A Note on This Message
Bishop Hudson opened by naming five points he intended to cover. Time ran out after the third point, "real authority submits to correction." Points four and five were not delivered in this message. What follows is a faithful account of the three points actually preached.
Sermon Notes
Scripture Reading: 1 Kings 12:32-33; 13:1-5; 13:31-32
King Jeroboam, ruling the northern kingdom of Israel, instituted his own festival and built an altar at Bethel, complete with a feast, a priesthood, and sacrifices, on a date of his own choosing. A man of God confronted the altar directly with a prophetic word of judgment. When Jeroboam reached out his hand to have the prophet seized, his hand withered on the spot and could not be drawn back; the altar itself split apart. Years later, at the end of his life, Jeroboam asked to be buried beside that same prophet, an acknowledgment that the word spoken against him would certainly come true.
Setting the Context: A Strategic, Not Accidental, Decision
Jeroboam knew exactly where the true altar was, the one Solomon had dedicated in Jerusalem, in the southern kingdom under King Rehoboam. Building a second altar at Bethel was not a mistake or an oversight. It was a calculated leadership decision: if his people kept traveling south to worship, their loyalty might travel with them, and his throne would not survive their departure. His real problem was never worship; it was security. This is the uncomfortable center of the message: this is not a story about outsiders to God's kingdom, but about God's own people and their own leader, in their own generation.
Point One: Leaders Can Build Out of Fear, Not Calling
There is a temptation for leaders to create structures, ministries, policies, or programs not because God asked for them, but to manage their own fear of losing position, relevance, or control. Jeroboam did not pray, ask God, or wait; he engineered a solution: a new feast, a new date, a new altar, with himself standing at it as king.
This is the "Bethel moment": the subtle shift from asking "What has God said?" to asking "What will keep this together?" The two questions can look nearly identical, but they are not. One flows from obedience; the other from fear. A structure, vision, or ministry can be built entirely from fear while still looking, from the outside, like devotion, whether that's an oversized event poster, an elaborate church name, or a striking hat worn to imitate someone else's ministry. The test is not whether it works, Bethel worked for a while. The test is whether it came from God, or from the fear of missing out.
Point Two: Self-Appointed Authority Can Look Exactly Like Devotion
Nothing about Bethel looked godless. It had a feast, a priesthood, a sacrifice, incense, every outward form of true worship. The only thing missing was a word from God authorizing any of it. Jeroboam did not abandon God outright, which would have been the more obvious danger. He kept the form of worship but discarded its source. This is described as more dangerous than obvious sin, because a convincing, well-built structure rarely gets questioned. It reveals itself not as compromise but as competence: an impressive ministry, business, or reputation that no one thinks to examine underneath.
A sobering warning follows: the gifts of the Spirit are irrevocable. A person can be genuinely Spirit-filled, speaking in tongues, prophesying, operating in real gifts, and still quietly become a master of their own agenda, deceiving others precisely because the gifts remain active regardless. The presence of spiritual gifting is not, on its own, proof that a structure is from God.
Point Three: Real Authority Submits to Correction
God did not wait for Bethel to fail before speaking; the prophetic word came while the altar was still burning and worship was still taking place. Significantly, what brings judgment in this account is not Jeroboam's original fear-driven decision to build the altar, that mistake had already been made. What withers his hand is his reflex to silence the word that confronted it. The deeper sin was not the wrong building; it was the refusal of correction once it was built.
This raises a direct question for anyone in a position of influence, whether formal leadership or simply the quiet influence held over children, neighbors, or a workplace: can you still be corrected? Not when you were young and easily corrected, but now, with position, reputation, and visible blessing to protect. Building your life out of anxiety rather than discernment does not disqualify a person. What disqualifies is the response when the Holy Spirit speaks and no surrender follows.
Closing Challenge
Every believer carries some form of leadership, whether recognized by title or simply observed by others: a neighbor watching how you live, children watching how you walk with God, colleagues watching how you carry yourself. The invitation at the close of this message was direct: examine which structures in your life exist because God said to build them, and which exist because you were afraid of what might happen without them. Whatever the answer, the door remains open to say, "I don't want to live my life out of fear. I don't want to lead out of fear. I want to do all of this because You called me to it, not because I was afraid of losing it."
PIWC-Takoradi Sunday Service
