Solomon in All His Wisdom

-
Solomon’s story has always disturbed me. In Proverbs 4, he speaks of the instruction that David gave to him when he was a young boy. David’s teachings, specifically regarding wisdom, were imprinted upon his young heart. While speaking to his sons, Solomon says in Proverbs 4:4-6 that David taught him and said to him, “Let your heart hold fast my words; Keep my commandments and live; Acquire wisdom! Acquire understanding! Do not forget nor turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will guard you” (NASB). This teaching so resonated within Solomon that when David died and he became king, one of the first things he did was offer a prayer to God asking for an understanding heart and discernment in leading God’s people (I Kings 3:8), and it pleased the Lord (vs. 10).  Solomon had seen David’s love for God and he truly loved the Lord (I Kings 3:3), yet from the beginning of his rule, he let the world distract him. He formed an alliance with Egypt, and thus Pharaoh, through marrying his daughter (I Kings 3:1). He spent seven years building God’s temple, yet years later he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places with his wives (I Kings 11:5-8). Even though God gave him “wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore” (I Kings 4:29), his heart became divided when he “held fast” to the many foreign wives and concubines he had taken during his rule.  God sent two warnings to Solomon regarding keeping all of His commandments and walking them out (I Kings 6:12-13; I Kings 9:4-8), but finally in Solomon’s old age, he allowed his wives to “turn his heart away after other gods” and “his heart was not wholly devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been” (I Kings 11:4).
If Solomon in all his God-given wisdom failed to recognize or resist the pull of the world on his heart that loved God, what makes me think that I’ll be any different? What makes me think that I can have one foot in the world and still have a heart fully devoted to Christ? Jesus said that the greatest commandment of the Law is that to love the Lord God with all of the heart, soul, and mind (Matt. 22:36); likewise, the first commandment given by God to Moses in Exodus 20:3 says, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Solomon, in all his wisdom, forgot David’s precious instruction to him as he prepared to place the kingdom into his hands: “As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind; for the LORD searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever” (I Chron. 28:9).  I guess Solomon’s story disturbs me so much because he had it all—God loved him from his birth (II Sam. 12:24-25); David instructed him on wisdom and understanding (Proverbs 4:4-6); Solomon loved God; and God gave him extraordinary wisdom and wealth beyond belief and let him build Him a temple;—yet it wasn’t enough to resist the pull of the world on his heart. I want to be like Christ, so I’ll let Solomon’s story serve as a warning to my sometimes wandering, worldly heart, and I’ll take Paul’s advice to the Philippians to heart and I‘ll continue to “work out [my] salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in [me], both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12b-13). Just as He did with Solomon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. If you have concerns or questions, I will do my best to answer them privately. I will publish comments at my discretion publicly if they glorify God.

Popular posts from this blog

An Uncertain Affinity (2 Cor. 4:7-11; Gen. 3:16)

-
Image
Today in my devotion time, I came across a word that led me to another word. Can I say that this is my usual, lifelong problem in reading dictionary entries . . . I have a hard time stopping.  It’s a real problem. ☺ The word connected to the word I was looking up about the tabernacle was skeuos . In the Greek, this word carries the meaning “of uncertain affinity; a vessel, implement, equipment or apparatus (literal or figurative [specifically a wife as contributing to the usefulness of the husband]):--goods, sail, stuff, vessel.” I got caught immediately in the first part: “uncertain affinity.”  Uncertain means “not able to be relied on; not known or definite.” Affinity means “a spontaneous or natural liking or sympathy for someone or something.” Putting these two words together is something of an oxymoron, which in the Greek literally means “pointedly foolish” because of its seeming contradiction. How in the world can you have an affinity for something you don’t know? How...
Read more

Letting Go Is Hard (Hebrews 12:1-2)

-
I sit among boxes piling a bit higher each day as I pack my life up once again. I say again, but in the grander scheme of things I haven’t moved that often in my 33 years of married life, and since the kids were born, I have only moved three times until now. We will be renting for a while until we can find a place to land, so I am purging things much more robustly than I have ever done with any other move. Sorting through 33 years (plus some things I had before marrying) has been utterly distracting, difficult to accomplish, and slow to finish. Homes need things, and things need a home, but I am finding I have held on to far too much over the years. Letting go is hard. Stuff.  Too much stuff. Merriam-Webster defines stuff as “materials, supplies, or equipment used in various activities: such as personal property.” By this definition, we own what we need to DO something. I have done much the last five years while I have not been in the classroom daily. Pottery was the first thing ...
Read more

Under Construction (All of the Bible . . .)

-
Do you remember the logic  🧩 (or riddles or analogies or challenges—not sure what to call the kind of word puzzle I mean) of childhood past where one was required to look at a grouping of words and figure out based on their arrangement what they meant together? Something like this one below: CONSTRUCTION soul The correct way to solve it would be soul under construction . If you notice, construction is weighty, and the soul is small under the burden of change. Maybe it has seemed quiet to you lately from this quarter. It is true that I have not written in a while, but it has not been because my soul has been absent of either noise or the quiet contemplation of time spent in the Word. I have been wrestling with myself, not with New Year's resolutions but with what I know about God, with the disconnect I sometimes feel between living out truth versus what my flesh wants in all its ugliness. There is the other side of wrestling, however, when it goes on too long without acti...
Read more