How to Be Stupid. (1 Kings 11: 1-43)

The Bible Project Daily Podcast is a daily, in-depth, encouraging, and uplifting study through the entire Bible,  chapter by chapter, verse by verse. 

Today's Episode: How to Be Stupid. (1 Kings 11: 1-43)

It is one thing to have knowledge, but it's another thing entirely to have wisdom.  I think we should all work at gaining wisdom, but obtaining wisdom isn't the be-all and end-all by itself. The extent of your wisdom is not the issue; it's what you do with the wisdom that counts. And that's what I want to discuss today. I’ve titled today's message "How to Be Stupid" because this chapter is a great illustration of that, if that is your aim in life….

Transcript

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Hi friends, welcome to the Bible Project Daily Podcast. As today we continue our journey through the Book of One Kings as part of this overall massive journey through the whole Bible chapter by chapter, verse by verse. If you've not done so already, might I encourage you to subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts from, and that way you can make the in-depth study of the Word of God part of the rhythm of your daily life. Now, if you're not seeing the whole back catalogue of over 1200 episodes going all the way back to Genesis, then please note that you can access that complete back catalogue free and ad-free by simply following and subscribing to the Free Tier on my Patreon account. But welcome however you find me, however you've ended up here, and enjoy and learn from the life of Solomon. Now Solomon was described as a wise man, and it's one thing to have knowledge, but it's another thing entirely to have what is described as wisdom. I think we should all work at gaining wisdom, but obtaining wisdom in and for itself is not the be-all and end all by itself. The extent of your wisdom that you have, no matter how widely spread, is not actually the core issue. It's what you do with that wisdom that counts, and that's what I want us to discuss today. Now I've entitled today's message rather provocatively, How to Be Stupid, because this chapter is a great illustration of how you can do that if that really is your aim in life. Welcome to today's episode of the Bible Project Daily Podcast. Or hopefully, that can teach us ways that we might not end up being stupid. But the truth is we can all qualify as stupid if we want to, because even here, Solomon described earlier as the wisest man on earth, ended up exactly being and doing that. And the chapter opens up very bluntly for us and places it and tells us exactly what's going on here. Let me read the first eight verses. However, King Solomon loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites. They were from the nations which the Lord had told the Israelites, You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods. Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord, as the heart of his father David had been. He followed Ashtareth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Moloch, the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord. He did not follow the Lord completely as David his father had done. On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the detestable God of Moab, and for Molech, the detestable God of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods. So, right from the off we see that Solomon not only loved the daughter of Pharaoh that we heard about him marrying last time, but he also marries many other women and women from precisely the nation God had warned Israel against doing such that. God said that very clearly. He said, You shall not intermarry with them, for they will turn their hearts away from God. So he not only gave the admonition, he gave the warning, and that warning appeared in Deuteronomy 7, and it was addressed to all of Israel. And again later in Deuteronomy 7, God will again give all Israel's leaders a very even more specific command. It says, Do not multiply your wives, do not have multiple wives. And why? It even says the reason why not, lest your heart be turned away. So Solomon didn't just break the command here, he obliterated it. He has 700 wives and 300 concubines. He didn't merely violate this law, he literally mutilated it, tore it to shreds. And the text then notes, not surprisingly, his wives did indeed turn his heart away from the Lord. Three times in four verses, the text repeats the same idea. God said it would happen, Solomon did it anyway, and the result was predictable. But the real issue that is lying behind all this is in fact the posture of Solomon's heart. The key verse, I think, for understanding this chapter is probably that verse from Proverbs, which I read earlier, which Solomon himself may very well have penned when he said, Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it springs the issue of life. So if only he could have taken his own life, his own advice and held on to it all his life. So the message for us is guard and protect your heart, because it is in the heart where the drift begins. Now, Christianity is often presented with people as a sort of list of external actions or rules, even things like read your Bible, pray, give, give of your resources, witness to others, go to church on a Sunday. Now, don't get me wrong, these are all good things, all necessary things in a way, but the real issue is never the external activity, it's the eternal loyalty and desire of the heart. Solomon's problem wasn't really with the woman, it wasn't even marriage or sex, as some I've heard presented it. The real issue here was his heart. He didn't guard it, he didn't protect it, and he let it drift. Instead of