1 Kings 3

Chapter 3 of 1 Kings begins by telling us that,

It tells us here a little bit about two things that are going on at this particular time in Solomon's leadership. It's very early on in his reign, but we're told two very important things. First of all, in order to make an alliance with the king of Egypt, Solomon took his daughter and that's what they would do back then. They would give their daughters away to another king from a foreign land in order to cement a pact or an agreement of peace. And the idea I suppose goes along that if you've got my family with you, then I'm not going to attack you, and you're probably not going to attack me, and this will be the sign of this sort of a pact. This is not something that Solomon had to do. God had given him peace on all of his borders but he did it as a political move. And we're going to find out later on in our study of 1 Kings that it is all these foreign women, they're going to cause such severe problems for Solomon down the road. And it's not because they're foreign. This isn't a racist issue. You guys know, don't you, that in Christ there is no race. Race doesn't even exist good grief in Christ. There's even there's no male or female That's what the Bible says. There's no Jew, no Gentile, no slave nor free. In Christ, we are just in Christ. (Galatians 3:28) But in the world in which we live there are obviously different cultural sorts of peoples and they carry with them different belief systems. And it is that caused issues with Solomon. It wasn't that he married a woman that necessarily, wasn't a Jew because there were other women that came into the fold, if you will, outside of Judaism. Ruth, as an example, and many others who incorporated into the Jewish family, and became a great blessing. But in this particular case, she's just an Egyptian princess. And as an Egyptian, she's filled with all kinds of paganistic ideas and beliefs. And she brings that into this marriage relationship with Solomon. And we're told that toward the end of Solomon's life, he actually began to build temples for their gods. We're told that he actually began to, along with them, worship their gods; the gods of his wives. Guess why? Because he found it interesting? No, it says that he did it out of love. Those of you who think that love is always a good thing, think again. Solomon out of love for his foreign wives, worshiped their gods. Built them temples so they could worship. And it greatly contributed to idolatry and paganism later on in Israel. This is a step that Solomon is taking now, early on in his reign in Israel, which is going to come back to haunt him badly. At this particular juncture, it seems like a small thing. And have you noticed that sometimes sin is that way? It starts off rather small and subtle. And you can be serving the Lord and doing— you're coming to church regularly, and you're reading your Bible, and you're praying, but there's just this little thing, right? And it starts small. And pretty soon, it's not small anymore. You get down the road a ways, and you find out that it has bit you badly. And you say, well, how do you know for sure that Solomon, was really walking with the Lord? Look at verse 3.

What are the high places? The high places, this is a pagan thought. Pagans believed that if you wanted to get closer to your god, you had to get higher geographically speaking. If you want it to meet with your god, you had to, well, if you want it to maybe successfully meet with your god, you got to go up, you have to get higher. And so they would get up on hills and they would sacrifice to their gods up on hills. They called them high places. And it was just nothing more than a hill. Israel at this particular point in their history was adopting some of those ideas of worshipping at high places, rather than worshipping the Lord there in Jerusalem where the tabernacle had been set up. And you remember David brought the

