Solomon's Fall
Notes
Transcript
Prayer
Welcome
Prayer
Welcome
Good morning everyone, it is good to be here as we continue in our Gospel story sermon series. Last week we looked at Solomon and the temple that he built. Solomon offered this prayer that pointed out to the people that they should always turn to God when they sin. Even when they fall away, if they would pray toward the temple God would hear their prayer and forgive them and have mercy. The temple itself wasn’t magical, but it was meant to remind the people to turn back to God in their sin. For us, we should turn toward Jesus when we sin and we are promised forgiveness as well.
But what makes this prayer a bit ironic is what ends up happening with Solomon. In fact, Solomon’s issues began before the temple was built and before the dedication prayer that we read about last week. So today we are going to look at Solomon and what leads to his downfall.
Prayer
Prayer
Engage / Tension
Engage / Tension
One of the Peanuts cartoon strips depicts Lucy and Linus sitting together while Lucy reads a story. Lucy from the book: ‘And so the King was granted his wish—everything he touched would turn to gold! Now, the next day …’ At this point Linus jumps to his feet and exclaims: ‘Stop! You don’t have to read any further! I know just what’s going to happen.’ He walks away bemoaning, ‘These things always have a way of backfiring!’
King Midas is the story Linus and Lucy were reading, the king who loved gold and wanted everything he touched to turn to gold. He eventually touches everything that he loves and it all turns to gold, but that isn’t very good when it comes to food and people!
But the beginning of King Midas is reminds me of Solomon. You can read about Solomon in 1 Kings and think that he is really this great king. It seems like he makes the right decisions, he is devoted to the Lord and following him. We would like to look at Solomon and admire him, look up to him in a way for what he has done. He asked for wisdom from God and God gave him wealth and success as well. In a lot of ways, Solomon is an example of the wisdom of Proverbs. Love God, honor and love him, and he will take care of you. But Solomon was not a perfect example of proverbs, because he is not perfect. So let’s begin to see what was happening with Solomon under the surface.
Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. He brought her to the City of David until he finished building his palace and the temple of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem. The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the Lord. Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.
Overall, this sounds okay, doesn’t it? Solomon is king, he wants peace, and so he marries the daughter of Pharaoh. Right after this information, we are told that Solomon loved the Lord and was walking in the laws of the Lord. But, marrying the daughter of Pharoah is not a good choice. Why would he marry someone who doesn’t know God? If he is going to obey the laws God had given his people, it might be rather difficult if his spouse doesn’t understand them. But maybe he will be okay.
As time goes on things go well for Israel. We are told that everyone is eating and drinking well, life is going good the Israel. Solomon begins to gain wealth just as God had told him he would have, but hear what Solomon does with the wealth.
Solomon’s daily provisions were thirty cors of the finest flour and sixty cors of meal, ten head of stall-fed cattle, twenty of pasture-fed cattle and a hundred sheep and goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks and choice fowl. For he ruled over all the kingdoms west of the Euphrates River, from Tiphsah to Gaza, and had peace on all sides. During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, lived in safety, everyone under their own vine and under their own fig tree.
Solomon had four thousand stalls for chariot horses, and twelve thousand horses.
Things sound good for Israel! They have all kinds of wealth. They don’t worry about food and the nation isn’t at war. Everyone seems to be doing well. In verse 26, the author gives us a detail about what Solomon does with the wealth he is gaining. Solomon begins to gather up horses. He has 4,000 stalls to house horses and even has more horses than that. 12,000 horses in total. In chapter 10 we are told where Solomon gets all of his horses.
1 Kings 10:28 “Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue—the royal merchants purchased them from Kue at the current price.”
This talk of horses might seem out of place and unimportant, but we will see what the issue is with them in a minute.
As we move on in 1 Kings we get to the temple that Solomon builds for the Lord. We talked about that last week. 1 Kings 6:38 “In the eleventh year in the month of Bul, the eighth month, the temple was finished in all its details according to its specifications. He had spent seven years building it.”
