The Problems

Welcome to our women's Bible study called Solomon and the House of the Lord. This is our final week in the series. We're going to study 1 Kings chapters 10 and 11. Last week the dedication of the temple was actually a celebration of God fulfilling his promises. Okay? God had brought them into the land that he promised. God had given them rest, just like he had promised. God had chosen Jerusalem as the city to place his name. God fulfilled his promise to David that his son would reign after him and his son would build the house of the Lord, which he did. Israel had now been set up in the perfect environment to serve God. What could go wrong? The Bible corroborates what we experience in life, that people have a tendency to bring problems in those areas where God has made promises. This is how the world works, unfortunately. This lesson is titled The Problems. Everything that God has done for Israel was for one specific purpose. God had said so that all the nations would know that I am God. That is what he set Israel up for, to be his specific people, to display his character so that all the nations would know that he is God. When we open up our lesson this week, we see one striking problem. All the nations seem to know that Solomon is king. He kind of made it all about him. And I think we understand that. We can look at ourselves and say, yeah, sometimes I do that. I make what I'm doing for the Lord all about me. So this is how we start. Chapter 10. When the Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with hard questions. She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, camels bearing spices, very much gold, precious stones. And when she came to Solomon, she told him all that was on her mind. And Solomon answered all of her questions. There was nothing hidden from the king that he could not explain to her. And when the Queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his cup bearers, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more breath in her. And then she explained that she'd heard all about this, but until she saw it with her own eyes, she couldn't even hardly believe it. Verse eight, happy are your men, happy are your servants who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom. Blessed to be the Lord, your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel. Because the Lord loved Israel forever, he has made you king that you may execute justice and righteousness. And I kind of feel like her tours seem to be contained to court itself. She doesn't seem to say anything about the normal villagers or the farmers, just Solomon's men and his servants. In verse 10, and then she gave the king 120 talents of gold and a very great quantity of spices and precious stones. Never again came such an abundance of spices as these that the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. So we summarize verses 11 through 22 by, we read these accounts of bounty and abundance and commerce. With all these spices, he was eaten good. And with all of those precious stones, he was looking good. And we read about him collecting exotic woods like this Elmog wood used for musical instruments. So his court was sounding good and he received so much gold every year. He didn't even know what to do with it. So he just made fancy shields, whole bunch of fancy shields to put in the forest of the house of Lebanon. He even covered his great ivory throne with gold, which I cannot understand at all. That's kind of like, like laying out a very expensive hardwood floor in your whole house and then put carpet over it. It's like no one appreciates what's underneath. Ivory is cool to begin with. So you start with that and then you cover it with gold. All of his drinking vessels were of gold. Nothing was of silver. That was so last year. It was all gold. And it says that his business ships, business with Hiram from Tyre, they came every three years bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. And so we again, we get the idea that all of this wealth was centralized in one place. It was centralized with Solomon. I don't think the apes and the peacocks were for the farmers. I think it was for him. This all came in to him. So the underlayer is telling us here that the king who once initially used the wisdom that God gave him to bring justice, remember the story about the normal people, the two prostitutes who had this problem with whose baby is this? So the king who once applied his wisdom to justice is now applying his wisdom to commerce and collecting and collecting. And if we haven't come to that conclusion by now, the writer tells us in verse 23, thus King Solomon excelled all of the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. And the whole earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his mind. And just like the queen of Sheba, when they came to seek his wisdom, they brought presence with them. So Solomon collected verse 26, 1400 chariots, 12,000 horsemen whom he stationed in the chariot cities and with the king in Jerusalem. And the king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stone. And he made cedar as plentiful as the sycamore of the Shephela. And Solomon's import of horses was from Egypt and Kiwi and a chariot could be imported from Egypt for 600 shekels of silver, a horse for 150. And so through the king's traders, they were exported to all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Syria, which is very interesting because at the end of this lesson, going forward, God is going to begin to raise up adversaries against Solomon, against Israel from these very places. And so it'll be interesting. Now they have improved weapons of warfare, improved implements of warfare. So Syria comes to attack Israel, a chariot is turned over and it says sold by Solomon. That's interesting. So look how far Israel has come economically. Let's consider how far since the days of Saul, the first king, this is only the third king, okay? Saul, David, Solomon. Since the days of Saul, when he was king, he was still a farmer. Saul would go out and do king stuff and they'd go back and farm. Now Solomon is living the lifestyle of the rich and famous. In just two generations, things have changed drastically economically. Do you remember that last week when God appeared to Solomon, he was driving home the point, spiritual fidelity. That is what he wanted from Solomon. That is what he wanted from his people. And so in the next chapter, the writer now is