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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/aj-higgins/solomons-erosion-and-enemies/
Now the scripture says that he that endures to the end shall be saved. All I can say is he that endures to the end will be fed at 5 .30. So turn now, if you will, to 1 Kings 10. Now I have to tell you the very honest truth.
I would wish there were some other note I could end this afternoon on other than what we're going to look at. Depressing? Almost scary. But it's here for our learning, our warning, our preservation. 1 Kings 10, we're going to read and highlight just a few things because there are a number of things to cover.
Verse 1, the Queen of the South heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord. She came to prove him with hard questions. And you know the story of the Queen of Sheba. Look down now at verse number 14.
Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 600 threescore and six talents of gold. Beside that which he had of the merchantmen, of the traffic of the spice merchants, of all the kings of Arabia and of the governors of the country.
And King Solomon made 200 targets of beaten gold. 600 shekels of gold went to one target. He made 300 shekels of beaten gold. Three pounds of gold went to one shield. And the king put them in the house of the forest of Lebanon.
And moreover, the king made a great throne of ivory and overlaid it with the best gold. Verse 21, and King Solomon and all King Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold. Verse number 23. So King Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom.
And all the earth sought to Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart. Verse 26. And Solomon gathered together chariots and horsemen, had 1 ,400 chariots and 12 ,000 horsemen, which he bestowed in the cities for chariots with the kings of Jerusalem.
And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycamore trees that are in the vale for abundance. And Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt and linen yard, and king's merchants received the linen yard at a price.
And the chariot came up and went out of Egypt for 600 shekels of silver. In other words, Solomon becomes the arms dealer here for the Middle East. And a horse for 150. And so for all the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Syria did they bring out by their means.
But King Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Zidonians, the Hittites, of the nations concerning which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go into them, neither shall they come in unto you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.
Solomon claimed unto these in love. And he had 700 wives, princesses, 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. And it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods.
His heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, it was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Asherah, the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.
And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and went not fully after the Lord, as did David his father. Then did Solomon build a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Moloch, the abomination of the children of Ammon.
And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods. And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned away from the Lord God of Israel, which had appeared unto him twice.
Verse 11,. Wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and give it to thy servant.
Notwithstanding, in thy days I will not do it for David thy father's sake, but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son. Verse 14,. And the Lord stirred up an adversary unto Solomon, Hadad, the Edomite.
Now it tells us about his history. Look at verse 17. It tells us that David was against Hadad, and David fled. He and certain Edomites of his father's servants with him, to go into Egypt, Hadad being yet a little child.
So that while he is trading horses with Egypt, Egypt is harboring this future adversary. Verse 21, And when Hadad heard in Egypt that David slept with his fathers, and that Joab, captain of the host, was dead, Hadad said to Pharaoh, Let me depart, that I may go to my own country.
Verse 23, God stirred up another adversary, Razan, the son of Elodad, which fled from his lord, Hadasar, king of Zobah. He gathered men unto him, and became captain over them, when David slew them of Zobah.
And he went to Damascus, and dwelt there, and reigned, and so on. He was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon. Besides the mischief that Hadad did, he abhorred Israel and reigned over Syria.
Now those were two external enemies. When we come to verse number 26, we come to the story of a man called Jeroboam, and he will be an internal enemy, one of the children of Israel who rises up, and who will revolt against Solomon.
We won't read his story for the sake of time. You know it, and you know the sad end, of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. Now God will add his blessing to the reading of his word. Chapters 10 and 11, from glory to gloom, from blessing to vain, tragic pathway.
Chapter 10 begins with the magnetism, the magnetism of the kingdom. The Queen of Sheba is drawn, as we looked at already in earlier chapters, chapter 5, here was God's great intention, God's great purpose in saving, redeeming, bringing his people out of Egypt, making them a kingdom, bringing them into blessing, and bringing Solomon to the throne, giving him all this glory, all of this honor.
His great purpose was, that people might be drawn to him, as a result. So the chapter begins with the magnetism of the kingdom. We're reminded as well of the magnificence of the kingdom, aren't we? That we read about a treasury that's filled with gold, and targets of gold, and a throne of gold, even the tumblers they drank out were of gold.
Everything was golden in this man's kingdom. The magnificence of it. It must have stunned people. I mean, you maybe have traveled and been to some great estates, great mansions in this country, or some of the old palaces in other countries, and you've gone in, and you've been in awe at the, not just the architecture, but the splendor of the place, and you've just stood back and wondered at the wealth that must have been behind it.
