Sin:
Failure and Consequences. 1 Kings 11:1-8
We have been looking at the doctrine of prosperity testing and a summary
of the problem-solving devices—problems related to any type of situation that
calls for a solution, anything that calls for a decision. Any time we have a
decision to make, by and large we have choices related to the application of
the Word of God or not; doing something God’s way, applying the Word God’s way.
That is where so many people tend to fall apart. They think that they are doing
the right thing and it doesn’t matter what the way is, or they think that they
are doing it the right way and it is not really the right thing at all. The
only way we can come to understand and have discernment in those areas is
through a study of the Word, over and over again.
Solomon as a young man is someone who is described as one who loved the
Lord. That means in biblical terminology that he knew the Law and he obeyed the
Law. Again and again in the book of Deuteronomy God makes this distinction that
the way we express our love for Him is to keep His statutes, His ordinances,
His commandments; that the measure of our love for God is not by how we feel
about God. Yet modern man has taken love to be a purely emotive concept and
when it comes to spiritual things we think we love God because we have certain
feelings about Him. This has infiltrated the church to such a tremendous degree
that it is almost impossible to find anybody who is saying anything truly
substantive or accurate about biblical love, because their starting point is
that it has something to do with emotion or feeling or some sort of subjective
sense about God. Our subjective emotions, expressions and feelings can be
terribly misleading, even to the point that they become idolatrous, and we end
up rather than worshipping an idol of metal or wood or stone, the major failing
of the Jews in the Old Testament, having a tendency as modern evangelical
Christians to generate mental images, constructs, opinions about God, what
pleases God, what our relationship with God is, and what God must like from us,
and then we worship that. It is just a mental form of idolatry because there is
not enough knowledge of the Word to truly understand who God is or who Jesus
is.
In John 14 we have the passage where Peter and Philip who have spent day
in and day out with the Lord Jesus Christ for three years and are sitting there
asking, Who are you, and Show us the Father, and to Philip Jesus says: “Have I
been so long with you, and {yet} you have not come to know Me, Philip?” It
takes time, thought, study and reflection to come to know anyone, much less the
God of creation, the Lord of the universe. Yet people don’t want to take the
time to do that. They think that an hour on Sunday morning or listening to an
audio once or twice a week is sufficient, but too often five minutes later our
thoughts are completely consumed with the details of life rather than sitting
and thinking about what has been studied and reflecting upon it. That is what
the Bible refers to as meditation: reflecting and thinking about it. The Bible
meaning is to fill the mind with the thought of Scripture and to reflect upon
it, to think about it, to think about how what we have just read or heard
impacts our life.
One of the great principles in the Bible is that in the Word of God, God
presents then characters of the Old Testament warts and all. We see their
failings, their flaws, their sin nature; they even get tagged with names that
relate to their sin nature, and hopefully they will get a new name when they
get to heaven because they wouldn’t want to go through all of eternity being
known as Rahab the harlot. Beyond that former state she has a tremendous
spiritual life and walked with the Lord and it didn’t have anything to do with
that which had been her previous occupation. The thing that makes a story a
great story is conflict, and conflict has to be resolved somewhere, there has
to be some sort of solution to the conflict. And when the conflict involves man
in the Scriptures then the hero who provides the solution is God. Ultimately in
all of the great stories of Scripture we always have God solving something one
way or another and He gives us the tools—the problem-solving devices—and we can
take those tools and impose those on the stories being looked at in the text,
asking the question: Which problem-solving device is being used? How is it
being used, and do I find myself in similar type situations, challenges,
adversity, prosperity, or whatever it may be, and how am I utilising the
problem-solving devices in the same way? And what isn’t applied?
What we see in 1 Kings 11 is the description of Solomon’s failure.
Everything up to this point in 1 Kings 1-10 has been on a positive trajectory.
The failure occurs in the last twenty years of his life, probably in the last
ten years of his life. But that foundation for that failure is actually seen
much earlier in his life, and that is true for all of us. There are sin
patterns, areas of weakness, tendencies that we have in our sin natures that if
we don’t deal with them under the principles of Scripture it is very likely
that when we get into our later years what happens is that these things have
grown and grown, and all of a sudden some of these trends or patterns that were
somewhat hidden suddenly become out in the open for everyone else to see.
