Hope From the Word

Bill Luebkemann: If that's the way you run your life, go around asking for advice, pretending that it really matters that you're asking somebody for advice, but really you're just shopping around for somebody to confirm what you want to do anyway, so that when you get it, you can feel good about doing what you were going to do anyway, just don't even bother asking for the advice. Just do what you were going to do anyway and still get yourself into trouble.

And that's what Rehoboam did. He was shopping around for an answer that would make him feel good, maybe so that he could blame somebody else if it went wrong or maybe so that he would just feel right.

Guest (Male): Hello and welcome to Hope From the Word from Calvary Chapel of Marlton. Today we're looking at Rehoboam, who was a king who made a mistake that cost him dearly. From the rich and powerful to the everyday folks, everyone makes mistakes.

In 1 Kings chapter 12, the nation of Israel is in jeopardy because of the power decision making of its leaders. And yet God is still at work. Let's join Pastor Bill Luebkemann as he begins in 1 Kings chapter 11 and we'll see how God works even through our mistakes.

Bill Luebkemann: Chapter 11, verse 28. "Now Jeroboam was a man of standing, and when Solomon saw how well the young man did his work, he put him in charge of the whole labor force of the house of Joseph." So he was an important guy. He was involved in the kingdom, he had a leadership role, and Solomon recognized what an important guy he was.

And about that time, Jeroboam was going out of Jerusalem, and Ahijah the prophet of Shiloh met him on the way wearing a new cloak. The two of them were alone out in the country, and Ahijah took hold of the new cloak he was wearing and tore it into 12 pieces. Then he said to Jeroboam, "Take 10 pieces for yourself, for this is what the Lord the God of Israel says. 'See, I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon's hand and give you 10 tribes. But for the sake of my servant David and the city of Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, he will have one tribe. I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites and Molek the god of the Ammonites.'"

Look, the operative phrase here is that God was going to do this. I, God, God speaking here. "I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon's hand and give you 10 tribes." Now Jeroboam didn't feel like waiting, so Jeroboam decided to try to lead a revolt here because we saw that up in verse 26. "Jeroboam son of Nebat rebelled against the king."

And what happened is, it tells us that in 26, and then the remaining verses are the story that led up to it. So this guy was told by a prophet of God that God is going to take 10 pieces of the 12 of the kingdom and give it to him. And so what does he do? He doesn't wait for God to do it. He leads a revolt to try to get it himself. Impatient, in a hurry, decides to help God out.

And what does he get out of it? Solomon tries to kill him, and he winds up running off to Egypt for safety. Now we're going to see in chapter 12 the fulfillment of the prophecy. The prophecy was still going to come true. God was going to do it. He didn't need Jeroboam's help. And I'm not going to go into a long bunny path here, but we talked last week about how David patiently waited for God to take the kingdom from Saul and give it to David.

He could have rebelled against Saul many times. He had the opportunity to kill Saul, strike him dead. Saul was there sleeping, David snuck up on him, could have cut his head off, he would have been king. David didn't do it. He waited for God to bring it about. And how many times we try to accelerate God's plan in our own life by bringing things about ourselves, forcing the issue rather than letting God work through His Holy Spirit on His timetable?

And that's what this guy was doing here. He decided, well, if God's going to do that, maybe God needs a little help. Abraham's another guy who did that. God promised Abraham a son. His son wasn't coming, wasn't coming, wasn't coming. He was 90 years old. His wife said, "Hey, maybe you should sleep with one of my helpers here, one of my maidens, because frankly, nothing's happening here."

And he had an illegitimate child when the child of promise, Isaac, came some 10 or 15 or so years later because he didn't want to wait. He was in a hurry. He ran out of patience. And we see in the Bible many times people didn't wait for God to do what He was going to do, what He promised to do. It seems like their patience ran out. Maybe they waited and waited and waited some more and they thought, "I just can't stand it, I just can't wait anymore, I just don't know when God's going to bring this about. How much longer do I have to wait? How much more patience do I have to have? How many more years is this going to take before God brings it about? I can't stand it anymore. I gotta do something about it."

