2 Chronicles 8

Although I am the one who decided on the title of this blog, I feel the need to ask you to read until the end—especially if you might take immediate offense at the title. There are a lot of ideas floating around out there about what God "requires" us to do before He will accept us. Sacrifices to be made, penance to be paid. This is not how I am using the word requires. So, if you’ll bear with me for a moment, I’d like to explain what I mean.

This chapter gave us insight into Solomon’s first step down a path that eventually took him away from the Lord (and into misery): "Solomon brought Pharaoh’s daughter up from the City of David to the palace he had built for her, for he said, 'My wife must not live in the palace of David king of Israel, because the places the ark of the Lord has entered are holy.'" (vs 11)

The Lord had given Solomon a lot of wisdom when it came to dealing with the people of Israel. However, it seems he chose not to exercise that wisdom in his personal life. The first woman he married was Pharaoh’s daughter. Israelites were forbidden to marry heathen women (although many did it anyways). But it’s unfortunate that King Solomon also chose to follow this practice. He was obviously aware that his choice of women wasn’t the most suitable, since he wouldn’t let her go into places that had been consecrated. He knew she came from a heathen land that served many false gods. He knew she didn’t believe in the God of Heaven.

Perhaps what Solomon underestimated, however, was the binding effect of marriage—that whole "two become one flesh" thing. He thought he would be able to intertwine his life (which was centered around God) with someone whose life was not centered around that same God. But he was wrong. He didn’t realize that our hearts can’t remain forever divided.

Jesus said it Himself: "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other." (Matt 6:24) A heart that is divided won’t stay that way for long. Eventually, it will take a side. It will become undivided.

And that’s exactly what happened to Solomon. For he didn’t marry just one heathen woman. He married a lot of them, and the writer of 1 Kings revealed the outcome of that: "King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, 'You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.' Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done." (1 Kgs 11:1-6)

His wives turned his heart after other gods. Solomon learned the principle of what Jesus said. Nobody can serve two masters. Eventually, one of them will win out, and it Solomon’s case, it was the false gods worshiped by his wives.

In order to serve God, we must have an undivided heart. God requires it—not because it’s some arbitrary rule He made up out of jealousy, but because that’s the way it works. We cannot serve anything with a divided heart. We cannot serve two masters. Solomon realized that he couldn’t "have his cake and eat it, too." His wives turned him away from God, but if the book of Ecclesiastes is any indication of what Solomon learned about the consequences of trying to live life outside of God, it seems he had a change of heart later in his life.

So, God requires an undivided heart—not because He won’t accept us if we don’t have one, but because it’s impossible for us to follow Him without one. We must choose the master we’re going to serve. And serving that master—whether it’s God or Satan or money or lust or whatever—can only be done with an undivided heart. There’s no other way.