Sin’s Slippery Slope

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Well, at the front of my yard, there’s a ditch. A lot of y’all have the same thing. There’s a ditch there that collects all the water.

And our house, you know, it’s on the side of a hill, so everything slopes down toward it. So it stays pretty moist, especially considering all the rain that we’ve had over the last month or so. And on top of that, right behind this ditch is a spot that stays wet most of the year around the water meter.

And it’s so bad that I thought for a long time we had a water leak. Until I realized what was actually going on, because there are times that it will dry up for a day or two. What’s actually going on is there’s such a network of gopher holes.

Some of y’all have this as well. gopher holes and crawdad holes all through our yard, that whenever there’s any kind of moisture in the backyard, it actually sort of forms an artificial spring that comes up in the, I’m not kidding, sometimes I’ve been back there in the garden watering in the backyard, and water will come up in the front yard because it’s run through there. It’s crazy.

And so the effect of all of that, All of our drainage problems, along with the massive amounts of rain that we’ve all had over the last month, is that I have not been able to adequately mow that ditch area and that gopher spring area for nearly a month. Now, I finally got out with a push mower. I hate using a push mower.

I’ve gotten spoiled. But I finally got out and did that Friday and did that ditch area because I was afraid I was going to get an angry letter from the city if I didn’t do something soon. But a couple weeks ago, you know, I’d been out mowing.

I told some of you I’ve got a new. . .

My mower broke down again. We’ve had three mowers in three summers, I think, so Charlie talked me into buying a brand-new John Deere Zero turn. And I felt pretty good driving that thing.

I mean, that’s the nicest lawnmower I’ve ever used. And so I got out there and I got just a little bold. And I’d get just a little closer to the edge of that.

And I thought, I didn’t get stuck. That little snapper, I always got stuck in that spot. I didn’t get stuck going close to that between the gopher spring and the tree.

So I’m going to try to get a little closer. And I thought, I still didn’t get stuck. I drove over a spot with standing water and I still didn’t get stuck.

I was so excited. And I thought, I’ll get just a little closer. Oh, bad idea.

After about three or four times of getting closer and closer, I eventually found myself stuck in the ditch in mud. I mean, I should have known better. Even me stepping out onto it, I’d sink two inches in my boots.

It was a bad idea. I never intended for that mower to get stuck, and I don’t know how I got it unstuck, but I did. I never intended on that mower getting stuck and sliding into the ditch.

It was brand new. and I had to hose it off because it was just covered in mud. It wasn’t so pretty anymore.

But see, when I started getting closer and closer to the muck and the mire, I never intended to get stuck. I just thought I’m going to get as close as I can without possibly getting stuck, and yet that stupid mud pulled me in. That’s what it does.

Sin is a lot like that. We think sometimes, you know what, I didn’t get stuck this time, or I didn’t get caught this time. it’s just a little bit maybe I can just edge a little closer over here to what God said for me not to do and it’ll be fine and what we don’t realize is we edge closer and closer to it and eventually we’re going to get stuck and sin ensnares us sin and traps us and one of the best examples we have of this principle in scripture is King Solomon Benjamin and I were talking about this story a couple weeks ago and I decided then this is to preach on because it’s such an important story for us to understand.

If you turn with me to 1 Kings chapter 11, we’re going to look at this story of King Solomon who thought, I can just start out with just on the edge of sin, just little sin, and we’ll talk about what that means, little sin. That’s a human concept, not a Bible concept. But I can just sin a little bit, not realizing he was going to get sucked in like I did when I got too close to the ditch.

1 Kings chapter 11. It says, Now that’s not a misprint. You saw that correctly.

700 wives and 300 concubines. Which is sort of a lower class of wife. Not that his wives were low class.

Some of you said, well, it’s his fault for marrying a low class woman. That’s not what it means. In terms of a second class citizen, she was kind of like a wife, but without all the rights and privileges that go along with that.