Ark of the Covenant. That was where they were told to worship the Lord. That was where they were to come to meet with YAHWEH, but they were adopting these paganistic thinking sorts of things. David never worshipped at high places. Solomon worshipped at high places. What's the point of that? It says in verse 3, it's all in the same verse, “Solomon loved the LORD, (it says here) walking in the statutes of (his father) David…” But! You see, it's those little buts, that'll really get a hold of you, and really come back to haunt you. He loved the Lord, right? Yeah. He really did. He loved God and he was walking in all the ways that David had established that he ought to walk and so forth, which of course was in keeping with the law of Moses. Solomon was doing all that, but he started taking foreign women as wives and he started doing things that the pagans do, right? You see, see what's going on here? Solomon is an interesting study for you and I of largely what not to do as it relates to our walk with the Lord. What are we told in the Scriptures about marrying outside of our faith? What does it say in 1 Corinthians? It says, we're not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers, right? Now, and frankly, we apply that to marriage most often, but a yoke could go beyond marriage. Any kind of a business relationship can be a yoke. Going into something with someone where you are connected, certainly marriage applies, but you and I are not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Why? Well, it's obvious. I mean, the life of Solomon is an example to us of why not? If somebody says to you, why not? Well, there's why not? Just study the life of Solomon. He went downhill, but I want you to notice when he started going downhill. It was when he was walking with the Lord, when he loved the Lord, and when he was keeping the Lord's statutes, that's when he started going down. You see, very rarely do we walk with the Lord one day and then say one moment, the next day, I'm not going to do this anymore. It's very rare. I can't even think of anybody who was just walking with the Lord doing great. And then all of a sudden they just said, I don't want to walk with God anymore. I'm done. I'm going to go, I'm going to walk this other way. It's a slow, subtle change of our direction over a period of time, but it comes by beginning to allow things into our lives. We start living like the world, just like Solomon is starting to worship like the pagans. We start living like the world lives. We start getting interested in the things the world's interested in. We start focusing on the things that the world is focused on, right?

And eventually, and we hold on to those things. And eventually it builds in our lives over a period of time, even though the Lord is convicting us. Sometimes, we can actually justify what's going on in our lives by saying, but I really love the Lord. People will say that to me sometimes when they're talking about somebody that is in their family that they know needs prayer. They'll say, it just really confounds me because he really loves the Lord. Do you understand that doesn't mean that there's any less of a warning, or any less of a need to really pray, or any less of a need to rescue that individual in prayer, or to see that the Lord's going to rescue. Just because that person loves the Lord does not mean that we are good. “Solomon (verse 3) loved the LORD,” but he worshiped on the high places and he was taking pagan wives. So be careful Christians. Oh, but she loves the Lord. I don't care. Is she walking with the Lord? Is she listening to the Lord? Is she responding or he, to the conviction of the Lord? Hey I'm preaching to myself here just as much as you. And then this is even a little more confusing. Look at verse 4. Look what goes on to say. It says,

Now stop there for just a moment. This question that you've heard this many times, most of you know the story. This question that God comes to Solomon and asks where He says, whatever you want, just ask for it. I'll give it to you. We consider this to be one of the coolest Bible passages and we all probably secretly covet this same question from the Lord. What do you want? And then it was like, don't I get three wishes? The story always goes three wishes. I'm not sure why. We just did the one here, but it's like, what would you ask for? Two more wishes? I don't know. But do you understand where this took place? At Gibeon? Do you understand what Gibeon was? It was a high place. This is, it's interesting, isn't it? It's interesting how God deals with people. Solomon wasn't supposed to be there. He wasn't supposed to be sacrificing at this high place, but he was. And the Lord came to him at the high place and offered one of the most amazing offers that you could possibly receive from the Lord. Ask me for something, anything, and I'll give it to you. That's an amazing offer, right? At Gibeon.

