1 Kings 3-4 - Solomon’s Got Street Smarts

Well, welcome back to the Bible Babels Podcast.

I'm your host, Bryon Self.

This is Carlos.

And we're excited to be jumping into 1 Kings 3 and 4 today. This is a great passage of scripture, and we're continuing in the reign and life of Solomon. And last week, we saw him kind of cement his throne and carry out some of his dad's final wishes.

And this week, we're going to be jumping right into kind of how his real personal relationship with God starts. So in the first part of the chapter, Solomon makes a treaty.

He makes an alliance with Pharaoh King of Egypt by marrying Pharaoh's daughter. And this is kind of a first thing that he does.

And, but then we read that the people are no longer just worshiping God as they were supposed to at the Tabernacle and all of that. Instead, they were sacrificing in high places because there was no temple or anything for the Lord in those days.

And this was something that David in at the end of his reign had wanted to do. He'd wanted to make the Lord a temple. And God said, you know, basically, thanks for doing that.

But but I haven't asked you to do that. But thank you for it. I'm going to allow that to go to your son, Solomon.

You've been too much of a bloody man. And so I'm not going to have you build the temple. So what David did then was he didn't just throw up his hands and be like, OK, well, I guess I'm not going to try and do anything for that.

But he amassed as much of the timber and resources and everything that he could for the temple. And I think that's a really, really cool thing that David did that even though God said, You're you're not allowed to.

You're not going to be the one to build my temple. David didn't pout. He didn't whine about it and said he was like, OK, I'm not going to build up myself, but I'm going to make it as easy as possible for Solomon to do this.

Carlos, any thoughts on not throwing fits or in prepping good things for other people?

No, not right now.

All right. So this is what's happening. The people are sacrificing in some of the high places, the groves, things of that nature.

And verse number three in First King says, Solomon loved the Lord walking in the statutes of David, his father, only or except he sacrificed and burnt incense in high places.

So here you have Solomon and already he's he's married a pagan king's daughter. He's sacrificing in high places. You can see here like he knows a little bit about the Lord from David.

It says that he loved the Lord, but he's not really putting a lot into that relationship. And instead, he's doing things that he shouldn't.

In verse number four of Kings three, it says the king went to give in to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place. A thousand burnt offerings did Solomon offer upon that altar. So here we have Solomon just doing extravagant offerings.

But in places that he shouldn't, in ways that he really shouldn't. But we see here that the Lord loves Solomon, both for his own sake and for the sake of his father David.

And so the Lord appears to Solomon in a dream in verse five and asks Solomon, ask what I shall give thee. And here he kind of has this open ended thing of, if you could have anything, what would you have?

Carlos, for you, if you could have anything in the world, what would you want?

That's a really tough question. If I could have anything in the world, I would probably choose to be over six foot tall.

That's a great answer. For those of you that don't know Carlos, he's five, five, three ish, five, four. I don't I don't want to shortcut you anything.

I think he's five, three. And so Carlos would want to be taller. I think that's a legit as I do think for me, if I could have anything in the world, I'd probably go with.

I don't I don't even know what I would what I would answer to say when anybody else will say you want money. Sure. Yeah.

If I had money, we could get building on our new church property as soon as our 18 months of rezoning are up. I could send baby be to college. I could, you know, get a down payment on a house and stuff for for my family.

There's lots of great options that people could think of, of things to ask God for.

But in this passage, Solomon tells God, he says, you've shown your servant David, my father, great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth and in righteousness and the brightness of heart with thee.

And you have kept for him his this great kindness that thou hast given him a son to sit on his throne as it is this day. And now, O Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead of David, my father. And I am but a little child.

He says, I'm no one, I'm so young. He says, I know not how to go out or come in. I don't know what I'm doing as I'm going around in the palace, all of these things.

He says, and thy servant is in the midst of thy people, which thou has chosen, a great people that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude.

Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad, for who is able to judge this, thy so great a people. And Solomon chooses here wisdom.