King Solomon had a thousand women, which just seems like a bad idea. I know for some men they think, oh, that’s a dream come true. I’ve said for years I love my wife.

I’m thankful to God that he gave me her. But I couldn’t deal with three more like her.

okay and I’m not being ugly she’d probably say the same thing about me and be right okay none of us are so perfect and so easy to deal with all the time that we would inflict three more people just like ourselves on somebody else okay when I say inflict we’re different people you know I love her but she’s a lot more organized than I am and that’s usually great and sometimes it means I’m having to talk her down off the ledge okay Solomon I don’t know what Solomon was the wisest man I hope I’m not in trouble when I get home I started that with I love my wife didn’t I okay she’s still smiling so we’re probably all right he was the wisest man alive I don’t know what made him think he could handle a thousand wives but he did he just couldn’t stop himself and God had warned Israel against these things the very things that King Solomon did God had warned Israel against doing these things because he said it would lead them into idolatry It would lead them in exactly the wrong direction.

Now, King Solomon started out very well in his reign. When David died and Solomon became king, God told Solomon, you ask me for anything you want and I’ll give it to you. Who in this room would not like to have a blank check like that from God?

That’s exactly what Solomon had. And you can think of all the things you might ask for. God said, I will grant you anything you request. anything you request and all the things we think of that he could have asked for he could have asked for wealth he could have asked for power he could have asked for fame he could have asked for any number of things but Solomon asked God for wisdom to rule God’s people well and God was thrilled with this prayer request and God was so delighted with King Solomon that he said not only am I going to give you what you’ve asked for I’m going to give you wisdom beyond your wildest imaginations I’m also going to give you all the things that you could have asked for and didn’t.

And so Solomon ended up with incredible wisdom Solomon ended up with wealth, Solomon ended up with fame he ended up with power, all the things that he would have liked to have had that we would like to have. He ended up with these things and yet Solomon with all of these things at his disposal it wasn’t enough. And Solomon wasn’t strong enough to flirt with temptation.

See, sometimes we think we can flirt with temptation. Oh, it’s okay. This sin won’t get me.

I can take it or leave it. Well, usually we can’t. Sin’s very deceptive.

And it’ll get a hold of us and it got a hold of him. He had convinced himself with all his wisdom with all his wealth and his power and all his prestige and all these things. I’m Solomon.

I’ll be fine. But he wasn’t. He succumbed to temptation.

God had warned about these very things. And God had explained the reasons why they should avoid the kinds of things that Solomon ended up doing. You know, I tend to think God doesn’t owe us an explanation.

People will say, well, why does God say don’t do that? I don’t know because he’s God and he can. It reflects his nature.

You know, sin is that which is against God’s nature. Holiness is that which reflects God’s nature. It’s because he’s God and that’s who he is.

So if he tells you don’t do that, that’s it. We don’t have to have an explanation. Kind of like the way I see parenting.

I don’t have to give you an explanation. Sometimes I just need you to be obedient. But God also will sometimes give an explanation even though he doesn’t owe one.

Just like I will sometimes explain things to my kids, even though I don’t owe them an explanation. And this is one of those instances where God explained the reasoning why. He had told them the whole nation had been warned against intermarrying with the pagan peoples around them.

And it says that in this passage. It says that in Deuteronomy chapter 7, where God says, Nor shall you make marriages with them, talking about these foreign countries around them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son.

for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods. So the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. Now I want to be very clear as we look at this passage, what it is talking about and what it is not talking about.

Because unfortunately over the years I have heard and still occasionally do hear people say that this passage, that we use this passage as an argument about keeping different groups of people separate. that God likes segregation, God likes racial segregation, God likes cultural segregation, that people are supposed to stay to their own kind because God said not to intermarry with the pagan countries around them. Folks, this had nothing to do with God saying, oh, y’all are different colors, y’all don’t mix.

Y’all are from different countries, y’all don’t mix. This had everything to do with their spiritual condition. It goes right along with what we are told in the New Testament that a Christian is not supposed to be unequally yoked with an unbeliever.

