Thank you, Richard. Let me just begin by saying it's a joy. It is a true joy to be with you all. I have my son visiting me from Alabama and his wife. He graduated from Covenant College and he met his wife down there and he has ended up living in Birmingham. I've noticed that we were, in his conversation he uses the word you all quite a bit. And he says to me that since the English language only has one word for you that we should adopt that, but I'm not so sure. But having family around, having our children around, those that we love, reminds us what a wonderful thing it is to be in the family of God. What a wonderful thing it is to be called by Jesus Christ into His family and to have the Holy Spirit, whom we have been reading and singing about, dwelling in us and uniting us to Jesus Christ by faith. What a wonderful thing it is, what a privilege it is to worship him and to hear his word. I do bring you greetings from the West Springfield Covenant Community Church, among whom I have the privilege to serve. Our thoughts have been with your pastor, Brad Evans, whom we love and admire and respect as well. Thank God for his ministry. look for his healing and return to ministry here. It is a privilege to be invited to bring God's Word to you. I'd like to have us turn together to 1 Kings 11. And then if you would also turn in your Bibles to the New Testament to Romans chapter 8. And in Romans chapter 8 we will read verses 1 through 9 and 1 Kings chapter 11 verses 1 through 13. Hear the word of God. Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women 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, nor for surely They will turn away your heart after other gods. Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. And 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. For Solomon went after Astaroth, and the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, and the abomination of the Ammonites. 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. And 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. So he did for all his foreign wives who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods. 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 and had commanded him concerning this very thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded. Therefore the Lord said to Solomon since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant my statutes that I have commanded you I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. And 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. 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." Turning now to Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 8. verses one through nine. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. For if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. So then brothers we are debtors not to the flesh but to the spirit. So ends the reading of God's holy word. Let's bow in prayer. We bow before you, eternal God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are before you as the Lord of all, the Giver of life, the God of all wisdom, the God who has provided such a Savior as we have in Jesus Christ. We ask, Father, that you would unite us to him this hour, and that we might hear his word. For it is through him we pray. Amen. The account that we've read from 1 Kings tells us of Solomon. In my most recent series of sermons I've been preaching from this these chapters these early chapters of First Kings and about Solomon and his life. And if we're familiar with the early chapters of First Kings we know something about the great blessing that God poured out poured out upon Solomon as the son of David as the one who was heir to the throne of Israel. God in response to Solomon's wonderful prayer where the Lord appeared to him you remember and he said ask of me and I'll give you what you ask for. Ask of me and I will give you what you ask for. What an invitation Solomon said in response to that. that he felt as though he was but a child and he needed wisdom. Most of all, he needed wisdom to be able to govern and to direct this great nation that he had been made king over and God gave him wisdom. God gave him more than wisdom. He gave him what he didn't ask for, wealth and glory. dominion over the nations that surrounded Israel who during David's reign had caused so much trouble. And you remember that David spent most of his life in battles and in bloodshed. Solomon just the opposite. Solomon given peace and dominion and it was as though the nation screamed to him, To hear from him the wisdom that God had given him and Solomon became a great teacher not only of Israel but of the nation surrounding Israel. And yet in spite of the great blessings poured out upon Solomon as the son of David and the heir of the throne of David Solomon as we read this morning fell. And he fell because he did not keep the covenant that the Lord had made with him. We can think about the cause of Solomon's fall into sin in a number of ways. One aspect of it has to do with covenant. Solomon did not keep the covenant. And we might say that sin in its very essence is a failure to keep the covenant, is a repudiation of obligations which the covenant places upon us. And God had certainly said to Solomon in his appearances to him, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, with the integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your