Abraham was 90 years old. If anybody could have been forgiven for saying that, it would have been him. And here was the guy that messed up the whole plan of God there, or hijacked it or whatever, and could have just been a little more patient and then he would just have had one son instead of a legitimate son and an illegitimate son. He still had the legitimate son. The child of promise, Isaac, still was born right on schedule. God's plan still happened.

But he had the illegitimate son as well. And here this guy Jeroboam here trying to hijack God's plan, rebel against Solomon because he gets this prophecy that he's going to get the kingdom. So, oh, God must want me to take it. Well, that's not what the prophet said. The prophet said, "I'm going to give you the kingdom." He didn't say you should go and take it.

And we're going to see now Solomon died at the end of chapter 11, and here's where Jeroboam gets to be the king. So Solomon died, Rehoboam is the son of Solomon. Now it's interesting, Solomon had 700 wives, 300 concubines. Wouldn't you think he had more than one son? But only one son named in the Bible, Rehoboam. Only one son. Isn't it interesting? Sin begets more sin. And the best the guy can do, this guy with all this wisdom, the guy that had more wisdom than anyone else, the wisest guy around who gets tripped up with all these women, manages to have only one son whose name is worth mentioning in the Bible, and even this one is a fool as we'll see.

And the rest of his sons are so, must be worse because we don't even know what their names are. So Solomon dies and Rehoboam is the supposed heir. In the natural sense, people looking at it think, well, here's his son. Maybe Rehoboam was the firstborn. I don't know. Maybe he was the son of the Egyptian wife, his first wife. Don't know that either. Maybe he was the one Solomon said, "I want him to be the king after me." Don't really know that. It doesn't really say. But he was the one that everybody thought would follow Solomon as the king, and who did follow Solomon as the king, but only over a portion of his kingdom.

Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all the Israelites had gone there to make him king. When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard this, he was still in Egypt where he had fled from King Solomon, he returned from Egypt. So they sent for Jeroboam and he and the whole assembly of Israel went to Rehoboam and said to him, "Your father put a heavy yoke on us. But now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you." Rehoboam answered, "Go away for three days and then come back to me." So the people went away.

Now here's the guy going to Shechem. I thought why don't they come to Jerusalem? That's the capital. Jerusalem's in the southern kingdom. Shechem was in the northern kingdom. And the northern kingdom is the part that Rehoboam lost. And one commentator that I read said, "Look, the northern kingdom is the part that he lost, and he was already beginning from a position of weakness. He had to go to them, they didn't come to him." They should have come to Jerusalem. Instead, he had to go up to Shechem.

And that's an interesting footnote. I don't know how much validity it has, but it's interesting. He went up to Shechem there, up meaning to the north. He went up to Shechem and that's where all the Israelites had gone to make him king. And I just am again puzzled why they didn't go to Jerusalem, which was the capital. But here you have Jeroboam son of Nebat still down in Egypt because he had fled from Solomon because Solomon tried to kill him because he had tried to accelerate God's plan by taking over the kingdom.

And word comes to him through his email account that Solomon is dead. And so he comes back from Egypt, figures he's safe now, he's not going to get killed. And they send for him, and he gathers together here, and they all gather together. And now I don't know if he's given up this idea of being king or not. Remember, he's got to be thinking in his head, hey, the prophecy was that I'm going to be the king. The prophecy was God's going to make me king. God's going to take away 10/12 of the kingdom and give it to me. And I tried to do it once and it didn't work out.

Maybe I better not try again. Maybe this guy's just waiting to see what God does. Maybe he thinks he blew his opportunity. Maybe he thinks because it didn't work out, it's not going to happen. It's kind of funny to think what was going through his mind. I don't really know what's going through his mind, but he's here with them. And he doesn't seem like he's demanding to be king here. He doesn't say, "The prophet told me I'm going to be king, so move over, Rehoboam, I'm taking over here."

He doesn't try to do it or anything. He's there with them and instead they just make a plea for a little bit of mercy. They say, "Your dad put a heavy yoke on us." This is what God told them when they wanted a king. If you dial back into the books of Samuel before they had a king, they said, "We want a king." "Why do you want a king?" "Everybody else has a king. We want a king, give us a king, everybody else has a king."