And as Benjamin and I were talking about this, he said, well, can’t you marry somebody and lead them to Christ? I said, you can, and that does happen, but you’re also opening yourself up to a great number of problems if you marry somebody who doesn’t share your spiritual values because the marriage relationship is supposed to be the strongest and closest bond between two people, and when we are not on the same page spiritually, It creates a great deal of difficulty. All right?

Now, my wife and I don’t agree on every single thing. We are not. .

. I’ve heard a preacher say that if you married somebody and you two are exactly alike, then one of you is unnecessary. And I think that’s true.

My wife and I are not the exact same person. We have different personalities. We have different opinions sometimes.

But when it comes to spiritual things and what’s most important, We both love Jesus. As a matter of fact, that’s how I found Charla. I was looking for somebody who was running toward Jesus like I was, and when I found her, linked arms with her and kept running.

All right? And that’s a solid foundation to build a marriage. Folks, I want you to understand, because you may hear this at some point, somebody saying, well, God just wants to keep people separate because he said not to intermarry.

Folks, this has nothing to do with race. It has nothing to do with ethnicity. It has nothing to do with culture.

has nothing to do with the Moabites and the Hittites being any less valuable to God as human beings. It was because of the difference between them spiritually and the Israelites. That God said they were going to lead them into the worship of false gods.

If the Moabites and the Hittites had worshipped the one true God, this would never have been an issue. But they didn’t, and so it was. I just want to be very clear on that, because you will, I’m sure, hear somebody make that case.

so God had warned them not to intermarry with these pagan peoples around them because it was going to lead them astray it was going to lead them to worship their false gods and in particular it’s not just that the nation of Israel had been warned against intermarrying with pagan tribes the king in particular had been warned against collecting wives that sounds like such a ridiculous thing that we should even have to say that Of course, you don’t collect wives. But in their day and age, it was a sign of power. It was a sign of virility.

If you were the powerful king, you were going to collect women like you collected everything else. But Deuteronomy 17, 17, God told the kings of Israel, Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself. Basically, the king was not supposed to take his focus off of God and doing the work of God in the nation and put his focus on collecting things or people that were going to build up his ego.

Because what the king was basically doing here was serving himself. He was giving in to every lustful temptation he had. Every time he saw a woman he liked, yep, got to have her, got to marry her.

Or Deuteronomy 17 puts it on the same level as gold and silver. For, oh, got to have that, the focus becomes on what I’ve got to have and what I’ve got to collect to myself, rather than doing the job that God put in there for. So there are these two principles taught in the Old Testament law of not marrying with the foreign pagan tribes around them and not collecting a harem of wives.

And Solomon, despite all of his wisdom, despite the way he started well in serving the Lord, had decided, I can handle it. No, no, you can’t. God warned you.

He said it’s going to lead your heart astray. Solomon said, no, I can handle it. I’m fine.

I’m Solomon. Solomon ignored God’s warning about these little sins. And so it should be no surprise when Solomon ended up far deeper in sin than he had ever intended.

Now, just a word about that idea of little sins and big sins. The idea of a sin being little or big comes from our perspective. It doesn’t come from God’s perspective.

Now, some sins have more dire and immediate consequences than others. There is a difference between murdering somebody and gossip in terms of the consequences. In terms of the effects, there are some differences.

but hear this any sin from God’s perspective is enough to condemn us any sin separates us from God whether it’s one that we’d look at and say oh that’s a little sin you know the things that in polite society we don’t worry about because they’re socially acceptable gluttony gossip things like this we say those are little sins we don’t commit the big sins we’re fine because we don’t commit the big sins. We’re not out murdering people. We’re not out having affairs.

We’re not practicing homosexuality. We’re not robbing banks. Those are the big sins.

Again, some sins have more immediate and dire consequences than others, but any sin is enough to condemn us in the eyes of God. The book of James tells us in chapter 2, for whoever shall keep the whole law yet stumble in one point. He’s guilty of all.

