How could he do it?
After all Solomon had seen and heard, after the Lord had answered his
prayer for wisdom, after he had built and dedicated the temple, after the Lord
had taken up residence there, his throne established, peace throughout the
kingdom, he had it all, and he loved his 700 wives and 300 concubines more than
he loved the Lord. They led him astray
and he built altars to all these gods and worshiped them, how crushing to read
this. Because of all these sins the Lord
took away the kingship from Solomon’s son.
Way back in Noah’s day, when Ham sinned against him, do you remember
what Noah did? He cursed his grandson,
Canaan, instead of Ham, and here the Lord has promised David concerning Solomon
so He keeps covenant with David by allowing Solomon to finish his life as
king. Sadly, all the blessings Solomon
received brought on his own ruin. He couldn’t handle the blessings.
Pilate is a weakling.
He can find no evil Jesus has done and yet, with the power of life and
death in his hands, he hands over Barabbas, has Jesus scourged and orders that
He be crucified. All of this was simply
to satisfy the Jews, to avoid a scene getting any uglier. It was easier to do their bidding than to do
the right thing. The soldiers take
Jesus, beat Him, mock Him, spit on Him and prepare Him for crucifixion. Just reading that description makes me wince
in pain, knowing who He is and the power in Him to stop the entire proceeding
yet the faithfulness to the Father’s will and to us to persevere to the
end. None of this had to happen, Jesus
could have simply risen up and ended it in power and yet He didn’t, as Isaiah
had written, He was like a lamb led to slaughter, a lamb silent before His shearers. The strength required to endure all this
without acting is humbling. We should be
overcome with love for Him.
Worldliness is what ruined Solomon. Bitter jealousy and selfish ambition are what
ruined the religious leaders of Jesus’ day.
These things infect the church at every turn today. Worldliness is a serious problem in the
church, we have plenty of preachers who encourage it by teaching that you can
have everything your heart desires if you just pray and believe or even speak
it and bind God to do something.
Jealousy and ambition ruin preachers and lay people alike and in doing
so ruin churches and damage the reputation of the kingdom of God. James says that friendship with the world is
enmity with God and yet we seek after the things of the world as voracious
consumers of whatever it is that is most fanciful to us and we are all
guilty. A little pain and denial in our
lives ruins us. Jesus showed a different
way and we need to heed James’ warning about our values.
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