The Story - Chapter 13

I want to use a passage of scripture in your Bible a couple of places if you want to find that and also chapter 13 in the story, they both are the same, but I want to read from chapter 3 of 1 Kings and then later on from chapter 11 in 1 Kings. The Bible has a very important ingredient that it is trying to present. It starts with a story of creation for a very good reason. The Bible wants us to understand something about God. He knows everything that there is to know in the world. Before anyone in this world ever heard of atomic energy, God knew what it was. Before anyone ever thought about DNA, God knew exactly what it was. When they discovered that galaxy way out there that they'd never seen before, I read this last month, God knew it was there because He made everything that ever has existed. God made the world. That's why the Bible starts with that story. So there's not anything that has been known or is known now or will be known in the future that God doesn't already know it. He has all the knowledge that there is in the world to have. The Bible wants us to understand that because understanding that God knows everything in the world gives us a great resource to go to in times that we're wondering about what to do or things that we're concerned about or distressed about. The Bible starts with that story because it also wants us to know of the great authority and power that God has, not only to make everything but to make things work like they ought to. God is the authority for everything in the world. He rules over the natural order. He rules over the birds, the planets, everything that there is except for human beings. Of all the created order, God gave us the opportunity to make choices, something that birds don't have and animals don't have. They just act on the instinct God placed within them. We can say to God, I don't believe what you say. We can say to God, I'm not going to do what you want me to do. The whole Bible is a story of how God deals with people under these circumstances. What happens when people believe that God has all wisdom and knowledge and act on what he says? What happens whenever people believe that God is the ultimate authority for all things in life and they do what he tells them? What happens when people turn away from that and start thinking, well, I'm not so sure that God's right about this part of it. I think maybe there's a better way to do it. What happens to people? What happens to people when they say, I don't care what God says. I'm going to do what I think is best. That's what the Bible calls sin, rebellion against God. It's a wreath of candles. I light the first one to remind us that the coming of Christ came about because of the sin and rebellion in human life. All people since the very beginning have rebelled against both the wisdom of God and the authority of God. Every one of us here listening can say, in my life, there are times in which I knew what God said was right, but I did something else. Every one of us can say, there are times whenever I knew what God said was right, and I said to him, you're not going to tell me what to do. That's all of our stories. In the story that we've been reading, chapter 13, I want to use today from 1 Kings chapter 3, is a story of a man who had everything in the world that a person could ever hope for, and because of his rebellious nature, lost everything. Solomon grew up in a family where his father was a very godly man. He didn't do everything right all the time, but when he discovered he had done something contrary to what God wished, his immediate response was always to say, you're right. I'm sorry, God, for what I've done. I'll pay the price for whatever it is, and I'll make a promise to you that I'll try to live as you want me to live. That is, he changed his mind, and he changed his behavior as a result of being confronted with what he did. God blessed him because he was a man that God respected for his integrity. When he sinned and he did the things that were wrong, he was ready to change his direction and make life different from then on. The time came when David was dying. He was going to turn his kingdom over to his son Solomon. Solomon now had this kingdom that David had put together, a powerful force, and it was going to become even greater, and he was anointed the king. As soon as he was anointed the king, he began to sort of clean house, and the first and second chapters are sort of bloody. Three people he had killed, slaughtered, because he was afraid of their rivalry to his kingship. The high priest, or one of the priests, he kicked out of office because he thought he wasn't being faithful to Solomon. Those first two chapters are not very pretty about Solomon's life. Then it picks up with chapter 3, beginning with verse 1, to describe Solomon's life. Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and married his daughter. Now this is more than simply a political announcement and a matrimonial announcement. There is something behind this that's very significant. For example, if God is all powerful, what else does he need to do anything? Nothing. He can fight any kind of war without any soldiers. There are times in Israel's history whenever he destroyed whole armies without even asking the Israelites to get a sword. They just died overnight. There's times whenever he defeated a whole city by having them walk around it and just shout and break glass. God has power and authority. And he never wanted his own people even to have a king because he was afraid that they would trust that human king instead of him. Now we find one of the first things that Solomon does when he's anointed a king is he makes a treaty with Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt. What this means is he went to him and said, let you and I make a compact. If anybody of they invades me, you'll come and help me fight them