1 Kings 11 describes Solomon’s failure and God’s discipline on Solomon
for his failures. Even though it takes Solomon a long time to recover, a long
time before he confesses his sins, we know from Ecclesiastes that he does
eventually. It is interesting that the book that Solomon probably wrote first
is Proverbs where he expresses his wisdom, and the book that he wrote last is
probably Ecclesiastes (we can’t say for sure), which he wrote towards the end
of his life. Even though he recovered, even though he confessed his sins, and
even though he repented in the true sense of the word—he changed, reversed
course, turned back to God and became obedient again—there were still
consequences to his sin, both national and personal. It didn’t just affect him;
it affected thousands and thousands of people for generations. Part of God’s
discipline for his shift to idolatry here is that the kingdom is going to be
taken (all but the tribes of Judah and Benjamin) away from the authority of the
house of David. This is going to set up an alternate kingdom in the north under
the leadership of Jeroboam I. It takes them right into idolatry. Later under
Ahab when he married Jezebel it is going to take the northern kingdom into the
worst forms of idolatry and will result in the discipline of economic disaster
of many in both the northern and southern kingdoms. These people have seen the
golden age of Solomon, the tremendous wealth that has come to the nation
Just think how many people in tis country are on negative volition right
now and are rejecting the truth of Scripture, and yet there are hundreds of
thousands of believers who are trying to do the right thing, studying the Word,
growing to maturity, but because of the vast number of people who are in
degeneracy, perversion, idolatry and demonism, believers are going top suffer
by association as God brings discipline upon this nation.
One principle to be noted as a framework for approaching this is, first
of all, this is an illustration of God’s faithful, loyal love. One of the key
words that we find in the Old Testament is the Hebrew word chesed, and it basically refers to God’s faithful, loyal love. Chesed is a love that is based on a contract,
a covenant. It has structure to it, commitment underlying it, it doesn’t depend
upon anything; it is the kind of love that governs a marriage after the wedding
which is defined in terms of a contract. That is what gives it stability and
certainty (or it should) because it is grounded in a contract and gives
structure and definition and meaning to the concept of love. And all of this is
related to salvation. When we think of the contractual nature of what God does
when He saves us from the very beginning of biblical history up to the present
when God makes a promise to save people on the basis of faith in His promise.
In the Old Testament it was a promise of future deliverance; in the New
Testament it looks back on what Christ did on the cross as He paid the penalty
for our sins and establishes the basis for the new contract, the new covenant.
So salvation is pictured this way, and our first principle is that when a
person is saved that salvation can’t be lost no matter what the sin was. That
is what is depicted here in a broader sense with Solomon. Because when God came
along, first to Abraham and then to David, He entered into an unconditional
contract. He promised Abraham that He would make a great nation from his seed,
and He promised him land. There were certain conditions attached to the
enjoyment of that and blessing but He guaranteed that there would be a genetic,
ethnic descent from Abraham and that this group would be the source of
world-wide blessing, and they would have an eternal homeland on a specific
piece of real estate.
If God could have broken His promise He would have because of the evil
that Solomon introduces into the nation
The second key lesson here is that sin has consequences. Sometimes when
we confess our sins or when we commit certain sins, for whatever reason related
to the grace of God, God just doesn’t nail us for those sins. He doesn’t
discipline us. God just doesn’t seem to lower the boom on every sin that we
commit. That’s grace. But that is God’s choice, not ours, so we don’t know when
we will get it and when we won’t. God disciplines us in the ways that are right
and appropriate to each of us in terms of our spiritual growth. Sometimes He
doesn’t ever discipline us for certain things and we grow out of them; other
times He just diminishes, minimises the discipline and it is not nearly as bad
as it could have been. Then at other times He really needs to discipline us
with the full force of His justice to get our attention and to rattle our
arrogant cages.
We never know what kind of future obstacles and unintended consequences
develop out from our sin. Furthermore, personal sin may develop into personal
tragedy and suffering brought on by bad decisions we make from a position of
weakness. We may make some very foolish decision that has to do with satisfying
our sin nature and it may cost us everything that we have. We don’t know that
at the time. It may have devastating consequences in the lives of those around
us in all manner of unexpected ways. We never know what that suffering by
association factor may be.
