Clough Manhood Series Lesson 36

Rehoboam: Discipline and the Family – 1 Kings 12; Proverbs 1:1-19

Tonight we continue in the study of the doctrine of the Christian man. We have looked at Solomon and David. We have noted how both Solomon and David showed characteristics which, when contrasted one to another show a certain picture and show an interesting principle about the male believer. One of those is the fact that David was able to concentrated on his objective, whereas if he would listen to the modern day Pharisees he would have long since been sidetracked. As we said last week, thank God CBS news wasn’t around to malign and criticize David, for they surely would have had a field day in criticizing some of his moves. But David was the kind of person, as is evidenced from the Psalms, who constantly prayed about the little twerps that were always criticizing him. And therefore he developed a sort of callousness as time went on toward all criticism and this was a weakness in his soul. But God commends him anyway because David went ahead with the objective; he did not listen to all the people who criticized, the reason, of course, being that David was grace oriented; he realized he made some very severe errors, very severe sins, but he did not permit those to get him down. He understood that God forgave him, and therefore he wasn’t going to be guilt manipulated by any personal critics. So David knew how to handle criticism and he knew how to keep rolling, regardless of failure. He knew, in other words, how to search for God in “a dry and thirsty land.”

Solomon was different; Solomon concentrated upon conserving temporal blessings rather than upon seeking the Lord. And so we have a situation where Solomon emphasizes the blessing rather than the Blessor. It also means that Solomon gained a lot of wisdom; in fact he gained a tremendous amount of wisdom but this wisdom was not related to his character; it was not related to his spiritual growth and as a result he was swamped under the power of his own wisdom. He lacked that hunger for God, as David did, searching for God in “a dry and thirsty land.”

Now we want to go back and illustrate a certain principle of in fellowship and out of and maturity because tonight we’re going to see how this carries over in a family. We often illustrate the believer’s position “in Christ” as a circle, that this circle demonstrates what is constant; this circle demonstrates God’s eternal plan, God’s perfect plan, God’s secure position for us, and this doesn’t change. But then we also illustrate the circle of temporal fellowship by the bottom circle and we draw this of a variable diameter because as one increases spiritually in maturity this circle increases. In fact, one reason why we designed the divine institution chart the way we did was because this chart basically is the bottom circle. This bottom circle can be very lopsided, as for example we excel perhaps in divine institution one, we’re weak in divine institution three. Or we’re strong here and weak over here, strong here, weak over there, the actual outline would vary depicting the fact that no Christian is equally strong in each sector. But these sectors demonstrate the declared will of God. And so we plot these out as the circle of fellowship.

Now the problem with Solomon was that as he grew in the Lord his bottom circle became bigger and as this circle expanded his areas of responsibility expanded, and when the areas of responsibility expands it demands much more concentrated faith because there’s greater responsibility, there’s greater cause, various latitudes for slipup and so on, and it demands more of an individual. And this is why Solomon eventually tubed out his spiritual growth, his exposure to the Word of God exposed him to more and more areas of life but his actual spiritual strength didn’t keep up. And so he got himself into a position where his responsibility was great and his spiritual assets small. Now he could have handled that responsibility but he chose not to do so. So we have watched Solomon.

Now we’re going to take up one of the great idiots of Scripture, Solomon’s son, and there’s no real excuse for this clown because he had the best education that was available in the ancient world. Solomon was the wisest man; he was second to none, including Leonardo DaVinci as far as a man in every area, and with this person as a father there is no excuse why Rehoboam wound up the way he did. But we have to go into the linkage between grandfather David, father Solomon and Rehoboam. What we have here is three generations in divine institution three, that is the third divine institution or the family. And whenever you have three generations in a family you will have certain spiritual trends in that family. And we’re going to watch how this particular man carried on and actually was the cause of his family’s destruction.

Rehoboam simply took a –R learned behavior pattern of his father, which basically we saw last time when we saw how, in the prayer for wisdom, he was more concerned with temporal blessings than he was in the God who gave the temporal blessings; he was creature oriented instead of Creator oriented, and because of this there was a weakness that plagued Solomon for the rest of his life although he was a very brilliant man, a very skilled man, a very well-educated man. Now he gave his son one of the finest educations available. In 931 BC when the throne went to Rehoboam he was, at that point, about forty years old. He was not a young kid; he had advanced degrees, the equivalent thereof, having gone through many of the wisdom schools of his father. And therefore he ought to have been a very fundamentally sound ruler; he ought to have been a wise ruler, a clever ruler.

Well, he picked up this concept from his father, that it wasn’t seeking God in “a dry and thirsty land,” it wasn’t basically your relationship to the Lord, it was the fringe benefits of the relationship. Solomon had his eyes on this and even though, as we’ll see tonight, Solomon tried again and again to straighten his son out he never could. We don’t now exactly why, of course Rehoboam’s responsible for his own sin, but we do know that Solomon was never able to crack that habit in his son. His son simply carried on and amplified his father’s weakness.

Turn to 1 Kings 12 and we’ll see the drama of Rehoboam. Now the background of chapter 12 is given in 1 Kings 11:11 where the Lord speaks to Solomon with a prophecy. Solomon, after the first eight verses in chapter 11, has been evaluated by the Holy Spirit. That’s the whole purpose of that first section. And so we read in 1 Kings 12:9, “And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned from the LORD God of Israel, who had appeared unto him twice,” the thing there being that Solomon had lost the objective; he was not pursuing the objective as his father, David, did, and as time went on he became submerged in the details of life and lost the big picture. [10] “And had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he kept not that which the LORD commanded.”

