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June 22, 2021
The Wisest Man on Earth Becomes a Fool (Walk Thru the Bible Week 21)
Solomon had great wealth and wisdom, yet he became a fool. He loved his pagan wives more than he loved God and he fell into idolatry. God honors his promises to David and does not take the kingdom from Solomon but announces He will take it from Solomon’s predecessor. If only Solomon had followed his own advice in the book of Proverbs.
This episode complements the daily readings from our Walk Thru the Bible reading plan for June 21-27, covering Proverbs, Song of Songs, 1 Kings 11.
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Transcript
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Welcome to Walk Through the Bible, Susan Michael's 12-month journey through the most exciting
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book on the planet.
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It will transform your life one page at a time.
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Be sure to subscribe for future episodes that will ignite your faith and bring your Bible
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to life.
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Now, let's join our host, Susan Michael.
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Well, hey there and welcome back.
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This is Walk Through the Bible Week 21.
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We're reading this week in the Daily Bible, pages 639 to 674, or the dates in the Daily
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Bible of May 21 through the 27th.
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Now last week, we talked about the highlight of Israel's history.
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I mean, we enjoyed the mountaintop view, the Solomonic Kingdom.
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They were in peace.
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They were in prosperity.
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They had a king that was the wealthiest and the wisest man on earth, and they were a light
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to the nations as the kings of the nations were coming up to Jerusalem to learn from
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this wise king Solomon.
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And from there, it's just so hard to understand the rest of that story.
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But first, I want to also review last week, and this week, we're reading in the Proverbs.
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You know, King Solomon is said to have written like 3,000 Proverbs, and a lot of them are
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in the book of Proverbs.
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So I want to know, what's your favorite proverb?
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Probably you're going to say the same one I'm going to say, which is Proverbs 3, 5 through
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6.
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Just trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding in
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all your ways.
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Submit to him, and he will make your path straight.
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Beautiful.
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Words of wisdom for all of us.
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Later in that same chapter, Proverbs 3, verses 11 through 12, also have another, I think,
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very important concept.
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And that verse says, my son do not despise the Lord's discipline, and do not resent
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his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father, the son he delights
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in.
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You know, sometimes we have difficulties in life.
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Sometimes we feel like the Lord may even be correcting us.
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And that's just because he loves us.
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If he didn't love us, then he would just leave us to be.
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And it's the Lord's correction, and even his rebuke is so comforting, because it means
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he sees us as his children, and his great love for us.
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Another one I picked out this week is Proverbs 8, 13.
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To fear the Lord is to hate evil.
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I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior, and perverse speech.
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I really love that verse.
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It's one I take to heart.
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But then there were a couple of funny ones.
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So, you know, I don't know that King Solomon wrote this verse.
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In fact, I would say maybe he probably didn't, because a king would not be aroused in the
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morning by their loud neighbors.
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But it could be that King Solomon heard others complaining about this.
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And so this is what he said, chapter 27, verse 14.
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If anyone loudly blesses their neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse.
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I always laugh about this one.
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Anyone that knows me knows I'm really not a morning person.
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Even if I get up early, I don't want to talk to people, and I don't want to hear from people.
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And so I can really relate to this verse.
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Another verse that men love to quote is from 27, 15, the very next verse.
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And it says, a quarrelsome wife is like the dripping of a leaky roof in a rainstorm.
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Can't you just hear it?
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Drip, drip, drip, is that quarrelsome or contentious wife.
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Well, we have to then talk about Proverbs 31.
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The Proverbs 31 woman, if she's not amazing, and some commentators even say that the description
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of the Proverbs 31 woman is even beyond the norm for the day it was written in.
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And she's in Hebrew, eshet hayil, which means a woman of valor.
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I just want to point out that the word hayil for valor means strength.
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And the same root was used for the modern Hebrew name of a soldier, hayal, because it
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means strength, a soldier, a fighter.
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And so eshet hayil takes on a little bit of a different meaning when you realize that
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same root.
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And I have a personal story I can tell about Proverbs 31.
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This was about 20 years ago, and I had come up with the idea of holding a joint Jewish
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Christian service in Washington, D.C., that we were going to have a day-long conference
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and talk about the history of anti-Semitism in the Christian church.