That was nothing compared to this. People must have come to view Solomon's house and Solomon's kingdom and just left totally, totally awed with the magnificence of this kingdom that everything was in gold.
And if it wasn't in gold, it was in silver. And it was in abundance. And here was a man, and I mean, people have calculated and think this, in fact, there are people who deny that this is possible because the abundance of gold is so great, and the wealth is so great that they can't imagine any man amassing this kind of a fortune.
But God is just reminding us just of the magnetism of this kingdom, the magnificence of this kingdom, this man at the height, at the apogee of his career, something of the majesty of the kingdom, supreme.
All the other nations coming and being subservient to it, being sought after by so many. Think of the greatness then, the magnetism, the magnificence, the majesty, the might of the kingdom. We read of it, didn't we?
The military might, the commercial might, the international might. Everywhere this man is prospering. And so he is amassing an army. He becomes an arms dealer for the Middle East and people are coming to him to get their armaments and so on.
And he's politically astute. He's economically very, very wise and everything is just success at every turn. But then we come to the malady, the disease that was working in the kingdom. In the seeming success, there were the seeds of tremendous failure.
There was, first of all, insensitivity to the word of God. Now, why do I say that? You go back to Deuteronomy. It was the responsibility of the king to read through the law, the book of the law, the first five books of your Bible every year.
He was to read it. Amongst the verses he would have read is the king is not to multiply wives. He's not to multiply horses. That's exactly what he's doing. That's exactly where chapter 10 ends, isn't it?
That he's multiplying horses. He's gathered together chariots and horsemen, 1 ,400 chariots, 12 ,000 horsemen. But God had said, Solomon, I have written that back in Deuteronomy, gave it to Moses, instructions you were to read, not to multiply horses.
And as well I've said, not to multiply wives. And you're not to take wives from among the Hittites and that long list of people that God said not to take them from, the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Zidonians.
You're not to take wives from there. And yet this man, who was marked by seemingly, seemingly a spiritual beginning, as we come to the end of chapter 10, we see the seeds for all of his downfall. The first thing is he has become insensitive to the Word of God.
Prize a tender conscience when reading the Word of God. Never let anything dull your conscience. Never let intellectual gymnastics rob you of God's power on your conscience. You know, we can make white seem black and black seem white and right seem wrong and wrong seem right.
Can't we? I mean, we can do that. We're tremendous at it. We would get gold medals in Olympics gymnastics if they were given out. Once our mind is made up that we want something, we can justify it. We can make it right because we know how to dull our consciences.
Prize a tender conscience. Never let anything dull your conscience because the moment your conscience becomes dull to the Word of God, the next step is it becomes hardened. It's exactly what happened to Solomon.
Make sure that every time you read the Word of God that you open your conscience to God for Him to speak to you, to correct. Now, I don't mean we just read for correction, but make sure your conscience is tender, open before God, that He can speak to you, teach you, correct you, instruct you, whatever is needed, that your conscience is open before Him.
Compromises. Compromising the Word of God. Making excuses for not doing what it says. Making excuses for doing what it says not to do. They may just be little compromises. Maybe just, you know, little steps.
Remember physics in school? I know, physics, physics, okay. But just let me mention one thing about physics. Remember the concept of trajectories? You know what a trajectory is, right? The way something takes off, okay?
Make a little difference in a starting point. And you know what happens with your trajectory? It could end up millions of miles away from its goal, right? I mean, you think about the satellites we launch, the missiles we launch.
You just... I think they talked about the expedition to Mars, the rover they sent up to Mars, that if there had been as much as a millimeter difference in the trajectory here on Earth, it would have missed Mars by millions of miles.
Just a millimeter here. But at the destination, millions of miles. Little compromises today can lead to huge gaps later on in life. Someone has said, and I'm quoting someone else, perhaps the greatest tragedy in life is the difference between what a man is and what a man could have been.
Don't end your life with regrets of what could have been. Don't make compromises. Don't become insensitive to the Word of God. Don't cause the Word of God to somehow bounce off you as though it's not for you.
Here was a man that became insensitive, first of all, to the Word of God. Foreign nations, foreign women, foreign gods. I can't prove this, but it seems to me that when you're in Chapter 11 and it speaks of these women being princesses, where it tells us that he had 700 wives who were princesses, I just wonder if all of these were political alliances he was making.
