This is a warning.
Rehoboam had been following the Lord. He had been obeying. He had been blessed because of the choices he was making.
And then the verse says it.
When he was firmly established and strong, he abandoned the Law of the Lord.
When things were finally good. When he was finally stable. When he finally had what he had been working toward. That is when he walked away.
That is so sad. And it is so real.
Because we do the same thing.
We cry out to God when we are desperate. We follow Him close when we have nothing. We pray hard when we are broke and scared and unsure of how it is all going to work out. And then He blesses us. He provides. He answers. We get the house. We get the job. We get the family. We get the stability.
And somewhere along the way, we forget who got us there.
We get firmly established. And we drift.
It does not usually happen all at once. It is slow. It is quiet. It is little choices that add up. We stop praying as often because we do not feel like we need to. We stop opening the Word because life is busy and good. We start trusting the systems we built instead of the God who built them.
And then one day we look up and realize we are not even sure when He stopped being the center of our life.
That is what happened to Rehoboam.
But the part that wrecks me even more is the next line.
And all Israel followed him in this sin.
He did not fall alone. He brought a whole nation with him.
That is exactly what we see today.
Famous preachers fall, and people get pulled into defending the fall instead of grieving it. Famous artists come out with sin, and the church takes sides. People line up behind the person they loved instead of behind the truth.
Established, strong, influential people abandoning the way of the Lord. And so many people following them in it.
It is not a new story. It is the same one over and over.
Which is why I keep coming back to this prayer.
God, please help me to be firmly established and strong in You. Not in anything else.
Not in my income. Not in my reputation. Not in my comfort. Not in my platform. Not in my marriage or my kids or my home or my health.
In You.
Because anything else I get established in will eventually try to replace You. That is just how it works. Whatever holds me up will start to feel like it is the thing I need most. And the moment I forget who is actually holding me up, I am one step away from drifting.
I do not want to be a Rehoboam.
I do not want to follow one either.
I want to stay close to God in the seasons of plenty the same way I clung to Him in the seasons of need.