So if we were looking at God’s law and saying, well, I’m perfect because I’ve kept the whole thing, and I’ve only broken God’s law in one little point. I’ve been perfect my whole life. First of all, that’s impossible.

But I’ve been perfect my whole life except I gossiped the other day. But, you know, it’s just one little gossip. God says, no, you’ve violated the hold all.

We take it as a whole thing, and you’ve violated the whole thing, and you’ve fallen short of my standards. What I want you to understand is we look at sin, and we categorize it as little, and we categorize it as big, and we categorize it as acceptable and unacceptable in society, God looks at all of it and says, you violated my standards. Sometimes we can violate God’s law in a spectacular way.

Sometimes we can fall short of God’s standards in a secretive way, in a discreet way. But guess what? Every sin means we fall short of God’s standard of holiness.

And so we would look at Solomon’s sin and say, yeah, it started out relatively little, because God said the problem here was that it was going to turn their hearts away. If Solomon, if Solomon could marry these women and marry so many of them and handle it, then he was fine. So it’s not that big a deal. That’s how mankind would probably justify what Solomon did.

It’s just a little sin. Oh, but it leads to such greater sin. Let’s look at verse 4.

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. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites. Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not fully follow the Lord, as did his father David.

Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, on the hill that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the people of Ammon. And he did likewise for all his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. So it started with Solomon ignoring what God had said in these little ways, collecting a wife here and there, until he had a thousand.

And it ended up with this spectacular sin of bringing idolatry into the temple, bringing idolatry into Jerusalem, bringing idolatry into his whole household, until eventually everything that Solomon touched was infiltrated and permeated with idols, with idolatry. And just like God warned about, just like God warned about, it started with these little sins involving who he chose to marry. And it led to something greater where his heart was fully turned away from God.

Solomon thought he could dabble in sin. And we do that too, don’t we? It’s just a little sin.

Maybe you’ve said this to yourself, I’ll ask forgiveness for it later. Oh, it’s not that big a deal. I’m better than that guy over there. At least I’m not doing this.

At least I’m not doing what he is. I can stop any time. We think we can dabble in sin.

That’s exactly what Solomon was doing. But what he found out was that his dalliance with sin led him to be ensnared by sin. I’ve heard people say that if you dance with the devil, eventually he’s going to want to lead.

There’s a lot of truth in that. You get too close to the edge of the pit or the ditch, whatever you want to call it, and eventually you’re going to get stuck in the pit or the ditch. And so his little sins, what we would call his little sins, led to these bigger sins where he has totally turned his heart away from God, and now he’s openly embracing idolatry.

And for Solomon, it started with marrying these women who loved idols more than God. And I don’t blame the women here. I blame Solomon.

Idol worshipers are worshiping idols. That’s what they do. That’s their job description.

They don’t seem to know any better. Solomon knew God’s word Solomon knew God’s law Solomon knew God and knew better and did it anyway and it started with him violating God’s word when he he loved these women more than God because God said don’t marry them and he saw these women and said but I want to so Solomon loved these women he clung to them in love he loved these women more than God and he loved his desires more than God’s desires and it began there and Solomon started to slowly bring idolatry in and no doubt thought, I’m fine. I’m still worshiping the Lord.

I’m just going to participate in the worship of these things on the side. I’m still worshiping God. When God says, no, you’ve got to worship me and me only.

There’s no plus these others. It’s just me. And then it eventually led to Solomon just embracing these things, these idols wholeheartedly, letting them have free reign in his kingdom, in his family.

and his heart was completely turned away from God. He participated in the worship. Listen to some of these gods and goddesses.

Ashtoreth was a goddess of fertility. He was worshiping a goddess that was worshiped in other cultures in ways that involved witchcraft, and that might have been involved with the Sidonians worshiping Ashtoreth. We see the god Milcom or Molech.

The commentary seemed to indicate those are two different names for the same God. Milcom and Molech is a God of child sacrifice. To worship Molech involved a practice called making your child pass through the flame, where children were offered as burnt human sacrifices.