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And by the way, if that's a history you don't know about, once we finish our walk through
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the Bible, we'll do some episodes about that and talk about that history.
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But so we wanted to do a day-long conference, talk about the history.
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And that evening we wanted to go over to a synagogue and sort of hold a service, a repentance,
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to the Jewish people for that history.
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And so I approached the largest synagogue in D.C., which is a reformed synagogue, very,
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very close to the church that we wanted to use.
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And so the rabbi said that they would talk about it and he'd get back to me.
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So one day he calls me.
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And he said, you know, I really would like to host this, but when I brought it up with
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my board of rabbis, there were some questions and some concerns.
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And so these are some of the things that they asked.
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And he asked me questions.
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I gave him the answers.
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He said, this is great.
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Can you come and meet with my board of rabbis and answer their questions?
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And I thought, sure, if I can do that.
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And I hung up the phone and I thought, whoa, go before the board of rabbis.
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Well, I didn't know what a board of rabbis really was, but it sounded pretty intimidating
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to me.
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I was just a young woman, pretty inexperienced at Jewish-Christian relations.
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And so I got a little nervous about it.
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And the day before I went to meet with the board of rabbis, that morning I just opened
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the Bible.
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And do you know it fell open to Proverbs 31 and verse 26 just jumped off the page right
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into my heart and brought me such peace.
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Now keep in mind, rabbis are very, very trained in the law, the law of Moses, the Torah, all
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of the rabbinic commentary and debates about the law.
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So they are what I would call specialists in the law.
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And here the Lord gives me this verse, verse 26 says, she opens her mouth with wisdom and
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on her tongue is the law of kindness.
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And it just filled me with peace and it just said, just go be a friend.
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Just be a kind, honest, sincere friend.
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And so I went.
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We had a great meeting, they approved the event and we held the event a few months later.
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And I later realized the board of rabbis is the same thing as at a church, what we would
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call our pastoral staff.
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So it's the, you know, the lead pastor, the, say marriage care pastor, the youth pastor,
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they're the same thing in the synagogue.
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And so it was far less intimidating than I was expecting.
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But that's just a story out of the Proverbs 31 woman.
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Now another book that we read this week was the Song of Songs or also known as the Song
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of Solomon.
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This is a love song depicting the wooing and the courtship of what is believed to be a
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female shepherdess with King Solomon.
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And the drama takes place in three scenes or several scenes and it's got three main speakers
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in it.
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The woman, the bride is the Shulamite, the king, which is Solomon.
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And then there is this choir of the daughters of Jerusalem.
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And you know, the, I want to mention that in the Song of Songs 1 verse 14, it mentions
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the vineyards of Ngheti.
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I just wanted to point that out because we talked about Ngheti a couple of weeks ago
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and the waterfall that is there, the oasis in the middle of the desert.
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And I noticed that this also referred to that.
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But the famous verse in Song of Songs is found in chapter 6 verse 3.
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This is one we've all heard.
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I am my beloveds and my beloved is mine.
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In Hebrew that's a knee le do di, le do di, le.
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And a lot of people get wedding bands with that written in the wedding band in Hebrew
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or I guess some in English.
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It's a beautiful verse.
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We all have heard that verse.
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Speaking of love and love songs, as we begin to continue our story now about King Solomon,
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it's actually love that got him in trouble.
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And so it's interesting that we have what we think is a book of love written by King
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Solomon.
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If not, it was written by someone posing to be King Solomon.
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And whereas love of a woman is really what brought his downfall.
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And so I want to tell that story now.
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We read about the Solomon's glory fades.
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The daily Bible has that heading.
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Solomon's glory fades.
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I probably would say it this way.
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Solomon crashes and burns.
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I mean it is a really, really bad fall.
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And it's hard to imagine.
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But we read about it in 1 Kings 11 verses 1 through 13.
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So I want to read some of that.
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King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter, who was
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his first wife.
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Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sedoniites, Hittites, they were from nations about which
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the Lord had told the Israelites, you must not intermarry with them because they will
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surely turn your hearts towards their gods.
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Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love.
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Now I want to stop here because this is a very interesting phrase that he held fast
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to them in love.
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This is a phrase that only appears one other time in scripture and it's in Deuteronomy 11
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where the Israelites are told to hold fast to their God in love.
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And here the writer uses that same phrase which really says it all that Solomon's heart
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was turning away from God and towards his wives.
