Influences Part 2

 

    Being a good influence can make you feel good about yourself.  Having good influences in your life is a blessing.  It can help keep you out of all sorts of trouble.  However, how do bad influences affect you?  How do you change for the worse due to factors in your life?

    Solomon had everything a person could want.  From the outside looking in, it would appear like there was no way he could ever fall.  However, we are all vulnerable in some area or another.  He was vulnerable to women.  He loved women, our beauty and softness.  He loved different cultures.  This passion left him vulnerable to sin.

    A long time ago God said do not intermarry into other cultures for a reason.  It was not about race, but to make sure that you marry a person that believes the way you do.   There is no other person in the world that has more influence on you than your spouse.  If so, then there is something seriously wrong in the marriage.  He tried to make everyone happy and that never works.  

    Solomon chose to over look that law made by God with justification that he did it for his nation or love.  Before he knew it, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.  Serious, how can any person keep up, love, and care for that many people in the way that everyone needs?  That is 1,000 women that had an influence over Solomon and it is very doubtful that even half were followers of God.  

    In his later years, Solomon began to allow worship other gods and built them temples.  This is evil in God's eyes.  God was obviously angry.  He had given so much, how could Solomon do this?  The punishment was that the kingdom would be torn apart.  

    It began with Hadad who had survived an attach from the Israelites when he was a boy.   He had grown up in Egypt and favored by the Pharaoh.  When he heard that David and Joab were dead, he returned home to cause trouble.

    Razon was another adversary that God provided.  He was a rebel leader that called himself the King of Damascus.  He was openly hostile toward Israel.  

    Those were understandable, but Jeroboam was unexpected.  He rebelled against Solomon when he was an official over the labor force.  He would become king over Israel (10 tribes) because the people were upset on what Solomon had done and what it would mean for them.  Jeroboam had God's protection as long as he followed God.  Solomon tried to kill him, but was unable.  Jeroboam fled to Egypt until Solomon died.

    Solomon reigned for 40 years.  When he died, Rehoboam succeeded him as king.  At this point the nation had not official split, so he was the one king over the entire nation.  When it all fell apart, he would be the King over Judah.  The Levites were God's people with no declared king.

1 Kings 11