Delegated Outcomes - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in 1 Kings 9:4-7,

"As for you [Solomon], if you walk before me [the Lord] faithfully with integrity of heart and uprightness, as David your father did, and do all I command and observe my decrees and laws, I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father when I said, 'You shall never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.' But if you or your descendants turn away from me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you and go off to serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land I have given them and will reject this temple I have consecrated for my Name."

Following King Solomon's completion of the temple of the Lord and his building of the royal palace, the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time. In his words to Solomon, the Lord laid on the Israelite's shoulders the responsibility of determining their own outcomes: if they remained true to the Lord they would be blessed by him, but if they turned from the Lord, the Lord would cut them off.

This delegation of assigned outcomes makes some who hold a certain theological perspective very uneasy. Unable to understand that a sovereign person can delegate the fortunes or outcomes to those under them based on their performance and still remain sovereign, they feel what we read in this chapter to be an outrageous challenge to the notion of the supremacy, the sovereignty of the Lord. So, back at their theological desks, they invent convoluted explanations in an attempt to make the Scriptures say what they don't. In this instance, they explain to us, we are to interpolate between the lines that the Lord will determine what the Israelites do and therefore determine what the outcome will be for the Israelites.

What we read in the history of Israel, is that they will, in fact, turn their back on the Lord and eventually lose the promised land, with the temple Solomon built destroyed, along with Jerusalem, and a small remnant carried off to Babylon - the remainder slaughtered.

I reject any notion that the Lord does not engage any of us in determining our own outcomes with him. While I do recognize it is the Lord to whom we must give an account of ourselves, and it is the Lord who will either bless us or judge us, based on what we choose to do, nevertheless, the Lord has left it up to each and every person to determine where they will end up in the resurrection. 

This is the simple message of all the Scriptures - none more clear than right here in this chapter of 1 Kings.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

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Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com