30th May, 2021
Minister: Pastor Seyi Osanyinbi
God has a way of revealing the strengths and the weaknesses of the men He chose; if you care to look deeply into the Bible you will see it.
King Solomon was a very wise man but he made quite a number of foolish decisions. The purpose of teaching today is for us to see the foolishness of Solomon so we can avoid making the mistakes he made.
2 Samuel 12:24
Solomon was loved from the beginning and he had an advantage over all the other sons that David had. He was marked out to be the heir to the throne after his father, David. Solomon, however, lived like just every other ordinary person until he had an encounter with God.
1 Kings 3:5-15
Before the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night in Gibeon, He (God) already saw that there were things about life that Solomon really desired to know, quests in his heart that he had been seeking to find answers to. So God decided to act upon it by giving him a blank cheque to ask for anything. This in a way explains the reason why we do not receive responses from God sometimes- there is no inquisitiveness in our hearts.
As far as we are concerned, what Solomon asked for made a lot of sense, something highly commendable, something we would applaud him for. But God saw differently. He saw into Solomon’s heart and responded according to what was there. Remember, God knows the thoughts and intents of our hearts.
So what was truly in Solomon’s heart?
Solomon wanted to know what was good for man under the heavens (Ecclesiastes 1:13). He did not spare any form of learning; he explored everything possible. He used the wisdom he got to discover all kinds fantasy and pleasure (Ecclesiastes 2:1-3). He did not ask for wisdom because he was truly interested in being wise, but because of a selfish and foolish reason. He used his life for experiments till he eventually came to the conclusion that all was vanity. He did all these at the detriment of his soul.
Solomon, a man who had that level of access to God should have just asked God “what is good for man under the heavens” but he chose to expend his energy unwisely. He did so many things that could have damned his soul, all because of experimentation.
What killed Solomon is what is killing so many people today- the desire to always try things out and see for ourselves, which is birthed from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:5). This is what drives people most times and Satan has really taken advantage of this to kill many.
It important that we pay attention to those who have gone ahead of us. Solomon’s experiments almost cost him his soul. Serving the Lord is a choice that we all have to make. We cannot afford to throw away our lives by wasting our time here on Earth pursuing the wrong things. We cannot afford to be foolish by making the same mistakes people made in the past. What will matter in the end will be whether we feared God and obeyed His commandments or not. (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)
We must always remember that we really do not have time to experiment with our lives here on Earth. We would have invited so many complications in our lives and this has led to us pursuing the wrong things. Whereas, the whole duty of man is just to fear God and keep His commandments.
Ecclesiastes 12: 1-7
The evil days (old age) will surely come. The problem is that all we see in our youthful age is pleasure and potential. People hardly remember that old age will come upon them one day. It is in our youthful age that we can adjust our mentality to do what God has called us to do so that we don’t end up in regrets.