And what does that tell you about the Lord? Well, I'll tell you one thing it doesn't tell you It doesn't tell you that God didn't care about where Solomon was at the time. He cared plenty. It tells you that God is a God of grace and mercy and that He continues to work with us, walk with us, and bless us even when there's areas of our lives that He's working with us on, hoping that we're going to respond favorably and responsibly, I guess I should say, and sincerely to the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Isn't it interesting? You and I, when somebody does something bad, we'll pull back right away. If we're dealing with somebody in there, and we're walking with them, and doing whatever business, ministry or something, and they do, and they bone up, they do something they shouldn't do, we tend to just go, we just pull it all back. And we're just like, what are you doing? What's your problem anyway? Have you ever noticed God doesn't do that? You ever noticed that God strives with people over a period of time, sometimes great lengths of time. One of the things we see here in the book of 1 and 2 Kings is just how long God strove with the Israelites before He finally gave them over. First it was Israel who was conquered and then finally the nation of Judah that they eventually, they will be conquered because of their idolatry and their paganistic ways. But do you know how many hundreds of years God bore with their idolatry before that happened? It's crazy. You and I would have called it down after about the first week. I've had it up to here with you guys, this sort of a thing. But God is so amazingly patient and so desirous for you and I to hear His voice. And to respond favorably with, you know what, Lord, I am such an idiot and I need Your grace so much. And this is an area of my life you've been speaking to me about. You know what? I've just been ignoring you over and over. And I've justified my behavior by the fact that I love You. And I am walking with You. And so I've said to myself, well, I love the Lord. And then God does something like this. He comes along and speaks to you. I mean, He comes along and just blesses your socks off. And what is our response? I must be good. I must be good with God. Look at what He just did for me. He just backed up the dump truck of blessing and unloaded it on my doorstep. I must be good. Not necessarily. It could be that just God is good and He's being very patient, right? Do you understand why, this way of thinking that blessing equals, everything's good with God is what gets us into doctrinal trouble as the church?

Do you guys, here 10, 20 years ago? You guys some of you who've been around in the Lord that long, you'll remember. Oh my. There was such weird things going on in the church. I mean the Toronto blessing. You guys remember the Toronto blessing about 20 years ago and all the? And then there was all these other things that were happening to where there was all this phenomenon happening. And people were literally getting on planes, and buses, and cars, and going to Toronto, and Florida, and other places where these moves of God had apparently broken out. And there was so much excitement about this stuff. And here's the— and they would go there. Guess what would happen? The roof would cave in? No! They would get blessed. And so they would come home and you know what they would say? That's where the blessing of the Lord is. In Toronto, or it's in Florida, or it's over here. We're going to go in there telling people, you guys need to go get the blessing. And they made this terrible error of believing that because God blessed me there, that means that's where He's blessing. And that's and everything's good there and it's not good here because we're not getting that, so it's over. We got to go there. And see that's this fundamental error that people have in their thinking, that when God blesses, it means something other than just God is good and He wants to bless you. We just, we make assumptions. And again, one of the assumptions is, I'm okay. All these issues of sin that I thought maybe God was talking to me about, obviously they're not a problem because He just blessed me. Or I get in my car and I go somewhere and I receive a blessing and I say, that geographically is where God's blessing is happening. It's ridiculous. And frankly, in Toronto and Florida and some of those other places, some of the most ridiculous and unbiblical things were going on. And they were, it was very damaging in the end to the body of Christ. Sure people walked away with a blessing. Why? Because everything there was perfect and doctrinally sound? No. Because God is good. And when people walk in the door and they're searching for God, they're going to find Him because that's His promise. Right? Isn't that what your Bible says? Seek and you will find, right? Isn't that what the Bible says? So that means you could seek Him anywhere and you'll find Him. Oh, but we make it a big deal that place is where I found Him.

So that— it's like that whole idea of when Jacob was coming home and remember he, or actually he was leaving home, I'm sorry, and he met the Lord. He was sleeping out in the open and the Lord, the Lord appeared to him and he saw this ladder. And these angels going up and down the ladder, you guys remember? In the Book of Genesis? And he goes, oh, this is God's house. So he called it Bethel, which means, the house of God. And he thought, well, this is the actual, this is the doorway of God's house. I just happened to stumble upon it. That's how pagans think. Biblical Christians realize God is everywhere and He loves to pour out His blessing. He longs to show mercy and you seek the Lord wherever you are and you will find Him. And you don't have to go to Toronto, or Florida, or Texas, or overseas, or you, the Lord is right here. That's what the Bible tells us. This is just the way things are coming down for Solomon. He's there at Gibeon. He shouldn't be. And yet God appears to him and says, “Ask what I shall give you.” Verse 6.

