[0:00] I'd like you to turn to Hosea, not because we are going to be there for our study, because we aren't. But I do want to read the first chapter and kind of set the stage for it, because we are going to be engaging background material, and you will see right at the outset, as we begin reading Hosea, that there is a very controversial issue that surfaces.
[0:24] We'll talk just a little bit about that, and then we'll immediately go to the background material, which will be back in 1 Kings. So I'm reading from the New American Standard, and we'll be sharing with you those first 11 verses of the first chapter, and then we will revert to some background material.
[0:43] So it will not take you long to spot the controversy and the real question that surfaces here, even before we really get much into the book. So let's start with verse 1 then.
[0:53] The word of the Lord, which came to Hosea, the son of Beri, during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel.
[1:14] And this, by the way, this Jeroboam is Jeroboam the second, not the first, and that does make a difference. You'll see why later. When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry.
[1:41] For the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord. So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
[1:57] And the Lord said to him, Name him Jezreel, for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.
[2:16] Now, if you want to insert a date here, we're talking about approximately, give or take a few years, 720 B.C. This is approximately 720 years before the birth of Christ.
[2:34] That's how far back Hosea is going. And it will come about on that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.
[2:49] Then she conceived again, and gave birth to a daughter. And the Lord said to him, Name her Loruhamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel that I should ever forgive them.
[3:07] But I will have compassion on the house of Judah, and deliver them by the Lord their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses, or horsemen.
[3:23] When she had weaned Loruhamah, she conceived and gave birth to a son. And the Lord said, Name him, Lo, am I, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.
[3:41] Yet the number of the sons of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And it will come about, that in the place where it is said to them, You are not my people, it will be said to them, You are the sons of the living God.
[4:02] And the sons of Judah, and the sons of Israel, will be gathered together, and they will appoint for themselves one leader, and they will go up from the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.
[4:19] This is a remarkable passage, and I've already alluded to it just by reading it, the strange demand that God makes of Hosea to marry a woman who is a known prostitute.
[4:30] And of course, the issue surfaces as to whether this is real, whether it's a metaphor or a figure or something like that, or whether God actually made that demand of him.
[4:42] So that's something you can be thinking about and allowing to germinate in your own mind regarding pros and cons, and eventually we'll get to that and to the morality of the issue. Now I'd like to take you back just about, just about, let's see, boy, I can't believe it.
[5:00] It's been 1957. That would be in the, about this time of the year, yes, this time of the year in 1957, I was a freshman student, 22 years old, in the class of Dr. Arthur Williams at Cedarville College, and there I was being subjected to a case of Old Testament survey.
[5:30] Having been a believer for about 10 months and having no spiritual background, biblical background, I didn't even have a background of the Bible stories that so many people have, I was absolutely lost.
[5:46] And we were in the Old Testament with this Old Testament survey dealing with all of these kings and all of these prophets, and man, they just all ran together, and I was so confused and so discouraged, you can't believe it.
[5:59] And I labored and sweated out, and I got a D in that course, Old Testament survey. I'll never forget how I struggled with that thing, and it was almost enough to make me just throw in the towel and say, forget this.
[6:16] But I stuck with it, and the grace of God got me through it. And I can't tell you what a huge breakthrough it was when I learned something that was just an eye-popping significance, and it's probably old hat to you all, but it was such a revelation to me, the distinction between Israel and Judah.
[6:40] And I kind of thought that they were the same, and it was very confusing. And then some of the kings have the same names, and some of the prophets even have the name of a king.
[6:55] And that too was confusing. So I was just swimming in this and really over my head. And then when I realized that, it was just a real breakthrough. And what we're going to do for background material, and I think this is really necessary because in order to get the real impact of Hosea, you've got to understand the times in which he was writing and what the issues were that they were actually dealing with at that time.
[7:21] So that's going to necessitate our going back to 1 Kings, and we are going to engage the declining years of Solomon. And Solomon remains to this day, at least for me, a huge enigma.
[7:38] And I have real difficulty computing an essential understanding of this man Solomon because he just blows me away with his brilliance and wisdom on the one hand, and yet his flaws and failures on the other hand.
[8:00] And you try to marry those two and understand, what was it about this guy that made him go off on the tangent that he did when the scriptures refer to him as having been the wisest individual who ever lived?
