“What Comes Around, Goes Around.”

When silver is mined from the ground it is commonly mixed with a number of other elements. In order to get pure silver that can be used for commercial or industrial purposes, it must be refined.

Silver has an extraordinarily high melting point—it must be heated to nearly 2,200 degrees in order to be refined to complete purity. Only when it has been through that process does the silver become useful for its intended function. Beautiful service pieces, high tech equipment, and collectible coins all become possible once the silver has been refined. Without that process, it is largely worthless.

Satan is delighted when we allow wicked influences to remain in our lives, because they keep us from fulfilling the purpose and will of God for our lives. One of his most effective lies is that such influences won’t really have any impact on us. Believing this lie has destroyed many believers as they fell prey to an influence they did not recognize and guard against. As Paul warned the church at Corinth, “1 Corinthians 15:33

1 Corinthians 15:33 ESV

33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”

Today’s Scripture is the last installment on the life of King Solomon. His story ends tragically. It is a tale of bad company not only ruining good morals, but leading a heart to worship other gods and to be given over to the most heinous apostasy. King Solomon failed to understand, “What comes around, goes around.” Let us first learn that...

Loving the wrong woman was Solomon’s downfall.

1 Kings 11 reads: 1 Kings 11:1-3

1 Kings 11:1–3 ESV

1 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. 3 He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.

We are not to assume that it was for sexual gratification only that Solomon made such poor decisions. He could have thought these relationships would bring peace with Israel’s neighbors. He could have reasoned that these marriages were good, in order to spread his fame and prestige. Regardless, Solomon thought he knew better than God. And friends, that always gets us into trouble. God’s instructions are there for our protection. If we choose not to follow, we put ourselves at risk. Leadership can be, and often is, vulnerable to blind spots.

How can a king, known for his wisdom; famous for His power and prestige, and his heart, at one time, to walk with God- how can it go so astray? The answer: little by little. Solomon made his first mistake in marrying Pharoah’s daughter. She was of a different faith than Solomon who supposedly trusted in the God of Israel. And then he married another foreign wife, then another, and another. These influenced him in ways that should have never been, not because they were from a different part of the world, but because they served other gods. It was a case of bad company corrupting one’s morals.

Remember that God said in Exodus 20:1-6

Exodus 20:1–6 ESV

1 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

The Bible gives us two case studies. One of of a man who saw this instruction as optional; the other who saw it as critical. For the former, we turn to verse four and learn...

They were the wrong women for Solomon because they served foreign gods.

1 Kings 11:4–8 (ESV)

. 4 For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done. 7 Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. 8 And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods.

How someone can live and please that many women is beyond me- each of them vying for his attention. And these women were followers of foreign gods. They were faithful to their religious upbringing.

Now some of these relationships were political. But some of them were not. And Solomon was a passionate man. He aimed to please those in his care. And he reached a point of compromise. But it started early, when he married the daughter of Pharoah. God had told Solomon not to marry foreign wives. But he did what he thought was best- quite the opposite of the wisdom-filled monarch that he had the reputation of being.

But Solomon’s actions had a devastating effect on his relationship with the Lord. Notice what it says in verse nine:

1 Kings 11:9–13 ESV

9 And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice 10 and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded. 11 Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. 12 Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. 13 However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.”

What a shame. Something that was so good and positive and the beginning, ended up being so terrible and harmful. It did not have to be like this.

Young people, be careful who you date and who you marry. Pray for your future mate. Do not get sucked into the vortex of immediate gratification that has ruined the lives of so many, obscure or well known.

Recent years have produced several examples of those spiritual leaders that have fallen prey to their sinful desires. Many years ago, it was the likes of Jim Baker or Jimmy Swaggart. More recently, it has been Ted Haggard and Ravi Zecharias. In the late 1980s, Bakker resigned from the PTL ministry over a cover-up of hush money to church secretary Jessica Hahn for an alleged rape. Subsequent revelations of accounting fraud brought about felony charges, conviction, imprisonment, and divorce.

