1 Kings 11:14-43

[0:00] 1 Kings 11, we're going to be in verse 14 and then to the end of the chapter, several verses, but we need to take them as a bulk and get us down to verse 43.

[0:11] 1 Kings 11, verses 14 through 43 will be our text this evening. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much just for the opportunity we have of being here.

[0:23] Lord, we thank you for the great privilege of fellowshipping midweek and for having the opportunity just to be encouraged. Lord, we thank you that we have the grand privilege of opening up the word of God with one another.

[0:36] So Lord, we pray you help us to see it for what it is. Lord, help us to understand it, give us the hearts and minds to accept it. Lord, we pray that you help us to live it out for your glory and honor.

[0:48] We do pray for all those working with our youth and our children. God, as always, we ask that Christ be magnified among them and that all things bring glory and honor to you.

[1:00] Lord, again, we just thank you for this day and we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, 1 Kings 11, rapidly coming upon, by the time we finish this chapter, we will be there, the end of Solomon's life.

[1:13] So we need to know how we got here because we're going to be introduced to the outcomes of some events that happened in the first half of this chapter, at least the first 13 verses.

[1:24] And that is kind of the downfall, the spiral downfall of Solomon. Now, there's some things we need to have in mind. Solomon is a good king as far as political leader goes.

[1:35] He leads the nation of Israel to one of the most prosperous times, if not the most prosperous time in a nation's history up to that point. During the reign of Solomon, Israel occupies and resides in, even if they do not possess, more land than any other time in their history, even up until today.

[1:53] So the kingdom expansion is there. It is only during the reign of Solomon that they get near to fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant as to the expanse of the land.

[2:04] So one thing we understand about the nation of Israel is they are yet to occupy all of the land that God promised to Abraham. Okay? So they really haven't fully occupied it.

[2:17] If you go back and you begin to look at geographical regions and things of that nature. But during the reign of Solomon, they are closer than any other time. He has great alliances formed with the many nations around them.

[2:31] But then we begin to see for all the good that he does, you know, he's a great builder. As far as design and architecture goes, he's phenomenal. He built the temple of the Lord. Of course, he cannot take credit for that design because he followed the pattern and the design that David was given.

[2:47] After he offered to sacrifice on the hill of Ornan or Arunah. Whichever, if you're reading in 2 Samuel or 1 Chronicles.

[2:58] Either way, same individual. So David gets the pattern. Solomon follows the pattern. But then he constructs his palace and really just a phenomenal amount of architecture and design and building that he accomplishes there.

[3:12] But last time we were together looking at 1 Kings, we began to see really that what was wrong with Solomon. Because for all of the good, which we can say, for all of the things that we can understand and we can give him credit where, you know, credit is due.

[3:26] Really, the grand problem of Solomon was he had the divided heart. Right? It was the danger of a divided heart. He starts out his reign in 1 Kings chapter 3 where it tells us Solomon loved the Lord his God.

[3:40] And we take the word of God as it is given to us, literally. So Solomon loved the Lord his God. But then by the time we get to 1 Kings chapter 11, it says, And Solomon loved many foreign women.

[3:52] And this division there between the love for the Lord and the love for the women. And the women began to pull him away. He began to be influenced. And he began to worship their God.

[4:04] So what started out as a matter that was internal in the heart became a matter that was personal. So he began to worship their God. And then it became a matter that was public. So he began to build temples for their gods so that they could worship there as well.

[4:17] So what should have been Jerusalem, what should have been a locale of a very monotheistic people, worshiping one true God became really a conglomerate of polytheism.

[4:28] You had all the gods that were there that were invited. And the ones that, the very ones, if you look at, that the Lord had called his people to push out of the land, Solomon brought back into the land. And you have all this worship going on.

[4:38] And that's where we stopped. It's because now he's went public with it, right? One thing that really strikes me is astounding. I know I'm getting way ahead of myself as far as Bible history goes.

[4:53] But one thing that you need to understand when you read Scripture is that God deals with this problem. We'll see the rest of this in 1 Kings, 2 Kings, and 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles. And it's leading up to something which we call the Babylonian captivity.