That's a poetic way of just saying, I don't know whether I'm coming or going, and I don't really know how to get there, and sort of a thing. And he says,

Now the ESV uses the phrase, “an understanding mind.” Honestly, I don't care for that translation as much as what I think is a little more literal from the standpoint of the Hebrew. Although these words that are translated, understanding mind or understanding heart, are two separate Hebrew words. It literally means, a hearing heart. And when we use the word heart, it speaks of the spirit or the essence of a person. You understand that, it's not obviously the physical heart. He's basically saying, give me literally, give me a hearing spirit, or a hearing heart, or a hearing mind. It couldn't be mind, but he's really speaking of all of himself. Help me to be a hearing person and this is a beautiful request. It really is. He's saying, Lord, give me a hearing heart. I want to hear your voice. As a leader, I can think of no better thing for me to have than to be able to hear you. Have you ever thought about that in your own life? I mean, have you ever thought about just how much you desire to hear God for the direction that He gives? Do you know why hearing God is so hard? Because we're used to listening with ease. And that's not what He's asking. He's not asking for hearing ears or listening ears. He's asking for a hearing heart, or spirit, or the essence of who he is. And the fact of the matter is, people, God communicates with us through His Spirit. You guys get that, right? When I'm sharing the Word of God with many of you, and I know this because you tell me, some of you, you walk away often very blessed just from being in the Word. I know that you do, and it's not my teaching. It's God's Spirit. Do you understand? It's God's Spirit that, because do you understand that I could be doing this at a college somewhere with a room full of unbelievers, and they would walk away completely unchanged? Do you guys understand that? I understand that I do have a teaching gift, but do you know that my teaching gift is nothing without the Holy Spirit making it, that Word alive to your heart? My gift will go in one ear and out the other if somebody doesn't have a listening heart. You with me? The gift is not the special thing from that standpoint. It's the ability to hear that is the really special thing. And that's where God comes in to play in your life, in your heart, and in the specificity of what He is saying to you. This is the thing that always amazes me when I get done teaching, is that some people will come up to me, or they'll email me about what God told them while I was teaching. And it's often very different. In fact, sometimes I listen to them and I go, did I say that? Seriously, I walk away going, did you come to Calvary Chapel today or did you just find yourself somewhere else?

I understand what's going on. I've been doing this long enough. I know that it's the Holy Spirit. He parcels out and He's so good at it. I'll say things and He'll parcel out this little thing and just go right in your heart and just plug it right in. There's like a light socket, its boom! And you just and people just go, whoa! And they start taking notes and they'll date it in their Bible. This is when God said to me and it's just life changing. And sometimes they come to me and think that I changed their life. I didn't. The Holy Spirit changed your life. If it weren't for the Holy Spirit, you would have no ability to hear. What Solomon is asking for is the ability to hear. Do you get it? Do you understand? He wants to hear God. I want to know You, I want to hear Your voice, I want to be responsive to You. Give me a listening heart, mind, soul, spirit, whatever You want to put there. I want to hear You. That's a great need, isn't it? As believers, to hear the Lord. I want to hear you, God. I want to hear your voice. Well, guess what? Verse 10. We're told that, “It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this.” Now, it doesn't mean that he's necessarily going to listen or obey, but either way, God is still, He's pleased. Let's look at what goes on here. Verse 11,

Obviously that would only be accepting the person of Jesus Christ Himself who is God in human flesh, but did you see what God is saying to Solomon? I am going to pour out, I'm going to give you the ability to listen, and you're going to gather so much knowledge and wisdom from what you hear me saying, that no one is going to meet the level of knowledge and wisdom that I'm going to pour into your life Solomon. And then look what else He says. Verse 13, because there's a spiritual principle here.

Isn't that interesting? Solomon didn't ask for riches or honor, but he got it because he asked rightly. And that reminds us, doesn't that remind you of something Jesus said? It's actually recorded in the Sermon on the Mount. Let me put it up on the screen for you because it's a great reminder.

