Soloman Series

Good morning. Today we are going to continue with our series called The Story. We are looking at the story of God that is told through the people, places, and events of the Bible. Last week we looked at the story of a king by the name of David. Today, we are going to look at the story of his son named Solomon. This particular time in the story takes place at about 1 Kings. David is getting older and people are beginning to speculate who is going to take his place. At that time, you have to realize there wasn’t a clear path of succession. As far as the crown was concerned, it was pretty much up in the air. Because it was up in the air, many people would jockey for position to try to get the crown. David had one son by a lady named Haggith. He had a son by the name of Adonijah. Adonijah decided he was going to take control of the crown by force. He was going to stand up and say I am the next king. It reminded me of a Christmas Eve service a few years ago. Everything was going well and I think Graham was doing the meditation. Lights were down and Graham mentioned something about Jesus the King. About that time, some guy walked down the middle of the aisle and stood up and said “I am the king” and then he left. That is a typical Christmas Eve at Bellevue Christian Church. Adonijah decided to take the crown and claim himself as king.

But Bathsheba, who happened to be Solomon’s mom, found out about that and went and told King David about it. She reminded David that he had promised that Solomon would get the crown. Not one to get out of his word, he said yes Solomon you are king and he anointed him. At that point, Solomon established his throne. We don’t know, but we think Solomon was probably young at that time. We get the sense that Solomon was probably feeling a little insecure about his new role as king. He really didn’t know how to handle it. He took the position and as the story goes, he went and offered sacrifices up on a mountain. He went to sleep that night and God appeared to him in a dream. God just said to Solomon ask anything you want and I will give it to you. This took Solomon aback. He thought about it and he said you have been very kind to my father David and to me, but frankly, I just don’t feel qualified. I am not sure I can handle the duties of a king. There are so many people involved in a country such as this. All I want is that I would be able to be a good king. That I would be able to discern right from wrong. That I would be able to give justice to the people. God’s response is this. “I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for – both riches and honor – so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings.” He asked for wisdom and he got riches and honor to boot. He got the wisdom from God. It was God’s wisdom that was given to him. So God gave him the opportunity to test out whether he really understood what he had.

The testing occurred in an interesting story. A story about two prostitutes and a young baby. It is an interesting story. As the story goes, these two prostitutes show up at the king’s court one day. They are arguing back and forth and bickering. They go to the king and one lady says this woman and I shared a house together. She went on to say at one point I became pregnant and I had a baby. Then the lady goes on to say three days later the other lady had a baby. After that, things got bad because that lady went to sleep one night and she actually smothered the baby by mistake. She laid on top of him and smothered the baby. Then she took the dead baby and she gave him to me and put him next to me and took my son that was alive and put him next to her. The next morning I woke up and I knew something was not right. The baby next to me was dead, but I knew it wasn’t my baby. It had to be the other lady’s baby. About that time, the second lady says you have it wrong. It is your baby that is the dead baby. It is my son that is alive. They were arguing back and forth and Solomon is put in this tough position. At that time, there were no witnesses. It was just one woman’s word against the next. Solomon did something that was very wise and a little scary. He told one of his assistants to go and get him a sword. He brought the sword back and he said cut that baby right in two and give half to one lady and the other half to the other lady. About that time, the lady whose son was alive panicked. It says “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!’” Right then Solomon, using his wisdom, he knew the answer. He says “Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother.” How did he know that? Any mothers out there know how he knew that. He knew that the bond between a mother and a son is so strong that even if the mother had to give the baby away to a complete stranger, she would do that instead of allowing any sort of harm to come to the son. This demonstrated that Solomon really was a pretty smart guy full of wisdom. The passage goes on to say “God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore.” That is a lot of smarts. He didn’t just have wisdom. He had insight and understanding. If we had time to read the passage, we would see that he pursued all sorts of learning. He was into plant life. He was into trees. He was into studying herbs. He was into studying animal life like reptiles and fish and the birds of the air. He was all about studying the natural sciences. He became an expert on many different topics. So much so that many people came from other nations just to sit at his feet and learn from Solomon. He was so wise and people were just attracted to him.