In the beginning, a divided heart may look very much like an undivided one.

It’s as if you’ve reached a subtle fork in the road, where the two paths before you appear to run side-by-side.

Looking ahead, you see that you can cross back-and-forth between the two paths, or even keep one foot in each. It seems that you can take both paths at the same time, that you don’t have to choose.

A wise and famous king stood at such a fork at the start of his reign. This is the story of his journey.

The good

My son, I charge you to acknowledge your father’s God and to serve him with an undivided heart and a willing mind.

So said King David in his later years, as he prepared his son Solomon to succeed him. David added:

You must realize that the Lord has chosen you to build his holy Temple. Now do it – and do it with determination. (1 Chron. 28:9-10 GNT)

Then David prayed:

Give my son Solomon the wholehearted devotion to keep your commands, statutes and decrees. (1 Chron. 29:19)

Give my son Solomon an uncluttered and focused heart. (MSG)

Praying for wisdom

When David died, Solomon became king. Shortly afterward, the Lord appeared to him and said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you” (1K 3:5).

Solomon replied, “Give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong” (1K 3:9).

God delighted in that prayer and honored it: “God gave Solomon wisdom – the deepest of understanding and the largest of hearts” (1K 4:29 MSG).

Solomon asked for a discerning heart. He could also have asked for an undivided heart. Oh Solomon, why did you not?

Building the temple

Solomon spared no expense building a temple for the Lord. Both Solomon and God identified the temple as an important obedience. Both also declared that a temple made with hands wasn’t the primary thing God sought.

Solomon said:

Adonai, God of Isra’el, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below. You keep covenant with your servants and show them grace, provided theylive in your presence with all their heart.” (1K 8:23 CJB)

The Lord urged Solomon:

Live in my presence as your father David lived, pure in heart and action. (1K 9:4 MSG)

Knowing God as his God

Just before David died, he had reminded Solomon:

Be confident and determined, and do what the Lord your God orders you to do. (1K 2:2-3 GNT)

Previously when speaking to Solomon, David had referred to the Lord as “your father’s God.” But the day he bequeathed the throne of Israel to his son, David identified the Lord as Solomon’s God.

Later, Solomon twice affirmed the same thing. He wrote:

The Lord my God has given me rest on every side, and there is no adversary or disaster. I intend, therefore, to build a temple for the Name of the Lord my God. (1K 5:3-5)

Solomon had a covenant relationship with God. The Lord was his God. Yet it mattered a lot whether Solomon walked before the Lord with wholehearted devotion. It mattered a lot whether Solomon lived in God’s presence in pureness of heart. It mattered to God. It mattered to Solomon. It mattered to his family, his nation and the generations to come.

The bad

The Lord appeared to Solomon three times during his reign. Even before the first time – when Solomon prayed for wisdom – he had begun to entertain a divided heart.

Early signs of heart problems

Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter.

And thus, Solomon entered his first politically motivated marriage to a pagan bride. He might have thought, “It’s strategic. It’s what kings do.” (It was.) “It will not stop me from building the temple of the Lord.” (It didn’t.)

Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places” (1K 3:1, 3).

The Lord had told his people:

Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. You must not worship the Lord your God in their way. (Deut. 12:2, 4)

Wherever the ark of the covenant rested, that was the place God’s people were to worship him.

Solomon may have reasoned, “The people are worshiping on the high places. It’s a commonly accepted practice.” (It was.) “We don’t have a temple yet.” (They didn’t.) “And I’m doing all the other things my dad said would please God.” (He was.)

A call becomes a compulsion

God himself had called Solomon to build a temple. Solomon had heard and obeyed.

But over time, something happened in Solomon’s heart with regard to building. A call became a passion. A passion grew into an obsession.

The temple was finished in all its details according to its specifications. He had spent seven years building it. (1K 6:38)

It took Solomon thirteen years, however, to complete the construction of his palace. (1K 7:1)

King Solomon used forced labor to build the Temple and the palace, to fill in land on the east side of the city, and to build the city wall. (1K 9:15 GNT)

Then, his passion growing, Solomon began using forced labor to build or rebuild whole cities and towns.

He built everything he desired in Jerusalem and Lebanon and throughout his entire realm. (1K 9:19 NLT)

More specifically, Solomon forced hundreds of thousands of his people to build all that he wanted.

God appeared to Solomon the second time, “after Solomon had completed building The Temple of God and his own palace, all the projects he had set his heart on doing.”

And God said to him, “I’ve listened to and received all your prayers, your ever-so-passionate prayers. I’ve sanctified this Temple that you have built.

As for you, if you live in my presence as your father David lived, pure in heart and action, living the life I’ve set out for you, attentively obedient to my guidance and judgments, then I’ll back your kingly rule over Israel, make it a sure thing on a solid foundation.

“But if you or your sons betray me, ignoring my guidance and judgments, taking up with alien gods by serving and worshiping them, then the guarantee is off.” (1K 9:1, 3-6 MSG)

Why did the Lord give Solomon such a strong warning in the wake of his greatest obedience? Had love of building become a hidden idol in Solomon’s heart?

One thing leads to another

Solomon had great wealth, and he loved to show it off.

According to 1 Kings 10, he received 25 tons of gold in tribute each year, above and beyond taxes. He crafted 200 gold body-length shields. He built a massive throne of ivory, with a veneer of gold. He had chalices and tankards, dinnerware and serving utensils made of gold.

