Trampling the First Commandment (Part C)

Solomon had his wives be idolatrous in Israel's land. Jeroboam takes it to another level where he now brings idolatry to the Hebrew people themselves. Solomon did it to keep the peace with surrounding nations.

Jeroboam will do it to keep control over his people. In both cases, we have an example of those who come along and think they know better than God's Word. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1 Kings.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now, here's Pastor Rick with his message called Trampling the First Commandment in 1 Kings chapter 11. Verse 3, and he had 700 wives. How many of you remember the names? I mean, really, he has to have an aide there to say, okay, this is, thank you. I couldn't remember.

What number is she? This is crazy, and I think that God, when we come across this, he doesn't want us to applaud this and admire it. The men would have to be told that.

The women is like, look, you don't need to give me any help in not liking what's going on here. This is slavery. Anyhow, he had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. Well, the team, 700 versus 1. Mathematically, it makes sense. Not only was this a multiplication of wives, but they were foreign also.

So, I said, not just, he keeps saying, look, I already messed, I'm already wet. What difference does it make? Polygamy. There are still those who try to use the Bible to, I mean, the more, the more, Mormons and morons, there's a very thin line there in speaking about those.

You just, I almost said, well, look at the morons, and it really wouldn't have been in need of correction. Still trying to justify polygamy. God had said, a man shall be joined to his wife, not his wife. So, this reason, a man shall leave his mother and father and be joined to his wife, not wives, and certainly, this was before the fall, but God knew what was coming, and God said that the two, not the multiple, shall be one flesh. This is upheld in the New Testament.

Matthew 19, 5, 1 Corinthians 6, 16, it is upheld. Listen, men and women are equal, they're not identical. One's not inferior to the other. They have different roles. God has assigned these roles, and in the New Testament, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are edifying for me.

Well, that leaves a lot of margin, a lot of space to get a lot of things done that you otherwise could not get done under a strict law. Christianity, Paul had the insight to know that, listen, Judaism was the foundation of the church, but we have now built a top of that, but not, according to our own understanding, it has been given to us by God, and that's, can you imagine a New Testament without the apostles? There'd be no authority. It would just be, this guy said this, this guy said that, but the apostles locked that down.

When they spoke, that was it. There's just no changing it, and God designed it that way, and yet you just get somebody that's going to come along and try to make women look inferior to men, or you're going to have somebody else come along and try to make a woman one of the guys. Satan is the one that kills femininity, and Satan is the one that makes men feminine. Who else could it be? Who else has got that great of an influence over invisible things in an evil way?

It's the devil. I, like C.S. Lewis said, that he loved the sound of men laughing, because it was just that there was something right about the masculinity in his proper place. He didn't say a man laughing.

He meant men together in camaraderie. Well, there are things that, it goes, you know, we love to see children playing with each other peacefully. We're not excited about it when one's trying to, when they're fighting or fussing, but there are these things that are okay to like and to understand, but you would think that they're common sense and they're not. We're living in a time where things that, boy, that is just not only wrong, it is devilish. Tell a little child they need a sex change. Somebody ought to beat the snot out of somebody for thinking like that. There's no other cure.

They should have, they should make me the czar of beating the snot out of people who do things like that. And I'm not using a newspaper. What are you going to do with that stick? Go find a bigger one.

That's what I'm going to do. I mean, it just has to, to act so shocked or to protest or to threaten life threatening, oh, come on. Let me get, I try not to, I don't want to talk about this stupid culture. Other generations have been more evil. This one has been, well, I don't know about more evil as evil.

This one has been the stupidest one. When I say generation, I mean from a hundred, whoever's alive buying into this junk. I'm not talking about one particular age group. Who would disagree with that?

Who would have imagined? Okay, this is a rant. This is a rant.

All right. These princesses here, of course, we've already covered the political side of that. Downsizing this again, keeping it in all this political, I think is wrong. It's more to it. 300 concubines. They were not acquaintances. If it's a thousand in a harem, how shallow.

