Tragedy (1 Kings 9-11)
The man who loved God (1 Kings 3:3), the man God chose to use to finally build Him a dwelling place, the one who had the privilege of fulfilling promises and had promises made to him by God who revealed Himself to him personally twice, the one God blessed by answering his prayers and going beyond just answering into exceeding blessing and peace and prosperity…
That one, did the very thing his dad had warned him not to do, the very thing God had spoken to him twice about directly in a very personal way. After the overflowing blessing of chapters 9-10, 1 Kings 11 is a tragedy of monumental proportions!
We can be tempted sometimes to think something along lines of; “if only I had…….. then I’d be content”. Solomon is probably the clearest example in all of Scripture exposes that thinking as false.
Solomon had God’s favour as a chosen man with destiny, God’s promises, God’s blessing financially, God’s blessing in his role as king with peace in the nation, God’s blessing with wisdom. More than this he wasn’t single wanting to be married but was married…
And yet he wasn’t satisfied! That’s because things don’t satisfy us, only God can truly satisfy us.
Solomon’s desire for more is most clearly expressed in his insatiable lust for women. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines! His lust for women blinded his eyes and shut his ears to the words of his father and more expressly the words of God and the commands of God which urged him to follow God’s ways and God’s commandments.
God had specifically instructed him not to marry foreign women for a specific reason – God knew that they would cause him to compromise and would lead him astray to the worship false gods. And that is exactly what we discover happening in 1 Kings 11.
So God eventually swore He would tear the kingdom from Solomon, divide the kingdom into two parts. Was God not gracious in swearing to do this? Sometimes we read the Old Testament and make a wrong conclusion that somehow the God depicted in the Old Testament is different to the New Testament- but that is not true. After all, God didn’t make this pronouncement after the first foreign wife or the second or the third or the 300th or 600th….!
God is is gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love and yet God is also holy and pure and righteous and He can not leave sin unpunished…
And so the glorious reign of Solomon has a dark lining – it’s a sad end and at the end of his life Solomon himself declares;
“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” Ecclesiastes 1:2 (NIV84)
So sad, what a tumultuous fall from grace and favour! So what can we learn? How does this apply to our lives?
If the one guy in Scripture who literally ‘had it all’ wasn’t satisfied by earthly things, by relationships by sex, money and power – do you honestly think you’ll be?
Seek God, find your joy in God, He alone can truly satisfy as God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him (Piper). So don’t be tempted and distracted by temporal things or even the good blessings given to you by God, love God more than anything find your joy in Him.
Two words that matter 