driving home the point that Solomon has completely lapsed into spiritual adultery. And that's what chapter 11 is about. It begins this way. Now, King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite. By the way, his son, Rehoboam, who will be the next king, has an Ammonite mother, okay? So again, his wives were Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people, you shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you. Why? For surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. Well, Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives who were princesses. These were mostly diplomatic marriages to form alliances with the nations around them. And then 300 concubines. I guess those were just any old women that were pretty, okay? And his wives turned away his heart. And in all fairness to his wives, they had some raw material to work with, okay? Solomon had a fairly sleepy conscience. And so he wasn't really difficult to turn away. Verse 4, for when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not follow, did not wholly follow the Lord as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all of his foreign wives who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods. So I want us to, I want I want to drop four points about what we just read about Solomon's spiritual adultery here. The first point that I want to talk about is the influence of his wives, because that is what the writer wants us to see. They influenced him. I remember when I was, so when we first moved here in the early 90s, we moved here from Seattle. And every Monday, we needed a city fix. And so every Monday on our family day, we would go to Boise. We'd go to Boise Town Square. It was new then. And we didn't have any money to spend, but the pet shop is free. And there was a little coffee shop. They did not have like $6 coffees. They had like $0.95. You can get a cup of, you know. And I remember at this coffee shop, they had a mug. You probably all have heard this saying by now. If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. I had to buy that mug, because it just like spoke to my heart in that moment with two little kind of preschoolers things. Like it resonated with me. OK, if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy times 1,000. For Solomon, that was his life. And so, you know, a man is intended to lead his household, but often we have a big influence, don't we? We women, we are strong. We have strong personalities, and we have a big influence. It didn't have to be this way. Solomon could have chosen one nice, adorable, cute Israelite girl to marry, to have a family, to continue the dynasty of David. But he didn't do that. So he had all these alliances through marriage, which he thought were bringing peace. Who was bringing peace? God had brought rest. Solomon thought he was the one that was doing it. OK, second thing about this is the influence of Hiram. Hiram, the temple builder. Do you remember as we studied about him, Hiram for Tyre? He was known for building the temple to Hercules in his own hometown. He was accustomed to building pagan temples. So when we get to this point where it says that Solomon built the high places, well, he knew a guy. He knew a guy that knew all about building pagan temples. And I just wonder sometimes if Solomon would have even known how to begin to go about doing that if he wasn't in such close cahoots with Hiram. You know, naivete will take us a long way in life, the people that we hang with. If you don't know where to buy substances, you won't abuse those substances. You know what I mean? It's like if you hang with the innocent, you remain innocent. So Hiram, I think, was an influence. The third point is the beginning of this well-used phrase throughout the rest of Kings. We heard it now for the first time. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. We're going to hear that 32 more times as we, whenever we finish the book of First and Second Kings. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And then the fourth thing I want to talk about is the comparison that the Lord made with David. Twice, God compared Solomon's life to his father. It says in verse 4 that he was not wholly true to the Lord as God, as was the heart of David his father. And in verse 6, he did not wholly follow the Lord as David his father had done, which makes David seem pretty perfect. And you're sitting there thinking about those phrases, and you're thinking, I was here in Second Samuel. I know all about David. And now it's like revision of history or something, because it sounds different than what I remembered what David had done. But here's a couple differences. First of all, David remained loyal to his God. He may have sinned. He may have made mistakes. He might have had problems. But he was always loyal to Yahweh. And that's what God is looking for. That is the context here, is spiritual fidelity. The other thing that David did is when David did sin, when David did make a mistake, he was humble. And he repented. And he sought the Lord's forgiveness over and over. We've seen that. And we've gone to Psalms where David did that. Have we ever seen Solomon humble yet? Have we ever seen him repent of anything that he has done? But yet David continued to repent all the time. Solomon prayed at the dedication of the temple that when his people would do something wrong, that they would turn their face to Jerusalem, that they would pray, that they would repent. But yet we didn't see him do that. So pride always turns us toward idolatry. It still does today. And God's usual way of dealing with pride is discipline, adversity, and eventually judgment. God had been long-suffering with Solomon for a long time. That's what long-suffering is. And he had spoken truth to him. And he had spoken warnings. And so now is the time for judgment, verse 9. And the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded. Therefore Solomon said, excuse me, therefore the Lord said to Solomon, since this has been your practice, and I want you to think about that, what God is saying. Since this has been your practice, God does not cut us down at the knees for making one mistake. This has been a habitual practice of Solomon's life. And now is the time, OK, for judgment. And you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you after repeated warnings. I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and I will give it to your servant. Is this not reminiscent of what