[8:17] And yet, he did some really stupid things that just defies comprehension. And we can open that for discussion too. And by the way, speaking of discussion, I want you all to feel free to interrupt me at any point.
[8:31] And if I don't see that you want to talk, just put your hand up or something. We'll stop right there and engage whatever you want to talk about because that might be the most important part of the whole session.
[8:43] So what we're going to do is go back to 1 Kings, 1 Kings chapter 11. And these represent the twilight days of Solomon the king.
[8:56] It's often been said that there's no fool like an old fool. And he might have been the one about whom that phrase was coined. I don't know. But he sure pulled some boners. Chapter 11, 1 Kings.
[9:09] And this is going to be right in the ballpark chronologically of the beginning of the ministry of Hosea.
[9:21] Now, King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh. And of course, she would have been an Egyptian.
[9:34] Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women. I mean, this guy had a harem full, did he not?
[9:50] And Hittite women from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, you shall not associate with them, neither shall they associate with you.
[10:09] Why? Because they will surely turn your heart away after their gods. How could that be?
[10:21] And I want to just pose one really important thing here, and then we'll move on. And the answer is very simple. How the loyalty of these people was deterred from the one true God to these foreign women is answerable, I think, in only one way, and that is the God they were supposed to worship was a God they could not see and did not see.
[10:54] But the women with whom they consorted, they could, and they did. And I think it has ever been established that the male of the species is attracted to the female of the species through the eye gate almost exclusively.
[11:14] And it is as old as Adam and Eve that man sees what he likes and he pursues it. That's the whole basis of boy-meet-girl thing.
[11:25] And yet, there is no visualization with the true God because God is spirit. Now, there are cases in the Old Testament, and we could visit those in Genesis, where God did take on a pre-incarnate manifestation of humanity like we saw Sunday with Abraham and later with Moses and also with Joshua where he did appear to them in human form, but by and large that was not done.
[11:54] And God had already stipulated through Moses that you are not to make any graven images or any idols or anything in the likeness of any figure, of any physical figure to represent deity.
[12:12] And yes, this of course is what they continue to do. And the reason I think is so obvious it is because man wants to see something.
[12:24] He wants to handle something. He wants to connect with the physical. And he reduces the God of heaven in many ways to a physical form. And yet, when you do that, you are suggesting a severe limitation on the deity.
[12:41] And there is no limitation on the deity. And this is why, among other reasons, God told them, don't try to reduce me to some idol or statue or something like that.
[12:52] Because he, of course, transcends that greatly. And yet, man has this innate sense, this innate desire, compulsion, to connect with something physical, something he can see.
[13:05] And that's the whole basis, by the way, of the idol worship. And when we engage the subject of idol worship, does anybody remember the two basic reasons why people would worship idols, statues, etc., as we saw in the Old Testament?
[13:21] Anybody remember the two basic things behind it? Do you idol worship? This goes all the way back to Genesis. We saw that earlier with the establishment of the household gods that Rachel stole from her father Laban and tried to escape with them, etc., these household deities.
[13:40] The whole concept of idol worship goes all the way back to Genesis and is predicated upon two things. This is why people engage in idol worship, idolatry.
[13:52] The first thing is for the appeasement of an imaginary deity. Now, the deity is not imaginary to them.
[14:03] They think it's real. They think that there is a real deity, a real god behind the idol that they are worshiping, and that this idol is the physical manifestation of that god.
[14:20] And Paul makes it very clear when he writes to the Corinthians that those who sacrifice sacrifice to idols are in actuality sacrificing to demons, and they don't even know it.
[14:32] Because these idols are man-made, they are conjured up from human imagination, they have no objective reality at all, they simply do not exist.
[14:44] So they create them from Romans 1, from their darkened mind, their darkened imaginations, they contrive these idols, and they make sacrifices to them, they worship them, they bow down to them in an effort to appease the gods that they think are behind that idol, so that they will not have any calamity or catastrophe befall them.
[15:10] The idea is you pay off the god, you're paying protection, if you will, and you make sacrifices and you worship this supposed deity with the idea that he will not harm you, that he will look out for you.
[15:26] It is an appeasement thing. And the other factor of that is that you hope to obtain something from the deity in a positive way. So there are those two things.
[15:37] One is appeasement, the other is acquisition, and the deity is appealed to, in a prayerful way, is appealed to and besought for either wealth or prosperity of some kind, an increase in cattle or lands or whatever, or to be successful in the pursuit of another person in love, such as the Greeks had their goddess Diana and the Romans did, and then there were the goddess of love, Amor and Eros and all of this, and all of this is strictly imaginary, but it was very real to them.