[5:06] And the nation of Israel went into the Babylonian captivity as one of the most polytheistic, that is, worshiping many gods of any nation around them. They came out of the Babylonian captivity, the most monotheistic nation still today in existence.

[5:22] Now, I'm not saying that they worship accurately today. But as far as their polytheism, God dealt with that, right? So the polytheistic worship going into it, worshiping a multitude of gods, worshiping multiple gods, they came out of the Babylonian captivity.

[5:37] But this is really the beginning stages of it here with Solomon. So we've left it there. So let's pick it up in the 14th verse. Then the Lord raised up an adversary to Solomon, Hadad the Edomite.

[5:51] He was of the royal line of Edom. For 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. For Joab and all Israel stayed there six months until he had cut off every male in Edom.

[6:06] The Hadad fled to Egypt, and he and certain Edomites of his father's servants with him, while Hadad was a young boy. They arose from Midian and came to Paran, and they took men with them from Paran, and came to Egypt to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who gave him a house and assigned him food and gave him land.

[6:24] Now Hadad found great favor before Pharaoh, so that he gave him in marriage the sister of his own wife, the sister of Tappanese, the queen. The sister of Tappanese bore his son, Genebath, whom Tappanese weaned in Pharaoh's house, and Genebath was in Pharaoh's house among the sons of Pharaoh.

[6:40] But when Hadad heard in Egypt that David slept with his fathers and that Joab, the commander of the army, was dead, Hadad said to Pharaoh, send me away that I may go to my own country. Then Pharaoh said to him, but what have you lacked with me, that behold, you are seeking to go to your own country?

[6:57] And he answered, nothing. Nevertheless, you must surely let me go. God also raised up another adversary to him, Rezan, the son of Illadad, who had fled from his lord Hadadazar, king of Zobah.

[7:08] He gathered men to himself and became leader of a marooning band after David slew them off Zobah. And they went to Damascus and stayed there and reigned in Damascus.

[7:19] 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. Then Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, an Ephraimite of Zeradah, Solomon's servant, whose mother's name was Zerah, a widow, also rebelled against the king.

[7:39] Now this was the reason why he rebelled against the king. Solomon built the millow and closed up the breach of the city of his father David. Now the man Jeroboam was a valiant warrior.

[7:50] And when Solomon saw that the young man was industrious, he appointed him over all the forced labor of the house of Joseph. It came about at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem that the prophet Ahijah, the Shilonite, found him on the road.

[8:03] Now Ahijah had clothed himself with a new cloak, and both of them were alone in the field. Then Ahijah took hold of the new cloak which was on him and tore it into twelve pieces. He said to Jeroboam, take for yourself ten pieces, for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel.

[8:19] Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and give you ten tribes. But he will have one tribe for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel.

[8:30] Because they have forsaken me and have worshipped Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh, the god of Moab, and Milcom, the god of the sons of Ammon. And they have not walked in my ways, doing what is right in my sight, and observing my statutes and my ordinances as his father David did.

[8:48] 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, whom I chose, who observed my commandments and my statutes.

[8:59] But I will take the kingdom from his son's hand and give it to you, even ten tribes. But to his son I will give one tribe, that my servant David may have a lamp always before me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen for myself to put my name.

[9:13] I will take you, and you shall reign over whatever you desire, and you shall be king over Israel. Then it will be that if you listen to all that I command you, and walk in my ways, and do what is right in my sight, by observing my statutes and my commandments, as my servant David did, then I will be with you and build you an enduring house as I built for David, and will give Israel to you.

[9:33] Thus I will afflict the descendants of David for this, but not always. Solomon sought therefore to put Jeroboam to death, but Jeroboam rose and fled to Egypt to Shishak, the king of Egypt.

[9:44] And he was in Egypt until the death of Solomon. Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, whatever he did in his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of Solomon? Thus the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel was forty years.

[9:58] And Solomon slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of his father David, and then his son Rehoboam reigned in his place. Okay, I want you to see the ordained problems of the king.

[10:12] The ordained problems of the king. Someone once said, when the Lord God is your problem, then you got problems. Right? We see what caused Solomon's issue, and the thing that caused Solomon's issue was his divided heart.

