Preached Sunday, November 14, 2010
from
1 Kings 12:1-24;14:21-31
Theme: The story of Rehoboam shows us the dangers of not preparing our heart to seek the Lord.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
As we continue our study this morning of the Kings of Judah, we come to the Bible’s story of King Rehoboam, the son of King Solomon. And with Rehoboam, we also come to a great turning point in the history of God’s chosen people. It was through the actions of Rehoboam that the nation—formerly united during the reigns of King David and King Solomon—became divided between the kingdom of Israel in the north, and the kingdom of Judah in the south.
The sad story of this division is the legacy of Rehoboam’s reign. But what’s even more sad—and most instructive to you and me today—is the spiritual legacy that the Bible attributes to him. It’s summed up for us, at the end of the story of his life, in these words from 2 Chronicles 12:14— “And he did evil, because he did not prepare [or “set” or “fix”] his heart to seek the LORD.”
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Before we delve into the story of Rehoboam himself, let’s take a moment to think about those words, and what it means to “prepare” one’s heart “to seek the Lord”. It’s an important concept; because it’s one of the distinguishing marks of a genuine man or woman of faith.
To “seek the Lord” doesn’t mean that the Lord is somehow missing from our view, and that we need to search for where He is. Rather, it means that—as an act of our own will—we sincerely delight in God and earnestly pursue His revealed purposes for our lives. It means that we are so transformed by His love for us—and that we so love Him in return as our chief good—that we set our own agenda aside, actively pursue His will, and give ourselves to Him for His use in bringing His agenda to pass. It’s not an expression of mere outward religiosity, but rather a passion of the inner man—a matter of the heart. To “prepare” one’s “heart” to seek the Lord involves a conscious, decisive, persistent resolve of the inner man to put the Lord first in our lives, to yield ourselves to His revealed will, and obey Him at His call.
I suggest that a good way to understand this would be to think of what the Bible said about godly Ezra—a great Old Testament hero of faith through whom God brought about a great revival among the Jewish people. The Bible tells us the secret to his great usefulness to God when it says;
For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel (Ezra 7:10).
As was true of Ezra, to ‘prepare our hearts to seek the Lord’ is to deliberately and joyfully devote ourselves to study God and His ways as they are revealed in His authoritative word, to make it our heart commitment to trust Him and do what He says, and to exalt Him by declaring Him and His ways to others. It’s a decision of the will that we make, and that we maintain, in advance—that is, that before the challenges and tests of life come upon us—that this is what we will be and do. To fail to fix our hearts to God and His purposes in this way is to be what Paul described in Ephesians 4:14—”children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.”
Many a professing Christian, who started out well in the Christian life, suffered shipwreck in later years because they did not—as an act of the will, and in spite of the challenges they may face—set themselves to follow God’s will in this way. They either ended up enthroning their own will in the place of God’s will, or allowing themselves to be passively shaped by the circumstances and sinful influences of this world.
And I suggest that the danger that comes from failing to ‘prepare our hearts to seek the Lord’ is the great lesson that God wants us to learn from the life of King Rehoboam.
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The circumstances behind Rehoboam’s story have their roots in the spiritual failure of his great father, King Solomon. Solomon had disobeyed God and had married many foreign women from the pagan nations that had surrounded Israel; and they turned his heart after the worship of false gods. As a result of Solomon’s unfaithfulness, God told him that he would lose ten of the twelve tribes of Israel. He said;
“Because you have done this, and have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. Nevertheless I will not do it in your days, for the sake of your father David; I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However I will not tear away the whole kingdom; I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of My servant David, and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen” (1 Kings 11:11-13).
In other words, ten of the twelve tribes would be given to his “servant” during the reign of his “son”. The “son” who would suffer these losses was Rehoboam. And the “servant” to whom the ten tribes would be given was a man named Jeroboam.
