God’s Judgement (1 Kings 11)

Could this be the most jarring ‘however’ in the Bible so far, as we begin chapter 11?  What follows is an excruciating list of the ways Solomon forsook the Lord, in favour of his many wives and their detestable idols.  It’s an account of the righteous judgement that his grievous sin deserves.  And in the wake of the glories of the kingdom up to this point, it makes for sober reading.

But here’s the thing that’s been pressing on my mind as I dwell on these verses.  This was no sudden U-turn for King Solomon.  He didn’t just wake up one day and go cold turkey on the Lord and his ways.  As Philip Ryken so helpfully articulates, ‘Solomon never explicitly decided to stop loving God.  Yet the more he loved other things, the less he loved God, until one day he was not living for God at all.  Solomon started falling into sin long before he ever fell into disgrace.’

He never explicitly decided to stop loving God, he just loved other things more.  What we witness in this chapter is the incremental demise of a heart that once loved the Lord.  It’s the slow surrender to the clamour of the world.  It’s the ever so subtle, and yet extraordinarily powerful lure of sin, that left unchecked, unconfessed, and unguarded,  chokes the heart, mind, body and soul into deathly submission.

This is a sobering chapter indeed.  And we do well to consider our own hearts, heeding Solomon’s own advice as he implores readers, ‘above all else, [to] guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.’ (Prov 4:23).  Are there sin patterns that are gathering a stranglehold on my walk with the Lord?  Are there things that are clamouring for my affection over and above the Lord? We do well to take time to consider our ways. 

But as we do, let us remember Christ.  Let us remember the one who walked out to the mount of Olives, not to worship detestable idols, as Solomon did, but in full obedience to the Lord, to pay the price for every ounce of idolatry in our hearts.  Let us consider Christ, who was not only wise and righteous, but who also came to deal with our sin problem once and for all.  Fix your eyes on Him, who ‘was faithful to the one who appointed him’. 

Fix your eyes on him - for one greater than Solomon has indeed come.