[10:26] It was a heart that was not wholly committed to the Lord his God. Now, we need to keep this in mind, that two times the Lord had spoken to Solomon. He spoke to Solomon at the very beginning of his reign.

[10:38] When he asked him, he said, ask whatever you wish of me, and I will give it to you. And you know the story. Solomon asked for wisdom, and God gives him above and beyond what he asked. And God initiates this covenant with him, because God is a covenant God.

[10:50] And the covenant with Solomon was a conditional covenant. You need to understand that, because he said, if you will follow me, and if you will obey me, then you will have a long reign, and your descendants will reign after you, and all of this stuff.

[11:02] Then, after Solomon dedicates to the temple, and he prays, he's in front of the people, and he's on his knees praying, and he sends everybody home, and they're observing the feast. The Lord appears to Solomon again, and repeats and reiterates this conditional covenant.

[11:14] So God is faithful to not only showing himself good, but declaring to Solomon what he expects from him. But yet Solomon, knowingly, with all of his wisdom, and all of his insight, with all the understanding, knowingly chooses to disobey this command, right?

[11:31] If you're reading through the book of Leviticus right now, you start going through, some of you I know are reading through it, and I'm reading through it. I always said I love the book of Leviticus not because it makes me feel good, it's just because it does the right thing, and it shows us what we are.

[11:45] Charles Spurgeon once said, the grand calling of every preacher, and this isn't very popular today, but the preacher is not called to bring comfort to the people. Surely as we need the Holy Spirit to bring comfort, we also need the convictor to come upon the people, because as Spurgeon said, how dare you clothe one who does not know they're naked, and how dare you add healing to one who does not know they're sick?

[12:05] So that's what the book of Leviticus does, right? It shows us how sick we are so that we can find the healer in the New Testament. So when you get to the book of Leviticus, I love how God tells his people that if an individual sins, and then he finds out that he sins, that's a little loud, I'm sorry, and then he realizes his sin, all of a sudden now he is required to make recompense for his sin, right?

[12:27] If he didn't know he sinned, but when his sin becomes known, now he was responsible for the sacrifice that goes along with that sin. But then you get to this point in Leviticus where it says, but the individual who sins high-handedly, the one who looks at God and says, I know that's what you want, I'm not doing it.

[12:44] For that individual, there is no sacrifice. For that individual, there is no restitution that could be made. Now, we're on the other side of the cross. We're not by covenant of works, we're covenant of grace.

[12:57] Because if we're going to be honest, every one of us has sinned high-handedly at some time or another, right? That's the presence of the Holy Spirit that convicts us of these things. It shows us. So we're not without hope because we have cross.

[13:08] We have the cross of Christ that pays the price in full. I read today, again, of the guilt offering. That if someone takes something that's due to them, they need to offer the guilt offering. They pay back, remember?

[13:19] 120%, right? That and a fifth more. So 120%. Jesus is our guilt offering. We've taken from God what does not belong to us. We've taken his position. And Jesus is our guilt offering.

[13:31] But Solomon knew all of these things. He's wise. He knows these things. God has very clearly told him what he should do. And yet he still loves the women more than he loves the Lord.

[13:43] And he does this. And he's introducing all this foreign worship. So now judgment is coming. And we see these are ordained problems. Now, this is something that doesn't make us very comfortable, but it's something that is very biblical.

[13:58] Sometimes God is the cause of the problem. And that's okay. Sometimes the consequences of the problem are what we would say sin.

[14:10] Right? We do not live in a perfect world. This isn't the way it's supposed to be. We live in a fallen world among fallen individuals, and the sin curse still reigns upon this earth. Sometimes the problem is ordained.

[14:23] And it is God's gracious act of trying to call people to attention. And we see it here in this, right?

[14:35] That God ordained these problems. I love how it says, the Lord, it says, raised up an adversary. The Lord raised up an adversary.

[14:48] The Lord is raising up an adversary. We have three adversaries revealed to us in this passage. And I want you to notice a number of things about them. Number one, we see that these are overlooked threats.

[15:02] Overlooked threats. That is, God had them in waiting until a time such as this. Right? These are individuals which really, if we look at them, say there's no reason why they should be there.

[15:13] We don't understand how it happened. The first one we run into is Hadad. Hadad is a gentleman who's really of the royal line. But back when David, David was a man of war.

