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As we continue our walk through Tracing the Thread we will be looking at 1 Kings 11:1-13 and Romans 3:21-26. I encourage you to go and read these two passages and see how they tie together. In 1 Kings we see a story about King Solomon. This passage comes at the end of his time as king. We learn that he chose to do his own thing and not follow wholeheartedly after God. Solomon was the son of King David. If you read the life of David you see the mistakes he made, but he always returned to the Lord. Solomon does not. 

In this passage in 1 Kings we see that Solomon chooses to do what he wants and not listen to what God has commanded him to do. We see that he intermarried with women God had called him not to. God knew that they would pull him away from Him and have Solomon follow other gods. The punishment for Solomon was to have the throne taken away from him. 

Solomon started out in his fathers footsteps. It is thought that he was a very wise man and was looked to for his wisdom. He was even the writer of some of the books in the Bible. But Solomon had his downfall. He chose to follow his own desires and not the desires of the Lord. The question I asked the students was, who/what do you choose to be motivated by? Your own desires or the desires of the Lord?

Then we have our passage in Romans. This is a passage you have probably read before. We see in verse 23 that all have fallen short of the glory of God, we are all sinners. If that was all this passage said that would be pretty sad. But in the very next verse we see that even though we are sinners we can and are justified by the grace of Jesus through His sacrifice. Now how does this passage tie back to 1 Kings? 

Solomon was a sinner and he chose to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Just like Solomon we are sinners we have all chosen to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord. We have all fallen short. I come back to the question, what are we motivated by? Are we motivated by our own selfish desires that will lead to our destruction or are we motivated by the redeeming grace that the Lord had for us. If you are motivated by selfish desires you will always come up short. If you are motivated by Jesus’ redemption of your sins than when you do come up short you can be freely forgiven. Now take that motivation and go and tell the world about what Jesus has done for you.