Now again, why did Solomon sin? What was his problem? His problem was that he wanted the blessing as security and peace. Now he could have had the blessing of security and peace if he’d simply trust the Lord to secure the peace. But Solomon, having all of this great cleverness, decided he’d be a Henry Kissinger of his day and he decided he would manipulate on the international front and arrange all sorts of treaties and it was through reliance on these treaties that the peace and security would be obtained. But every time he ran into a treaty he had to marry a woman, because that’s how the treaties went on; you married because that was the guarantee that you’d signed the treaty. The princess would be married off to the king after her father made the treaty, and she was really acting as a hostage; this is the real reason for the whole thing, that if obviously the king’s daughter was with the other king and one of them wanted to fool around, the other king could just simply kill the other king’s daughter, and he knew this. So it acted as sort of a deterrent against funny business on the international scene. But unfortunately for Solomon these girls came and they started in with their ecumenical religion, and instead of being like Ruth where Ruth said “your God is my God, where you go I will go,” these girls decided that they were going to go their own way, if they’d come from Egypt they were going to worship the Egyptian gods, or if they came from the other countries round about, Moab and so on, they would worship their gods. They were not going to submit to Yahweh, the God of Solomon.

And so therefore Solomon, instead of requiring this of the princess before he married her, went ahead, like Christians do, oh, they’ll change after we marry. And of course he was no more successful at that than Christians are today that think the same way. And so Solomon, every time he’d pick up one of these princesses he’d pick up an extra god or two. And finally he had a pavilion of these things, all over the top of Mount Zion. And with the result that he encountered the ethics of these other gods; you can’t have the Creator and other gods; it has to be one or the other but you can’t have both. That’s what’s wrong with our society today; we want God’s Word and its blessing but we also want man’s law and its blessings. And we simply can’t have both of them together intermingled. Solomon tried this and that’s the point of verse 10, he went after other gods. The motive for going after other gods wasn’t to break down the Word of God. The motive was simply (quote) “the good things,” that is, security and peace. Everybody’s for security and peace. So he decided he wanted security and peace and he decided to get it by human viewpoint method.

So [1 Kings 11:11] “Therefore, the LORD said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done by thee, and thou hast not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely tear the kingdom away from thee, and I will give it to thy servant. [12] Nevertheless, in thy days I will not do it, for David thy father’s sake, but I will tear it out of the hand of thy son. [13] However, I will not rend away all of the kingdom, but will give one tribe to thy son, for David My servant’s sake, and for Jerusalem’s sake, which I have chosen.” Now notice something. We’re going to have a judgment upon Israel. Now look at the specifications of that judgment and those very specifications will show you something very interesting. The last verse, verse 13, says because Jerusalem, I have elected, or I have chosen. In other words, God has a plan and even if Solomon craters out, that plan will continue. So nothing is going to stop the plan of God. God has chosen Jerusalem, period.

All right, that’s secures the physical safety minimally for the nation Israel, but an interesting principle is set up in verses 11-12, the principle of the shield of the father over his son. And you see this again and again in Scripture and it’s a most interesting thing. Apparently a father who is godly can secure for his son certain blessings; blessings which his son, or sons, do not deserve in and of themselves, but are credited to the sons on the merit of their fathers. This goes both ways, but it is seen in several instances.

Turn to Genesis 9:25 and the problem of Ham, Shem and Japheth. In Genesis 9 we have the problem of the father being Noah and the son being Ham. Ham offends his father, and I myself am not sure of all the implications of what that is in verses 21-22, but in some way Ham offended Noah, and it was a very serious sin. So therefore, when Noah went to outline the destinies of his sons as the patriarchs did in the Old Testament, you have this recurrent theme in the Old Testament that the father, when he approaches his deathbed will take his sons to his side and will say to his sons individually, this is your destiny, this is your destiny, this is your destiny. You see it done very well at the end of Genesis when Jacob does it; you see Isaac do it; you see Abraham do it, and here Noah’s doing it to his three sons. He’s outlining their future as their father. But interestingly one of his sons of the three is not spoken to directly, and that is the son who is cursed.

You’ll notice in Genesis 10:25 [“And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shell he be unto his brethren.”] the cursing does not fall on Ham; it falls on Ham’s sons. Now why is this? Why is it that Noah, when he goes to curse doesn’t curse Ham? Apparently the principle is that he’d be cursing himself if he did so. A father can’t really cut his son off like this. He can cut the grandson off, but not the immediate product of himself. In other words, Noah was a godly man and Ham shared in the shadow of that godliness. And thus you see the same thing being repeated in 1 Kings 11 when God talks, this time to Solomon, and here’s David the father, Solomon is the son, and Solomon’s son is Rehoboam. Now God is angry at the son of the father, but when God goes to curse the son He is not going to curse Solomon directly because as it says in verse 11 and 12 that “I will rend the kingdom from you,” I won’t do it in your day. Why? Because for the sake of your father.

God apparently says to dishonor a son dishonors his father. this is remarkable because the same thing is carried over in the four Gospels. To dishonor the Son is to dishonor the Father. The son stands in his father’s place and anyone who mars the son mars the father. The son in history stands in somehow, in some relationship to his physical father. And therefore there’s a very interesting careful delineation of the cursings of Scripture. The cursings flow but sort of skid off into the third generation. We will watch how this carries on in a moment as we go through the text more carefully.