Jeroboam was an Ephraimite who had become one of Solomon’s trusted servants and an officer over Solomon’s labor force. One day, a prophet of God named Ahijah took a walk with Jeroboam. Ahijah was wearing a new garment; and at a certain point, the prophet stopped, tore the garment he wore into twelve pieces, handed ten pieces over to Jeroboam, and said, “Take for yourself ten pieces, for thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: ‘Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give ten tribes to you . . .'” (v. 31).
King Solomon heard about what the prophet had told Jeroboam—that He would take ten of the tribes from Solomon’s son and give them to Jeroboam. And even though he knew that this was what the Lord had purposed to do, Solomon sought to kill Jeroboam. So, Jeroboam fled from him, and hid in Egypt until Solomon’s son Rehoboam ascended to the throne.
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All of this gives us the necessary background to understand Rehoboam’s story. It was God’s sovereign purpose to take ten of the twelve tribes away from the son of Solomon in punishment for Solomon’s unfaithfulness and give them to Jeroboam—and yet keep true to His promises to Solomon’s father David, “for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen” (11:13). But Rehoboam’s great flaw in it all was that, though all this was settled in the purpose of God, he himself “did evil, because he did not prepare his heart to seek the LORD” (2 Chronicles 12:14).
So then; let’s follow Rehoboam’s story and learn the lessons God wishes to teach us from it. As we do, we discover—first—that one of the things that happens to us when we choose not to prepare our hearts to seek the Lord is that . . .
1. WE LISTEN TO AND FOLLOW BAD ADVICE (12:1-17).
When we refuse to set God and the wisdom that He reveals to us in His word as a first priority in our hearts, and when we do not devote ourselves to obediently follow that wisdom when He shows it to us, we open ourselves up to the bad advice of the ungodly people of this world—and we suffer the consequences as a result.
That was what happened to Rehoboam. The Bible tells us that, after his father Solomon died, all Israel had gathered together at Shechem to make him king. And, as it turns out, Jeroboam was also in the crowd. Many of the people of Israel had called Jeroboam from Egypt to be their representative in presenting their grievances to Rehoboam. Jeroboam had—we might say—become ‘the poster boy’ for their case against Solomon’s harshness. And so, Jeroboam and the people said, “Your father made our yoke heavy; now therefore, lighten the burdensome service of your father, and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you” (1 Kings 12:4).
Now personally, I wonder just how accurate their complaint was. After all, the Bible tells us that, under Solomon’s rule, “Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and rejoicing” (4:20); and that they all “dwelt safely, each man under his vine and his fig tree” (4:25). It may be true that Solomon demanded much from his people at times; but it seems that they also ignored the astonishing benefits of his rule. But in any case, this was their complaint. And Rehoboam told them, “Depart for three days, then come back to me” (v. 5).
This three-day waiting period gave Rehoboam time to think carefully about his answer. And we’re told that the first thing he did was to consult with the older, more experienced advisors who had served under his father Solomon’s rule. “Who do you advise me to answer these people?” he asked them (v. 6). And from the abundance of the wisdom that old age and administrative experience provided, they told him, ““If you will be a servant to these people today, and serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever” (v. 7).
As Rehoboam’s father Solomon once said, “Where there is no counsel, the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14). So, Rehoboam did right in seeking counsel. You and I, by the way, should learn from this that, when faced with a difficult decision, we should hold-off until we have sought the advice of older, godly, more experienced saints. And what’s more, the advice that these elders gave was sound wisdom from the Holy Spirit; because as Solomon also said, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1). Perhaps in the grace of God, if Rehoboam had properly prepared his heart in the first place, he would have followed their wise, biblical advice; and things might have gone far differently for him.