I need to just keep moving. And his wives turned his heart, turned away his heart here in verse three. As God said, it would happen.

It has happened. And we are supposed to pay attention to this. This is not true.

This is true, not only with marrying or unevenly yoked relationships. It's true of unbiblical thinking. Galatians 3. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth before whose eyes Jesus was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit? Are you now being made perfect in the flesh?

Does that not fit Solomon? Can you not say, Solomon, are you so foolish who's bewitched you? God showed himself. You have four visions of God.

God speaking to you directly. Your kingdom was given to you by God. Everything that David handed to you was because of his relationship with God, a man after God's own heart.

You began in the Spirit. How is it, Solomon, that now you're being perfected by your own wisdom without God? These lessons, every one of them, have something to do with us. Verse 4. For it was so when Solomon was old that his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not loyal to Yahweh his God, as was the heart of his father David.

Well, it would help to remember this. As bad as Solomon is, and we're gonna still get to more of it, there were other kings of the Jews who were far worse. I mean Ahab. You just, for example, Manasseh.

These men were monsters. Solomon wasn't going around, you know, mass killing and just things like that, but that doesn't make this acceptable, but it helps us get a little perspective on what is going on here. They turned his heart after other gods, referring mostly to his tolerance as a, mentioning that there should have been an intolerance, but he tolerated them. If you walked up to Solomon and said, are you worshiping Molech? Do you believe he's God? He would, I have no doubt myself, he would say, of course not, but you know, it works well with the wives.

It keeps peace, keeps the tree. He has all these answers that are wrong answers, but I don't think he personally believed that these were genuine gods. Again, we go back to Galatians because Paul is dealing with this. He sets the churches up in this region. Those, there would be those that would come in back of him to try to undo his work, and these churches in the region of Galatia were falling for this, and so Paul writes the Galatian letter to deal with it, and he says, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. So here in Solomon's day, he was disobeying, he's turning away, he was doing everything wrong, not talking about his heart, but his actions, which there is a connection of course. Paul comes along and says, listen, this kind of stuff happens in the New Testament too.

You have people that try to, you know, mingle in the world and false ideas, things that are contrary to God, things that God has forbidden, and they try to make it sound as though it's wiser and better than God. I don't, I believe the Bible is very clear. Women are not supposed to pastor men. They're not supposed to pastor.

I believe that. The scripture teaches that, but we have a society that will come along and say, oh, that was for them back then. Yeah, but Paul dates it. He put the time stasis since Adam and Eve.

This is, this is perpetual. And there are those that will, will do that with other verses too. They tried to homosexuals, try to say that, you know, they're homosexual Christians, the serial killers. They need us, they need to be, you know, hey, well, listen, we kill, we kill for Christ, okay? We're just thinning out the herd and we're Christians too. You see the insanity behind these, these, these statements and so Paul is saying to the Galatians, I'm amazed that you're turning away from the gospel.

I can't believe it. You received Christ, you saw the grace, these other Johnny come lately's come up and, and now you're following them. You were in the spirit. You were following the scripture and the apostles and you sold it all away.

There are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ and that is to this day is an ugly fight. Whatever happened to this prayer of Solomon? Yahweh, God of Israel, there is no God in heaven above or on earth below like you who keep your covenant and mercy with your servants who walk before you with all their hearts. I think he meant that at the time he said it or else God would not have showed up and he did. That is at the dedication of the temple, but he drifted. It says here in verse four, and his heart was not loyal to Yahweh his God and is as was the heart of his father David and we've discussed this earlier.

The question I have looking at this is did Solomon's poor devotional habit transfer to his son Rehoboam? So a father can influence a son. Well we all know that just like a mother can.

Will it be for good or bad? The saying the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Well there's some truth in that, but you know when Bathsheba came to Solomon and said hey I have a favor to do for Adonijah. He didn't go for that so that saying is not a hundred percent but there's still that influence. Did Solomon's poor devotional habit influence his son Rehoboam?

