Prophetic Hindsight
Moreover, he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’ Deuteronomy 17:16 NASB
Never again – Reading this statement in Deuteronomy makes you wonder if the author wasn’t writing it from a period after Solomon. These verses basically describe everything Solomon did wrong. Horses, women, gold and silver—he fulfilled precisely the warning that was supposedly given centuries before he made his fatal request. Of course, we could read the text as prophetic, but then we would have to ask, “How is it that Israel at the time of Solomon seems to have forgotten this exact warning?” Solomon’s reign is given plenty of glory. The temple, the palace, his influence far and wide, his wisdom—yet before the people even enter the Land, it appears that they should have been much more suspect of such a king. Collective forgetfulness had serious repercussions.
But if we imagine that the Deuteronomy material was constructed after the Solomon experience, then there is more than prophetic hindsight involved in this verse. God says, “Never return to that way,” that is, the way of the Pharaoh, the way of power and opulence. The way of pointless excess. The way that leads a man to forget that he is just a man, a dependent creature bound to the earth, subject to the will of YHVH. “Never again” is a warning not just to Israel, but to us. There is a way that we know. We have lived it. It is the way of human power. On this way we determine that we are the pharaohs of our circumstances—and we accumulate. We accumulate because we can and because we wish to exhibit our status as masters of our destiny. In fact, the average American today lives with comfort and convenience that even Pharaoh could not have imagined. The single most important status symbol of the first world of the West is excess. We probably don’t have to make this list. It takes very little reality check to realize that the most powerful man on earth, the Pharaoh of Egypt, experienced none of the routine accumulation of everyday living that we take for granted.
And God said, “Never again return that way.” Solomon didn’t listen, and for nearly all of us, Solomon seems to be our heroic model. We want the power, the glory, the affluence, the savvy. And we shall have it!—one way or another. We even chose our leaders on the basis of their Solomon traits. We ignore God’s precise warning, “Never again return that way.”
What would your life look like if you made a Solomon-Pharaoh comparison list of your own goals and gains? On one side, write down all the things that Solomon-Pharaoh wished to have. Not just material possession, but everything that would make them exemplars. On the other side, put a little check mark (not too big, be humble) next to each one of these things that you also pursue. See how much of the “never again” way is still lurking in your attitudes and actions. And then ask if this prophetic hindsight fits your life.
Topical Index: Solomon, Pharaoh, never again, lo . . .’od, Deuteronomy 17:16
What did that list in this verse mean in the ancient world? I would wager that it was security from the most feared conditions of that world. Put security for the flesh at the top of that list before you start filling in the blanks today. What that means to us, and how we go about it, may seem different (most of us don’t think that more horses in the pasture is going to give us security these days), but if security is the goal, then how are we any different? Yes, I dream of it, too, and it excites me just as much as it does anybody else.
What causes the most separation from YHVH? Would not that be the sense of not needing Him? Um, hello, security. Layers deep in our security blankets, we add Him as a postscript or icing on our self satisfied cakes. A good day is when all the blankets seem to be working well. The pay check is sufficient, the insurance plans adequate, the prescriptions are working, the party we want is in power and the status symbols give us an identity that signals the world to treat us in a certain way. Security locks us into the world’s false counterfeit for love (which we want to believe is INSULATION from the reality of those dreaded consequences), but that security also insulates us from Him, too, and history teaches us that there is only so long His temper puts up with that.
In all of us is there not a deeper need to be meaningful? To find the purpose we were created for and live it out? Money for me is the same as for everyone I am sure but it is necessary and no matter how much I have or don’t have I still need to know that what I do on thei earth has value. A friend once told me that her pray is “please don’t let me be successful at anything that has no value” I have prayed “please never let me be successful in a place that would let me lose my relationship ie. need for God”. Maybe that is why my great struggle is with finding “that sweet spot” in life where I feel I am doing what I was created to do. Money doesn’t really change that for me. But then again I have never been super wealthy so who knows ; ).
It seems to me that the opposite of the Solomon-Pharaoh list may look like the Joseph model.
He owned nothing, but had access to everything. He acquired and built up for the good and security of all.
The “scraps under the table” where God placed him were more than enough. As for security, which seems to equal Independence in most of our ways of thinking, there lies the battle.
Balancing this world and the kingdom is like the tight-rope walking act
in a three ring circus. With no net, no less.
But there IS something underneath us: GRACE.
This miraculous gift to man offers us an intuitive sense that there IS something
far more intensely real than the bright shinny object we know as earth.
But to get there risks having to fall off the high wire and learning to deal with the fear
of having to walk on it in the first place. There’s a lot to learn. Nothing easy. Lots of pain.
Our “teacher” has been through it Himself. Hebrews 5:8 says: “Although he was a son,
he learned obedience from what he suffered . . .”
Learning to do God’s will is not for sissies. Easy it’s not. But as you persist in learning
the ropes, the more of the kingdom becomes visible. The more you persist on walking
that wire, the more grace you receive to balance. And, Lo! The things of earth they do grow strangely dim.
And the greater joy is the enhanced wisdom and vision you receive in just where that high wire
is leading you!