The Spirit of Counsel – Rehoboam and Jeroboam

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The Holy Spirit

That's a thing I'm sure you've heard before: to be aware that He does run interference; that He protects us from human viewpoint delusion; and, that He causes prosperity to dog our steps. But it is something else to finally come to where you experience it. You should be sensitive to those moments, for that's how it begins. It begins with moments in our lives when we suddenly realize how we are just functioning perfectly all around, and to realize that God the Holy Spirit is free to lead us, and we are responding to Him. There are other times when things don't work so well: when things aren't prospering; when we are not happy; and, when we have the sense that we're sort of mulling about, and our lives really are not counting in terms of eternity. We should be aware that there's a disunity with the Spirit of God at a time like that. But the more time you spend where the Spirit of God is running interference for you, and you're following Him on the plays, the more sensitive you will become to when that is happening in your life, and it will be an exhilarating experience. You'll know when you're in, and you have less and less taste for the lifestyle that leaves Him out.

It does happen. That's exactly the way life moves. Once in a while, you may hear a person get up and give a testimony as to the difference that the leading of the Lord makes in his life. And everybody says, "Wonderful! Gee, that's nice, and that's good." But unless you yourself can relate to having had that kind of experience, you don't fully appreciate what that person is saying. That person is exhilarated because he has discovered what it is to be able to live with God's impact; guidance; thinking; and, capacity behind you, and to have a life that is functioning successfully.

There are some Christians who become people after God's own heart, who, on a regular basis, function in such a way that things just keep falling to their blessing. Things just keep falling in line. Things just keep moving together for them. Things just keep prospering. There is a wholesale outpouring of divine blessing and satisfaction in life. There isn't the frustration. There isn't the struggling. There isn't the incompetence. God brings it together.

Seven Flaming Torches

The torches that we have seen before the Father's throne in Revelation 4:5 are symbols of the ministry of God the Holy Spirit. The first torch is the Holy Spirit as deity, who brings the essence of God to function in the life of the believer, with all that means, so that all that God is, is functioning in your life. The second torch was the Holy Spirit as wisdom, so the believer is provided with divine viewpoint values by which to make decisions. The third torch, which is the one that we are studying now, is the torch of understanding. The torch of wisdom and the torch of understanding have to do with the Christian's mind. These are torches of ministry that do tremendously necessary, important functions relative to the mind of the believer.

The Torch of Understanding

Human Understanding

Human understanding can be very impressive. It seems to be very perceptive, but it is an arrogant self-delusion. That's why the Bible says (and Solomon, in his wisdom, in the book of Proverbs says), "Lean not unto your own understanding." And it is easy to quote the proverb, and you say, "Well, that's self-evident. Of course, that would really be dumb." But the truth of the matter is that sometimes human understanding is very deceptive because it seems like it's so smart. It seems like it's so perceptive. It seems like it's so on track. And you go with it, and you have to be warned that there's a big difference between having the capacity of understanding within the realm of your sin nature, and to have it as an outside gift from the Spirit of God.

Nehemiah

Our daily association with human viewpoint unbelievers who lack perception and who lack understanding is a major threat to our understanding. We are willing to pick up the thinking of other people. Very often, the thinking of other people is garbage. You wouldn't want to walk around picking up a piece of garbage to eat, but you don't mind picking that up for your mind. Human viewpoint of unbelievers is devoid of understanding. Therefore, the opinions and the conclusions and the attitudes and all of these things are provided by understanding that come from the people around you. I don't care how close they are to you. These should be areas that you should be on guard against, and that you should refuse to accept, and you should function on the divine understanding that only the Spirit of God can give you.

Faith in the Scriptures

Creation

So, here are these scientists who have enormous knowledge; capacities; high IQs; and, training, and they are dumb. They're stupid when it comes to the origin of life. They make the most ridiculous kinds of statements, and they expect people to actually take that vast fable called "evolution" seriously. Hebrews 11:3 tells us that if you believe the Bible and what it says, you will have understanding. And remember, by "understanding" we mean perception. You'll see through things. You'll be able to come to reality. The evolutionary scientist can never come to the reality of the origin of life because he rejects the Bible.

