1 Kings 9:7

But at once, as in all this book, the question of responsibility follows. It is the exact opposite of what came before. When it is a matter of Solomon the type, everything is assured; when it is a matter of Solomon in responsibility, everything comes into question. God can establish his throne forever only if he is upright and faithful. He can establish his descendants only on the same condition. Let Israel prove unfaithful as well as her king. Let them bow down before other gods, and nothing will remain of all that the Lord has established by Solomon. The people will be cut off, the house itself rejected and destroyed.

If he, or his descendants, should turn away to serve other gods, Israel would be cut off. The house would become a testimony of the judgment of God to everyone who passed by. We see here how far the fate of Israel hung upon their king.

The consequences of disobedience do not stop with him, yet everything hangs on him. When he turned away, he drew the people away too. God set that vast outlook of glory and power and dominion before Solomon as the reward of his obedience. But since it rested on his faithfulness, it was only a house built on the sand. The floods of idolatry overthrew it, and great was its fall.

This divine communication shows clearly how everything from that moment depended on the king. … The later history of Solomon is all the more terrible when we hold these plain words in view. He should have realised that his own departure from God would wreck the whole magnificent order of things around him. … Josiah was the last king who was worth anything to the nation. … Not long after, the princes of the royal house were eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon, and "our holy and beautiful house, where our fathers praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins" (Isaiah 64:11).

God shows here the danger that lay before Solomon and his family. He shows the conditional ground he must take until Christ brought in sovereign, unconditional grace. It is impossible not to speak in the language of condition except in view of Christ, of Christ personally. There alone we get the full mind of God and the heart of God. Whenever that is the case, it is no longer a question of conditions but of perfect love — love that works for His own name's sake, and can do so in righteousness through the Lord Jesus.

There was one person on whom the blessing of the people depended, or who, sadly, involved the people in his own ruin… Miserable, until we come to Christ. How blessed, when Christ comes to reign! Then all the blessing of the whole world hangs on that one Man, and that one Man will make it all good.

So within the space of two verses God declares unconditionally that His eyes and His heart will be forever on this house — and that He will cast it out of His sight! Does God contradict Himself? Certainly not. The conditional warning came true to the letter. In the same way, the unconditional promise will come true to the letter, when the true king after God's heart has built Him a house — a temple on earth far more glorious than Solomon's.