I can’t imagine how depraved a society has to be that it’s an act of worship to slaughter their children. And yet I feel like we’re almost there in America in 2019, where large swaths of our society act like it’s almost a sacred thing to sacrifice our children. And then there was Chemosh, who was worshipped by the Moabites, and he was the king of the gods among the Moabites.

Chemosh is the one who’s, he’s in the Moabite theology, he’s the king of kings and he’s the lord of lords. So what we’ve done, if we’re worshiping Chemosh and we’re saying he’s the top of the pyramid, then we’ve taken the Lord God of Israel and completely swept him and his claims aside. Folks, there can only be one top of the pyramid.

There can only be one king of kings. There can only be one God of gods. And if Solomon was allowing Chemosh to be worshiped as the god of gods, then guess who wasn’t?

being worshipped in that way in Solomon’s household. And eventually all of the deities worshipped by all thousand of the women that he had brought into his household had a place of worship. I don’t know if that means a thousand deities.

I’m sure some of them worshipped the same gods. But that tells me that these three that are listed here are not the only gods that became worshipped. And there were shrines in the palace.

There were shrines in the temple. There were high places all around Jerusalem. It says the mountains of the east of Jerusalem, even there on the Mount of Olives, where we know Jesus taught later on.

There was a high place of idol worship. See, Solomon ended up in a bad place. Solomon ended up ensnared in idol worship and sin.

And it started when he took his footsteps one step off the path of what God said to do and started flirting with the edge of the ditch. Let’s look at verse 9. So the Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned from the Lord God of Israel who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods, but he did not keep what the Lord had commanded.

God had appeared to Solomon twice. Solomon had been in the presence of God twice and still managed to go astray. And in the previous part of the passage we read, it said that Solomon was not fully committed to the Lord like David was.

And as I read that, I’m thinking, David, wow. It says David was fully committed to the Lord. David messed up his whole family because David went and had an affair with a married woman.

And David had her husband murdered to cover it up. David did some really shady things. David did, you know, let’s not minimize it and call it shady.

David did some evil things in his life. And yet he was still called a friend of God. He still described as someone who was fully committed to God.

Because the difference between David and so many other kings of Israel, including Solomon, who went astray, the difference between them and David is that when David sinned, David was brokenhearted when he was confronted about it. The other kings tended to dig in and say, God, I don’t care what you want. And David would go to the Lord and say, Against you I’ve sinned.

And he would beg God to forgive him and to cleanse him. See, that’s a repentant spirit. That’s a repentant heart.

Not that we become perfect, not that we’re able to completely and totally walk away from our sins from day one, but the heart that’s repentant agrees with God about our sin. We change our mind toward God and toward our sin. And Solomon, unfortunately, didn’t do that.

He dug in, and he continued, and it got worse and worse. I don’t believe that what we see at the end of this passage is the first time that Solomon realized what he was doing was wrong. Probably just the point he got to where God said, I’m done.

You’ve had chance after chance after chance to repent. You’ve just dug in. You’ve just gotten worse.

You’ve just done what you wanted to do, and I’m done. Solomon had been in the presence of God and yet still loved this sin more than he loved God. He had not done what God had commanded him.

So verse 11 says, The Lord said to Solomon, Because you have done this, and have not kept my covenant and my statutes which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom away from you and give it to your servant. Nevertheless, I will not do it in your days for the sake of your father David. I will tear it out of the hand of your son.

However, I will not tear away the whole kingdom. I will give one tribe to your son for the sake of my servant David, and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen.

