7-4-1 Parental Expectation
One of the reasons for Solomon's strange mixture of spirituality and carnality, not to mention his supreme spiritual self-assurance, was the fact that Solomon's faith was almost completely on account of his living out parental expectation. Those fundamental problems of Solomon are at the root of much of our difficulty in living dynamic spiritual life today: we have the 'little of both' syndrome, and are far too spiritually self-assured. The real possibility of failure and rejection seems lost on many of us. For many in the Christian heartlands of the UK, North America and Australia, the reason may be exactly the same as for Solomon: our spirituality is the result of living out parental and community expectation, rather than a result of being motivated by the fact that Christ loved us, and gave his life for us so that we might be a people zealous of good works. There can be no doubt that upbringing has a crucial impact upon who we later become. If we seek to truly be new creations, to find a genuine independent identity, to have the Name written which can only be given to us, then we need to be able to decode our Christian backgrounds, taking from them that vital and saving truth which they gave us, and yet not being who and where we are simply by reason of living out parental expectation.
Some of you might have heard of a book by Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled. Despite the drawbacks common to all self-help psychology, there's a lot in it for Christians. He speaks a lot about living out parental expectation. He gives examples of people who've lived for many years as successful businessmen, and then in middle age lose their parents; then they flip their lid, perhaps becoming farmers on some remote island, searching for who they really are. We are all only human beings. Inevitably our lives are a living out of parental and community expectation- to some extent. Those of us with generations 'in Christ' behind us, brought up in a closely knit Christian community, wary of everything and anything outside the community, really need to wake up to the possibility that a large percentage of our spiritual life is only living out expectation. This really is a worrying thought. As the last days wear on, and even in the mission fields the second generation of converts appears, this will be an increasing problem. Even if we have broken free from parental and community ties in order to be baptized, there still remains the possibility that we have become so involved in our community that we too are only living out the expectations of our brethren and sisters. The Gospel is a call to be a new creation, to truly break free of all the strings of our background, and stand alone before God and in this world, having left father and mother to be married to Christ, and bring forth spiritual fruit to his glory and our own salvation. David almost willed Solomon to make God’s promises come true. He told Solomon that God had promised that Solomon would be the Messianic King, if he was strong [AV “constant”] to do God’s commandments. And so, David urges Solomon to be “strong” [s.w.] (1 Chron. 28:7, 10,20) to as it were make God’s promises come true. On one level, David was being a good spiritual parent to his son. Yet one suspects that David was so filled with pride that his son could be Messiah that he was urging Solomon almost for his [David’s] sake to be obedient… And this can be seen happening in the psychology of the best Christian families. Parental expectation is lived out initially in spiritual matters, but the heart of the son or daughter can still be unconverted.
In so many ways Solomon is a believer gone wrong. We have shown in our study of Solomon and the temple that David firmly expected Solomon to be the eternal Messianic King; he wildly over-interpreted God's promises in such a way as to imply that Solomon would build a literal temple and have the full Messianic Kingdom. Not surprisingly, Solomon unquestioningly accepted his father's perspective; and we have seen that this was his undoing. He “propseroulsy effected” the work of the temple in fulfilment of his father’s hope and expectation that he would “prosper” (s.w.) in this work (1 Chron. 22:11; 29:23; 2 Chron. 7:11). He reigned in the place of his father and “prospered”- just as David had expected of him (1 Chron. 29:23). So very very often does Solomon speak of " David my father" , and that God had made him king " instead of David my father" (eg 1 Kings 3:7). Thus he asks Hiram to deal with him just as he had done with David his father (1 Kings 5:2-7; and cp. 1 Kings 5:1 with 2 Sam. 5:11). The number of times these phrases occur in the records is so large that we simply have to recognize that God is pointing something out to us about the relationship between Solomon and David (1 Kings 2:24,26,32,44; 3:6,7,14; 5:3,5; 6:12; 8:15,17,18,20,24,25,26; 9:4; 11:33; 2 Chron. 1:8,9; 2:3,7,14; 6:4,7,8,10,15,16; 7:17). So often in his prayers to God does Solomon make reference to David; for example: " Thou hast showed unto thy servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with thee; and thou hast kept for him this great kindness, that thou hast given him a son to sit upon his throne" (1 Kings 3:6).
These words are doubtless an allusion to the mercy God showed David in his relationship with Solomon's mother, Bathsheba. But Solomon makes no mention of David's great faith in God's grace, and his subsequent appreciation that animal sacrifices were meaningless. These were David's real strong points, but Solomon is obsessed with David's public life of obedience (" according as he walked " ). He evidently saw his father as the epitomy of spiritual good, faultless in God's sight. " Mercy" and " truth" both occur in 1 Kings 3:6, and they often refer to the promises. Solomon seems to have seen the promises to David as a reward for David's good life, rather than an expression of God's unwarranted grace. David's reaction was " Who am I...?" to receive such an honour. Solomon's feeling was that David deserved them because of his righteousness. So here is a feature of many parent:child relationships in the Lord. The children love and respect their parents spiritually, but often for the wrong reasons; they actually misunderstand their forefathers' spirituality. This is why their understanding of parental and community expectation is often wrong in the first place.
