Your Divided Heart

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Solomon was not like his father David.  God looked down at David's heart and saw a man who was seeking after His heart.  While Solomon started well, in that at the beginning of his reign he humbled himself before the Lord and asked the Him to bless him with wisdom to rule over Israel, he began to walk in disobedience to the commands of God.

Solomon's sin is easily seen by comparing Deuteronomy 17: 14-20 (God's commandments for the ruling king) and I Kings 11: 1-13.  In the passage of Deuteronomy God precisely states 4 principles that His kings should follow:  Do not multiply horses (trusting in military power), do not multiply wives (looking to them instead of God), and do not greatly increase you silver and gold (trusting therefore in  their material blessing).  

Then God spoke of the desired spiritual walk of the King of Israel.  He was to write himself a copy of the entire Law (so that he might trust in the Lord and His word, hiding it in his heart).  He was to keep God's word with him, read it every day, learn to fear God from it, carefully obeying its commands.  By doing these things the king would keep his heart humble, and therefore not turn away from God and the power of His words.  (Hmmm. . .sounds like what the Spirit suggests to us as well.  But we don't have to write our copy of His word; we just have to pick up one of the many copies laying around our house!)

Solomon knew the commands of God, yet he chose to marry a foreign woman, and then marry 699 more!  Solomon chose the sin of having the love of many women over obedience to the God of his fathers.  And the result had drastic consequences on Solomon's spiritual walk.  They turned his heart away, to follow after their gods.  The heart that once sought the Lord in everything so that he could walk in the ways of God now was torn in two, divided between his wives' gods and the One True God.  Because of his sin Israel would now become a picture of Solomon's heart--it too would be divided.  God's precious land would be divided between the north and the south.  The commands of God were given; Solomon turned away from them; he lived a life of overlooking the sin in his heart; he and all of Israel suffered the consequences of his sin.  Solomon surely did not have the heart of his father.

But it is so easy to read this account and think to ourselves, "How could he have been so wickedly disobedient to God?"  The answer lies in our own divided hearts.  We, too, claim to love God, and yet our lives reveal our other "lovers."  We are just as guilty of idolatry as Solomon was.  But the gods we worship are not called Ashtoreth, Milcom, Chemosh, or Molech.  Our gods have the names of Adultery and Other Sexual Sin, Materialism, Cheating and Lying, Money, Prestige, Popularity, Gossiping, Self-sufficiency, Self-absorption, and the list is endless.  We like to believe that ours are not nearly as bad as theirs, so we continue to justify our attitudes and behaviors, our words and our thoughts, even though we know that God's commands to us in the Bible are against all of them.  

God is looking for men and women who are seeking His heart, through surrender to Him and obedience to His word.  He is looking for those whose hearts are not torn between this world and the next world.  He still desires for His children to be wholly devoted to Him as David was, not just partially devoted to Him as Solomon was.  Our hearts are in need of mending.  Our hearts are desperate for spiritual healing.  Are you willing to assess your own heart and see the gods that sit on its mantle?  Are you willing to surrender them to the Lord in a repentance that turns away from them, never to return to them?  Are you willing to follow His commands by the power of the Spirit within you?  If you are, and you take action, you are truly saying this:

"Teach me Your way, O Lord; I will walk in Your truth; UNITE MY HEART to fear Your name."  (Psalm 86:11)

 

Wrong Way! Go Back!

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David should have been at war.  It was springtime, and his military troops had returned to battle to complete what they started before the long, rainy, cold winter set in.  Instead, David remained in Jerusalem.  Pacing the floor of his balcony, likely thinking of the his men and worried just a little that he hadn't accompanied them, David glanced over and saw Bathsheba.  At that very moment every thought of his nation's battle and his lack of entreaty to the Lord stopped plaguing him, and his mind, as well as his eye, lingered on Bathsheba.  Thus began a snowball of sin coming down the mountain of his life.  Or so I used to think.

As long as I have been reading my bible I was sure that this one moment in David's life, of falling to a fleshly temptation, had ushered in a bushel of horrible choices.  But the truth of the matter is this:  David's sin began long before that fateful night on the balcony.  It began the moment David took his second wife. 

God had clearly given the command that the men of Israel were to be monogamous.  God put the parameters of "one wife" around them to protect them.  Yet David "overlooked" this particular commandment and justified himself as he took wife after wife, and concubine after concubine.  For several years his disobedience appeared to also be "overlooked" by God.  But it wasn't.  With God, appearance is irrelevant.  God hated sin, so He gave commandments to show His people what He expected out of their behavior.  God hated David's sin,  and not just in the moment when he fell to the temptation of not looking away from Bathsheba.  God hated David's sin the moment he fell to his selfish lack of control that opened the door to a second marriage while still married to his first wife.  God hated the lust in David's heart the presented itself long before his sleepless night of pacing.

Caught in his sin, David would now suffer the consequences of leaving his lust unchecked.  Countless times David could have confessed to God regarding his sinful heart, but he never did.  Not until he had been caught by the prophet Nathan in a wicked scheme to keep his infidelity a secret, a scheme that involved lies, betrayal, and a murderous plot.  Nathan called David's honor and integrity into account, and David, truly heart-broken over his sin, confessed to God the truth He already knew.

The ugliness and sin in David's heart began as a tiny seed of dissatisfaction with the wife of his youth, but it grew into a massive, strangling vine.  God let it grow until He had finally had enough.  What David thought God must have "winked at," he now realized had been a critical flaw in his character.  

What sin have you been committing for a very long time now?  Has it seemed that it is just "no big deal" to God since He really hasn't challenged you in regard to it?  Learn from the life of David.  What hasn't been dealt with will surely be!  God is not willing that evil reside in any of us.  If you have let it go unchecked, as David did, you can count on God pulling the rug out from under you sooner or later.  Take a good look into your heart.  What is your ugly, sinful vine?  Surrender now and confess it to God and walk away from it..  It's the wrong way!  Go back!  Get on the right path!  Better to handle it that way than to wait for the discipline of the Lord!