Yes, how do we know that? Because the Bible tells us that. First, 2 Chronicles 12 speaking of Rehoboam and he did evil because he did not prepare his heart to seek Yahweh. So we honor our mother and father but we do not honor the dishonorable things that they may do.

I don't mean the nitpicking ones, I mean the ones that are moral and spiritual violations. A person, an individual has got to come to a place in their walk where Jesus is their savior personally not because mom and dad say so but because they've discovered that Jesus is the Lord. Everything's right with that and so Jeroboam he never developed we're going to come to him next chapter and he you know he's one of the he's one of the greatest fools in the Bible. He listened to his buddies more than the wise men, the men who were experienced.

He just threw all their experience away and went with his cronies and what happened the nation split and it was a disaster. So let's review from Deuteronomy 17. Do not return to Egypt God said. Their people were not to return to the land of bondage. Do not multiply horses. The military was not supposed to be invasive.

In other words so strong and we're seeing this with the Soviet with the revived Soviet Union under Adolf Putin. Do not to multiply wives. The king was not to be divided in his devotions and his attention to God. Not to multiply wealth. The king was not to be occupied with material gain. The king was to be dependent upon God focused on God by faith as was Moses as was Joshua. Did Solomon really think yeah but those guys were lightweights.

I'm a heavyweight. They had just you know a million slaves who just had bad manners and lived out in the desert and survived because of their leadership but me you know I'm a lot smarter than that. I think some of that was there. As was the heart of his father David we have covered that. Psalm 16 for their sorrow shall be multiplied who hasten after another God.

Their drink offering offerings of blood I will not offer nor take up their name on my lips. Now I know I've read that already in our study of kings but it's so good. Galatians 6 9 let us not grow weary while doing good for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.

Now why would I read that? Is that a random verse? Has that anything to do with what we're talking about? Yes because what sometimes happens to pastors and Christians alike is you get bored with Christianity. You get bored with the scripture and when that begins to happen if you don't see it and endure it you will start looking elsewhere and you will start bringing in what some other person said that sounds so good and so sensitive and so right but it's a step away from the scripture. It's moving forward without the word of God because you've grown weary of the word of God. For me in my 30 years of ministry there have been times where it's just you know I'm so familiar with the text that it's hard to stay engaged but I know this is where I need to be and I'm not looking anywhere else and so you won't hear me come up and quote the latest bestseller in Christian circles and I have found if you stick to it God revives. He comes along and he says yeah good you hung in there all those years and how about this boom and I'll I don't know you may not agree you may say I have a missing your sermons I'm not all that impressed. Well I'm impressed that I'm still just I love the word of God still and Solomon I think got away from that. The word of God was no longer this special thing to him.

Again let us not grow weary while doing good. Verse 5 now for Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians and Milcom the abomination of the Amorites. Ammonites, Amorites close phonetically but different peoples. Anyway this Ashtoreth was known by other names Canaanite fertility goddess, Ishtar in Babylon, Venus by the Greeks, Aphrodite by the Romans.

They just keep you know reinventing her. Ashtarte, Ashtarte is her original name. Some scholars believe that the Jews called her Ashtoreth by moving the words around a little bit and it actually means shame and to show their disdain for her she became known as Ashtoreth amongst the Jews whereas she was Ashtarte amongst the other Semitic people.

It's a hard one to prove but there's you can't dismiss it either. It's interesting because the Jews were in the habit of putting in those little zingers. We talked about Ezekiel. When Ezekiel referred to the pagan gods that the Hebrew word is the dung gods but the translators use the idol you know they don't say it that way when they should because that's exactly what he's calling them.

