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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Anthony Baca

Rehoboam

Gracious Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for the privilege to share with my friends.

You know my mind has a thousand things taking place over the last couple of weeks, so I pray that you would calm it, that you would make thoughts clear and concise, that you would speak, Lord, from the pages of your own inspired word to the hearts of those who read them today, that even if I don't say it and you have something intended, that you would impress it upon their minds today.

Teach us all, including myself, individually and personally.

Be our teacher, we pray, in Christ's name, Amen.

Today, like I mentioned, we're gonna be talking about Rehoboam.

I love practical lessons from Bible stories.

There's a book called Education on page 189, and it tells you on page 189 of Education, the most helpful method of how to study the Bible.

So if you ever had trouble in your personal morning devotions, or trying to read the scriptures and get something meaningful out of it, Education, page 189, has a powerful section that literally tells you exactly how to study the Bible, if you needed it, like in Basic 101.

And I love it because in that passage on education page 189, it tells us that God has a thought for us individually in each text of scripture.

I'll say that again, that God has a thought for each of us in each text of scripture.

Can you read a text of scripture and be impressed with a different thought than I am when I read the same text?

And in fact, I'm gonna argue that the Bible was designed that way, to speak to any person from any culture, from any land, doesn't matter.

God has the ability to speak through His word to each of us in a very distinct and personal way, as if He wrote the Bible just for, just for you today.

And so what we're gonna do is, this is not an exhaustive list of things you can learn from the life of Rehoboam, but these are personal things in my devotions that God spoke to me that I needed to hear 1 day.

So whenever a preacher preaches, just so you know, they are always being vulnerable because that's a message God gave them, not to tell you, but because they needed it themselves.

And so if you're encouraged by the message, inspired, I encourage you to study Rehoboam yourself and see what God has in the texts that we don't read today for you personally.

We're gonna look at Rehoboam's life in 3 points today.

Number 1, we're gonna look at the beginning of Rehoboam's career as king.

What happened in the early stages of Rehoboam's experience?

Second, we're gonna then examine the danger that comes with prosperity or success.

And number 3, we're gonna talk about why Rehoboam fell.

Typically, when you think of, again, Rehoboam, You don't think of maybe the most positive king.

You don't probably think of a good ending.

You might not even think of a good beginning.

You might not think anything positive at all when you hear the name Rehoboam.

But we're gonna actually see that that's not entirely true with this man, that there was some great things in his life.

And we're gonna hone in on those and try to learn what we can from him.

So let's start with the beginnings of Rehoboam's experience as king.

Well, he was the son of Solomon, hence my confusion with Solomon and Rehoboam somehow, some way, Don't sound similar, but it happened.

And he became king after Solomon, his father's death.

Now, you can read about this in 2 Chronicles 10.

When he became king, some of his subjects came before him and they had a request.

Your father, they said, dealt harshly with us, can you deal more kindly with us?

Your father was kind of harsh with us, can you be a kinder king than your father was?

Rehoboam, being the new king that he is, decided to go and get some advice.

It's good to get advice every now and then, right?

So he went to the old timers, some of the elders.

They said, if you're nice to them, they will serve you forever.

Let me go ask my friends who I grew up with what they think.

Oh, come on man, you're the king now, right?

I mean, imagine your own buddies in that situation.

And as a result, the kingdom was divided into the North and the South, the 10 tribes and the 2 tribes, what we kind of, which, and it remained that way from that day forward.

So we see after going to his preferred counselors, he made, he decided to deal more harshly, ending in the division of the king.

So this was kind of the day 1, if you can call it, of Rehoboam's kingship, right?

And as a king, if you were a king and your kingdom split in half, would you be excited about that?

What would you do if you were king and you just lost 10 of your 12 tribes?

What would be your first inclination as a king?

And as a king, how do you get them back typically?

And so we're gonna pick up the story now in chapter 11.

So for the sake of time, we summarize chapter 10, but again, I've already told you, don't trust me.

Go read chapter 10 for your afternoon devotion time.

And learn more of the story of Rehoboam's beginning.

So in chapter 11, verse 1, we're going to pick up the story here.

It says, now when Rehoboam came to Jerusalem, he assembled from the house of Judah and Benjamin 180, 000 chosen men who were warriors to fight against Israel, that he might restore the kingdom to Rehoboam.

I love how the Bible speaks third-person, like this third person, it's like he's gonna go restore it for himself.

Was Rehoboam serious about this, yes or no?

Was he okay with the fact people were gonna die in this experience.

He was ready to go to war if that's what it would take to get these people back.

But The word of the Lord came to Shemaiah, the man of God, saying, Speak to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all Israel, and Judah, and Benjamin, saying, Thus says the Lord, You shall not go up or fight against your brethren.

Let every man return to his house, for this thing is from me." So here, a message comes from the Lord to Rehoboam, telling him to, in essence, stop.

Now, obviously your eyes are reading ahead, which I shouldn't have just blotted that out, but anyways, that's fine.

But if all you knew was what we just summarized from Rehoboam's experience, Do you think that he sounds like the type of man who would just, 000, you want me to stop?

He doesn't come across that way from chapter 10, does he?

He comes across as a man who's gonna do what he wants to do, even though someone with more wisdom, like the elders, are telling him, hey, this is not a good course of action.

But Rehoboam does something so remarkable that for the longest time I never even noticed he did.

I just thought of Rehoboam as the man who wanted to deal more harshly and die doing evil in the sight of the king.

That's all I thought of him as when I would go through the list of the kings in my mind.

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Rehoboam

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