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Transcript 448A — Solomon's Besetting Sin [1 Kings 11]
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening. I'm in I Kings 11, concerning the end of Solomon's life And I was wondering if you could shed any light on why he let his wives turn his heart away from the Lord.
HC: All right. The question that's raised is concerning the end of King Solomon's life. King Solomon reigned for forty years, and was a marvelous king, the wisest of all kings who ever reigned on the face of the earth, and who had so many endowments and wonderful privileges. How is it possible that in his old age he allowed his wives to turn his heart from God, so that he actually, in a sense, began to worship other gods, and brought the wrath of God upon him? How is this possible?
Well, I think Solomon's life is a classic illustration of what happens if we do not take care of the besetting sin. You know, God lets us go along. There may be something in our life. We're a child of God; we've actually become born again. And yet there is an area of our life that we never quite straightened out. Oh, it didn't seem to be really troublesome, but yet it was contrary to the will of God. And God lets us go on and on and on.
Now there's a natural development of sin. Sin develops additional sin. Sin goes in the direction of destruction. Now if we're truly a child of God, this sin will not make us lose our salvation. But my, oh my, that sin ultimately can really get us into serious trouble. And it can bring us very low, and can be a real terrible thing in our life before it's all done with, because there is this natural outworking of sin.
Now this was the case with Solomon. He was a wonderful king, a marvelous child of God. But there was one little problem that he hadn't resolved. He loved women. And his father David had a harem of several wives, and this got David into trouble. But this wasn't enough of a lesson for King Solomon. He multiplied the harem. And this was contrary to the Word of God. God had declared, way back before Israel ever came into the land of Canaan, When you have a king they should not multiply wives.
But God didn't trouble Solomon about this. God allowed it to happen. God allowed it to go. Solomon was not reminded of his sin, and because it was in vogue in those days for kings to have harems, and because father David had had a number of wives, he continued to let them multiply.
But Solomon wasn't getting away with it. Eventually his wives began to turn him away from God. He wanted to please his wives as well as please God, and so he raised up high places, and so on. And this was such a terrible abomination that God took the kingdom away from Solomon. Except for the promise He had made to his father David, that the lamp would never go out, God would have taken all twelve tribes away from Israel, or from Solomon's son Rehoboam. As it was, He took ten tribes away.
Solomon did not get away with his sin. Now that sin was covered by the blood of Christ. In the life of the believer all of our sins are covered. But if we have a besetting sin that we do not get victory over, and in Solomon's case, of course, it was a very incidental sin, in view of everything God had said heretofore, and in view of the customs of that day, it was a relatively incidental sin, and we have these in our lives, too. Of course, had Solomon been serving other gods all his life, had he been going after other gods as a youth, and continuing this way, it would have indicated he was never saved, because we could never live that way for a lifetime.
Thank you so much for calling and sharing. Good night.