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It goes on then in verse 3.
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He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines.
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And his wives led him astray.
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As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods and his heart was not
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fully devoted to the Lord his God as the heart of David his father had been.
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Now I want to stop here and explain.
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He had 700 wives of royal birth.
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That means that all of these wives were some type of political alliance that Solomon had
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entered into.
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So a wife differs from a concubine in that a wife is of great worth to the marriage.
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And in probably most of these cases their worth was in a political alliance with another
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country.
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But they also may have been a woman of very high standing and birth and she was able to
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pay a large sum of money in terms of like a dowry.
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And so she was worth a lot.
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She had high standing and therefore her children were able to become heirs to the throne.
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But concubines are women of a lower birth and they were a lower status.
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They were wives but they just were a lower status wife and their children were not qualified
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to become heirs to the throne.
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So he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
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But then it goes on starting in verse 5.
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He followed Ash Torth, the goddess of the Sedonians and Moloch, the detestable god of
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the Ammonites.
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So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
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He did not follow the Lord completely as David, his father, had done.
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Now who is this goddess of Ash Torth that he was worshiping?
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Well she was a fertility goddess.
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She is the forerunner of the Greek god Aphrodite.
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And how do you worship a fertility goddess?
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Well it's through temple prostitutes and a whole sacramental sexual involvement because
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that's how someone who needs fertility gets pregnant.
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And that's how you worship this goddess.
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And then the detestable god of Moloch.
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Well Moloch required that you throw your children, not all of them of course, but that you throw
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children into the fire.
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It was a detestable god.
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These were absolutely detestable practices before the god of Israel.
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And yet Solomon has begun to fall into them and to follow these gods.
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And if you're king, you're a leader.
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So your people are going to follow you.
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So let's think about this for a minute.
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Let me continue on, verse 7, on a hill east of Jerusalem Solomon built a high place for
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chemish or chimish, the detestable god of Moab and for Moloch the detestable god of
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the Ammonites.
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He did the same for all his foreign wives who burned incense and offered sacrifices
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to their god.
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Whoa, let's talk about this.
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So Solomon, the great builder of the temple to the god of Israel, built many other temples.
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And he built them on the hill east of Jerusalem.
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Now this is not the Mount of Olives, which is directly east of the Temple Mount.
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It's the hill that's right below the Mount of Olives.
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It's still on the east side of Jerusalem, but it's sort of southeast.
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And it's known because of this history and other histories as the hill of evil counsel.
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And so it's there that we had all of this pagan worship that the king of Israel not
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only built and entertained but participated in it.
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Today just so happens that on that hill in Jerusalem sits the United Nations.
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And no, you cannot make these things up, that the United Nations is on the hill of evil
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counsel in Jerusalem.
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So Solomon, if you ask me, has crashed and burned.
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He has hit rock bottom spiritually.
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Now Israel and Solomon are no longer alike to the Gentiles if these nations come up to
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receive wisdom from Solomon.
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What are they going to see?
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Going to see them worshiping their gods.
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They're no different whatsoever.
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So the light has gone out.
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Continuing on then in verse 9, the Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned
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away from the Lord the god of Israel who had appeared to him twice.
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Now note there, his heart had turned away from the Lord.
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It was Solomon's heart that led him astray.
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I'm going to come back to that in a minute.
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Continuing on, although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep
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the Lord's command.
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So the Lord said to Solomon, since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant
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and my decrees which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you
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and give it to one of your subordinates.
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Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime.
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I will tear it out of the hand of your son, yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from
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him, but will give him one tribe for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem
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which I have chosen.
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So God is a faithful promise keeping God.
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He made promises to David and so he's telling Solomon, even though you've done these evil
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things I'm going to keep my promise to David and I'm not going to tear the kingdom from
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you but I will tear it from your son.
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And the whole story I find so disturbing because if Solomon had just listened to his own proverbs,
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I mean proverbs 14, 16 said, the wise fear the Lord and shun evil.
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And you know, we know Christian leaders who have also fallen very, very hard and it seems
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like they're at the pinnacle, they have a huge ministry, a huge following, they're doing
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mighty things for the Lord and then all of a sudden we find out about moral failings
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and they're fallen.