But at this point we want to just look at 1 Kings 11:11-13 making sure we understand the curse of God. Verse 11 again, “You have not kept My covenant, therefore I will rend the kingdom from you,” that means the Solomonic dynasty will not inherit the blessing of the Davidic dynasty. This is why, incidentally, here’s David and this is why David when he had at least two sons, one Nathan and the other was Solomon, and Solomon ostensibly was the king of Israel and the originator of the dynasty, actually the Lord Jesus Christ is physically related to Nathan, not Solomon, because Mary, His mother, is related to David through Nathan. And this is the story of the genealogies. So Solomon did lose the kingdom; he lost it because his dynasty was not an everlasting dynasty, though his father’s dynasty was an everlasting dynasty. And you can have this because David’s seed on down the line through Nathan continued into an everlasting dynasty. The Word of God is very careful, one of the signs of the fact that it’s an omnipotent omniscient author who writes this kind of stuff. Human beings don’t write books like this. Not this carefully, where history is under such fine tuning, such fine control.

So the kingdom will be rent from him, but not such that it violates 2 Samuel 7 which is the fact that the kingdom would never be rent from David. In fact, if you turn back to 2 Samuel 7 you’ll notice again some fine print in that Davidic Covenant, which will make a lot more sense. In 2 Samuel 7:12 when he’s promising the old man, David, the dynasty, he started with verse 12, “I will set up thy seed after you, which will proceed out of your bowels [your own body], and I will establish his kingdom. [13] He shall build a temple for My name, and he [I] will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. [14] I will be his father, and he shall be my son…. [15] But my mercy shall never depart from him, as I took it from Saul,” that is, there will always be some continuity to his dynasty, and that you’ll see in 1 Kings 11, [16] “But thine house,” David’s house, not Solomon’s, David’s house, David’s house and David’s kingdom “shall be established forever before thee, and thy throne shall be established forever.” Notice in verse 13 it just says the throne of Solomon is established, but in verse 16 it says thy kingdom is established, little fine print but it nevertheless allows for such things as happen in 1 Kings 11.

So 1 Kings 11:11a kingdom is rent, and that is not violating the fine print of 2 Samuel 7 because it never promised the kingdom. [12] “Nevertheless, in thy days, I will not do it, for David your father’s sake,” his father acted as a cushion against the judgment of God upon his house, “but I will rend it out of the hand of your son,” that is the third generation from the old man, that’s the generation that’s going to get it. Just as in the case of Noah, not Ham but Ham’s sons are going to get it. We’ll see more about this as time goes on. Finally, 1 Kings 11:13, to make sure we understand it you’ll notice, “However, I will not rend away all the kingdom, but will give one tribe to thy son, for David, My servant’s sake,” and that’s to answer the problem the throne has to be maintained. So the rest of 1 Kings 11 shows the troubles as Solomon finished his career.

Now 1 Kings 12:1, the incident with Rehoboam. Rehoboam was a man of about forty years old when he ascended the throne in 931. “And Rehoboam went to Shechem; for all Israel was come to Shechem to make him king. [2] And it came to pass, when Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who was yet in Egypt, heard of it (for he was fled from the presence of King Solomon, and Jeroboam dwelt in Egypt), [3] That they sent and called him. And Jeroboam and all the congregation of Israel came, and spoke unto Rehoboam, saying,” so they’re having a national conference on the next king’s coronation. You will notice in verse 1 Rehoboam goes to Shechem because all the tribes, all Israel comes to Shechem. But notice in verse 3 who they send for; they don’t really like Rehoboam so they send for another man called Jeroboam.

Now this Jeroboam is an interesting person because through him we have introduced dangerous elements for the history of Israel. Jeroboam I left the administration of Solomon; he was an administrator, a bureaucrat under the Solomonic administration; he got hacked at Solomon and Solomon at him, and he broke and he left and fled to Egypt. While in Egypt, it can’t be proved but it looks like from the later happenings of kings that deals were made between Jeroboam and the Pharaoh of Egypt; the deals were that if Jeroboam went back and got in position of influence within the new Jewish administration that he would somehow make things easy for Egypt. Because Egypt was always interested in protecting her northeastern frontier against the Assyrians and the people in the Mesopotamian valley. So therefore there’s a little intrigue that has always been suspected by careful students of Kings and Chronicles. It doesn’t explicitly say this, but later on he’s in very close league with the spy system of Pharaoh and so on.

So Jeroboam comes and he is acting as a spokesman, and he says in verse 4, “Thy father made our yoke grievous; now, therefore, make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee.” Solomon had become top heavy, he had formed centralized government and as time went on instead of developing a freedom culture he developed an oppressive socialistic culture. [5] “And he said unto them, Depart yet for three days, and then come again to me. And the people departed. [6] And King Rehoboam consulted with the old men that stood before Solomon, his father, while he yet lived, and said, How do you advise that I may answer this people? [7] And they spoke unto him, saying, If you will be a servant to this people this day, and will serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever.”

But now the tragedy in verse 8, here’s the young man who ascends the throne in place of his father, “But he forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had given him, and consulted with the young men who were grown up with him, and who stood before him. [9] And he said unto them, What counsel give ye that we may answer this people, who have spoken to me, [saying, Make he yoke which thy father did put upon us lighter?] [10] And the young men” said go ahead and make the yoke even heavier. So verse 11, he follows the counsel of the young advisors. “And, now, whereas my father did burden you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke; my father has chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.” These are whips with very sharp points in them.

