Matt preaches for the church of Christ in Joliet, IL where he lives with his wife, Lauren, and children, Zoë and Mark. He also maintains a spiritually themed blog at http://HisExcellentWord.blogspot.com. He can be reached at MandLBassford@gmail.com.

APPLYING BIBLE AUTHORITY

While Solomon faithfully followed God’s pattern in constructing the temple, he was woefully deficient in his personal conduct, evidencing self-will instead of submission.

One of the sad but timeless truths of mankind’s walk with God is that His people tend toward apostasy. Over time, the righteous become forgetful and complacent, but the devil never rests. Because of his tireless efforts, he eventually leads them to fall away.

If we don’t want this tragic story to be our story, we must maintain continual vigilance against error. We must constantly check our actions, words, and even thoughts against the standard of the word of God. When we conform to its pattern in all things, we are certain to remain faithful. However, when we begin to ignore that pattern, falling away won’t be far behind.

The Scriptures are filled with warnings about the dangers of ignorance, most prominently in the stories of the Old Testament. In 1 Corinthians 10:11, Paul observes that it, also, was written for our instruction. Indeed, in context, he uses the story of the wilderness wanderings of the children of Israel to warn the Corinthian church against the dangers of unfaithfulness.

We, too, need to pay attention to the mistakes of those who came before us. The refusal of the Israelites to honor “the pattern that was shown you on the mountain” led them to disaster. Unless we take their example to heart, the same thing will happen to us.

Solomon’s Apostasy

There are many biblical characters whose stories serve well as object lessons for us, but one of the most telling is the great king Solomon. Despite being put in the best position of any king of Israel in the Old Testament, he squandered his advantages through a refusal to obey.

In Deuteronomy 17:14-17, the law warns kings against three activities in particular: they must not acquire many horses, especially from Egypt, they must not acquire many wives for themselves, and they must not acquire excessive silver and gold.

Despite his vaunted wisdom, Solomon failed to heed these warnings. According to 1 Kings 10:14-25, he accumulated massive amounts of treasure. In 1 Kings 10:26-29, he traded with Egypt to gather horses for his chariots. Finally, in 1 Kings 11:1-8, he brought together for himself 700 wives and 300 concubines.

Predictably, his love of foreign women led him to turn away from God. In the last portion of his reign, we see the shocking spectacle of the man who presided at the dedication of the temple offering up his own children to Molech! In 1 Corinthians 10:12, Paul warns, “Let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (ESV). Nobody ever fell farther than Solomon; we must remember that the faithful service of our past is no more protection for us than his past service was for him.

God’s Displeasure

In 1 Kings 11, the first consequence of Solomon’s sin is that it incurred God’s displeasure. 1 Kings 11:9 begins with the chilling words, “And the Lord was angry with Solomon.” How foolish it is to provoke the Creator of heaven and earth!

However, the Old Testament is filled with stories of those who did exactly that. The prophets bear eloquent wisdom to God’s anger, pain, and sense of betrayal when His own chosen people turn aside from His ways to follow false gods. Scarcely less is His anger at the oppression of His most vulnerable people in defiance of His law. Precisely because He is a God of mercy and compassion, the mistreatment of others rouses Him to fury.

We must understand, then, that to God, obedience is personal. He’s not some dispassionate IRS agent in the sky who will punish us for breaking the law, but doesn’t care one way or the other about it. Instead, in His eyes, honoring His word is inseparable from honoring Him. We show our love and respect for God by faithfully following His pattern in all respects. When we abandon the pattern, we communicate the opposite.

God’s Opposition

Similarly, we see that, because of Solomon’s sin, God began to work against him. The narrative of 1 Kings 11 describes a litany of adversaries God raises up against Solomon: Hadad the Edomite, Rezon the son of Eliada, and finally and most tellingly, Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who would become king of Israel after Solomon’s death.

God set Solomon over all of Israel and surely would have confirmed his son in the kingship had he only been faithful. However, Solomon’s falling away ensured that his kingdom would not endure. God was not willing to abandon the lineage of David entirely, but Solomon’s son Rehoboam would find himself ruling over a two-tribe rump state not much larger than one of our modern-day counties.

God’s way works, and it works because God is working with the worker. As long as His church remains faithful to Him, He will bless it, and it will continue to prosper. However, far too often, church leaders conclude that they can gain some advantage by departing from the “ancient paths” of Jeremiah 6:16. Though they do not possess the wisdom of Solomon, they believe that their rejection of the pattern will somehow yield better results than did Solomon’s rejection.

Thus says the LORD: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Pay attention to the sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ‘We will not pay attention.’ Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them. Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not paid attention to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it (Jer. 6:16–19, ESV)

To the wisdom of the world, apostasy will always be appealing. Based upon that criteria, it makes perfect sense for a king to safeguard his kingdom by building a powerful military, filling his treasury, and forming marriage alliances with neighboring nations. By contrast, Deuteronomy 17:14-17 seems like foolish counsel.

So too today, faithful adherence to the pattern often seems like foolishness to the wisdom of the world, and apostasy like wisdom. If you want to bring visitors in, you need to put a rock band up on stage, playing “popular” music (even though generally, the worldly regard Christian rock music as a risible counterfeit of the real thing). If you want to develop relationships among brethren, you need to have a church-funded fellowship hall so that Christians can eat together after services (even though everybody who’s ever eaten in a school cafeteria knows that eating in the same room with somebody does not make them your friend). If you want to keep young people, you have to soft-pedal Bible teaching on the practice of homosexuality (even though denominations that accept practicing homosexuals keep almost none of their young people).

The list goes on and on, and we are assured that if we confine ourselves only to biblical worship, teaching, and service, disaster can be the only result. Yet, in reality, the more we contemplate the will of God, the more sense it makes, and even if it doesn’t make sense, we can be certain that God will oppose us if we abandon it. To paraphrase Paul in Romans 8:31, if God is against us, who can be for us?

Conclusion

In the past 2,000 years or even the past 3,000 years, people haven’t changed at all. The apostasy that undid Solomon is no less a danger for us. The text of Deuteronomy 17 is no longer a concern for God’s people, but the ordinances that He has revealed to us are. They explain how God wants us to work and worship, both individually and corporately. Either we will be faithful to that pattern, or we will not. The choice is ours. However, we should be under no illusions about the consequences in either direction.