[16:20] So there is a two-fold prong as to why people engaged in idolatry. One was for appeasement, and the other was for acquisition. The prayer was either for wisdom or for this, and sometimes it was for fertility.
[16:35] All of the gods of Baal that we see so often in the Old Testament, they're called the Baals, B-A-A-L-S. They are gods and goddesses of fertility, and you appeal to them, and supposedly they would open the womb, and that you would have a multitude of children.
[16:54] So the whole thing is steeped in paganism, idolatry. God has told them, don't do this. Don't even make these graven images. But of course that did not prevent them from doing it.
[17:07] They did it anyway. And we read in verse 4, I'm sorry, let's repeat verse 2. from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the sons of Israel, you shall not associate with them, neither shall they associate with you, for they will surely turn your heart away after their gods.
[17:29] Solomon held fast to these in love, and he had 700 wives, he was a busy man, and by the way, be reminded this was before Viagra or Cialis, so I don't know what for sure was taking place here, but he was some kind of character, was he not?
[17:55] 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned his heart away. How could they do that?
[18:07] It's very simple. I think any man ought to be able to understand this. The power of the feminine mystique is something for which no man is a match, unless he's got peculiarities in other directions, if you get my direction.
[18:24] And you know, by the way, this is the whole basis for women being attired as they are in the Mideast. This is part and parcel of the Arab world and the culture of the woman being veiled, so that no part of her body is to be seen, and the only thing she can see, that you can see, is she needs her eyes so she can tell where she's going.
[18:48] But other than that, she wears this burqa that completely covers her arms. Her arms are not to be exposed. Her legs are not, nothing about her is to be exposed, except what she needs to see with.
[19:02] And that is because in the Arab mind, even to this day, it is believed that if a man looks upon exposed body parts of a woman, he is unable, literally unable, to resist.
[19:25] And he will pursue in an illegitimate way, which of course could end up with rape. So in the Arab mind, virtually any woman who is raped, it is somehow her fault.
[19:40] Because if she is exposed in any way, shape, or form, no ordinary man is able to resist that. So it's not his fault. It's her fault. And this goes all the way back to the Old Testament as well.
[19:53] But in the modern Arab world today, this is still enforced. I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but in the 1970s, remember 1979, when the U.S.
[20:05] embassy in Tehran was overtaken by these student radicals, and they held all of these Americans there hostage. That was in a revolt to the Shah of Iran.
[20:21] Remember, when he became ill, I think it was with cancer, and he was here in the United States receiving treatment, and while he was gone out of the country, there was this revolt that took place, and it was a revolt against, and by the way, this is where the jihad started.
[20:38] I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but this is where the Twin Tower destruction really began. It was in 1979, and what was taking place in Iran was that the Shah had succeeded in many ways of westernizing Iran, and it was very common to see multitudes of women in Iran wearing jeans, women's jeans, imported from the United States, and they loved it, and the whole country was being westernized.
[21:22] They were picking up on western music, western culture, western videos, all of this stuff, much to the chagrin and displeasure of the religious establishment, which was, of course, Muslim.
[21:36] And they began a concerted effort of speaking out against all of this westernization and opposing the Shah of Iran.
[21:49] Well, the Shah, for all practical purposes, the Shah was the same as a king. He was royalty. He was the dictator of the country. And when he was weakened, the religious establishment saw their chance, and they really started making a lot of noise about it, and what happened, well, I got ahead of myself.
[22:13] A few years earlier, a man started making a lot of noise and was a real problem to the Shah of Iran, so he kicked him out of the country. And that was Ayatollah Khomeini.
[22:26] He was sent into exile, and he went to live in France, in Paris, and he was there for several years. And then when this happened, and the revolution took place, and the embassy was overrun, and they were held hostage and everything, and that's when Jimmy Carter was president, and they had this big fiasco where they tried to rescue them, and the choppers broke down, and it was a catastrophe.
[22:52] Then shortly after that, the Shah of Iran died from his illness, and the opposition saw that as their chance to take over, and they did.
[23:05] And the next thing you know, we saw on television a remarkable scene. Here was a helicopter flying into Tehran, and it was carrying Ayatollah Khomeini, and he came into Iran, and literally took over the government, and it has been under an Ayatollah ever since, and it is to this day, and it all started in their revolt against the westernization of Iran, and that's largely what this is all about today.
