For when Solomon was old his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. ~ 1 Kings 11:4
Solomon’s fall is tragic. Here is a man who had incredible favor from the Lord and wisdom like no other; everything he put his hands to prospered. Rulers and mighty people from distant lands came to see if all that they had heard about the splendor and wisdom of Solomon was true, and it was. He was a king who could not be rivaled, who appeared greater in person than any tale could spin with words. “The god of Solomon indeed is a great god,” they must have returned from their journey to tell those who eagerly longed to hear.
Yet as an old man, his heart is turned from Yahweh, the one who had made him great in the first place, to the gods his wives worshiped, gods made of wood and stone, worthless idols. It says that Solomon clung to these foreign women that God had commanded the people of Israel not to marry, “in love”. Is that not crazy, or what?! How often do we hear this said today, sometimes even by ourselves, that love trumps all, even God’s specific commands to his people. Yikes! Oh, that we would learn this difficult lesson by observing Solomon’s tragic fall and not by destroying our own lives and the lives of people around us.
Solomon’s fall wasn’t sudden; he didn’t hop the fence from being fully devoted to God to worshiping idols in one swift leap. It was a gradual undoing. Satan is crafty to work this way. It’s little compromises that lead us one step at a time away from the foot of the cross. Rarely do we turn and run towards apostasy flat-out. That would be a shock to our system and likely result in aborting such a ridiculous notion. Satan knows that. He is content to allow the time it takes for a gradual slide away from our faith. We were once devoted to our Savior, to his word, to the sweet communion of prayer, to putting sin to death in our body, and to his bride the church. But with each baby step away from Christ, our affections dim and before we know it we are sitting in the dark and not quite sure how it happened.
In Proverbs, we are told to,
Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. ~ Proverbs 4:23
How ironic is it that the man who spoke 3,000 proverbs (see 1 Kings 4:32), failed to put such an important one into practice? We are certainly not as great as Solomon. What hope do we have to keep our hearts “wholly true to the Lord” our God? On our own we have none. We can expect nothing short of failure, outside of the help of the Holy Spirit. But that is how – the Holy Spirit! It is God’s spirit that guides and directs us, that teaches us as we read God’s word, that convicts us of sin. Oh that we would be quick to listen and humble enough to follow. Let’s be sensitive to God’s voice to us in his word and the Spirit’s leading in our lives, that we may avoid the gradual descent of Solomon away from our Savior!
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