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It's so hard to understand and so I don't know, maybe the story of Solomon is an encouragement
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to you that even Solomon fell but it should also probably be discouraging and it shows
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the condition of the human heart.
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It shows how that we all must guard our hearts and we must check ourselves and Solomon didn't
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do that nor did any of these Christian leaders that have fallen into sin.
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That Proverbs 23, 19 says to guard your heart in the way.
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I mean if Solomon had just listened to his own proverbs, in Proverbs 27, 19 it says,
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as in water, face reflects face.
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So in other words, you look in the water, you see the reflection of your face in it.
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As in water, face reflects face, so a man's heart reveals the man.
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Our hearts determine who we are and what we do and that's why it's so important that
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we guard our hearts, that we keep our hearts focused on the Lord and that we clean to him
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with all of our heart because if not our hearts going to clean to something else and that's
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something else will be our downfall.
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You know I want to take just a quick minute to talk about this because God knew from the
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very beginning that the idolatry around his people was going to bring about their downfall
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and so when we look at the stories of the Exodus and the conquering of the land, we
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cringe because God told them to push out, to destroy all the inhabitants, to get rid of
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the pagan worship in the land and the pagans with it because he knew that it would be a
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temptation to his people and of course they didn't do it and look at what happened.
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It brought the downfall of the Davidic kingdom and you know there's a really special verse
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though we'll get to in a minute but it looks like it's really all dying from here.
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It doesn't but it sure looks like it.
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So God has pronounced his judgment on Solomon and what happens next but that there's rebellion
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against Solomon and you know this is a sign.
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It's a sign that God's grace has lifted because when God is with the king the nation is in
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peace but here the first thing that begins to happen is rebellion and this is the story
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of Jeroboam and Jeroboam becomes very important next week so I want to make sure we understand
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the story this week and who he is.
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We read the story in 1 Kings 11 verses 26 through 40 and it says, so Jeroboam son of
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Nebod rebelled against the king.
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He was one of Solomon's officials.
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He was an Ephraimite.
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So it says here is the account of how he rebelled against the king.
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Solomon had built the terraces and had filled in the gap in the wall of the city of David
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his father.
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Now Jeroboam was a man of standing and when Solomon saw how well the young man did his
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work he put him in charge of the whole labor force of the tribes of Joseph.
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So about that time Jeroboam was going out of Jerusalem and Ahijah the prophet of Shiloh
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or Shiloh met him on the way wearing a new cloak.
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The two of them were alone in the country and Ahijah took hold of the new cloak he was
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wearing and tore it into 12 pieces.
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Then he said to Jeroboam, take 10 pieces for yourself for this is what the Lord the God
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of Israel says.
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See I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon's hand and give you 10 tribes.
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But for the sake of my servant David and the city of Jerusalem which I have chosen out
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of all the tribes of Israel he will have one tribe.
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I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ash Toreth the goddess of
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the Sidonians, Chemish the god of the Moabites, and Moloch the god of the Ammonites, and have
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not walked in obedience to me nor done what is right in my eyes nor kept my decrees and
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laws as David Solomon's father did.
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But I will not take the whole kingdom out of Solomon's hand.
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I have made him ruler all the days of his life for the sake of David my servant.
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I am going to jump down to verse 38.
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If you do whatever I command you and walk in obedience to me and do what is right in
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my eyes by obeying my decrees and commands as David my servant did I will be with you.
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I will build you a dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David and will give Israel
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to you.
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I will humble David's descendants because of this, but not forever.
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Then Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam fled to Egypt to she-shock-the-king and stayed
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there until Solomon's death.
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So God has made an amazing promise to Jeroboam.
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He said, I will give you a dynasty as enduring as the one I've given David if you just obey
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my decrees and my laws.
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And of course once Solomon heard about this he tried to kill Jeroboam so Jeroboam flees
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for safety to Egypt.
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I want to point out here in the story God's faithfulness to his servant David.
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He made promises to David he will fulfill them.
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And he says here the very last line to Jeroboam he says, I will humble David's descendants
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because of this, but not forever.
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So my friends, it's not all over for Israel or the Davidic dynasty, but it is for a while
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as he humbles the lineage of David through King Solomon.
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So what a faithful God that we serve.
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So that does it for this week.
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I will see you back here next week as we continue this story.
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And until then, God bless.
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We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Out of Zion with Susan Michael.
