1 Kings 11 part 7
Last week we left of with Solomon living high on the hog as read about his great wealth. But, tonight we quickly see what happens to those who don’t remain faithful to Lord.
1 Kings 11:1 But
King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh:
women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites
-- 2 from the nations of whom
the LORD had said to the children of Israel, "You shall not intermarry
with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after
their gods." Solomon clung to these in love.
In the beginning of
Solomon’s life he was a very humble man who wanted to serve God and his people
well and he was great wisdom from God and he was so privileged as God spoke to
him on two different occasions. Yet once he started getting rich and expanding
his kingdom he started marrying more and more foreign women which was
specifically prohibited by God. God knew that if you married a foreign woman
she could influence you to start turning toward her false God’s and sinful way
of life and this exactly what we see happening with Solomon as we continue on
in,
1 Kings 11:3 And he
had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his
wives turned away his heart. 4
For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after
other gods; and his heart was not loyal to the LORD his God, as was the
heart of his father David.
No think about this if
God was concerned about the influence 1 foreign wife would have try multiplying
that by a 1000. Solomon dug his grave because I don’t care how much wisdom or
knowledge you have that many wives would have no problem turning the heart of a
person just as Solomon’s wives did to him. That very sad statement made here
which says that his heart was not loyal to the Lord and that he had turned to
some of these other false Gods.
This teaches us several
lessons. First is does not matter how wise you are or how much you know about
God’s Word because if you do not live it you will not be pleasing to God.
Second of all it shows that we cannot be divided and give part of self to God
and part of self to other God’s or other things. That Jesus teaches us in,
Matthew 6:24 "
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the
other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot
serve God and mammon.
This is what Solomon was
attempting to do as he tried to appease his wives and God at the same time. A
Third thing we learn is that some people would say that they would believe in
God or that they would be more faithful if they got to hear God with their own
ears or see some great miracle. But, this simply would not be true in most
cases. Now at first they may believe and conform to God’s will but it wouldn’t
take long before some would get comfortable again and say well I haven’t heard
from God anytime soon so maybe it was just a figment of my imagination. Besides
this we countless examples of those in the OT and the NT that either heard God’s
voice or saw a real miracle and yet it doesn’t take very long before many of
them go back to way they were doing things and they farther and farther away
from God. As I said earlier Solomon had heard God speak to him on 2 different
occasions and yet look at him now. So, those who claim they would believe if
they heard from God or saw a miracle most of them probably would not.
Now lets look at how far
Solomon went down hill.
1 Kings 11:5 For
Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the
abomination of the Ammonites. 6
Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not fully follow the LORD,
as did his father David. 7
Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of
Now we are only given a
partial list of the differing Gods’ he
honored by building high places for because the text tells us that he
did this for his foreign wives who worshiped different Gods. Solomon certainly
a chip of the ole block because he did even come close to being like his father
David. Lets take a quick look at some these God’s that are mentioned here.
First we have Ashtoreth
who was considered the Goddess of fertility and growth of crops and herbs. She
was considered to be partners with the male Baal.
Second we have mentioned
Milcom which is also called Molech and this God is called an abomination. The
reason why is because those who worshiped this God were know for sacrificing children
to him and God speaks against in Lev. 20 and Jer. 32:35. It hard to believe a
man a wise as Solomon was to set up a place so that his wives could worship
this God.
The third one we have
mentioned is Chemosh who the God of Moabites. Very little is known about this
God but he seems to get start here at
Next we learn that God is
angry at the choices that Solomon has
made because he broken God’s commands and now God will speak to Solomon one
more time but this time it won’t be very pleasant as we read in,
1 Kings 11:11
Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, "Because you have done this, and have
not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely
tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. 12 "Nevertheless I will not
do it in your days, for the sake of your father David; I will tear it out of
the hand of your son. 13
"However I will not tear away the whole kingdom; I will give one tribe to
your son for the sake of my servant David, and for the sake of
I don’t care how good you
think you are or how much power you think you have if mess up you have to face
the consequences of your actions and God is letting Solomon know what will take
place because of his unfaithfulness. But, even in this dark moment in Solomon’s
life God showed mercy for the sake of David and even though this great
We certainly need to keep
this in mind as Christians today that we will have to give account for the
things we have done on this earth. For example note,
2 Corinthians 5:9
Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to
Him. 10 For we must all
appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things
done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or
bad. 11 Knowing, therefore,
the terror of the Lord, we persuade men;
Since Paul knew this was
the case it motivated him to persuade others to know Christ so that they could
be prepared for that great day of judgment by have Jesus as their advocate.