But what does he want you to put as a priority in your life? Seeking first. He doesn't just say, seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness. He says, “seek first the kingdom of God,” right? Seek it first, before all the other things that you might otherwise run after. And then the principle is, and then I'll take care of these other things that you might otherwise feel the need to run after, and so forth. Because you didn't feel the need to ask me for long life and riches, but you asked me instead for a listening heart to discern and to know and to understand my voice, I'm going to give you that discerning heart, and I'm going to give you those other things you didn't ask for. Verse 14 goes on and says, “And if you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days.” Now, again, we went through 1 and 2 Samuel. We know that when it says, “as your father David walked,” we know that wasn't perfect, don't we? Because we studied through those books. And we know that David made some really serious mistakes in his life. I mean, big whopper errors. And yet he was a man who did something whenever he was confronted with his errors. What did he do? Did he justify himself? Did he make excuses? Did he argue? What did he do? He was broken, wasn't he? He had that broken and contrite spirit, which he knew was important before God. When he was confronted with his sin, he would just say that's right, I'm… In fact, sometimes he was confronted with circumstances, and he even would assume that it was because of his sin, when it wasn't, necessarily. But that was just his heart. This is really, this is an important thing to remember. God looks at David's life, speaks about it to Solomon. He says, if you keep my commandments, if you walk with me like your father walked with me, and right away our mind thinks, oh, David must have walked perfectly. Oh, no, we've been there. We studied the chapters, big mistakes, life changing mistakes.

But what did he have? He had a listening heart. He had a listening heart. And when God spoke, he listened, he heard God. And when God said, this is sin David, David said, yes, it is. Yes, it is. And I need to repent. And he did. That's why David is lifted up here as someone who walked with God. The reason I love that is because I am so imperfect and I make so many mistakes. I need to know that walking with God doesn't mean perfection. I need to know it just means sincerity. And it tells us here in verse 15, “And Solomon awoke, (woke up) and behold, it was a dream. Then he came to Jerusalem and stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, (where he should have been in the first place. I just put that in there) and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings, and made a feast for all his servants.” Makes you wonder if maybe there was a little extra word there from the Lord in that dream. And by the way, Solomon, what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be in front of the Ark? Not physically, obviously, as he wasn't of the priest so he couldn't go into the, most holy place. But he should have been before the ark anyway. Now, in verses 16 and following, we're given just a wonderful example of the wisdom that Solomon received from the Lord. Because we're told that,

In other words, this is the issue. Do you understand that the kings of Israel did this all the time? They had to judge between people who had differences of whatever, legal sorts of things. And so this is almost entirely unjudgeable because what we have here is we have two people who simply have opposing opinions, right? They have different opinions about something and there are no witnesses.

The first gal gets up and she says, there was nobody there. It's just the two of us in the house. Nobody else was there to see any of this. So you need to know, okay, that what you're about to get is one person's word against another. But this woman is desperate because her child is involved. And there is such an important aspect, reminder, truth, nugget of truth that we need to mine out of this situation. Do you understand in the law, the Bible said God gave, when He gave the law to Moses, He said, let every matter be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. (Deuteronomy 19:15) And the reason that is necessary is because you can't trust what two people are saying over against one another. One person says one thing, the other person says another. Unfortunately, our court system does it all the time. And particularly in small claims court, it's pretty much up to the judge to just decide who they think are telling the truth, right? And there are even some civil juries. If you're on a civil jury, some of you probably sat on one. You're not looking for the same thing you are in a higher court case. You're just thinking, who do I think is telling the truth the most? That's a very, very difficult thing to do. If it's one person's word against another. There's a proverb that covers this. Let me put this on the screen from Proverbs chapter 18, and verse 17. It says,