[23:38] What is going on right now is we see the terrorists as threatening the American way of life, and you might find this hard to believe, but I'm convinced that it's true.
[23:49] They see the western world, America in particular, threatening their way of life, because one thing, among others, that really, really terrifies them is for Arabic women to start picking up on the freedom and the liberty that western women enjoy, and it terrifies them, because they have a totally male-dominated culture, where the woman, the wife, is a second-class citizen, she is subject to being beaten if he deems it necessary to beat her, and no court would ever convict him.
[24:29] They're fearful of losing all of that, and I'm convinced that that's got a lot to do with that, and we see this even surfacing here in this first Kings passage. how in the world can one justify subjecting women to this kind of treatment, because you know, the Bible never endorses this.
[24:54] The Bible never endorses this. It does, it does not recommend, but it does permit multiple wives. We see that as far back as Rachel and Leah, where there are two wives involved, and there are other cases of multiple wives, but the Bible never embraces the idea of the degradation of femininity, like the culture did, and the culture did here too, and the culture still does in the Arab world, and this is, this is one of the puzzles of our society today, is how this goes on, and I don't know if you've ever really thought about this, or researched it out, but I am convinced that there has been male domination of femininity from the beginning for one basic simple reason, and that is, he could do it.
[25:58] That's it. He could do it. He was able to do it. He had the upper hand. He had the physical strength, and he was able to take advantage of women, and that's why he did, and this does not speak well of masculinity, but it shows you the power and influence of masculinity when controlled and dominated by the flesh, and every man that does not have the spirit of God is dominated by the flesh, and even a man who does have the spirit of God may still be dominated by the flesh if he is walking in the flesh instead of in the spirit.
[26:32] But this female-male thing is just dynamite stuff, and it is very little understood even by many today in our so-called enlightened world. So here we've got all of these women, 700 women, who are willing or unwilling to be in subjection to this king, and he, of course, has total, absolute supremacy over their lives, their well-being, their future, and everything.
[27:02] And that was par for the course in that day. So, his wives turned his heart away. So they had their power in a different way.
[27:17] His wives turned his heart away. How many of you might have seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Anybody see that?
[27:27] That was a hilarious movie. If you haven't seen it, you ought to see it. It's really funny. And in it, one of the lines that comes out is that the man is the head.
[27:44] He is the head of the family. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all this masculinity bombasting. He is the head. And this girl's mother, she turns to her and she says, this is true, this is true, the man is the head, but the woman is the neck that turns the head.
[28:07] That's what we've got here. We've got Solomon with all of these wives, but the wives turn the head. There is that undeniable kind of influence and power.
[28:22] And it came about when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods, and his heart was not wholly devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been.
[28:40] For Solomon, this is the wisest man, Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the detestable idol of the Ammonites, and Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not follow the Lord fully, as David his father had done.
[29:07] I don't know how much of this can be attributed to Solomon getting old, as the old saying goes, there's no fool like an old fool. And verse four makes it clear that Solomon was old, maybe his inhibitions were lowered, maybe his wisdom was flagging, I don't know.
[29:21] But it appears that the older he got, the more his spiritual reasoning left him, and he was more subject to the influence of others, particularly these wives.
[29:37] And then the blow of blows comes in verse seven. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh.
[29:47] A high place was nothing more than a place of religious sexual prostitution, where these priests and priestesses hung out and engaged in some of the most detestable, disgusting kind of sexual practices and perversions that you could ever imagine.
[30:07] And by the way, this is rampant in the Old Testament. I mean, it surfaces time and time again. And that's exactly what we've got going on here. built a high place for Chemosh, the detestable idol of Moab.
[30:24] Moab is where present day Jordan is located. It's just over the river and into the land of Moab. This is where Ruth the Moabitess was from, who will later marry Boaz, on the mountain which is east of Jerusalem.
[30:41] And for Molech, the detestable idol of the sons of Ammon, thus also he did for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
[30:54] Now the Lord was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.
[31:07] Now it would be bad enough as it was, but for God to have appeared to him twice and exactly in what form I do not know, but he had appeared to Solomon twice and had commanded him, verse 10, concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods, but he did not observe what the Lord had commanded.