This is another great point to show that we as humans play a role in whether or
not make it to heaven which shows that we are not saved by grace alone.
1 Kings 11:14 Now the
LORD raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite; he was a
descendant of the king in
In these verses we are
given a brief history of this man called Hadad. It shows us his motivation for
having a beef against
1 Kings 11:23 And God
raised up another adversary against him, Rezon (reason)
the son of Eliadah, who had fled from his lord, Hadadezer (had-uh-dee-zur) king of Zobah. 24 So he gathered men to him and
became captain over a band of raiders, when David killed those of
Zobah. And they went to
Once again we see one of
David’s enemies coming back to haunt Solomon and his kingdom. Rezon had so much
hatred toward David’s family that he was against Solomon’s kingdom all the days
of his life. Now while these 2 men that have mentioned so far caused some
problems for King Solomon’s kingdom they would be like gnats compared to what
was going to happen from within in his own people.
1 Kings 11:26 Then
Solomon's servant, Jeroboam the son of Nebat, an Ephraimite from Zereda, whose
mother's name was Zeruah, a widow, also rebelled against the king. 27 And this is what caused
him to rebel against the king: Solomon had built the Millo and repaired
the damages to the City of
Many times the greatest
enemy that can cause the most destruction come from within and we certainly see
that Jeroboam fits this Bill as we all know he becomes the main influence which
divides up Solomon’s kingdom. Of course we need to keep in mind that he did not
do this all by himself because it was by the providence of God that this was to
happen.
Now think about this here
you have this servant who has been very eager to perform well for the king. He
does such a great Job that Solomon stands up and takes notice and makes this
servant to be over the labor force of the house of Joseph. Everything was going
according to plan until Ahijah came and spoke to Jeroboam. Now we don’t know
very much about this prophet but his message was from God and this message was
enough to push Jeroboam to carrying out God’s justice upon Solomon’s kingdom
due to his blatant disregard to God’s commands.
This prophet take a new
garment tears into 12 pieces and tells Jeroboam to take 10 them indicating that
he would have 10 out the 12 tribes he would reign over while 2 tribes would
remain under Solomon’s son. Ahijah informs Jeroboam that he would not takes
these 10 tribes until Solomon was dead and his son had taken over.
God also makes a promise
to Jeroboam that if he will walk in God’s commands by keeping them just as
David did he will make him a great king of
As I thought about this
concept of the enemy within, it reminded me that some of the greatest enemies
of the church came from within. Over the years I have heard about how congregation
have split and caused people to fall away because one person or small group
decided to stir up a big stink about trivial matters which are based solely
upon personal preferences. Since these people were so adamant about having
their way they did more damage to the church than any outsider could ever think
about doing. I find it really sad when a congregation made up of people who
love God start bickering and fighting about useless things instead of trying to
work things out. Not only does this type of behavior destroy friendships and
that particular congregation it also destroys the influence of that
congregation in there community because who is going to want to be part of
congregation that is divided over matters of expediencies. This is an important
lesson that ever congregation needs to learn and be aware of so that they don’t
allow enemies from within to cause problems within a congregation over trivial
matters.
1 Kings 11:40 Solomon
therefore sought to kill Jeroboam. But Jeroboam arose and fled to
Apparently Solomon found
out about this prophecy of Jeroboam and so to prevent it from happening he was
going to kill him but it didn’t work because he ran to
This just shows as
Christians that we must remain faithful to God until the day we die because it
doesn’t matter how hard we worked in God’s kingdom if we decide to turn our
back on God toward the end of our lives he to will turn his back on us. This is
the main point I hope you get from this lesson and this is to remain faithful
to the Lord as Jesus said in,
Revelation 2:10 Be faithful until death, and I will give you
the crown of life.