Everyone knows the story in the New Testament of the wise and foolish men.
The Wise man built his house upon the rock.
The Foolish man built his house upon the sand.
Do you know that there is a story in the Old Testament about a wise fool?
1 Kings 11:1- 14
No man began with more promise than Solomon did. Yet a good beginning doesn’t mean a good finish. Solomon drifted and finally defected. Could it happen to us?
Solomon means “Peaceful”, he was David’s second son by Bathsheba, the first after their legal marriage. He succeeded his father on the throne at a young age, about sixteen or eighteen years of age.
As soon as he had settled himself in his kingdom he entered into an alliance with Egypt by the marriage of the daughter of Pharaoh.
During his reign Israel went from strength to strength commercially. Extensive traffic was carried on land with Tyre, Egypt, and Arabia, and by sea with Spain, India, and the coasts of Africa, as a result Solomon generated huge amounts of cash, and he also had much of the produce from these different countries he traded with.
God appeared to Solomon in 1 Kings 3 and said ask what and I shall give thee. Solomon asked God in Verse 9 for an understanding heart and not only gave Solomon a wise and understanding heart, but also gave that which he had not asked for. Solomon was the wisest man in the world.
1 Kings 4:32 - 34 And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. 33 And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. 34 And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom.
The bright day of Solomon’s glory ended in clouds and darkness.
So what went wrong,
I. Solomon had a misplaced love.
VERSE 1 & 2
In school, when you used to do something wrong the teacher would shout out your name and you would pretend not to hear them, because you knew you’d done wrong and you knew you were in trouble.
God tells Israel not to have anything to do with these women!!! Solomon loved these women. He is like the kids in school; he pretends not to hear God give the command not to marry these women because deep down he knew it was wrong. The Lord tells Israel not to marry these women because they will turn their hearts away from God and that is exactly what happened to Solomon. Solomon had his heart turned because of them.
Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
It is impossible to present your bodies a living sacrifice if your heart is not right. Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould. Have you ever been serving the Lord and everything is going well, then all of a sudden temptation comes, things start to crop up in our lives that cause us to start missing Church and our prayer time and Bible study times are slowly taken away from us. How easy it is for Satan to get in and cause us to have a misplaced love.
Well the enemy is always in the background. Satan wants to gets us as far away from God as possible.
II. Condition of misplaced love: (Turned heart / Backslidden)
VERSE 4
V4 is a hinge verse, things change from this point on.
Solomon had his heart turned away from God, as a result of his misplaced love his heart is turned not only away from God, but towards false gods. The worship systems that Solomon was involved in were sexually orientated and obviously this would appeal to Solomon, if he wasn’t interested in this kind of thing he probably would have stuck with just the one wife.
Have we had our hearts turned away? You may say that the worship of false gods no longer takes place today. Well let me tell you that thousands of Churches are empty today because of the worship of false gods.
• You see Sunday is the only day that the kids can play football, so we have to take them while church is on.
• I go to watch my socar/football/baseball team play Sunday afternoon I could never miss that for church.
• I can’t read my Bible because I would miss too much TV
The minute we place more priority on something other than Jesus Christ then we are in effect worshipping false gods.
One of the biggest sins we can commit is the sin of not giving Jesus Christ His proper place in our life. We need to pray and ask God to remove the idols in our lives, I don’t want sport to be my god, I don’t want TV to be my god. The only God I want is YOU!! I want the true God in my life, the only God!!
King Josiah hears the words written in the book and he rips his cloths, he realises that they have not been living as the Bible says they should. He goes all over the country and rips down the alters. He and the people renew their faith in God, revival starts. Let me tell you something, when we get rid of the idols in our lives and we start serving the Lord with all our hearts revival won’t be far behind. Revival has to start in us first.
We cannot turn our hearts away from God.
III. Cause of misplaced love: (women, false gods / money, jobs)
VERSE 5
The cause of Solomon’s misplaced love at the end of the day was his wives and the false gods that they worshipped. Things were appealing to his sensual nature and not his spiritual nature.
What causes us to turn our hearts away from God? You see Satan will use every means possible to get us as far away from God as possible. That job you’ve been praying for all of a sudden requires you to work 12 hours on a Sunday and if you don’t do it then they will find someone who will, or sin will start to creep into our lives, and in turn our hearts start to drift away. Satan makes sin look so attractive and we say that it will be different for us, that it won’t hurt.
