“But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him, and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him.”
2 Chronicles 10:8
This verse comes from the story of King Rehoboam. He took over as the king of Israel after his father, King Solomon, had died. When he became king the people came to him asking him to make their burdens of service lighter, for they had been great under Solomon (it was under Solomon that the Temple was built). Rehoboam went to some of the elders of Israel to ask their advice. They told him to lighten their burden, and by doing so they would love and serve him as king all of his days. Rehoboam didn’t like that answer. After all, it meant he would be losing all of his free labor and money. So he went looking for someone else’s advice.
Among his friends, who thought the same way as him, he found the advice he was looking for: double down on their burdens and rule over them strictly. He took this advice and ran with it. From then on, the people rebelled against him. In the end, it was written, “he did evil, for he did not set his heart to seek the Lord.”
How often do we follow these exact footsteps. We go seeking advice, and we keep seeking until we find someone to tell us exactly what we wanted to hear. It’s called confirmation bias. It’s a very common practice, and unfortunately has become common even within Christianity. Nowadays, you can find a church for just about anything you may want to believe, regardless of whether it is Scriptural or not.
We must be wary of such behavior.
Don’t go looking for the answer you want to hear. Seek out wise people for counsel, and don’t ignore it if it doesn’t match up with what you wanted to hear. Sometimes the truth is hard. Sometimes the right answer isn’t what we wanted it to be. You can always find someone to be a yes-man and tell you to do whatever your heart desires, but remember Jeremiah 17:9, “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked.” Just because it’s what you want doesn’t make it right. Find people who will speak the truth to you, like the elders spoke to Rehoboam, but unlike him, listen to the advice they give. Don’t go seeking out the answer you wanted from the beginning.
Prayer:
Father,
Thank you for the example of Rehoboam that we can learn from even now so many thousands of years later. I pray that you would place people in our life to speak truth to us, even hard truths. And help us not to go seeking only the opinions that reinforce our desires, but to give heed to those who speak wisdom and truth.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
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