But instead, Rehoboam did what so many people do—he ‘counsel-surfed’. The advice he got from the elders wasn’t the advice he wanted to follow; so, we’re told that “he rejected the advice which the elders had given him, and consulted the young men who had grown up with him, who stood before him” (v. 8). These were probably not “young men” in age—because Rehoboam was forty-one-years-old at this time, and they had grown up with him. But they were certainly “young” in comparison to those whose advice he had just rejected; and they were probably more than a little bit “childish” in their thinking. The advice they gave was utterly foolish, disrespectful to the people, and flatly contrary to what God had revealed to Solomon. They said;
“Thus you should speak to this people who have spoken to you, saying, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you make it lighter on us’—thus you shall say to them: ‘My little finger shall be thicker than my father’s waist! And now, whereas my father put a heavy yoke on you, I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges!’” (vv. 10-11).
That’s what these young men advised Rehoboam to say. And three days later, Jeroboam and the people came back before Rehoboam. We’re told;
Then the king answered the people roughly, and rejected the advice which the elders had given him; and he spoke to them according to the advice of the young men, saying, “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges!” So the king did not listen to the people; for the turn of events was from the LORD, that He might fulfill His word, which the LORD had spoken by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat (vv. 13-15).
God’s sovereign purposes to punish Solomon would surely stand. But Rehoboam, nevertheless, was responsible for having rejected the voice of wisdom, and turning instead to the foolish counsel of the ungodly. And the results of his folly were sadly predictable:
Now when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king, saying:
“What share have we in David?
We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.
To your tents, O Israel!
Now, see to your own house, O David!”
So Israel departed to their tents (v. 16).
How stupidly Rehoboam behaved! How foolishly he spoke! And this was no small matter; because ten of the twelve tribes went into rebellion against ‘the house of David’ from that day forward. Rehoboam had let the largest share of his father’s kingdom slip through his fingers; and all because he rejected sound wisdom, and listened to—and followed—bad advice instead! This is what can happen to us when we do not prepare our hearts in advance to seek the Lord!
As Psalm 1 says;
Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.
The ungodly are not so,
But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the ungodly shall perish (Psalm 1).
May God help be a people who set our hearts—now! today!—to “delight” in the law of the Lord and to “meditate” on it day and night; so that we will not listen to or heed the counsel of the ungodly—and thus suffer loss in the future!
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So; that’s one thing that Rehoboam’s experience teaches us. When we do not prepare our hearts to seek the Lord, we listen to and follow the bad advice of the ungodly people of this world—and suffer the consequences as a result.
But another thing his experience teaches us is that, when we don’t set our hearts right . . .
2. WE WASTE OUR RESOURCES IN FRUITLESS ENDEAVORS (12:18-24).
When we do not set our hearts to make God’s expressed will the first priority of our lives, we end up seeking to bring our own agenda to pass—sometimes even in open violation to what God Himself has said. We resort to our own vain efforts to retrieve—in our own power—what we never would have lost if we had just obeyed God’s word in the first place. Some people, because they never prepare their hearts to seek the Lord—end up spending their whole lives hitting brick walls.
This, too, is what happened to Rehoboam. After the ten northern tribes rejected him and went their way— the very people God had said He would take away from him—Rehoboam sent his secretary of revenue, a man named Adoram, to to collect taxes from them. You can imagine how that went over! We’re told that, in response to Adoram’s visit, “all Israel stoned him with stones, and he died. Therefore King Rehoboam mounted his chariot in haste to flee to Jerusalem” (v. 18). He lost the man in charge of his revenue; and only succeeded in hardening the hearts of Israel against the house of David, and in solidifying Jeroboam’s influence over them.
Then, after Rehoboam came back to Jerusalem, we’re told that “he assembled all the house of Judah with the tribe of Benjamin, one hundred and eighty thousand chosen men who were warriors, to fight against the house of Israel”, that he might restore the kingdom to himself (v. 21). Can you imagine the cost that must have been involved in raising such an army? And, what’s more, his actions—if they had succeeded—would have led to a dreadful civil war that would have been in clear violation of what God had already told him He purposed to do.
