Prosperity Testing and Self-Deception; 1 Kings 11:1

Here we have the last chapter related to Solomon. There have been ten positive chapters and now in this last chapter we see the problems that occurred and the failures of Solomon at the end of his life. For much of his life he was very positive and very obedient but at some point, and we don’t know when that was, he began to gradually be influenced away from the Lord until he became very distant from the Lord and went on just a tremendous search to find meaning and happiness in life apart from God.

The first eight verses lf chapter 11 summarise what happened. 1 Kings 11:1 ^NASB “Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, [2] from the nations concerning which the LORD had said to the sons of Israel, ‘You shall not associate with them, nor shall they associate with you, {for} they will surely turn your heart away after their gods.’ Solomon held fast to these in love.” So he disobeys God, he multiplies wives; he has 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. It is through these wives that he has his heart turned away from God and he is not loyal to God, and so God is going to discipline him and by the time we get down to verse 6 we read ^NASB “Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not follow the LORD fully, as David his father {had done.}”

One thing we are going to note as we go through Kings and we look at this note that so and so did evil in the eyes of the Lord. Often when we think of evil we have different ideas and concepts of what comprises evil. Every time we look at these kings there is this summary statement: “… did evil in the sight of the Lord.” The evil is always idolatry. It is always defined in terms of the violation of that first commandment that the Jews should have no other god beside Yahweh. The starting point of all evil is when man shifts his allegiance from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we shift our attention away from Him, that then sets the stage for all manner of evil. This is what happens to Solomon. God has given him everything but he becomes complacent and he fails, and in that we have some tremendous lessons.

The doctrine of prosperity testing

1. In life God takes us through various circumstances which provide us with opportunities to trust Him in life. Each of those circumstances is a test. When these are hard circumstances we describe this as adversity. When they are pleasant circumstances we describe it as a prosperity test. a) What is a test? It is any situation which calls for us to make a decision where the options involve either depending on God and the spiritual resources He will provided or depending on our own resources; b) Whenever we are dependent on God that is called trust. That is what faith is: relying upon God, taking His Word, His promise, His principle as true, and saying even though we don’t feel like doing this, even though it makes us uncomfortable, we are going to do that because that is what God says to do. We call this process the faith-rest drill. When we put that into practice then we can relax in the situation; c) We need to recognise that whenever we rely on something else to resolve the test that is a form of idolatry; d) Idolatry in the Old Testament is built around pantheons of gods. It is a more overt form of idolatry. There were all of the various gods but they were associated with some detail in life, all of the different things that the people in that culture were faced with at different times. But when we get into the New Testament there is the recognition that idolatry is not just this overt worship of idols made out of stone, metals and wood, it is mental and not necessarily overt. Colossians 3:5 ^NASB “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.” Greed is a form of idolatry; materialism lust is a form of idolatry—the worship of money and the things that money can buy, the worship of possessions, the worship of any material thing that we think makes life worthwhile; and that this will provide meaning and purpose for our lives rather than looking to God. It goes beyond that in Romans 1:19-23 ^NASB “because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” When we look to anything in creation to supply what only the creator can supply, that is idolatry. Once we take God out of the picture or say God isn’t there then the only solution is to deify something within creation. To look to something within creation as the ultimate source of meaning or happiness or value in life. Definition: Idolatry occurs when man seeks from something in creation that which only the creator can provide. God takes us through these tests in order to teach us to be dependent upon Him and to show that when we are not everything will fall apart, collapse in a hurry. Joshua 24:23-27 there is a warning to Israel about what would happen in relationship to idolatry. Joshua is giving them his parting instructions before he is going to die. ^NASB “Now therefore, put away the foreign gods which are in your midst, and incline your hearts to the LORD, the God of Israel. The people said to Joshua, ‘We will serve the LORD our God and we will obey His voice.’ So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God; and he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the LORD. Joshua said to all the people, ‘Behold, this stone shall be for a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the LORD which He spoke to us; thus it shall be for a witness against you, so that you do not deny your God’.” The word “incline” in v. 23 means to stretch out, and it is just the opposite of what happens with Solomon. 1 Kings 11:4 ^NASB “For when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father {had been.}” The word “heart” means to be at the centre of something. Joshua set a stone up that would be a historical testimony to the claim that they made that they would always serve the Lord. In a few years when they weren’t worshipping the Lord that stone would stand as a silent testimony of their failure.

1 Kings 11:9 ^NASB “Now the LORD was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.” He has the empirical evidence. Miracles aren’t designed to convince people so that they will believe; miracles are designed to give evidence that God is who He claims to be. But because of negative volition of people like those mentioned in Romans 1, people who have all the evidence they need to trust in God, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness; they try to shut God out of their life.

2. In prosperity God provides us with an abundance of the details of life. This can be friends, family, success and careers, money, material possessions, respect by peers, anything. Everyone is different. What is a significant status symbol or details of life for one person as their definition of prosperity is not the next person’s definition of prosperity.