Day 172 (1 Kings 10-11, 2 Chronicles 9) - Year 4
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Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. The last time we dropped in on Solomon's story, he had just finished building his empire. So it's no surprise that word about him spreads quickly. And today, a foreign queen travels a long way to visit him.

The queen of Sheba shows up with a lot of people and camels and gifts, as well as a lot of questions. And Solomon answers them all. She's dumbfounded. She's also taken aback by how wealthy he is. She praises him for his prosperity and his wisdom, and she points out that even the people who work for him really seem to like him. That's unusual for a king, especially in this day.

They trade gifts and she heads home to Sheba, which is probably either modern-day Ethiopia or Yemen. They're just across the Red Sea from each other. But before she goes, this pagan queen even praises God for establishing him as king and points to God as the source of it all. We see this idea reiterated in 1024, which says, "...the whole earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his mind."

There is no wisdom apart from God. He owns it all, and anyone who has it, got it from Him. Solomon asked God for this wisdom, and we can too. James 1.5 says, If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. This is a prayer God promises to answer with a yes for any of His kids who ask.

Wisdom is not only from God, but it points back to God. He's the source, supply, and goal of it all. Despite his wisdom, Solomon isn't perfectly obedient to God's commands for Israel's kings. We see him amassing more gold and more horses, which is in direct defiance of Deuteronomy 17. That's the passage that says Israel's king shouldn't collect horses, gold, or women. Then as we move into chapter 11, we see him adding women to his list. Uh-oh.

We all have a blind spot, and it seems like this was his. He married and associated with women who turned his heart from God. He ended up with 700 wives and 300 concubines, but it all started with just one. Just one woman whose heart wasn't aligned with God. I've mentioned this before, but my dad says the way you turn a battleship to go in a completely different direction is one degree at a time.

Little by little, tiny yields to God's commands are how we lead our own hearts astray. And that's how Solomon shows that he's ruled by lust, not by God, and it eventually leads to the downfall of his kingdom. It went exactly as God said it would go way back in Deuteronomy 7, where he said, You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. God wasn't guessing. He knows.

Solomon even ends up building sites for idol worship, at least one of whom, Molech, is a god the pagans make child sacrifices to. Are you kidding me right now, Solomon? And remember, this is the guy who built the temple. His heart had done a 180. I find it interesting that 11.6 says, Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord as David his father had done. David?

And this is in the book of Kings, not Chronicles. This is the book that is more likely to tell us the bad stuff and not eliminate it from the narrative. But here it is, recounting David as a man who obeyed God. Isn't that incredible? Doesn't that show you God's heart for forgiveness? God isn't remembering David as the murderer or the man who committed grave sexual sin. He's marking him down as a man who followed him. There were consequences for David's disobedience, and there are consequences for Solomon's too.

God says his rebellion will cost him the kingdom. Despite Solomon's sin, God wants to keep his promise to his father David. He says that after Solomon dies, the majority of Israel will be torn away from his son during his reign. God effectively punishes Solomon's blatant disobedience while maintaining his promises to David and Israel. Talk about efficiency.

In 1114, we see God raising up an enemy to oppose Solomon. Specifically, God raised up a man named Jeroboam, who was one of Solomon's servants. Jeroboam had been suspicious of Solomon for a while because one time after they'd completed a construction project, Jeroboam was heading out of town and he ran into the prophet Ahijah, who was wearing a new outfit. All of a sudden, right in front of Jeroboam, Ahijah tears his own brand new clothes into 12 pieces and hands 10 of those pieces to Jeroboam.

Then he explains himself. He prophesies that God will take 10 of the tribes away from Solomon's line of descendants and give them to Jeroboam. What? That's crazy. That's like if you're an employee at Amazon and one day someone comes up to you and rips a giant cardboard box into 12 pieces, hands you 10 strips and says, someday God will take Amazon from Jeff Bezos and give it to you. From that moment on, Jeroboam seems to be eagerly awaiting his own rise to power.

Solomon knows Jeroboam is after the kingdom, so he tries to kill him. But Jeroboam packs his bags and goes to Egypt and stays there until Solomon dies. His son Rehoboam takes over the throne after him. I know the names Jeroboam and Rehoboam are really close to each other, and since we're going to be talking about them for a while, I want to give you a little trick to remember it that will hopefully help. The letter R for Rehoboam is right beside the letter S for Solomon in the alphabet.

So you can remember that they're close to each other in the alphabet and also in relation. Jeroboam is the outsider here. I'll also try to call them Jerry and Ray for short, just to prevent confusion. So King Ray takes over after Solomon. Where did you see God's character on display today?

My God shot was just a little phrase that caught my eye in 2 Chronicles 9.8, where the Queen of Sheba is blessing God in response to Solomon's prosperity and wisdom. She says, The part that caught my eye was where she said, God set you on His throne.

She didn't say God set Solomon on Solomon's throne, but that God set Solomon on God's throne. Now, there's zero chance she's talking about the heavenly throne or even the earthly throne of the Ark of the Covenant. What's indicated here in the text is that God owns positions of power, specifically the throne of Israel. He's in charge of who's in charge, no matter who's in charge. These are his people, and he's establishing their rulers as he sees fit to work in them what he wants.

That's a nice idea when the people in power are guys like Solomon or David for the most part. But what about all those terrible judges? It's hard for us to see what God might be doing by positioning them in power. Ugh. That's where we have to be open-handed and trust that he's working out something we can't see. For instance, he used those terrible judges to produce repentance in the hearts of his people. He has purposes we can't understand sometimes, but they're always righteous and good and loving.

And no matter who is on the throne, he's where the joy is. I love DGroup and I want to tell you about one of our core values that makes us who we are. DGroup core value number three is bring your wins and losses. In DGroup, we set the expectations bar high, but we set the grace bar higher. We don't expect you to know everything or nail everything. We're in this together and we're with you when you drop the ball.

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