Daughters of other kings. Again, trying to secure himself, entrench himself in his kingdom so that on all sides he had allies who were going to protect his flank and his borders and so on. But nevertheless, whatever it was, he allies himself with all of these foreign nations and as a result he brings himself into some fairly sad and tragic circumstances.
So let me talk to you about the alliances that he made. His pathway was one of self-gratification. No excuse. I mean, 700 wives, 300 concubines. Whatever way you want to cut it, here's a man that is in for self-gratification and disobeying the Word of God.
All of that together. But I want to talk to you as well about not just his pathway, but his past. Now be honest. If you stopped at the end of chapter 8 or 9, or maybe even the beginning of chapter 10 and the Queen of Sheba coming, and someone told you, you know there is someone who is going to dishonor the Lord by involvement with other women and by worshipping idols, you would say, anybody but Solomon.
Can't be him. Can't be Solomon. Anybody but Solomon. Can't be Solomon. I mean, here's the man who was the most gifted man in the kingdom. He's a man with great gift. Here's a man who has been the most useful man in the kingdom.
I mean, everything this man has done. Poet, builder, scientist, writer. I mean, he's the most useful man we have. He's got a great gift. I mean, he's been the most useful man that we have. Here's a man who has actually had encounters with God.
A man who actually twice over, God revealed himself and spoke to him. Two other occasions God sent messages to him. I mean, certainly Solomon who has known God face to face virtually. I mean, you would never think that Solomon would suddenly worship idols.
I mean, he's actually heard God speak to him. Worship idols? I mean, doesn't go. Here's a man who prayed one of the most eloquent, moving, effective prayers in our Bible. I think it's the longest prayer in our Bible for that matter.
But we didn't read it. But when he was dedicating the temple back in chapter 7 and 18, he is seen praying. And not only does he pray, but God answers his prayer. So here's a man who knew God in terms of answered prayer.
And we would think, not Solomon, anybody but Solomon. Please don't miss this. I hate to say if you forget everything else, please remember this. But please remember this. There is only one person in your Bible, only one, of whom it says he loved the Lord.
It was Solomon. And yet, and yet, it was Solomon who ended his days by loving many strange women and sacrificing to their idols. Once you dull your conscience to the Word of God, you have no idea where you will end.
Sometimes there are believers who get far from God and people say they couldn't be saved. Listen, you dull your conscience to God's Word, you harden yourself to God's corrective ministry, and God knows where you and I could end.
Sorry, Solomon. Solomon's wisdom did not keep him from folly. Solomon's temple did not keep him from idolatry. Solomon's love for the Lord at the beginning of his life did not keep him from loving strange women at the end of his life.
Sober, searching. That's why we have to cry daily, Preserve me, O God, in Thee do I put my trust. The most useful man. The most gifted man. The most spiritual man. The most godly man. And yet, as his life comes to a close, we read in chapter 11 of the sad end of this man's life.
His pathway. His past. You know what his problem was? I don't know if you noticed that as we read in those first four or five verses of chapter 11, it mentions his heart. His heart. His heart. His heart.
His heart was turned away. His heart was turned away. His heart was turned away. So it's stressing forth that this man that began back in chapter 3 with those tremendous words unique to him alone, Solomon loved the Lord.
But suddenly the affection of his heart has been turned. And now he is giving himself over to all that seemed so contrary to his life. Notice his behavior, the apostasy that marks this man. What he is doing is irrational.
And in reality, sin is irrational. What do I mean? Well, normally, normally, if a nation conquered you, you were caused to worship their gods. Okay? But now he's worshipping the gods of nations that he's defeated or that his father David defeated that are subject to him.
So he's actually worshipping the gods who had shown their impotence, who had shown their failure, who had shown that they couldn't really defend a nation, that they were just empty idols. And yet, yet he's worshipping them.
You all know the names of Nadab and Abihu. They were sons of Aaron. And they were the two oldest sons and the priesthood would have come to one of them had things been different. We read of them in chapter 24 of Exodus.
And here's what it says. That they went up into the Mount of God and they ate and drank and they saw the God of glory. So in chapter 24 of Exodus, they're actually in the presence of God and whatever form it took, they saw the God of glory.
Tremendous revelation. You know the next time you see them? They're offering strange fire at the altar and they're slain, put to death. And the next time you see Aaron, he's making a golden calf. These be thy gods, O Israel.
