So King Solomon became greater than all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom (1 Kings 10:23).

So Solomon had the greatest wealth and wisdom in the world. And for all this he worshipped the LORD. No! The final "w" is not worship but women. He steadfastly loved his ungodly wives (1 Kings 11:2). Is it wrong to faithfully love your wife? To listen to them? To respect their convictions? Yes! Unless it contradicts the Word of God.

Even the command to love your neighbor as yourself is secondary to the primary command to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. Every other devotion must be defined and ordered by our devotion to God. Filial obligations must take second place to our devotion to God and His will for our lives. Job did not follow the foolish counsel of his wife when she advised him to curse God and die. 

Jesus taught, "Seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness" (Matthew 6:33). The word "first" is both in time and in priority. We must always begin with God. We must always keep Him as our central focus. 

Solomon did not. His devotion began to slip as he grew older. As powerful men are prone to do, he forgot that he will not remain powerful forever. 

So, friends, we must remain vigilant till the day we die. We must diligently study God's Word. We must pray without ceasing. We must remain humbly teachable and prudent to keep the priority of God and His calling ever in mind and as our mission. Once we let down our guard and think, "This little sin is okay" or "I can tolerate that" or "That's not all bad," then like a chink in a warrior's armor, it will give the enemy of our souls a place to attack and destroy us. 

Whether, like Solomon, we are endowed with wealth and wisdom, let us never cease to humbly worship the Lord first and foremost. And to my brothers in Christ, let us be careful of the influence of wayward women. Let us also be wary of foolish pride, for when we think we can stand on our own, we will certainly fall. 

Blessed be the Lord your God who delighted in you to set you on the throne of Israel; because the Lord loved Israel forever, therefore He made you king, to do justice and righteousness (1 Kings 10:9).

The Queen of Sheba praises the LORD God of Israel because of the wisdom, justice and righteousness of King Solomon. I wonder if she came to this conclusion on her own or if King Solomon told this to her. Outside of Solomon's praise for God in the early years of his reign, the narrative does not suggest a continuing humility before the LORD.

Remember King Saul. He was humble and honored the LORD in the early years of his reign but pride and insecurity soon became his prevailing attitude. Perhaps Solomon was falling down this same slippery slope. In contrast, King David remained humble and honored the LORD throughout his reign.

Friends, these examples from Scripture are reminders to me that I must always be humble and honor the LORD, even on occasions when it feels awkward to do so. For example, I was recounting to an unbeliever the confidence I had in sharing some new ideas with the leaders at a martial arts testing. I sincerely confessed that this confidence came entirely from the Lord, even though I knew that the one listening to me might not believe me.

Every morning and evening I pray before the Lord, "Father, thank you for your mercies and grace..." and "I always need your providence and grace to lead me..." and "May you always receive the highest glory from all that I do..." and "You are my chief delight above all things..." While my chief intention in these words is to praise the Lord, these expressions also serve as reminders to me to always remain humble and to honor the Lord. 

Friends, I encourage you to take such a view of things in your every purpose and outcome. Always remember to humble yourself and to honor the Lord. Pride and insecurity are two sides of the same mountain of spiritual failure. They are slippery slopes that can only be countered by a constant vigilance to remain humble and to honor the Lord. 

Then it will be, that if you listen to all that I command you and walk in My ways, and do what is right in My sight by observing My statutes and My commandments, as My servant David did, then I will be with you and build you an enduring house as I built for David, and I will give Israel to you (1 Kings 11:38). 

Wow! God promises to do for Jeroboam what He promised to do for David. What an amazing opportunity! But there is one major difference. Listen to the promise God made to David and see if you notice the difference:

“The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever” (2 Samuel 7:11-16).

Did you catch it? Hopefully my highlights helped you see it. 

God's promise to Jeroboam was conditional. God's promise to David was unconditional. God's promise to Jeroboam depended on Jeroboam's obedience to the Law. God's promise to David depended on God's faithfulness to His covenant. 

This may be the only difference between the two, but it is a vast ocean of difference between a right standing with God by works versus a right standing with God by grace. As Paul would write later:

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin (Romans 3:20).