People who Practice Evil Lack Understanding

One of the signs that you have divine understanding is that you reject what is evil. You reject what is wrong to do. You do not pick up your lifestyle from the evil society in which we live. Living successfully means to reject the foolishness of human viewpoint. In Proverbs 9:6, we read, "Forsake the foolish and live, and go in the way of understanding." When you have friends that you spot as lacking divine viewpoint perception, don't get too involved with them. Detach yourself from people who lack understanding. I'm warning you: It is the easiest thing in the world to absorb their disorientation. It is hard to be around people extensively and not absorb their human viewpoint. So the book of Proverbs says, "Forsake foolishness, and you'll really live." The deception is that many times we associate with people who lack understanding because we think that they've got the key to real living. If you forsake the foolish, you will go in the way of understanding. And Job tells us that it is foolishness to practice evil.

Sometimes we forget that the current kicks that we may have by following a certain course of action are at the expense of eternal consequences. A life without divine understanding is a wasted life. It is filled with self-imposed miseries. So, this is an important principle. If you lack understanding, you will practice evil. When you get understanding, evil will make you sick to your stomach, and you will avoid it. If you do that, you will have imposed miseries upon yourself.

Understanding is Essential

So, you need to know what God has particularly in store for you. And, by that, I don't mean only what God has in store for you in terms of your Christian service. I mean everything that's involved in your life. What does God have in store for you in terms of family; marriage; social life; material prosperity; and, everything else? Unless you have possessed understanding, you'll never know what God's plan is for you. So, understanding is an essential quality.

The Knowledge of God

How do we get a Knowledge of God?

We just spent a campout at Padre Island with our older clubs, and we studied every one of those things as a possibility for happiness. We studied if from the greatest man that ever lived, in terms of wisdom, who tried every one of them. The man, Solomon, with his great wisdom, turned his back upon God. Instead of coming back and confessing it, he decided to try other things to substitute for fellowship with God, and to find happiness. We studied every one of those things, and Solomon said that: "Every one of those bombed out on me, and it was nothing. Every one of those was foolish emptiness, and I hated it after I did it. I had nothing for all of my efforts." You're not going to get understanding except through knowledge of doctrine. That's the way you will get understanding. That's what Proverbs 9:10 says: "Knowledge of the Holy One is understanding."

Don't be too quick to turn your nose up and say that there has to be something more to the local church ministry than learning doctrine. There is a variety of expression, but there is nothing more. That's where it's at. And when you catch that, you're going to be on your way to that exhilarating experience of being aware of the fact that you are walking with God. Understanding is spiritual wealth. Colossians 2:2 says, "That their hearts might be comforted, being together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father and of Christ." Full understanding: that is real riches.

So, this particular torch of understanding represents the fact that the church-age believer has with him God the Holy Spirit, who, through the written Scriptures, is ready to give him the capacity to know what the score is. That's the simplest way I can reduce it. This torch of understanding is to give you the capacity to know what the score is. You know plenty of people, just as I do, who never know what the score is. They go around, and some of them think that they're tremendous hot-shots, and you couldn't find bigger zeros than they are. But they think they really know what the score is. They have all the arrogance that the sin nature can spew up, but they have no understanding. This is a precious quality.

The Spirit of Counsel

You and I as Christians are surrounded by many sincere opinions, and we have to have the quality of "etsah" in order to be able to distinguish what is a human viewpoint delusion. We Christians are constantly surrounded by people who've got all kinds of opinions for us as Christians (as individuals). You know that there are people always suggesting to you one thing and another about what they think; about what you should think; and, about what you should do. And unless you have the quality of "etsah" from the Spirit of God, you will not be able to spot bad advice.

Some of you are sitting ducks for bad advice. You just absorb it like a sponge. If anybody comes along from the Christian community, or from the non-Christian community, with bad advice, you are so devoid of the capacity of counsel that you just eat it up. Until the Spirit of God gives you good counsel, by which you can judge the advice of people, that's what's going to be true about you. You are going to be a patsy.

The Lord Jesus Christ had the Spirit of Counsel

What if he had done that? What if he had been foolish enough to take that kind of advice? It would have been an enormous evil out of the will of God, for they would not have believed Him anyway. The result would have been that they would have led Him into the sin that would have terminated all possibility of eternal life for us all.

When He raised Lazarus from the dead, He thereby demonstrated that He indeed was the omnipotent God, for only the omnipotent God can raise the dead. Even "omnipotent" charismatics today can't raise the dead. That's an exclusive capacity of God. If you read that passage in John, you will discover that after He raised Lazarus from the dead, that's when the official, religious leaders of Israel got together and said, "We've got to kill Him. We're never going to stop Him until we kill Him." You would have thought they would have said, "Now we do believe. We have seen with our eyes. This man was dead three days. His sisters didn't even want You to roll the stone away from the tomb because he is putrefied by now, and the stench would be enormous." But instead, He raises him from the dead: "That man was really dead. He is really alive. You are obviously what you claim to be: the Messiah, anointed by the living God. Instead, they said we're going to kill Him, and they set the plan in motion that ultimately led to His crucifixion.

