Battle Ping Pong

“Now Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of his father David, except he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places.” 1 Kings 3:3

There are times that changing things up causes no problems. In fact, it can sometimes enliven something that has become boring or humdrum. The summer after my High School graduation my best friend Dale and I played ping pong almost daily in my family’s recreation room.

That is no understatement. It was every day, all 90 days of that summer. We got a little better as time went on, but we also became a bit bored. One day one of us (I don’t remember who, so I’ll blame it on Dale) hauled off and just slapped the ball across the table right into the opponent’s chest. Needless to say, it was “game on”, and we began smacking ping pong balls one after the other at each other.

This gave rise to our new game: “Battle Ping Pong”! Scoring was the same, one point if you made your opponent miss the ball. But, if you hauled off and tried to hit the ball toward your opponent and actually hit him, you received two points. (If you missed, the opponent got one point). You could use this strategy at any time during the game or rally. So you never knew if the person across the net might merely tap it over, or pretend to tap it over and whack it right at your face as you leaned in to defend.

No harm, no foul, a few red blotches on our faces.

But other things may not be so innocent. We’ve all heard jokes about substituting H2SO4 for good old H20. A person would enjoy only one drink of that cocktail. And, seemingly small changes can make dramatic effects. Once, instead of adding sugar to a cookie recipe, I added salt by mistake. No, they weren’t even good for soup crackers. They came out of the oven looking about right but were entirely unpalatable.

Solomon “loved the Lord” and “walked in all the statutes of His father David.” So far so good. And, even as we read on later in 1 Kings 3, Solomon asks God for wisdom rather than riches or fame. He is starting out well, following his father’s heart-devotion to God, even when God tells him to ask for anything at all.

But, Solomon keeps one tiny area to himself. He continues sacrifice and burn incense on the high places. Bad idea, Sol! At that time there was no permanent temple, so it was some of Israel’s habit to perform their religious sacrifices on hillocks. Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? And we can all imagine the emotional and theological impulses to seek God on the hills. He seems so much closer, and we are trying to let Him know we will meet him “as high” as He want us too.

But good intentions go bad when they are counter to God’s best. You see, the pagan worshipers also used the hills (“high place”) for their worship. Their style was a bit less, well, modest than Israel’s. They worshiped the Baals and the female consort Astarte. Believing that the earth brought forth good crops when Baal and Astarte did what good married gods do, they imitated the same actions. It was man’s attempt encourage the gods to do what they were supposed to do so the crops would be successful. Fertility is fertility, no matter how you look at it, in the pagan view.

God wanted His people to have nothing to do with any of this. He wanted them to know He was nothing like the Baals and Astarte. He was not a god who was driven by lusts, but was rather a Holy, Good and Caring God who looked after His own people’s interest. He did not want them to think they had to force Him to act. He would send the rains upon the just and the unjust in His mercy.

But Israel wouldn’t listen. Like we often do, they made excuses and probably said, “Yeah, but it won’t affect me!” So Solomon kept worshiping on the high places. It was available, everybody else was doing it, and nothing bad had happened to him yet. So, God must have gotten that one thing wrong.

So he thought for about half his reign. But then his love for the hills took him down new paths of compromise, marrying foreign brides from pagan nations as ways to make treaties. 1000 wives and 600 concubines later, he housed a harem of Cirque de Religione!

Yes, small things make huge differences. What is the one thing that you are leaving out of your obedience to God? At this time in Solomon’s life it was tiny. He is even described as loving the Lord. But He also was disobedient in something that led him further down the road from God than He ever wanted to go.

Let the Holy Spirit speak to you. What is it you know from God’s Word that you should be doing, or that you should refrain from? What is the one thing that you have said, “It won’t affect me?” Will you allow Solomon’s example to help you decide earlier than he did? Will you hear Jesus say, “If you love Me, then keep My commandments.” What joy when we live the high places behind and simply love Jesus is purity of heart.