The loss of faith begins with being drawn away by one's
desires. We know Solomon was led into
sin by the influence of his wives but they were women he had no right to. "But
King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh:
women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites--from the
nations of whom the LORD had said to the children of Israel, 'You shall not
intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts
after their gods.' Solomon clung to these in love." (1 Kings 11:1-2
NKJV)
Solomon's first sin was not idolatry. It was marrying foreign wives of the
nationalities mentioned. His desire for
these women led him into sin. "Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these
things? Yet among many nations there was no king like him, who was beloved of
his God; and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless pagan women caused
even him to sin. Should we then hear of
your doing all this great evil, transgressing against our God by marrying pagan
women?" (Neh. 13:26-27 NKJV)
I would like to list here some things we can learn from
Solomon about how to maintain our own faith and guard against losing that faith.
(1) Beware of the company you keep for it will influence you
despite yourself. The New Testament
teaches this principle. "Do not be deceived: "Evil company corrupts good habits"
(1 Cor. 15:33 NKJV) or as the NIV phrases it, “Bad company corrupts good
character.” Even Solomon, speaking by
the Holy Spirit, confessed this earlier in his life when he said, "The righteous should choose his friends
carefully, for the way of the wicked leads them astray." (Prov. 12:26
NKJV) I might add the closer a person
becomes to you the greater their influence will be. We can develop a love or fondness for people
who can turn us from God.
The loss of faith is a gradual process. It takes time to lose one's faith, it doesn't
happen overnight, and it often takes outside help which the Bible clearly
teaches that Solomon got from his pagan wives.
Here is the problem, the wicked do not at first appear to be
wicked. The women Solomon married did
not appear to him to be wicked, not at all.
I would say the chances were great that they treated him with all
respect, honor, and kindness, and chances are many of them truly loved him. Most certainly Solomon did not go out looking
for wicked women to marry. They were
most likely the class of their cultures.
There was only one problem with them—they were wicked by God's
standards, they were idolaters.
We have the same problem today. The world is full of good people, good to us,
we consider them good, but with God they are wicked. They may be the most outstanding people you
would ever meet but outstanding by the measures used by one human being to
measure other human beings. They may be
very likable, have great personalities, are friendly, kind, considerate,
thoughtful, helpful, compassionate, honest, hard working, the kind that would
not mistreat a mouse, and some of them may even be religious folks and yet in
God's eyes, by his standard, they are wicked.
All it takes to fit into that category is to reject God's word.
These are the kinds of people that destroy, even if
unknowingly, those who could otherwise have been saved had they not fallen
under their influence. These are people
who themselves either do not have faith or if they do have faith it is not a
faith based on the truth of God's word.
Their faith is in what they believe, not in what God’s word says.
We become close friends with people like this, grow fond of
them, and get to thinking so highly of them that we get to the point where we
cannot allow ourselves to see anything but good in them whether they have any
religion about them or not. We get to
seeing them as so good that a just God could not possibly condemn them. If they are lost we want to be lost too. Man thus becomes the standard of what a man
ought to be, forget what the Bible says for we consider them to be too good to
be lost. Unfortunately, often such
people are family members.
The most dangerous people in the world are not those that
appear wicked to us. We run from them. They are no danger to us. Those of the kind I have described above are
the ones who take us down for they often appear to us as ministers of
righteousness of a sort, the righteousness this world has to offer, the self-made
righteousness of man.
Again, some of these may even be quite religious people but
they hold to false doctrine with the thinking often being that the Bible just
cannot be interpreted for our generation the way the word of God was for the
first generation of Christians. It is a
liberal Christianity they hold to that will not allow the Bible to mean what it
says. They lead well-meaning people
astray by what appears to most men to be righteous lives.
(2) A second lesson
we can learn from Solomon’s experience is to obey God whether you want to or
not, whether you can see the reasoning behind his commands or not, whether you
think his commands are wise or not. We
are not told Solomon's reasoning process that led him to disobey God and marry
these pagan women but disobedience always leads to trouble with God. One problem with sin is that it is likely to
lead to even more sin. It is likely to
compound and even multiply once it gets started in one’s life. Sin repeated time and again eventually leads
to the hardening of one's heart. We get to
the point that our desire for the sin outweighs our desire to do what is right
which is to say we cannot repent because we do not want to repent and that is a
sad state to get in.
Faith does not grow by being disobedient. Sin will lead one to flee from God as Adam
and Eve did in the Garden of Eden when they tried to hide from God. We know God does not approve of sin thus when
we commit sin we prefer not to be in God's presence (say worship services, prayer,
Bible reading, etc.), we begin the process of withdrawal, unfaithfulness, and
of losing our faith. Faith in such
circumstances torments us rather than comforts us. We feel better without it. We become more comfortable away from God
rather than with him.
We may attempt to justify our sin, our unfaithfulness. Solomon found new religions that would allow
for what he was doing although I cannot say that was his motivation for turning
to them but only that it had that effect.
Certainly, his new religions did not condemn him for marrying the pagan
wives or worshiping multiple gods.
With men today it is often that way. It is not hard to find a body of religious
people who will not only not condemn your sins but justify them and make the claim
that no sin is involved at all. Just
change your religious affiliation. You
can always find someone more liberal than you who will accept more departure
from God's word than you without calling it sin. They will not condemn your sin and in fact
will declare it to be no sin at all.
