Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Ever desire to have what King Solomon had? You have a similar promise and opportunity, believe it or not. Here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: The attitude of many in the church today seems to revolve around self and what can we get and how can we have more stuff. Look, we have a similar promise that Jesus gave us: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." We have a similar opportunity to come to our Father today and make our needs known to Him.

Guest (Male): Bible says, "Set your mind on things above, not on the things that are on earth." Do you desire temporal, earthly things, or do you desire eternal things? The greater is certainly the eternal, and we would do well not to settle for less.

Welcome to Hope From the Word with Bill Luebkemann, the pastor of Calvary Chapel of Marlton. King Solomon initially desired the greater. He prayed for wisdom to be able to fulfill his calling. That's a good prayer. From 2 Chronicles chapter 1, starting in verse 10, here's Pastor Bill.

Bill Luebkemann: "For who is able to govern this great people of yours?" In other words, what he's saying here in all humility is, "Look, I can't do this myself. I can't lead this people, and I can't govern this people without You and without Your wisdom and knowledge."

If you look over in 1 Kings chapter 3, where he recounts the same episode, it says Solomon wanted wisdom in his heart, so he knew where the seed of wisdom was. It's not something you can have knowledge in your brain, but I think wisdom is more of a heart thing. Knowledge applied. Give me wisdom and knowledge. So give me the knowledge, but give me the wisdom to know what to do with it. Some people are very, very smart. They know all kind of things. They don't know what to do with it. They can't even get it out of their mouth.

He says, "Give me wisdom and knowledge so I can use it for a good purpose." Why? To get more things? No. "That I may lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of yours?" Do we see any kind of self-centeredness in here? Do we see anything about the flesh? Do we see anything all about how to get more stuff? We've got to get for ourselves? We don't see any of that. We see a totally selfless man who is committed to doing God's work and who wants only what he needs to get the job done.

He doesn't ask for a single dollar, not a single victory in battle, nothing like that. Just wisdom and knowledge so he could lead the people and so that he could govern them better. Now look, this sounds great. We could look at this and say, "Oh man, boy, I wish God would have appeared to me in a dream because I'd ask for wisdom and knowledge too, but I'd slip a few extra requests in there also. If the Lord would just ask me the same kind of question, man, I'd ask him for the wisdom and the knowledge, but that would really just be a cover so you could ask him for the other things."

See, God knows our heart. If someone told you tonight when you go home and you go to bed, you're going to have a dream, and God's going to ask you for anything you want, you would think, "Well, I really want the million dollars and the house at the LBI, and I wouldn't mind having a new car, one with air conditioning that works at least, and a few other things. But in order to impress God, I'll just ask him for the wisdom and knowledge. I won't mention these other things because I'm hoping He'll give them to me anyway like He did Solomon."

See, that's the wrong attitude. That's not the attitude Solomon had. He didn't have the attitude, "I want the material things, but I'll try to impress God by asking for the spiritual things, and then I know I'm going to get impressed." But that seems to be the attitude of many in the church today. It seems to revolve around self and what can we get and how can we have more stuff. Look, we have a similar promise that Jesus gave us: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened."

We have a similar opportunity to come to our Father today and make our needs known to Him. Over in John—that was Matthew 7:7, if you didn't get the reference—in John 15:7, Jesus said, "If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you." So now we see there's a catch here. We don't just ask whatever we want and we get it. We have to remain in Him, and His words have to remain in us.

So when we're off asking for things that are selfish or self-centered, that we just want to please and gratify our flesh, we're not remaining in Him, and His words are not remaining in us. And no matter what you see on the TV preacher shows about all the things that God wants you to have, and He just wants you to have this stuff, and He wants to bless you, and He wants to give you all this stuff, it just seems to revolve around self too much.

In 1 John 5:14, it says this: "This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him." Look, but we have to begin by remaining in Him and by asking in accordance with His will. If we ask anything according to His will, not our will, not our lust, not what we saw in the magazine or the newest electronic gizmo that we simply have to have because the neighbors have one or the shiniest car that we have to have because the neighbor got a new car so we've got to have a new car so they don't look down on us.

