The King Who Had It All
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good morning church! It’s such a privilege to stand before you all today to teach, it’s my first time preaching from the pulpit this morning and I am so grateful to be here. Today we’re continuing our study of THE Story with the story of Solomon, the king who had it all.
The great king David got old, as men do, and came to know it was time for a new king, so David steps aside and gives the throne to his son Solomon. Solomon would be wiser, richer, and more powerful as king than David had ever been! Under Solomon Israel would know peace for a generation, and become a powerful, respected nation. Now, since I’m sure a few of us are already thinking it, whether or not the great old king stepping aside for the younger, hip new ruler had any bearing on Bryant choosing this particular week to go on vacation and ask me to preach in his place well, you’ll have to check that with him when he gets back, but I’m just saying.
Wow I’m gonna regret drawing that comparison when we get to the end of this story… Let’s hope you’ve all forgotten about this moment by the end.
Scripture Reading
Scripture Reading
And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?”
It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. And God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you, all your days. And if you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days.”
And Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream. Then he came to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings, and made a feast for all his servants.
Solomon’s Reign Begins
Solomon’s Reign Begins
You see, Solomon knew that as a new king he had his work cut out for him. Before he even took the throne, his older brother Adonijah (Adonai-jah) had declared himself king without David’s consent (1 Kings 1), and after Solomon was named king, David gave him this charge before he died:
“I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn, that the Lord may establish his word that he spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk before me in faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’
And so now Solomon, who’s rule was contested before he’s even crowned king, gets this charge from King David that basically boils down to “you know what to do, don’t mess it up and our dynasty will rule Israel forever, gonna go die now”.
Whereas David was a warrior king, Solomon was a king over a peaceful Israel, God had given Solomon a peaceful reign so that he could build the house of the Lord without having to go to war to preserve Israel’s lands. When David first proposed to build the temple, God had the prophet Nathan instruct him to wait, promising to make his son a “man of rest” and to give Israel “peace and quiet… in his days” (1 Chronicles 22:9-10)
So once his throne is secure, instead of going to war, Solomon married the daughter of Pharoah, forging an alliance between Israel and Egypt. 476 years earlier, the people of Israel were slaves in the land of Egypt. Now, the king of Israel is able to wed Pharaoh’s own daughter. God has surely brought his people a long way.
Solomon Asks for Wisdom
Solomon Asks for Wisdom
So one day shortly after he moves to Jerusalem with his new bride, Solomon goes to Gibeon to make a sacrifice to the Lord, and while he is there, the Lord appears to him, and allows him to ask for anything he wishes. This brings us to today’s scripture reading, and Solomon asks God for the wisdom he needs to lead his people well. This request pleased the Lord so much that in addition to granting Solomon wisdom, He promises him riches and honor greater than any other king of the time!
Solomon goes on to use the wisdom the Lord gave him to govern the people justly, probably the most famous story about Solomon’s wisdom, the story of the two prostitutes. They appear before the king because they shared a house, and both gave birth to a child within a week of each other. One of the children tragically died, and there was a dispute over who was the surviving child’s mother. Now that all seems quite far fetched in today’s day of DNA testing and little baby lojacks and footprints and more, the idea of truly disputing the parent of a child seems foreign to us. But none of those technologies existed in the days of Solomon, and as prostitutes these women didn’t exactly have supporting families gathered around who could identify the child.
So Solomon tests for an immeasurable, incalculable, infinite quantity that no modern testing can quantify, a mother’s love. He calls for his sword and calmly explains he will cut the child in half, giving half to each woman. The lying woman, realizing that she has no way to gain a live baby to replace her deceased one, accepts Solomon’s decree, while the mother immediately begs the king to let the lying woman keep her child, if it means sparing his life. Solomon sees that the second woman is clearly the mother, and awards her custody. All of Israel was amazed at his wisdom!
Solomon’s wisdom was so great that his proverbs were collected and added to the scriptures themselves, including some real classics:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.
Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another.
Which has done more for high school football team t-shirt designers than any other piece of scripture by FAR.
A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Whoever spares the rod hates his son,
but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.
And my absolute personal favorite which is actually the inspiration for my personal fitness routine:
Proverbs 28:1 (GNT) “The wicked run when no one is chasing them, but an honest person is brave as a lion”
Solomon’s wisdom truly did surpass all others.