This was not a short building project. It took seven years for Solomon to finally construct the temple for God. But immediately after this, in chapter 7 verse 1, the author of 1 Kings gives us another important construction update.
1 Kings 7:1 “It took Solomon thirteen years, however, to complete the construction of his palace.”
1 Kings 10:14 “The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents,”
The amount of gold that Solomon was getting yearly was about 25 tons of gold! Things are going well!
Throughout these early chapters, we are told great things about Solomon, but we are also given hints by the author that things aren’t quite what they should be. Why is the author giving us these little bits of information about Solomon? Why is it important to know where Solomon’s wife comes from? Why should we care how many horses Solomon has? Why does it matter if Solomon gains wealth and power?
Well, let’s flip back to Deuteronomy.
When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,” be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.
All the way back in Deuteronomy we are given some very specific instructions on how the future king must live. While Solomon is an Israelite, he marries someone who isn’t. In fact, he goes back to Egypt and marries the daughter of Pharaoh. It also says that the king should not have many horses or even purchase horses from Egypt. The king should also not have large amounts of silver and gold. Now, think about the details we had been told about Solomon. He gets a lot of horses and he gets them from Egypt. He has huge amounts of silver and gold brought in each year. Literally tons of it. And finally, in verse 11 we see how all of these things culminate and lead to his downfall.
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.
On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.
Solomon did exactly what the kings were told not to do in Deuteronomy. He had all kinds of horses, specifically from the nation that used to imprison his people, he had all kinds of wealth, and he took many wives who eventually led him away from God. It says that Solomon holds fast to them in love, which sounds romatic. He’s dedicated to them. But, he is so dedicated to them that he begins to be led astray by what they believe. His heart is turned away from God and he begins to seek other gods. He follows these other gods and as a result of this, does evil in the eyes of God. This reaches such a point that, even though Solomon was the one in charge of building the temple, he goes and creates places of worship for these foreign gods!
Verse 4 tells us exactly when this happens. Solomon didn’t just wake up one day and decide, “I think I’m going to try following other gods.” This was not a sudden change of heart that led him down a different path. It happened because of decisions that he had been making for years. Decisions that likely never seemed like they were a big deal, until all of a sudden they were.
Glasses Illustration
The process is like what happens with one’s eyeglasses. We may wear our glasses constantly, or at least repeatedly, and subject them to frequent cleanings; but unless we happen to be toying with them or, uncharacteristically, inspecting them, we likely do not notice whether the minute screws that keep the frames securely around the lenses might be getting a bit loose. One might almost thoughtlessly check and find a screw has loosened up a couple of turns. It’s more probable, however, that a lens simply pops out when we are in the middle of something. We were completely unaware that the frame was loose. It happened gradually, slowly, imperceptibly.
Application
Application
Solomon had everything going for him, and none of the decisions from early in his reign seemed malicious or ill-intended. But slowly, as he went through life, his heart became insensitive. As a result, his great wisdom that once represented a gift from God became an instrument for self-service. It’s a realistic depiction of the same character flaw we saw at work in the story of Saul. Self-deception is by definition impossible to spot on your own. You’ll never see yourself going down the road of no return. No one ever sets out to ruin their life on purpose, and certainly not to ruin anyone else’s, but it happens all the time.
The choices we make matter. All of them. Big and small. Are our choices honoring to God? Or are they not?
The stories of Solomon stand as yet another warning that we should take our own dark side seriously. It also serves as a sign of hope that God will not let the failures of his people get the final word. His promise to David still stands.
If Solomon isn’t the promised king who will rule over the nations forever, then when that future king does arrive he will be “like Solomon,” minus all of the negative bits.
The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, and now something greater than Solomon is here.
The hope of the future messianic King becomes one more pointer to God’s faithfulness in the face of human unfaithfulness. In this way, the bad news about Solomon points forward to the good news of the future that will arrive with King Jesus.
God is faithful to his people and to his promises even though Solomon messes up. God remains faithful to his promise to bring a deliverer to defeat sin and death.
Prayer
Prayer