Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Everyone Has A Dark Side | The Writings | 2 Chronicles 8-9

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

Is it possible for anyone to be all good or all bad? When you can clearly see that everyone is a mixed bag, you can open your eyes to the need for Jesus. In today's episode, Keith discusses Solomon's shortcomings in 2 Chronicles 8-9 and offers encouragement for sinners. Sign up here to receive the "Our Good King" Holy Week Devotional beginning on Palm Sunday, March 23rd, 2024. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Chronicles 8-9

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Steve Jobs, they're some of the most important and influential people in the last few centuries. Their individual careers and the movements they led caused a massive shift in the way people think, live, and interact with each other. They provided amazing resources and leadership, improving the quality of life for millions of people worldwide. But they all had one thing in common. They all had a dark side. For Gandhi, it was inappropriate and mysterious sexual encounters. For Steve Jobs, it was his arrogant and demanding attitude. For Thomas Jefferson,

it was the hypocrisy of writing all men are created equal while owning slaves. All three of these men were mixed bags. They did great things and possessed moral clarity. And yet at the same time, they didn't live up to their own moral standards and caused much pain in the lives. And the lives in the lives of those around them. No person is all good or all bad. Every human being is a mixed bag. Because we're all made in the image of God, human beings are capable of amazing creation and ideas that are beneficial to the world. But because of sin, we're also capable of wrecking God's good creation. I like how Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian dissident, put it. He said the line separating good and evil passes through every human heart.

and through all human hearts. The line shifts. Inside of us, it oscillates with the years, and even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. What Solzinnocin points out is that even the worst human you can imagine has glimpses of beauty and goodness inside of them, and the greatest human you know is capable of great evil. I think this is not only what the Bible teaches, but also demonstrates in its pages. Think about some of the Bible's greatest heroes. They also had dark sides. For example, there is Noah who got drunk after getting off the ark, or Moses who was also a murderer.

Or what about King David? He was an adulterer and a murderer. Abraham told his wife Sarah to say that she was his sister just to save his own skin. The list goes on and on. The biblical figures that we look up to were mixed bags. They did great things for God, but they also committed great sins. Today we read in 2 Chronicles 8 and 9 about another person who could be put in that same category, and that's King Solomon.

If you were to read the story of the Old Testament up to the point where Solomon becomes king, you would have almost every reason to believe that Solomon was going to be a great king. His father, King David, was known as a man after God's own heart. David was a good king who was faithful to God, and in 2nd Samuel 7, God promised David that his offspring would build a house for God and would sit on a throne that endures forever. So after David dies and Solomon takes over his king, the reader thinks that Solomon must surely be the king that God promised. Well, in some ways, he was. King Solomon was a good king. You might remember the story from First Kings III when God tells Solomon to ask for anything he wants,

and God will give it to him. And in this genie-in-a-bottle type of a story, Solomon doesn't ask for riches or power or wealth or fame. Instead, Solomon asked for wisdom. See, Solomon knew he needed God's wisdom if he was going to lead the nation of Israel. God was pleased with Solomon's request and granted him not only wisdom, but also riches and power and fame that he did not ask for. See, Solomon started off his reign as king on the right foot with God. But that's not all. In Second Chronicles 8, we also read that Solomon constructed and finished the temple in Jerusalem. Here's what verse 16 says. All Solomon's work was carried out from the day the foundation of the temple of the Lord was laid

until its completion. So the temple of the Lord was finished. See, before the temple, the Israelites had a small tent called the tabernacle that they would carry around with them as they journeyed through the wilderness. The tabernacle is where God dwelt in a special way. But the temple was a permanent building in the center of Jerusalem. Now that would be God's house, the place that God dwelt with the Israel. on earth. This was a huge deal for the nation of Israel. The completion of the temple was followed