With Solomon, his sin, which went on for a number of years, finally
resulted in God’s intervention. Solomon’s sin related to his internationalism.
That is ultimately what it was. It is interesting to get into this whole
scenario where Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. The nations where
these wives were from is important. It is suspected that ninety-nine out of a
hundred messages that deal with this focus on Solomon’s sexual proclivity. That
is not what is going on here. It may be a factor but that is not really what is
going on. First of all, Solomon here is in his older years. He is entering into
relationships with all of the surrounding countries and there are marriages
designed to shore up alliances and to strengthen
There is this idea that we have to respect everybody’s ideas and there
is this concept of tolerance which begins to be more and more recognised in the
culture. But the term changed. Tolerance and being tolerant used to mean: “I
think that your ideas are horrible and if you follow your ideas you are going
to destroy yourself and this nation. I abhor and despise your ideas and they
are dead wrong, but I am going to put up with them and allow you the freedom to
live in this country, even though you have ideas that are self-destructive.”
Now tolerance means that you have to approve and go along with what other
people believe and say, no matter how asinine, destructive, stupid, foolish or
biblically wrong it is. And you can’t say that it is wrong, immoral, that
homosexuality is immoral, destructive and perverse, and that if it is allowed
to continue without interference from government it will destroy the country,
because that is the way God created reality. So now, in order to be tolerant,
we have to approve this and even have to promote it. If we don’t then we are
deemed completely intolerant and guilty of “hate speech.”
So Solomon becomes exposed to all of these different cultures and
religions, and it comes though an area which is probably an area of weakness in
him which is all of these women. Solomon, we are told, loved many foreign
women. Instead of being loyal to
1 Kings 11:2 NASB “from the nations concerning which the LORD had said to the
sons of
The statement in 1 Kings 11:2 comes out of two key passages in the Old
Testament. It summarizes what is in Exodus 23:31ff which is where God gives the
Mosaic Law for marriage. So first of all Solomon breaks the divine
establishment basis for marriage by having more than one wife. Anything other
than marriage between one man and one woman is a violation of divine
establishment and once you start changing the definition of marriage—and it
doesn’t matter whether it is called civil union or any other sophistry—it is
just as much an abomination and is self-destructive for a nation to tolerate it
and to incorporate it into law.
Exodus
Exodus 34:12 NASB “Watch yourself that you make no covenant
with the inhabitants of the land into which you are going, or it will become a
snare in your midst. [13] But {rather,} you are to tear down their altars and
smash their {sacred} pillars and cut down their Asherim.” This is the one flaw
we saw early on in 1 Kings chapter three. Solomon loved the Lord with all his
heart, but he didn’t tear down the high places. It is those little things that
we don’t think are that bad, the secret sins, that we eventually give in to and
it begins to grow and take on a life of its own. Verse 13 infers that we are to
tear down all evidence of human viewpoint thinking. That is what we do in
sanctification and it is a great illustration of the process of spiritual
growth. We have to capture every stronghold, every thought. [14] “—for you
shall not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a
jealous God—” God is not going to tolerate the worship of other gods because it
is destructive and it doesn’t fit reality. [15] “otherwise you might make a
covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they would play the harlot with
their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone might invite you to eat of
his sacrifice,
So we don’t want to get into the trap of compromise with unbelievers and
even believers who are operating on human viewpoint. This same principle is
clarified later on in Deuteronomy 7:3, 4 NASB “Furthermore, you
shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their
sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons.
1 Corinthians
The point is that there needs to be this separation, distinction. But
Solomon violates that and in doing so he is violating the conditions that God
placed in the promise that He gave when he appeared to Solomon in 1 Kings
chapter nine. 1 Kings 3:14 NASB
“If [conditional] you walk in My ways, keeping My statutes and commandments, as
your father David walked, then I will prolong your days.” God is going to be
true to David that one of David’s descendants is going to sit on an eternal
throne. Is that going to go through Solomon or someone else? But then in the
second appearance, after the temple is dedicated, 1 Kings 9:4, 5 “As for you,
if you will walk before Me as your father David walked, in integrity of heart
and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you {and} will
keep My statutes and My ordinances,