The one who states his case first seems right, until the other one comes and examines him. In other words, or questions him. And this is so important, you guys. What this verse is telling you is there are always two sides to a story. Always two sides. How many times? How often, however, do we ignore this verse and do we jump to conclusions based on the information we've received from one person, or one side of a particular case? How often do we do that? Very often, particularly if what we're being told is bad. We love believing bad things about people. In fact, we're almost disappointed if somebody comes around along and contradicts it. Oh, man, that was good dirt. I like that. But we're reminded here that just, some people are just really good at convincing you of things. But if you don't take the time to look into it and say, well, I'm going to withhold judgment until I hear the other side of the story. Well, you learn this with when, if you're ever raised kids, more than one child. And one of them comes in and tells on one of the kids and they're like, dad. You're not going to believe it, and then you find out that it isn't exactly that way at all. It's very different as a matter of fact. So what is the king going to do in this particular case? It's like an unsolvable puzzle. Verse 23, “Then the king said, “The one says, ‘This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead’; and the other says, ‘No; but your son is dead, and my son is the living one.’” Yep, you got it right Solomon. “24 And the king said, “Bring me a sword.” So a sword was brought before the king.” Can you imagine, you don't know how long it took for the sword to get there. Could have been right there next to the throne. Could have been in the next room, so there's probably this very awkward moment of silence while these women are sitting there before him, and he goes, “Bring me a sword.” And they're like, okay, it's the closet, go there, get the thing. So they're, and these women are like. And they bring the sword to Solomon. And you got to love what he says. “25 And the king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” 26 Then the woman whose son was alive said to the king, because her heart yearned for her son, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him.” 27 Then the king answered and said, “Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means put him to death; she is his mother.”” What did the Lord tell him? It is the most natural thing in the world for a mother to love their child. Hey, it's even true in the animal kingdom, right? Don't get between a mother bear and her cub. I mean, unless you want to lose your life. I mean, there is a protection mode that moms swing into at a moment's threat, right? That will absolutely, curl your hair. And in a situation that judicially seems to be unsolvable from the standpoint of the evidence, because you've got two witnesses; the only two people that were there with conflicting information. What are you going to do? I love what he does. And this is so good. And it goes with what we talked about on Sunday. We talked about how people had begun to give up the natural for the unnatural. We even talked about relationships, how men will abandon natural relations with men and begin to take up relationships. I did I say that wrong? They abandoned relationships with women and take up relationships with other men and same with women. And it's an abandoning of nature. Nature has these things built into it. And when we abandon nature, it says something that's really weird about where we've come. And what Solomon is doing here is he's reverting to the laws of nature and the laws of nature say, mom will protect her child. And so I love it. Yeah, bring me a sword. We'll cut the baby in half and give each one a half. And the mother, the real mother of the child immediately is just like, no, give her the baby, give her the baby. It's fine. Solomon says, that's the mother. Isn't that beautiful? I mean, just such incredible wisdom, such incredible. And by the way, knowledge and wisdom, it's important to understand the difference. Knowledge is just knowing something. I can read a book and learn about something like auto mechanics, for example, to the point where I could actually diagnose a problem. And if I heard something or saw something in an engine, I could look at it or I could hear it and I could say, I know what that problem is. That's knowledge. Wisdom is knowing what to do about it. It's knowing how to fix it. Wisdom is the application of knowledge or the solution, if you will. And that's what we're seeing here in Solomon. Not only the knowledge, but the wisdom to apply that knowledge. The knowledge is, a woman will protect her child at any cost. The wisdom is if I challenge and say that we're going to put this child to death, I know that the real mother is going to come forward and offer this child up just so he will live. That's the application of knowledge. That makes sense? So very important that we see the difference in those things because it applies very much to the new Testament where we talk about the gift of a word of knowledge and the gift of a word of wisdom. Paul talks about those in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, right? He talks about specifically the gift of the word of knowledge, the gift of the word of wisdom. What's the difference knowledge is to know something, to know something by the Spirit. I know something about you that I wouldn't have known if God hadn't dropped it in my heart. The wisdom is here's what you need to do about that. Somebody comes to you and they tell you, here's my problem and God just gives you this wisdom. Here's what you need to do. This is the Lord. And this is God speaking to you. And you know when you usually hear that wisdom, that was the Lord. And that was good stuff. Solomon had such amazing wisdom.