bringing all these people and relationships into the orbit of that one true God, he let himself drift off in other multiple directions easily. And when the heart drift, of course, everything else in life follows. A great illustration of that, I heard the story once of a group of soldiers often prepare who prepared for target practice and spent a long time cleaning and preparing the rifles. One man in that regiment showed up with a rifle polished to perfection on the outside, gleaming to look at. But when he took aim and fired, of course he missed the target completely. Why? Because the inside of the barrel had not been cleaned. It was rusted. He'd cleaned the outside and ignored the inside. And that is a picture of what Solomon has done here. And that is something that we can too do if we're not careful. It's a trap we can fall into. So guard your heart, because what is on the inside determines how things go and where you go on the outside. Now for Solomon, the weak point was women. But I have to ask you, what turns your heart? Because anything can turn your heart away from the Lord. For many it can be relationships. I know people who once walked with God but drifted because the relationship choices they make or even the marriage path they took. Scripture is clear in this area. Marry only unto the Lord. That's 1 Corinthians. For others, it's simply the friendships or the business relationships that they carry. There's nothing wrong with having unbelieving friends or business contacts. Jesus did, but the line here to be aware of is who is influencing who. Are you influencing them or are they influencing you? Paul, again writing to the church in Corinth, said, bad company can corrupt good morals. Now for some of you out there, it may be sex, it may be pornography, it may be the pursuit of money or pleasure, and for others it may be an obsession with work or achieving success, caring more about what other people think about you than how you are in your posture before the Lord. It may be just a selfless drive for ambition. Anything can be twisted in a way that turns your heart away from the Lord if you let it. Now the three great heart turners, so to speak, are actually summarized perfectly for us and defined for us in one John chapter two. The sixteenth verse tells us they are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Every temptation fits into one or two or all three of these lust of the flesh, that being pleasure for pleasure's sake, lust of the eyes, things that you see, things that you desire, physically or possessions, and thirdly the pride of life. Desire to be held with esteem and to hold position and influence and control over other people. Now Adam and Eve fell to all three of these in that one event story. Satan, of course, we know he tried to tempt Jesus with all three of these as well. And Solomon, when you read the whole of these opening chapters, you can see now the turn is towards all three of these temptations as well. But ultimately, Solomon didn't guard his heart, and because of that, his life turned in these directions. Solomon's heart drifted, and the Bible is painfully clear. When that happens, there's always consequences. The text continues. The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord's command. That's sobering indeed, or it should be. God, remember, has appeared directly to Solomon twice, a privilege almost no one else in Scripture ever had or experienced, and yet still Solomon drifted. God warned him not to go after other gods, but Solomon did not keep that commandment. You want to know how to be stupid? It's right there in the text. Let your heart drift, ignore God's word, and do what God told you not to do. That's the simple formula revealed here. And the result, God's judgment falls, and a kingdom is torn asunder. Verse eleven to thirteen tells us, So the Lord said to Solomon, Since this is your attitude, and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates. Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime, I will tear it out of the hand of your son. Yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from him, but I will give him one tribe for the sake of David my servant, and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen. So the result is stunning and destructive. Let's be clear, Solomon's sin deserved judgment, but God here is enacting that judgment, portraying it, prophesying it even, but he's also delaying that judgment, and he's doing it because of David's sake. Now David himself wasn't perfect, but overall David's heart was loyal, and God honored that loyalty, and he's doing it here long after David died. Solomon's divided heart is now leading to a divided kingdom, but the division won't happen until after his death, which must for us raise a very sobering truth. Make us aware of a really sobering truth here. Please be aware, friends, your choices today may not only affect you, but can affect people long after you've gone. We usually think about how our actions affect eternity, but this passage is teaching and showing us something else. It tells us that our foolish decisions can create consequences for us today, but also for others, and others even after we die. And that's exactly what's going on here with Solomon. Now beginning in verse fourteen, the writer begins to show us the consequences that occurred during Solomon's lifetime. Let's look at them. Then the Lord raised up against Solomon an adversary, Hadad the Edomite, from the royal line of Edom. Earlier, when David had gone fighting with Edom, Joab the commander of the army, who had gone up to bury the dead, had struck down all the men of Edom. Joab and all the Israelites stayed