Rebellion

 

    Rebellion is to oppose authority or dominance.  Opposing authority may be bad, but opposing dominance is not necessarily a bad thing.  No person should dominate another.  Resisting an established government is not evil, but leading a revolt or uprising that would cause people to lose their lives is not good.  God allows or uses these events for His own purpose, but it should never be something that we pursue.

    King Rehoboam was doomed to fail from the first day because of Solomon's mistake.  He never had a chance, but it doesn't mean things couldn't have turned out differently if he had chose to follow God.  The people asked him to ease up the labor force.  He thought on it for three days.  

    During that three days, Rehoboam went to the elders whom told him that he should.  He didn't need them to work so hard because there was no big project with a deadline.  However, he rejected their wisdom.  He turned to his personal friends that were his age and did not understand how the nation and world worked.  They were entitled and without experience to make these kind of decisions.  They told him to make it harder for their ingratitude.  

    Jeroboam was with the people when they returned to hear Rehoboam's decision.  They were not happy and the king would not listen to his people's needs.  They went back to their lives, but he lived separate from them in his city.  The slaves stoned Adoniram to death for his cruelty over them.  

    A rebellion was born from that because they knew that things were as bad as they could take.  If it got worse, then it would kill them.  The rebellion was born out of pain, hopelessness, and anger.  It climaxed with a national war.  Rehoboam ended up reigning over Judah while Jeroboam reigned over the rest of Israel.

   Jeroboam made two golden calves for the people to worship.  He was winning them over.  He placed them outside the City of David in Bethel and Dan.  He made his own high place for sacrifices.  He led the people to sin and to live a life of pleasure over serving God.

    The tragic thing was that neither leader was consulting God.  It was the people that was paying the price initially.  They would have to face their choices down the road, but these mistakes were costing the people their lives and possibly their souls.

1 Kings 12