Nothing like that. We remain in Him, and we ask according to His will, and He hears us. And He provides what we need. Jesus said to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," not "give us this day our daily wants, desires, lusts, and everything else we saw on TV or in a magazine." And that's what Solomon said. And if we were told we're going to have this dream tonight and God's going to give us this opportunity, look, a lot of us, myself included, probably figure, "Well, I really want to get all this stuff, so I'll just try to do like Solomon did and ask for wisdom and everything, but be secretly hoping that God gives me all the stuff that I didn't ask for, just to try to impress Him."

Forget about impressing God with impure motives. That's not what Solomon did here. He wasn't thinking in the back of his mind, "I'm going to impress God." He really meant this. He truly meant it. He wasn't looking for the bucks or anything else. He was just looking for wisdom and knowledge so he could do a good job. That's it. He said, "I already have everything I need here except I need some wisdom." And when we approach God, instead of listing things we don't really need, maybe we should be more about approaching Him thanking Him for what we do have already.

"And you know what, Lord? Thank you very much that we had dinner tonight, that we have a house, a roof over our head, air conditioning in our house and maybe in our car if we're lucky, and a job, and we're able to pay the bills, or at least most of them most of the time." Verse 11. Look over in 1 Kings chapter 3. It says what Solomon said pleased the Lord. And here's what it says in verse 11 of 2 Chronicles 1: God said to Solomon, "Since this is your heart's desire and you have not asked for wealth, riches, or honor, nor for the death of your enemies, and since you have not asked for a long life, but for wisdom and knowledge to govern my people over whom I have made you king, therefore wisdom and knowledge will be given you. And I will also give you wealth, riches, and honor such as no king who was before you ever had and none after you will have."

Then Solomon went to Jerusalem from the high place at Gibeon, from before the tent of meeting, and he reigned over Israel. Look, what Solomon had to say pleased God. And God said to him, "Since this is your heart's desire..." How do I know that Solomon didn't want all those other things? Because God tells me that right here in the next verse. This was his heart's desire. If his heart's desire was really to have all the material things but he really just didn't say so, then it would say that here.

God said to Solomon, "Since this is your heart's desire, and you've not asked for these other things. You didn't ask for the wealth, you didn't ask for the riches, you didn't ask for the honor, you didn't ask for the death of your enemies, you didn't ask for a long life. Instead, all you asked for, wisdom and knowledge to do your job. I'm going to give you those things, and I'm going to throw in everything else as a bonus prize." Right? Do you want to keep what you have now, or do you want what's behind door number one, door number two, or door number three? He gets to keep all of them.

He gets to keep what he has, he gets all the prize. He picked the right one, and he gets everything else thrown in. You've all seen that show. "That's it! You've won it! A new 2009 Ferrari!" Oh man, we already have a small car. He's going to get everything. He's going to get the wisdom and the knowledge, and he's going to get the wealth, the riches, and the honor thrown in here. It doesn't mention, by the way, long life. But he's going to have so much wealth, riches, and honor as no king ever before or ever after.

This is the pinnacle of the history of Israel in terms of the wealth and the riches and the honor bestowed upon the king. He's at the top of the summit here. I'm going to give you all those things, I'm going to give you what you asked for, and I'm going to give you everything else beyond all measure. And at that point, Solomon went to Jerusalem. He was in Gibeon at the tent of meeting, the tabernacle. He went back to Jerusalem, and he reigned over Israel. Now what happened? Verse 14.

He had a lot of wisdom, by the way. One example of Solomon's wisdom, very famous example, we all know it, in 1 Kings chapter 3, verse 16, was about the two prostitutes that came before the king. And one of them said, "My lord, this woman and I live in the same house. I had a baby while she was there with me. The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone. There was no one in the house but the two of us."

So the two ladies in the house by themselves each had a baby three days apart. "During the night, this woman's son died because she lay on him. So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I, your servant, was asleep. She put him by her breast, put her dead son by my breast." The next morning, I got up to nurse my son, and he was dead. But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn't the son I had born.

So she says, "Here were the two of us living in a house. We both had sons only three days apart. In the middle of the night, her son died, and she switched them." You know, in this day, it wasn't as easy to get up in the middle of the night, flip on the light, see what you're doing. It was dark at night. She didn't realize it. She was sleeping. This other lady switched the baby. She wakes up, she has a dead baby in front of her, but she realizes when she looks closely it's not her baby.

