1 Kings: Rise and Fall of Solomon | Episode 24

This week, we discussed Solomon and his character arc in 1 Kings.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back, everybody, to the Year Through the Bible podcast. My name is Rodney Adams. I'm the executive pastor at Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And we are uh in our year through the Bible readings. We are in Fir Kings. So if you remember, we are reading an Old Testament, a New Testament, a Psalm and a Proverb, uh reading every single day. By the end of the year, we'll have completed the entire Bible. And right now, as we are spending uh so much time in the Old Testament, we have just begun uh the Fir Kings. So the last couple of episodes, we talked about David quite a bit. And there's a lot written on uh King David and everything um concerning his personality and his leadership, and um, we were told that he was a man after God's own heart. And I think when we get into Solomon, which is what we're gonna talk about today, you're gonna start wondering well, if Solomon did some stuff that wasn't very good, and some other kings did some stuff that wasn't very good, or some other leaders, some judges, and David did some stuff that wasn't very good, what was it that made David unique or distinct among the rulers, the leaders of the covenant people of God, that he somehow main to this status, maintained this status with God as a man after his own heart, someone who God says over and over and over again he didn't stray uh like Solomon did. So we're gonna look at that in a little bit, but let's get right into the life of Solomon. Okay. Solomon is one of David's sons. And 1 Kings picks up with this scene where David is old and frail, and he is not necessarily on his deathbed, but he's definitely old, and he's definitely um not doing well enough health-wise to sort of sustain maybe the evening times on his own or something like that. And so this is a very strange scene where they bring in this young woman named Abishag the Shunammite, and basically she lays down with him in his bed to keep him warm. Um, the scriptures are very uh specific in saying that um they did not have like marital relations, if you will, while they were doing this. This was purely to keep David's frail old body warm um while he was laying in bed. Very, very, very weird story. What is happening here? Well, apparently this was not uh crazy out of bounds um for the people that lived in that day. This was kind of a normal, you might even say, medical practice where um someone else would be used to comfort someone who is sick or in pain or convalescing after an energy uh uh an injury or something like that. And in this case, maybe it has something to do with David's um tendencies toward women or something like that. But either way, this was not totally unusual thing for someone to do around this time period. So this lady's brought in Abhishag, she's gonna keep him warm. Now, a new scene sort of arises, or we cut to a new scene. One of David's other sons, not Solomon, but Adonijah, starts to pick up on the fact that David is advanced in years and is getting older, and the time of his reign, his time on the throne, is coming to a close. Adonijah sees the writing on the wall. So as one of his sons, he starts to make a little bit of a run to assume the kingship. He starts to draw uh the Israel people after himself. He begins to um sort of advocate and make it seem like he is the obvious choice to assume the throne after David passes. However, Nathan, who is um a prophetic advisor to David, and Bathsheba, who is his now wife, she's been his wife for a while now. She's the one that he um had an affair with, got rid of her husband, uh, their their next kid or child passes away, but they have Solomon together. And Nathan and Bathsheba approach David in chapter one and say, Hey, um, Adonijah's kind of making himself look like he's gonna be the next king. But don't you remember you promised that Solomon was gonna be the next king. You swore to the Lord that this was gonna happen. And David is like, yeah, okay, you're right. I did say that. So fair enough, Solomon is gonna be the king. Now, this is kind of a strange note uh about the scriptures. There doesn't seem to be anything in our Bible that that validates this as being true, that validates that David actually did at one point swear to the Lord or to someone that Solomon was going to be king. So maybe it was just assumed. Maybe Nathan and Bathsheba um were devising some kind of plan and David was so old he couldn't really remember what he said, or something like that. That doesn't say that either, so we're just gonna probably not go with that. But generally speaking, they say that David told the Lord he was gonna make Solomon king. David agreed to that, and then David makes Solomon the king. Well, Adonaijah says, Okay, fine. Um, the people think I'm gonna be the king, but the Lord thinks that Solomon's gonna be the king or says Solomon's gonna be the king. So fine, I'm gonna bow out. I'm not gonna make a run for the kingship. But um, I would like for you to give me Abishog the Shunammite as my wife. And David finds out that that's something that he was trying to do, or Solomon rather, and they decide no, no, no, no. This is him trying to backdoor his way into the kingship again because of Abishog's now relationship with David. Again, it wasn't like a marital relationship, but apparently something, some bond was formed there, whether it was an obligation of the king to now have to take care of her because they removed her from wherever she was and brought her in to sort of keep him warm and basically be in his service. I'm not totally sure. But um, there's definitely some sort of move that Adonijah is making toward the kingship or trying to usurp uh Solomon's kingship by getting in relationship with Abhishag. And so Solomon decides that's not gonna work and ultimately um says, listen, if Adonijah, if you're um if you will, if you will behave, I will not put you to death for this, but um, this is not good. This isn't gonna work. And later, eventually Adonijah ends up being having to put to death. Okay. So here we are in chapter two. Uh Solomon is has been announced as the king, and David is kind of giving his final instructions here in chapter two. And what it sort of looks like is almost