"The Voices We Heed" (June 14, 2026 Sermon)

Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

Text: 1 Kings 12:1-17

A single bad listening decision can split a community, a workplace, even a nation. We open with 1 Kings 12 and the moment Rehoboam steps into power, hears a desperate plea to lighten the burden Solomon left behind, and chooses the advice that flatters him most. The result is as dramatic as it is familiar: harsh words, wounded trust, and a kingdom that breaks in two. 

We zoom out to Solomon’s “high water mark” at the temple dedication and the slow drift from wisdom toward the god of gold. Forced labor, heavy taxes, and vanity projects prop up a shining public image while neighborliness fades. It’s an ancient story, but it reads like a modern case study in political leadership, economic inequality, and what happens when “success” is measured without asking whether the hungry are fed or the vulnerable are protected. 

Then we bring it home with Lev Shomeah, the listening heart. A listening heart is powerful, but it is not automatically good; it becomes wise when we choose voices that stretch us, correct us, and tell the truth. We contrast Rehoboam’s yes-men with Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals, and we name the hard work of discernment: not all voices are of God, and listening widely does not mean heeding blindly. As our nation approaches a major anniversary, we also ask what faithful Christian patriotism looks like when we examine who has been heard and who has been dismissed. If this stirred something in you, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review, then tell us: which voices do you need to hear more clearly right now?

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Transcript

Opening Prayer And Scripture

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Let us pray. Lord God, by your Spirit, teach us to obey your voice and keep your covenant so that we may be a priestly kingdom, your holy people, in Jesus' name. Amen. The scripture this week comes from the book of 1 Kings, chapter 12, verses 1 through 17. Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. When Jeroboam, son of Nebut, heard of it, for he was still in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon. Then Jeroboam remained in Egypt, and they sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, Your father made your our yoke heavy. Now, therefore, lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you. He said to them, Go away for three days, and then come again to me. So the people went away. Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, How do you advise me to answer this people? They answered him, You will be if you will be a servant to this people today and serve them and speak good words to them, when they when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever. But he disregarded the advice that the older men gave him and consulted with the young men who had grown up with him and now attended him. He said to them, What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, Lighten the yoke that your father put on us? The young men who had grown up with him said to him, Thus you should say to the people to this people who spoke to you, Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must lighten it for us. Thus you should say to them, My little finger is thicker than my father's loins. Now, 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. So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king had said, Come to me again the third day. The king answered the people harshly. He disregarded the advice of the older men who had given him and spoke to them according to the advice of the young men. My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions. So the king did not listen to the people, because it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord to fulfill his word that the Lord had spoken by Ahijah, the Shilanite, to Jerobaham, son of Nebit. When all Israel saw that the king would not listen to them, the people answered the king, What share do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel. Look now to your own house, O David. So Israel went away to their tents, but Rehoboam reigned over the Israelites who were living in the towns of Judah. Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

All right, friends, let us pray. The Lord may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Alright,

