When Rehoboam, the son of
Solomon and grandson of David, ascended to the throne of the Kingdom of Israel,
he faced a potentially explosive situation at the very beginning of his
reign. The taxes that had been levied by
Solomon felt oppressive to the people and they chose a man who rebelled against
Solomon, Jeroboam, to be their spokesman and bring their grievance to the new
king. {Side note: II Kings tells us that
Jeroboam had already been chosen as the king of the tribes that would break
away by the prophet Ahijah}.
After taking three days to consider the request, and
consulting both his father’s advisors and the men of his own age, Rehoboam
answers the request by his new subjects exceedingly harshly. The arrogance and lack of compassion in his
answer, as Rehoboam vows to raise the taxes instead and rule by fear, shutting
the door on the possibility that he might rule by wisdom and love for the
people, actually drives the people away and begins the rebellion that splits
the descendants of Abraham into two nations.
It would be easy to criticize Rehoboam for listening to
his own generation and ignoring the advice of his elders, that flaw is so
common in our world in every generation that it hardly needs to be pointed
out. A secondary application of this
text that may be overlooked by those who assume that have little of Rehoboam’s
power in this world, is the idea of how power and authority are used by
Christians. We’ve all been on the wrong
side of somebody with power over us who was willing to use that power for their
own ends, and I would imagine that most of us have fallen to the temptation to
do the same thing to somebody beneath us.
The example of Christ, to use power with compassion and humility,
applies to us all as we all do have relationships where we have power over
somebody else and it is up to us to make sure that we aren’t corrupted by that
power but instead treat it as an opportunity to be a servant.
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