God said to Saul when he took the kingdom away? Say, I'll give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David, your father, I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of David, my servant, and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen. So from this moment forward, there's no more peace, no more safety, no more unity for Israel. Solomon has created problems for his nation, and now we're seeing the stage set for a divided nation that will be divided all the way through the exile. So these next verses, we find here that God raises up adversaries. Now Israel had been at peace, remember? In fact, Solomon even told Hiram that back in 1 Kings 5, 4, he said, but now the Lord my God has given me rest. On every side, there's neither adversity nor misfortune, and that is all changing right here. So I'm gonna summarize some of these adversaries. The first one is Hadad the Edomite. This guy had a grudge back from David and Joab, and he fled to Egypt as a child, grew up in Pharaoh's household, married into Pharaoh's family, and now he decided he wanted to repatriate and make trouble for Israel. But we don't hear about it in this lesson. Also Rezan, charismatic, renegade sort of a guy who had gathered a whole bunch of men, ended up in Syria, in Damascus, ended up somehow becoming the king of Damascus, king of Syria, and in verse 25, it says, he loathed Israel. So he is positioning himself to be an adversary over Israel, although we don't hear about it in this lesson. But here comes the most important adversary now. This third one, he didn't start off being an adversary at all. He actually started off in middle management in Solomon's building kingdom. It's Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. He's an Ephraimite, so he's not a foreigner. He's actually from Israel. Verse 27 says, this was the reason why he lifted up his hand against the king. Solomon built the mill. We read about this last week. And he closed up the breach of the city of David, his father. And the man, Jeroboam, was very able, and when Solomon saw that the young man was industrious, he gave him charge over all the forced labor of the house of Israel. So he was a manager for Solomon. Who did he manage? He managed the forced labor of the house of Joseph, which is Ephraim and Manasseh. And you're kind of thinking, ah, last week, I thought it said that there wasn't, Israelites weren't forced into labor, but now it says that they were, and I'm confused. Throughout this series, there have been four mentions of the draft for labor or forced labor. Some of them talk about the Canaanites, and some of them talk about the Israelites. So you could read through this and say, I don't know. The Bible's just contradicting itself. I don't really know what's going on. Let me say something that might help us understand, okay? If I'm talking to you and I say, it rained the whole month of April, you would just take that at face value. And then if I turned around and talked to you and said, well, it was on a Thursday, it wasn't raining, the time, and we went. Now, are both of my statements true? This is just the way we speak. When I say it rained the whole month of April, it's a generalization that it was an extraordinarily rainy month. And when I say that I did something when it wasn't raining, that's true as well. And so throughout this building process, there probably were times when it was only Canaanites that were conscripted for forced labor, and there were probably times that the Israelites. But right here, we see that Jeroboam was a manager over Ephraim and Manasseh. Now, this is important because this very thing is going to play into the next chapter, why Israel is so mad, because they're overworked and overtaxed. So now back to our passage. So one day, Jeroboam, he was finishing a long day of supervising on the Millo job site. The whistle blew, and he's headed home. Verse 29, when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, the prophet Ahijah, the Shilonite, found him on the road. And Ahijah had dressed himself in a new garment, and the two of them were alone in the open country. Ahijah laid hold of the new garment that was on him, and he tore it into 12 pieces and said to Jeroboam, take for yourself 10 pieces. For thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said, behold, I am about to tear the kingdom from the hand of Solomon, and I will give you 10 tribes. But he shall have one tribe for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh, the god of Moab, and Milcom, the god of the Ammonites. And they have not walked in my ways, doing what is right in my sight and keeping my statutes and my rules, as David his father did. And we take note here that God took action, not just because Solomon didn't follow some rule about offerings or sacrifices, but this overarching theme of turning to other gods. This is spiritual adultery. This is what God had warned them about. This is what God was jealous about. This is what God had wanted from his people, was to stay connected to him. Verse 34, nevertheless, I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand, but I will make him ruler all the days of his life for the sake of David, my servant whom I chose, who kept my commandments and my statutes, but I will take the kingdom out of his son's hand, and I will give it to you, 10 tribes, yet to his son I will give one tribe, that David, my servant, may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen to put my name, okay? So one tribe is basically going to be the tribe of Judah, although in chapters to come, it might mention something about Judah and Benjamin. People will eventually come and move to Judah for various reasons. But still, one tribe and 10 tribes, you're saying to yourself, that makes 11. The coat was torn into 12 pieces, where's the other one? And the writer doesn't explain, although there could be some very good reasons. The one I think is the best reason is the Levites. They don't have any land, okay? So the 12th tribe is the tribe of Levi, their servants. They own nothing, so how can you take a tribe when they don't own anything, plus they're dispersed throughout the whole region anyway? And now to Jeroboam himself, this guy, this manager guy, God speaks, verse 37, and he says, 'I will take you, and you shall reign over all that your soul desires, and you shall be king over Israel. And if you will listen to all that I command you, and will walk in my ways and do what is