[31:36] How do you suppose Solomon justified doing this after God had appeared to him twice? on what occasion or what form he appeared to him were not told.
[31:47] But I can only get the impression that it was an unmistakable kind of appearance, that Solomon was not left in some great doubt or question as to the reality or the being of God.
[32:01] He had appeared to him. He had communicated to him in some kind of an undeniable way. How in the world then could Solomon allow himself to slip into something like this after having had a visible kind of encounter with the true God, not once, but twice?
[32:24] What do you think? Any ideas? words? Regardless of how wise he was, he was still human.
[32:39] I'm sorry? Regardless of how wise he was, he was still human. Oh yeah, well that's for sure. Regardless of how wise Solomon was, he was still human. Any other thoughts?
[32:51] have you ever had some kind of an experience or encounter in the past that caused you to later wonder whether it was real?
[33:09] Whether that really happened? Whether you really saw that? Whether you really did that? Whether you were dreaming? Whether you were imagining something?
[33:22] I don't know if that's what came into play or not. I don't know. But Solomon had to in some way get from A to B. He had to make some kind of a transition having had some kind of what appears to be an undeniable encounter with the Lord because it seems to add to his culpability here and the record throws this in and it isn't as if Solomon was left with some kind of a vague murky kind of comprehension or understanding that may or may not have been real.
[33:56] No, no. The text says the Lord appeared to him twice. And I doubt that there was any mistaking it. And the only thing I can suggest and maybe the age factor came into play, I don't know, the attractiveness of these women no doubt influenced him powerfully because they were obviously always there, always available.
[34:22] You know, he could pick any of those plums that he wanted at any time and they were completely subservient to him in every way. In fact, they probably considered themselves honored that he would call them in.
[34:35] And this is the way femininity regarded itself in that day. Well, we've come a long way from that, haven't we? We certainly have and to the betterment of femininity too.
[34:48] The only thing I can suggest is that he had to have relived these incidents and as undeniable as they were at the time, they did not and could not compare with the present reality and accessibility of feminine flesh and blood right before him.
[35:13] Here's a principle. and I saw it worked out in my own life and in my own marriage. And I've shared it before, but I'll share it again because it is so powerful.
[35:23] And that is this. When there is a doctrinal, biblical, theological, spiritual, principle involved, and it is countered with a material, emotional counterpart, the material and the emotional will almost always win out.
[35:58] The heart, the emotion, and the feelings usually take precedence over the mind, the rational thinking and logical pursuit of a right conclusion.
[36:16] In other words, the average person tends to be more feeling emotionally oriented than we are intellectually oriented.
[36:30] the mind is no match for the feelings. We will usually go with the feelings every time. And the illustration I give, and I do not do it as a disservice to Barbara, my first wife, because she agreed with it fully and she even used the illustration herself about herself in some of the women's classes that she taught.
[36:54] Here, she and I were engaged to be married and she knew full well that I was not a believer. And yet she was willing to marry me. Knowing full well, admitting, acknowledging, this is not right.
[37:12] I'm not supposed to do this. She knew that. But she was willing to do it anyway. Why?
[37:24] She was in love. Is there anything that can counter being in love? What the brain knows intellectually, biblically, theologically, doctrinally, goes right out the window.
[37:38] Yes, I know what the Bible says, but, but, and, and, bless her heart, you know, even though she was willing to do that, she didn't have to, because, as most of you know, I came to faith in Christ about three hours before we were married.
[37:56] And that's the only reason the preacher was willing to marry. But I wonder, to what degree Solomon contended with that, that male-female thing.
[38:07] And it is, it is so powerful. Feelings and emotions will normally, ordinarily, usually dictate the course of action we take, even though we know better, intellectually.
[38:23] constantly. And sometimes we justify it by saying, well, I just go with my gut, you know, my gut feelings. Well, if you've got a line of scripture, if you've got a biblical principle, that's where we owe our allegiance.
[38:38] And we need to subject and submit our feelings and our emotions to that. But it's so hard to do, because, well, wasn't it Zaza Gabor?
[38:51] Yeah, it was Zaza Gabor when she was being interviewed. And the interviewer asked her, if you had the do-over against Zaza, would you rather be born and gifted with a great mind or great beauty?
[39:05] And she said, oh, darling, great beauty anytime, great beauty. And he said, why is that? And she says, because, darling, men can see better than they can think.
