God Knows Your Heart

Context:

1 and 2 Kings was originally one book and it covers a time period of approximately 400 years of Israel’s history from the David’s death to Judah’s captivity.

400 years of bondage to freedom, then 400 years of wandering and wars to golden age of national Israel

Solomon is king, being the successor to his father King David’s throne and perhaps on track to exceed even his father’s greatness. In chapter 1 the newly installed king demonstrates mercy on his enemies, and in chapter 2 secures and establishes the kingdom by eliminating the remaining threats within the kingdom, in chapter 3 Solomon asks God for wisdom to govern his people and he is blessed with more wisdom than anyone before or after him. He later demonstrates his wisdom in everything from delivering justice to a lowly prostitute to appointing government officials and assigning kingdom duties. And through chapters 5-8 he prepares for and builds the temple along with his palace. Israel is enjoying peace and prosperity beyond what they had ever known.

In chapter 10 the kingdom is truly a light to the nations. Part of God’s plan for salvation in the Old Testament was for the nation of Israel to draw gentiles into their country to hear about Yahweh. People around the world were to hear great reports of the great works of the God of Israel and they were to hear about the faithfulness of His people especially Israel’s king. And it happened. The Queen of Sheba travels 1,500 miles to Jerusalem to see and hear for herself all that had been reported concerning Solomon and the name of the LORD. And what she received from her journey greatly exceeded the original report she heard. So much so that by faith she believes and trusts in Yahweh and her faith is affirmed by Jesus in Matt 12.

Theme: wisdom and folly

Preface: Be careful how you think about OT saints. Some of you are very judgmental.

READ 1 Kings 11:1-13

Solomon’s trouble was not due to excess of wealth or an excess of wisdom. Like all sin issues, Solomon’s sin is a matter of the heart. The word heart appears five times in verses 2-4.

What does God’s Word mean when it refers to the heart? The heart is the inner man, the core of who every person is, it is the control center of your life. The heart is made up of your desires, affections, and will. It plans and purposes (Prov 20) is calculating and untrustworthy (Prov 6) and deceitful above all things (Jer 17:9). The world constantly reinforces the idea that is noble and genuine to follow your heart no matter what, but God’s Word refutes that in Proverbs 21 by saying “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.” Your heart is self-righteous and self-justifying.

As a result none of us not me, not the elders, not you are capable of assessing your own desires, plans, and purposes without examining them through the lens of God’s Word. So this morning you and I will do just that. We will examine our own hearts with the first 13 verses of chapter 11 of 1 Kings and focus on how your own heart could potentially be divided between God and women.

PRAY

Give the title of the sermon

The Root of a Divided Heart

1 Kings 11:1-8

Dismissal of Warnings

1 Kings 11:1-2

What started as an all-time succession story immediately becomes a tragedy. Chapter 3:3 starts out “Solomon loved the Lord” and chapter 11 begins with “Solomon loved many foreign women”.

The first rebuke by the author is that Solomon had dismissed Yahweh’s specific warnings to Israel. God specifically instructed them not to marry women outside of Israel.

READ Deut 7:1-4; Exod 34:11-16

So Solomon dismissed the warnings from the past. He knew about the warnings but he did not take them to heart.

We live in a time right now where there are so many warnings that you literally need to dismiss most of them just to keep your sanity. And I know many of you men here this morning dismiss a lot of warnings. I’ve talked to a lot of you and I know how you handle popcorn ceilings. You handle popcorn ceilings like they are literally made of popcorn. Some of you are the opposite, you take every warning seriously but come to realize warnings change like the wind. We’ve been warned about the importance of sanitizing our hands in order to prevent COVID spreading, meanwhile we

But warnings are all over. How many times have you been in a store with a sign that says “Warning. Some products sold in this store contain chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.” Sleeping pills must warn that they may cause drowsiness. There are so many ridiculous warning, but then there are warnings you may heed based on who is giving the warning and not the warning itself. Admit it, some of you will take a warning from former President Donald Trump to heart and declare him to be the most genuine and caring person in having the best interest for truth, justice and the American people. But then if President Joe Biden gave the very same warning you would dismiss it and be like that guy only cares about himself, he doesn’t care about America.

For Solomon, the Person giving the warning was God. And when God speaks you need to listen. And when He speaks a warning, man you need to take it to heat.

Solomon had great assurances from God that he took to heart.

READ 1 Kings 2:1-4, 6:11-13, 8:25-26

In 1 Kings 9 God appears to Solomon a second time and He again reinforces His assurances to Solomon, but also gives him a very specific warning with very specific consequences.

READ 1 Kings 9:4-9

We see the same heart issue in God’s people in the book of Deuteronomy as Israel is preparing to leave the dessert and enter the Promised Land. In chapter 30 Moses exhorts the people to obedience and warns them of the curse of disobedience.

READ Exod 30:17-19

In chapter 31 God speaks to Moses and tells him after Moses dies Israel will whore after foreign gods in the land they are entering and God instructs Moses to teach them a song about how they will disobey and commit apostasy so that song will be a witness against them. That song is in Exod 32 and it is mind blowing to think that this they still fall away and worship other gods. They heard the warnings, they sang the warnings, so they absolutely had the knowledge of the warnings. But they did not take the warnings to heart.

What about you Christian? Are you only about the assurances from God but not the warnings? The assurances you have received as one who has placed his faith and trust in Christ. Forgiveness of sin, Christ’s righteousness, being foreknown and predestined by God, being sealed by the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit, no longer facing condemnation. The assurance of an eternal future in glory in Christ’s kingdom? Praise God those are among many assurances we receive through Christ.