Jeroboam, therefore, serves as a kind of literary foil for God's incomparable faithfulness. Jeroboam would immediately fail to keep his side of the covenant, and he would even become a byword to characterize the unfaithfulness of all the kings that came after him. In other words, Jeroboam represents human depravity and the failure of free will to fulfill God's requirements. 

Yet, my friends, our hope does not rest on a conditional covenant but an unconditional one. We recognize our inability and glory alone in God's ablity. What we could not achieve because of our hopeless depravity, tied very much to our nature as free moral agents, God did for us through His sovereignty. He Himself kept the lamp of the line of David burning till it found its eternal fulfilment in Christ Jesus, through whom God would achieve for us an eternal salvation by establishing for us in Him an eternal throne and kingdom. To God alone, therefore, be all the glory

Then Ahijah took hold of the new cloak which was on him and tore it into twelve pieces. He said to Jeroboam, “Take for yourself ten pieces; for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and give you ten tribes (but he will have one tribe, for the sake of My servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel) (1 Kings 11:30-32).

When you saw this text, perhaps it gave you some pause. Didn't Ajijah tear the cloak into twelve pieces? He gave ten pieces, representing ten tribes, to Jeroboam. But he left one tribe, presumably one piece, for Solomon. Ten plus one makes eleven. What about the twelveth piece/tribe?

This has been explained in various ways in various commentaries. Here's my take. The listing of the twelve tribes vary throughout the history of Israel; however, it seems best to me to number the tribes according to their original designation. If we do so, the twelve tribes would be as follows: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin. These were the original twelve sons of the partriarch Jacob, whose name was consequently changed to Israel. What is more, the nearest listing of the tribes in the context of the monarchy gives these names (cf. 1 Chronicles 2:1)

I believe the twelve pieces that Ahijah tore from his cloak represented these original twelve tribes. When the prophecy of Ajijah was fulfilled, the one tribe that remained loyal to the house of David was Judah:

When all the Israelites heard that Jeroboam had returned, they sent and called him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. Only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the house of David (1 Kings 12:20).

That means the remaining eleven went with Jeroboam, right? No. We are told that the tribes that lived within the towns of Judah were also ruled by Rehoboam (i.e. the house of David). While we are not told that the tribe of Benjamin was loyal to the house of David, we, nevertheless, know that much of this tribe was ruled over by Judah because it resided within the towns of Judah. Even the capital city of Jerusalem, where King Rehoboam reigned, was within the boundaries of Benjamin. That is why we are told that when Rehoboam mustered his forces to war against Jeroboam, he got his troops from both Judah and Benjamin. The Chronicler even goes so far as to say that both Judah and Benjamin were in Rehoboam's possession (cf. 2 Chronicles 11:12). Therefore, while God had only promised the house of David one tribe, practically speaking, he had two. 

One might think that Judah was still vastly outnumbered by Israel; however, this may not have been the case. For example, the priests and Levites sided with Rehoboam. Some even left their pasturelands in Israel and migrated to Judah and Jerusalem:

The priests and Levites from all their districts throughout Israel sided with him [i.e. Rehoboam]. The Levites even abandoned their pasturelands and property and came to Judah and Jerusalem, because Jeroboam and his sons had rejected them as priests of the Lord when he appointed his own priests for the high places and for the goat and calf idols he had made. Those from every tribe of Israel who set their hearts on seeking the Lord, the God of Israel, followed the Levites to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to the Lord, the God of their ancestors. They strengthened the kingdom of Judah and supported Rehoboam son of Solomon three years, following the ways of David and Solomon during this time (2 Chronicles 11:13-17). 

What is more, we learn that large numbers from Israel came over to Judah:

Then he assembled all Judah and Benjamin and the people from Ephraim, Manasseh and Simeon who had settled among them, for large numbers had come over to him from Israel when they saw that the Lord his God was with him [i.e. Asa, a king of Judah] (2 Chronicles 15:9).

Therefore, while the house of David had a smaller geographical area when the kingdom was divided, they did not necessarily have a weaker populace. Over time, the Southern Kingdom of Judah, representing the House of David, would endure longer (by approx. 150 years) as an autonomous nation than the Northern Kingdom of Israel, representing the ten tribes of Israel. 