Now here we have the mechanism by which the third generation damns itself. On the one hand you have to look at the sovereign picture; on the other hand you have to look at human responsibility operating. Sovereignly you have the old man, David; David has the son, Solomon; Solomon is somewhat shielded from the plagues of God, Solomon’s on negative volition and Solomon cranks out a son, Rehoboam. Rehoboam is no longer immediately related to David; he’s removed from David by one generation. And so therefore God says all right, Solomon, you have set the wheels in motion for destruction and I am going to guarantee that your son is going to get it. I am going to rend the kingdom in a great civil war in 931, in the days of your son, the grandson of King David.

Now that’s the sovereign picture, but for the human responsibility picture here’s what happened. David had a lot of chaos in his family. We know this in the way 2 Samuel ends. Then we come to Solomon. Remember who Solomon is; he’s the son of David by Bath-sheba, and David had a lot of women and Bath-sheba wasn’t the top spiritual giant of David’s harem. In fact she was a pretty stupid woman actually. She never could get her stuff together and didn’t now what was going on and the protocol of the court. Nathan has to come up and baby her at every step and tell her now Hon, this is the way you do it in the court, you know, you are the queen, try acting like it once in a while. And so with that as a mother you can figure out how Solomon got screwed up. All right, then Solomon is so busy, he has a thousand women to distract him, and so along comes out of one of these thousand women, Rehoboam. Now Rehoboam continues the –R learned behavior pattern of his father and amplifies it and strengthens it. So on the human responsibility it’s simple the fact that the grandson is rebelling in the same direction as the father, and just simply amplifying the sin of his father and therefore you see, this gives the excuse God needs to carry out His prophecy; I’m going to damn that third generation, I’m going to cut them off. And when the third generation comes, lo and behold, the third generation qualifies to be cut off.

I show you these two sides because when it’s said in the Bible that God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him, the tendency in people’s minds is oh, that’s unfair, what’d the poor grandson do? Well, when God says I’m going to visit the iniquity He says I visit the iniquity unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate Me. So in order for the son to receive the damnation in the third and fourth generation he has to persist in the same sin of his father. If that grandson, and the probability is strong that he will because after all, the third divine institution was given originally to train men, and the third divine institution in the family was given so that the child would mimic his father. So the probability favors the fact that if his father is getting off track his son, barring some intrusion of new grace in that family line, his son is simply going to degenerate further than his father did. And that being the case, then he qualifies for the judgment.

Now the sentence, “I will curse them unto the third and fourth generation” comes from the Ten Commandments. So turn back to Exodus 20 for this principle. We’ll show the fact that it’s in the Ten Commandments because people say well, that’s just a principle that applies to Israel and the Law. No it doesn’t, the fact is that God identified Himself as a God who curses family and cuts them off in the third and fourth generation before the Mosaic Law was finished. So therefore this principle we hold operates universally throughout the human race. Said another way, every family unit including your own, has a built-in self-destruction device in it. That is, a family is so structured under the sovereignty of God in history that when it gets a sin in it that persists and is serious, and threatens long-term health of society, God will destruct that family. That family will just go out; either they’ll never have any children, something will happen and that family line will be destroyed; that’s God’s way of getting rid of cursed families.

Now in Exodus 20:5 notice both sides of the statement. “…I, the LORD thy God, am a jealous God, I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation…,” now people usually stop there, but they have to read further, [6] “And showing mercy unto the thousands of them that love Me, and keep My commandments.” Now after the word “thousands” in verse 6 you ought to read “thousands of generations.” Those of you with a King James will notice in verse 5 the word “generation” is supplied by the translator in italics. What you also have to notice that in verse 6 they should have put “generation” in, so what God is saying here is look, here’s grandfather, we’ll take two families: Grandfather plus, grandfather minus. Grandfather minus got involved in the –R learned behavior pattern that’s significant as far as God is concerned in the preservation of that family. Grandfather plus is a godly grandfather, one who’s loyal to the covenant.

All right, God says, okay, here’s the father, coming out, here’s the other father coming out, they’re following… this father follows his grandfather, and so therefore God continues blessing, his son is blessed, God continues blessing. This one, when he gets out to the third generation, this son begins to really catch it and surely by the time of his son, then he really gets it. So that way a family can’t go on for more than three or four generations in a deeply embedded sin. Now if God would bless to the thousands of generations of them that keep the Law, keep the Word of God and keep rolling.

Now question? What about a grandfather minus who goes along and has a son and this father turns out to be a loser and he has a son but this son goes positive? What about that? When that happens the curse is not carried because of verse 6 here; verse 6 says, I will “show mercy to the thousands of them that love me,” to the thousands of generations. Here you have the son in the third generation and he breaks out of it. Some of the kings do this, in 1 and 2 Kings and when they do God doesn’t curse them; God does not curse a son who is trying to submit to the Scriptures, who’s breaking out from a family learned behavior pattern. But that is highly unlikely, in most cases most families go this way, they just simply go out and God simply creates new families as the population expands to replace the old degenerate families.

Now in 1 Kings 12 Rehoboam, in his human responsibility continues in the sin of his father, so we have Rehoboam picking up the sin of Solomon, the –R learned behavior pattern which is the fact that he is more concerned with the kingdom and how it operates than he is with the God who gives him the kingdom. He is creature centered instead of Creator centered; he is anthropocentric instead of Theocentric. And so he has this and he’s just increases this. Now the actual means by which he dooms himself is very simple, and this too speaks to the value of the son and his father and his grandfather.

Back in Genesis 1, when we stated the fact that man was given the mandate to subdue the earth we said something; we said when that mandate came it said God blessed them, and He said be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth. And I said the significance of those verbs is important. What it says is that the means of subduing the earth won’t be through Adam and Eve alone; it will be through Adam and Eve and their children and their children and their children and their children and so on down through the human race corporately. So we then have the fact that when you have a father he transmits to his son what we will call an inheritance.

