The Migraine Committee (Part B)

The historian is taking a sarcastic shot at them. He's calling them kids, these kids. Now, it's an insult. If you were 40 years old and somebody said, what are you, a kid?

What are you, you don't know any better? Not a flattering, and it's not uncommon in the Old Testament. Amongst the prophets, in the historical writings, sarcasm is a tool. God Himself, keep on hearing, keep on listening. God says, see what happens to you. I mean, this is, sometimes it's what it takes if you can't reach the lost.

What advice do you give? How should we answer this people who have spoken to me saying, lighten the yoke which your father put on us? Well, what they should have advised them and said, look, Rehoboam, we go way back, we've been buddies for what, 35, 40 years? Why don't you listen to the elders? Look at the kingdom.

They had a big say-so and Jerusalem is the center of the world right now. Why don't we listen to them? No, that's not what they say. They're obligated to resist the elders. Again, Proverbs 1-5. Now, I've translated this from the Martian into English. A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel.

Yeah, unless your name is Rehoboam, and there have been many Rehoboams ever since. A. W. Tozier talks about, he went to hear a sermon, and he was talking about, well, in fact, you just get one nugget from a sermon. You know, that's a lot. I'll take that. And he says, I don't remember the preacher's name.

I wish I remembered. I'd give him credit for this saying. But Tozier writes, this is what he got. He says, listen to no man who fails to listen to God. Well, that registered with Tozier.

We know this. I mean, even the Proverbs, go from the presence of a foolish man when you do not perceive in him the lips of knowledge. But still, to hear it from another, it just strikes a chord.

And it did with Tozier, so much so it ends up in his book, The Root of the Righteous. And then he goes on to say, now this is really good. I couldn't say it this good, but I could say it. But then I'd be charged with being, well, that's just you because you'll be all like anything. And I really don't like that.

I like the old Puritan Richard Baxter. He said, everything is wrong till God sets it right. And I believe that. I mean, when you tell me, hey, there's a new thing out in the church. Well, we're going to take that to the Bible and see if God says it's a good thing or a bad thing. But I'm not jumping on that just because it's on Christian radio.

Well, here's the word from Tozier. In any group of 10 persons, at least nine are sure to believe that they are qualified to offer advice to others. And in no other field of human interest are people as ready to offer advice as in the field of religion and morals. Yet, it is precisely in this field that the average person is least qualified to speak wisely and is capable of the most harm when he does speak.

Leave it to Tozier to insult guilty people. For this reason, we should select our counselors carefully and selection inevitably carries with it the idea of rejection. So if you say, you know, I'm going to listen to you, that means you're going to also have to say you're not going to listen to somebody else who has a different opinion. So be ready for that. And then he finishes, he buttons this.

Actually, the section I have in my notes on my computer, it's almost a whole section that I've had to shrink it down because it's just so rich. Anyway, he says, true moral wisdom must always be an echo of God's voice. You just, you know, this is why, you know, my pastor, I don't know that he was the only one, he wasn't actually. Tozier was known as a modern-day prophet, not that he was opening up new information.

We don't need new revelations from God right now, we need fresh experiences in the existing revelations. Well, Tozier just had this ability to apply logic that was otherwise missed by a large majority of people, and here we have these counselors that think they're qualified to offer advice to others without any qualification. Rehoboam listened to men who had not listened to God. And of course, subsequent events prove that.

The whole future of Israel was adversely affected because of these headache-giving people. Again, Proverbs 14, 7, go from the presence of a foolish man when you do not perceive in him the lips of knowledge. You come across somebody and say, this guy, what is he talking about?

That's prosperity teaching. Well, that's Jehovah Witness jumbo-mumbo. You say, you know what, I'm not even going to stay around this. I'm going to go from the presence. Come out, come out, come out from them, Paul said.

Paul was so concerned about Christians who just, I fear that Satan is going to seduce you as he did with Eve. Well, it is especially important that young people learn whose counsel to trust. And if you have decent parents, most people that attend here, if not all, I think, among the youth do. But anyway, as youth, you've not been in the world long enough to get experience.

There's no shame in that. Experience comes from time, you know, flying hours. It's just no shortcut to experience, although some can pick up things faster than others, granted, but experience means you've been around a bit to take a couple of hits and come up with a response, a mental response. So, it's okay to look to others for advice, especially in the formative years. Independence from decent parents and decent elders, now this is important, I think, is not a virtue. It's not a virtue to be independent of decent people. It is a liability to be independent from them. Interdependence, that's the virtue. That's the whole meaning of the church, the body of Christ, where Paul says, listen, the eye and the hand have different functions, but we need them.

You know, the more private parts, you know, they're valuable, all they need to do is go wrong to remind you how valuable they are. Let's be careful about the difference between dependence and interdependence, and not saying you need to be dependent, interdependence. Okay, well, it is a virtue.

Interdependence is a virtue in this neck of the woods, in this life. You just, you go loony if you're not around people after a while. Look, I have a little light in my head that after I've spent so many hours with people, it comes on and says, get out immediately. Eject, eject, you've got to get away from them. It doesn't matter who it is. And I mean, it's expanded since I've been a pastor.