I remember that when I first read about the Israel being divided into ten tribes versus. one tribe, I felt that this division was so lopsided, and that the ten would swallow up the one. But I realized that I was thinking in a wrong way. Just as Solomon's greatness could be destroyed in one generation because of his unfaithfulness to the LORD, even so, one tribe could be greater than ten if the one tribe received the favor of the LORD. And so it was.

Friends, let us also have this view of things. "If God is for us, who can be against us" (Romans 8:31). When the LORD is with us, though we are vastly outnumbered, we are still stronger:

I lie down and sleep;
    I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.
I will not fear though tens of thousands
    assail me on every side (Psalm 3:5-6).

The Father has given us what is most precious to Him, His one and only Son. Therefore, let us not worry or fear that God will not be with us throughout the vicissitudes of life. Instead, let us trust that He is with us always, and let us do our utmost to humbly and faithfully serve Him in this life in keeping with His unique and sovereign design for us. 

Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam fled to Egypt, to Shishak the king, and stayed there until Solomon's death. (1 Kings 11:40 NIV)

Here is an interesting turn of events. Jeroboam was one of Solomon's own officials, who was particularly gifted. So Solomon promotes him and gives him greater responsibility. Then, Ahijah, the prophet, tells Jeroboam that God will take ten tribes of Israel from Solomon and give it to Jeroboam because of Solomon's stubborn idolatry. Solomon apparently gets word of this and seeks to kill Jeroboam.  Does this sound familiar?

Remember King Saul? He saw David's giftedness and made him his armor bearer. Samuel anointed David to be king of Israel in place of Saul. When Saul realized this, he tried to kill David. 

Just like Saul, Solomon began well but ended badly. And when God judged him for it, rather than humbling himself and returning to the LORD, Solomon, just like Saul, tried to take matters into his own hands. This is not wisdom but folly.

But what caused this? One of the reasons Saul disobeyed God in his day was because he feared the people more than God. One of the primary reasons for Solomon's fall is that he held fast to his Canaanite wives in love (1 Kings 11:2), even though the Mosaic law explicitly forbade marrying them. 

I'm sure a Hollywood producer could make a movie out of this, where he would draw out our sympathies for Solomon, who was deeply "in love" with his wives. Now, since polygamy is not so much in vogue today, the producer would likely hone in on Solomon's love for just one of his Canaanite wives. Women would swoon from Solomon's romantic side, which we understand from his writing the Song of Solomon. Men would respect his power, his fame, and his adventurous indulging of every pleasure, which is documented in another book he wrote (i.e. Ecclesiastes). 

Yet, let us be careful to make a right judgment. Neither an emotional tug nor an adrenalin rush is an indication of virtue, only what is in keeping with God's Word. And Solomon loved his women more than God's Word:

King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, "You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods." Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. (1 Kings 11:1, 2 NIV)

Like some Christians today, who think they can convert their unbelieving boyfriend or girlfriend through marriage, Solomon probably thought that he could turn the hearts of these women through his great wisdom. Yet, that is not what happened:

As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done. (1 Kings 11:4-6 NIV)

All you singles, who are dating unbelievers, should take warning from this. Why do you think that you can do what even the wisest man in the world could not? And don't you know, as Solomon shoud have known, that when you disobey God, He will not support your good intentions? 

What lessons can we draw from Solomon? Wisdom does not necessarily guarantee godliness. Even though Solomon wrote that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, knowing this kind of wisdom and doing this wisdom are two different things. If Solomon knew the fear of the LORD, at some point in his life he failed to abide in it. So, although he began wise, he ended a fool. He failed to cultivate wisdom with disciplined discernment by which he could mature in his devotion to the LORD. Therefore, it is in godly wisdom that we should excel both in knowledge and obedience.

Do the various other books, such as The Book of the Acts of Solomon still exist?  Are they used as texts to assist studying the OT?  I recall from readings last year that the lives and rulings of the kings after Solomon are "recorded in such and such book" so on and so forth.  I know that when the Bible was put together in it's current form, certain books were omitted, and I was curious as to whether these books were examples of those.  I don't foresee myself seeking out these books to read them, but wondered from what perspective they are written and who was their audience.  I enjoy that so much about the Gospels, having learned from which perspective they are written and who specifically they are written for.  I wondered if there was an abridged or cliff noted version of these other books.