I would venture to say that most of our sins are what we would consider unintentional and even inadvertent. When we commit these types of sins, if we were asked whether we thought we were rebelling against God by doing them, we would vehemently deny. We might even say and believe that we were doing it for God.

And these “unintentional” or “inadvertent” sins occur usually when we value human opinion above that of God. King Saul’s sin was this type. He feared the people more than God and usurped God’s authority by taking a role of a priest. And in 1 Kings, we see another example of another king who was immensely blessed by God, but because of fear of men, compromised and rejected the call of God and lost everything as a result.

That man’s name was Jeroboam. He wasn’t in the line of David. But Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, was foolish and God, instead, gave the kingdom to Jeroboam, an immensely talented man. But rather than depending on God and following His word, Jeroboam decides that he needs to keep his popularity up among the people by building a competing altar near where he lived. In other words, he devised his own plan to keep himself in power rather than trusting God. And he did this by feigning spirituality. After all, he built an altar to the Lord for more people to be able to worship and sacrifice to God more conveniently. But this was clearly against the law of the Lord. And this causes God to reject Jeroboam as king of Israel.

His true motive was to stay in power. His justification would have been to help the people worship God better. And he might have sincerely believed that he was doing this for God. But it was sin nonetheless and was detestable before God.

How often, I wonder, we commit such a sin? Do we feign caring for our family and shun God? Do we convince ourselves that being happy in general is what God truly wants? Do we build our own kingdom while advertising to others that we are building God’s kingdom? Do we compromise with sin and call it freedom?

Ask God to reveal to you if you are doing this. I will do the same…

PH