Now we normally think of an inheritance as financial; in the Scriptures an inheritance includes family wisdom, learned behavior patterns that can be righteous or they can be unrighteous but they are part of your family baggage, stuff that you’ve inherited from your parents. All of us have this and it’s inescapable. We are designed for this because originally before the fall that was the means that God was going to subdue the earth. Each family would come along and they’d subdue something; they’d make some breakthroughs. Well, it’s silly to have Adam’s son come along and say well, Dad started here with this four-footed creature called a deer and he did this and he did this and he did this and then he did this, so I’m going to start doing the same thing all over again and I conduct the same zoological investigation my father did. Well, no one would get anywhere doing that. So there has to be an accumulation of wisdom. And it’s in the third divine institution that that wisdom is accumulated.

Scripturally, then, a family has an inheritance that is more than material assets. It is the wisdom principle, the habit patterns of the whole family, a whole line. And this is passed on. Now under ideal conditions this wisdom should amplify; each generation should add to that wisdom so you get this kind of an effect, and you would have a tremendously virile civilization if this ever really worked for more than two or three generations. But you know what always seems to happen is we have a godly generation start out, maybe another one increases, and them pffft, something happens, the chain is lost, the wisdom is lost. That’s what’s happened in this country. Think of the wisdom that has been lost on how to manage government.

Think of the wisdom that has been lost in how to handle education. Think of the wisdom of the early Puritans in New England who established their own schools; families, maybe fifteen or twenty families would go out and they’d hire a girl to teach. Just one girl, say go ahead now, all these little brats are yours, take care of them, and we want to see something come out at the end; we’re not going to buy one million dollars worth of audio visuals on how to brush your teeth, we’re not going to go through open concept situations where the little things can choose what they want to learn and not learn. We are going to give you a school, we will assure you of discipline because if the brats misbehave you tell us and we’ll warm their bottoms until they do behave, and we expect you to teach. That’s all we expect you to do; we are paying you to teach, not entertain. Now that was wisdom. And it was done far before the days of public education. Public education is a late comer in this country. Most of our most significant people were educated before the days of public education. So when you hear this line that public education is the salvation of the world, don’t buy it; it isn’t!

So we have lost this wisdom. The wisdom goes out and certain generations are very bad in history about losing the wisdom of their parents. And wherever you have this, this is usually the means of destruction that God uses. Other means are physical catastrophes and so on. One of our great modern examples, if you want a catastrophic illustration of this principle at work, think of what has happened to agriculture in the Soviet Union. Not a hundred years ago the Kulaks and the middle class Russians fed all of Europe. The Ukraine used to be called the bread basket of Europe. The countries of Europe, crowded as they were, would get their grain from the Ukraine, and so at one time with the wisdom principles of the great middle class agrarian Russian families they raised grain and sent it all over Europe. And now today look at the spectacle, with all the great progress of socialized agriculture they can’t even feed themselves; they have to buy from capitalist United States. As the sign says on the Kansas border, you are now entering the bread basket of the Soviet Union. Why has this happened? Because you had a loss of wisdom. Where did the wisdom go? Well, Stalin was the great instigator of this; he had the brilliant idea that if you didn’t cooperate with him he’d kill you off, so Stalin didn’t think too much, and he went in and he killed six, seven, eight, nine million Kulaks, just wiped them out. Only one problem Stalin, when you kill the farmer you kill the wisdom with him. And he forgot and so now the Russians don’t know which end of the ground the grain comes out of. They still haven’t figured it out because they lost that wisdom through some stupid policy of politics.

Well, that’s a situation that is parallel to this one. Look at what Rehoboam’s doing. He has the wisdom accumulated with the old men in verse 6 and 7. There’s the accumulated wisdom of the Solomonic dynasty. What happens? He breaks with the wisdom, he goes with the young men, the whiz kids that he grew up with in verse 8, parallel I needn’t comment on any modern administration in recent past American history that followed that same example. And so the young kids get in and they are going to tell everyone how to do it. The result, on the human side that is where old Rehoboam cut his throat, because in 930 there was a civil war, almost a civil war, by God’s grace it didn’t become it, and this is what happened. Here’s the northern and southern kingdom; the green area is what was left to Rehoboam after the split, and the orange is the territory he lost, never to be regained and from this point forward in history the northern kingdom was called Israel and the southern kingdom, Judah. It is still reflected in the latest titles to the land by Menachem Begin, who insists that Israel not be called the West Bank but be called Judea and Samaria. Samaria largely is the orange area and Judea is the green area. So you have that same bifurcation.

The reason it came without blood is in 1 Kings 12:24, God was very gracious, “Thus saith the LORD, Ye shall not go up, nor fight against your brethren, the children of Israel. Return every man to his house; for this thing is from Me.” I am in charge of history, and you have lost it Rehoboam, so don’t try to regain it, you’re just going to frustrate yourself, I am sovereignly in charge. You lost it. So try to pick up the pieces and work with what you’ve got but you’re never going to get your dad’s house back together again; you lost it, you broke the wisdom chain.