National Blessing

Let's begin at verse 10: "The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nought. He makes the devices of the people of no effect. The counsel of the Lord (on the other hand) stands forever – the thoughts of His heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, and the people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance." It is a point of importance to a nation that the people who are the leaders of that nation are men who possess divine viewpoint counsel. That nation will be blessed of God. When a nation loses leaders who have divine viewpoint counsel, that nation will not be blessed.

The same principle applies in any realm of life. If you have a school, that school will be blessed and prospered if the people who are the head of it are following divine viewpoint counsel. If you have any relationship of life, if divine viewpoint counsel is being followed, that relationship in your life will be one that will prosper. If you are in business, if you are related to people who are tied in to the Holy Spirit's counsel, your business will prosper. And sometimes, it will prosper because you are functioning on divine viewpoint counsel, even though the people you're associated with are either carnal or unbelievers.

This is one thing that was very clear to Lot. Lot was not the greatest believer of all times, and he was heavy into the carnal world. He recognized that he was being blessed because of his relationship to Abraham, who was God's man. So, you've got these hangers-on. Laban recognized that he was being blessed because of his association with his nephew, Jacob. And if it were not for him, he would not have been prospered. Divine counsel is a tremendous thing. Following the advice that God gives simply cannot permit you to be a loser.

Rehoboam

Jeroboam

Solomon had tried to find happiness without fellowship with God, instead of confessing his sins. When you confess your sins, that means you're going to get rid of your sin. You're going to discontinue it. Part of Solomon's problem was that he disobeyed God by marrying heathen women. He compounded the problem by bringing in more than one wife. He compounded it further by establishing altars to the heathen gods of these heathen wives. So, he was on a downhill road. How in the world are you going to confess to the Lord that that's an evil? Are you going to go to this woman and say, "You're through?" Is she not going to worship these evil gods anymore? How in the world is Solomon going to go to his 699 wives, and say, "The first one is my wife. The rest of you 699 girls were an enormous mistake, and I'm going to cut you off. I'm going to take care of you, but I have one wife." And those 300 girlfriends that he had on the side – was he going to cut them off? Salomon was in a terrific bind. He got himself so deep that he had nothing but the fury of women's scorn like you wouldn't believe, facing him in the eye, even after he confessed the evil.

In order to find happiness then, he proceeded with these other things. So, with his desire to build great cities, as well as great palaces for himself, he had to impose a great burden of service upon the people, and a huge taxation system to pay for all these things, even though he was an enormously wealthy man in his own right. So, that's what these people were referring to. Jeroboam, being the spokesman, said, "This is too much. A new administration has come in. A new king is to reign, and we humbly submit that this burden should be eased."

1 Kings 12:3-4: "They sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the congregation of Israel came and spoke unto Rehoboam saying, "Your father made our yoke grievous. Now therefore, make the grievous service of your father (that is, of Solomon) and his heavy yoke which he put upon us lighter, and we will serve you." This was not an unreasonable request. Jeroboam said, "Ease up the pressures; take the government off our back; and, ease off the taxation, and we will gladly follow you as we have followed your famous father, Solomon.

Now, this Jeroboam was doing a rather outstanding thing by being willing to be the spokesman for this group, because he had already previously been contacted by the prophet Ahijah, who had a message for Jeroboam from God. This was a most amazing message of what God's plan was for Jeroboam's future. That was in 1 Kings 11:29: "And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet, Ahijah, the Shilonite, found him in the way, and he had clad himself with a new garment, and they, too, were alone in the field. And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on Jeroboam, and tore it into twelve pieces. He said to Jeroboam, 'Take ten pieces, for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, 'Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon, and will give ten tribes to you.''"

So, Jeroboam had already been previously told by God's prophet that the kingdom was going to be split in two, and that Jeroboam was going to become king over ten of the tribes. So, this does tell us something of the wisdom of Jeroboam. There is something to commend this man for, that in spite of this, he still went to Rehoboam, the new king, recognizing him as in the line of David, and appealing to him to ease the burden upon the people. This was even though, in the back of his mind, he was well aware of the fact that God had revealed to him a distinctively different direction.

The Counsel of the Old Men

1 Kings 12:6: "And King Rehoboam consulted the old men who stood before Solomon his father while he yet lived, and said, 'How do you advise that I may answer this people?' They spoke unto him saying, 'If you will be a servant unto this people this day, and will serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever.'"