[15:24] Solomon's a man of peace, right? David fought battles. Solomon married women. And so David gained territory by winning the victory. Solomon gained territory by marrying princesses. That's exactly what happened.

[15:35] Right? So David's out fighting a battle. And there's a time where he sends Joab. And they're burying all the slain there. And Joab and his men are there six months burying all the slain. So what they decide to do is they're going to kill every man of military age at that time to kind of quest the threat.

[15:50] Hadad escapes. His dad is the king. He leaves. And he's a young boy at that time with some of them. And he ends up in Egypt. And while he's in Egypt, he's just being raised up. He's being raised up. He's being raised up. It's an individual that's overlooked in history.

[16:01] I'm sure that David never thought anything of it. Joab never thought anything of it. But the time comes where God raises him up and calls him out of Egypt so that he will be an adversary to Solomon.

[16:13] And the reason we know this is ordained is because he really, he was not strong enough. As a matter of fact, when we look at these, one thing we need to understand is none of these three are strong enough on their own or even together to remove Solomon from the throne.

[16:27] So there's no threat that Solomon's not going to be king, right? None of these three are strong enough to go in there and go, oh, we're going to reign over Israel. They're just there causing problems.

[16:37] And what we find is Hadad comes out with this small marooning band and he's causing problems on the southern front of the nation of Israel. And he's kind of going in and out all the time and he's doing this.

[16:49] And then the next individual that we run into is you got Hadad. And then all of a sudden we meet this man named Rezin. Now, Rezin is totally different. Rezin had left his master's house, his Lord's house, and he had followed David.

[17:02] David had went into a place and wiped out all these men. And so, you know, what you have there is when all these men, because David was a man on military campaigns. Now, stay with me. You got to figure out how all this happened because God literally holds things in the palm of his hands, right?

[17:15] So when David and Joab go through, they win these battles and they create this vacuum. There's no man there anymore. There's no male to lead. So Rezin had fled his master, his Lord. And now all of a sudden he comes into this land.

[17:27] It tells us that he comes into the land of Damascus there. And what had happened in Damascus is that David and his men had wiped them out essentially.

[17:38] So there's no leader. So all of a sudden he's going to be the leader of that area. So he becomes a leader. And now all of a sudden he's got some people. Now, in his own strength, he's not strong enough to take the kingdom away from Solomon, but he is an annoyance to Solomon all the days of Solomon's reign.

[17:55] He was overlooked. And then we find the one that is internal, right? We find this valiant warrior, Jeroboam, who is of the Ephraimites. Now, Ephraimites don't really like people from Judah.

[18:10] They just don't. There's a little bit of internal battle here, okay? Ephraimites are descendants of who? This guy had his coat of many colors, right?

[18:21] Joseph's coat of many colors. You know, if it wasn't for Joseph, there wouldn't have been the rest of the tribes. Because Joseph went ahead of them into Egypt and preserved the nation, right? So the Ephraimites kind of felt this position of prestige. You know, his whole existence was dependent upon us.

[18:34] You know, you shouldn't have been here. And so maybe they felt like they should have been there. So when we just begin to look at this, just historically, they kind of had this position. They thought, ah, and there's some good people from Ephraim, right?

[18:45] Some great leaders. But it's not God's chosen people. It's not, I mean, they're God's chosen people, but it's not Judah, the tribe of Judah. So while they have twice as much land, Ephraim and Manasseh, and we have all this occupying land from the descendants of Joseph, they're not real fond of Judah.

[19:01] So all of a sudden Solomon says he's a valiant warrior. I'm going to bring him in. He's going to be the leader during this construction process of building up the Milo, which just literally means like a retaining wall or the hill or the high place.

[19:12] And all of a sudden he becomes an adversary internally. Because there's a prophet, again, that God sent this prophet to make this declaration to him. But these are just overlooked threats.

[19:26] That God is continuing to raise up these adversaries. He's continuing to raise up these threats. He's continuing to raise up these problems. Why? Because what is he doing? God is really creating an issue.

[19:39] Okay? Along with these overlooked threats, it's the second thing. There are overruled alliances. Now, Solomon kind of prided himself, if we look at him politically, in forming alliances by marriage.