there for six months until they had destroyed all the men in Edom, but Hadad, still only a boy, fled to Egypt with some Edomite officials who had served his father. They set out from Midan and went to Peran. Then taking people from Peran with them, they went to Egypt to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, who gave Hadad a house and land and provided him with food. Pharaoh was so pleased with Hadad that he gave him a sister of his wife, Queen Tafinis, in marriage. The sister of Tafinis bore him a son, named Genubat, whom Tafinis brought up in the royal palace. There Genubath lived with Pharaoh's own children. Now while he was in Egypt, Hadad heard that David rested with his ancestors and that Joab the commander of the army was also dead. Then Hadad said to Pharaoh, let me go that I may return to my own country. What have you lacked here that you want to go back to your own country? Pharaoh asked. Nothing, Hadad replied, but let me go. And then God raised up against Solomon another adversary, Rezon son of Eliada, who had fled from his master, Hedazar, king of Zobah. When David destroyed Zobah's army, Rezon gathered a band of men around him and became their leader, and they went to Damascus, where they settled and took control. Rezon was Israel's adversity as long as Solomon lived, adding to the trouble caused by Hadad. So Rezon ruled in Aram and was hostile always towards Israel. Okay, that's a long piece of narrative, but what is going on here, it's showing how Solomon's divided heart didn't just affect the long-term future that we've talked about, it's affecting him right now in the present. Firstly, we see it creates an enemy to the south. This guy identified as Hadad the Edomant. An adversary is revealed, and the text gives us his backstory, didn't it? You see, when his father David conquered Edom, Joab, David's commander, killed every male except one, and this Hadad, who was only a little child, fled to Egypt, where Pharaoh gives him a house and a wife. But when Hadad hears that David and Joab are now dead, he says, I'm going back to my own country. Why? Well it's obvious. Revenge, he wants payback. And now Edom, which is in the south of Israel, so Solomon now we see here having described for us as an enemy in the south. But secondly, it's also pointing out that he also has an enemy to the north being raised up. Second half of this passage I just read, it introduces this other adversary called Razon, who is declared to have loathed and despised Israel. Sound familiar? Then as today, Israel has enemies to the north and the south. Today they're launching rockets as I speak from both directions. So history does indeed repeat itself. But the principle being established here is that the divided heart will lead to a divided life, and Solomon's heart divided and turned, and God thereby allowed troubles to rise up on either side. So now Solomon and the nation of Israel have enemies to the south, enemies to the north. What's next? Perhaps an enemy within. Let's hear what happens. Verse 26. Also Jerobam, son of Nibat, rebelled against the king. He was one of Solomon's officials, an Ephraimite from Zarada, and his mother was a widow named Zarua. Here is the account of how he rebelled against the king. Solomon had built terraces and had filled the gap in the wall of the city of David his father, but now Jerobam was a man standing, and when Solomon saw how well the young man did his work, he put him in charge of the whole labour force of the tribes of Egypt. But this guy who starts well and serves well initially is no foreign enemy or outsider. This is Solomon's very own servant who will become an internal adversary, and the text is explaining exactly how this happens. Now it didn't always start that way. Jerobam was one who helped repair the city of Jerusalem, and he proved himself a brave leader in doing that. And Solomon noticed all this, including his industriousness, and he promoted him, we are told, over the entire labour force of the house of Joseph. Now, sometimes for some people promotion brings opportunity, but it can also stir that sense of pride. It can even awake selfish ambition. And it appears that Jerobam's new authority stirred something in him, a desire to rule, and the eternal enemy within is being curated. But then back in the main text, a prophet appears. About that time Jerobam was going out of Jerusalem, and Ahijah, the prophet of Shiloh, met him on the way, wearing a new cloak. The two of them were alone out in the country, and Ahijah took hold of the new cloak he was wearing and tore it into twelve pieces. Then he said to Jerobam, Take ten pieces for yourself, for this is what the Lord God of Israel says. See, I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon's hand and give you ten tribes. But for the sake of my servant David and the city of Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, he will have one tribe. And I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshipped Ashtareth, the god of the Sidonians, Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, and Molech, the god of the Ammonites, and have not walked in obedience to me, nor done what is right in my eyes, nor kept my decrees and the laws as David Solomon's father did. Okay, so this prophet arrives, he meets Jerobim, and he takes a new garment and tears it into twelve pieces, obviously representing the tribes of Israel, and he says, I will tear this kingdom out of Solomon's hand and give you the ten tribes. Why? It tells us God says, Because they have forsaken me. So notice the shift here. Not just Solomon, but the whole people are now being declared to have forsaken the Lord and followed in Solomon's