off. Do you see the problem here? If anyone invades Egypt, we'll come and send our soldiers to fight them off. Do you see the problem here? This pagan king, Pharaoh, has been made an alliance with the people of Israel to be their protector and defender in place of Yahweh God. For some reason, Solomon thought that God would not be enough to protect them. He would not be strong enough to defend them. He would not provide the resources they need. So he went to some other human agency and said, we want to depend on you to protect us. The lack of trust in God is enormous here, but it's even more than that. In this situation, whenever treaties were made like this, the treaty would be signed, the agreements on what we would do if you attacked us and what you would do if we attacked you. But then to seal the deal, the king would give one of his daughters to the person he was making the contract with as a way of saying, well, now if we don't keep that, you've got my precious daughter, and this will allow me to know and you to know that I'm going to do what I say when I sign this. Pretty common kind of way of doing business in the ancient world. But even more than that, God had said to his people when they came into the land of promise, you're to never marry a woman or man who is not an Israelite. They were forbidden from doing it. Because God said what you're going to find is that your homes are divided. One will want to serve me and the other one will want to serve a foreign God. What you'll find is that one of you in the family will be making offerings to a rival to me, someone who claims to be as powerful as me or more powerful than me. And your whole family will be divided in its loyalty. But Solomon did it anyway. He wanted the assurance of the protection of Egypt. He starts off, you see, from his kingship with a divided mind and heart. And rebellion against God in two of the most important things God required of his people. Do not trust in other people to protect or defend you or even yourself but only in me. Never align yourself with someone to marry someone who is faithful to another God other than me. So the very first thing Solomon does is violate two of the great principles God said he should not do, any of the people of Israel should not do. He brought her, his wife, 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. Now high places in the Bible refers to a mound or a hill, something to be a little higher than normal ground. And on those spots closer to the heavens or the gods, they would often make a worship place, an altar, where the sacrifices were made to the local gods of that region or place. When the people of Israel started into the land of Canaan, God's requirement was when you conquer this land, destroy every one of those high places. No one is to be a rival to me because I alone created the world, I alone have all power and authority. You are to get rid of all of those. And if you look in the book of Judges, whenever the people began to turn away from God, there is always a story of the high places being rebuilt and the people would be migrating to the high places to offer sacrifices to the local gods, the local Baals. Now here the people were still sacrificing in the high places. Solomon had not destroyed them. Not one time do we ever have any reference to his father David worshipping in a high place, one of the local deities. But here is the story of Solomon who is doing exactly the opposite. Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the statutes of his father David. Now mixed in with this story of his rebellion against the very instructions God gave him, he now shows his loyalty by trying to live according to the statutes God has given him with the exception of these that he has decided not to do. David, except that he offered, this is Solomon now, except that Solomon offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places. So we see in the very beginning of his life and work a divided mind. He loved God and wanted to follow his instructions with the exception of these things that he thought would be best for him. The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices for that was the most important high place and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on the altar at Gibeon. The Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream and God said, ask for whatever you want me to give you. Solomon answered, you have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day. Now O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, but I am only a little child and I do not know how to carry out my duties. Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong, for who is able to govern this great people of yours? All of those right words that he asked. So the Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him, since you have asked for this and not for a long life or wealth for yourself nor justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart so that there will never have been anyone like you nor will there ever be. Moreover I will give you what you have not asked for, both riches and honor, so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. And if you walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commandments as David your father did, I will give you a long life. Then Solomon awoke and realized it had been a dream. So we have the story of a man who started with everything. He had all the promises that his father had received. He had all the benefits his father had achieved. And then he starts with a mixed loyalty to God. He knew what the right thing was because he tried to live according to some of the statutes of God. He knew what the right thing was to ask for wisdom so that he would know the difference between right and wrong. He knew what to ask for because he knew that wisdom would come from God. But there is a fatal flaw in Solomon's