Now, Solomon warned his son many times that this was coming. To show his addresses to his son turn to Proverbs 1:1. Here’s what he taught his son; this is the wisdom of that family, but because of negative volition in the family this wisdom was simply discarded, it was just trashed; the young men didn’t pay any attention to what their fathers told them. And this has gone on in history time and time again. “The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel,” and he gives the two goals of his educational program for his son in verse 2. The first half of verse 2 is “to know wisdom and instruction,” the point there is that you want to know your way around God’s creation. The creation is run in an orderly way and I want you, Rehoboam, my son, to understand how our Creator created so that you will be able to subdue that creation. “…to perceive the words of understanding” is the immediate goal, that is, I want you to learn, son, how to understand these capsule summaries of wisdom. So the second part of verse 2 is the immediate goal; the first part of verse 2 is the long-term goal.

Verses 3-5 amplify verse 2a; verse 6 amplifies 2b. So the first part of verse 2 is expounded in verses 3-5. “To receive the instruction of wisdom,” now the instruction of wisdom has emphasis… and by the way, it’s not receive, it’s “to take the instruction of wisdom,” and the word “take” implies there is an aggressiveness needed in order to learn. Learning is not passive; learning is active and this is why chokmah, which is the Hebrew word for wisdom, is the only case that I know of in the Bible that forces the believer to be pictured as a male. In every other case the believer is always pictured as female, the reason being the believer’s passive to the grace of God, but here the believer is the male and the chokmah is the female, and the picture there is of the believer pursuing wisdom. He doesn’t wait for wisdom to come to him, he goes and gets the wisdom. That’s why there’s a female nature to wisdom here.

Now the content of this wisdom, as he’s telling his son, because Proverbs is written for a regal son, for a prince, he says son, it consists of three things, “justice, judgment and equity.” The first one, “justice” is righteousness; it has to do with the standards of what is right and what is wrong, and we said earlier, didn’t we, when we went through the manhood course we went through the doctrine of the law and we said what is it that gives you your confidence? What gives you your confidence is that you know what is right and what is wrong. Today there’s a lot of this guilt manipulation. People always like to make you feel guilty; if you don’t buy so much of this then you’re not really providing for your family; if the United States doesn’t give the Hottentots eight million dollars in aid they really don’t care about the Hottentots. See, it’s always this guilt manipulation. And so we need people who are immune from this and only people who know what is right and what is wrong can be immune and stable. “…and judgment,” there is the emphasis on carrying out those standards in practice. And “equity” has to do with the political side of the solid area of the structure.

Proverbs 1:4, “To give subtlety to the simple,” now that is a nice King James translation, it’s a little more sophisticated in the original language, the idea is to give subtlety or shrewdness to people who are untutored. Now who do you suppose would be untutored? The child, the prince, the boy that’s growing up in the court, he’s untutored, he needs to get skill and so Proverbs was there to give the child skill; there’s nothing sinful about being untutored; the only thing sinful about it is staying untutored. So “to give subtlety to the simple,” and you also can gauge from verse 4 the educational philosophy of Israel was not like we often see it today, where we sit around and we let the young people decide what they want to learn. Well, it says young people are “simple,” and therefore they don’t know what they ought to learn. And so little kids do not participate in the formation of the curriculum. Here the curriculum is given to the simple, and after they have some subtlety then they can choose advanced training and electives and so on. So, “To give subtlety to the simple, to the young man knowledge and resourcefulness,” the word “discretion” has more of the idea of improvising, of making due with things so that you can handle yourself when all the tools aren’t there, you can improvise somehow.

Now the warning in verse 5, he kept telling Rehoboam, keep in mind now, we’re not exegeting Proverbs here in the technical sense of when we went through the series. Keep in mind though, as we read these verses, these are all addressed to this guy that’s such a goof in 1 Kings 11. “Wise men will hear, and will increase in learning; a man of understanding shall attain to wise counsels,” the idea being that young man, if you are wise as you think you are you’ll listen. You will listen to what I have to tell you because what I have to tell you is worthwhile.

Verse 6, “To understand” is an amplification of the last part of verse 2 and that is simply to understand the technique of teaching. Well, when Solomon got down to the end of verse 6 he had to give the basis for all wisdom. Now that basis is right; verse 7 is correct, but it’s verse 7 that apparently never dawned in the mind of Rehoboam; he had heard it, he had heard it, he had heard it again and again and again and again but it did not make any impression. So we read in verse 7, “The fear,” the word “fear” means the respect for the authority, “The respect for authority of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise” it. Immediately do you notice that teaching and education is subsumed underneath something prior to it? An authority structure. You can’t have education if you don’t have authority. That goes for anyone in the classroom. This is why some of our best teachers in this congregation are the hardest nosed individuals when it comes to running the classroom, and particularly is it tough on the girls who have to take on a whole class and have to lay the law down for 2 or 3 weeks and have to go through it like they are a bunch of old biddies and a few other things, and get that impression and that reputation. Well, it’s the only way they can do it; they have got to maintain and gain authority in the classroom because if they don’t in the first two weeks they can kiss off the rest of the semester. It’s the only way they’re going to do it. So you notice, right here it is the fear of God that frames all education. Apart from that there isn’t any education.

Now Rehoboam had heard this, and he had heard this, and he had heard this; it didn’t make any impression. Well, let’s watch what happened next. Right after introducing Proverbs Solomon’s first lesson to this kid, the very first lesson is the one that he blew it in 1 Kings 11. Proverbs 1:8, “My son, hear the instruction of your father, and forsake not the law of your mother,” incidentally, that shows that both mother and father were involved in the educational process in the home. [9] “For they shall be an ornament of grace upon thy head, and chains about thy neck.” Wisdom in Scripture is viewed as an adornment. This carries on with the same idea of why it’s pictured as a female; the female is the adorner, the decorator, and the wisdom here is what decorates life. You can have a spiritual life as a Christian, being born again, you can have your position in Christ, you can get down the basic doctrines and so forth but there’s no real beauty to Christianity unless it spills forth into a culture.