Churches today, for example, are full of people involved in adulterous
marriages. I know of one that has a
lesbian couple and a transsexual man who I am told came to services around
Veterans Day with his old army jacket on while wearing high heels and a skirt.
There is no indication from the Bible that Solomon ceased
his idolatry even after God spoke to him the last time. We can get to the point, evidently, that even
God talking directly to us would no longer turn us away from our evil
passion. But I ask the question, what if
Solomon had just obeyed God and never started down the path of marrying pagan
women? Would it have made a difference
in his faith in his old age?
There is a lot to be said for just obeying whether you want
to or not. Obey and in time you will
find you are obeying not because you have to but because you want to. It has become your life, who you are.
(3) A third lesson one can learn from Solomon is to beware
of religions that are based on appeals to the lust of the flesh, the lust of
the eyes, and the pride of life for they will lead you from the faith of God's
word. Solomon may have been drawn to one
or more of these idolatrous religions because some of them enticed by the
nature of their worship. In at least
some of them sexual activities were involved as a part of their worship. It was an appeal to the lust of man’s flesh. I do not accuse Solomon of being guilty for I
cannot know. I can only know there was
an appeal to the lust of the flesh in many pagan religions of that era.
A lot of religious bodies today appeal to the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life in one way or another and it
has its appeal to the fleshly man, not the spiritual man, and is certainly
capable of drawing people away from biblical faith into false doctrine and away
from God. Something drew Solomon into
idolatry and we know with certainty that it was not logical argument or
miracles or signs or wonders. The appeal
was, without doubt, an appeal to the flesh, to the lusts of man.
In our own time, there are some religious bodies calling
themselves Christian whose drawing card is an appeal to wealth. God wants you to be materially wealthy is the
claim. Clearly, the appeal is to the
lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
It is all about the contribution.
The more you give the more wealth God will give you in return and in the
meantime the finer home the evangelist can live in and the more expensive the
car he can drive.
Big costly buildings, robes, rituals, choirs, drama
performances, musical entertainment, trips to amusement parks, ball teams, golf
outings, and other such outings, etc. are not found in the pages of your New
Testament in the first-century church but they have an appeal to modern
man. Some groups have built worship
facilities that include gymnasiums for basketball, snack bars, rooms for
pool and/or badminton, choir and band rooms, etc. Were these things built to appeal to the
spirit or the flesh? One can be drawn away
from the things of the spirit by the things that appeal to the flesh. Can you imagine the apostle Paul soliciting
funds from the brethren to build and provide for such things? Was his interest in athletics, entertainment,
and food and drink?
(4) A final thing I would list for our consideration as a
lesson we can learn from Solomon's unfaithfulness and loss of faith is that one
must beware of our human tendency to desire peace rather than war. I speak here of arguments and debates and all
the unpleasantness that goes with that.
Solomon should have been at war against these idols. As it was he had peace but not a peace
pleasing to God.
I am far from certain that Solomon ever gave up his original
religion fully. There is some indication
he did not based on 1 Kings 11:6, "Solomon
did evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not fully follow the Lord, as did
his father David." (NKJV) I
emphasize the word "fully"
in that passage which makes it sound as though he did follow the Lord but only
up to a point. It could be he simply
added these idolatrous gods to the Lord God he worshipped becoming a
polytheist.
If that is the case is that not also what the denominational
world today has done as well? They have
said one religion (denomination) is as good as another, it makes no
difference. And, yet, they each consider
the other to be teaching some error they do not hold to in their own
denomination. But does error really
matter at all if you can be saved practicing the error? To ask is to answer. Of course, error does not matter in the
denominational world if you can be saved in any denomination despite the error
they hold to in that denomination.
So, did Solomon get to where we are in America today where
one religion is as good as another? But
you say wait a minute. All denominations
believe in the same God and the same Savior.
Solomon was worshiping multiple gods.
That argument sounds good until you examine it. What is wrong with it? Just this much—is the God of denomination A
the same God as the God of denomination B if he is teaching one thing in one
place and another in another place? It
sounds like two different Gods.
Solomon did not wage war with the other religions or other
gods. He sought peace with them
all. In doing so God was not
pleased. We ought to learn from that. God is never pleased with a departure from
his word, never. Our job is to seek out
the truth and hold to it. If the rest of
the world wants to believe and practice error so be it but we do not have to
run after those gods.
A slow continual drip of water will eventually erode
rock. A steady diet of withdrawal from
the things that make up the Christian life will eventually erode and destroy
faith. We may not do like Solomon and
change religions or as his case may have been just add other religions to his
Jewish religion. We may simply cease to
have any religion at all.
Some think faith can be turned back on at will. It didn't work with Solomon so why should we
think it would work with us and bear in mind God even spoke to Solomon
concerning his unfaithfulness, whether directly or through a prophet, but it
did not cause him to repent and turn back to God. We can get to the point where we just cease
to care. When we reach that point it is
all over. We are done. We need to nurture faith and keep it. Let us learn from Solomon and move toward God
and not away from him. Let us learn from
his mistakes.
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