throne over Israel forever as I promised David your father. And you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel. But if you turn aside from following me, you and your children, and do not keep my commandments, and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them. Then I will cut off from Israel, cut off Israel from the land that I have given them." You notice the ifs and the thens? If you do this, I will do that. And God has said to Solomon, even in the midst of the great building projects that he was engaged in and in the midst of all that he was doing in the glory that God had given him. It was not the building projects. It was not all of the external things that Solomon was doing. What was most important was that Solomon keep his heart and that he not misplace his love. Solomon broke covenant. He repudiated covenant obligations before God in that he disobeyed. the commandments of the Lord with respect, particularly to intermarriage with those who lived in Israel, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Sidonians, the Hittite women, the nations from which the Lord has said to the people of Israel, you shall not enter into marriage with them. For if you do, they will turn your heart after other gods. Solomon didn't listen. Not only didn't he listen, but he repudiated his covenant obligations. But Solomon's sin can also be looked upon not only as a breaking of covenant, but as a misplaced love, a misplaced love. Love is a wonderful thing. We sing about it. We write poems about it. I was introduced not long ago to a wonderful little book by Henry Schugle called The Life of God in the Soul of Man. Henry Schugle, The Life of God in the Soul of Man. If you see that book, pick it up and read it. In this book, he says this about love. Love is the greatest and the most excellent thing that we are masters of. Therefore, it is folly and baseness to bestow it unworthily It is indeed the only thing we can call our own. Other things may be taken from us by violence, but none can ravish our love. If anything else be counted ours by giving our love, we give all." By giving our love, we give all. So far as we make over our hearts and our wills by which we possess, all our other enjoyments, it is not possible to refuse him anything to whom, by love, we have given ourselves." It is not possible to refuse him anything to whom, by love, we have given ourselves. Love is of that nature, isn't it? It is exclusive, and it has an all-dominating and all-powerful effect upon us. We can think of nothing but the one we love and it is exclusive in nature and we give to the one that we love. Solomon's fall was a failure because it was a misplacing of love and the text brings that out because the text says that Solomon clung to his wives. In verse two at the end of verse two Solomon clung to these in love and his wives turned away his heart from the Lord. Solomon clung to these in love. He loved his wives more than he loved the Lord. And not only is Solomon's sin seen in terms of a breaking of covenant. Not only is it seen in the sense of misplacing of that all absorbing and all consuming love, but it is also seen to be a matter of the heart because love is a matter of the heart. And if you noticed in the reading of this section of scripture from chapter 11 in 1 Kings that the repetition of the word heart It's used repeatedly over and over again that Solomon and going after these other wives, he did not follow wholly after the Lord as David, his father, had done. But in his heart, he followed after other gods. The heart is the thinking and willing and feeling center of a person. It is our core. It is our that inner being that is so hard for us to wrap our minds around and understand, but it is who we are. And sin begins in the heart, and that's why the writer of Proverbs Solomon says to us, keep your heart, for out of it are the issues of life. My son, give me your heart. and let your eyes observe my ways." Solomon's fall reveals, I think, something about us as created by God. We are created to cling. We are created to cling. It says here that Solomon clung to his wives in love. God created us to cling. The word that is used there is the very same word Use when the writer of Genesis says about Adam that Adam, that it says, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast. To hold fast is to cling. It's the same word. And God has made us in such a way that we cling in love to someone or something. And the very question that is before each one of us is, what is and who is the object of our love? Who is or what is the object of our love? Schugel makes this point, he says, in a phrase that I like to call a maxim. He says this, the worth and the excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love. The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love. God has made us to love. He's made us to cleave. The real question is, to whom are you cleaving? To whom have you given yourself unreservedly to love? To plead to God and to love God is to resign oneself wholly to him and to desire to please him above all and to delight in nothing so much as to have fellowship with him and communion with him. And that's why when you are here and you're fellowshipping, God willing, As you sing and as you hear God's word and as you hear it, you offer up to the Lord your prayers, your fellowshipping, and the