The Counsel of the Young Men

I cannot believe how I can see young people again and again going to someone who doesn't have a track record of success, but has a track record of mostly being a zero, and follow their leading. This is how women get themselves married to slobs, and how young promising young men get themselves married to women who have nothing within themselves (empty shells). That is because they do not consult and get the advice (the counsel) that will make them happy in those choices.

So, Rehoboam demonstrates the inexperience of his own youth, and he goes and he asks the people he grew up with. 1 Kings 12:8: "And he forsook the counsel of the old men, which they had given him, and he consulted with the young men who had grown up with him, and who stood before him. And he said unto them, "What counsel (what 'etsah') do you give that we may answer this people who have spoken to me saying, 'Make the walk which your father did put upon us lighter?' And the young men who had grown up with him spoke unto him saying, 'Thus shall you speak unto this people who spoke unto you saying, 'Your father made our yoke heavy, but make it lighter unto us.' Thus you shall say unto them: 'My little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins. Now, whereas my father did burden you with a heave yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father has chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.'"

The young men said, "Listen, Rehoboam. Forget that baloney of those old dudes. You stand up and make it clear who's in charge. You stand up and you tell the people that a new administration is here, but if they think they can walk over you, they've got a second thought coming. You are the great Rehoboam. You're going to be bigger than your father, Solomon."

Well, this is the problem, as always, when you get a son who doesn't have the capacity to have produced and created what his father did before him. Then he falls into the position of having to administer that which his father created. Solomon was a very great man, and he produced a very great civilization in Israel. He brought it to the pinnacle of its history. Now, Rehoboam, who didn't have enough brains not to ask the kids he grew up with how to act, is given the responsibility over all this that his father produced. So, Rehoboam decided to follow the advice of the young men who were as out of touch with divine viewpoint counsel as he was.

1 Kings 12:12: "So, Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king had appointed, saying, 'Come to me again the third day.' And the king answered the people roughly and forsook the old mens' counsel that they gave him. He spoke to them after the counsel of the young men saying, 'My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke. My father also chastised you with whips, and I'll chastise you with scorpions.' Wherefore the king hearkened not unto the people, for the cause was from the Lord, that he might perform his saying, which the Lord by Ahijah the Shilonite spoke unto Jeroboam the son of Nebat."

The Holy Spirit permitted Rehoboam to function on human viewpoint courage in order to fulfill the divine judgment on Solomon, his father, which had been predicted to Jeroboam, that Jeroboam would be the executor of God's judgment upon Solomon, because of his turning away from the wisdom that God had given.

The Splitting of the Kingdom

Rehoboam arrogantly says, "I'll show you who's in charge. You're going to rebel against me?" For ten tribes said, "We're leaving." The ten northern tribes said, "We're splitting off, and we are going to be a separate kingdom." And Rehoboam said, "Who do you think you're dealing with?" He was still cocky. He still was listening to the counsel of the youth about him. So he sent one of his agents to deal with them, and they stoned him. And Rehoboam said, "Boy, this is no place for me to be," and he hops into his eight-cylinder chariot, and he hightails it back down to Jerusalem. He was getting out of there in a hurry.

Verse 19 says, "So Israel rebelled against the house of David unto this day." That means, of course, that, when the book was written, the kingdom was still divided in two.

All of this was because of the terrible sins of Solomon, and of the warnings that God had given to him, and the refusal of even Solomon to follow the divine viewpoint counsel. Notice in 1 Kings 11:1 what Solomon was really guilty of here. This is why Jeroboam was told that he was going to receive part of the kingdom: "But King Solomon loved many foreign women, in addition to the daughter of pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites."

These were all of the nations that God said, "Don't intermarry with them:" "Of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, 'You shall not go into them, neither shall they come in unto you. For surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.' Solomon clung onto these in love. And he had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. And Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not go fully after the LORD, as did David his father. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And he did likewise for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods."

All of this is described in the book of Ecclesiastes. That's why we say that nine-tenths of that book is Solomon out of fellowship, describing human viewpoint. Solomon is wrong, wrong, wrong, in thing after thing after thing that he says in Ecclesiastes – the conclusions he reaches. But it is a priceless example of substitution for fellowship with God, and the disaster that that leads to.

Verse 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, and had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep that which the Lord commanded. Wherefore, the Lord said unto Solomon, 'Forasmuch as this is done by you, and you have not kept My covenants and My statutes which I commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you, and will give it to you servant. Notwithstanding, in your days, I will not do it, for David your father's sake, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son."