That’s what we’re trying to do here with the music program, with some of the people that are creatively writing, to try to express Bible doctrine in these fields to show people that Christianity isn’t barren; we are in effect trying to put an ornament of grace upon our head and chains about our neck, decorations. For the average person in the street thinks of fundamentalism as some honky operation that runs along by rolling down the aisle or some goofball thing. Or some of these idiots on the radio, send your handkerchief in and Jesus will autograph it or something, and this kind of stuff. And that’s what passes in most people’s mind for fundamentalism. No wonder no one wants to listen to it, I wouldn’t want to listen to that either. But that is the image that we have, and this is why we have to work hard to gain that and destroy it, to show people that there is a culture that can be produced through Bible doctrine.

So this verse 9 is exerting, telling Rehoboam, exhorting him, look son, the thing that’s going to be the great thing and attractive thing about you as a king is going to be this spillover of Bible doctrine into ever area of life. Now they followed this up with Proverbs 1:10-19 which is the fundamental lesson for all adolescents. And this is where more kids get off base, right here, than any other area. “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. [11] If they say, Come with us, let us lay in wait for blood, let us lurk secretly for the innocent without cause, [12] Let us swallow them up alive as the grave, and whole, as those that go down into the pit. [13] We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil; [14] Cast in your lot among us; let us all have one purse: [15] My son, walk not thou in the way with them, and refrain thy foot from their path. [16] For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. [17] Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird. [18] And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk secretly for their own lives. [19] So are the ways of everyone that is greedy of gain, that takes away the life of the owners thereof.”

This is a warning against his son mixing with the wrong crowd. You’ll notice in verse 10, and all the structures of Proverbs are given this way, there is a circumstantial clause, there is the motive, and then there is the proverb. Notice the circumstance, verse 10, verse 11, all the way down to verse 14; that gives you the situation in which the doctrine should be applied. Obviously it’s the solicitation by his peers. Notice verse 11, “us, us, us,” repeated, the gang. This is the gang; the gang of peers that loves to put pressure on. It starts about Junior High and doesn’t get over with some people until they drop dead, where they become so totally victimized by what the gang thinks. Of course we care what other people think about us but you can let that become something that will destroy you. You cannot permit the crowd to dictate. And this is just an elementary thing and right in book of Proverbs it’s the first thing out of the box; the first thing—son, watch for peer pressure, it’ll do you in every time. He’s not necessarily saying all peer pressure is bad but he’s saying obviously in this case the gang is pressuring, there is multiple people in verse 11. It’s not just one person coming, it’s a whole bunch of guys coming to this boy.

And they are propositioning him. Now you have to be careful about what this thing is in verse 11, “Let us lay in wait for blood,” that doesn’t necessarily have to mean that they’re out to murder someone. Proverbs, if you study the style, will take the extreme form to stand for all forms. So this can stand for any violence to any person. So it doesn’t necessarily have to mean murder; it could be ripping someone off, going out to the mall, this kind of thing. So we have under verse 11 all categories of unjust violence.

Now notice in this situation the invitation and what it caters to, in verse 13. “We shall find precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil.” In the light of creation what is that an appeal to? Man is to subdue; out of his subduing is to come production and wealth. Now notice, isn’t this interesting; such perversity. Verse 13 promises the boy that he doesn’t have to subdue the earth; he can arrive at wealth, which is legitimate, but he arrives at with a short-circuit method, the easy way, the ungodly way; we shall find this, “cast in thy lot among us,” in other words, “let us have one purse,” this is approbation lust, the lust of joining the crowd, you’re nobody, friend, until you join the crowd; your identity is with us. Notice what it says at the end of verse 14, “Let us all have one purse,” one reputation, we all wear black leather jackets, that kind of thing. It’s “all,” our title. Well, you see, life wasn’t too much different in 1000 BC than it is today. That’s why the Proverbs are basically timeless; they’re timeless truths.

Now when that situation happens, verse 15 is the command. So verses 10-14 is the situation, you notice how he sits down with his son, he says son, this is going to happen to you; I know, after all, look at what Solomon was raised in, look at the chaos of David’s household. They had gangs in that situation in Jerusalem in David’s day; Solomon said look, I’ve ran with a gang so I know what kind of pressure, now listen to me, this is a real thing that’s going to happen to you. Verse 15, what you do, just clear out, don’t mess with them, you’re going to get in trouble every time. This goes, and young people have to be particularly warned about this, that you identify yourself with a group and your group gets in trouble with the law, you’re in trouble with the law, whether you do it or not. The law is not going to make distinctions, well, I was just watching. Tough baby, you’re identified with the group and they did it and you’re in. So you can get sucked up into some legal problems real fast by associating with the wrong crowd. So that’s why verse 15 is important even today.

Now verse 16 and following, there’s the motive. You’ll notice the three-fold way these proverbs are structured; 10-14 gives you the situation; verse 15 gives you the command, what to do in the situation; and now it ends in verses 16-19 with the motive, why son, why ought you to do this? Well, first motive, verse 16, “their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood,” so the first motive given to the son is it’s wrong. Nothing pragmatic, it’s wrong; that ought to be a motive to you if you care, if you have a conscience, it’s wrong!

