The Wise Fool

Everyone knows the story in the New Testament of the wise and foolish men.

The Wise man built his house upon the rock.

The Foolish man built his house upon the sand.

Do you know that there is a story in the Old Testament about a wise fool?

1 Kings 11:1- 14

No man began with more promise than Solomon did. Yet a good beginning doesn’t mean a good finish. Solomon drifted and finally defected. Could it happen to us?

Solomon means “Peaceful”, he was David’s second son by Bathsheba, the first after their legal marriage. He succeeded his father on the throne at a young age, about sixteen or eighteen years of age.

As soon as he had settled himself in his kingdom he entered into an alliance with Egypt by the marriage of the daughter of Pharaoh.

During his reign Israel went from strength to strength commercially. Extensive traffic was carried on land with Tyre, Egypt, and Arabia, and by sea with Spain, India, and the coasts of Africa, as a result Solomon generated huge amounts of cash, and he also had much of the produce from these different countries he traded with.

God appeared to Solomon in 1 Kings 3 and said ask what and I shall give thee. Solomon asked God in Verse 9 for an understanding heart and not only gave Solomon a wise and understanding heart, but also gave that which he had not asked for. Solomon was the wisest man in the world.

1 Kings 4:32 - 34 And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. 33 And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. 34 And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom.

The bright day of Solomon’s glory ended in clouds and darkness.

So what went wrong,

I. Solomon had a misplaced love.

VERSE 1 & 2

In school, when you used to do something wrong the teacher would shout out your name and you would pretend not to hear them, because you knew you’d done wrong and you knew you were in trouble.

God tells Israel not to have anything to do with these women!!! Solomon loved these women. He is like the kids in school; he pretends not to hear God give the command not to marry these women because deep down he knew it was wrong. The Lord tells Israel not to marry these women because they will turn their hearts away from God and that is exactly what happened to Solomon. Solomon had his heart turned because of them.

Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

It is impossible to present your bodies a living sacrifice if your heart is not right. Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould. Have you ever been serving the Lord and everything is going well, then all of a sudden temptation comes, things start to crop up in our lives that cause us to start missing Church and our prayer time and Bible study times are slowly taken away from us. How easy it is for Satan to get in and cause us to have a misplaced love.

Well the enemy is always in the background. Satan wants to gets us as far away from God as possible.

II. Condition of misplaced love: (Turned heart / Backslidden)

VERSE 4

V4 is a hinge verse, things change from this point on.

Solomon had his heart turned away from God, as a result of his misplaced love his heart is turned not only away from God, but towards false gods. The worship systems that Solomon was involved in were sexually orientated and obviously this would appeal to Solomon, if he wasn’t interested in this kind of thing he probably would have stuck with just the one wife.

Have we had our hearts turned away? You may say that the worship of false gods no longer takes place today. Well let me tell you that thousands of Churches are empty today because of the worship of false gods.

• You see Sunday is the only day that the kids can play football, so we have to take them while church is on.