looks like a like a mob boss or someone giving um, you know, final instructions to one of his henchmen or something as he's about to pass away. He kind of starts going down these different accounts of people who have either wronged him or who have even treated him loyally, and and sort of said to uh Solomon, like, hey, act on your own wisdom, do whatever you want to do, do what the Lord tells you to do. But I'm just telling you, um, these guys didn't treat me well. These other guys did treat me well. Um, do what you're gonna do, but I just feel like I need to pass that on to you as I'm about to pass away. And so um ultimately Solomon's reign was established, and then his sort of first act of um kingship, or however you want to say it, is he begins to settle some of these accounts, and he goes in and has his henchmen get rid of Joab and uh I believe it was uh a man named Shemmai who had uh protested David earlier in the Samuels and even like threw rocks at him and stuff. You probably remember that story. And uh Solomon goes in and basically settles David's accounts the way that David told him to do. As a little bit of an aside, it's a little strange because on the last episode of this podcast, we talked about David's sort of passivity. Like, was he a forbearing king? Was he was he loving his enemies? Was he just, or was he just passive? Was he what what was the deal with David and and not sort of killing the people that were trying to kill him or something like that? Um and why then pass on that responsibility to the next generation? And it is interesting that in his passing on of that information and really kind of passing along the responsibility for settling those accounts to Solomon, he does say, Hey, you do what you feel like the Lord is asking you to do, or use your own wisdom. I'm just telling you where I stand with some of these folks, and you now they're your responsibility. And ultimately Solomon decides that um some of these guys need to be struck down. And then at the end of chapter two, it says, So the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon. Now, chapter three starts out kind of strange. Solomon, verse one, Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He took Pharaoh's daughter and brought her into the city of David until he had finished building his own house and the house of the Lord and the wall around Jerusalem. The people were sacrificing at the high places, however, because no house had yet been built for the name of the Lord. Remember, David said, Um, now that he has established the city of David or Jerusalem, David said, Lord, I want to build you a temple. And God said, No, no, no, it's not gonna be you that builds me a temple, it's gonna be Solomon. And that's where we pick up here in chapter three. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places. So he didn't have he he recognized he did not have like a house or a permanent structure to sacrifice to the Lord and have the ark and those sorts of things. But verse one, you start to see a little bit of the crack in the foundation of Solomon. Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He took Pharaoh's daughter and brought her into the city of David until he had finished building his own house in the house of the Lord and the wall around Jerusalem. What do we know going all the way back to the Torah and to the law of Moses and the the commandments that God had given the patriarchs of his covenant people going all the way back to the Torah? What do we know about God's command to them and foreign women or foreign tribes or foreign relationships? He says, Don't do it. Do not marry these foreign women, because you will whore after their gods, to use the uh biblical language, which is um pretty bracing for us. So it doesn't say that Solomon is chasing after these other gods or sacrificing to other gods now yet, but we do start to see some of the cracks in his foundation. He's starting these alliances with um Pharaoh in the form of marriage, basically taking Pharaoh's daughter. Now, this is primarily, I think, a political alliance. You'll see later in 1 Kings chapter 9, um, kind of the result of that alliance. Pharaoh ends up killing some people that are enemies of Israel and kind of giving over those territories as a dowry to his daughter, um, who Solomon had married. So um you st you will we will see the results of these quote unquote alliances play out a little bit later. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David, his father, only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places. Verse 4. And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place. Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, Ask what I shall give you. And Solomon said, You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant David, my father, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart towards you, and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne to this day. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father. Although I am but a little child, I do not know how to go out or to come in. So what he's saying right there is he's almost coming to the Lord in a posture of humility. Lord, I don't know anything. Um, I just got this job, and of course he's an adult, and he's he's arranging for all these accounts of David's to be settled, and he's dealing with Pharaoh. So he's obviously knows something. But what he's doing is he's got this posture of humility toward the Lord. He said, Lord, I don't I don't know what you know, but I want a mind like yours. Verse 8 And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people? And it pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. So what he's saying is, I have responsibility over your people, God. They're yours, they're not mine, and I want to do a good job. So, Lord, this is the posture that I'm coming to you with. And God said to him, Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, behold, I now do according to your word. So I'm gonna give you the wisdom you ask for. I'm gonna give you knowledge, understanding. Behold, I give you wise and discerning minds, so that none like you has been before, and none like you shall arise after you. So not only is he gonna give him wisdom to do his job, he's gonna make him basically the wise sharpest guy in the world, the wisest guy who knows everything, and we'll see later. There's some examples of of what manifests because of this wisdom. