David, the father provided the resources. Solomon, the son, appointed and anointed by God to do so, built the temple of God.
This same Solomon was known as the wisest man who ever lived, his unprecedented and unsurpassed wisdom the result of God’s answer to his request: “… God gave Solomon wisdom and exceedingly great understanding, and largeness of heart like the sand on the seashore. Thus Solomon’s wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the men of the East and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men—than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol; and his fame was in all the surrounding nations. He spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were one thousand and five. Also he spoke of trees, from the cedar tree of Lebanon even to the hyssop that springs out of the wall; he spoke also of animals, of birds, of creeping things, and of fish. And men of all nations, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom, came to hear the wisdom of Solomon” (1 Kings 4:29-34 NKJV).
How then did the wisest man in the world turn away from the One who gave him everything? Heart issues (1 Kings 11:1-4 NKJV).
When we speak of the heart in this context, we are not referring to the physical organ in our chests that pumps blood through our bodies and keeps us alive. What are we speaking of when we talk here about the heart? I found the BibleProject’s Word Study Video on the heart helpful in understanding what is meant by the heart in Scripture, and I reference content from that video here.
In Scripture, the heart is seen as the place where all of human intellectual activity takes place. For example, it is with our heart that we understand and make connections. Wisdom dwells in the heart (Prov. 14:33). We use our hearts to discern between truth and error. It is with our hearts that we think and make sense of the world.
In addition, we feel emotions in our heart, for example, pain, fear, distress, depression, joy. The heart is the center of our intellectual and emotional life. It is where our desires are centered (Psa. 37:4). The heart is where we make choices motivated by our desires. In the Bible, the heart is the center of all parts of human existence (Prov. 4:23 HCSB).
What happened to King Solomon’s heart? First Kings 11:1-4 (NKJV) states: “But King Solomon loved many foreign women … from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, ‘You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.’ Solomon clung to these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. 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” (emphasis added).
It is important to note that the turning of his heart after other gods was a process.
We could make the mistake of focusing on the number of women Solomon loved, think, “No wonder his heart was turned away from God,” and breathe a sigh of relief based on the belief that is not our issue. Such a response, however, would not be reality based because King Solomon’s diagnosis, the turning away of the heart from God to other gods, is one to which each of us is also predisposed. And it does not take hundreds of relationships to harm our hearts. One relationship is sufficient.
The harmful relationship could be an interpersonal one, for example, a relationship with one person whose opinion I value more than the opinion of my Heavenly Father. When pleasing that one person and gaining his/her approval becomes more important to me than God’s approval.
The harmful relationship could be the one we have with ourselves, for example, when we prioritize our wants and ambitions above God’s purpose. When we prize vengeance over forgiveness. When we delay obeying Him. These are just a few of the conditions in our intra-personal relationship that can foster spiritual heart disease.
What I find sobering is that someone could have heart problems and not know it; this is true physically and spiritually. Thankfully, regular check-ups can reveal the state of our hearts, helping to identify the onset of heart problems so that interventions can be implemented before serious damage occurs.
The C.S. Lewis Institute recommends an annual spiritual check-up. Their article of the same name provides questions designed to aid us in the spiritual check-up process.
Let us not wait one moment longer to begin our spiritual heart check-up. Great Physician, I echo the words of psalmist-king David, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life” (Psa. 139:23-24 NLT).