God said, "If you have a king, he's going to have an army, you're going to have to serve in his army." "We still want a king." "If you have a king, he's going to charge taxes, he's going to have forced labor." "No, we still want a king. You're going to have to pay taxes, be in his army, serve in forced labor, you're going to do all this stuff." "No, we still want a king, we want a king, we want a king."

Everything the Lord told them about having a king came true when they got a king, and it was worse with Solomon than with any previous king, which was Saul and David. Solomon charged them high taxes, had forced labor, all this kind of stuff, big army, there was a heavy yoke on them. But there was a difference now. Rehoboam wasn't Solomon. For whatever reason, he didn't have the charisma of his father, he didn't have the wisdom of his father.

It seems like they put up with this heavy yoke when his father was the king, but they didn't want to put up with it when he was the king. They served his father voluntarily, they managed to put up with it, they liked his father, Solomon did a lot for them, he was able to get away with it somehow. Rehoboam isn't going to get away with it. And they said, "Look, your father put this heavy burden on us, this heavy yoke, but lighten it. Give us a break. Lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us and we will serve you."

Just turn down the heat a little bit. Your father was pretty oppressive. Give us a little slack and you can be our king and we will support you and we'll be with you and we'll do everything for you and we're in your camp forever. And Rehoboam said, "Give me three days to think about it. Go away for three days and come back to me." So the people went away.

Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during his lifetime. "How would you advise me to answer these people?" he asked. They replied, "If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants."

He asked the elders, he went to his dad's advisors, the old geezers. He went to them, the guys that served his dad, the old guys, and he said, "What do you guys recommend?" And now here's a pool of guys that has wisdom. They've been in the business a long time. They're the seasoned bureaucrats, politicians, leaders, or what have you. And he says, "What do you think? What should I do here? How should I do this here? What do you say?"

And they said, "Be a servant to these people." What an idea. It's almost like they had read the New Testament. Remember, that's an idea that you can trace back to Jesus washing His disciples' feet, and you see the Lord almost being modeled here in this verse. Be a servant one to another. Be a servant, serve one another. Let the king serve them, and if you'll do that and if you'll serve them and give them a favorable answer, they'll be your servants forever. They'll be with you forever, they'll never give you up.

But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him. So he also had his younger set of advisors, the young hotshot kids who were his own age, that grew up with him. And he rejected the advice of the old guys before he even got the advice of the young guys. Look, I want you to see this very carefully here. He didn't get all the advice and weigh it out. He got the advice of the old guys and he rejected it before he even got the advice of the young guys.

See, he was shopping around for the answer he wanted. He already knew what he wanted. He already made up his mind what he wanted. He decided what he wanted to do. He was just trying to find somebody who would confirm his advice. Look, if that's the way you run your life, go around asking for advice, pretending that it really matters that you're asking somebody for advice, but really you're just shopping around for somebody to confirm what you want to do anyway, so that when you get it, you can feel good about doing what you were going to do anyway, just don't even bother asking for the advice. Just do what you were going to do anyway and still get yourself into trouble.

And that's what Rehoboam did. He was shopping around for an answer that would make him feel good, maybe so that he could blame somebody else if it went wrong or maybe so that he would just feel right or whatever. The Lord was in this whole thing, by the way. But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him.

He asked them, "What is your advice? How should we answer these people who say to me 'lighten the yoke your father put on us'?" What do you hotshot kids who were drag racing with me, what do you think I should do? How should we answer these people? And these kids who felt the power of serving the king, and they think, we have power now, we're in authority now, we can boss people around, we're in office now, we're the ruling party, the ruling class, we can do whatever we want here.

The young men who had grown up with him replied, "Tell these people who have said to you 'your father put a heavy yoke on us but make our yoke lighter', tell them 'my little finger is thicker than my father's waist'." Look, in other words, my father, you ain't seen nothing. My father was nothing compared to what I am. My father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips, I will scourge you with scorpions. In other words, pack it in, pal. You're going to see it even worse than you ever saw it.