We tend to justify it to ourselves that it’s OK. What fools we are to let anything, or anyone for that matter; turn our hearts away from God.
2Corinthians 6:14-15 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? 15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
A lady kept a raccoon as a pet and unknown to her they go through a glandular change at about 24 months. After that they often attack their owners. Since a 30-pound raccoon can be the same as a 100-pound dog in a fight her friend, who happened to be a zookeeper, felt compelled to tell her of the coming change. She listened politely and simply said, "It will be different for me, Bandit would never hurt me, he just wouldn’t." Three months later the lady underwent plastic surgery for facial lacerations sustained when her adult raccoon attacked her for no apparent reason.
Sin too often comes dressed in adorable disguise, and as we play with it, how easy it is to say, "It will be different for me!"
Sin won’t be different, it may come in a different disguise but it will have the same effect.
Sin will never take you down a little way; sin will always take you down a long way. It took the prodigal son to eat with the pigs, it took Cain to kill his brother Abel and then be banished to another land.
If we play with sin it will not let us stop where we want to stop. It will take us down further than we want to go. When we choose not to do what God wants, we have to face the consequences. Not following Go always has its consequences.
IV. Consequence of misplaced love: (God raised up an advisory and tore the kingdom in two/ things don’t work out
VERSE 11 & 14
The consequence of sin will always cost more than the pleasure the sin provides.
Solomon’s motivation had changed, he had gone from building God’s Temple and serving God, to building alters for the false gods his wives worshipped and he ended up serving them. David had defeated all Israel’s enemies and Solomon had none to worry about during his reign. But look at verse 14. And the Lord stirred up an adversary unto Solomon.
Israel go from glory to exile. Israel went from the glories of having fellowship with God and walking with God to having their country split into two and several hundred years later their Temple is destroyed and they are carried off to another country in captivity. The problem is that others suffer when God’s man sins. Because his heart was turned to other gods and he built places of worship to them, Israel over the next 300 years also have their hearts turned from God.
We miss out on what God wants to do in our lives. He wants to have fellowship with us, that was the reason He created mankind and sin keeps messing it up. You see we get involved in thing that appear to be nice but are slowly destroying our spiritual lives.
VERSE 6
God chose David as king because of his heart, Samuel was looking at the outward appearance and he wanted Eliab, the eldest of Jesse’s sons to be king. But God saw David’s heart, and his heart was right.
But remember the enemy is always in the background. Satan turned Adam & Eve’s heart away from God but tempting them with the forbidden fruit, well he tried the same thing with David, only the forbidden fruit this time was Bathsheba. In the spring the kings went off to battle, David stayed at home, sees Bathsheba, he ends up killing her husband.
Look at 1 Kings 10:14 Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore and six talents of gold,
Don’t you think it is interesting that this number just so happens to be 666, now this was not all of Solomon’s income, but this is what has been written down in Scripture. The enemy is always in the background.
Don’t Negotiate With Satan!
A hunter raised his rifle and took careful aim at a large bear. As the hunter was about to pull the trigger the bear spoke in a soft soothing voice, "Isn’t it better to talk than to shoot? What do you want? Let’s negotiate the matter." Lowering his rifle, the hunter replied, "I want a fur coat." "Good," said the bear, "that is a negotiable question. I only want a full stomach, so let us negotiate a compromise."
They sat down to negotiate and after a time the bear walked away alone. The negotiations had been successful. The bear had a full stomach, and the hunter had his fur coat!
Satan says to you, "Let us negotiate." But there are some things that cannot be negotiable. We cannot compromise the church with the world. Christ and His church deserve our very best and utmost loyalty.
Conclusion
Solomon was the wisest man on the earth and his heart was turned away from God. It shows that we need to keep our eyes open, we need to watch for the enemy, because he is always in the background, waiting to trip us up, waiting to turn our hearts. It is said that the devil will find things for idle hands to do, lets not give him the opportunity.
Solomon’s problem was not ignorance but rebellion. He knew better but did not do better. We need to “seek ye first the Kingdom of God,” and give our hearts fully to Jesus and His church, He alone will fill our empty hearts with untold and countless blessings when we give it to Him.
Jesus says in Matthew 6:21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Matthew 5:8 says, Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