It used to be three minutes, but it's greatly expanded and I don't really have that too much now. I don't know where I was linking that to. Oh, so, but that doesn't mean that I want to be away from people and stay that way. After a while, you start getting lonely. Some get lonely, some just start getting kooky.

They can't, they skip the lonely, they go right to insanity. Anyway, verse 10, then the young men who had grown up with him spoke to him saying, 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 fingers shall be thicker than my father's waist. Why?

Why? I mean, this is insulting. It's not even, instead of just saying, no, you got to go ahead and say my little pinky is going to be so much more powerful and impressive to you than anything you've ever experienced. The young men here, in contrast to the elders of verse 6, again in their 40s, 40 years of developed arrogance and incompetence and it is all now on parade right before us. Youth cannot be blamed for this profound stupidity. You can't say, oh, they're just young kids. Why then does he say young men?

That's going to be good. Because the Hebrew word here, translated young men, is almost always described as a child, children, youngsters as a stretch. No age limit put on it, but it means a child.

When referring to Jeroboam back in chapter 11, as a young man that impressed Solomon, it's a different Hebrew word. Why not use that word for these men? It's more appropriate. Because these children who had grown up without maturing, the historian is taking a sarcastic shot at them. He's calling them kids, these kids. Now, it's an insult. If you were 40 years old and someone said, what are you, a kid?

What are you, you don't know any better? Not flattering and it's not uncommon in the Old Testament. Amongst the prophets, in the historical writings, sarcasm is a tool. God himself, keep on hearing, keep on listening. God says, see what happens to you.

I mean, this is, sometimes it's what it takes. If you can't reach the lost with sarcasm, it might stabilize those who are not, who are drifting, drifting away from what is right. About 300 years later, Isaiah will deliver this emphatic message in the third chapter.

I will give, God speaking through the prophet in Isaiah 3 verse 4, I will give children to be their princes and babes shall rule over them. Now, of course they're not little babies, you know, ruling, lifting up the rattler instead of the scepter. He's talking about the behavior of adults who are really not developed mentally, cannot do the job.

Not well, not in their favor. He goes on, Isaiah does. I said emphatic. Well, here's the emphasis.

That was verse 4, then verse 12, he comes back to it. As for my people, children are their oppressors and women rule over them. Oh, my people, those who lead you cause you to err and destroy the way of your paths.

That is sarcasm. He is telling that the people, your leaders are messed up. And that's what the historian is saying. These kids, these kids had grown up, but they're still kids. And these are the ones that spoke to Solomon with this gibberish, because you read this and you say, only a madman would have such a response. You can't write it off to say, well, the culture of that is nonsense. The elders called it right.

Look, lighten up on these guys. Arrogance. Let's define it. Having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities. The Bible would say it this way, self-exaltation.

Not those words, but the teaching. The dictionary leaves out the motive for arrogance in the heart, which is self-exaltation. I shall be like the Most High.

I shall exalt my stars with the Most High. I mean, that's arrogance. You have no right to think such a thing. You have not the capability. But yet, it doesn't stop you. And this is what the youth need to learn.

How to get the youth to be aggressive and confident without becoming arrogant. Others have done it. Non-Christians have done it. There are heroes out there that have excelled in sports and other fields who just had this confidence. They have scientists that just knew they could develop a cure or do this or that, and they have this confidence without arrogance. Not all of them.

But it is doable. Truth, wisdom, kindness, interdependence. All of those clash with arrogance. They don't mix with arrogance. Arrogance needs to bypass truth and wisdom and kindness.

And we're looking at them do that. They don't care about the truth. They don't care about the wisdom of the elders. They don't care about even being kind. They're being mean with their response.

Say, I'm my little pinky. The sole reason behind their having access to the King was the alumni. It's like, so well, we were in the military together. Yeah, well, that doesn't mean that all of a sudden everything's going to be just automatic. We went to the same school together.

We went to the same college together. It's practiced all the time. Merit is then bypassed.

Then cronyism takes the lead. These men were ill-suited for the task, but you couldn't tell them that. You couldn't tell their parents that. Here they were.

And Rehoboam, you know, it just gives you a headache, these people. The elders, when they heard this, could you just imagine the look on their face? Huh? No, come on. Stop kidding with me. This is a serious matter.

No, that's what they said. Well, anyway, back here to verse 10, saying, thus you should speak to this people who have spoken to you. No respect for these elders. And I think the historian is capturing that.

I would likely verbatim because these would be official records, and they would have been preserved at that time. But what did these kids know? I think they just felt part of it. Part of it was they felt obligated to resist the elders. You know, old school, what does it know?

Cronyism embedded them in the king's court, and therefore, you know, they must know what they're talking about. And so we say to the young believers, pick good friends and avoid the bad ones. It's not complicated. You won't miss out. Satan comes along and says, yeah, but you're not going to find anybody that says it's fun, or anybody that, to look up to this, it's a lie.

It is a lie. Use your Bibles. Don't just come to church and sit there and take notes, and that's it. It's got to get into your life.

It's got to show up. Again, 1 Corinthians, do not be deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits. And that's a lighter translation, you know. Don't be suckered.