But you've just been in the presence of God and you've seen the God of glory and now you're making a golden idol? A calf? Saying these be thy gods, O Israel? Past experience never preserves from present temptation.
You cannot rely on the past. You cannot coast in Christian living. There is not one of us here spiritual enough to leave the house in the morning without time spent with God. Did that register? If you're in the habit of getting up 10 minutes before you've got to be out of the house and you, you know, shower, comb, floss, if you do flossing in the morning, you know what I mean, and you're out of the door in 10 minutes and, you know, your coffee in one hand and your bagel in the other and there you go.
And there's not one of us spiritual enough to leave home without knowing something of the Word of God each day to preserve us. We need daily fellowship with God to preserve from what you're going to face out there every day.
Because every day you'll be bombarded with choices. We've mentioned that before. Sorry if I sound like a broken record. You're daily bombarded with choices. And your values need to be realigned with God's values.
Because you're going to be hearing all day long the values of the world. You deserve this. You have a right to it. Do your own thing. Don't let anyone tell you what you ought to do. You know, all the self-expression, the self-fulfillment, the self-satisfaction, the self-aggrandizement, all of that is part of the philosophy of the society you move in every day.
And subtly and not so subtly, you are going to be taught to please yourself and not allow anyone to tell you what to do. That's why you need to know God daily in your life, in your readings. His heart was turned away.
That's where it all begins, isn't it? With hearts being turned away from occupation with Christ, from love for Christ, from desires to please Him. And so there was this irrationality and there is this problem with his heart.
And you come to verses 7 and 8 and you just stand back and wonder in amazement that a man could drop this far down in his spiritual life. That actually he is building high places for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Moloch, the abomination of the children of Ammon.
And these are not just everyday idols, right? I mean, these are idols that people made their children pass through the fire for. They would sacrifice their children on these altars to these gods. And Solomon is involved in all of this all of a sudden.
How tragic for a life to end that way as a result of his failure to be sensitive to the Word of God and to the truth of God, the apostasy. Then, of course, you have the anger of the Lord that is raised up against him in the verses that follow.
In verse 9, God seems to be stressing this. Solomon, you have spurned my grace. God's grace. It says that the Lord was angry because his heart was turned away from the God of Israel who had appeared unto him twice.
Solomon, I have given you two revelations, two promises, and you've turned away from them. He spurned his grace. He despised his truth, verse 10, and commanded him concerning the thing which he should not do, but you did not keep that which the Lord commanded.
So there was grace that was set aside. There was the truth of God that was not kept. And now there's going to be discipline that has to be reaped. And so God is going to move in discipline upon Solomon in the verses that follow.
Now we've touched on already the fact that God would raise up external enemies and he would raise up internal foes as well. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, at the end of the chapter 11, was raised up and became an adversary.
He was raised up, first of all, he was not raised up to be an adversary. He was raised up to rule the ten kingdoms, but then he became an adversary by his behavior towards Solomon. But I want you to look at these other adversaries that God had allowed in Hadad and in Razan.
You'll notice that Edom and Egypt are involved in the first. Egypt was where Solomon was making all of his alliances, married the Pharaoh's daughter. It's where he was getting his horses from, doing business with.
And all the time, while he is cozying up to Egypt, Egypt is nurturing his future enemy, future foe. Now there should be a lesson there. There should be some principle you can take away from that. You cannot reconcile a world to the believer.
It doesn't work. It will always end up being your foe. So that the place that Solomon went for a wife and for security became the very place that began to erode his kingdom and eat away at his kingdom, at his borders, as kind of a guerrilla warfare occurs and Hadad harasses him and Hadad works against him in all that he does here.
And he becomes an adversary to Solomon all the days of his life. And then you have this other man that God stirred up, another adversary, raising the son of Elodie. And he also becomes an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon beside the mischief that Hadad did.
And listen to this. And he abhorred Israel. You know what's significant about that? Up until this time, everybody is in total awe and admiration of Israel. Everyone is wondering at the magnificence, at the majesty, at the magnetism of this kingdom.
Chapter ends. Solomon has not only lost his own testimony, but he's dragged Israel down with him. Always remember, your testimony is linked with the assembly. You're not a lone ranger. You're not a free agent.
Once you come into God's assembly, you take upon yourself all of the burdens, all of the responsibility, and all of the, can I use the word reputation, all of the testimony of that assembly. And the end result is Solomon not only lost his own testimony, but Israel now was abhorred by this man.