And many of us would be familiar with the Book of Proverbs, which Solomon goes into a lot of this wisdom. And he says, hey, here's get wisdom. Wisdom is the principle thing.

And he talks so much about that. And then we see in verse number 10, and the speech pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing. And I think that's awesome.

I think it's great that we being as sinful as we are, can still please God. We can bring happiness to the Lord in what we ask. And this thing that Solomon has asked is, hey, I know I don't have the knowledge.

I know I'm not smart enough for this. So I want to rely on you, God. And I want to have your wisdom.

And so God tells him in verse number 11, because you have asked this thing and have not asked for yourself long life, neither have you asked riches for yourself, nor have asked the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to

discern judgment. Behold, I have done according to your words, lo, I have given you a wise and an understanding heart, so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee.

And I have also given you that which you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that there will not be any among the kings like unto thee all thy days.

And if you will walk in my ways to keep my statutes and my commandments as your father David did walk, then I will lengthen your days.

So God says here to Solomon, hey, I know you didn't ask for riches, you didn't ask for honor, you didn't ask for any of these things, but because you've asked for the most important thing, I'm going to give all the rest to you.

It makes me think of the verse, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto thee.

And I just love that promise of God, obviously not that we'll have tons of wealth if we ask God for wisdom, but the fact that when we're looking to God for direction and when we're looking to God for guidance, all of the other things in life that we

could be worried about, he's going to have taken care of, that he cares about us as our father, and I think that's great. So Solomon now has been given all of this wisdom, and he has the promise of God that now he's going to have honor and riches,

and there's going to be no king like him during his lifetime. No one's ever going to have really all of the wisdom that God gave Solomon. And this has happened in verse number 15. It kind of ends this section.

Solomon awoke and behold, it was a dream, and he came to Jerusalem and stood before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord and offered up burnt offerings and offered peace offerings and made a feast to all his servants.

So now he's going from, I think it was Gibeon in the place he was before, where he had that giant offering of a thousand, what did he have?

A thousand burnt offerings that he did to where now he went to Jerusalem where the Ark of the Covenant was, where he should be offering, and there he does his offerings. And now he, he kind of gets it.

Now he really has that personal relationship with God where he's talked with him. He's asked God for things. God has given his blessing and all of that.

In this next section, though, his wisdom is really put to the test. So why don't you talk about that a little bit, Carlos?

So we know that Solomon has been king for a little bit, and you would think that he has a lot on his plate, and he has a lot of important things to do.

But here we find in this patch of the scripture, we have that two women come to him with a problem. And one woman said to the king, they're having this problem about their children.

And one of the women who had given birth, they were in a house together, and they came to the king with this problem. And honestly, the king, he could have just turned them away because he probably didn't have time for this.

And it seemed like a silly problem, probably at the base of things. And so these two women come to the king, and they're having an argument between themselves, and they want the king to pick their side.

So what happens is both of these women had given birth to a child, and one of the women had accidentally rolled over onto the child and killed it.

And, you know, the woman tried to swap that child with the other woman's child, and try to play some kind of trick on them, and try to think that their child died in the night.

But really, one of the women swapped the living child with the dead child.

And now they come to the king, and they want him to solve this silly problem of theirs, which the king, you know, it just amazes me why he would even want to, you know, be involved in this.

So he, what happens is, is the king, you know, he now has all this wisdom, and what happens is he calls for one of his servants, he says, to bring him a sword.

And I would just imagine a look on people's faces when they're trying to figure out why he needs a sword to figure out, well, who's baby, or who's the actual mother of the baby that's alive?

And I would imagine the mom who is, who is the actual mom, was scared and frightened because she thinks that now her baby's about to get, you know, sliced in half. And Solomon says to the two women, he says, we will basically cut the baby in half.

And so we'll give one half of the baby to the other. And I would imagine that they were like, the actual mother was scared and it says that the lady responded. She said, don't do that.

Just give the baby to the other person and that's fine. And then the other woman responded by saying, no, it's not going to be mine or yours. And by that response, Solomon knew who the actual mother was.

And Solomon was able to discern in a situation that was probably impossible for anyone else to figure out who the actual mother was.