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Be sure to subscribe to Out of Zion now on Apple Podcasts, CPNshows.com, YouTube, or
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wherever you like to listen and learn.
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Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJUSA, All Rights Reserved.
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Welcome to Walk Through the Bible, Susan Michael's 12-month journey through the most exciting
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book on the planet.
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It will transform your life one page at a time.
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Be sure to subscribe for future episodes that will ignite your faith and bring your Bible
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to life.
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Now, let's join our host, Susan Michael.
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Well, hey there and welcome back.
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This is Walk Through the Bible Week 21.
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We're reading this week in the Daily Bible, pages 639 to 674, or the dates in the Daily
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Bible of May 21 through the 27th.
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Now last week, we talked about the highlight of Israel's history.
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I mean, we enjoyed the mountaintop view, the Solomonic Kingdom.
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They were in peace.
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They were in prosperity.
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They had a king that was the wealthiest and the wisest man on earth, and they were a light
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to the nations as the kings of the nations were coming up to Jerusalem to learn from
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this wise king Solomon.
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And from there, it's just so hard to understand the rest of that story.
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But first, I want to also review last week, and this week, we're reading in the Proverbs.
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You know, King Solomon is said to have written like 3,000 Proverbs, and a lot of them are
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in the book of Proverbs.
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So I want to know, what's your favorite proverb?
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Probably you're going to say the same one I'm going to say, which is Proverbs 3, 5 through
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6.
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Just trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding in
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all your ways.
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Submit to him, and he will make your path straight.
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Beautiful.
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Words of wisdom for all of us.
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Later in that same chapter, Proverbs 3, verses 11 through 12, also have another, I think,
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very important concept.
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And that verse says, my son do not despise the Lord's discipline, and do not resent
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his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves as a father, the son he delights
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in.
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You know, sometimes we have difficulties in life.
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Sometimes we feel like the Lord may even be correcting us.
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And that's just because he loves us.
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If he didn't love us, then he would just leave us to be.
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And it's the Lord's correction, and even his rebuke is so comforting, because it means
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he sees us as his children, and his great love for us.
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Another one I picked out this week is Proverbs 8, 13.
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To fear the Lord is to hate evil.
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I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior, and perverse speech.
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I really love that verse.
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It's one I take to heart.
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But then there were a couple of funny ones.
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So, you know, I don't know that King Solomon wrote this verse.
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In fact, I would say maybe he probably didn't, because a king would not be aroused in the
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morning by their loud neighbors.
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But it could be that King Solomon heard others complaining about this.
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And so this is what he said, chapter 27, verse 14.
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If anyone loudly blesses their neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse.
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I always laugh about this one.
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Anyone that knows me knows I'm really not a morning person.
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Even if I get up early, I don't want to talk to people, and I don't want to hear from people.
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And so I can really relate to this verse.
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Another verse that men love to quote is from 27, 15, the very next verse.
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And it says, a quarrelsome wife is like the dripping of a leaky roof in a rainstorm.
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Can't you just hear it?
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Drip, drip, drip, is that quarrelsome or contentious wife.
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Well, we have to then talk about Proverbs 31.
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The Proverbs 31 woman, if she's not amazing, and some commentators even say that the description
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of the Proverbs 31 woman is even beyond the norm for the day it was written in.
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And she's in Hebrew, eshet hayil, which means a woman of valor.
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I just want to point out that the word hayil for valor means strength.
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And the same root was used for the modern Hebrew name of a soldier, hayal, because it
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means strength, a soldier, a fighter.
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And so eshet hayil takes on a little bit of a different meaning when you realize that
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same root.
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And I have a personal story I can tell about Proverbs 31.
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This was about 20 years ago, and I had come up with the idea of holding a joint Jewish
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Christian service in Washington, D.C., that we were going to have a day-long conference
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and talk about the history of anti-Semitism in the Christian church.
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And by the way, if that's a history you don't know about, once we finish our walk through
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the Bible, we'll do some episodes about that and talk about that history.
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But so we wanted to do a day-long conference, talk about the history.
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And that evening we wanted to go over to a synagogue and sort of hold a service, a repentance,
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to the Jewish people for that history.
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And so I approached the largest synagogue in D.C., which is a reformed synagogue, very,
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very close to the church that we wanted to use.
