"The Voices We Heed" (June 14, 2026 Sermon)
/The Voices We Heed
1 Kings 12:1-17
Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. When Jeroboam son of Nebat heard of it (for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam remained in Egypt. And they sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, “Your father made our yoke heavy. Now, therefore, lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you.” He said to them, “Go away for three days, then come again to me.” So the people went away.
Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, “How do you advise me to answer this people?” They answered him, “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.” But he disregarded the advice that the older men gave him and consulted with the young men who had grown up with him and now attended him. He said to them, “What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke that your father put on us’?” The young men who had grown up with him said to him, “Thus you should say to this people who spoke to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must lighten it for us’; thus you should say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins. Now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’ ”
So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king had said, “Come to me again the third day.” The king answered the people harshly. He disregarded the advice that the older men had given him and spoke to them according to the advice of the young men, “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” So the king did not listen to the people because it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord to fulfill his word that the Lord had spoken by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam son of Nebat.
When all Israel saw that the king would not listen to them, the people answered the king,
“What share do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse.
To your tents, O Israel! Look now to your own house, O David.”
So Israel went away to their tents. But Rehoboam reigned over the Israelites who were living in the towns of Judah.
Last week, we gathered with Solomon and the Israelites as he stretched his arms out to heaven and dedicated the glorious, newly constructed Temple to God’s glory. It had been years in the making. And in that moment, the Israelites celebrated not only this sacred space, but also the credentials it gave them on the geo-political stage. Just two generations prior, Israel was largely a nation of hill-country farmers. But this Temple put them on the map. It established their reputation. And that moment, when Solomon both basked in the glory of his and their accomplishment, was the apex of his reign. Unfortunately, everything pretty much went downhill after that.
To make a long story short, Solomon tasted glory and, as do almost everyone in his position, decided he wanted more. Once someone tastes that sort of power, they rarely find their appetite satiated. Solomon hungered for gold; lots of it. He began to cover everything in gold and seized every opportunity to establish himself and, almost as an afterthought, the Israelites as the golden kingdom of opulence, wealth, and power that everyone else needs to submit to. Famously, in the chapters between last week’s passage and this week’s passage, the Queen of Sheba paid a royal visit to Solomon to witness firsthand his golden empire and his storied wisdom. It would seem, however, that that “listening heart” (or lev shomeya) that God granted him back in chapter three began to listen to a voice other than the God who granted it to him in the first place. Instead, Solomon began to listen to the god of gold rather than the God of neighborliness.
The irony is this: everything Solomon did to increase Israel’s wealth and prosperity was perhaps done with good intentions. It was all done in the name of law and order, national strength and prosperity, success and power. However, he forgot the Torah’s mandate of neighborliness. Or, to put it another way in modern vernacular: a booming stock market doesn’t necessarily mean that the hungry are being fed, the naked are being clothed, and the homeless are being housed.
Instead, Solomon began to care more about his power than the people’s well-being. We can, of course, look at history and find no shortage of political leaders who have fallen into this trap. More than two dozen years ago, Walter Brueggemann said the following about Solomon’s folly: “It is odd and noteworthy that the steps taken toward security produce more anxiety. The provisions for happiness produce more tension.” In other words, Solomon’s efforts to make Israel “great” only led to a widening economic gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” After all, these building projects relied on forced labor and could only be funded by exorbitant taxes that disproportionately burdened the poor in his kingdom. And it’s only a matter of time before those chickens come home to roost.
Therefore, Solomon died a failed king. Mostly because by the time he had died, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and Solomon made the choice to abandon his faithfulness to God’s Torah to follow the pagan religions of his numerous spouses and concubines, most of which were undoubtedly affairs of political alliances and geo-political negotiations. But, most of all, the people had had it. By the time Solomon had died, the people were close to mutiny, fed up with the burden of paying for all of Solomon’s building projects.
Solomon’s Son Inherits
And so it happened that the crown was passed on to Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. However, trouble began to stir before his reign had barely gotten off the ground. The Israelites in the northern part of the kingdom complained to him that Solomon’s reign had been oppressive to their economic security. They essentially asked Rehoboam to turn from his father’s ways and to lighten both the requirements of forced labor for his father’s building projects and their responsibility to fund them with their taxes.
Rehoboam takes their complaint to two groups of advisors before deciding his response. First, he goes to the “old guard,” the advisors who have been around a long time and remember the time before his father became drunk with power and wealth. They advise him to ease the burden and lighten the yoke for his new constituents. “Listen, Rehoboam,” they say, “your father flew a little too close to the sun. He bit off more than he could chew, and you have an opportunity to adopt a more conciliatory posture and return the focus to the well-being of your people over national glory or personal advancement.” Rehoboam mulls it over but remains unconvinced.