And then verse 28 says, all the Israel heard and they were, they feared the king and they knew that this guy has God's wisdom and he's able to carry out justice. So what Solomon did that day was actually a pretty big deal.

Yeah. I think it's kind of crazy there. You have maybe one of the earliest custody battles that I've read about.

And in there, you just you have all of this craziness of the one woman would rather have no babies.

And maybe you could even attribute it a little bit to grief of, if I can't have my living baby or if my baby died and can't be alive, then this other mother, she shouldn't be able to have her living baby either.

And just kind of a vindictive spirit and all of that. Yeah, it's definitely crazy.

But as you mentioned in verse number 28, Israel heard about this, and it was really something God used in Solomon's life to to show all of Israel, hey, like, I've put my hand on this king.

And it's really cemented both in kind of the force that we saw in first Kings two of all of the enemies are taking care of. And then in first Kings three, you have Solomon has the wisdom to actually be able to take care of this entire kingdom.

First Kings four is really just a continuation of that thought of the fact that God had really now taken care of Israel had given them plenty of wealth of food of animals, all of these things.

And in verse twenty nine of first Kings four, it says, God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the seashore and Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the East

country and all the wisdom of Egypt for he was wiser than all men. And then I like in verse number thirty two, it says, he spake three thousand proverbs and his songs were a thousand and five.

We only have really one song of Solomon's written out for us, and that would be the one that is in scripture of Song of Solomon or Song of Songs, as it's sometimes called.

And but I have written maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty five songs ish. I have not reason written a thousand and five.

Although that number as large as it is, was surpassed by, I believe, Fanny Crosby had seven thousand songs that she wrote in her lifetime. I think it was Charles Wesley wrote five thousand songs in his lifetime.

But it does go to show, if you're smart, you're going to write music, or at least in this time, you're going to write some poetry.

And so if you have any creative bents or anything like that, don't think that maybe because you have a bent towards creativity instead of being super athletic or you're creative, instead of being a math whiz that you're unintelligent, Solomon in all

of his wisdom wrote proverbs and he wrote songs with the wisdom that God had given him. So take full use and use that gift that God has given you of being creative in whatever way that is.

Our pastor's wife is very creative when it comes to painting and all of that and does great work with a lot of that. Carlos, do you have any creative things that you do?

I, well, I definitely am not a poet. I don't write many music. I don't know if they answer to that question.

We'll find you something creative to do.

But yeah, love this passage. Carlos, do you have anything else that, any thoughts you have on wisdom or Solomon or any of that?

I think a lot of the times we see someone in scripture like this who has that wisdom from God. And then a lot of times we try to think to ourselves, you know, that I wish we could have that wisdom.

Obviously, we're never going to have like the wisdom Solomon had. But the only thing we can have is God's wisdom. And the Bible says that, you know, God gives liberally to those who ask him.

And I just love that fact that we don't have to go through life, you know, leaning on our own wisdom, but we can actually just go to God and ask him to give us that wisdom because, in all honesty, it's almost impossible to do the Christian life

without God's wisdom because we choose things based off emotions or feelings, and we really should just be leaning towards what the Bible says and leaning towards God's wisdom.

Yeah, that's great.

I love in that verse, James 1.5, that God gives his wisdom liberally and abradeth not. He doesn't get after us for how come you don't know this?

The only way we can know true wisdom, know the difference between what's right and what's wrong and the choice that we should make in that is because of God.

And so God doesn't think any less of us or he's not going to punish us for asking for wisdom. Instead, he absolutely commends it. Well, you have any other things?

Custody Battles, Babies, Solomon, wisdom.

The Bible is interesting.

It is interesting. And definitely would encourage you read through this passage. And it's so great that God has a plan and is working even through these books in the Old Testament, where it could just be history or boring or mundane to people.

There's awesome stories linked all throughout here with things that we can apply to our everyday life. Well, thank you so much for listening. And hope you have a great next week.

This has been Bible Babels. My name is Bryon.

This is Carlos. Thanks for joining us.