This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back to our second week of studying through 1 and 2 Kings. We're in day
4 of that second week and we're looking at really chapters 3 to 11 in one sense
of 1 Kings as we talk about Solomon's surprise ending. Some things about Solomon
that his wisdom, even though he was the greatest man of wisdom that ever walked
this earth, God said he was, even though he had all that wisdom, they could not
protect him from these three things.

Yesterday we talked about the fact that you've got to make sure you don't run
out of dreams. If you want to live the rest of your life with faith, don't run
out of dreams. Second lesson from Solomon is don't fall out of love.

Do not fall out of love. When you fall out of love with the Lord, you will fall
into all kinds of sin. No matter how long you've been a Christian, Christianity
is not some job where you earn security or seniority on the basis of being there
such a long time as a Christian.

Like somehow, well, I've been a Christian 20 years so I would never sin again.
No, it's a relationship. It's a relationship.

And you know relationships have ups and downs and they are either growing or
they're declining. It is a relationship that demands a continuing strength of
love. Solomon fell out of love with the Lord.

Why did he fall out of love with the Lord? Because he fell in love with sin. He
fell in love with sin and this is important to understand because his values
began to change and his values changing caused him to fall in love with sin.

There are four specific sins in Solomon's later life that show how these values
began to change. Four warnings for all of us in the life of Solomon. First you
see in these chapters, chapter 3 to 11 that he began to value power above
wisdom.

Even though he had wisdom, sometimes we start to value something we don't have.
It's the strangest thing. You have the greatest love in your family, the
greatest blessing of love, but you start to value possessions for some reason.

You start to value what you don't have. That's Satan's trap. And he began to
value power above wisdom.

Now as we walk through each of these things that Solomon began to value in the
wrong way, I want to do something with you. I want to go back to usually the
book of Deuteronomy and show you how God had warned the kings of Israel against
the very things that Solomon's going to come up against. So if he'd just read
God's word, he would have understood what he was going to face.

I want you to hear the warning from Deuteronomy and then hear how Solomon's
values had changed to go against those warnings. Back in the book of
Deuteronomy, chapter 7, beginning in verse 1, "When the Lord your God brings you
into the land, you are entering to possess and drives out before you the many
nations, the Hittites and the Girgussites and the Amorites and the Canaanites
and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Debusites, seven nations larger and
stronger than you. And when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and
you've defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.

Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. Don't intermarry with them.
Don't give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,
for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods.

And the Lord's anger will burn against you and he will quickly destroy you. "
This is God's warning to the entire nation of Israel in this case. In 1 Kings 3,
1, Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he married his
daughter.

And he brought her to the city of David until he finished building his palace in
the temple of the Lord, the wall around Jerusalem. He married the daughter of
the Pharaoh because there was power in Egypt. And by marrying that daughter, he
had made a powerful alliance.

But Deuteronomy tells us he was disobeying God when he did that. Do not
intermarry. He did it.

He did exactly what God told him not to do. Why did he do it? Maybe it was
because he felt good.

Maybe he really loved this woman. It certainly was because it seemed to be the
right thing to do. We read later in 1 Kings that she was of royal birth, so he
was making these valuable alliances with foreign powers.

But look at where it led him. It led to his downfall. One of the things that you
and I have to learn through life is that common sense and wisdom are not always
the same thing.

Sometimes common sense will cause you to do the wrong thing. Even the sinful
thing. The Bible says there is a way that seems right to a man, to a woman.

But in the end, it's the way of death. It seemed right to make all these
alliances. It made Israel a more powerful nation.

But God had said, "Don't do it because I want your heart to always be pure
towards me. " Now you might remember, we studied a few weeks ago, that God
appeared the first time to Solomon when he went up to Gibeon to a high place, to
a place where he wasn't supposed to be. God in his grace was working in spite of
the sin in Solomon's life.

That does not mean that those sins will not someday catch up with us. You don't
assume upon his grace. Just because God in his grace worked in your life, even
though you were disobeying in this circumstance or you were walking against him
in this circumstance, you were doing what he said not to do in this
circumstance, you don't start to assume, "Oh, then I can just sin all the time
and God's going to just keep working the same way.