life. In the book of James, James writes, a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways. Solomon never seemed to really be committed completely and dependent on God. He knew what the right things were and he knew what was right to ask for. But when it came to his personal choices about what to do, he seemed to lack the determination to live a life of devotion as his father David had done. Scripture says that he had 700 wives, but another place it says that he had 80 queens. What it means is he went from one place to another, finding people to make alliances with and marrying the daughters of these rulers of foreign nations or communities or whatever size their kingdoms might be. Solomon lived his life under the grip of this double-mindedness. And whenever that happens to us and we begin to question what God says is right and begin to try to figure out on our own what to do, there is this kind of vacillation that you see in the very beginning of his life. Now let me tell you a story. That never ends well. And so we turn to chapter 11 in 1 Kings. This is the end now of Solomon's life. The end result of what happens with this poor start that he had in his life. Chapter 11 in 1 Kings, beginning with verse 1, it's page 191 in the story, the last paragraph on that page if you want to follow in the storybook. King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter. Forget that. Remember how he said in the first part how he loved God and wanted to follow his instructions? Now at the end of his life, there is not any discussion about how much he loved God, but how much he loved the foreign women. The Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Sidonians, the 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, what a dreadful word, nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. The very same word that he used about his faithfulness to God, loving God. What happened in his life, he was torn between two loves. The love of these women and the love of God. The love of this political power that it gave him with all these other kings having contracts or treaties with him and the contract he had with God. He had a covenant with God. The Israelites did. The young man had to enter that covenant growing up. He had the promise, he had the covenant, but he had another set of covenants it was making that really negated the first one. To say you are my Lord and ruler and nothing else and no one else in the world can take your place and then to go to another God and say the same thing violates the very principle of the first promise. The end result that Solomon had in his life was disastrous. He had 700 wives of royal birth, 300 concubines, his wives led him astray. Exactly what God warned would happen. Solomon asked for wisdom to be able to know what was right. I mean he didn't have to be too smart to read in the scripture where it says do not marry these foreign women they will lead you astray. What he said was well I know that's a danger but I can handle it God. I can marry these women and I can stay faithful to you and nothing will happen to me. I know more than you do. I think I cannot do what you say and make my life work out great. This is a story of every one of us. I can figure my own life out. I can do what the right things are. I'm going to make a few mistakes along but for the most part I can handle it. I can take care of myself. You see it's the arrogance of saying I know more than God. I have more power than God. I have more wisdom than God. As Solomon grew old his wives turned his heart after other gods exactly as the Lord warned him it would happen. And his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Asteros the goddess of the Sidonians and Molech the detestable God of the Ammonites. The Bible always uses with Molech the word detestable because Molech was a God they worshipped of power and life. And one of the things they asked was that a sacrifice would be made to Molech which was a child full of life and vigor and vitality. So to worship Molech people would bring their small children put them on the altar and burn them to Molech. The Israelites were doing that. It started off you know sort of simple for Solomon I think I would get some help from Pharaoh it ends up he's burning children on the altar. The detestable God Molech he did the same with all of his foreign wives who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods. A lot of people think that God in heaven is just a wonderful kind old grandfather. He looks down and says well I sure am sorry these people are living that way but you know what can I do. It's a different picture of God in the Bible. The Lord was angry with Solomon. He followed these different gods and it made God upset. On the hill east of Jerusalem Solomon built a high place for Chemish the detestable God of Moab and for Molech the detestable God of the Ammonites. He did this for all his foreign wives who burned incense and offerings sacrificed to their gods. The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord the God of Israel who had appeared to him twice. Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods Solomon did not keep the Lord's command. So the Lord said to Solomon since this is your attitude and you've not kept my commands and my decrees which I commanded you I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to another of your subordinates. Nevertheless for the sake of David your father I will not do it during your lifetime. I will tear it out of the hands of your son yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from him but I will give him one tribe for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen. The language that he uses there is the very same language he used with Saul. I will tear the kingdom away from you. At the end of this story Solomon is seen in God's eyes exactly like Saul the man he could not tolerate. He starts off and God says if this is what you really want wisdom to be able to live I'll help you in any way I can. But slowly and probably imperceptible in Solomon's mind he drifted further and further and further away from submission and obedience to God until finally one day Solomon hears God say what I promised David I would give him I gave him what I promised David I would give you I gave but you have not been obedient to me. Two things he didn't do he didn't trust in the authority of God he didn't trust in the wisdom of God and so his kingdom was torn away from him. All that he spent his lifetime building was gone. The story of this Solomon's adventure is really a story that you see written every day around us. People grow up in a Christian home they read the Bible they know about God they come to Sunday school they may even be baptized make a declaration of their faith and trust in God but their mind is divided. There hasn't been that complete surrender of themselves to God so as they begin to live and have to make tough choices choices that might cost them money choices that might cost them friends choices that might cost them a girlfriend or boyfriend choices that might make people look at them as if they're a little bit different they back away from God and begin to do what's prudent. What seems right at the moment what seems to fit them even though the scripture is clear and plain about what God wants and they recognize that they choose to do something different than that thinking it won't make any difference. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to in my life as a pastor who come in and talk about the problems they have you say well you're doing these things that are contrary to what God wants I know but you know I don't think it hurts anything it doesn't except it separates you completely from God and they keep on doing it over and over and over again. What happens to cause this? It's the failure to really believe that God is the supreme authority over all the universe. It's the failure to believe that what's found in the word of God is really a requirement for your life. It's not a suggestion. It's not something you can do if you want to. It is a requirement. God demands ultimate authority over our lives. He demands that we do what he tells us is right. And with that he promised to give us everything in our lives that we need. Protect us from the things that would destroy us. Guide us in the choices that we're trying to make and make sure that our life when it's over really has made a difference in the world. And he says if you don't do that I withdraw my gifts to you. You can make choices but I'm not going to tell you what the right choice is because you don't listen to me. I'll provide for you except that you don't listen to what I tell you so you go ahead and provide for yourself. I offer you my protection but you say no I've got it figured out better I'll take the chances on my own so you pay the consequence. He removes his hand from you and allows the difficulties to compound. And when you see someone whose life's in a spin and a turmoil with one problem after another you pretty much know they're sort of like Solomon. They may believe and know the right things are true but somehow or other they've pushed them aside to do what seems best to them or easiest for them in conflict with the word and authority of God. And so Solomon who had a good start with a godly father a good start with the right attitude in his kingship ends up a wreck in God's story. How do you avoid that kind of stuff? Well it begins with a promise to God. I promise you God that I believe you have all authority and all power so I'm going to trust my life to you. From this moment on in my life I'm going to live saying whatever you tell me I'm going to believe it's true whatever you let me know that I should be doing I'm going to try my best to do it. And if I fail I'll stop and say God I failed but I want to do what you tell me is right. I want to live under your authority submission to you and I'll start over. It doesn't matter if I have to start over 50,000 times I'm going to keep determined to live in obedience to you and submission to your authority. And then you take this book and you begin to read it. As you read it what you'll find is God tells you this is what you should do this is what you shouldn't do. If you do this you'll live if you do this your life will be a mess. And as you read that you say okay God here's another thing I need to do I'll start trying to appropriate that in my life. That's why you have to read the Bible to stay on course. And then when you start making choices about your life what to do with your money what to do with your marriage what to do with your kids what to do with your life. You take them before God and you say God here is something I need to do you tell me what I should do about it. And you keep asking and keep asking and keep asking until you have a clear idea what you should do then you do it. And then you get together with other people who are trying to do the same thing. They're reading the Bible and they're doing this and you listen to their experience and you learn from it. That's what the church is a place where every person in that church has made this promise to God saying I'm going to live in obedience to you. We're reading the Bible to find out what God wants us to do and I'll tell you my experience about how it turned out for me. You'll learn from me. And so we all learn from each other. That's God's safety net for walking this life with him. See what happens is if you read the scriptures Solomon read it and said hey you know it says here I should marry no foreign wives and said okay I'm going to quit that God I apologize for what I've done I'm going to stay on track now. I'm going to trust you for the military power that I'm going to need. If you'd read the story about