before you and have gone and made for yourself other gods and metal images, provoking me to anger, and have cast me behind your back." Jeroboam had done without God, had despised Him as a useless object. And is it any different today? Man does without God as with a quantity that counts for nothing. He banishes Him from his life, casting Him behind his back so that he sees Him no more.

Jeroboam stands out prominently in the Old Testament as the great division maker. Under him the great mass of God's people, ten of the twelve tribes, broke away from God's centre at that time. Like a death knell, these sad words with which the Spirit marks out this man are repeated again and again, "Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin."… Personal sins are bad enough, but to turn away God's people from the centre which He has set up — what could be worse?

It would have been well for Jeroboam if he too had listened to God's messengers. The God of Israel could have blessed him and his descendants (one of whom, his son Abijah, seems to have shown great promise), and he would never have deserved that terrible description, the man "that made Israel to sin." But the promises of God were not enough for this man. He reasoned on a purely human level.

But God must judge the people too. It is not only because the king had led them astray, but because they had themselves sinned: "they have made their Asherim, provoking the LORD to anger." God judges them by the principle set out in Romans 5:12: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned."

Jeroboam was to learn that his disobedience to God did not only affect himself. It affected his whole family while he was living, and the welfare of his family after he died. It also affected the nation he ruled, both while he ruled and for many years afterward. This is surely a striking illustration of the truth that none of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself. Our influence is a far more serious matter than we generally think.