" Of course not. Don't assume upon the grace of God. Solomon did that.

He valued power over wisdom. A second thing that he valued is he valued
popularity above wisdom. And again, let me read the warning from Deuteronomy and
then the action that Solomon took.

Deuteronomy 7. 5 says about the false kings and idols of the peoples who were in
the land, "This is what you're to do to them. Break down their altars and smash
their sacred stones.

Cut down their asher poles and burn their idols in the fire. " But 1 Kings 3. 3,
"Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the statues of his
father David, except that he offered sacrifices and he burned incense on the
high places.

" These high places were places where the worship of false idols was going on.
They were popular places to go. People loved to go there.

People loved to trust in false idols because it seems like a very visible way to
guarantee that the good crop is going to come in or that the baby is going to
come or that your life is going to be blessed. They would do visible things and
they would do, in very strong ways, very evil things before God because they
trusted in some stone idol rather than in the true God. And Solomon, because
everybody else was doing it, he was a popular king, he went and he did the same
thing.

His decision was popular, but it wasn't obedient. A third thing that Solomon
began to value above wisdom that was his downfall was he valued possessions
above wisdom. He struggled with greed, with a desire for more, just for the sake
of having more.

Again, let's look at Deuteronomy, what God had warned him against, and then look
at first kings and what he did. Deuteronomy 17, 16 to 17. The king, now this
one's directly written to the king, "The king, moreover, must not acquire great
numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of
them.

For the Lord has told you, you're not to go back that way again. He must not
take many wives or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large
amounts of silver and gold.

" Now listen to what Solomon did in 1 Kings 10, 26 to 28. "Solomon accumulated
chariots and horses. He had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses, which he kept in
the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.

The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones and cedar as plentiful as
sycamore fig trees in the foothills. Solomon's horses were imported from Egypt
and from Q. The royal merchants purchased them from Q.

Solomon had been told in Deuteronomy, "The king must not have a lot of horses. "
He gets 12,000 of them. He's told in Deuteronomy, "Don't get them from Egypt,
especially don't get any horses from Egypt.

" He gets them from Egypt. He directly violates what God tells him not to do.
His wisdom and power caused him to think that he was somehow above God's word
and his desire for more becomes his downfall.

He changed his values and so he stopped listening. And then finally he valued
passion above wisdom. We just read about that.

Deuteronomy 17, 17, "He must not take many wives or his heart will be led
astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. " First Kings
11, 3, he had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines and his wives led him
astray.

Exactly what God said would happen in Deuteronomy is what happens. Solomon is
seduced by sex. A thousand wives and concubines.

First Kings 11, 3 to 4 says, "As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart
after other gods and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord as God, as the
heart of David his father had been. " Exactly what God said would happen did
happen, did happen. What kept David faithful to the end?

Solomon turns away at the end. What kept David faithful to the end? He loved the
Lord.

The way to stay away from sin in your life is your love for the Lord. God was a
man after God's own heart. Your greatest protection against sin is your love for
the Lord and you knowing his love for you.

We're going to focus in on that a little bit more tomorrow as we look at one
final thing to be afraid of that we learned from Solomon. But for today, these
warnings that he gives us about the values and the things that we value most,
this is a matter of prayer. Me before God saying, "God help me to value what you
want, so would you pray with me?

" I just simply pray, "God, in those times when I value my pleasure or passion
or my popularity or my possessions or my power the way I look before others,
when I value those things more than I value my relationship with you, I know I'm
in a dangerous place. I know my life is headed away from joy rather than towards
joy. God, I know that you forgive sin and I thank you for your forgiveness.

But I also know that you lead me out of sin and I pray that you would one step
at a time, one day at a time. Lord, help me to hear in the warning of the life
of Solomon, a warning from my life, I don't want to build my life on things that
aren't going to last. I want to build my life on the values of knowing you and
loving you, what's going to last for eternity.

And so I make a fresh commitment to that right now in my heart. In Jesus' name,
Amen.