GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
2 CHRONICLES 11:1-4
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11:1 When Rehoboam arrived in Jerusalem, he mustered the house of Judah and Benjamin– a hundred and eighty thousand young men– to make war against Israel and to regain the kingdom for Rehoboam.
The tribe of Benjamin was aligned with the Ten Tribes of the northern kingdom, but there was a catch to that. Like our U.S. Capitol, Jerusalem was not quite within the borders of the tribes. It sat between Judah and Benjamin, just as our Washington sits in its broken and flawed diamond shape (is that a symbol of something?) between Virginia and Maryland. Some of the people who lived in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem were Benjamites, but they were under Rehoboam’s rule. Tens of thousands of young men from Benjamin and more than a hundred thousand from Judah were mustered into a fighting force.
2 But word of the LORD came to Shemaiah the man of God: 3 “Say to Rehoboam son of Solomon king of Judah and to all the Israelites in Judah and Benjamin: 4 ‘This is what the LORD says: Do not go up to fight against your brothers. Go home, every one of you, for this thing is from me.’” So they obeyed the word of the LORD and turned back from marching against Jeroboam.
The Lord is compassionate. To prevent this unnecessary war, he stepped in personally with a message to a prophet named Shemaiah. The message was simple: “Don’t fight. Go home. This is my doing.” Here Rehoboam made the second of his two wise decisions, and sent the men home. He had lost the north, but he was still the King of Judah. Who can say what might have happened if he had been rash and ignored the word of God? He might have lost his life, and the lives of tens of thousands of his people.
A wise man knows when it is time to say, “I know that it is my fault” (Jonah 1:12), for “we all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2). This admission meant defeat for Rehoboam, but it also gave him an opportunity to evaluate two things: The wisdom of his advisors, both younger and older, and the way he listened to their advice.
We don’t necessarily need to draw the conclusion that older advisors are always right. In ten proverbs about taking advice (I think my count is fairly thorough), Solomon never once talks about the age of the advisor, but he only advises that we take good advice. “A wise man listens to advice” (Proverbs 12:15). “Wisdom is found in those who take advice” (Proverbs 13:10). “Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise” (Proverbs 19:20). There are also some excellent warnings: “The advice of the wicked is deceitful” (Proverbs 12:5), and again: “Since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh at your disaster” (Proverbs 1:25-26).
Rehoboam’s father was the great King of Israel, and Rehoboam was reduced and humbled. If there is a little foreshadowing or picture of the Savior here in this descendant of David, it is in this, that the son accepted his humble and lesser role according to the word of God. For Rehoboam, this prevented a war, and the word of the Lord came through the prophet Shemaiah, whose name means “The Name of the LORD.” For the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, this state of humiliation was decreed already before the world began; it was in the mind of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in eternity. For Paul says, “God chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Ephesians 1:4). And John says that there are names that have been written in the book of life from the creation of the world, and belonging to the Lamb that was slain (Revelation 13:8). “Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself” (Philippians 2:8). And so God the Son (prophesied also in Proverbs 30:4) accepted his humble state to save his own people. To save us. Praise his holy name forever.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – 2 Chronicles 11:1-4 State of humiliation