by celebrations and festivals as they watched the temple be filled with God's presence. Life was good under King Solomon. Under his reign, the Israelites prospered, so much so that in 2nd Chronicles 9 when the Queen of Sheba, a foreign ruler, comes to visit Solomon, she is so impressed by him that she says, and now this is out of verse 7, how happy your people must be, how happy you're officials who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom. Praise be to the Lord your God, who is delighted in you and placed you on his throne as king to rule for the Lord your God. Think about that. Here's a non-Israeli, a Gentile who is praising the God of Israel because of how great their king was. Could things get any better than that? So just to make sure we're all tracking, Solomon is given

more wisdom than anyone else. He's built the temple for God. He's led his people and prosperity. even the Gentiles from the nations are coming to faith in God because of it. But remember, just like any human, Solomon is a mixed bag. He has a dark side. You might be familiar with Solomon's first failure. It says this in First Kings 11. Solomon had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines, and his wives led him astray. If you're doing mental math, that's a thousand women in Solomon's harem. You might say, okay, well, Solomon isn't a great model for sexual purity, but he was still a good king. Just look how prosperous Israel was. And that's true. Israel was very prosperous under King Solomon. In chapter nine, it says year after year, everyone who came to Solomon

brought a gift, articles of silver and gold and robes, weapons and spices, horses and mules. Solomon had 4,000 stalls for horses and chariots, and 12,000 horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with them in Jerusalem. Solomon's horses were imported from Egypt and from all other countries. Well, all that sounds great. King Solomon led Israel in a time of economic flourishing, so maybe he's not too bad of a king after all. But wait a second. What you might miss your first time through Second Chronicles 9 is that the author is subtly critiquing Solomon's reign. How do we know that? Well, back in Deuteronomy 17, God gave the Israelites some commands about how the king of Israel should act.

Before we read those, remember that Solomon had lots of gold, lots of wives, and lots of horses from Egypt. Okay, here's Deuteronomy 17. The king, moreover, must not acquire a great number of horses for himself, or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them. For the Lord God told you, you are not to go back that way of gin. He must not take many wives, or his heart will be let us, He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. So again, if you're doing the middle math at home, that strike one, two, and three against Solomon. See, what the Bible shows us about King Solomon is that although he was a good king, he wasn't the good king. He wasn't the perfect king that God had promised.

Solomon wasn't the promised king, but he did point to the promised king. See, Jesus said to some religious leaders in his day, the queen of Shiba will rise up at the judgment with this generation. and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The Queen of Sheba came from the ends of earth to see Solomon, but Jesus is claiming that he is greater than Solomon, and that the scribes and the Pharisees, they're missing it. Jesus says, He is the true, wise king that God promised would always sit on the throne of Israel.

So what are some things that we can take away from this story? Well, what I want to focus on is that we are all mixed bags. Every one of us is made in the image of God and capable of doing good. And if we are Christians, then we know the Holy Spirit lives inside of us and produces his good fruit in our life. But we all also know the struggle that we have with sin, that the Spirit of God and our sinful nature wore inside of us. And what's true of us is true of every person. They are all mixed bags. See, we're prone to make people into either all good or all bad,

to believe that they can't do anything wrong or that they'll never do anything right. If we think people are all good, we end up making excuses for their shortcomings instead of being honest about them. If we think people are all bad, then we write them off and assume the worst about them. Once we realize that everyone is a mixed bag, we will have more realistic relationships, and we will be able to extend grace to them, the same grace that we need extended to us. And then we want to think a little bit about our leaders.

Solomon was a leader, but he was a mixed bag, so was Noah and Moses and David and every other biblical leader. And our leaders, whether they're found in churches or nonprofits, businesses, or government, they too are mixed bags. We need to be careful that we don't put our leaders on a pedestal and hold them to a standard that they can't possibly live up to. They're going to make mistakes. They also have the same struggle against sin that you and I have.

They're human beings just like us. And then finally, because we all know that we are mixed bags, it shows how much we need Jesus, how much we need what he did on the cross applied to our life. He is the true king, the wise king, who took our place and died the death that we should, should have died so that we can live a life that we don't deserve. Today and every day, remind yourself who the true king is and receive the grace that he

offers us and the presence he provides for us in His Holy Spirit. Amen.