Money, sex and power. Now that I have your attention, no, this isn’t the latest edition of “Inside Edition.” Those are the three things that Moses warned the people of Israel about if they ever got a king (read Deuteronomy 17:14-20). The misuse of money, sex and power. It would take me too long to recount the list of names of the rich and beautiful in our culture who have fallen by way of this triumvirate of temptation: money, sex and power. Think of all the names that come to mind—athletes, politicians, preachers. People who somehow believe the rules are for other people, “I’m untouchable.”

 

And King Solomon fits this sad profile. The writer of The Book of First Kings very artfully leads us to the pinnacle of Solomon’s success (the completing of the glorious Temple). And then, quickly, the bottom drops out, the glory fades. It’s gone! Even in the build-up to Solomon’s crowning success, there are hints that things aren’t right in the kingdom. This success has come at too high a price. All that lavish wealth, accumulated at the expense of slave labor, sexual exploits and self-indulgence. Ralph Sockman wrote about King Solomon’s sad slide. Power produced pride (inflated attitudes about self). Pride produced arrogance (an attitude of superiority toward others). And arrogance led to forgetting God The Interpreter’s Bible, 1978, vol. 3, p. 101]. Think about that sad slide in our own nation. And in your own life.  

 

Have you ever thought about how sin has its own built-in billy club, its own judgment? One of the judgments of sin is that it desensitizes us. It desensitized Solomon; it does the same to us. We become so numbed by our own appetites, we don’t even realize that it affects the way we view the world. A few months ago, right after the earthquake in Chile, I heard a piece on the news. The reporter was telling that, yes, there had been major devastation in Chile, but thank goodness, the supply of fresh vegetables to the U.S. would not be interrupted! And best of all, the prices would not go up! Well, let’s all thank God…an earthquake rocks a nation, but WE’LL be OK!

 

You see how sin blinds us? Money, power and privilege change us. C.S. Lewis wrote that we think we are finding our place in the world, but really, the world is finding its place in us [The Screwtape Letters, p. 155]. All of this is no doubt why Jesus had more to say about wealth than nearly any other subject. In the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), one in ten verses have to do with the dangers of wealth [Bob Sabath, Sojourners, Feb., 2010, p. 12].

 

But not just power and wealth. This misuse of sex also. Solomon! All those wives and concubines! In a children’s attempt at telling the stories of the Bible, one child wrote, “Solomon…had about 300 wives and 500 porcupines. My teacher says he was wise, but that doesn’t sound very wise to me.” Poor Solomon had forgotten the biblical truth that human sexuality is far too powerful to waste on casual relationships. In our own day, statistics abound regarding online pornography, the shocking number of lives out of control regarding our appetites. I once read a very insightful comment: sexual impurity is not like a tumor that you just have someone remove. We can’t go to the surgeon, have him excise it and tell the family, “I think we got it all!” Instead, sexual impurity is a series of bad choices. Conversely, holiness is not some altered state of consciousness, or some vague trance you go into like hypnosis. Holiness is a series of right choices [Every Man’s Battle, Arterburn et.al., p. 92]. And Solomon got lost in a tangle of bad choices.

 

And how curious, that after all these centuries and millennia, things haven’t changed. The abuse of money, sex and power still travel around together like arrogant bandits, robbing lives of joy and fulfillment, stealing our holiness and our effective Christian witness. How sad that Solomon started his reign with that powerful prayer for wisdom, asking God for strength and insight (1 Kings 3). How sad that his power FOR people became power OVER people [Sockman].

 

I love the story about the little boy who fell out of bed in the middle of the night. When his mother came in to check on him, he said, “I guess I fell asleep too close to where I got in.” That’s not a bad description of some of our spiritual journeys! We don’t use the word “backsliding” much anymore. We’re too sophisticated. We’re too lax in accountability. But it’s still a reality. And it’s still a sad slide.

 

Some of us will remember a great song written and sung years ago by Neil Sedaka, entitled, “The Hungry Years.” The words go, “We spun so fast we couldn’t tell/The gold ring from the carousel/How could we know the ride would turn out bad/Everything we wanted, was everything we had/I miss the hungry years, The once upon a time/The lovely long ago, We didn’t have a dime/Those days of me and you, We lost along the way. I miss the hungry years.” Though this song is obviously romantic, referring to human love, the words apply to our love affair with God. Do you miss the hungry years?

 

My abiding memory of visiting the nation of Belarus for the first time in the mid-90’s was the extreme spiritual hunger. Here was a former Soviet satellite country, without religious freedom for decades, suddenly open and able to worship as they chose. And as we worshiped with them, for four hours, they would stand the entire time. There was vibrancy in the worship. Intensity. I watched their eyes. They wanted this worship. They wanted God. They had nothing, materially speaking. But they had joy. They were rich. They had heart hungers. They were living the hungry years.

 

What’s happened to us? How did we grow cold? When did we stop caring? When did we stop loving God? When and where and how did we slide? We always have choices. God’s grace means that life can always be new. It’s never too late. Jesus Christ died and was raised again to empower us by his Spirit to live new and fresh lives.