HOMILETICS OF 1 Kings 13:33-34
AN INVETERATE SINNER
I. That an inveterate sinner is indifferent alike to entreaty and warning. “After this thing Jeroboam returned not from his evil way.” There is something exceedingly obstinate and perverse, as well as blinding and infatuating, in idolatry. The gracious overtures of Jehovah through the prophet Ahijah (chap. 1 Kings 11:37-38), the prediction against the altar and the miraculous and awe-inspiring events in connection with it, sent as much in mercy as in anger, were surely sufficient to have affected and alarmed any heart not wholly and incorrigibly hardened: and yet they had no effect on Jeroboam! “All these wonderful accidents, as God’s hammers, did but beat upon cold iron.” This state of mind is not acquired all at once. It is the result of repeated rejections of God’s grace, of stifled convictions, and a love of sin for its own sake. An inveterate sinner is an occasion of sorrow to ministers, to angels, to God!
II. That an inveterate sinner adds to his guilt by a stolid persistency in the same course of iniquity. “But made again of the lowest of the people priests of the high places.” Among the worst of heathens, the priesthood was filled with respectable men: but Jeroboam made no discrimination. Any strolling vagrant who offered himself was accepted, irrespective of moral or intellectual fitness. The king became more and more careless as to the character and motives of the men he appointed. The spiritual office is put to shame if borne by men who make a traffic of religion, and are intent only on filling their own hands. Wicked men grow worse and worse, till they have filled up the measure of their sins, and so wrath come upon them to the uttermost (Revelation 9:21; Revelation 16:9; Revelation 16:11).
III. That an inveterate sinner will not escape the most complete punishment. “And this thing became sin unto the house of Jeroboam—even to destroy it from the face of the earth.” Sin will not always triumph. Its glaring abominations cry to heaven for vengeance; and that vengeance, though long delayed, will fall with terrible and desolating power. When neither the severity nor the patient long-suffering of his God brings to repentance a man who walks in evil ways, he is brought by his own sin under the sentence for the obdurate, namely, temporal and eternal ruin (2 Timothy 3:13; John 8:34).
LESSONS:—
1. Unrepented sin hardens the heart.
2. The goodness of God will not leave the most inveterate unwarned.
3. Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
1 Kings 13:33-34. Apparently the witness which the man of God bore, and the death which he died, were in vain. The destruction of an altar, and the withering of a hand which was cured again, were lessons soon forgotten. A law once broken, there must be continual new transgressions to justify the first. A superstition once established will go on increasing and multiplying itself. At last the sense of being under any authority will vanish almost wholly from the mind of the rebellious ruler. He will say—using the words in precisely the opposite sense to that in which they are used in the parable—“May I not do what I will with mine own?” As the necessary retribution for such a state of mind, he will become more and more a slave. The priests whom he has made will insist on ever higher prizes for their ignominious work. To soothe the fears which haunt him after the fear of a Righteous Being has been cast aside, he will ask those whom he has put in the place of his conscience what acts he must do that he may seem a religious man to them, possibly at last to himself.—Maurice.
—The means to strengthen or ruin the civil power is either to establish or destroy the right worship of God. The way to destroy religion is to embase the dispensers of it. This is to give the royal stamp to a piece of lead. It is a sad thing when all other employments shall empty themselves into the ministry; when men shall repair to it not for preferment, but refuge, like malefactors flying to the altars only to save their lives, or like those of Eli’s race (1 Samuel 2:36), that should come crouching and seeking to be put into the priest’s office that they may eat a piece of bread.—R. South.
1 Kings 13:33. Idolatry. I. An evil way. II. Delusive. III. Dangerous. IV. Corrupting. V. Leads to destruction.
—He exercised no discretion, but allowed anyone to become a priest, without regard to birth, character, or social position. We may suspect from this that the office was not greatly sought, since no civil governor who cared to set up a priesthood would wish to degrade it in public estimation. Jeroboam did impose one limitation, which would have excluded the very poorest class. The candidate for consecration was obliged to make an offering of one young bullock and seven rams (2 Chronicles 13:9).—Speaker’s Comm.
—The authoritative source of the ministry. I. Is not the will of the aspirant. II. Not the exigencies of a false religious system. III. Not the appointment of the crown. IV. But the call of God.
1 Kings 13:34. This persistence in wrong, after the warning given him, was such a sin as to bring a judgment, not only on Jeroboam himself, but on his family. Jeroboam’s departure from the path of right forfeited the crown (chap. 1 Kings 11:38), and in that forfeiture was involved naturally the destruction of his family, for in the East, when one dynasty supplants another, the ordinary practice is for the new king to destroy all the males belonging to the house of his predecessor.
—Diminution, disquiet, and desolation of families, is the fruit of sin. He promised himself that the calves would secure the crown to his family, but it proved they lost it and sunk his family. Those betray themselves that think by any sin to support themselves.—M. Henry.