Matins Devotion: August 31, 2026
When man wars against his neighbor, he’s always warring against God as well. We see this when Adam tells God “the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” He’s blaming Eve for his corruption, but is ultimately blaming the God who gave the woman to him. We see this when Cain kills Abel, not because he wants to punish Abel for offending him, but because he wants to punish God for doing so. And we see the same thing with Jeroboam when he wars against Rehoboam. To prevent the people from returning to the son of Solomon, he entices them away from offering their sacrifices in Jerusalem. He builds two golden calves and declares, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.”
You don’t have to know your Bible all that well to hear something familiar in this language. He’s echoing the words that Aaron spoke when he led the people into great idolatry in the wilderness as Moses was up the mountain, an act that stoked the furious ire of God. And so we see quite clearly what Rehoboam is doing. He could have picked a thousand different idols to craft to entice the people away from his rival king. But he chose the golden calves because he knew his true enemy was not the king of Judah, but the One who gave Rehoboam his kingdom. His enemy was God and he wanted to rub his rebellion in that God’s face.
So it is with all sin. We speak harsh words to people not just because we want to hurt them, but because we want to hurt the God who told us to love them as ourselves and to humble ourselves for them. We lie about others not just to tear down their reputations but to wave our knives at the God who refuses to love us more than such worthless souls. We betray people not just because we want them to feel the sting of abandonment but because we want God to feel the sting of us walking away from Him.
But thanks be to God that all of our sins have been destroyed by the One who waged a war of His own, not a war against men, and not a war against His Father, but a war against the devil. Thanks be to God that Jesus Christ gave us peace with each other by giving us peace with His Father. With His blood, He melted our golden calves into nothing. With his dying breath, He destroyed the weapons of war that we held in our hands. By forgiving our trespasses, He gave us peace with God. And through that same forgiveness, He gave us the right to be at peace with each other because every spear of sin that we hurled at each other has now been erased from existence.
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