From Temple Glory To Decline

SPEAKER_02 4:01

folks, as we continue our journey through 1st and 2 Kings. Last week we gathered with Solomon and the Israelites as he stretched his arms out toward the heaven and dedicated the glorious, newly constructed temple to God's glory. As we talked about last week, it had been years and years in the making. And in that moment, you may remember the Israelites celebrated not only this sacred space that they had built, but also the street cred that it gave them on the geopolitical stage. Sometimes we forget that just two generations prior to this, Israel was largely a nation of hill country farmers. But this temple put them on the map. It established their reputation, and at that moment, when Solomon both basked in the glory of his and their accomplishments, it was unfortunately the high water mark of his reign. Everything after that pretty much went downhill. To make a long story short, Solomon tasted glory, and as do almost, well, a lot of people in that position, he decided that he wanted more and that he could not get enough. Once someone tastes that sort of power, they rarely find their appetites satiated. Solomon, the book of 1 King, tells us hungered for gold, lots of it. He began to cover everything in gold and seized every opportunity to establish himself and almost as an afterthought, the Israelites, as a golden kingdom of opulence, wealth, and power that everyone else around them needed to submit to. Famously in the chapters between last week's passage and this week's passage, the queen of Sheba paid a royal visit to Solomon to witness firsthand his golden empire and his storied wisdom. But it would seem, however, that that listening heart that we talked about, that Lev Shomeah, that God granted him back in chapter three, began to listen to a voice other than the God who had granted it to him in the first place. Instead, sadly, Solomon began to listen to the God of gold rather than the God of neighborliness. And the irony was this everything Solomon did to increase Israel's wealth and prosperity maybe was done with good intentions. It was all done in the name of law and order, national strength and prosperity, success and power, but the Bible tells us that he forgot the Torah's mandate of neighborliness in the process. Or to put it in modern vernacular, a booming stock market doesn't necessarily mean that the hungry are being fed, the naked are being clothed, or the homeless are being housed. Instead, Solomon began to care more about his power than the people's well-being. Now, we, of course, can look at history and find no shortage of political leaders who have fallen into that trap. More than two dozen years ago, Walter Brugman said the following about today's passage in Solomon's folly. Brugman said, It is odd and noteworthy that the steps taken toward national security produced more anxiety. The provisions for happiness produced more tension. In other words, Solomon's efforts to make Israel great only led to a widening economic gap between the haves and the haves not and the have-nots. After all, all of those building projects relied on forced labor and could only be funded by exorbitant taxes that disproportionately burdened the poor in his kingdom. And it was only a matter of time before those chickens came home to roost. So sadly, Solomon died a failed king, mostly because by the time he died, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And I know it's a lot. And Solomon made the choice to abandon his faithfulness to God's Torah, God's law, and follow the pagan religions of his numerous spouses and concubines, which most of all probably were undoubtedly affairs of political alliances and geopolitical negotiations. But most of all, what really was Solomon's downfall was that the people had had it. Kim did a really good job of summarizing why they were so frustrated, because by the time Solomon had died, the Israelites were close to mutiny, fed up with the burden of paying for all of Solomon's building projects.

A New King Meets Old Grievances

SPEAKER_02 9:21

And so it happened that Solomon died, and the crown went on to his son Rehoboam. But trouble began to stir before Solomon's son Rehoboam's reign had barely gotten off the ground. This is the kind of colorful part of today's story that Dan read for us. The Israelites in the northern part of the kingdom complained to Rehoboam that his father Solomon's reign had been oppressive to them, especially in their economic security. They basically asked Rehoboam to turn from his father Solomon's ways and to ease up, to lighten both the requirements of forced labor for his father's building projects and their responsibility to fund them through their taxes. Rehoboam

Choosing Advisors Shapes A Kingdom

SPEAKER_02 10:13

takes their complaint to two groups of advisors before he decides on his response. The first time he goes to the old guard, the advisors who have been around for a long time and remember the time before his father became drunk with power and wealth. They advise the young king to ease up, to ease the burden and lighten the yoke for his new constituents. Listen, Rhoboam, they say, your father flew a little too close to the sun. He bit off more than he could chew, and you have an opportunity to adopt a more conciliatory posture and return the focus to the well-being of God's people over national glory or personal advancement. Rheoboam mulls it over, but it's not what he wants to hear. Next, he goes to another group of advisors, his young advisors, that's all the descriptions that the Bible gives us. Just simply says that he goes to some of his friends, his younger men, and Brugman, Walter Brugman suggests that these are naive advisors, young enough to have known nothing but the opulence of Solomon's reign. And they are the ones who tell Rhoboam exactly what he wants to hear. Don't listen to those wimps up north, they tell him. This is the Stephen Fearing paraphrase, if you hadn't figured out yet. They say, Don't listen to those wimps up north, they tell him arrogantly, now isn't the time to let up. Instead, it's time to grab the bull by the horns and take this to the next level. In fact, they urge the young king to respond to the northern tribes by telling them, and I quote, My little finger is thicker than my father's loins. Now, I will let you all extrapolate for yourselves what that actually means. Let's just suffice to say that their entitlement and privilege and arrogance are music to Rehoboam's ears. He says, We're gonna go with that. And so he disregards the will of the people, and he does so to his own detriment. Around the year 922 BCE, the northern tribes revolt and follow one of Solomon's old advisors, Jeroboam, and the kingdom splits in two. The wonder and glory of Solomon's temple are now stained by a kingdom divided. Rehoboam continues his reign in the southern tribes of Judah, and Jeroboam begins his reign as the king of the northern tribes in what was called Israel. And so for the remainder of our time in 1st and 2nd Kings, we'll journey through a divided kingdom until Israel, the northern kingdom, falls to the Assyrians around 722, and Judah, the southern kingdom, will fall to the Babylonians around 587. Now, I realize that this has been a lot of history, such as unavoidable when we're going through the books of 1st and 2nd Kings. But I