A short while later, Jimmy Swaggart, America's leading television evangelist, has resigned from his ministry after it was revealed he had been consorting with a prostitute.

In 2006, Ted Haggard, pastor of a mega church in Colorado Springs, who once served as the President of the National Association of Evangelicals, had allegedly been cavorting with a male prostitute and participating in illicit drug use.

Then in 2021, world renown Christian apologist and author Ravi Zecharias was discovered to have had multiple trysts and even accused of rape. Zacharias, Christianity Today reported, used “tens of thousands of dollars of ministry funds dedicated to a ‘humanitarian effort’ to pay massage therapists, providing them housing, schooling and monthly support for extended periods of time.” (Christianity Today, “News and Reporting,” February 2021)

In each of these cases, there was a lapse in judgement; a failure to put up the proper defenses and checkpoints before one’s desires went off the rails, and move away from God’s provision and protection. But there is a better way. Next we find...

There are better examples of faithful leadership.

An opposite case study is the story of Joseph. This young man, sold into slavery by his brothers, was transported into Egypt. There, he was employed by Potiphar, an official to the king. He was trusted, but also sought after by Potiphar’s wife. Hear the story of Joseph in Genesis 39.

Genesis 39:1–10 ESV

1 Now Joseph had been brought down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, had bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. 2 The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. 3 His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to succeed in his hands. 4 So Joseph found favor in his sight and attended him, and he made him overseer of his house and put him in charge of all that he had. 5 From the time that he made him overseer in his house and over all that he had, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had, in house and field. 6 So he left all that he had in Joseph’s charge, and because of him he had no concern about anything but the food he ate. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. 7 And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” 8 But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. 9 He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” 10 And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her.

Joseph practiced the Billy Graham rule, before there was a Billy Graham.

The Modesto Manifesto or Billy Graham rule is a code of conduct among male evangelical Protestant leaders, in which they avoid spending time alone with women to whom they are not married. It is adopted as a display of integrity, a means of avoiding sexual temptation, to avoid any appearance of doing something considered morally objectionable, as well as for avoiding accusations of sexual harassment or assault. (See: Billy Graham rule - Wikipedia).

Author Erwin Lutzer had this to say in reflection of the scandals mentioned earlier. I share his thoughts today. He said:

“Let us ponder. First, we should stand amazed at the evil deceptions of the human heart. Hence the Bible says, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), it means just what it says. Someone once put it this way: Just when you think you have reached the bottom of the evil within the human heart, there is a trap door under your feet, and you realize there is another layer beneath you- a basement of deception- and then another. And another.”

Second, we must realize that technology gives us ways to sin that were not available to previous generations. Technology can be used for good of course, but the Internet gives us access to a whole world of evil with just the click of a mouse or the tap of an app.

Third, we must realize that the most important part of who we are is that which no one ever sees, namely the mind and the heart. There is an old adage: “You are not what you think you are, but …what you think, you are.” He quotes 2 Chronicles 16:9:

2 Chronicles 16:9 ESV

9 For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars.”

Then states: “We must run to Christ moment by moment, so that God, who sees all we do, might give us His mercy and grace.. The eighteenth-century evangelist George Whitefield requested that these words be on his tombstone: ‘Here likes G.W.; What sort of man he was, the great day will discover.”

It should be an encouragement to you, with whatever you are facing in the way of temptation- to do what is common or popular, that God looks for those wanting to do things His way. Remember, God desires obedience more than sacrifice. Jesus was tempted in every way that we are, yet without sin. He can give you and I the grace needed to live a way that is pleasing to God.

Conclusion

Notice our “Thought for Meditation”: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” Galatians 6:7. Some have said that Solomon wrote Ecclesiastes, which is a reflection of a life that has been tested by regret. Sexual improprieties/desires often exceed one’s sense of wisdom and self control.

The Navigators teach that Scripture memorization can help strengthen your decision-making ability, help combat temptation, and guide you away from sin.

Socrates said: “Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for.”

Leo Tolstoy said: “People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing- refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.”