But do you only hold to the gospel truth that says you were justified by faith and have no regard for the gospel truth that says the just shall live by faith? Are you trying to enjoy the promise of eternal life with little concern for living out the Christian life? Are you above God’s warnings in the bible for all believers?

That’s why I love the second half of Romans 7 so much. There is probably a 50-50 split on those who think Paul is talking about the heart struggle of a believer or unbeliever. Martyn Lloyd Jones says unbeliever. John MacArthur in a sermon from 1983 says believer. Ultimately it does not matter where you land on this because Romans 7 shows the battle within the human heart applies to everyone, both believer and unbeliever. Whether you are an unbeliever in need of justification by faith or a believer in need of sanctification, both people need Christ. And whether you are an immature baby Christian or a mature Christian the truth in Romans is just as relevant.

God knows your heart. God knows my heart. And that is why He lovingly gives us warnings. The world gives us so many warnings today out of liability concerns. The world stops at no costs to avoid lawsuits and legal trouble. But God gives the world and especially believers warnings because He knows our hearts and knows that we are prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love.

Are you taking warnings from God’s Word to heart when it comes to another woman or other women?

Are you seeking a romantic relationship or even marriage with an unbeliever? Throughout the bible God’s desire for marriage is clear, but is your judgment being clouded by a divided heart? Christian if you are already married to an unbeliever you are to remain married to your wife and love her as Christ loved the church. But if you are seeking a relationship or in a relationship outside of marriage with an unbeliever that is not something that brings honor to the Lord.

READ Proverbs and other NT warnings

To some extent all of our hearts are divided

Devotion to (other) Women

1 Kings 11:2-8

From a worldly perspective Solomon forming alliances with other nations by taking wives from them would have been a brilliant political move. To ensure peace and perhaps good relations that sustain and grow the economy, I mean why not?

Well, because as God warned, these wives would turn his heart after other gods. How would they do this? For the fact that these marriages were not just for political reasons but for the reason the end of verse 2 gives “Solomon clung to these in love.”

These are not strictly business decisions, they are as Solomon later reflected on in Ecclesiastes 2

READ Eccles 2:1, 10

Notice Solomon’s fall is when he is old.

READ 1 Kings 11:4

When you think about a demographic most likely to fall into great sin you usually think about young men. But the real tragedy is when older men fall into sin or when it has been revealed they had been hiding their sin for much of their life.

So how is it that this happens to older men, even older Christian men?

It is the result of a life of compromise. A life of dismissing God’s warnings. Death by 1,000 wives or death by 1,000 paper cuts is still death.

We live in the “Me Too” era where you would have to be pretty bold to be outwardly lustful towards other women. There is just no tolerance for that behavior and that is how it should be.

But we also live in a time where you are encouraged to follow you heart and do what makes you happy. Whether that means divorcing your wife because you don’t feel respected at home or engaging in casual or recreational sex with a woman who is not your wife.

As a young 13 or 14 year-old I really got into music. Spent most of my money on tapes and later CD’s and CD players. One of the very last tapes I purchased was in 1990 and it was one of those albums I could listen straight through without fast forwarding. But as I revisited that album more recently with Spotify I started to pay attention to the meaning and the lyrics of one of the songs “Love Makes Things Happen” and I have to skip that song every time now because it seems to celebrate or encourage lust and infidelity. I recently watched the music video and the video is a little more ambiguous. It makes it clear that throughout a man’s life there are temptations to pursue other women and it is a real struggle. Even for a married man. But there is no moral concern or concern for the consequences of lust and loving other women. The video is so ambiguous that people in the comments are debating on whether the music video is celebrating lust and infidelity or showing that love conquers lust and infidelity.

The world clearly recognizes there is a conflict within every person’s heart and many times this conflict is brilliantly portrayed in music, movies, and television. But these worldly creations never provide a real solution or even a clear judgment of the problem. The world is good at showing the struggle of the human heart but cannot provide a solution to the human heart. That is why we end up with “follow your heart” and “do what makes you happy”.

In your mind do you regularly fantasize about other women without repentance? You think it is harmless? Not only does Jesus say it is adultery, but if you are regularly doing it and self-justifying it, you are dangerously compromising and revealing to have a dangerously divided heart.

Every man who ends up having affairs or ends up with a prostitute never gets there by a momentary slip of judgment. The slip up always occurs much earlier when he was a youth who regularly fantasized about women and viewed pornography and sensual images, music, and movies.

What about relationships with women at school or work or even in the church? Are they honoring to the Lord or are you

Do you feel a lack of respect from your wife so you justify flirting and such with other women?

The Result of a Divided Heart

1 Kings 11:9-13

Destruction of Works

PROV 6:32-33

The Response Needed for a Divided Heart

Don’t Wait

Biblical warnings will produce a response from you. They will either harden your heart and you will continue to dismiss them and keep making excuses for yourself or biblical warnings will soften your heart and make you feel a godly sorrow resulting in you turning away from sin rather than turning away from your God.

Sin is deceitful. Your own heart is deceitful. You need other godly men to help you recognize your blind spots.

Solomon had 1,000 wives and concubines. How many hundreds or even thousands of pornographic images have you viewed in your web browser in the last 12 months? How many hundreds or even thousands of times have you allowed your mind to fantasize about other women and in your heart keep justifying it?

Are you in a relationship with an unbeliever? Are