The other woman said, "No! The living one is my son. The dead one is yours." She denied making the switch. But the first one insisted, "No! The dead one is yours, the living one is mine." And so they argued before the king. Look, they were arguing before they got to the king. They started arguing that morning. "Why did you switch the son?" "I didn't switch the son. That's yours." "No, no, my son had a pimple on his forehead."

No, no, no, that was my... and they argued, and no doubt they went to the local police chief, and they saw him, and they worked their way up through the different levels of available places where they could go to work this out, and they wound up here at the king. And they're arguing all the way down to the king. You can just see it. "He's my son!" "No, he's not!" "He's yours!" Back and forth, back and forth. And nobody knows what to do. No DNA testing. Nowadays, no problem. We'll just check the DNA. We'll tell you whose son it is, and we'll tell you 73 other things about him or her.

None of that stuff. Nobody was there. Nobody would recognize them. They were prostitutes. There were no husbands there. They lived in the same house. They didn't have anyone else. There were no witnesses. Nobody could attest to this. Nobody knew what to do. Such a case as this, everybody was perplexed. The king said, "This one says 'my son is alive and your son is dead,' while that one says 'no, your son is dead and mine is alive.'"

Then the king said, "Bring me a sword." So they brought a sword to the king. He then gave an order, "Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other." Now look, he wasn't really going to do that. He had wisdom here beyond his years and beyond his means. The woman whose son was alive was filled with compassion for her son and said to the king, "Please, my lord, give her the living baby. Don't kill him!" But the other said, "Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!"

Then the king gave this ruling: "Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him. She is the mother." When all Israel heard the verdict the king had given, they held the king in awe because they saw that he had wisdom from God to administer justice. Look, that's just one example of Solomon's wisdom. He really did have wisdom here. And that was something that was given him by God. Nobody else would have thought of that. You and I wouldn't have thought about it.

"Bring a sword and let's kill the thing and cut the thing in half!" "I want the bigger half!" Remember long ago when you're cutting something in half for your kids so each get one half? "I want the bigger half! No, I want the bigger half!" You let one cut it, and you let the other one pick which half they want. You never seen anything cut exactly in the middle perfectly. You're going to cut it, and you're going to pick first. You know they're not going to cut it 75/25. Solomon accumulated chariots and horses. He had 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.

Look, for years people would criticize this. "That's impossible! Nobody could ever have that many horses back then!" But now archaeology over the last few decades, they've dug up stables dating back to Solomon's time where there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stalls for horses. Just in one city, and then there's another set of stables in a different city and then somewhere else. They've started to unearth these things. And they say, "Wow, man, maybe somebody could have this many horses back then. Maybe the Bible really is right."

Well, in this place anyway. He had 1,400 chariots, 12,000 horses. There's a problem there, though. There's a problem there. The Lord blessed him with many things, there's no doubt about that. But if you look over in Deuteronomy 17, verse 16, this is what it says: "The king must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, 'You are not to go back that way again.'" Don't acquire these horses. Don't go back to Egypt for them.

He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. Look, he did those things also. Back in 2 Chronicles, continuing in 1:15—we're just going to squeeze in the end of the chapter here—the king made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore fig trees in the foothills. Solomon's horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue. The royal merchants purchased them from Kue.

They imported a chariot from Egypt for 600 shekels of silver and a horse for 150. They also exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and of the Arameans. Look, Deuteronomy said the king must not accumulate horses or wives or silver and gold. Now, I don't know if he accumulated the silver and gold because it says he made them as common in Jerusalem as stones. So to me, that kind of says there's a lot of silver and gold around, he shared the wealth, everybody had plenty of it.

I don't think it necessarily means it was all his. But he had all these horses. And worse yet, they were getting them from Egypt. And the Lord had said, "You left Egypt, do not go back that way again. Do not get into bondage again." And it's interesting that here we see him bringing horses out of Egypt. And as you go through his life, before too long, you see him marrying a wife from Egypt. And then later on, you see him marrying other foreign wives.

And then sometime after that, you see his wives were complaining that they wanted to worship their God, and they didn't have a temple to do that, so he was building temples for his wives to worship their gods. And later on, he was worshiping their gods with them. So we see a kind of a slippery slope here. And people say, "Oh, there's no such thing as a slippery slope." There is, and this is an example of it. Here's a guy that started out, "Ah, what's a few horses? Ah, just do a couple of business deals.

