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.” Then this thing became a sin, for the people went as far as Dan to be before one. 1 Kings 12:28-30 ESV
Through the Bible: 1 Kings 12-14
On my last trip to Israel, I visited Tel Dan in the northernmost part of the country. There we walked to the site of Jeroboam’s altar, mentioned in 1 Kings 12. Archaeologists have erected a metal framework to help visitors visualize its original size. It must have been an impressive sight.
1 Kings makes it pretty clear what Jeroboam’s motivations were for building an altar. He was afraid that if people continued to go to Jerusalem three times a year for the annual feasts, he would lose control over them (v 26).
So notice how he sells the people on his alternative altar: “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough” (v 28).
It occurred to me that Jeroboam didn’t make a command. He didn’t forbid the people from going to Jerusalem. Instead, he created a more convenient alternative—one carefully designed to keep their hearts, and their allegiance, in the northern kingdom.
I can imagine the sales job: “Aren’t you tired of having to pack up your whole family three times a year and going all the way to Jerusalem? It’s a long journey, filled with peril. Wouldn’t you rather stay home? After all, it doesn’t really matter where you are worshiping, so long as your heart is in the right place, right?”
So Jeroboam builds a substitute altar. He appoints substitute priests. He creates a substitute feast week, “after the day he devised in his own heart” (v 33).
He did this not just in one place, but in two. And the people flocked to these altars (see verse 30). They seem to have loved getting six weeks of their lives back. It’s easy for me to imagine them saying, “This is so much easier! I can just stay home and worship. I don’t have to worry about getting the kids ready. I don’t have to fight the traffic. I’m still worshiping, right?
Sound familiar? Ever since Covid, many Christians have discovered that it is possible to watch church from the couch. For those who are sick, homebound, traveling, or otherwise unable to gather, technology can be a genuine blessing. But it can also tempt us toward the same logic Jeroboam offered: “Why make the trip when there is an easier option?”
For Israel, there was just one little problem. Maybe because it was just so convenient, the people didn’t seem to notice…
- That the priests weren’t Levites, like they were supposed to be (verse 31; see also Numbers 8).
- That the feast week wasn’t on the fifteenth day of the SEVENTH month, like Leviticus 23:39 specifies. It’s a month later (v 32).
- That there was a FREAKING GOLDEN CALF on the altar (verse 28). Did they learn NOTHING from their own history (see Exodus 32)?!?
This is what happens when we decide we can approach God on our own terms. In yesterday’s post, I talked about the temptation of compromise (see Woe to You, Chorazin!). Today, we saw what happens when we yield to the temptation of convenience. We neglect the object of our worship when we start rearranging it because of what is convenient to us.
The sin of Jeroboam was deciding that worship could be redesigned according to human preference. Once that decision was made, everything else followed: substitute priests, substitute feasts, substitute altars, and eventually substitute gods.
It was never supposed to be about what fits our schedules, or which church in our town has the most to offer our family, or what church is most convenient to our neighborhood.
Convenience is not necessarily wrong. But when convenience becomes the controlling factor—when we are willing to compromise biblical worship in order to make life easier—we are walking the same road Jeroboam paved.
And at the end of that road, there’s an altar. And sitting on the altar is a golden calf.
Its name is convenience.
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