ways. So Solomon's idolatry didn't stay private, did it? It spread, it influenced others, and it has in fact infected the entire nation. Now leadership by nature obviously influences people. People will follow the leader, whether the leader is following God or not. The apostle Paul entreated the people who followed him by saying, Follow me as I follow Christ. So we all need to make sure that the people we follow, particularly the religious leadership we follow, is following the Lord. The prophecy continues, 34 to 39. And this is God speaking, remember, but I will not take the whole kingdom out of Solomon's hand. I have made him ruler all the days for his life and for the sake of David, my servant, whom I chose and who obeyed my commands and decrees. I will take the kingdom from his son's hand and give you the ten tribes. I will give one tribe to his son, so that David my servant may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I chose to put my name. However, as for you, I will take you and you will rule over all that your heart desires. You will be king over Israel, and if you do whatever I command you and walk in obedience to me and do what is right in my eyes by obeying my decrees and commands, as David my servant did, I will be with you, and I will build your dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David, and will give Israel to you. I will humble David's descendants because of this, but not for ever. So he's not going to remove the kingdom from Solomon during his lifetime, but he will take it from Solomon's son and give ten tribes to Jerobam, this other son. He will leave one tribe, that being Judah, with a little scrap of Benjamin attacked, to Solomon's descendants, but he's only doing that out of loyalty for David's sake, it is said here. So David's loyalty is still echoing through the generations that took are to come. But then God says something really quite profound to Jerobim. You shall reign over all your heart's desire. Now Solomon got his heart's desire, and Jerobam will also be declared to get his heart's desire. But what are we meant to hear in this? Again, it's about guarding your heart, because God will often give you exactly what your heart desires. And that's always being presented as a positive thing, isn't it? But in reality, there are two sides to this coin, and that's the important thing to pick up on here. And then comes one of the most important lines in the chapter I will afflict the descendants of David because of this, but not forever. So, divine discipline is real. The consequences of this are real. And God's promises are also real. And if you belong to Christ, let's be clear, you're sealed forever. You will not face condemnation as part of your eternal destiny, but you will face discipline in this life and a degree of accountability for how you've fallen short in the next. God always keeps his promises and he promises to discipline his children, but in doing so he also promises never to abandon them. And Solomon's response to all of this, verse 40, more stupidity. It says Solomon tried to kill Jerobam, but Jerobam fled to Egypt to Shishkak the king and stayed there until Solomon's death. What? Instead of repenting, he's been given the opportunity, instead of humbling himself, instead of accepting God's discipline, he tries to murder the man that God has now chosen. So Solomon is piling up one sin upon another. This supposed wise man on earth is now just making one stupid, foolish decision after another. And Jerobam flees to Egypt, and Solomon doesn't get the chance to act in his stupidity. Now the chapter then concludes and concludes rather softly. The closing verses simply say, As for the other events of Solomon's reign, all he did and all the wisdom he displayed, are they not written in the book of the Annals of Solomon? Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel for forty years, then he rested with his ancestors and was buried in the city of David his father, and Rehuabam, his son, succeeded him as king. So there you are, it tells us that Solomon reigned for forty years, and then he died, and he was buried in the city of David. And that's it. That's how it closes. But what we see here is this man who began with great wisdom, worship of the Lord, great glory, ends in a state of idolatry, rebellion, and the kingdom divided. So what's the lesson of the chapter? Well, Solomon was clearly a brilliant man. He was gifted, he was blessed. Yet Solomon ended his life by making some really stupid decisions. And why? Again, it's very clear, it's because he did not guard his heart. That was the core point of that. He disobeyed the Lord. He married these foreign wives, he embraced the idolatries that they brought into the kingdom, and God tore ten tribes away from him and his descendants. This one chapter is the point that shapes the rest of Israel's history. And now that we've reached the end of Solomon's life, we really need to pause and ask, what can we learn from all that we've seen? Now the answer is not straightforward or simple because Solomon's life was not straightforward or simple. He was in no way a simple man. So first we must see all sides of it. We must see the big picture here. First we must recognize the good side of Solomon. Before we talk about his fall, we must acknowledge his greatness, and scripture indeed gives us a long list of the great things that Solomon did. He was divinely chosen to be king. He reigned in a divinely chosen city, Jerusalem. He was a righteous judge and an effective administrator. He ruled a vast territory bringing peace and prosperity to Israel. He built the temple, one of the greatest achievements in biblical history. He