[39:21] Boy, I'm telling you what, she's got our number, guys. We are no match for that. And she had Solomon's number, too. Barbara, do you have a comment? Yeah, I just want to back up.
[39:31] Like what you said, I had the same situation. I was bound and determined to marry Darrell as an unbeliever. But God is raised five years down the road.
[39:42] He determines what he does. And it happens, but the best thing is to make sure that they believe it. Yeah. But you know, this love feeling thing is so powerful.
[39:56] I mean, it is incredible. Caution, reason, intellect, logic, everything goes right out the window. And there's just nothing to compare with that, that feeling and that emotion of being in love.
[40:09] And all of that comes into play here. It's just amazing. Well, let's read on here. And we are, in verse 10, he had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods.
[40:24] Verse 11, so the Lord said to Solomon, because you have done this, and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant.
[40:44] Who will that be? we'll see shortly. Nevertheless, I will not do it in your days, that is why you're still alive, for the sake of your father David, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son.
[41:03] Now, who is Solomon's son going to be? He's going to be a man by the name of Rehoboam, not to be confused with Jeroboam, completely different boam.
[41:18] Rehoboam is the son of Solomon, and when Solomon dies, Rehoboam is going to come to the throne. And bear in mind that Israel is intact now as a nation under the leadership of Solomon the king.
[41:34] And here's something that you need to know, because this really helps to set the stage. David the king was a warrior king. king. And David subjugated all of his neighbors under his military authority.
[41:54] He literally defeated everybody all the way around. And David and his army was the only superpower in the whole area.
[42:07] They had succeeded in subduing everyone. And many of them were even paying tribute to David. And he as a result of all of his victories he won a very extended time of peace for the nation of Israel when they were not at war with the neighbors.
[42:31] Remember when David wanted to build the temple and the Lord would not allow him to build the temple. people who says because he was a man of war and that's a misunderstood concept because a lot of people think that David was a man who was associated with violence and death and killing in the military and all the rest.
[42:53] And God didn't want someone like that building his temple. That's nonsense. God was the one who led David in most of his military exploits and told him who to go to battle against and who to destroy.
[43:07] God was behind that. And when it says that he didn't allow David to build the temple it simply meant that David was a man of war and he was so preoccupied with the military he would not have the time necessary to devote to the building of the temple.
[43:25] So God as much as told him hey only one major project at a time and you are a warrior king. You are to subdue all of these enemies. And what happened was David succeeded in doing that and he brought a period of unparalleled peace to the whole region.
[43:43] And what that did was it immediately opened the floodgates for domestic prosperity and accomplishment. And when David passed off the scene that whole area was at peace in a way that they had never known and what this resulted in was it allowed Solomon his son then to engage in business and industry and productivity that brought the whole region into an area of unparalleled prosperity.
[44:18] Solomon was a doer and David paved the way for Solomon to be able to do it because he didn't have to engage all of the enemies militarily that had already been taken care of.
[44:30] And Solomon could devote all of his time and energy in building up the kingdom. And boy did he ever. It reached a height of prosperity and plenty that it had never known before.
[44:42] And nations came from all over the world. Remember the Queen of Sheba came and visited Solomon because she had heard of the accomplishments and the glory and everything. And it was eye popping.
[44:52] And he built the temple. And it was a knockout. I mean everything was just burgeoning with prosperity and plentitude. I'm sure there was 100% employment and nobody was living in poverty.
[45:06] It was a time of unparalleled prosperity and it also set the stage for people to trust in things other than the true God.
[45:19] And that set them up for that. That coupled with their idolatry. You know, I liken this almost to a period in the United States between 1948 and 1960.
[45:31] when we had just come out of World War II and we were no longer making tanks and guns and planes but we could start reproducing refrigerators and automobiles and all that stuff again.
[45:44] And it was a time of unparalleled prosperity. And material prosperity tends to lead people to depend on and to go after things.
[46:01] Things. Stuff. Materialism. And we are living in a very materialistic age right now. And that which is spiritual is getting short shrift.
[46:14] We're trying to get God out of this and get him out of that and you know the secularization. Well let's move on here. I will tear the kingdom from you and give it to your servant.
[46:25] Nevertheless I will not do it in your days for the sake of your father David. Now this harkens back to the fact that God has a thing about keeping his promises and commitments to people to whom he made them.
[46:39] And he made certain promises to David and it was because of David and David's memory that God had with him that he wasn't going to do this during Solomon's reign. And that's a beautiful thing.