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And so the rabbi said that they would talk about it and he'd get back to me.
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So one day he calls me.
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And he said, you know, I really would like to host this, but when I brought it up with
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my board of rabbis, there were some questions and some concerns.
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And so these are some of the things that they asked.
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And he asked me questions.
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I gave him the answers.
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He said, this is great.
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Can you come and meet with my board of rabbis and answer their questions?
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And I thought, sure, if I can do that.
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And I hung up the phone and I thought, whoa, go before the board of rabbis.
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Well, I didn't know what a board of rabbis really was, but it sounded pretty intimidating
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to me.
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I was just a young woman, pretty inexperienced at Jewish-Christian relations.
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And so I got a little nervous about it.
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And the day before I went to meet with the board of rabbis, that morning I just opened
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the Bible.
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And do you know it fell open to Proverbs 31 and verse 26 just jumped off the page right
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into my heart and brought me such peace.
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Now keep in mind, rabbis are very, very trained in the law, the law of Moses, the Torah, all
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of the rabbinic commentary and debates about the law.
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So they are what I would call specialists in the law.
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And here the Lord gives me this verse, verse 26 says, she opens her mouth with wisdom and
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on her tongue is the law of kindness.
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And it just filled me with peace and it just said, just go be a friend.
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Just be a kind, honest, sincere friend.
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And so I went.
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We had a great meeting, they approved the event and we held the event a few months later.
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And I later realized the board of rabbis is the same thing as at a church, what we would
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call our pastoral staff.
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So it's the, you know, the lead pastor, the, say marriage care pastor, the youth pastor,
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they're the same thing in the synagogue.
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And so it was far less intimidating than I was expecting.
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But that's just a story out of the Proverbs 31 woman.
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Now another book that we read this week was the Song of Songs or also known as the Song
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of Solomon.
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This is a love song depicting the wooing and the courtship of what is believed to be a
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female shepherdess with King Solomon.
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And the drama takes place in three scenes or several scenes and it's got three main speakers
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in it.
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The woman, the bride is the Shulamite, the king, which is Solomon.
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And then there is this choir of the daughters of Jerusalem.
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And you know, the, I want to mention that in the Song of Songs 1 verse 14, it mentions
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the vineyards of Ngheti.
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I just wanted to point that out because we talked about Ngheti a couple of weeks ago
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and the waterfall that is there, the oasis in the middle of the desert.
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And I noticed that this also referred to that.
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But the famous verse in Song of Songs is found in chapter 6 verse 3.
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This is one we've all heard.
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I am my beloveds and my beloved is mine.
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In Hebrew that's a knee le do di, le do di, le.
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And a lot of people get wedding bands with that written in the wedding band in Hebrew
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or I guess some in English.
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It's a beautiful verse.
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We all have heard that verse.
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Speaking of love and love songs, as we begin to continue our story now about King Solomon,
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it's actually love that got him in trouble.
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And so it's interesting that we have what we think is a book of love written by King
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Solomon.
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If not, it was written by someone posing to be King Solomon.
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And whereas love of a woman is really what brought his downfall.
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And so I want to tell that story now.
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We read about the Solomon's glory fades.
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The daily Bible has that heading.
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Solomon's glory fades.
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I probably would say it this way.
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Solomon crashes and burns.
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I mean it is a really, really bad fall.
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And it's hard to imagine.
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But we read about it in 1 Kings 11 verses 1 through 13.
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So I want to read some of that.
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King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughter, who was
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his first wife.
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Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sedoniites, Hittites, they were from nations about which
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the Lord had told the Israelites, you must not intermarry with them because they will
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surely turn your hearts towards their gods.
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Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love.
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Now I want to stop here because this is a very interesting phrase that he held fast
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to them in love.
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This is a phrase that only appears one other time in scripture and it's in Deuteronomy 11
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where the Israelites are told to hold fast to their God in love.
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And here the writer uses that same phrase which really says it all that Solomon's heart
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was turning away from God and towards his wives.
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It goes on then in verse 3.
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He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines.
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And his wives led him astray.
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As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods and his heart was not
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fully devoted to the Lord his God as the heart of David his father had been.
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Now I want to stop here and explain.
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He had 700 wives of royal birth.
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That means that all of these wives were some type of political alliance that Solomon had
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entered into.
