Theological Commentary: Click Here
In 1 Kings
11 we see the consequences of the warnings over the past few chapters. Solomon falls into sinfulness. We’ve seen the slide gradually; now it snowballs
and the fall comes hard.
As I said
yesterday, it begins with the wealth and the notice of the nations. Because of his wisdom, Solomon gets a taste
of the world’s attention. He buys into
it. His temples become splendid. His furnishings become splendid. He draws
more and more attention from the other nations and he begins to look more and
more like them.
He begins to
take wives from nations that God has warned him about. It’s likely that these wives start by being
political arrangements. However, at some
point it becomes more than that. The
wives become personal enough to Solomon that they begin to teach him about the
gods from their own people. Solomon even
begins to erect places of worship for them.
Soon there are significant places of worship of foreign gods among God’s
own people.
God comes to
Solomon and rightly accuses him. He
tells Solomon that the kingdom will be torn because of this treachery. It’s one thing for the people to worship
foreign gods and for Solomon to fight against it. That doesn’t happen, though. The people start worshipping foreign gods
because Solomon encourages it.
I fid this sad
to see, but I also find it exceptionally believable. The call of the world is strong. Many human beings are easily wooed by what
the world has to offer. As the famous
saying goes, “We all have a price.” For
some, that price is fame. For others, it
is wealth. For others, it is
popularity. There are likely hundreds of
more reasons for which we can be wooed.
The story of
Solomon is simple. We must be vigilant
against the call of the world. David had
his problems with sin, but he always remained focused upon God. Solomon had his problems with sin and eventually
Solomon found his heart turned in other directions.
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