Painting above: Hans Holbein (1497-1543) “Rehoboam’s Arrogance” (1530)
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From “Ask Someone Older Than You” by Marshall Segal, twenty-something staff writer at Desiring God Ministries; posted August 15, 2018 at: www.desiringGod.org
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4. Beware of counsel from people just like you.
“King Rehoboam took counsel with the old men, who had stood before Solomon his father” (1 Kings 12:6) — men who had lived and led, succeeded and failed, suffered and persevered. “But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him” (1 Kings 12:8) — young men with whom he was more comfortable, boys who were more like him.
When you do ask someone older for counsel, resist the impulse to make up your mind beforehand. Why do we, like Rehoboam, default to our peers? Positively, because they typically know us best. And they’re often the most available (they’re already a part of our life). But negatively, they’re most likely to agree with us. Not always. Good friends are hard to find, but they do exist. But whether they are good friends or not, peers consistently lack the same wisdom we do — the wisdom that often comes with age, maturity, and experience.
We do need counsel from our friends because they know us. The danger is that they’re more like us. One way to avoid pitting older, wiser counsel against counsel from your friends is to make someone older than you a friend. Pursue a real, life-on-life friendship with someone in a different stage of life. When you already have an ongoing friendship with that person, you don’t have to bring them up to speed on the last five years in five minutes to get informed counsel. They already know you and are ready to speak into your life.
5. Beware of counsel that serves you at the expense of others.
Perhaps the brightest warning in Rehoboam’s story is that his friends’ advice encouraged him to serve himself at the expense of others. They cheered on his pride, and told him to threaten the people, “Thus shall you speak to this people . . . ‘Whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions’” (1 Kings 12:10–11). True wisdom will be suspicious of any advice, from young or old, that elevates me and my desires while hurting someone else. Some decisions may end up hurting others to some degree — whom we marry or don’t, where we live and work, what church we join — but counsel that elevates me to the unnecessary pain or inconvenience of others should give us considerable pause. We should weigh that kind of guidance with even more prayer, counsel, and patience.
6. Pride is the enemy of wise counsel.
Why does Rehoboam reject good counsel and accept the bad? Because the older men called him to humble himself, while the younger men stoked the fires of his pride. They provoked him, “Thus shall you say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s thighs. My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier.’” (1 Kings 12:10-11a) (see painting above). His friends knew that Rehoboam would come down hard on the people if they questioned his manhood — his strength, his independence, his ability to make his own decisions. Satan seeds our thinking with the lie that real maturity is being able to make decisions on our own. God doesn’t leave us to make any major decisions on our own. He wants us, first, to lean on him and ask for his wisdom (James 1:5). And typically what it means to lean on him involves listening well to godly people in our lives, especially godly men and women who have lived and learned more than we have. If we isolate our decision-making from other believers, we not only forfeit sage perspective and good judgment, we also may “be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). Nothing keeps more of us from good counsel than our own pride, especially when it comes to asking someone older than us.
What About Bad Counsel?
Now, not every believer older than you will be wiser than you, at least not in any given situation. The psalmist declares, “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts” (Psalms 119:99–100). If you only ask someone older, and never meditate on the word of God, and therefore are not shaped by his wisdom, how will you recognize bad counsel (or know how to handle wise counsel)? If you jealously seek advice from the aged, but do not seek to obey God himself, you will horde the wisdom of the age, but not the wisdom of God.
Job’s friend Elihu, wise beyond his years, rightly says, “It is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand. It is not the old who are wise, nor the aged who understand what is right” (Job 32:8–9). But even while the older men spoke foolishly, “Elihu waited to speak to Job because they were older than he” (Job 32:4). Wisdom doesn’t end with asking someone older than you. We begin there, but then vigilantly seek God’s will in whatever advice we hear. When you ask for counsel, make sure God’s voice in Scripture is always the loudest in your ears. Ask someone older than you, and then ask if their voice harmonizes with his word.
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THE REST OF THE STORY: The advice of Rehoboam’s young friends was foolish and led to disaster. The northern half of the nation rebelled against him, and the nation that had become great under Rehoboam’s grandfather David and father Solomon, became divided and weakened.
I Kings 12:18-19 — King Rehoboam sent out Adoniram, who was in charge of forced labor, but all Israel stoned him to death. King Rehoboam, however, managed to get into his chariot and escape to Jerusalem. So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day. (verse 17) — But as for the Israelites who were living in the towns of Judah, Rehoboam still ruled over them.
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