Jeroboam was a servant of Solomon. The Lord said, "Because you've done this, Solomon (this terrible evil in Israel), I am going to take the kingdom away from you. But because of my respect for your father, David, I'm not going to do it while you're alive. But just as soon as your son Rehoboam gets on the throne, I'm going to pull most of the kingdom away from him."

Verse 13 says, "Howbeit, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but will I will give one tribe to my son, for David my servant's sake, and for Jerusalem's sake, which I have chosen." The Lord said, "I'm not going to take it all away from you. You deserve that. But because of David, that man after my own heart, I'm going to leave Judah and the tribe associated with Judah (which was almost absorbed into Judah): Benjamin. Those two you will retain as the southern kingdom."

So, here is a classic example of a man who had good advice given to him, and he chose to take the bad advice. So, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin took the counsel of God. They refused to follow Rehoboam into battle against the ten tribes. 1 Kings 12:21-24 tell us that the Lord came to these two tribes and gave them the counsel that they should not try to fight against the ten northern tribes, which is what Rehoboam wanted them to do.

So, Rehoboam, given the counsel of the Holy Spirit, through the old men, which would have made his reign over Israel successful and prosperous, instead chose to take the counsel of the younger men that destroyed that possibility. Rehoboam rejected this counsel.

Now God comes along to Jeroboam, and says, "Jeroboam, now I'm going to try to give you some divine viewpoint ('etsah')." You've seen what has happened. In 1 Kings 11:37-38, the Lord says to Jeroboam, "I will take you, and you shall reign according to all that your soul desires, and you shall be king over Israel (the name for the ten northern tribes). And it shall be, if you will hearken to all that I command you, and will walk in My ways, and do what is right in My sight, to keep My statues and My commandments as David My servant did, then I will be with you and build you a sure house, as I built for David, and will give Israel unto you."

What an amazing bit of advice. God comes and says, "Now Jeroboam, I'm going to say the same thing to you that I said to Solomon. If you will obey the Word of God, and if you will be faithful to Me, I will make you as great a king and give you a dynasty of posterity such as I have promised to David. But I won't promise you that your kingdom will be forever, because the ten northern tribes are going to be joined again with the southern tribes and they will again be one kingdom in the millennium. But I will promise you that, over the centuries, until that happens, the dynasty of Jeroboam will glow like a gem of glory in human history."

What would you do if you were in that place? Wouldn't you just say, "Yes, sir, Lord? Boy, I am the beneficiary of all of that dumb counsel that Rehoboam took. You can count on me to take good counsel." Instead, the truth of the matter is that, in short order, Jeroboam went negative for the counsel of the Holy Spirit, believe it or not. He took human viewpoint counsel, and it set the northern kingdom on the road to evil. If you want to pursue this on your own, 1 Kings 12:25 all the way through 1 Kings 13:6 describe how, in spite of what God said, Jeroboam said, "You know, I'm going to have to consolidate my kingdom myself."

That's one of the worst things that people who do not have divine counsel think they have to do. They have to make it on their own. In spite of the fact that God said, "I'm going to make it for you, Jeroboam," Jeroboam said, "Listen, if I let these people go down to worship at Jerusalem (which is the only place that a Jew could worship, because that's where the temple is, and that's the only place the sacrifices could be made), their hearts are going to be drawn away, and they'll turn their allegiance back to Rehoboam. So, he established a false worship. He established a false system of priesthood. He established a totally alien system; appointed his own priests; put on the wild fire (instead of the proper fire that God provided for the burning of the sacrifices); and, set up the whole nation on the road to its own destruction. So, in time, Jeroboam, ignoring the counsel of the Spirit of God, became as bad as the man that he had replaced.

Pity the nation who is mostly led by men devoid of the counsel of the Holy Spirit. Pity the people you know who live their lives without the advice of the Holy Spirit. Pity yourself when you are too backward to know whose advice you are receiving, and are incapable of acting upon the advice of the Holy Spirit, and have that advice countered by some human viewpoint advice of people that you esteem that you should not esteem; of people that you are intimate with, whom you should not be intimate with; of people that you admire, whom you should not admire; and, of people who have something you desire that you should not desire.

Learn to appreciate the counsel of the Spirit of God. He lives within you. He is there to give it. He pours it out all the time to the degree that you are obedient to receiving that information, and to the degree that you understand Scripture. From the Bible, He gives you counsel that makes you successful beyond anything you could possibly dream of. He does it every time.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1982

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