The golden calf at Tel Dan...

*Taken from my journal on 01/22/09 when we visited Tel Dan. Following the split of the kingdom of Israel into the northern and southern kingdoms, Jeroboam placed a golden calf here for the people to worship. He did this to keep them from going to Jerusalem to worship God because he feared losing them to Rehoboam.*

Today we went to Tel Dan and saw the very place where Jeroboam placed the golden calf. For a people marked by the distinction of being God’s own, a people brought together by Him alone, how could idolatry ever become an issue? It’s shocking that a leader would allow it, much less encourage it. So how did it come to be? How did they fall so low?

I think we are just now beginning to understand the danger of competing for God’s people. A generation of famous and fallen pastors has shown us the destruction that comes when we seek to glorify our own names. It seems that the trouble starts when we seek to be “better than”. Whether we wish to solve the problems of the previous generation or avoid the flaws of leaders and companions who’ve disappointed us, we find ourselves in a mess when we hold ourselves up to any standard but God’s approval alone.

We are often blind to our own flaws and full of our own virtues. Because we are doing better than so-and-so in such-and-such way, we imagine that we are doing well. I think that’s how Israel falls to idolatry, how pastors become thieves and adulterers. We were so busy trying to beat Rehoboam and so excited to be winning in that way, we forgot to please the Lord and didn’t realize how far we’d fallen.

The golden calf of Tel Dan… quite a warning against building our own kingdoms.