We'll just buy some horses here and we'll keep some for ourselves and we'll sell some to the Hittites and the Arameans. We'll make a profit, and we'll reinvest that. We'll be able to get more horses. Just business, just business." And before you know it, he's married to an Egyptian. Then he's married to 700 other wives, 699 other wives. Was it 300 wives and 700 concubines or 700 wives and 300 concubines? I can't remember which is which, but you get the point.

Look, all those wives, foreign wives. He's not trying to get them to worship his God, who's the only true God. He's following them. Worshiping their god, building their temple. "Hey, honey, I'll build you your own private temple. No problem." You know, they weren't supposed to even marry foreign wives. Genesis says, "And the two will become one," not "the 1,001 will become one," but "the two will become one." A man will leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, not his wives, not his concubines. His wife. W-I-F-E, singular.

And we see Solomon here, already at the very beginning, he has this great encounter with God, and how quickly he's led astray by his flesh, spelled S-E-L-F. Led astray by himself. He wants to get worldly things. He wants to get what the neighbors have. He wants to look good in the neighbor's sight. If the neighbor has something, he wants more of it. He wants to have more horses, more wives, more chariots than anybody else. He's comparing what he has to what other people have, perhaps, and that's always a mistake.

And it's a mistake when we do it ourselves today. Look, if we can learn anything here, it's how quickly and easily you can fall from the highest spot to the lowest. How you can have a dream and God can present you with this awesome opportunity, and you can give just the right answer and be so blessed by God beyond what anybody can imagine. And just a short time later, you're beginning to make the wrong decisions and go down the wrong road. And it kind of has a multiplier effect.

It's kind of like a snowball rolling down the hill, getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And as time goes on, you make the wrong decision and more wrong decisions, and one wrong decision helps you make another one, and you make a few, and then you can make a few more. It becomes just a little bit easier. And before you know it, you're making all kind of wrong decisions to the point where, if we were to jump ahead in his life story to 1 Kings chapter 11, which is actually behind in the Bible here, we can talk about the things he did.

Having all these wives, making a high place for Chemosh, the detestable god of Moab, and for Molech, the detestable god of the Ammonites. And he did the same for all his foreign wives who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods. It didn't just—this wasn't just for a few of them. By the way, here's the real number: it was 700 wives. 1 Kings 11:3, 700 wives. So look, do not go out here and marry 700 wives.

And ladies, don't go out here and try to find yourself 700 husbands. Stay on the narrow path. Serve the Lord and Him only. Stay focused on Him and let Him minister to you and follow Him with all your ability. The littlest deviation. Somebody sent me an email and said, "If you shot a rocket to the moon and you were off by just one degree, how many miles would you be off when you got to the moon?" And you can say one degree, man, that's a really small amount.

But when you figure out one degree, by the time you get to the moon, you would miss the moon by thousands of miles. Just by being off one degree. Just a tenth of a degree, you still miss the moon by a few hundred miles. I mean, we can be making little mistakes in our lives now in how we serve God or listen to Him or don't do those things. And that can have this snowball effect where it just becomes a little bit easier to miss the Lord with each passing day and week and month and year.

And we wind up at the end of our lives with not as much to show for ourselves as we should have. And that's what happened to Solomon. And I pray that it doesn't happen to any of us.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope From the Word. We're currently in Pastor Bill Luebkemann's study of 2 Chronicles. If you'd like to hear this message again, you have several options. Visit our website at ccmarlton.org, download the Hope FM app to your smartphone or tablet, or look for us wherever you find podcasts.

If you've been thinking about visiting Calvary Chapel of Marlton, where Bill serves as pastor, we'd love to have you. Our service times are on Sunday mornings at 10:00. We also meet midweek on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. You can also livestream from home when you visit our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton. For more information, go to ccmarlton.org. We hope to see you soon.

Before the day is done, we'd like to connect with you. Share a praise report, prayer request, or what you're learning from this series. You can easily email us from our website, ccmarlton.org, or just call us at 856-983-1662. There's more to come from Bill's study of 2 Chronicles, and we'll have that for you next time on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel of Marlton.