Leadership
Character Qualities. 1 Kings 12
The question: Should religion be divorced from politics? We can address
that question from two perspectives. One is from the perspective of the voter
and the second would be from the perspective of government. From the
perspective of the voter you cannot divorce religion from politics. If someone
has a religious conviction, whatever that religion may be, if they don’t allow
that to address that the every-day issues and decisions of life, then it has no
value to them, it is just a façade. So from the perspective of the individual
every value judgment, whenever we say something is right or something is wrong,
that brings to the table an ethical system, a moral system, and we have some
basis for saying why something is right or why something is wrong. Is that
informed by a view of the divine institutions coming out of the Scripture? Is
it personal preference, or is it just motivated by one’s desire to avoid a
recession, depression, or difficult times economically because you really don’t
want to lose everything you have invested?
So what is the value system? There is always a value system and that
value system either comes out of the Scripture (which is what makes it
biblical—the foundation comes out of the Scriptures and then you build on that;
it is not because it seems to be compatible with Christianity), God and His
revelation, or out of human reason, human experience, pragmatism, empiricism,
etc. It comes down to what one’s ultimate authority is. There really is no
neutrality in human thought. All human thought that involves any sort of value
judgment, any sort of ethical decision, always brings to the table some sort of
view of ultimate reality—is it personal, is it impersonal? If it is personal
does that ultimate reality communicate with man or is that ultimate personality
non-communicative—something like a deistic view of God that was popular in the
early stage of the Enlightenment.
When we think of it in these terms we realise that for a Christian to
come to a decision about who to vote for in an election means that we have to
analyse the particular leaders in a lot of different ways. None of them are
going to be perfect. We stop and look at the various things that God has laid
out. We think of it in terms of the divine institutions, for example—individual
responsibility, marriage, family, nationalism. What God shows throughout the
Old Testament history is that human government will always fail; it is not the solution.
The political solution is no solution and cursed is the man who trusts in man.
What God is showing, and specifically when we get into the theocratic
As Solomon during the latter years continued trying to impress people
with the grandeur of his building projects he was conscripting more and more
labourers from the tribes. So he is virtually taking away their means of production
by bringing the men into
As we analyse the political process which is part of the whole social
structure of mankind we have to realise that at the heart of the political
process is people, and people are all totally depraved, as Scripture says, and
if it is not for the truth of Bible doctrine which emphasises personal
responsibility the tendency for human beings is to always shift responsibility
to someone else. In governmental settings today in the modern world that fits
within a model known as socialism—the idea that government controls the means
of production and controls and redistributes the wealth. This destroys
initiative, the desire to accumulate wealth and to produce and go forward, and
many other things. But at the heart of this whole thing is the people and the
leaders a nation gets comes out of the same cultural morass as everybody else.
So we tend to get the leaders that we deserve because they come out of the same
pot that the rest of us are in.
In 1 Kings chapter twelve we see an emphasis on the character of the
leader, and how important the character of the leader is. We can see a contrast
between Solomon’s son Rehoboam, who will succeed him on the throne, and
Solomon. In 1 Kings 10 we saw the grandeur of Solomon’s empire because of God’s
blessing. It was not through taxation; he didn’t build this kingdom on the
backs of the people. God blessed him and the nation was prosperous because his
heart was totally devoted to the Lord. But when his heart turned away from God
and he began to do evil in the sight of the Lord—defined in context as open
idolatry, which is treason against God—God brought him under discipline. Now to
maintain the façade of affluence and in order to keep that veneer up he is
going to maintain his affluence on the backs of the people. So he is increasing
the load that he is putting on the people in terms of financial taxation as
well as the demand for more and more labourers. He had to keep up the façade
that God is still blessing them when in fact God is no longer blessing them and
has announced the judgment on the nation through His own revelation and then
the prophet Ahijah to Jeroboam who is one of the key leaders in labour force in
the tribes from the north.
A character comparison from what we know of Solomon and Rehoboam. First
of all, Rehoboam is much older when he comes to the throne than Solomon was.