what happened in the story of the judges where they abandoned God worshiped at the high places now God abandoned them he would say wait I better not worship at the high places or get rid of them. I've learned my lesson from the past. We learn you see from each other. Every person listening can tell you the story of their own sin and how devastating it was and how wonderful it was when they turned back to God and said from now on God it's going to be different. We all learn from each other. God's intention is that you live your life in fullness. He wants you to achieve everything that you were born to have in this world and then to have life forever with him. But it starts here by recognizing there is one Lord and ruler of this world it is Yahweh God and every person who kneels before him and says you are the authority for my life will find life and every person who puts aside anything else that would get between him and God will find that life. That's God's story. The most powerful man and the richest man in the world Solomon came to a dirty desperate end. No one can fight with God and win. No one. He had military power he had military alliances but in the end God said without a single war or a single battle your kingdom is taken away from you. It doesn't mean you see that you can live your lives every day in misery. Solomon lived his life in wealth and luxury but in the end he lost everything. What God gives us a story to learn is you can't live your life double minded. I believe in God but I don't do the things God tells me I should do. You can't do that. If you don't do the things God tells you to do you do not believe in the God of the Bible who has all authority and who has all wisdom. What God asks of each of us is that we look him in the eye and we say Lord I believe that you're the ruler of the universe with all authority and all wisdom and I yield myself to be your servant every day of my life as best I can. And with that promise then we start reading this Bible. We start asking God for his wisdom about the choices we have to make. We gather together with other believers to learn from them and to live our lives in the covenant relationship with them. They support us, they help us, they encourage us and in the end we will hear God say well done my good and faithful servant. So you have a choice. What have you done about it? Would you bow your heads please? Most people in the world believe in God and Solomon did too. He believed he existed. He didn't believe that God had all wisdom though and he didn't believe it was necessary to do what God told him. So don't say you believe in God if you don't believe he has all the wisdom in the world and that you really have to do what he tells you. Faith in God encompasses those two things. So I want to ask you to say to God have I really allowed you to control my life? Do I really trust your wisdom above my own? If you ask that in your mind God will answer it. You'll know. If in this moment God has made clear to you that there are some things in your life that are really not in his control, he's trying to help you avoid what happened to Solomon. You're in the same place Solomon was at the beginning of his life. He'd made some mistakes but God said I'll give you another chance because you've said I'm ready now to listen to you. But it means throwing away your own control of your choices and learning to think what does God want of me? Your life can change but the authority over it must change too. It must change from you making your own plans to God making your plans. So if you've thought right now of some ways in which you're not doing what God wants you to do, what you should do right now is to say God I acknowledge that. I admit it's true. I want to apologize for it. I want to ask that you give me the wisdom and strength to never do those things again. And I will start reading this book and I will start talking to you about the issues that I face and I will join with other people to learn and grow. This morning you may feel a need to make that promise openly and publicly to God. I'm going to be here at the front and Ros will be here. Music's going to play today. And while the music's playing I want you to ask yourself am I prepared to say to God my life is what you want it to be? If it's not, he's giving you this opportunity to do something about it. So while the music plays, people are praying, you do what you know God wants from you. Music playing. Music playing. Music playing. Would you stand please for a moment of prayer. We're so blessed today to have all of the wonderful decorations here. Connie gave me a list of those and I put it somewhere, Connie, but I don't know where they are. Here they are. Richard Snaywise helped, Terry Riebel helped, Jody Beckham helped, Eliana Beckham helped, Ros Crane, Gail Alexander, Jolene Peters, Nancy Rogers, Connie Parsons. I'd like you to give them a hand and I'd like you as they leave. Applause. If you run across one of these would you thank them personally? We give thanks to God for people who help to make our worship area beautiful and wonderful. Tonight Paul in Romans 12 talks about how can you tell if you really are a follower of Christ? What are the marks that are there? He gives us definite ways by which we know if the Spirit of God is in our life and controls us. Evening at 6 o'clock. Lord Jesus, we recognize you as the Lord of this world. Though most of the world may not accept that, we believe it's true. We devote ourselves to you, to living according to what you tell us is right. We fear making mistakes and living contrary to what you want. And so we listen to you, we listen to your word, and we try to hear you as our Lord speak to us. So we ask that you'd guide us with every promise made here today. Help us to keep that promise we've made. In Jesus' name we ask it. Amen. So for closing we'll do the third verse of Share His Love.