In fact it's a little bit more crass than what I'm telling you. That's how intense their disdain for the idols were amongst the prophets. Anyway, Nilkom, an Ammonite form of Baal. Three hundred years later this god is entrenched in Israel. Zephaniah 1.5, I've read this before. Those who worship the hosts of heaven on the housetops, those who worship and swear oaths by Yahweh but who also swear by Malcolm. Oh I go to church but I also you know believe in horoscopes or something like that. You can't, those two are irreconcilable.

You can't do that. This is what they were doing in those days because of Solomon bringing in the idols as he did. It was a royal, seriously, a royal endorsement. Verse 6, Solomon did evil in the sight of Yahweh and did not fully follow, did not fully follow Yahweh as did his father David. Well his sin was public, it was blatant, there was no denying it, the evidence was there. Where it says and did not follow, fully follow Yahweh. He did not fully follow Yahweh.

There's a glimmer of hope in that. Where I get the, where I told you that I think if you said to Solomon do you believe these gods are real, I believe he would have said no way. Then why are you going ahead and violating the law? Well because you know Moses lived back then and we need to do it, I believe he would have some goofy answer like that because we see people do it to this day. And I think as Solomon said, there's nothing new under the sun. As did his father David, of course, David did not follow those false gods. Verse 7, then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab on the hill that is east of Jerusalem and for Molech the abomination of the people of Ammon. Well that hill east of Jerusalem is the Mount of Olives, the place where Jesus ascended.

2 Kings chapter 23 verse 13, then the king defiled, this is not Solomon, he's being spoken of here, then the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem which were on the south of the Mount of Corruption, which Solomon, king of Israel, had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians and for Chemosh the abomination of Moabites and for Milcom the abomination of the people of Ammon. So the historian, different guy, because this part is a hundred years later, over a hundred years later, he's looking back and he's saying the people are still doing the things of Solomon imported. They're still at it. You can't just get this out.

It has taken root. So, the tragedy of it all. Verse 8, and he did likewise for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. He sponsored it, he subsidized it, paid for it, kept it going there in the land of God's people.

It's very hard for us to stomach this. He had smarts and brains and that's not enough. You can meet a person who's got smarts and brains but they reject Jesus Christ and they take down a lot of people with them. How many college professors, for example, have this power over students who pay them to become idolaters? How many times do I say to a Christian going off to college, when you get that degree, don't let it go to your head, only to see it go to their heads. I've got the degree. I'm smarter than you. All the things you taught, they were wrong because my professors know better. What church do they pastor?

What anointing is on them? Which ones of them are truly Christians? I could probably beat them all up anyway because I'm just like that. You might think that I have a slant towards violence. Well, it works sometimes. It's frustrating.

It's like, God, why can't we beat them up? Of course, we know why and I joke about it because I don't really feel that way too much. My flesh does. My flesh is totally in disagreement but the spirit is not. Well, we've run out of time. So many more things to say about all this.

I hope I've not confused you, especially with that whole rant episode. I'll close with this verse because I left out the part about Jezebel whose horse-trampled body, the dogs couldn't even finish eating her. She was so disgusting. They left their hands on her skull and said, you know what, that's enough.

She was that vile. She was a Sidonian princess that introduced idolatry on a large scale to the northern kingdom. Well, Solomon set the precedence for this over all the Jews.

But again, if it was not him, it could have been someone worse and things could have been worse. First Kings 12, 28, therefore the king asked advice. This is Jeroboam who will be the first king of the northern kingdom when it splits. He will lead the Jews into idolatry. Solomon had his wives be idolatrous in Israel's land. Jeroboam takes it to another level where he now brings idolatry to the Hebrew people themselves. Solomon did it to keep the peace with surrounding nations.

Jeroboam will do it to keep control over his people. In both cases, we have an example of those who come along and think they know better than God's word. First Kings 12, 28, this is Jeroboam, therefore the king asked advice. This is when the people were still going to Jerusalem to worship from the north, made two calves of gold and said to the people, it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt. You're going to say, what Bible do you have?

None. I just know parts of the Bible and I change it when it works for me. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

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