God said you’ve messed up and over all this time see it took him years to amass a thousand wives and it took him years to fall completely into idolatry God had given him chance after chance to repent and he had failed to take it and God said we’re done here I’m going to take the kingdom away from you but he said I’m going to wait until after you’re gone well not because Solomon was great and deserved to keep his kingdom the rest of his life it was because God had made promises to David and he said I’m not going to take the whole kingdom away from your dynasty, from your heirs again because I made promises to David and because I made promises to the nation of Israel you see God would have been completely within his rights to say Solomon you’re done and you’re done today the kingdom, the whole kingdom is being ripped away and given to your servant and eventually it was Jeroboam led a rebellion of the 11 northern tribes and the kingdom was split after Solomon died.

God would have been well within his rights to say, Solomon, you’re done and you’re done today. But God is a God who keeps his promises. God is a God who is always faithful to his word.

And because he had promised David that his heirs would sit on the throne of the kingdom of Israel forever, and because God had promised to use Jerusalem and to use the tribe of Judah in certain ways, God said, for their sake and for the sake of keeping my promises, I won’t tear the whole kingdom away from you and from your heirs. I’ll wait until you’re gone, and I’ll leave a remnant behind. But again, God didn’t spare Solomon from the total consequences of his sin because Solomon deserved it.

It was because God is faithful, and God is gracious, and God is just, and God always keeps his promises. Even when we fall short, God never falls short. So the consequence of his sin was that God would remove the kingdom later and partially for the sake of David.

God was furious with Solomon because Solomon had started out so well. Solomon knew better. And yet he had started so well, yet he fell into disobedience with God, and his heart had gradually but completely gone away from God and embraced this sin that seemed so much more important to him.

As I’ve said already, it started out small with him just loving these women more than God. And verse 2, it said he clung to these in love. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with loving your wife.

We are commanded throughout Scripture to love our wives. Men, we’re commanded to love our wives more than ourselves. We’re commanded to love our wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

We are supposed to love our wives up to the point of laying down our lives for them. There’s nothing wrong with him loving his wife. But when it says he clung to these in love, it means in spite of what God had said, meaning he loved them more than he loved God.

And they turned his heart to follow after false gods. Now, we could blame the women, but ultimately it was Solomon’s responsibility. I like that line from the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, that the man is the head of the family, but the woman is the neck, and she can turn him any way she wants to.

Nobody can change my mind like Charla, okay? And so we might be tempted to blame the women because of the influence they’d have on him, but God warned Solomon way in advance. This is not poor, oh, poor Solomon, the victim, these evil women turned him astray.

No. No, Solomon was a man, and if he was going to be man enough to disobey God, he’s man enough to deal with the consequences. He willingly embraced things that God said not to, knowing what it would lead to.

And these idols that were brought into his house, they stole his loyalty from the one true God, as we see in verse 4. They stole his loyalty from God, one idol at a time, until his heart was so filled with idols that there was no room in his heart for the one true God. This idolatry grew until it destroyed everything.

Folks, that’s what sin does. Sin, left unchecked, worms its way into everything. It corrupts everything, and it crowds everything else out.

And if we love our sin more than we love God, then it will continue to squeeze in and grow in our hearts until it pushes out all room in our hearts to love God the way we’re supposed to. And we see from this story of Solomon that compromise with sin is deadly. Compromise with sin is deadly.

This is one of the things that Benjamin and I talked about. That there will be days when we’re told, it’s fine, just go along with it, it’s easier. It’s just a little thing.

It’s just a little compromise. Whether it’s the temptation to compromise when nobody’s looking. Whether it’s the temptation to compromise with what society says about sin when it contradicts what God says about sin.

The pressure to compromise with sin is all around us. It’s been a fixture of human nature since the Garden of Eden. That’s exactly what Satan was doing in the Garden when he talked to Eve.

You won’t surely die. God just knows that you’ll be like him. It’s just an apple.

Well, we don’t know that it was an apple. It’s just a piece of fruit. It’s just one little piece of fruit.

What’s it going to hurt? You won’t surely die. Folks, we have been under pressure to compromise with sin from the very beginning.

But that compromise with sin is always deadly. Mark my words. Take Solomon’s example.

We cannot compromise with sin without being consumed by it. Proverbs says, can a man take fire to his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be seared?</