Solomon was probably somewhere near the age of 20; he’s young. That is
something to notice because youthfulness and the naivety of inexperience of the
young is a theme within this particular chapter. Rehoboam is 41 when he comes
to the throne, not far from the age that Solomon was at when Solomon began to
get away from the Lord. Rehoboam is older and should be wiser and should have
more experience. But he doesn’t. He is arrogant; he is self-centred; he makes,
as a result, foolish decisions. That comes because he is not oriented to God.
His heart is not for the Lord at this point.
The second thing in comparison that we see is that Solomon listened to
the counsel of his fathers. Cf. 1 Kings 2. He is teachable, he has humility, he
recognises his own limitations, and he has objectivity. By the time we get to 1
Kings 3:7 we see that he is humble toward God. NASB “Now, O LORD my God, You have
made Your servant king in place of my father David, yet I am but a little
child; I do not know how to go out or come in.” He asked God for wisdom and
skill in leading his people. So we see that there is a heart for leadership
there and he understands that his leadership is servanthood. That is a key
element because Rehoboam is going to reject that. Solomon understood that at
the heart of leadership is that a king is serving God and serving his people.
Solomon’s priorities show that he is focusing on God. He wanted to build
the temple for God in
What makes the difference between Solomon as a great king and Rehoboam
as a poor king is the spiritual factor. 1 Kings chapter twelve shows us the
issues related to leadership and the individuals involved. A number of
important principles are pulled out of verses 1-24 which are often thought to
be the main idea here—listening to the elders instead of the young men, and
some other things. But that is not the main point that the writer of 1 Kings is
trying to make. He is trying to show as part of his broad argument through 1
& 2 Kings that as based on the Mosaic Law God blesses the nation that is in
obedience to Him and is keeping the contracts, the covenant that God made with
them, and that God will bring judgment on the nation that disobeys Him, and the
most egregious form of disobedience is idolatry. All of this goes back to our
understanding of Deuteronomy and the Mosaic Law. The fundamental lesson through
all of this is related to God’s discipline of
One of the key contrasts between Solomon and Rehoboam has to do with
wisdom. Solomon is wise; Rehoboam is foolish. Proverbs 1:7 NASB “The
fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
The starting point is this fear, this respect for God as the sovereign ruler of
His creation. That is what the fear of the Lord really means. It is a fearfulness
but it is also a respect. It is that recognition that if I disobey God He will
lower the boom. Once there is that respect for God’s authority that is when we
really begin to learn and that is the basis for wisdom. In contrast, fools
despise wisdom and instruction. We see that with Rehoboam, he despises the
wisdom and instruction that comes from the elders.
Another key passage to look at would be Psalm 11:10 NASB “The
fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding have all those who do
{His commandments;} His praise endures forever.” That is the idea that James
has of practicing what we learn from the Word of God. Those who hear should be
doers, implementers of what they learn.
Proverbs
Proverbs
Psalm 19:7-10 is a tremendous meditation on the value of God’s Word. NASB
“The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making
wise the simple.
The contrast is in Psalm 14:1 NASB “The fool has said in his
heart, ‘There is no God’.” This is not talking about some overt atheist; this
is talking about the person who in terms of their inner thought life, how they
approach life, are functional atheists. It could be said that perhaps ninety
per cent of people who go to a Christian church on a Sunday morning are
functional atheists, because they don’t live as if God has actually spoken to
every area of their life. They lives as if there is no God. But there is a God,
so they are foolish because they don’t have the fear of the Lord. So the fool
is not the unbeliever, the fool is the person who is living in terms of his
inner thought life, his inner view of reality, his human viewpoint thinking
which is based on non-biblical assumption.
Proverbs
Proverbs
Proverbs 15:5 NASB “A fool rejects his father’s discipline,
But he who regards reproof is sensible.” Solomon had guided Rehoboam as a young
man but now he rejects the teaching of his father in his early years and he
rejects the guidance of his father’s counsel. In contrast, the wise person is
the one who regards reproof.
Romans