Maybe that will stick better. Nobody likes to be cheated. I mean, if you went to the cash register, and when I grew up, there was such thing as cash. It was paper and coin. And if you were cheated a penny, it grated on you. I mean, it was a penny, but it was my penny. I don't know, maybe the rest of you had pennies. Pennies, I hate pennies.

They're useless anyway. Anyway, nobody likes to be cheated. And so when you read in the Bible of the promises of the lessons from God saying, do not be deceived.

Don't be cheated. My little finger is thicker than my father's waist. My finger is really not in the original Hebrew, but it is the obvious fit.

There are some theories on other things, but I'm not going to go into them because you just can't prove it. But it's probably a proverbial expression. My force is going to be greater than his force. My weakness is going to be stronger than his weakness. My pinky, you know, or my weakness is going to be stronger than his strength.

Because my pinky is stronger than his waist kind of a thing. Verse 11 now. And now, whereas my father put a heavy yoke on you, I will add to your yoke. My father chastened you with whips, but I will chasten you with scourges. So there's still the migraine committee telling the king what to say. It's unnecessarily harsh.

Why? It is especially important that young people learn whose counsel to trust and then to act on it. I have had the privilege of having many good counselors before I became a Christian. They just would take me under their wing.

It wasn't just because, you know, hey, we like you. You've got to earn it. I was a hard worker, even if I didn't know what I was doing all the time. I worked hard and I submitted to the authority. The military put that into me. Take an order.

I don't mean like two fries and a burger kind of an order. And they saw that and they just zoomed in on me. I wasn't the only one, but there were many others they did not. So, and I like to say, one thing I really admire about my time in boot camp is that nobody ever asked me my opinion. Not once.

Not without a set up. I mean, they might have asked something like, what do we got here, Prive? And that was a bomb coming. But anyway, I love that and there's nothing wrong with it. Don't be so thin-skinned and offended.

Take good advice. 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. Psalm 1, right at the beginning, the first Psalm is watch out who you go with. The first verse of the first Psalm is watch who your friends are. Rehoboam walked in the counsel of the ungodly and a lot of people paid. And we haven't even gotten to that yet. Verse 12. So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day as the king had directed, saying, come back to me the third day. Now remember, what we got was just the cronies telling the king what to say and puppet king that he was, not even a good sock puppet, or you know, your hand.

He's just terrible. So we're going to be able to skip some of this because we've already covered it. Verse 13. Then the king answered the people roughly and rejected the advice which the elders had given him.

Now you know the historian is a little irked at all this too. Verse 14. And he spoke to them according to the advice of the kids, saying, my father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke, my father chastened you with whips, but I will chasten you with scourges.

Of course, when I said kids, that was an interpretive rendering. The Hebrew is children or child. Verse 15. So the king did not listen to the people, for the turn of events was from Yahweh, that he might fulfill his word, which Yahweh had spoken by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nabat, the Shilonite Ahijah the prophet, that is. And what verse 15 is saying in its Hebrew way is that God told you this was going to happen. He's not forcing anybody to do this. He just saw they were going to do this, and he is directing events.

He's still sovereign, still in control. This is what God said would happen, and here it is happening. So his arrogance, exasperated by inexperience, put those two together, made him weak and made a wreck of things. Proverbs 16, 18. Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. A haughty spirit is arrogance. It's the Bible's word for an arrogant spirit, which is the cause of so much sin in so many people.

No surprise to find totally unfit people get elected and unfit people voting for them to be elected. That's in the Bible, too. 1 Samuel 8, 18.

Samuel speaking. And you will cry out in that day because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, and Yahweh will not hear you in that day. Well, verse 16. Now when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, that's the northern tribes, that's all Israel, 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. They voted with their feet.

We're leaving. Solomon's first recorded decision, official decision, was wise with the baby and, you know, cut the baby in half and called the bluff. Rehoboam's first official decision, who announced that he was a fool, and for centuries, for centuries before the destruction of the Jewish temple by Nebuchadnezzar, the Jews considered the division of the nation the greatest tragedy in their history.

This one moment right here when they said, We're out. For 120 years, from Saul through Solomon, it was the United Kingdom, with its problems, but it was united. And they measured every calamity by this split. This became, you know, Isaiah talks about it in chapter 7, Ezekiel does it in chapter 37, because Ezekiel, much of his writings took place before the temple fell.

So this was a big deal. We're not living there to go through it. They were. Verse 17, But Rehoboam reigned over the children of Israel who dwelt in the cities of Judah. So that means there were those who relocated from the northern tribes or settled in Judah's area and they say, Ah, what is our family?

That's a political thing. We're staying here. And they were free to stay. Verse 18, Then King Rehoboam sent Adoram, who was in charge of the revenue, but all Israel stoned him with stones, and he died.

Therefore King Rehoboam mounted his chariot in haste to flee to Jerusalem. Whose bright idea was it to send such a high-level official, such a foolish assignment? You know, hey, they just rebelled. Let's send the IRS there.

I mean, it's the arrogance. Is he listening to his cronies still? What should we do?

Go get the money from him. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

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