Next, he goes to another group of advisers, which the Bible only describes as “younger men.” Brueggemann suggests that these are naive advisors, young enough to have known nothing but the opulence of Solomon’s reign, who tell Rehoboam exactly what he wants to hear. “Don’t listen to those wimps in the northern lands,” they tell him arrogantly. “Now isn’t the time to let up; instead, it’s time to grab the bull by the horns and take this to the next level.” In fact, they urge the young king to respond by telling the northern tribes the following taunt: “My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins.” Now, I will leave you all to extrapolate for yourselves what that particular insult is insinuating. Their entitlement and privilege are music to Rehoboam’s ears.
And so, Rehoboam decides to disregard the people’s discontent. And he does so to his own detriment. In the year 922 BCE, the northern tribes revolt and follow one of his father’s old advisors, Jeroboam, and the kingdom splits. The wonder and the glory of Solomon’s temple are now stained by a kingdom divided. Rehoboam continues his reign in the southern tribes of Judah, and Jeroboam begins his reign as king of the northern tribes of Israel. For the remainder of our time in 1 and 2 Kings, we’ll journey through the divided kingdom until Israel (the northern kingdom) falls to the Assyrians around 722 BCE and Judah (the southern kingdom) falls to the Babylonians around 587 BCE.
Wisdom in Rehoboam’s Folly
Now, I realize this has been a lot of history, and such is unavoidable in the Books of First and Second Kings. But I want to focus on the following because I believe that there’s wisdom to be gleaned from Rehoboam’s folly. I will make the case that Rehoboam did, in fact, inherit his father’s lev shomeya, his “listening heart.” But I believe he learned the hard way what many of us are learning today: that a “listening heart” isn’t a proper moral compass unless we make the intentional choice to listen to voices that help us grow, that challenge us, and give us different perspectives.
I remember back in college reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. In it, she chronicles how Lincoln cleverly filled his cabinet with his former political rivals who differed with him greatly on a variety of political issues. At a time when the country was fractured by civil war and fighting over the issue of slavery, Abraham Lincoln did the very opposite of what Rehoboam did in today’s passage. Rehoboam surrounded himself with nothing but “yes men,” advisors who appeased his desire to continue his father Solomon's vanity projects. Lincoln, by contrast, surrounded himself with people who disagreed with him. And he worked tirelessly to reconcile conflicting factions to bring the war to an end and, along with it, the institution of slavery. Was it messy work? Absolutely. Did it work 100% of the time? Of course not. But Lincoln knew what Rehoboam learned the hard way: that a political leader who listens only to that which he wants to hear is no leader at all.
We Are Leaders Nevertheless
Now, few among us will ever be the president of a country or the king of a nation. But we are leaders nevertheless. We are leaders in our church, in our families and circles of friends, and in our workplaces, non-profits, and boards. We lead simply by being representatives of Christ on earth whenever we step beyond the walls of this sanctuary. And I believe we are stronger when we listen to a multitude of voices and, together, discern which of those voices is leading us in a faithful direction. Because, let us be clear, not all voices are of God. There are voices telling us to turn against one another, to treat our neighbors with suspicion and contempt, and to give in to selfish individualism. But just because we listen to all voices does not mean we heed them all.
So this week, I invite your “listening heart,” your lev shomeya, to be intentional about naming the voices that you listen to and ask yourself the following questions. Who am I listening to? Who am I not listening to? What voices have been pushed to the side?
I’ll close with this observation. In a few short weeks, we will observe the 250th anniversary of the United States. For many of us, this will be a time of celebration. And I want y’all to hear me when I tell you that we don’t have to choose between being Christian and being patriotic. However, part of being patriotic Christians is having honest conversations about our nation’s lev shomeya, its listening heart. Who has this nation’s heart listened to? And who has this nation’s heart dismissed, disparaged, and dehumanized over its 250-year history? As we study this book of the Bible that chronicles the rise and fall of Israel's political regimes, we face the reality that all kingdoms rise and fall eventually, but only God’s faithfulness remains. And you and I can be thankful for the parts of our country that are good and just and moral, while also attuning our lev shomeyas to the voices of those for whom that promise of “liberty and justice for all” has not come to fruition.
Tuning Our Listening Hearts
And so, we close this sermon together by tuning our listening hearts, and our singing voices, to our next hymn, “O God of Every Nation.” I particularly want to draw our attention to the prayer of the second stanza that we will sing together:
From search of wealth and power and scorn of truth and right,
from trust in bombs that shower destruction through the night,
from pride of race and station and blindness to your way,
deliver every nation, eternal God, we pray.
Let us sing…
[sing “O God of Every Nation”]
In the name of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us, God’s children, say: Amen.