Mercifully, God sent a prophet to stop the king;
But the word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying, “Speak to Rehoboam the son of Solomon, king of Judah, to all the house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the rest of the people, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD: “You shall not go up nor fight against your brethren the children of Israel. Let every man return to his house, for this thing is from Me.”’” Therefore they obeyed the word of the LORD, and turned back, according to the word of the LORD (vv. 22-24).
How foolish it is to reject God’s wisdom; but how doubly foolish it is to suffer the consequences of our rejection, and then fight with God over the consequences! We only end up wasting ourselves in the effort. And yet, such constant, continual exercises in futility characterizes the whole lives of some who will not prepare their hearts to seek the Lord! As God said through His prophet Jeremiah;
For My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters,
And hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jeremiah 2:13).
May God help us to so set our hearts to seek the Lord that we don’t waste our energies on seeking ways around His will!
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Now; Jeroboam—the man to whom God gave ten of the twelve tribes—began to set up his rule over what Rehoboam had lost. But he was by no means a good man. In fact, he was a very ungodly man. He began to spread idolatry throughout the ten tribes. He rejected the priestly ministry of the tribe of Levi, built altars to false gods, and set up his own priesthood to serve his false religion. As a result of his idolatry, the priests and the Levites who were in the northern tribes left their lands and their possessions and came to Judah and Jerusalem.
These Levites, and those who came with them, were people who had “set their hearts to seek the Lord”. And their presence had a positive impact on Rehoboam and his kingdom. 2 Chronicles 11:16-17 tells us,
And after the Levites left, those from all the tribes of Israel, such as set their heart to seek the LORD God of Israel, came to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the LORD God of their fathers. So they strengthened the kingdom of Judah, and made Rehoboam the son of Solomon strong for three years, because they walked in the way of David and Solomon for three years (2 Chronicles 11:16-17).
But did you notice the words “for three years”? Their positive impact didn’t last very long. And this shows us one more lesson we learn from Rehoboam’s failure to fully prepare his heart to seek the Lord; and that is that, when we fail to do so . . .
3. WE EASILY WANDER AWAY FROM GODLY INFLUENCES (14:22-28).
In spite of the failures and losses at the beginning of his reign, those first three years—thanks to the godly influence of others—were prosperous. Rehoboam built up several cities for defense, made wise appointments for the leadership of his people, and acted prudently as a king.
But the influence of those who had set their hearts to seek the Lord couldn’t preserve the heart of a king who was not himself personally fixed on God’s purposes. Therefore, he didn’t continue to lead his people in God’s good ways. We’re told what the remaining fifteen years of Rehoboam’s reign looked like:
Now Judah did evil in the sight of the LORD, and they provoked Him to jealousy with their sins which they committed, more than all that their fathers had done. For they also built for themselves high places, sacred pillars, and wooden images on every high hill and under every green tree. And there were also perverted persons in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD had cast out before the children of Israel (vv. 22-24).
It even came about that, after the godly influences of others had ceased to have their impact, Rehoboam suffered even more humiliation and loss. We’re told,
It happened in the fifth year of King Rehoboam that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem. And he took away the treasures of the house of the LORD and the treasures of the king’s house; he took away everything (vv. 25-26a).
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What a sad legacy! And we’re not left to wonder why all this happened. God Himself has told us in His word why Rehoboam’s story went as it did—that “he did evil, because he did not prepare his heart to seek the LORD” (2 Chronicles 12:14).
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ; let’s not be like him. Let’s learn from the hard lesson of His life; and, while we can, make it our heart commitment to love the Lord God and His good ways for us, to trust fully in His Son Jesus Christ, to study and obey His word, and to faithfully declare Him and His good ways in this world. Let’s be a people whose conduct in this world shows that we have pledged ourselves to a different allegiance than the people of this world have. Let’s do as the apostle Paul has said;
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1-2).
Let’s prepare our hearts to fully seek our Lord!
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