1 Kings 11 - The Division of the Kingdom | Bible Podcast, David Alley, Peace Christian Church

In this video listen to 1 Kings Chapter 11, read by David Alley, followed by comments and prayer.

In 1 Kings Chapter 11 we see that all that glitters isn’t necessarily gold. Solomon doesn’t follow the example of his father David, and like a mouse goes after the baited mousetrap, disobeying the law against accumulating wealth and women. He ends up with 300 wives and 700 concubines who lead him astray.

There are somewhat modern equivalents to Solomon: - King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had 30 wives and 35 children - Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia had 22 wives and 115 children. - Genghis Khan had more than 500 concubines - Moroccan King, Ismail Sharif in the 1700’s had over 2000 concubines and 1042 children... a world record according to Guinness. One of his concubines was Lalla Balqis a Englishwoman kidnapped by pirates while enroute to Barbados. Solomon built places of worship for his wives gods including the terrible Molech and Chemosh.

This angered the Lord. Why does Solomon do these things? After the Lord gave him everything, why did he go after other gods? It's hard to understand. It seems that unlike other pagan kings who worshipped gods from more powerful nations, he has turned to gods from nations less powerful, and nations that were conquered by his father David. This is best understood in my opinion by taking the bible literally... Solomon “loved” many foreign women.

The influenced him because his heart went after them, and he worshipped their gods because they wanted him to. A clear example of this would be Pharaoh’s daughter. Solomon seems to be trying to copy his empire on what Egypt was. He is trying to be like the other nations, rather than trying to be like what the Lord commanded in the law. Thus Solomon was not a monotheist, or even a henotheist like Abraham and Jacob, but a polytheist.

He worshipped God as the god of Israel, but also worshipped other gods. Wealth is an x-ray which shows the heart. Give any person a billion dollars and what will come out is what they love. A heart test can be done by saying to someone (even yourself), what would you do if I gave you a billion dollars right now? Once they start talking about all the fabulous things they would, buy and do, you see what they love. A giant ship cruising across the ocean cannot be turned quickly.

So as the heart of the king changes, the nation seems to keep on going “fine”, but all is not fine. The turning of the king will be seen in the generations to come. And so is cultural change in our day and nations too. We need to push into prayer to bring a turning back to Christ, which is something that often works itself out over time, even with revivalism at work it still is a time consuming process that takes generations. Solomon ruled for 40 years. Forty is a symbol of testing.

Perhaps this time they failed the test.