How could Solomon, the wisest man in all the earth end like this? When you read the descriptions of the temple and the sheer wealth that this man used for construction, when you hear about the Queen of Sheba who was a skeptic about Solomon yet discovered that his wisdom was not even half of what she had been told, when you read the book of Proverbs and all that he understood about life and relationships, it’s just unimaginable how this could have happened. But it did.
Towards the end of his life Solomon’s heart was turned away and he worshiped foreign gods. The Lord had told him not to intermarry with foreign women as they would turn his heart away from the living God. He didn’t marry just one foreign woman, he married hundreds.
The Lord was right. Solomon was wrong. And the wisest king known to humanity was lead astray.
Solomon had forgotten the very foundation which is that to fear the Lord is to obey the Lord. And now all of Solomon’s labors for the temple, all of his father David’s dreams, all the kingdom he built for himself would be taken away from him piece by piece, person by person, and territory by territory. One of the greatest kings of all time would experience the greatest falls of all time. It was only because of the Lord’s love for David that Solomon himself was shown mercy and shielded from seeing this cataclysmic crash down.
It was never meant to be this way. Faith is meant to be a crescendo, something that grows unstoppably with each year. The Psalmist says that even in our old age that our latter years will “stay fresh and green” (Ps 92:14). This is His promise to those who walk in the fear of the Lord. Fresh. And green. Age has no hold on the saints of God.
Our only job is to continue to walk in the fear of the Lord, loving him all the days of our lives. To fear Him is to obey Him.
It doesn’t mean that we don’t stumble.
It took Abraham several significant failures before he lost his taste for disobedience. And how many times did the bumbling disciples stumble before they rose up and became the apostles we have come to know and love?
It’s not that we don’t drop the ball. We do. But make no mistake, sin that is “justified”, acted upon and fully embraced will not go without devastating consequences. Even if you are Solomon, the wisest, wealthiest and one of the most powerful kings of all of history.
