The Fruit of Immaturity

Three days later Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam, as the king had said, "Come back to me in three days." The king answered the people harshly. Rejecting the advice given him by the elders, he followed the advice of the young men and said, "My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions." So the king did not listen to the people, for this turn of events was from the Lord, to fulfill the word the Lord had spoken to Jeroboam son of Nebat through Ahijah the Shilonite. When all Israel saw that the king refused to listen to them, they answered the king: "What share do we have in David, what part in Jesse's son? To your tents, Israel! Look after your own house, David!" So the Israelites went home. (1 Kings 12:12-16)     I am still hung up on the theme of growing up to maturity in Christ.  Paul uses this image a few times in the New Testament, fretting over his congregations that were still too immature to eat the "solid food" of the faith, but could only receive "milk."  How he longed for them to grow up into the fullness of Christ!  You can see this thread in passages like 1 Corinthians 3:1-4, Galatians 4:19-20, Ephesians 4:11-16, Hebrews 5:11-14.   Jesus once declared that "every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old."  Paul was such a teacher, and some of the old treasures he brings out of his storeroom through his letters are images that come from deep reflection on the Old Testament scriptures.  This theme of maturity is one of them, I think.  I've noticed it most recently in places like 1 Samuel 2 (click here for a devotion or sermon on that text) and right here in 1 Kings 12.   Three times in this longer passage, King Solomon's son, Rehoboam, is said to have listened to the advice of the "young men" he grew up with, rather than the advice of the elders.  Interestingly, neither King Rehoboam nor those men he grew up with would've been understood in that day to have been "young."  1 Kings 14:21 says Rehoboam was 41 years old when he became king.  Given the life expectancy of the day: he was certainly no spring chicken.  Besides, the word for "young men" employed here in the Hebrew is a word which is translated in most other places in the Old Testament as "child" or "boy."    The reference, therefore, seems to be to the immaturity of these men, rather than their age.  Interestingly, the only use of this word for "child" or "young man" before this in the book of Kings is from the story of Solomon's wise judgement when he said to two prostitutes fighting over a living baby "cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other."  After he said this, the true mother backed off of her claim to the child, saying: "Please, my lord, giver her the living baby! Don't kill him!" while the other women exclaimed: "Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!"   Somehow the story of the living child being cut in two is evoked in the telling of Rehoboam's immaturity.  I think the author means to suggest that the words of Solomon's own ruling have come back as a judgement against his own house.    The Rabbis said that Solomon was the worst of the King of Israel because he was the one who caused the division of the nation depicted here in this text today through his sins of promiscuous marriage and idolatry.  Israel as a nation is depicted often as an unfaithful spouse that prostitutes itself after all sorts of other gods besides the Lord.  Solomon was the first such idolatrous prostitute among the Kings.  Immature, despite his wisdom, his heart was divided among many dead scraps of religion rather than wholeheartedly devoted to the living God.    The fruit then of Solomon's house and Solomon's idolatrous prostitution, as embodied in Rehoboam, is a violent immaturity that results in the cutting of God's people in two.  This is the same violent immaturity displayed in the prostitute who was not the true mother of the child.  It is the same violent immaturity displayed by Pharoah as he ruthlessly worked the Israelites as slaves in Egypt.  The result of this violent immaturity?  A fatal wound that would eventually culminate in the death of both Israelite Kingdoms through exile.    Immaturity leads to idolatry, violence, and division.  It leads to the destruction of faith and life.  The invitation, therefore, is to grow up into Christ, to become mature.  The prophet Samuel, King David, and Jesus himself all offer examples of what this "growing up to maturity" looks like, as do the fruit of the Spirit.  More on that to come.