True Wisdom Leads to God - Solomon
As my wife had a baby a few days before this Sunday, the below sermon is different from the one that Merv preached on this Sunday, which you find above.
2 Chronicles 1:1-2, 6-13 - Asks for Wisdom
Psalm 150
1 Kings 6:11-14, 8:10-19 - Builds the temple and God comes close
When things don’t go our way or when things don’t go right, what do we often do? We blame others, we wish we had more power, more money, or our way. Yet, rarely do these things actually fix what is wrong. We instead need to see the truth behind the problem and seek greater answers. The added challenge is that situations are often beyond us, we don’t know all the layers and situations that lead to this wrong to even understand if it is wrong. We only have our limited perspective and too often we can only act from this limited perspective.
You can imagine how King Solomon would have felt. He was a young man when he became king. He had older brothers along with the family of Saul wanting the crown and a great big nation to guide and lead. Who was he to lead? How was he to know what was truly best for these people? What could he do? The common human response is to accumulate power to force people to follow our limited and often wrong decisions. Or we often believe that money and stuff will solve problems as it greases palms and creates a false sense of security. Solomon knows better.
In our first reading, we see God acting faithfully to King David by trying to care for his son King Solomon. God asks Solomon what he can give him. Solomon responds with honesty. I don’t know how to lead this great people and so he asks for God’s wisdom. God responds by saying that Solomon was right to ask for wisdom instead of power or wealth and so God gives him all three.
I’ll admit, I might not be as young as Solomon was when he asked for wisdom, and this church is not half as big as Israel but I often feel like him. I know it takes a great wisdom, a wisdom that can only come from God, to lead all of you. I know that we need it, to protect us from stumbling, to know what to hold onto and what to let go of, to know how to reach out and how to embrace, to know how to maintain, repair, grow and protect. I don’t often feel up to the task, because who am I? How could I ever know everything that has ever happened to you or what weighs upon your hearts? How could I know what we need as a whole at every moment, in every new situation? Leading a community like ours is a lot like raising a child: we know we will get things wrong.
Yet we can’t ignore this fault or we will fail even more. Instead, we have to move forward while understanding our weaknesses and lack of knowledge, so that we might seek what we truly need. God’s wisdom and understanding.
For Solomon, this wisdom leads him to build a temple for God and increasing worship throughout the Kingdom. It would seem as if wisdom ultimately leads to creating opportunities, spaces, and situations where people might meet God. This would make sense too because if God is the source and foundation for wisdom, peace, bounty, joy, hope, love, and more, he is ultimately the source of all we need.
God’s wisdom also leads Solomon to increase the Kingdom of Israel. He extends its borders while creating greater peace, stability, and riches within. It leads Solomon to write proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the love poetry of Songs of Songs, and more. It leads him to judge rightly, to create peace with other nations, to bless them and for them to bless Israel. So with all of this Solomon works with the wisdom of God to show us to spread the Kingdom of God (though this is a little different than the kingdom of Israel).
So we can see what God’s wisdom born in us is meant to do. It is meant to create opportunities for people to meet God. Wisdom shares God through art, contemplation, love, relationships, right judgment, and the increase and spread of God-filled influence as we bless and are blessed in return.
Yet Solomon doesn’t always follow God’s wisdom as he gets a lot wrong too. He thinks murder and execution would lead to peace. He thinks many wives will join together nations. He invites the worship of other god’s into the nation. The result is the opposite of what he wants. All three of these decisions lead to disunity as the kingdom and nation of Israel are divided. Only one generation after Israel is finally united, we see a wise one following his own wisdom rather than God’s creating even more division.
We too can have access to God’s wisdom and yet more often we would rather trust our own. And so we too see how our own wisdom can do the opposite of what we intend. Even if we have the very best of intentions. We need to continually turn back, to take time to discern and pray for God’s guidance and not our own.
It would seem as if Solomon is so close to the one we are promised. He is a child of David, a king that can usually, lead and judge rightly. He is one that desired first the wisdom of God, rather than taking the forbidden fruit. He is one that shares God’s wisdom. He is one that creates opportunities to meet God and for God’s worship to grow. He is one that builds and expands God’s Kingdom, almost creating paradise. He knows he isn’t good enough and needs God, most of the time. Yet, Solomon does eat that fruit, taking wisdom for himself, proving he is still not the snake crusher, Israel is not the garden and God still does not walk beside them as he did in the garden.
Jesus is the only answer. He is the true temple of God that creates opportunities for us to meet, know and worship God as he walks beside us. He is the wisdom of God as his word heals, feeds, releases, and creates bounty. He is the one who judges rightly both showing wrong and bringing salvation to all sinners. He is the one whole crushes the snake, rejecting temptation in the wilderness, in the garden or mount of olives, and who becomes the tree of eternal life as he hangs on that cross. Jesus is our return to paradise as he creates community, life, and bounty and leads us through gardens and fields with more than enough.
Through all of these things we have discussed over advent and Christmas God has been preparing our hearts and minds along with all of cultures to receive the only answer to our needs and longings and the only answer to all of his promises. They have all been point us towards the God, man, and king who was born to set us free: Jesus: God saves, Emmanuel: God with us. AMEN