[19:55] The very first marriage that Solomon formed an alliance with was he married a princess from Egypt. Remember that? One of the grand problems that Solomon had is he went to Egypt and found a wife.

[20:05] He went to Egypt and he bought horses. And he went to Egypt and he bought chariots. And he sold them on the open market. Because God said, you should not go back to Egypt and look for wives. You should not go back to Egypt and buy horses. And you should not go back to Egypt and buy chariots.

[20:17] Because you were not supposed to trust in your horses and your chariots. You're supposed to trust in the Lord your God. So he went back to Egypt and he made this alliance with him. But did you notice in our text that two of the three adversaries ended up in Egypt?

[20:31] Hey, Dad is in Egypt. Now, Egypt is supposed to have an alliance with Solomon because of this grand marriage. But they foster him and they raise him up and they groom him.

[20:43] As a matter of fact, many people believe it's a separate Pharaoh. It's not the Pharaoh that was ruling when Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh. This is another Pharaoh. So he marries the sister of Pharaoh's wife there.

[20:57] Hadad is there. The child of Hadad is raised in the house of Pharaoh. And then all of a sudden, Jeroboam, when he leaves, he goes to Egypt too. And he's there with that king. And the problems are really coming out of the very place that Solomon chose to make his first alliance.

[21:14] Because he was trusting in the ability of man to provide security for himself. Right? If I do things politically right, if I do things correct, if I play my cards right, I'll have no threats.

[21:24] And so he'd made all these alliances and he'd made them with all these nations and these powerful people. But God has a way of working and God has a way of overruling that. Because the strongest alliances and agreements of man are nothing in the sight of a powerful God.

[21:40] And God brings his enemies out of the very territories that he had already created peace with. He thought he had taken care of these problems. He thought he had handled these issues.

[21:51] He thought that by his own scheming and his own conniving and his own planning and his own ways, that these matters were out of hand. You know, he didn't even have to worry about that anymore. But what we see is that the purposes and plans of God are stronger than the purposes and plans of man.

[22:05] And that is no matter how hard we try, no matter how much effort we put into, no matter how much we try to go to great lengths to financially provide for ourselves, physically provide for ourselves, do all these other things.

[22:16] I've heard someone say, eat well, stay fit, exercise daily, walk out in the street, get ran over by a Mack truck. It ends just the same. Right? And it's not to say lightly. It's that really as much as we try to be in control, in the end, we're really out of control.

[22:32] The book of Proverbs says, a man plans his steps, but the Lord dictates his way. All right, we plan ourselves. We are to plan. We are to prepare. We're to be wise. We're to seek wise counsel.

[22:43] We're to do all those things. But ultimately, the trust and the confidence rests. How's the book of James put it? Why say that today and tomorrow we'll do this and this and next year we'll go over there, when we don't even know if we'll make it to the next year, right?

[22:54] But rather trust the Lord your God to do all these things. Solomon had been trusting in his own abilities to create an atmosphere of peace, and all of a sudden God became his problem. And God was his problem because he'd been trusting in himself the whole time.

[23:08] So sometimes these problems are ordained because of what God is doing, showing us that our self-confidence, our self-trust, our self-ability, the things that we are excelling at, in the end, really cannot hold it together, which gets us to the third thing, that is opportunities for repentance.

[23:30] Why was God doing all this? It's because he's graciously extending opportunities for repentance. Solomon was a man of peace.

[23:45] As a matter of fact, if we go back and we look at the Davidic covenant, because much of what we find in Scripture is based upon the covenants, right? One of the promises that God gives to David is that David will not build the temple, but the seed of David will build the temple, and that that seed would be a king of peace.

[24:07] Solomon's very name means peace. So David took that. The next child is born and named him Peace. The problem is, is he had peace with men, but he did not have peace with God.

[24:22] And now this peace is disrupted. Now, and I say this, I know sometimes even with your pastor's wife I get in trouble. I'm not saying that Solomon was wrong in constructing the temple, because God gave David the plans of the temple, and the temple was built according to those plans.