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So a wife differs from a concubine in that a wife is of great worth to the marriage.
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And in probably most of these cases their worth was in a political alliance with another
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country.
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But they also may have been a woman of very high standing and birth and she was able to
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pay a large sum of money in terms of like a dowry.
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And so she was worth a lot.
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She had high standing and therefore her children were able to become heirs to the throne.
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But concubines are women of a lower birth and they were a lower status.
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They were wives but they just were a lower status wife and their children were not qualified
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to become heirs to the throne.
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So he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
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But then it goes on starting in verse 5.
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He followed Ash Torth, the goddess of the Sedonians and Moloch, the detestable god of
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the Ammonites.
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So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
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He did not follow the Lord completely as David, his father, had done.
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Now who is this goddess of Ash Torth that he was worshiping?
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Well she was a fertility goddess.
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She is the forerunner of the Greek god Aphrodite.
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And how do you worship a fertility goddess?
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Well it's through temple prostitutes and a whole sacramental sexual involvement because
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that's how someone who needs fertility gets pregnant.
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And that's how you worship this goddess.
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And then the detestable god of Moloch.
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Well Moloch required that you throw your children, not all of them of course, but that you throw
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children into the fire.
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It was a detestable god.
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These were absolutely detestable practices before the god of Israel.
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And yet Solomon has begun to fall into them and to follow these gods.
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And if you're king, you're a leader.
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So your people are going to follow you.
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So let's think about this for a minute.
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Let me continue on, verse 7, on a hill east of Jerusalem Solomon built a high place for
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chemish or chimish, the detestable god of Moab and for Moloch the detestable god of
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the Ammonites.
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He did the same for all his foreign wives who burned incense and offered sacrifices
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to their god.
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Whoa, let's talk about this.
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So Solomon, the great builder of the temple to the god of Israel, built many other temples.
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And he built them on the hill east of Jerusalem.
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Now this is not the Mount of Olives, which is directly east of the Temple Mount.
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It's the hill that's right below the Mount of Olives.
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It's still on the east side of Jerusalem, but it's sort of southeast.
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And it's known because of this history and other histories as the hill of evil counsel.
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And so it's there that we had all of this pagan worship that the king of Israel not
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only built and entertained but participated in it.
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Today just so happens that on that hill in Jerusalem sits the United Nations.
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And no, you cannot make these things up, that the United Nations is on the hill of evil
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counsel in Jerusalem.
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So Solomon, if you ask me, has crashed and burned.
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He has hit rock bottom spiritually.
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Now Israel and Solomon are no longer alike to the Gentiles if these nations come up to
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receive wisdom from Solomon.
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What are they going to see?
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Going to see them worshiping their gods.
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They're no different whatsoever.
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So the light has gone out.
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Continuing on then in verse 9, the Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned
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away from the Lord the god of Israel who had appeared to him twice.
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Now note there, his heart had turned away from the Lord.
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It was Solomon's heart that led him astray.
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I'm going to come back to that in a minute.
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Continuing on, although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep
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the Lord's command.
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So the Lord said to Solomon, since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant
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and my decrees which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you
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and give it to one of your subordinates.
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Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime.
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I will tear it out of the hand of your son, yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from
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him, but will give him one tribe for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem
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which I have chosen.
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So God is a faithful promise keeping God.
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He made promises to David and so he's telling Solomon, even though you've done these evil
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things I'm going to keep my promise to David and I'm not going to tear the kingdom from
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you but I will tear it from your son.
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And the whole story I find so disturbing because if Solomon had just listened to his own proverbs,
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I mean proverbs 14, 16 said, the wise fear the Lord and shun evil.
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And you know, we know Christian leaders who have also fallen very, very hard and it seems
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like they're at the pinnacle, they have a huge ministry, a huge following, they're doing
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mighty things for the Lord and then all of a sudden we find out about moral failings
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and they're fallen.
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It's so hard to understand and so I don't know, maybe the story of Solomon is an encouragement
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to you that even Solomon fell but it should also probably be discouraging and it shows
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the condition of the human heart.
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It shows how that we all must guard our hearts and we must check ourselves and Solomon didn't
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do that nor did any of these Christian leaders that have fallen into sin.
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That Proverbs 23, 19 says to guard your heart in the way.
