The Rehoboam Lesson Plan

I'll start the lesson just as the manual recommends, with hangman, hunting for the phrase "Peer Pressure." We'll briefly discuss what peer pressure is, that it can be positive or negative, that it can influence us if we let it, and that we can use it to influence others. Then I'll use the transition that the manual so generously provided me by saying that this lesson is about a king who was influenced by negative peer pressure, to disastrous results.

That'll be a good time for a recap. Last week's lesson was about Solomon, who, as we remember, was fairly wise. And, I can't remember if we covered this last week, but he also built a great temple using lots of gold and precious stones. (Tangent: Nephi builds a similar temple in the Americas later.) However, all that gold and precious gems cost a lot of money, and government leaders like kings get their money through taxes. King Solomon had his people paying pretty high taxes, so when Solomon's son, Rehoboam, became king, the people asked him to lower the taxes. In fact, they made him a promise.

And we can turn to the scriptures from there. 1 Kings 12:1-5 sees Rehoboam become king, and Jeroboam (along with the rest of Israel) says "Hey, if you lower our taxes, we will serve you." And Rehoboam says "Uh, let me think about that for a few days." In 1 Kings 12:6-7, Rehoboam asks Solomon's counselors what he should say, and they say basically the same thing: If you lower their taxes, they will serve you." But in 1 Kings 12: 8-11, Rehoboam asks people his own age what he should do, and they tell him that he should actually raise the taxes and increase the penalty for not paying it. Rehoboam tells everyone his decision in 1 Kings 12: 12-14 , which leads to a rebellion  in 1 Kings 12: 18-20, ending with Jeroboam becoming king of most of Israel, while Rehoboam only retained the loyalty of a handful of tribes.

Then we can explain that Rehoboam lost his position because he listened to the wrong people instead of listening to the right people and that we, too, need to listen to the right people. We should make sure that we're following righteous influences, and we should make sure that we are righteous influences. We might do the Enrichment Activity in which I describe situations in which the kids and their friends might have opportunities to influence each other, for better or worse. That should probably eat up the remaining time, especially if we spend enough time on each scenario, describing what we should do and why we should do it. There are five given scenarios. That should eat up a decent amount of time if we need it to.

I'll conclude with my testimony of the importance of following and being good influences. I'll remind the students that we all have more influence than we probably realize, and it's our responsibility to use our influence for good. I might say something cheesy like "Being a good friend means being a good friend." That'd be alright. Mostly, I want to encourage the kids to only follow those who encourage them to do good and to encourage others to do good as well.