[24:41] So those are ordained plans. But, that's not the complete fulfillment of what God was coveting with David. Because God's covenant with David is that the seed of David that would build the temple would have a kingdom that endured to the end, and that he would be a prince of peace, and that he would rule upon his people, that he would be righteous, that his people would look to him, and that he would sit eternally upon the throne.

[25:05] So there's a greater fulfillment, right? There's a greater fulfillment. We're getting there in just a moment. But Solomon, this man of peace, all of a sudden begins to have his world disrupted. He's got all these marooning bands coming in here, these people that are really just causing chaos, and it's kind of outside of his control.

[25:22] Even the kingdoms in which he has created alliances with, political alliances with, now all of a sudden are breeding grounds of his enemies. Even internally, he's got people that are, he wants to kill Jeroboam, but he can.

[25:34] He's got these people that are valiant warriors, which is a big contrast to what Solomon is. He says, he's a good politician. This guy over here is a valiant warrior. And now all of a sudden, he realizes there's a problem.

[25:45] But one thing that we don't ever see Solomon doing is crying out to God. We never see it. You know, when we go back and we read the accounts of David, now David's a man after God's own heart.

[26:01] David had problems, right? He had a lot of them. David made a lot of mistakes. And a lot of chaos followed those mistakes. But what we find with David, and this is why I believe we can define David as a man after God's own heart, is his response in the middle of the chaos because of his mistakes.

[26:20] Not because he was perfect, but because we read them as the penitent psalms, right? The psalms that cry out saying, I've wronged, I've messed up, I've sinned.

[26:35] Those psalms of acknowledgement and admittance and those psalms of crying out for restoration. Psalm 51, one of the classic penitent psalms, when David prays this psalm after his sin with Bathsheba and it's so broken, you know, he acknowledges brokenness.

[26:52] And one of the great things that we see in the psalm is that David cries out to be restored and David wants to go worship the Lord among the throngs of the people. But he says, we notice this heartbeat, he says not for his own benefit, he wants to worship the Lord so that the people will know of God's faithfulness.

[27:10] It's about the glory of the Lord, not the glory and the recognition of man. But one thing we never read about Solomon is we don't ever see him praying after the dedication of the temple.

[27:22] We don't ever see him crying out. But God is faithful, right? I mean, temple dedication, it was in the 24th year of Solomon's reign. He reigns 40 years.

[27:35] I'm not really good at math, but that's another 16 years. All we know is that he loved foreign wives and he worshiped foreign gods.

[27:45] But that whole time God was causing disruptions. God was causing problems. God's patient and kind and gracious and giving opportunities for repentance.

[28:02] But he never does. Never does. Why? Because of the heart. It's a heart issue. And these things are annoying to him for sure.

[28:14] But in all of his wisdom, he thinks that he can figure it out. But we see these opportunities for repentance that are just cast aside. And finally, God says, okay, I'm dividing, the kingdom is going to be split.

[28:25] We know what happens. Rehoboam comes and the kingdom is split. But one thing I want you to see finally, I want you to see this. Because we look at these overlooked threats, these things that, you know, were there, present, just waiting for a time as this.

[28:37] We see these overruled alliances that no matter how hard Solomon tried to maintain his peace, peace could not be had. We see these opportunities of repentance that are just forgotten and cast off. And the last one that we see is just the ongoing faithfulness of God.

[28:55] Because when we read the text, we should not be surprised that Solomon does wrong and suffers the consequences of his wrong. As a matter of fact, if we ever read scripture, the thing that catches us by surprise is when we meet someone that does good, that does right.

[29:13] And we love this about Christianity. I love this about scripture is that scripture does not paint a better picture of mankind than they are. Right? If man in his own strength and his own wisdom could be perfect, Solomon would have been it.

[29:28] He can't. The book of Ecclesiastes, and we can kind of get into it a little bit here on Wednesday night, the book of Ecclesiastes is written by the preacher. He refers himself as the preacher, the preacher, the preacher, the preacher.

[29:41] It's kind of split on who many people believe the preacher is. Some people believe Solomon himself wrote that. And I can see arguments for either side of that.

[29:51] Others believe that someone wrote it as a pseudonym in the name of Solomon after the Babylonian captivity. And I can see the other side of that too. Because what they would have been doing coming out of Babylonian captivity is writing as kind of the perfect man.