Let’s look at the second motive, [17] “Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.” Now this is an idiom which means that they have the means to escape the trap but they don’t bother because they’re hungry; it’s a picture of the bird and he has wings, he has the availability to leave, but why does the bird get trapped? Because he’s hungry; there’s no physical reason for the bird ever getting himself in that kind of a trap. “Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.” Now that’s not a very proper translation but what it’s illustrating is the fact that this kid could escape; if you want the reasons why I take that interpretation I refer you to the Proverbs series where I develop each word of this and show you what it is. You might also say that very facetiously he’s calling all the gang the bird brains. Don’t run with these birds.

Proverbs 1:18, “They lay in wait for their own blood,” and this is moral retribution; this you will see as a motive again and again in the book of Proverbs, retribution, because God is God history always winds up with the people given enough rope they always hang themselves. This is a good thing, don’t worry about these people that are always getting involved, they are going to meet somebody some day that is going to clean their whistle. I remember one clown that was in high school with me that was always in trouble, all the whole time and he aggravated everyone. There was nothing anyone could do about it so he went on and I guess he reached 25 or 26 and he tried to make a deal in a back alley with somebody and they shot him, and that was the first member of my graduation class to kick the bucket and that was the worst one of the graduating class to go. And when God got rid of him off the face of the earth at least we had one less clown around, one less degenerate and the air was cleaner. So God has retribution and it still works, even though it doesn’t work exactly. And that’s the motive, the final motive of the son, and that is that son, trust the retributive nature of history. These people will get theirs someday; just steer out of the way.

All right, we won’t go any further except to say that this is the kind of instruction Rehoboam received from his father. This, these proverbs represent the learned behavior patterns, the positive ones, in his father’s family. We’ve already said there were negative ones in his father’s family. The question is, which way would Rehoboam go? Would he take the positive things in his positive family heritage and amplify them by grace, or would he take the negative things in his family and amplify them in defiance of the living God. The answer, 1 Kings 11. And what does 1 Kings 11 say? Rehoboam listened to those he grew up with. What does Proverbs 1 say? Son, leave them alone. So look, Rehoboam did exactly, he failed at the most fundamental point of his father’s teaching, the most fundamental point.

Solomon knew this so we’re going to conclude with a verse Solomon wrote in another book, the book of Ecclesiastes. Turn to Ecclesiastes 2:18; Solomon had an inkling this was going to happen. How many fathers have said this to themselves in history. “Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me. [19] And who knows whether he shall be a wise man or a fool?” Who knows? That’s the plague of every father because God has structured the male to take pride in giving something to his sons. This is built in to every man, whether he wants to acknowledge it or not it’s there because the Scriptures keep talking about this. The pride of a man is what he passes to his sons, because from Adam forward he’s been given the mandate to subdue the earth to his family and he’s to give his son an inheritance. Not just a material inheritance, a spiritual, wise inheritance. And then verse 18 what it so clearly says is that doesn’t it render meaningless the life of the old man? Here he is, he’s spends time studying, he spends time working, what is it? Is he going to leave it to a fool?

Notice what is says in verse 19, “Yet shall he have rule over all my labor wherein I have labored, and wherein I have shown myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity?” [20] Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labor which I took under the sun. [21] For there is a man whose labor is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that has not labored therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil. [22] For what has man of all his labor, and the vexation of his heart, wherein he has labored under the sun? [23] For his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart takes not rest in the night. This is also vanity.” Depressing, isn’t it, because it records the failure of the man. The man who knows he’s a failure and has no confidence that he’s left anything for future history and it weighs heavily on his soul; it weighs heavily on Solomon’s soul.

So as Christians, as Christian men we have to ask ourselves these questions. We don’t live our Christian life unto ourselves, that old individualistic idea of something we’ve got from the Greeks, it isn’t something we’ve got from the Bible. The Bible says we Christian men live in a family unit; we live in a physical family unit, we live in a spiritual family unit. Physically we try to provide, we try to win our sons to Christ, we try to feed them Bible doctrine by taking spiritual leadership in the home and not letting momma do it all, as happens again and again, every single September when we have our family training program, who is it that trots in here that wants all the material? Momma. Where’s daddy? Oh, I don’t know, he’s too busy off doing something. He sure is, and he’s just showing how much he cares for his son that way, because the son sits there and he watches; hmm, he says to himself as he grows older, isn’t this interesting. Every time I am taught something spiritual it comes from momma, it never comes from daddy. Now true, in many cases the mother has to actually be the administrator but the son still ought to know that it comes imminently from the father because later, when he becomes a man and he puts away the childish things he’s going to put away the things of his mother and Christianity will be one of those things that he’ll put away, because he learned it all through his years from females.

This is why in our family training in the classes we try always to have a man in the class, or a couple to take the class. It’s not because we’re discriminating against the women; it’s because we want the children to be exposed to men; men who are proud of Jesus Christ and the Word of God, who are not ashamed, and who are going to teach them this, to give them the image they need. Men are needed here and where men don’t do this and they can’t do it in their own home, the Christian man has at least one other option. Maybe through evangelism he can beget spiritual children; maybe other men who he can win to Christ and nurture them in the faith and they will carry the light of faith into the next generation, so maybe spiritually they can produce. But either way, physically or spiritually, there’s something in the male that drives him to do this. We know what it is, it’s the mandate of Genesis 1 and no man is really happy in the depths of his heart until he is a patriarchal man who knows that his future is going to be carried on and is going to be God-honoring; not like this tragic moaning lamenting Solomon here. Just read these again. Is this what the man wants, “I hated my labor which I’ve taken under the sun, because I leave it to a man who shall be after me. [19] Who knows whether he’ll be wise” or an idiot?