[46:51] But I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However I will not tear away all the kingdom but I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen.
[47:09] And what will that tribe be? It will be David's tribe. It will be the tribe of Judah. That's the royal line. That's the line through which the Messiah will be born.
[47:22] that's David's tribe. And then the Lord raised up an adversary to Solomon, Hadad the Edomite.
[47:34] He was of the royal line in Edom. That means that this guy, Hadad the Edomite, was a direct descendant of Esau, Jacob's brother.
[47:48] You know, Jacob and Esau being brothers are still going to be worlds apart and he is going to be an Edomite. And just for your information, Herod the king, Herod the great, the one who ordered the massacre of the innocents when Jesus was born, he is a direct descendant of this guy.
[48:11] He is an Edomite also. It's not correct to call him a Jew because they are not Jews, they are Edomites. And it came about when David was in Edom and Joab, the commander of the army, had gone up to bury the slain and had struck down every male in Edom.
[48:27] For Joab and all Israel stayed there six months until he had cut off every male in Edom, that Hadad fled to Egypt. He and certain Edomites of his father's servants with him, which Hadad was a young boy.
[48:40] Wow, Hadad was a young boy. And they arose from Midian and came to Paran. And they took men with them from Paran and came to Egypt. Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who gave him a house and assigned him food and gave him land.
[48:52] This is royalty looking out for royalty. Hadad found great favor before Pharaoh so that he gave him in marriage the sister of his own wife, the sister of Taphins, the queen, and so on and so on.
[49:07] But let us go down here if we may and down to verse 23. God also raised up another adversary to him, Rezon, the son of Eliadah, who had fled from his lord.
[49:21] Now these are just a bunch of names that some of them are even hard to pronounce, but the only thing I want to emphasize is these were real flesh and blood people. They're not just names. These are real people who lived.
[49:32] And he gathered to himself, verse 24, men and became leader of a marauding band after David slew them from Zobah and went to Damascus, stayed there, reigned in Damascus.
[49:42] So he was an adversary to Israel all the days of Solomon, along with the evil that Hadad did. And he abhorred Israel and reigned over Aram. That's another name for Syria.
[49:54] Then Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. This is a phrase that is going to occur time and time again as we go through the kings. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat that made Israel the sin.
[50:07] That's almost like a formula to be repeated time and time again. Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an Ephraimite, of Zerudah. Solomon's servant, whose mother's name was Zeruah, a widow, also rebelled against the king.
[50:20] And in verse 28, we're told, the man Jeroboam was a valiant warrior. And when Solomon saw that the young man was industrious, he appointed him over all the forced labor of the house of Joseph.
[50:37] And it came about that at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, the prophet Ahijah, the Shilohite, found him on the road. Now Ahijah had clothed themselves with a new cloak. Both of them were alone in the field.
[50:48] Ahijah took hold of the new cloak, which was on him, and tore it into twelve pieces. Well, what in the world is that all about?
[51:00] He is creating an object lesson here. He is taking this single garment and ripping it up and making twelve pieces out of it, and he's using it as an illustration.
[51:11] And he said to Jeroboam, Take for yourself ten pieces. What is that going to mean? That's ten tribes. Ten tribes.
[51:23] These will be the northern ten tribes of Israel. Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and give you ten tribes.
[51:35] 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.
[51:46] And I don't know why Benjamin doesn't surface here and come into play because it's going to, and it won't be just one tribe in the south. It's going to be two tribes. And it will be the tribe of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin.
[51:58] And the reason that the tribe of Benjamin is so important is because Jerusalem is located in the tribe of Benjamin geographically. And that's very important because Jerusalem is going to play a real key role.
[52:16] They have, verse 33, they have forsaken me and have worshipped Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh, the god of Moab. And these are not gods at all. These are non-existent deities conjured up by the imaginations of these evil minds.
[52:33] Milcom, the god of the sons, the sons of Ammon, and they have not walked in my ways, and so on. And verse 34, nevertheless, I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand, but I will make him ruler all the days of his life for the sake of my servant David.
[52:49] We see that surfacing time and again. For the sake of my servant David. For the sake. And you know, David, David had his dark side. We all know that.
[53:01] I mean, this man was far from perfect. But yet, he is the only man, and I still have trouble getting my brain around this. He was the only man in all of the Bible who is ever referred to as having, being a man after God's own heart.