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you all your days. And if you walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days. And Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream. And then he came to Jerusalem and stood before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings, and made a feast for all his servants. Okay, so things are starting out pretty well for Solomon. He assumes the kingship, the Lord approaches him, he's like, Lord's like, what do you want? And Solomon's like, listen, you were with my father, you love my father, my father loved you. Now I'm over all the people that my father was over. I want to do a good job. This isn't about me. I take the weight of this responsibility seriously. So give me what I need to lead your people well. That's what he's doing. Very, very, very, very wise, even though he asked for wisdom, it's all he's already wise. He's he's wisely asking for the right things, which is wisdom. So very Solomon's a very, very interesting character. So Lord says, You got it. Now Solomon's wisdom is on display right away in the last part of chapter three. There's this issue with these two women, and um, it almost reads like a like a fable or a parable or something like that. But um, you know, these two prostitute women, you know, one has a baby. The I guess they have babies about the same time. One of their babies passes away, so they're kind of fighting over which who gets the other baby. And Solomon's like, hey, we're just gonna cut the baby in two. And then one lady's like, no, you can't do that. And the other one's like, all right, fine, that's fair. Then Solomon wisely says, Hey, the one who was grieved by the fact that this baby was about to die is the actual mother, and so therefore, that's that's where the baby ought to go. And everybody marvels at Solomon's wisdom. Interesting story. Okay, uh, chapter four, Solomon begins to establish the leadership of his kingdom. So things are going pretty well. And chapter four, verse 20, Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea. They ate and drank and were happy. Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life. And then later in verse 25, and Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beersheba, every man under his vine and under his fig tree all the days of Solomon. So Solomon has wealth, Solomon has wisdom, Solomon has favor for his people, and his people have favor from God and provision, and everything is going great. So what Solomon does with his with all of this wealth and favor and wisdom is he begins to build the temple of the Lord, and he begins to build a palace for himself. So he begins to establish a permanent um residence for the kingship and for God in Jerusalem. And so the rest really it's chapter uh five through nine, where Solomon is essentially building the temple and arranging for essentially um this new religious life to exist in the city of David in Jerusalem. Chapter nine, there's this ominous tone to the beginning. Listen to this. As soon as Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord, this is verse one, and the king's house and all that Solomon desired to build, the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. And the Lord said to him, I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you have made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built by putting my name there forever, my eyes and my heart will be there for all time. So when Solomon establishes the temple and his palace, he then consecrates it. He he offers prayer and sacrifices in this long, beautiful benediction. He basically does everything right, consecrating all of this material stuff to the glory of God. And God says, Okay, I've heard you, I've heard your uh your prayer and your plea. Verse 4, and as for you, if you walk before me as your David, as your father David walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all I've commanded you and keeping my statutes and rules, then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, You shall not lack a man on the throne in Israel. But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them. And the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples, and this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house? Then they will say, Because they abandoned the Lord their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the Lord has brought all this disaster on them. So here's the question that you ought to have in your mind, if you've already read kind of how this continues to go. What's the difference between Solomon and David in terms of God saying God mentions many, many times uh David's faithfulness and how his heart was after God's heart? The question you ought to have in your mind is what's the difference between those two? And the real question about Solomon is this if he's been endowed with all wisdom and knowledge, and if with that wisdom and knowledge he makes all these global deals and arranges for all of this power and glory and whatnot to come for to Israel. Like Israel at this time, at uh in at the time of Solomon with all of his wealth and all this stuff, his palace and the temple, and then the people of Israel in general, they're like a wonder of the world. I mean, the the scale and the grandeur of all of this stuff is un unmatched, and we're gonna see that in just a little bit. So if you have all this stuff and you've been given all wisdom by God, then why would you ever stray? Like and God says very specifically, okay, you're doing all the right stuff, here you go, though. If you go and serve other gods and worship them, then things are going to start going not well for you. So why would Solomon stray from what he has? Here we go, chapter ten. Verse one Now 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, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold and precious stones, and when she came to Solomon she told him all that was on her mind. And Solomon answered all 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 attendants of his servants, their clothing, the cupbearers, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the Lord, there was no more breath in her. She was speechless, took her breath away to hear all this kind of stuff. So now things are going well, and Solomon and Israel are now on the sort of global scene, if you will. People from faraway lands have started to hear about this, and now they want to come and just be around him, okay? Fast forward to chapter eleven. Here we go. Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh, a Moabite, an Ammonite, an Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods. And Solomon clung to these women in love. He had seven hundred wives who were princesses and three hundred concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. 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 Ashtareth, 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 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, and the mountain east on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrifice sacrifices to their gods. Okay. So saw the part about Solomon in the in first Kings is actually relatively short. It's only like a handful of chapters, and his downfall is just one chapter. And so we learn a lot about him following David. We learn a lot about him growing in wealth and stature and influence and and um the glory of Israel just increasing, you know, day by day. There's something different. There's there's a difference between wisdom and knowledge and obedience. And I think what we're seeing here is the what it's like to be under the law, so to speak, um, and a slave to sin, and basically uh um following the desires of the flesh despite knowing what not to do. God specifically told him, do not do this. And so one of the questions that came in was why does what is the difference between David's faithfulness and other stuff? Because we saw that Solomon consecrated the temple to the Lord and consecrated his palace to the Lord and gave this long moving benediction and was, you know, brought in the ark and made all these sacrifices, kind of doing the right thing. So what was the difference? And I think the answer in finding that one sort of that one narrow lane of uniqueness, you could say, about David, is that David didn't bring any foreign gods into the city of David, and David didn't whore after other gods like his entire ministry. David stayed faithful to the one true God, even though he was breaking the law of Moses from time to time, committing adultery, you know, um had a hard time with leadership in certain environments, all these things, all these moral problems that we say David had. The problem he did not have was being tempted to um worship other gods. When God says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, David did. When God gives the commandment, have no other gods before me, David did. When God says, Um, don't carve any uh idols or any graven images or anything like that as a foreign as another god, David didn't. So David kept true to the one true God, period. Okay. Um couple more things about Solomon here, and then we're gonna get out of here. Solomon, that basically starts the downfall of Solomon. So here in chapter eleven, verse nine, 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 the Lord said to Solomon, Since this has been your practice, and you have not kept my covenant and my statues that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and 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 at the end of chapter eleven, verse forty-three, and Solomon slept with his fathers, was buried in the city of David, his father, and Rehoboam his son, reigned in his place. So next time we'll look at um Solomon's son, Rehoboam, when he picks up his kingship, and we're gonna look at this character, Jeroboam, who is not from David's family, but is from the tribes of Israel, and we're gonna see that the promise that the Lord said he was going to make good on because of Solomon's unfaithfulness, where he says, I will tear the kingdom from your son, but I will keep one of the tribes back to for him to rule over. That's exactly what we see later. Rehoboam basically retains Judah, and then Jeroboam becomes the king or the ruler over everything else. And so we'll look at that later on. That's what's going on. And now Solomon, he had a great run, uh, but now he's done, and his reign sort of ends in disgrace because he whorred after other gods, and um God is basically about to tear the kingdom away from his family. Okay, um, maybe this is another question that came in that I don't really feel like I want to answer right now because we haven't fully seen this play out. But even in 2 Samuel, we started to notice that the language between Judah and the rest of Israel began to separate. So sometimes they'll say Judah and Israel or Judah, and then later they'll be and Israel and not Judah, something like that. Um, in 1 Kings 12, because of this promise that God made to Solomon that he was going to tear the kingdom apart away from his family, um, we start to see the separation of Judah from Israel. But because I think the writers of this section of scripture were writing basically Joshua through the Chronicles as we have it in our Bible, much later in exile, they probably were already like foreshadowing the split of the kingdoms even back in the Samuels. Um, but there were also times where Judah, because of its location and size, would often just kind of act independently anyway. Um, there was often some kind of civil war going on among the tribes. So sometimes we would see Judah and Benjamin, which was just to the north of Judah, kind of acting independently from the other tribes. And then Ephraim is kind of the main big central tribe in Israel. We kind of see them acting separately from Judah. So anyway, um, a lot of geopolitics geopolitics there, but we'll maybe look at that in a little bit more depth uh later on. Okay, well, that is it for this episode of the Year Through the Bible podcast. My name is Rodney Adams. I'm the executive pastor at Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Um, don't forget you can go to year through the Bible.com and we have some resources for you. You can follow on on our reading plan. Uh pick up a one-year Bible. We are almost halfway through the entire reading plan. Uh, July 2nd is the 50 uh 50% mark, the halfway point for our Year Through the Bible plan. It will be done on December 31st. So anyway, until next time, we'll see you again.