right in my eyes by keeping my statutes and my commandments, as David my servant did, I will be with you, and I will build you a sure house as I built for David, and I will give Israel to you.' Do you find it a little bit surprising that God takes a normal guy off the street and just says, hey, you wanna have this special relationship with me? Yeah, we can do that. You know, we don't even really know what to think about that, for sure. I don't know if it's intentional that we're supposed to see in this a little preview of the open door for the Gentiles, where here in the time that we live, God can take any girl off the street and say, hey, you wanna have a special relationship with me? Yeah, just believe in me, and we can have this. I think it's a nice thing to consider at this point. But back in the moment, not very much happens in Solomon's kingdom that he doesn't know about, and so verse 40, Solomon sought, therefore, to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam arose, and he fled into Egypt to Shishak, king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death of Solomon, and this is an indication already to us that there's a deteriorating relationship with the other nations, okay? So Shishak is probably the guy who came after the pharaoh who gave his daughter to Solomon, and now he's taking in Jeroboam. It's probably not a secret why Jeroboam is there, so the relationships begin to deteriorate, and this guy, Shishak, in Egypt, five years after Solomon's gone, he's gonna come and attack Israel. So, and now we come to the end, verse 41. Now the rest of the acts of Solomon and all that he did and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of Solomon? And the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel was 40 years, and Solomon slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David, and Rehoboam, his son, reigned in his place. So this chapter's a little bit of a spoiler for us. It tells us that Rehoboam reigned in his place. We just learned that 10 of the tribes, what we call the northern tribes, what will eventually be called Israel, are gonna go off with Jeroboam, and God keeps his promises. That's the way it's gonna be. I don't know when we can finish first and second kings, I don't know what it's gonna be called, but when we get there, we'll study the 40 kings now who reign over Israel and over Judah. The nation will never be the same again. But what I wanna do is I wanna wrap up this study. Solomon and the house of the Lord, kinda wrap it up in a bow. We've said throughout this study that one of the important points that we've stressed is that God has always desired to dwell among his people. That is the heart of God, to dwell among his people. At this point in history, right where we're at, his dwelling of choice has been this house that Solomon has built, okay? Solomon built it, God's presence filled it. But this is not the dwelling that's in view in our point in history. We don't seek God in a particular temple. God does not come and fill a particular temple. He doesn't draw near to people that way. His desire is to dwell within us, okay? And this began to happen after Jesus' death and his resurrection at Pentecost. The spirit of God began to come in and dwell in people in a particular way. And so the early disciples experienced this. And they taught this. And early on, even in Acts chapter seven, when Stephen, filled with the spirit, was speaking to the Jewish leaders, he gave a recap of the history of God, how God has drawn near to his people. And it's really fascinating that his recap stops right here with Solomon. But it starts with Abraham. And Stephen told them that first God appeared to Abraham in Mesopotamia. And then he was with Joseph in prison in Egypt. And then he appeared to Moses in the desert. And then I wanna show you on the screen, I wanna pick up this narrative, Acts seven, verse 45. And this is what Stephen was saying. And he goes, and so it was until the days of David who found favor in the sight of God and asked to find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. But it was Solomon who built a house for him. And then Stephen stops with the history right there and jumps right up to the current time. And he said, yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says. Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. What kind of a house will you build for me, says the Lord? Or what is my resting place? And one of the best places that answers that question is the Apostle Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians. Look what he says. For we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, the temple of the living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people. This is our promise, okay? Solomon had promises too. And he added problems to his promises. This is our promise from God that by faith and by our belief in Jesus Christ, we can invite him to live in our hearts, to dwell in our hearts. But also as we consider this entire lesson. We are warned, don't add problems to that. We have promises, let's not add problems. For example, let's not take for granted the fact that God dwells within us. Let's not walk in spiritual adultery and not serve the Lord with our entire heart, not worship him with our whole heart. Let's remain humble, confessing our sins, asking God to forgive us and changing course as we need. So I would say, let's wrap this all up by saying, hold on to the promises, don't add any problems. But if we do add problems, as people tend to do, then that beautiful verse from 2 Chronicles, I'll just recite it to you. If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and I will hear their land. That's our promise too. Father, thank you so much for your promises to us. Lord, you have promised to dwell within us. Lord, you know our propensity to create problems over the top of your promises. And so I just ask for us that we would be aware of that, we would keep short accounts with you, Lord. And when we see that we have added a problem on top of your promise, that Lord, we would turn quickly to you, we would humble our hearts, we would confess to you, and Lord, we see another promise that you will forgive, you will heal us, and you will turn us in the right direction. And so Lord, we just wanna bask in that today as we close this whole series. And we thank you that you are a long-suffering God filled with mercy, love, and tenderness for all of your people. In Jesus' name, amen.