1 Kings 14:8

Jeroboam worked hard, and that was commendable. But God looks for more than commendable human qualities. He looks at the heart and wants hearts wholly committed to Him.

There are two men whose walk in Old Testament days the Holy Spirit places in striking contrast. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, is one, and David is the other. Of the first we read that he was a strong and brave man. He worked hard, so Solomon gave him special authority. Of the second, in spite of personal weakness and failure, we are often told, he walked in the ways of the Lord, keeping His statutes and commandments. Jeroboam was brave and hard-working, yet he turned the people away from the centre God had appointed... The one who did not heed the Word of God sinned himself, and he turned others out of the way. The one who walked in God's statutes himself turned no one away from the established Centre, the place of Jehovah's name.

Just over five hundred years later, Jeroboam became king over the ten tribes of Israel. The Lord had said to him, "If you will listen to all that I command you, and will walk in my ways, and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did, I will be with you and will build you a sure house, as I built for David, and I will give Israel to you" (1 Kings 11:38). God promised Jeroboam this blessing if he sought the interests of Jehovah as David did. This was not beyond Jeroboam. God asked only what David had already shown.

"You have not been like my servant David, who kept my commandments and followed me with all his heart, doing only that which was right in my eyes" (v. 8). Could David have spoken this of himself? No — neither he nor any other man. But God had chastened him as a son whom one acknowledges, and the discipline had borne fruit. Because of his sacrifice, God was able to pass over the sin of His servant and never remember it again. He could look only at the fruit produced in David's heart — His own work, in which He could find pleasure.

Jeroboam had done without God. He despised Him as a useless object. And is it any different today? People do without God as if He were nothing. They push Him out of their lives, casting Him behind their backs so as to see Him no more. What they have in front of them is their own plans, their ambition, and their comfort. They do not think about what they have cast behind.

God had exalted Jeroboam and made him ruler over Israel, tearing the kingdom away from the house of David. Yet Jeroboam, unlike David, did more evil than anyone before him. He turned to idolatry of every form and rejected God's authority. So God would bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam.

David's greater Son is the perfect Pattern for faith today, and He could say, "I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love"; and to the believer it is written, "Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked" (1 John 2:6). No standard short of Himself is set before God's dear children now.