“…if Your people Israel are defeated before an enemy because THEY HAVE SINNED AGAINST YOU, and when the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because they HAVE SINNED AGAINST YOU, when they PRAY…and CONFESS Your name, and TURN FROM THEIR SIN…hear in heaven, and FORGIVE THE SIN of Your servants…that they may FEAR YOU, TO WALK IN YOUR WAYS as long as they live in the land which You gave to our fathers.” (2 Chronicles 6:24-31)
This is how you ANSWERED THIS PRAYER, Lord. “…if My people who are called by My name will HUMBLE themselves, and PRAY and SEEK My face, and TURN from their wicked ways, then I will HEAR from heaven, and will FORGIVE their sin and HEAL their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)
So, how did Solomon do as the king?
Influenced by his MANY FOREIGN WIVES AND CONCUBINES, (Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3)), Solomon became involved in pagan worship. Failing to heed God’s warning of the “SNARE” which foreign wives would become, he allowed his wives to turn him to FALSE GODS. God gave these specific instructions to His people, “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. But YOU SHALL DESTROY THEIR ALTARS, BREAK THEIR SACRED PILLARS, AND CUT DOWN THEIR WOODEN IMAGES (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God) …” (Exodus 34:11-14)
Solomon was hooked on pleasing the many foreign women he had a made images of their false gods and fell out of favor with God. “But King Solomon loved many foreign women, the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites— from the nations of whom the LORD had said to the children of Israel, “You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will TURN AWAY YOUR HEART AFTER THEIR GODS.” Solomon clung to these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and HIS WIVES TURNED AWAY HIS HEART. For it was so, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods; and HIS HEART WAS NOT LOYAL TO THE LORD HIS GOD, as was the heart of his father David.” (1 Kings 11:1-4)
Your Personal Pastor -Bill Stockham