Your testimony is a high place when you start your walk with God. The past generation built it to glorify the works of the flesh, will you bless their corruption or destroy it? When the sins of that high place stay remaining and get justified by a believer, they give Satan strong hold over over them. Lets see how this played out in Solomon's life. It starts in Solomon's response to God's miraculous offer to him:
1 Kings 3:5 " In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give thee."
What does Solomon say in response? He magnifies his father king David saying, "Thou hast shewed unto thy servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart..." And after God confirms his request for a wise heart, God then holds him accountable to his father's steps, 1 Kings 3:14 "And if thou wilt walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as thy father David did walk, then I will lengthen thy days." God just offered Solomon more life but put it behind an invisible red line, the line of his own justification. As long as he walked in-step with his father David, he would be given a longer life.
What did God just do to Solomon? The better question is what did Solomon just do to himself... In response to God's offer by grace, Solomon justified his petition according to the righteousness of his father. And by doing so God used Solomon's own justification to justify an even greater gift, more life. Don't people already do this? They hold themselves accountable to a standard they can't keep and live in a perpetual cycle of failure, ending in a life of shame and condemnation by their own conscious. (Something the blood of Jesus has come to also free us from! Hebrews 9:14 "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?") Do you see the danger in comparison?
More so than this, look at what justification also did to Solomon. When he lifted up David's righteousness, he lifted up DAVID'S RIGHTEOUSNESS! If Solomon understood David's righteousness was of the Lord, he wouldn't have magnified David's personal integrity. It was because Solomon didn't knowing the meaning of "the righeousness of the Lord" that Solomon viewed David's favour and grace given by God as a result in his ability to walk blamlesly before the Lord.
Even David testifies there are none that do good, Psalm 14:3 "They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one." David's life, was riddled with sin, but David understood what it meant to have the righteousness of God, grace. This is what Romans 3:21 is referring to, "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;" and the word testifies that David was a prophet in Acts 2:29-30. The righeousness of God was a mystery before the first coming of Christ, and the grace that is given through God's righeousness this is seen in 2 Samuel 7:15 "But my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before thee."
But this isn't what Solomon saw in his father David, or he wouldn't have been led to justify himself before God. This is ultimately what lead to Solomon's downfall, because when he justified his father's righteousness before God, he also justified his altars of sin.
Many know the sexual sin David fell to with Bathsheeba, but did you know he was tricked into blessing his own deception? In 2 Sam. 14 Joab devises a scheme to get Absolom back into the kingdom after the murder of Amnon. A woman is sent by Joab to deceive king David to help get Absolam back into the kingdom, how so? With his own unjust judgment. The woman tells David a made up story about how one of her sons killed another and asks for David's mercy to deliver her son from being killed by her family. David blesses her request and then is condemned by her for not having the same judgment towards Absolam. Why did her lying story work to deceive David? Because he already condemend himself when Amnon used David's blessing to take advantage of Tamar. Before Amon raped Tamar, he asked for his dad's approval to have Tamar bring him a meal. And it was this meal that Amnon used to hid his true intentions towards his sister. Looking back at that event, it's understandable why David would have felt guilty.
This explains why he never judged Amnon and allowed Amnon to go unpunished for his wickedness. David was ashamed of his blessing getting taken advantage of. And this is one of the flaws that follow when we "seek perfect judgment", it will cause an individual to condemn themself anytime imperfection is viewed. (This is the importance of having mercy towards yourself, so you can see clearly and judge clearly. Perfect judgment doesn't consider a person's understanding or knowledge when a transgression is committed. Self-mercy is even seen in apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 1:13 "Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.")
It was this shame that blocked David's understanding as he judged the woman's lying story. When the woman finished her false-story, David immediately blessed her with protection because that guilt caused him to give more mercy to this woman than himself. So much so he became blind to deception. And this is what Solomon was lifting up by justifying David, his father's weakness to deception.
So Solomon became weak to two things, deception and lust, yet didn't share in the same heart as his father. How so? Well first was deception, he blinded himself to God's law by marrying women that weren't Israelites. Seen in his first wife who was the daughter of Pharaoh, and then in the nearly 1,000 wives and concubines he had in his life. Who were also women not from Israel, which ended up being his own demise. It says in 1 Sam 11:1-7 these wives enticed him to worship other gods, and he ended up falling to it seen in verse 7 where it says Solomon made high places for Chemosh, Moloch and burned incense to other gods.
Why does anyone have 1,000 of anything? Lust, and this is what the enemy used to deceive Solomon with, his own desires (Giving more context to James 1:14 "But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.") Interesting thing to consider, as wise as Solomon was, the Word never mentioned him converting anyone to serve God. Yet his father David is seen in Psalm 51 was praying for God to help him convert sinners... The contrary happened to Solomon, his wisdom didn't save him from Pharaoh's daughter when her and the other wives ended up converting HIM to worship the Devil.
But why was Solomon so weak to commitment and David's life full of repentance and honor? Because faithless wisdom gives fruitless seed, and this is because God isn't in wisdom, 1 Corinthians 1:21 "... in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God..."
We've seen how Solomon's testimony justified his father's high places into his own destruction. How will your testimony go? Will you condemn the wicked practices of your ancestors and old self to walk forward in faith? Or will you be satisfied with seedless fruit of the flesh and look over evil to make friends with destruction?
The Israelites worshipped God in the high places because God's temple wasn't yet built. God looked over it for this reason, but after they made a home for God, the Lord no longer looked over it. Worship is defined by the Word, and if the Word states where worship is and who it's to. You'd only be deceiving yourself by permitting it anywhere else. What do you think Jesus was talking about to the Samaritain woman in John 4:20-22 "(The woman) Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship... 22 (Jesus says)Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews."
1 Cor. 3:16 "16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"
Luke 9:23
King James Version
"And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me."