[53:15] And I can see ways in which he was, but I can sure see ways in which he wasn't too. Can't you? Surely. And I will take the kingdom from his son's hand and give it to you, even ten tribes.
[53:33] And this, of course, will be Rehoboam. But to his son, I will give only one tribe, that my servant David, there surfaces again, may have a lamp always before me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen for myself to put my name.
[53:49] And I will take you, and you shall reign over whatever you desire, and you shall be king over Israel. And then it will be that if you listen to all, 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.
[54:18] Well, verse 43 says that Solomon slept with his fathers, was buried in the city of his father David, and his son Rehoboam reigned in his place.
[54:32] And our time is gone now, but I want you to see how this schism developed, because we've got a situation here where in much the same way that the South did, beginning with South Carolina when they seceded from the Union in 1860, we've got a situation 1,500 years earlier, 2,500 years earlier, where the North is seceding from the Union, only it's the northern ten tribes that are pulling out of the Union, and Rehoboam is going to be the one under whose rule the kingdom will be divided.
[55:18] And from this point on, they are going to be referred to as Israel and Judah. And that's a little confusing, but it means, usually we think of Israel as being the whole nation, and today we do, too.
[55:34] But back then, it was ten of the tribes of Israel seceded from the Union, and they, of course, are much larger geographically and physically and in population and every way.
[55:52] There will be those ten tribes up to the north, and they will leave just the two tribes to the south, Judah and Benjamin. But the two tribes in the south will have something that the north doesn't have, Jerusalem and the temple, and that's a biggie, and the priesthood.
[56:12] So all of these things are going to come into play, and the plot will thicken as we move on, and perhaps next week we'll get to Hosea. But this is all background material, and this is the kind of situation that Hosea is going to start ministering into.
[56:26] Any questions or comments? And I'm already over my time. Anybody? Mike. Just an observation. It occurs to me that Solomon had another tremendous problem.
[56:38] He had all these wives, and if he had misnamed one, someone is going to be angry with him, and he must have been just in full turmoil.
[56:50] I don't know what he... Maybe he called them all honey. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if Solomon ever experienced it or not, but wasn't it Shakespeare that said, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned?
[57:09] He may have experienced some of that. I don't know. Any other thoughts or comments? Yes, Barbus? I was thinking about David and why David's called man after God's own heart.
[57:23] David, you know, started out as a young kid and was really wanting to do what God wanted to do. He ended up messing up, but then he realized it and did his best to get himself right with the Lord, where Solomon just kind of fell into it all with his father David, and he was a very good man, but really ended badly.
[57:51] So I don't know if it's got to do, you know, if God sees... He knows we're human and we can't live the way we should, but David did try his best where Solomon just said, oh, well...
[58:07] Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's an interesting... That's an interesting... You know, as badly as David blew it, say one thing, one really big thing to his credit, he repented.
[58:22] And if you read that, Psalm 53, David's contrition was powerful. And God loves nothing more than for a human to acknowledge their wrong and repent.
[58:42] And as we saw just recently, anytime there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repents, you can be sure that it's something that pleases God. And I've often referred to repentance as God's silver bullet.
[58:55] He is the God of the second chance. And once repentance is in place, it's a whole new ballgame. But you know what? Even though God forgives with repentance, he does not eliminate the consequences.
[59:13] David had some real gut-wrenching things happen in his own family with his own son and daughter that were just heartbreaking.
[59:25] And it all stemmed from David's misbehavior. He set the stage for that. So it's a tremendous spiritual concept. Well, thank you all for being...
[59:36] Any other final comments? John? There's two different places here it says that the Lord stirred up an adversary into Solomon. And in another place, he stirred up another adversary.
[59:49] Is this like God hardening Pharaoh's heart? I think it's related to that. I think it's related to that. And God is providing opposition here.
[60:03] I think it's to curb a situation. And when some are of an effort to short-circuit this division of the kingdom, God says, And there's a temptation to actually go to war for the purpose of preserving the union.
[60:25] And God says, No, you don't do that. This thing is from me. And he makes that statement. And we'll look at that next time. So thank you all. I really appreciate it. Can we consider this a done deal then?
[60:36] The first Tuesday of October we'll meet. And if you didn't get one of these, God and other objects of worship on the sound desk over there, pick up one on your way out. And thank you again for being here.
[60:48] Really appreciate your presence. Have a great day. Thank you.