[30:10] Right? He was wise, rich, popular, comfortable living. He was handsome. And showing that even as the perfect man, they couldn't hold it together.

[30:24] They fell woefully short. Now, which one it is? I'm not 100% certain, really, just to be honest with you. As I studied the book of Ecclesiastes, I've written papers on it before.

[30:36] And I kind of, even in my writing, I kind of get pulled between the two. Was it Solomon? Or was it someone writing in his steed later on? Right? I don't know. But we know either way you look at it, what we find is that if there was one individual in the history of the nation of Israel that could have made it based upon his abilities, it would have been Solomon.

[30:55] But scripture is so honest about who we are. But the one thing that we notice in light of who we are as mankind is just the ongoing faithfulness of God.

[31:11] Because in all of his judgments, God is not only fair, fair is subjective, right? What's fair to you is not fair to me. What's fair to me may not be fair to you.

[31:23] And really, what is fair? But God is faithful. He's faithful. And what he's faithful to is his word. Because he declares to Jeroboam, you're going to have 10 of the tribes, but you're not going to have all of them.

[31:41] Now, Judah and Benjamin, they're the southern tribes. So when God says, I'm going to give the seed of David one tribe, give it one in addition to his own tribe. All right.

[31:52] This is where, so if you look at a map of Israel, I need trace here to do it for you. You got all the tribal divisions. And if you look down in the southern portion, you got Judah and Benjamin down there.

[32:05] And then there's the center of the donut, the donut host, Simeon, the tribe of Simeon. It's right in the middle of Judah. The Simeonites kind of disappear. Many of them believe, many believe they were absolved in the tribe of Judah.

[32:18] Some of the Simeonites more than likely moved north like the tribe of Dan and went to the northern kingdom. Dan wanted more land, so they kept going further north. So either way, the tribe's not lost, okay?

[32:31] It's not the lost tribe that showed up and they're here in America. That's not, some of you know exactly where I'm going. LDS believe that tribe got lost and they showed up in America. Okay, that's not them. They're not here. It's not the native, they didn't fight against the Native Americans and any of that stuff, okay?

[32:46] That just didn't happen. But you have Judah and Benjamin that are there together. And so what God is doing though is he's staying faithful, right?

[32:57] And he's not doing it because David was perfect. He said, I'm doing it for the seed of David, for the seed of David, for the seed of David. So he's not doing it because David was perfect. David wasn't perfect. We know that. All the good things that came out of David's life came as a result of David's mistakes.

[33:12] They did. And then David's obedience to those, you know, to God's chastisement. So what we see though is that God had made an unconditional, his covenant with Solomon was a conditional covenant.

[33:26] If you are faithful, then these things will happen. The Davidic covenant was unconditional. This is where we, this is what's so good, okay? Because the promise of a coming Savior in Scripture is always flowing through an unconditional covenant.

[33:44] Okay? The Adamic covenant, when God makes a covenant with Adam and Eve, we call it the Proto-Evangelium, Genesis 3.15. God found them in their sin. You know it as he said that the seed of the woman will crush the head of Satan and Satan will bruise the heel of the seed of the woman.

[34:00] That's unconditional. God didn't say, Adam and Eve, if you get your act together, one of your offspring is going to crush the head of Satan. That's not what he said. He said, this is going to happen. Unconditional, right? No conditions attached to that.

[34:11] Follow along, you get to Genesis 12, Abrahamic covenant. So the Abrahamic covenant, unconditional. Again, the seed of Abraham will bless the nations. He will be a blessing to the world and those who believe. There's no conditional covenant.

[34:22] There's no condition upon that covenant. Go fast forward a couple of generations. You get to David, the Davidic covenant. The seed of David was set upon the throne of David forever. Unconditional. He didn't look at David and said, David, clean your act up, get everything right.

[34:34] You know, if you stay faithful, there were conditions attached, but not to that covenant. There was no condition attached. Unconditional. God is making a promise to rescue man through scripture and God stays faithful to his promises in spite of man's faithlessness.

[34:54] And what we see astounding is that at any moment, God could have said, all right, I'm done. I mean, wouldn't you?