Solomon begins the Temple
Solomon begins the Temple
So now it’s finally time for construction of the temple to begin. Solomon negotiates with the king of Tyre to provide the lumber and he begins construction, forcing 30,000 canaanites living in Israel to go the Lebanon to retrieve his lumber, and setting 150,000 Israelites to work on the stone. We know these laborers were treated harshly because when Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, was to become king, the people refused to accept his rule unless he lessened the yoke from his father, who had worked them hard and beaten them with whips.
So Solomon’s temple is underway, and it is a grand building. The inner sanctuary was completely overlain in gold, with two massive cherubim also covered in gold flanking the ark of the covenant. The columns supporting the vestibule of the party were crafted from bronze, and the outside area of the temple complex included a 15 feet tall, 30 feet long altar made of bronze upon which the burnt offerings would be placed. There were also large metal basins for ritual cleansing, the largest for the priests and smaller ones for rinsing the parts of the animals that would make up the burnt offering.
It took 7 years to build the temple, and the house of the Lord was permanently established among His people.
When the temple is finished, the ark of the covenant is brought from the tent in the city of Jerusalem to the new temple. The visual reminder of Yahweh’s presence among his people came to it’s new home. The people made a great sacrifice as the ark came to the temple, 1 Kings 8:5 says they sacrificed “so many sheep and oxen that they could not be counted or numbered”. Now, later in this same chapter Solomon sacrifices 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep, and they could count those! So I’m pretty confident estimating it was at LEAST that many! The people of Israel were so excited to welcome the presence of the Lord to the new temple.
After the priests had placed the ark in the Holy of Holies, a dark cloud, the glory of the Lord, filled the house. Just like in the days of the Exodus, the Lord dwelt among His people in a great dark cloud. Solomon turns to the crowd at this point and blesses the Lord for fulfilling His promise to David, that his son would build a house for the name of the Lord. The house for the name of the Lord, its actually referred to that way quite a bit in the text and at first pass it’s normal to find that a little odd, names don’t have houses. I don’t get home to my apartment and take off my name and place it in a little dog house that is the House of the name of Chris, that’s just, weird!
Solomon is just being explicit that the temple does not contain Yahweh, like a temple of Baal (Bale) might, but is a place where the people of Israel could call on the name of the Lord, and He would hear their prayers.
Solomon stands at the altar of the Lord before all of Israel and prays over the temple, over the nation, giving thanks to God.
Glory of Solomon
Glory of Solomon
Now in addition to the temple, Solomon had built for himself a grand palace, larger even than the temple and just as grand. Covered in gold and build from the finest, most expensive lumber and built specifically to impress the daughter of Pharaoh, Solomon’s wife. It was from this fine palace that Solomon received envoys from around the world, including the Queen of Sheba.
The Bible says that when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions (1 Kings 10:1). She came to Jerusalem with a huge entourage with spices and gold and precious stones, and she wanted to know what this deal was with this Solomon.
You see God built His nation, His own people, and that upper story we have been talking about where God makes His will done in his great redemptive plan, Solomon is the culmination of the power and glory of the chosen people of the Lord. They don’t know it yet, but Israel is peaking. They are hitting the upper limit of their wealth and glory and power and there is something to see here. When God dwells among His people, and His people seek His wisdom and do His work, there is something to see.
The Queen of Sheba came to test Solomon’s wisdom and prosperity, asking him every tricky question she could think of, and he explained it all clearly. She toured his house and sat at his banquet table and 1 Kings 10:5 says that when she saw all this “there was no more breath in her”. The wisdom given to Solomon by the Lord, the prosperity and the peace and Israel enjoyed by God’s will, all of these things were just so overwhelming she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. And she said
Blessed be the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because the Lord loved Israel forever, he has made you king, that you may execute justice and righteousness.”
And Solomon showers the queen of Sheba with gifts and she went back to her people.
Friends, when the people of God gather under His wisdom and His peace and His love for them, it is something to see, something that can take your breathe away. That is my prayer for our church here in Dublin Powell that we would seek the Lord and be so blessed by Him that when people come to visit us here and see what the church in Dublin-Powell is about they can’t say anything but “Blessed be the Lord your god, who has delighted in you!”