built fortresses, storage cities, a whole national infrastructure. He developed international trade, turning Israel into a commercial powerhouse of the world, and he possessed unattached wisdom given directly by God, which he used to bring blessing to the kingdom, but that only happened for as long as he followed the Lord. That's the opening narrative of these first eleven chapters. Solomon was indeed brilliant and he was capable. Solomon was gifted and blessed, and yet Solomon Stid had a tragic blind spot. One author I read put it perfectly. They said, Few figures are more difficult to evaluate than Solomon. He exhibited great ability, yet a blindness that hastened the empire towards its eventual disintegration. So he was a wise man who made stupid decisions. And he's not alone in that. The Bible is full of it, and modern life is full of it. Adam was given paradise, and he fell. Noah survived the flood, but still sinned afterwards. Israel as a nation saw the Red Sea part in front of him, but within days they were building a golden calf and worshipping it. Aaron was giving the priesthood, but we're told that at one point he offered what is described as strange fire to other gods. And Solomon here was given wisdom, but ended up in idolatry. The pattern is painfully familiar. But helpfully, the book of One Kings gives us the ability to spot the contrast between the two directions we can go in life. And it's bookended by this opening half of the book we've read. If we turn back towards the beginning, in 1 Kings chapter 3, verse 3, at the beginning of this book it says Solomon loved the Lord and walked in the statutes of his father David. That's how things started. But now, when we've gone that done this journey and turned to the start of today's episode and the close of this section of 1 Kings 11, it says, However, Solomon loved many foreign women. So he began by loving the Lord, but he ended up loving something else. And the whole story of that is played out between these two verses. And that's the journey we've been on for the last month. So what happened? How did this wise man become so stupid? The answer is simple, he didn't guard his heart. Now this word heart, when you see it in the Bible, it's a much broader definition than we might think today, for it includes the mind, the emotion, and the will. Those things that define us as people, as persons, as individual free will persons, a mind that thinks in his heart, the emotions and the will, the choices we make. So when we say God your heart, what we actually mean is guard what you think, guard what you desire, and guard what choices you make. Solomon had knowledge, Solomon has wisdom, and he had insight, but he did not guard the choices, and that in the end is what destroyed him. Now in the real world, there are many people who are still little more than educated fools because knowledge they have plenty, but knowledge on its own is never enough. Even wisdom and insight are not enough because sometimes people will still make choices that diminish that, and the choices determine whether or not they finish well and how things work out for them. We need to understand that a good start does not guarantee a good end. Solomon's beginning was better than his ending, that's for sure. He started with devotion, but he still ended with idolatry in spite of all these giftings and opportunities he had. If only he had guarded his heart. So how can we avoid Solomon's mistake? Well, perhaps by turning to the advice of Solomon's own father, David. Psalm 119, verses 33 and 34 say, Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I will keep your law. Indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart. There it is, friends. Teach me, that's all about knowledge. Give me understanding, that's about wisdom, and I will keep them. There you go, that's the choices that we make. With all of my hearted ads, that's about loyalty. To the end, that's about persevering. Correct choices, loyalty, perseverance, knowledge, and wisdom. Put these together, live these together, and you will not end up like Solomon. The issue is never how you start, the issue is how you finish. Someone once said, and I love this one, don't have a head as big as a watermelon, but a heart as small as a watermelon seed. Don't be that man, friends, don't be that woman. Guard your heart and guard your choices and guard your finish. That's the big lesson we need must learn from today's episode of the Bible Project Daily Podcast. Okay, we've reached the end of Solomon's life. The story is both inspiring and rather sobering, isn't it? It reminds us that wisdom is a gift of God, but faithfulness that is the choices we make, and it warns us that even the wisest amongst us can drift if we stop guarding our hearts. But Solomon's story is clearly not the end of this story, because in the next chapter the consequences of his choices finally break the surface. The kingdom he built, we will see begin to fracture. His son will step onto the stage, Jerobam will return from exile, and the nation of Israel, the once united nation, prosperous and at peace, will split in two. What Solomon has set in motion in this chapter, the next generation will have to face tomorrow in the next chapter. So join me tomorrow as we step into 1 Kings chapter 12, where the kingdom divides, the leaders stumble, and we learn what happens when pride, folly, and stubbornness collide. If you want to keep up to date and across everything I'm producing here, subscribe to my weekly newsletter on Soxstrack, and it'll tell you everything that I'm working on this week across all my ministries and all my podcasts. Thanks for being with me today. Bye bye, Fanaha.