[35:06] I'm done. But God is so faithful. He is bringing the redeemer. He's bringing the savior of man, the seed of David that was set upon the throne of David eternally.

[35:23] And even the biggest mistakes can't thwart that. And you need to know because ultimately, God raised up adversaries for Solomon.

[35:35] But the biggest adversary being fault was the one trying to mess up the plan of God. Satan's moving in the heart of Solomon.

[35:49] Satan's doing all this other work. And if we look at the history of scripture, what we find is over and over and over again, Satan thinks he has a way to overcome. If he can get rid of the seed of David, the Davidic covenant is null and void.

[36:05] But God's too faithful for that. Right? Stay through. First Kings, second Kings, they go into Babylonian captivity. This is where I love the genealogies of Matthew.

[36:17] I love the genealogies of Luke. Mark and John don't have it. I love those genealogies. And it gets us so excited because you see God's faithfulness because Satan finally thinks he has it right because there's Jeconiah, Arconiah, however, he's mentioned twice in scripture by both names.

[36:32] So Jeconiah, Arconiah, who's that last king in Israel before there's the deportation of the people into Babylon. Actually, he's mentioned twice. He goes into, a little side reference, here.

[36:43] So when you go into the genealogy of Matthew, there's 14 generations until the deportation. There's 14 generations after the deportation until you get to David and there's, or until you get to the birth of the Savior.

[36:55] So there's 14 generations from Abraham to the deportation, 14 generations, all of that. So 14 is a big number, right? The only way you get 14 is if you count Jeconiah twice. And that's why he's mentioned twice in the book of Matthew. Complete side note, our cross out there on the back wall, anybody want to guess how wide it is?

[37:09] It's 14 inches wide because 14 is a big number in scripture. All right? So, and it's seven inches off the bottom because seven is a full number of scripture. So yeah, when we laid it out, we did it on purpose. So anyway, I told Ethan, I said, nobody will ever know that, but now you do.

[37:23] So anyway, there was a reason for our laying out of that. So anyway, Jeconiah is this last one and God cursed Jeconiah. God said, no seed of Jeconiah will ever reign up on the throne because he was so unfaithful.

[37:36] So Satan's like, yes, I got my man. This guy has cut the lineage off. That's the last one we see. But then you turn to Luke and you find out David had other children too and they're kind of going through there, right? And Jeconiah is in the lineage of Joseph, but he's not in the lineage of Mary because if you trace Mary's genealogy, which is in Luke, which most people believe is Mary's genealogy, she doesn't flow through Jeconiah.

[37:58] She flows through Nathan and so then takes all the way back to God. Now, Genesis 3.15, it's the seed of a woman that will crush the head of Satan not to see the man. So all of a sudden this faithfulness of God, what you see in Scripture, and I know I'm closing right here, God is so faithful to what he says he's going to do.

[38:19] And the reason this is important, our covenant with Christ, I say this hesitantly, just like Adam and Eve didn't have to get their act together and God was going to do this, just like Abraham didn't have to get his stuff together and God was going to do this, just like David didn't have to get his stuff together and God was going to do this.

[38:43] When we call upon the Lord Jesus Christ, there's this unconditional covenant. Now, I'm hesitant because there's nothing we must do to be saved, but since we are saved, there are many, many things that we will do, right?

[39:01] The conditions follow salvation but there's no conditions to enter into the covenant and so what we see when we open up Scripture and we see God being faithful here, if God can keep a covenant there, don't you think God can keep a covenant now?

[39:18] Right? The faithfulness of God is so rampant in Scripture because we need that. We have adversaries in our life that tell us, do you really believe that you're saved? Do you really believe you have this enemy on your shoulders sometimes saying, do you really believe you're a child of God?

[39:31] Well, not based upon my merit, no, but based on what the Word of God says, yes, absolutely. I'm believing in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, yes. That's my promise, that's my hope and we see here the faithfulness of God and it's ongoing faithfulness even though man is so rampantly unfaithful at times.

[39:53] The seed is coming, the temple will be built and He will set up on the throne. The good news is is we're those stones being put together and we see it in 1 Kings chapter 11 verses 14 through 43.

[40:07] All right. Thank you. so, so, Thank you.