Vanity of Solomon
Vanity of Solomon
Solomon was a rich man, perhaps the richest man who ever lived, adjusted for inflation of course. His cups were all pure gold, his fine ivory throne was overlaid with gold, and the palace was littered with articles of silver and gold, myrrh, ivory, silver, apes, and peacocks. Solomon was so rich that silver was absolutely worthless during his reign, who needs silver after all when you have this much gold!
Solomon had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen, and a whole fleet of trading ships. 1 Kings 10:23 says that “Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom.” And Solomon was a very smart guy. The problem for Solomon is, he started to confuse his lower story, with God’s upper story.
Solomon’s Fall
Solomon’s Fall
So we know Solomon was married to Pharaoh’s daughter, but she was far from his only wife. Solomon married Moabite women, Ammonite women, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites, basically Solomon saw the list of peoples that God forbade His people from intermarrying with and he grabbed a couple dozen of these, a hundred of these, a few of these, and had himself a nice pagan smorgasbord of wives. All totaled Solomon had 700 wives, all of royal birth, and 300 concubines. I’m telling you this man could go from now until May 2023 and never spend the night with the same woman twice. So much for a “man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24)
Now why would it be that God forbade Israelites from intermarrying with other tribes? The Bible says that it was because “they will surely turn your heart after their gods.”
Oh, okay.
That’s probably not so bad for Solomon.
I means he’s the wisest king who ever lived and the son of King David, the man after God’s own heart, if ever there was a man who would know better and not turn his heart towards these idols surely King Solomon will stay true.
Well, let’s see
For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.
So Solomon allows himself just one more indulgence and just one more after that and before you know it he’s making offerings and sacrifices to Ashtoreth and Milcom and Chemosh just outside Jerusalem. Now it might be easy to say “well sure but it wasn’t that bad he just burnt a few crops and sheep outside the city I bet he didn’t even mean it”.
You wanna know what the highest order sacrifice one could make to Milcom, also called Moloch?
Children.
The highest order sacrifice people made to this idol that Solomon made sacrifices to was human children sacrificed in fire.
Now does that mean Solomon made such sacrifices? Honestly I have no idea. But at this point does it really matter?
Judgement
Judgement
So what is God to do with his servant Solomon?
And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded. Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.”
Solomon was only the 3rd king of Israel, and he would be the last king of the united nation. But even in this God shows Solomon grace, not for his own sake for out of love for David, that God would not take the kingdom from David’s son, but from Solomon’s son.
Story Swap
Story Swap
So where did Solomon go wrong? I mean that went south SO FAST! How did it happen?
Solomon’s error was he confused God’s upper story, with his lower one. You see God was using Solomon to build a mighty nation of His own people, and he gave wisdom and riches and glory to Solomon so that this nation would bring glory to God! But somewhere along that path, maybe on wife #342, or on private vineyard #18, or somewhere around golden sippy cup #628, Solomon stopped seeing his power and riches and wisdom and fame as a source of glory for God, and started seeing them as a source of glory for Solomon.
When we start to confuse our lower story with God’s upper story, things can get tricky really quick. When we stop using what we have been blessed with to serve God and start using them to increase our own glory and power, our hearts get pulled into idolatry! And that’s exactly what happened to Solomon.
True Story
True Story
You see an important part of the upper story here is that there is one God, and He is sovereign, He is sovereign over history, over nature, over all of His creation. And this special people that He had chosen to show off as His own were supposed to reflect HIS glory and HIS power and HIS sovereignty.
And God’s upper story was still barreling forward, speeding toward the fulfillment of his promise to David:
When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.’ ”
David’s throne has been established forever and the man who reigns from that throne is Jesus Christ, God the Son, who came to earth as a humble son of a carpenter and lived a perfect life, culminating in an undeserved death upon a cross. And by giving himself up to death he took the punishment that we, as people rebelling against God deserve. And when He rose from the grave and ascended into heaven He secured forever an eternal home in heaven for all of those who believe in Him.
Altar Call
Altar Call
If you need to respond in faith to Jesus today, to be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins and to enter into the family of God, we will have an opportunity in just a moment for you to do so. If you just need the prayers of this church because maybe you got your lower story a little confused with God’s upper story and you need to reset some priorities and get back on track. No matter your need if you are in need of God’s grace today and would like our help with that you can come forward, or stay right where you are and maybe just raise a hand and we will come to you. We’d love to assist you in any way we can, won’t you make it known while we all stand and sing.