When you look at the story of King Solomon, he is considered the wisest man. Why, you ask? Because he asked God for one thing – wisdom. He did this because he knew he could not lead God’s people on his own strength. Solomon was seeking God’s kingdom first, so God helped him build his own.
We can spend our lives building the church and God’s kingdom, but if we don’t surrender our desires to God, we’ll end up turning from Him.
When Solomon finished the building of the Lord’s house and the king’s house, and all he desired and was pleased to do, 2 The Lord appeared to Solomon the second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3 The Lord told him, I have heard your prayer and supplication which you have made before Me; I have hallowed this house which you have built, and I have put My Name [and My Presence] there forever. My eyes and My heart shall be there perpetually. 4 And if you will walk before Me, as David your father walked, in integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, keeping My statutes and My precepts, 5 Then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, There shall not fail you [to have] a man upon the throne of Israel. 6 But if you turn away from following Me, you or your children, and will not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you but go and serve other gods and worship them, 7 Then I will cut off Israel from the land I have given them, and this house I have hallowed for My Name (renown) I will cast from My sight. And Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among all the peoples. 8 This house shall become a heap of ruins; every passerby shall be astonished and shall hiss [with surprise] and say, Why has the Lord done this to this land and to this house? 9 Then they will answer, Because they forsook the Lord their God, Who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and have laid hold of other gods and have worshiped and served them; therefore the Lord has brought on them all this evil.
1 Kings 9:1-9 AMPC
King Solomon was obsessed with women. Pharaoh’s daughter was only the first of the many foreign women he loved—Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite. He took them from the surrounding pagan nations of which God had clearly warned Israel, “You must not marry them; they’ll seduce you into infatuations with their gods.” Solomon fell in love with them anyway, refusing to give them up. He had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred concubines—a thousand women in all! And they did seduce him away from God. As Solomon grew older, his wives beguiled him with their alien gods and he became unfaithful—he didn’t stay true to his God as his father David had done. Solomon took up with Ashtoreth, the whore goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the horrible god of the Ammonites.
1 Kings 11:1-5 MSG
These excerpts show us that as human beings we are not immune to sin and temptation. The whole purpose of sin and temptation is to take us away from what God has called us to.
Solomon’s love for God crumbled because his lust for power and pleasure caused him to place other things above his creator. Once under the power of this attraction, he clung to these in love instead of giving them up to the Lord.
4 As Solomon grew older, his wives beguiled him with their alien gods and he became unfaithful – he didn’t stay true to his God as his father David had done. 5 Solomon took up with Ashtoreth, the whore goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the horrible god of the Ammonites. 6 Solomon openly defied God; he did not follow in his father David’s footsteps. 7 He went on to build a sacred shrine to Chemosh, the horrible god of Moab, and to Molech, the horrible god of the Ammonites, on a hill just east of Jerusalem. 8 He built similar shrines for all his foreign wives, who then polluted the countryside with the smoke and stench of their sacrifices.
1 Kings 11:4-8 MSG
This is a tragic example of the power of the lust of the flesh. Because of lust, Solomon found himself in a place where he never thought he would find himself. He found himself burning incense at the altars of depraved pagan gods. This is the power of lust – it can capture us in a spell, in a fog of spiritual confusion until we do things we never thought we would do.
9 God was furious with Solomon for abandoning the God of Israel, the God who had twice appeared to him 10 and had so clearly commanded him not to fool around with other gods. Solomon faithlessly disobeyed God’s orders.
1 Kings 11:9-10 MSG
Remember that encounters are starting and check points on our faith journey’s. It’s not meant to be the thing that sustains you. We sometimes think that great spiritual experiences will keep us from sin and will keep us faithful to God. This was not the case with the wisest man who ever lived, and it will not be the case with us also. Only surrendering our will and desires to Jesus will suffice.
Solomon, as we often do, forgot his security rested in the blessing of God and in his obedience and faithfulness. Solomon’s kingdom was an outstanding example of wealth, military power, and prestige. Yet the true security of Israel did not rest in any of those things. It rested in the blessing of God and in the obedience and faithfulness of their king.
Then I took a good look at everything I’d done, looked at all the sweat and hard work. But when I looked, I saw nothing but smoke. Smoke and spitting into the wind. There was nothing to any of it. Nothing.
Ecclesiastes 12:11 MSG
Solomon released there was no enduring, eternal sense of meaning to life lived for the earthly pleasures and accomplishments. Solomon lived for pleasure and saw it was meaningless. Many of our desires, too, are meaningless.
13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, For this is man’s all. 14 For God will bring every work into judgment, Including every secret thing, Whether good or evil.
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 NKJV
The preacher (Solomon) asks what it would be like if things were totally different from what you thought? What if this world is not the ultimate one? What if God exists and is a rewarder of those who seek Him? What should your response be?
Fear God, do what He tells you and that’s it. All the things that you are stressing about, just know that God will be there. That’s His responsibility, Our responsibility is to fear God and do what He tells us. We should come to the same conclusion that Solomon came to – God is more than enough than our ambitions. That’s what it means to have Jesus at the center of our lives.