Bad advice. Just really dumb, stupid advice from a bunch of hothead airheads. Their heads were full with hot air, not with brains. And the old folks gave him the right advice, the proper advice. If he had followed that, he would have had a bunch of loyal followers forever. But we're going to see the Lord was in this thing.

Three days later, Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam as the king had said, "Come back to me in three days." The king answered the people harshly, rejecting the advice given him by the elders. He followed the advice of the young men and said, "My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions."

So the king did not listen to the people, for this turn of events was from the Lord to fulfill the word the Lord had spoken to Jeroboam son of Nebat through Ahijah the Shilonite. So this was the outworking of God. This was God's will here, that the kingdom would be taken away from Rehoboam, that the people would revolt, that this guy Jeroboam would wind up being the king of 10 out of the 12 tribes.

And so God allowed this foolish guy Rehoboam, He allowed his hardened heart. God didn't make him do it, by the way, any more than He made Judas turn over Jesus to be nailed to the cross. Judas spent three years with Jesus, walked with Him, talked with Him, ate dinner with Him, got the same high-quality teaching that the other 11 apostles got, and at the end of it, he made his decision of what he was going to do about it. Did God know ahead of time what he was going to do? Yes. Did God make him do that? No. He knew in advance what Judas was going to do and he did it.

And this guy here, Rehoboam, he was a fool by his own choosing. But God allowed him to do this. God allowed it to happen in some way, his own foolishness working with God's will in a way that I believe we really can't understand this side of heaven, how God's sovereignty and our will work together. But they do somehow. But it was all to fulfill what the Lord had spoken to Jeroboam through that prophet back in chapter 11. "Now's the time." It wasn't the time back then when you revolted against Solomon. God didn't want it to happen during Solomon's lifetime. It was to happen after Solomon had died.

When all Israel saw that the king refused to listen to them, they answered the king, "What share do we have in David? What part in Jesse's son? To your tents, O Israel! Look after your own house, O David!" So the Israelites went home. But as for the Israelites who were living in the towns of Judah, Rehoboam still ruled over them. In other words, they said, "What connection do we have to David? What part do we have to this guy? He cut us off. We have no part in him. We're not connected to him. He doesn't care about us. Let's just go home and let's not be bothered. We're not part of this kingdom anymore. He's not looking after us. He's not going to serve us. We're not going to serve him. Let's just beat it and get out of here."

But the people living in the towns of Judah, Rehoboam ruled over them. Judah was where Jerusalem was, the southern part. Rehoboam had that kingdom, the southern part. But the northern part was all going to be under Jeroboam, as God had said.

King Rehoboam, he decided to ignore what was happening and enforce his idea here that his little finger was thicker than his father's waist, and he sends out this guy Adoniram. King Rehoboam sent out Adoniram, who was in charge of forced labor, but all Israel stoned him to death. So he sends out the guy, "Okay, go out and get me some forced labor from these people." And their reaction is they just kill the guy, stone him to death. And so he's not successful at that.

King Rehoboam, however, managed to get into his chariot and escape to Jerusalem. In other words, to put it in the Luebkemann paraphrase, he runs away. He gets his tail out of there and gets home to the safety of Jerusalem. And fortunately for him, they don't pursue him. So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day, the northern kingdom separated from the southern kingdom because of the foolishness of this guy.

When all the Israelites heard that Jeroboam had returned... And I shouldn't just say because of the foolishness of this guy, really because of the foolishness of Solomon and all he did to ruin his relationship with the Lord and serving of all those foreign gods in the later years of his life, God visited this catastrophe on his descendants.

When all the Israelites heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. Only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the house of David. So here the rest of the Israelites called Jeroboam down and said, "Look, we want you to be our king." And they made him the king just as God had prophesied through the prophet in the previous chapter. Now the guy's been made king. He didn't have to go out and lead a revolt. The people revolted on their own. Jeroboam had nothing to do with it. They made him king.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in the study of 1 Kings. You can hear this message or more Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann by going to ccmarlton.org. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. Or if you prefer to listen via podcast, you can find Hope From the Word wherever you find your podcasts.

We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 AM, and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00. To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link, ccmarlton.org.

And if you would, take a moment to write to Pastor Bill. It would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives. And we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. We'll continue our study of 1 Kings next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.