Walk of Imperfection

WALKING WITH GOD. No.28

1 Kings 3:3 Solomon showed his love for the LORD by walking according to the statutes of his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.

Throughout this series we have been picturing our life with God as a walk. Walking is a picture of an ongoing activity and our ‘walk with God’ is an ongoing activity. The different ‘walks’ that we have looked at have considered different things that happen on that walk or different ways we ‘walk’. A number of the recent meditations were in respect of David but now we come to a series of ‘walks’ that are seen in the lives of the kings that follow him, starting with his son Solomon.

Before we examine Solomon’s activities, we should note a summary of David’s life and reign: “David had done what was right in the eyes of the LORD and had not failed to keep any of the LORD ’s commands all the days of his life–except in the case of Uriah the Hittite.” (1 Kings 15:5) David’s only failure was in respect of his desire for Bathsheba, his subsequent act of adultery and of assassination of her husband. Sexual desire had been his downfall, and that alone. At the beginning of the current chapter we find, “Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter” (v.1). Now that was not a smart move; in fact it was contrary to God’s instructions to the Israelites not to marry foreigners who might lead them astray. Now we can accept that this marriage was no doubt part of a trade treaty, but it still reveals an area of vulnerability in Solomon that will bring his downfall. However, a more favourable outlook on this marriage might say there was the possibility of this Egyptian princess becoming a member of the covenant race and following the religion of the Lord. However, something in our verse today suggests that that might not be very likely.

At this stage of his life (and we have to say at this stage), this summary of Solomon suggests that his heart was turned to the Lord and he did keep the Law of Moses – or at least, most of it! And therein is the problem. His walk with the Lord was imperfect, in that he was careless in his attitude towards worship. We can say that because of the two things mentioned. First, Solomon in his enthusiasm to worship God conducted his own sacrifices instead of using the priests. Second, in his travelling around he would stop off at the ‘high places’ to offer incense to the Lord. Now incense was a part of the sacrificial system (e.g. Lev 2:2,16) and of course there was an altar of incense (Ex 30:27, 40:27). However this was only to be burnt in the Tabernacle and the burning of incense elsewhere was a simple way, in Solomon’s eyes to express worship when he was away from Jerusalem. The trouble was he did it at the shrines with little idols at them that were scattered around the land on hilltops, remnants of the idol worship from the earliest inhabitants of Canaan, and which some of the Israelites foolishly carried on using.

Solomon would no doubt have said that he was worshipping the Lord, but the trouble was that he was a member of the covenant community and the Law of Moses was very specific about how and where worship should be offered, and it was by the priests in the Tabernacle. Solomon’s attitude was obviously one that is still very common, “Oh it’s all right, God understands.” This casual attitude was eventually to be Solomon’s downfall as we’ll see in a subsequent meditation. It seemed ‘all right’ at the moment but was an indication of a half-hearted attitude in some respect of the way he thought about the Lord.

Now what is amazing about this, is that shortly after his marriage he went and offered major sacrifices to God and shortly after that God gave him a dream in which he asked for and was given, wisdom from God to rule the people wisely. Despite the fact that God knew Solomon’s casualness and what his eventual outcome would be, the Lord nevertheless granted him this supernatural level of wisdom that made him the richest man in the world and a mighty ruler. Perhaps it was that the Lord, respecting his self-will, allowed him the path he took but blessed him anyway so that he could never say he hadn’t had God’s fullest blessing to be a success as Israel ’s ruler.

To summarise Solomon’s approach to his walk with God: he was casual about certain parts of it and did not ensure that he complied fully with God’s will in respect of his attitude towards worship. Solomon is a man who accepts imperfection and doesn’t seek to be whole-hearted in keeping every aspect of God’s will. Our possible similar attitude might be, “Oh, it’s all right if I do this, God doesn’t expect me to be perfect.” Wrong! Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). We are at least to make that our aim. We may fail, but our intention should be to be whole hearted in seeking all of God’s will for our lives. Solomon might have said, “Well I’m keeping most of the laws!” but that meant there were some where he was offending God because he thought he knew better. What we call ‘little things’ can become our downfall. That’s the warning Jesus kept giving in the Sermon on the Mount when he talked about plucking out eyes or cutting off hands. He was saying, if you are casual about these things, unless you take radical action, they will be your downfall. Heed the warning! Don’t tolerate the ‘little things’ that are contrary to God’s will!