And he becomes an adversary all the days of Solomon. Tragic end. Let me just point out some lessons, a couple of other things I should mention before closing, but let me just mention some take home points.
The limit of past experiences. You cannot rest on your past. No matter how glorious, no matter how useful you've been, there is not one of us that can depend upon our past. Gift will not preserve. Usefulness for God in the past will not preserve.
Past experience with God will not preserve. The limits of the past. Preservation is always in the presence with a daily dependence upon God. Not only the limits of the past, but the liability of our flesh.
The liability of our flesh. Hate to tell you, but your flesh and my flesh, they are capable of anything. I don't want to tell you where my flesh could lead me in my life. If allowed. If unjudged. If given free reign.
If becoming insensitive to the word of God. There is nothing to which it could not stoop, as we see with Solomon. Your flesh is exactly the same as Solomon's. No different. And so there is the liability of our flesh.
The lesson of compromise. Small compromises lead to major, major destination differences. Beware of compromise. I'm not saying that you don't re-examine your convictions and bring them more in line with the word of God.
Some of us had very, very legalistic convictions in our younger days, which I guess is not bad. It kept us out of a lot of trouble. Nothing wrong with re-evaluating your convictions, making sure they're scriptural, making sure they're according to the word of God and not going beyond scripture.
But you know what I mean by compromise. It's where you know, you know something is wrong, but you're able to justify it because of yourself. Avoid compromises is the lesson of compromise. The law of sowing and reaping.
That the man that went down to Egypt for a wife and horses reaped from Egypt an adversary in the end. And the loss that he sustained. He would lose the throne. Now, he did die, and he died in peace. But generations to come, when the book ends, the last king is led away as a blind captive to Babylon.
And the throne is vacant. And it will be vacant until the Lord Jesus Christ returns. But Solomon lost the throne to generations to come because of his sin. He lost territory. His kingdom began to shrink as adversaries began to eat away and to erode all that David, all that David had conquered.
The only blood Solomon shed was when he had Joab, Shimei, and Adonijah put to death. That was the only blood he shed back in chapter 2. Other than that, he never shed a drop of blood in war. Everything he lost, David had gained through blood and tears.
Don't give up quickly what other men have paid dearly for when it comes to God's truth and God's assembly. He lost the throne. He lost territory. He lost treasures. Were it to just turn a chapter or two, we'd find that Rehoboam begins to lose all of these golden shields and other things that Solomon had built.
And slowly but inescapably, all the treasures begin to melt away. And he lost truth. And he lost testimony for God. The tremendous price of self-gratification, all beginning with becoming insensitive to God's word.
I got to close on a better note. So just let me remind you of what Paul says when he closes his Roman epistle. Unto him that is of a power to establish you according to my gospel. And when Jude writes his letter, and he closes it.
Now to him who was able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before his throne with exceeding joy. Solomon's story does not have to be yours. You can't finish your course well because there's someone who was able to keep you from falling.
I used to read that verse in Jude. Unto him who was able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before his throne with exceeding joy. I think the joy was going to be mine. I don't think that's what it means.
I think the joy is going to be his. That he will actually be happy. Happy is a poor word. He will actually be rejoicing to present you to his father. Faultless. Kept through life. Presented faultless before the throne.
And he'll take great delight. You could please God by a life of godliness. By a life of simple dependence upon him. And unlike Solomon, finishing your course well. Loving the Lord at the beginning. Loving him even more at the close.
May God preserve each one of us and keep us for his glory and for his honor. Shall we speak to God in prayer? Our father, we bow in thy presence. We have had to deal with very sober and in some ways very, very sad parts of the word of God this last hour.
We commend ourselves to thee and each of us would own the need for grace to be preserved. We thank thee that there is sufficient preserving grace with thee. Thou art able to keep us from falling and we give thee grateful thanks for this.
Help us then to be dependent. Help us never to become dull to the word of God and it's convicting and correcting power. And grant that we may finish our courses well. We may not accomplish great things in this world but we would long to at least please thee in how we finish our lives.
Help us to finish well and to glorify thy name. Receive our thanks. Remember us now as we partake of food in a few moments. Again, the kindness of thy people that has been displayed to us today we will again partake of their bounty and return thanks to thee for it.
And ask for thy blessing now to be upon us and the blessing upon the assembly and as others travel back to their homes some a distance we pray to give them safety as they move and remember us for good on the morrow in the name of our Lord Jesus.
Amen.