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I mean if Solomon had just listened to his own proverbs, in Proverbs 27, 19 it says,
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as in water, face reflects face.
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So in other words, you look in the water, you see the reflection of your face in it.
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As in water, face reflects face, so a man's heart reveals the man.
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Our hearts determine who we are and what we do and that's why it's so important that
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we guard our hearts, that we keep our hearts focused on the Lord and that we clean to him
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with all of our heart because if not our hearts going to clean to something else and that's
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something else will be our downfall.
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You know I want to take just a quick minute to talk about this because God knew from the
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very beginning that the idolatry around his people was going to bring about their downfall
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and so when we look at the stories of the Exodus and the conquering of the land, we
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cringe because God told them to push out, to destroy all the inhabitants, to get rid of
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the pagan worship in the land and the pagans with it because he knew that it would be a
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temptation to his people and of course they didn't do it and look at what happened.
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It brought the downfall of the Davidic kingdom and you know there's a really special verse
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though we'll get to in a minute but it looks like it's really all dying from here.
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It doesn't but it sure looks like it.
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So God has pronounced his judgment on Solomon and what happens next but that there's rebellion
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against Solomon and you know this is a sign.
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It's a sign that God's grace has lifted because when God is with the king the nation is in
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peace but here the first thing that begins to happen is rebellion and this is the story
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of Jeroboam and Jeroboam becomes very important next week so I want to make sure we understand
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the story this week and who he is.
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We read the story in 1 Kings 11 verses 26 through 40 and it says, so Jeroboam son of
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Nebod rebelled against the king.
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He was one of Solomon's officials.
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He was an Ephraimite.
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So it says here is the account of how he rebelled against the king.
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Solomon had built the terraces and had filled in the gap in the wall of the city of David
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his father.
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Now Jeroboam was a man of standing and when Solomon saw how well the young man did his
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work he put him in charge of the whole labor force of the tribes of Joseph.
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So about that time Jeroboam was going out of Jerusalem and Ahijah the prophet of Shiloh
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or Shiloh met him on the way wearing a new cloak.
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The two of them were alone in the country and Ahijah took hold of the new cloak he was
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wearing and tore it into 12 pieces.
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Then he said to Jeroboam, take 10 pieces for yourself for this is what the Lord the God
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of Israel says.
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See I am going to tear the kingdom out of Solomon's hand and give you 10 tribes.
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But for the sake of my servant David and the city of Jerusalem which I have chosen out
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of all the tribes of Israel he will have one tribe.
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I will do this because they have forsaken me and worshiped Ash Toreth the goddess of
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the Sidonians, Chemish the god of the Moabites, and Moloch the god of the Ammonites, and have
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not walked in obedience to me nor done what is right in my eyes nor kept my decrees and
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laws as David Solomon's father did.
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But I will not take the whole kingdom out of Solomon's hand.
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I have made him ruler all the days of his life for the sake of David my servant.
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I am going to jump down to verse 38.
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If you do whatever I command you and walk in obedience to me and do what is right in
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my eyes by obeying my decrees and commands as David my servant did I will be with you.
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I will build you a dynasty as enduring as the one I built for David and will give Israel
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to you.
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I will humble David's descendants because of this, but not forever.
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Then Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam fled to Egypt to she-shock-the-king and stayed
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there until Solomon's death.
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So God has made an amazing promise to Jeroboam.
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He said, I will give you a dynasty as enduring as the one I've given David if you just obey
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my decrees and my laws.
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And of course once Solomon heard about this he tried to kill Jeroboam so Jeroboam flees
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for safety to Egypt.
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I want to point out here in the story God's faithfulness to his servant David.
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He made promises to David he will fulfill them.
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And he says here the very last line to Jeroboam he says, I will humble David's descendants
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because of this, but not forever.
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So my friends, it's not all over for Israel or the Davidic dynasty, but it is for a while
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as he humbles the lineage of David through King Solomon.
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So what a faithful God that we serve.
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So that does it for this week.
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I will see you back here next week as we continue this story.
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And until then, God bless.
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We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Out of Zion with Susan Michael.
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Be sure to subscribe to Out of Zion now on Apple Podcasts, CPNshows.com, YouTube, or
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wherever you like to listen and learn.
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Out of Zion with Susan Michael is a production of ICEJUSA, All Rights Reserved.
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