soul delights in nothing so much as to fellowship and to have communion with him, even so much that it's willing to go to great discomfort and to sacrifice much for the sake of it. In Solomon's fall we see someone who misplaced his love. He broke God's commandments and he misplaced his love. We don't know the outcome at the end of his life but the text doesn't tell us much beyond what we have read today about Solomon. It leaves us with a question. But it leaves us to ponder this whole issue, this whole matter of love and what it is and how God has made us. The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love, not the soul in itself, but what the soul loves, what the soul settles its affections upon and its mind upon. determines the worth and the excellency of the soul. There's something about this in Romans, in Paul's letter to the Romans, where he says that the basic problem that man has is that he worships and serves the creature rather than the creator. He worships and serves the creature rather than the creator. But when he does this, nothing satisfies. It doesn't have sufficiency in itself to satisfy the longing that we have when we love, the longing that we have to give ourselves wholly to someone. God has made us in such a way. that we are, as Augustine says, made for him. We are made for God. He's made us in such a way that when we humbly and steadfastly cling to God, when we humble ourselves before God and cling to him, that it is the most exalting life-giving experience that we could know. It seems contradictory, and this is something that Augustine reflected on, and Augustine was always one that loved paradox. He says, it seems contradictory that loftiness, that is raising ourselves up to set ourselves up as those who break the covenant and go our own way and do as we please, it seems contradictory that loftiness actually debases us and humility and lowliness exalts us since God is self-existent life in himself. Nothing is more ennobling and exalting to man's life. Nothing is more fulfills us and makes us truly human. Nothing is more exalting to man's life than to cling in love to the God who is the source of our life, because it is only God who has life in himself. It is only God who is in himself eternally self-existent. And it is only God who satisfies our being. And it is only God who brings us to be truly what we are intended to be. Who do you love? Who do you give yourselves to wholly? If you love that which is of this creation, it is doomed to fail. What happened in Solomon? How did he make that change? How did he go from that humility that exalts to the exaltation that debases? How did he do that? It happens not all at once, but it happens to us. We lose our first love. John writes of this in Revelation. He says, I have this against you that you have abandoned the love that you had at first. Remember from where you have fallen. Repent and do the works that you did at first. We begin well, but we forget. We abandon the love that we had at first. But also, I think, we are forgetful. We are naturally forgetful. I am. But we are forgetful of the source of the blessings that we have. We lose that place of humility and we begin to think of ourselves as able to be functioning on our own and we forget God. Also, I think ignorance has a part to play in it. We don't grow in our understanding of who God is. The writer of Hebrews says, you have become dull. I think dullness is affecting of our love. He says, you have become dull and hard of hearing. By this time, many of you should be teachers, but now you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk and not solid food. We become dull of hearing. Lukewarmness. We become lukewarm in our life with God, neither hot nor cold. We need to be hot. We need to be zealous. We need to love. holy, but instead we become lukewarm. And I think another thing that we do that affects us is we postpone repentance. We know we need to cry out for repentance. We know we need to repent and we need to love God holy. We know we're not. And we delay it. We say, I know I need to repent, but not now. some other time. In spite of the many blessings that Solomon had experienced, his heart and his love for God grew cold. And he holds up for us an example of that lack of stability that we have in us. Since our fall in Adam, there is something about the heart of man we can't Do it. We can't love God with all of our heart and with all of our soul and with all of our minds continuously. And it is one of the great things about Christ. As you read the Gospels, especially I find this in the Gospel of John, that Jesus Christ in himself embodies that which we seek to be. In his zeal and in his love for the father. His constant referring to the fact that the words that he speaks are the words that his father has given to him. The deeds that he does are the deeds that his father has told him and commanded him to do. And that Jesus as he walked on earth in our flesh. And how important that is. that he is, that he is, even now in heaven, one of us. He knows what it is to experience the weakness of humanity. And he knows, because of his union, that the Son united himself with that humanity, he was able to do and to keep that which Solomon was not able to do. He kept covenant. He was able to love his father completely and wholeheartedly in obedience, in word and deed and thought, and never for a single moment was the communion that he had with his father lost. And I am overwhelmed and struck by the words and the Apostle Paul in Romans 8 when he says, when he writes to us, For God has done. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. For God has done what Solomon weakened by his flesh could not do. For God has done what Rodney, weakened by the flesh, could not do. God has done it in Christ. And the union of the Son with my nature means that he has restored humanity. He has restored me again to that place of love. and fellowship with him. How did he do it? By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh. He condemned sin in the flesh. He made purification for sin on the cross. And on the cross, my sin was atoned for. My covenant breaking my failure to love wholeheartedly, my idolatry, my giving of myself to that which is not eternal and which does not satisfy, and for my seeking of satisfaction in all those things which are merely created, and my forgetfulness of God that God in Christ has done. that God in Christ has done. What has he done? He's paid for that. He's paid the penalty for that on the cross for sin. He condemned sin in his flesh. But it's important to continue on as well with what Paul says. For He says that He did this in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And the great cause of rejoicing for each and every one who has abased himself before God, humbled himself, and acknowledged his sin before God, And had God exalted him in Christ, what he has done also is he has sent his Spirit into our hearts, enabling us to walk, not according to the flesh, but in the Spirit. And as Richard so beautifully pointed out, and I was amazed as I was listening to the Scripture passages that were read, because I felt like I I heard in the reading basically what I wanted to say. What is to ensure that there will not be repeated falls and repeated exiles? How do we know that this will not happen again? Anyone who has tried tried to be what he or she knows they ought to be, knows the frustration and the agony of that question. How will I ever reach the place where I know that I'm secure? It won't happen again. And again, be sent into exile. And again, be sent from the father's face and from the garden where I have fellowship with him. Where is it that I can find security It is not in myself. Security and the knowledge that it can never happen again is found in Jesus Christ because of the union of the divine son with our nature. That divinity is upholds and upheld in his earthly life and continues to uphold it in in his heavenly life, upholds his humanity, and assures that all who are in him, all who have been united to Jesus Christ by faith, and all in whom the Spirit dwells, and who walk in the Spirit, are secure, eternally secure in Christ. Because his obedience, unlike Solomon's, did not fail, and his obedience did not falter, and his communion with his Father was never broken. And he is the true King and the true Son of David, the true King of Israel. Those who are in spite of your sins, in spite of the failing again and again that we experience in our flesh. Remember this, that God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. And He's done it for you in Christ. And you are securing Him. Solomon, like Adam before, fell. Christ kept the covenant, and he paid for your sin on the cross, and he was raised from the dead, and he has ascended to the throne of David at the right hand of the Father, and he is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and all who are in him are eternally and forever secure. No more fear of exile. This cycle of sin will not continue. And that's why it is a wonderful thing to contemplate the fact that God in his great wisdom, the fall of Adam was not something that took God by surprise. His intention was to bring us to this place in Christ all along so that we would be secure knowing that the Eternal Son, with whom we by faith and by His Spirit are united, will reign forever and ever with Him. Because in ourselves, we would always be subject to this question. How long will it last? The question of whether we would sin. We were created holy and righteous but mutable, subject to sin, subject to the fall. In Christ, you see, that question is answered perfectly. Thank God for the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ. Yes, Adam fell. Yes, Solomon did likewise, and yes, insert your name. But Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, has made you secure forever and ever and ever. Do you know him? Have you given yourself to him wholly in love? Are you zealous? If not, if you don't, This is the time. This is the time. Now is the time to repent and turn in faith to Jesus Christ and find that he brings you to the completion, brings you to the end and to the perfect, the perfect goal. And you are truly made human in him. Let us pray. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for his perfect obedience, for his life, that he lived among us and that he suffered and that he went to the cross and that he died and there dealt finally with our sin and was raised to sit at the right hand, at your right hand. Father, enable us even now to be united to him by faith. to confess our sin, the instability of our own hearts, and to place our trust wholly in him. For we pray through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.