The Discovery Channel TV-series Vikings has a theme song that starts with the lyrics,
This will never end
'Cause I want more
More, give me more
Give me more
This will never end
'Cause I want more
More, give me more
Give me more - Fever Ray - "If I Had A Heart"
This song was going through my mind while I was reading 1 Kings 11 today,
"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 Kings 11:1-6 (NIV)
Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived. He was wealthy beyond imagination and ruled a kingdom that was at peace. God blessed him beyond what most of us will ever see.
Yet it wasn't enough. He wanted more. And here we see with women, not just one wife, but seven hundred wives. And even that was not enough,so he added 300 concubines to the count.
At fist I marveled at that. How? How could he be so wise and still ignore God? How could he just keep going like that, that kind of excess?
Yet we sometimes do the same on a lesser scale, don't we?
The answer is in the sin nature. It is never satisfied, it is never filled. Here was see Solomon taking this to the extreme and beyond because he had the means. And yet, it wasn't enough.
The reason is that the sin nature can never be satisfied. So feeding it becomes an endless cycle.
Solomon learned from this experience and more, in Ecclesiastes he tells us,
"I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my labor,
and this was the reward for all my toil.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun." Eccl 2:10-11 (NIV)
Is there something in your life that you continue to allow? Are you surprised that it never seems to end?
That is because it truly never does...
