Bible in 90, Day 25: Stupid kids!

1 Kings 7-16

*image courtesy of jan-willem at www.sxc.hu

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you!”

How many times do we ignore this as kids?  How many times do we ignore it now?  We always think we know better.  And the younger we are, the more we think we know!

This was certainly true of Rehoboam.  Even though he was forty-one years old when he became king, he made a bone-headed move, typical of a man half his age (1 Kings 12).  He had just become king, and the people came to him seeking a bit of relief from the hard labor his father, King Solomon, had put them under.  Here was a great chance for the new king to gain favor in the sight of his people.  He consulted the elders, the men who had been Solomon’s advisers.  They counseled him to answer them favorably and so gain their allegiance.  He then made the mistake of rejecting this counsel and sought the advice of his friends.

Stupid move.

These were the guys he had grown up with.  These men were obviously not diplomats, or wise elders.  These were the guys he goofed off with all his young life.  They were not statesmen, they were not kings or king-makers, they weren’t even all that godly if we look at their response (check out the way some translations render 12:10! if memory serves me correctly, this is the gist of what they were saying! pretty crude).  These were the rough and tumble guys that had grown up as Rehoboam’s chums.  Not exactly the best place to go for godly counsel.  They give him terrible advice, and he follows it!  It goes quite badly for him, as you’ll remember, and ends up splitting the kingdom.

Thanks buddies!

One of the great ironies of all this is that, as we discussed yesterday, Solomon spent a lot of ink trying to teach his son to get wisdom (Proverbs 4:5, 7; 16:16; 23:23).  Obviously this pleading fell on deaf ears.  Perhaps this is why Solomon spent so much time reminding his son to get wisdom.  Perhaps he saw his foolishness early on in Rehoboam’s childhood.

But we do the same, don’t we?  We go to our friends “for advice” and really all we hope for is to hear what we have already decided to do.  Instead of seeking out those who have true wisdom, we go to those we know think like we do.  We may even read the Bible, but we bring our preconceived notions to it and read our desires into it instead of looking into the perfect law and letting it change our lives (James 1:22-25).

Instead, as we discussed yesterday, we should ask God for wisdom (James 1:5).  In addition, we should seek the counsel of godly people.  We younger folk need to be reminded that those older and more experienced than us have a wisdom we cannot yet even understand, a wisdom that comes from living life.  This is not to say that all older people are wise and all younger people are fools (1 Timothy 4:12).  Notice that we should seek the counsel of godly people.

Let us not be like foolish Rehoboam.  Let us seek wisdom from God and from those whom God has already gifted with wisdom through a long life of faithfulness to Him.  And then, by all means, let us heed this wisdom and not reject it!

• Sorry about yesterday’s post everyone!  I’m out of town for school this week and my wi-fi connection had a bad case of the hiccups last night.  I wrote the article for yesterday, pressed “Publish” and the only thing that made it was the title and the tags!  I’m going to go back and re-do it when I get back home and get a hardline connection again.