Thought for Today

New Year’s resolutions. Whether to read the Bible more, pray more, eat better, lose weight, start going to the gym, spend more time with family, stop frivolous spending, we vow to do better, to make needed changes, most often at the start of a new year. We are now a month into that new year. How is it going? Are you keeping those resolutions?

We do have the best of intentions. We often even start out well, but within a few weeks, we’re right back to where we were before. We fail to carry out our good intentions. Romans 7:18–25, particularly verses 17–18, that nothing good dwells in our flesh, and that “the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not” (NAU) is spot-on. We want to do the good, we resolve to do the good, but then we don’t do it, and instead go back to doing the bad. I may vow to no longer eat donuts, but that box of six chocolate, cream-filled donuts, and six apple fritters I just ate sure tasted good.

What goes wrong?

Sometimes we flat-out deceive ourselves. The Bible gives us a fascinating example with Solomon. He states that he will build a great house for God (2 Chronicles 2:4). Many passages in the Scriptures describe it. Much gold and silver are used in its construction; so much bronze that it cannot be weighed. Its size is 90 ft. long x 30 ft. wide x 45 ft. high (assuming a cubit is roughly 1.5 ft.). First Kings 6:37–38 tells us that it took seven years to build. At first glance, that is impressive.

What about his house? His house takes thirteen years to build (1 Kings 7:1). Parts of his house include the Forest of Lebanon (150x75x45 ft.); the Hall of Pillars (75x45 ft.); not to mention the civic Hall of the Throne and Hall of Judgment (no dimensions given), although his incredible throne is described in detail (1 Kings 10:18–20). When the Queen of Sheba arrives, she is blown away by the stairway that leads to the Temple (1 Kings 10:5). I do wonder, why the stairway and not the exterior of the Temple itself1? While I can speculate, the Bible does not give a direct answer.

All of that leads to another question that cannot be directly answered: what was more glorious, the Temple, or Solomon’s house and civic buildings? 1 Kings 7:12 informs us that at least in some respects the construction of his house and the Temple were about the same.

I wonder: What were Solomon’s true priorities? While the Temple was glorious, did Solomon’s house and the civic buildings overshadow it? At least in terms of their overall size, that is distinctly possible. Interestingly, in Ecclesiastes 2:4, Solomon describes his many building projects (not the Temple), and in the end finds them to be nothing but vanity.

What I suspect happened, although I can only strongly infer it, is that Solomon started with the goal of having the Temple be the most glorious (it is listed first in terms of building order), and over time, became more interested in himself and his own glory. Scripture makes it clear that his many wives eventually turned his heart away from God, and that he built high places for his wives to worship their false gods.

That should give us pause, shouldn’t it? What about ourselves? We sometimes claim we want one thing, start to pursue that one thing, yet truly want the direct opposite. I may vow to stop eating donuts, but my subsequent eating that box of the yummy dozen donuts indicates something else, doesn’t it?

How do we succeed at making changes? What is going on? We will start to examine these questions in the next post.