“Silver was considered common and cheap” (v. 21 MSG).

What’s more, “Solomon built up a huge force of chariots and horses. He had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses” (v. 26 NLT). His horses were imported from Cilicia and from Egypt.

Scripture includes such details because God had given specific instructions to Israel’s kings about such matters as silver and gold, and horses from Egypt:

The king must never own a large number of horses or make the people return to Egypt to get more horses. The Lord has told you, “You will never go back there again.”

The king must never have a large number of wives, or he will turn away from God.

And he must never own a lot of gold and silver. (Deut. 17:16-17 GW)

In direct opposition to God’s commands:

Solomon accumulated large amounts of silver and gold. God had promised Solomon riches. But a person walking in the ways of the Lord would have used those riches to benefit his people, not to make his life grander, and theirs, harder.

Solomon accumulated great numbers of horses – and sent the people to Egypt to get them.

Solomon accumulated great numbers of wives. He collected and used human beings, and he “loved” 1,000 women – like a person might collect and love coins.

In addition to Pharaoh’s daughter, King Solomon loved many foreign women, including Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites. These came from the nations that the Lord had commanded the Israelites about: “Don’t intermarry with them. They will definitely turn your heart toward their gods.”

Solomon clung to these women in love. He had seven hundred royal wives and three hundred secondary wives.

As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods.

Solomon followed Astarte the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom the detestable god of the Ammonites. Solomon did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes and wasn’t completely devoted to the Lord like his father David. (1K 11:1-6 CEB)

Wouldn’t you know it? God was right. Unchecked pursuit of other loves led Solomon into blatant idolatry. Wantonly, Solomon pursued women, and the wealth and power gained from wedding foreign wives. Wantonly, Solomon pursued his passion to build:

Then Solomon built an illegal worship site on the hill east of Jerusalem for Chemosh (the disgusting idol of Moab) and for Molech (the disgusting idol of the Ammonites). He did these things for each of his foreign wives who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.

So the Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned from the Lord God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. God had given him commands about this. He told him not to follow other gods. But Solomon did not obey God’s command. (1K 11:7-10 GW)

The third time the Lord spoke to Solomon, he said:

Because you have done all this instead of keeping my covenant and my laws that I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom from you and give it to your servant. Even so, on account of your father David, I won’t do it during your lifetime. I will tear the kingdom out of your son’s hands. Moreover, I won’t tear away the entire kingdom. I will give one tribe to your son on account of my servant David and on account of Jerusalem, which I have chosen. (1K 11:11-13 CEB)

In wrath, God remembered mercy. Yet Solomon did not repent.

Little by little, the man who asked for a discerning heart, without asking for a pure heart, discarded wisdom too. Ultimately, a person of many passions lost all ability to love.

The ugly

King David was far from perfect. He committed some very grievous sins. But whenever any passion or allegiance threatened the place of God in his life, David let God expose it, and David turned from it.

As he lived in God’s presence with a pure heart, he learned to treat people more honorably. And he bequeathed to the generations after him a legacy of wholehearted devotion to the Lord.

Solomon squandered that legacy. He let other passions steal his heart.

After Solomon died, the kingdom split, as God had said it would. The first king of the 10 northern tribes built two golden calves and told the people, “Here are your gods.”

The people had lived 40 years under King Solomon. They had seen his wisdom, his riches, his fame. And his divided heart. With that kind of example, they surely felt they could worship those calves. And worship the Lord too.

Solomon suffered dire consequences as a result of his choices. He accumulated everything – to find that it all meant nothing. He denied himself nothing – only to find his life void. He expressed his desolation in the extended wail we call Ecclesiastes. Yet, seeing the emptiness, and knowing the solution, Solomon stayed on that desolate track.

The people of Solomon’s day didn’t see his inner woe. They didn’t recognize the domino effect his choices had, the dire generational consequences his sin would bring. The people saw and hated the harsh way Solomon had treated them. Yet they saw and wanted Solomon’s wealth and clout. They severed themselves from the rule of Solomon’s line, yet continued to pursue Solomon’s double-minded ways.

As did their children. And theirs.

Solomon’s life made it seem that God’s people can worship the true God and other gods of their own choosing, indefinitely, without consequence. Solomon’s life made it seem there’s no compelling reason to have to choose.

My prayer

In the beginning, a divided heart may look very much like an undivided one. In the end, a divided heart can become very hardened, very deceived.

Lord, please help us to learn from a king who did not.

When what is not you – but seems to us quite compatible with you – promises to protect us, enrich us and fulfill us, may we see what is happening and realize we do indeed have to choose.

When you come to us to expose what is already seducing us, may we believe you and turn back to you.

May we not believe the lie that we can keep walking a dual path “for now” – and will surely turn back later, if what we’re pursuing leads us completely the wrong way.

When we ask for whatever we want you to give us, Lord, may we cry for an undivided heart.

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“Journey to a divided heart” is adapted from the chapter by the same name in The Elijah Blessing: An Undivided Heart. The original, and much shorter, version of this post was published October 15, 2012.

Image by Albrecht Fietz from Pixabay

See also

• Spirit, power, Elijah and an undivided heart
• Checklists, idols and loving God
• When Christian leaders reject God
• Spiritual schizophrenia and the two-headed snake
• Masters of misdirection
• The Lord is with you, mighty warrior