A Listening Heart Needs Challenge

SPEAKER_02 13:22

want to focus on the following because I believe that there's wisdom to be gleaned from Rehboam's folly. I will make the case that Rehoboam did in fact inherit his father's Lev Shomeah. Do we remember that phrase? Say it together. Lev Shomeah, which again means listening heart. That's the listening heart that Solomon asked God for in chapter three. Rehoboam did inherit his father's Lev Shomeah, but I believe that he learned the hard way what many of us are learning today. That a listening heart isn't a proper moral compass unless we make the intentional choice to listen to voices that perhaps challenge us, that help us grow, and maybe give us different perspectives. Now I remember back in college reading Doris Kern Goodwin's 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning book, Team of Rivals, the political genius of Abraham Lincoln. Did anybody read that book when it came out about 20 years ago? In it, she chronicles how Abraham Lincoln cleverly filled his presidential cabinet with former political rivals who differed with him greatly on a variety of political issues. At a time back then, when our country was fractured by civil war and fighting over the issue of slavery, Abraham Lincoln did the exact opposite of what Rehoboam did in today's passage. Rehoboam surrounded himself with nothing but yes men, advisors who appease his desire to continue with his father Solomon's vanity projects. But Abraham Lincoln, by contrast, intentionally surrounded himself with people who disagreed with him. And he worked tirelessly to reconcile conflicting factions, to bring the war to an end, and along with it, the institution of slavery. Was it messy work? Absolutely. Did it work 100% of the time? Of course not. But Lincoln knew what Rio Gillam learned the hard way, that a political leader who listens only to that which he wants to hear is no leader at all. Now I realize that few among us will ever be the president of a country or the king of a nation. But every single one of us here are leaders, nevertheless. We're leaders in our church. We're leaders in our families, in our circles of friends, in our workplaces, in our nonprofits, on our boards. We lead simply by leaving this room today and being representatives of Christ on earth wherever we step beyond the walls of the sanctuary. And I believe we are stronger when we listen to a multitude of voices, not just mine. I hope to goodness that I'm not the only voice you all listen to, and I trust that I'm not. Because I believe that we're stronger when we listen to different voices. Because let us be clear, not all voices are of God. There are voices right now that are trying to turn us against one another. There are voices that are trying to tell us to treat our neighbors with suspicion and contempt. There are voices that tell us to give in to selfish individualism. But just because we listen to all voices does not mean that we heed to them all. So this week, I invite all of us, certainly myself included, to be intentional about naming the voices that our listening hearts listen to, and to ask ourselves the following questions: Who are we listening to, and who are we not listening to? What voices are loud and what voices have been shoved to the side? So we'll close with this observation.

Patriotism With Honest Listening

SPEAKER_02 17:05

In a few short weeks, we are going to observe the 250th anniversary of our country. For many of us, this will be a time of great celebration. And I want you all to hear your pastor when I say that we don't have to choose between being Christian and being patriotic. But I think part of being a patriotic Christian is having hard conversations about our nation's left Shumea, our nation's listening heart. Because it's important for us to ask who has our nation listened to, and who has our nation's heart dismissed, or disparaged, or dehumanized over its 250-year history. As we study the book, this book of the Bible that chronicles the rise and fall of Israel's political regimes, we face the reality that all kingdoms inevitably rise and at some point fall, but through all of that course of history, God and God's faithfulness will always, always remain. And you and I can be thankful for the parts of our country that are good, and parts of our country that are just, and parts of our country that are moral, while also attending our listening hearts to the voices in our country for whom that promise of liberty and justice for all has not yet come to fruition. We hold these things together in creative tension with one another.

Singing O God Of Every Nation

SPEAKER_02 18:37

And so I want us to close this sermon together by tuning our listening hearts and our singing voices to our next hymn, which is O God of Every Nation. And particularly as Jordan heads up to the piano, I want to draw our attention to the prayer in the second stanza that we will sing together that sings like this. I love the second stanza. It says, From search for wealth and power and scorn of truth and right, from trust in bombs that shower destruction through the night, from pride of race and station and blindness to your way, deliver every nation, eternal God, we pray. So, friends, let us close this sermon together. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit, as together we sing, O God of every nation. Amen.