I've been a member here.
I'm not a minister if you're visiting not a minister.
Um, but I'm a member and I've been a member here since 1994.
Uh, grew up in North Orange County and actually went to Cal State Forton.
Who has Cal Who, who?
Heres Cal State, ladies and gentlemen.
Ramon Diaz is here.
Man, I love this guy.
This has been a brother.
I, I love you.
I'm so glad you're here.
It's exciting.
Um, but I graduated from Cal State in the early sixties.
I'm a little older.
No, I graduated in the nine, late nineties.
Okay.
I just look old.
Um, I'm married, been married for 19 years, almost 20, and uh, I have two dogs.
I have a male pit bull that's about 60 pounds and a micro pit bull.
Have you ever seen those?
That's a female.
Um, she's great.
Her name's Dotty.
Call her little Dotty.
Um, so most of you guys are like, okay, that's great Chris.
We just wanted to hear about Gina.
I wanted to give you an update about Gina.
Most of you know that she's been battling cancer for over a year now.
Okay.
Had surgery, went through all her chemo, just finished her infusions and she has
another surgery coming up this next week.
This week?
No, next week.
Okay.
So if you could pray for her, that'd be fantastic.
Uh, some of you got a chance.
I'm throwing out prayer requests right now.
Some of you got a chance to meet my mom.
Uh, my dad died last year and my mom was coming to church and, uh, some
of you I was so grateful, invested in talking to her in relationships,
um, and she got rushed to the er, uh, twice this past week.
She has some heart issues.
So if you can remember to pray for her, uh, and Gina, my
wife, that would be fantastic.
We'd really appreciate that.
Um, okay, so somehow Marcel said, Hey, you can come back up and speak again.
Uh, it was amazing, Nick.
Uh, so last, the first time I spoke about Goliath was anybody here when we talked
about Goliath and how Goliath's name was really the exposure and what he did was he
exposed God's people and prevented them, their fear, whatever was in their heart.
They would wake up and they'd pray and they'd go to battle and there's Goliath,
and he would expose who they were.
And they never got to the real battle that was already won, that God had already won
for them because Goliath stood in the way and they just couldn't get through it.
And then we talked about the next time about Noah and how
Noah was a man after God's heart.
He followed God, he built this arc.
Everyone thought he was crazy.
He's insane.
What are you doing following this God?
It's not gonna rain.
Sure enough, it rains never hears from God.
All these people die.
All his friends die.
There's aid in all that are saved.
He's on this boat, it's dark, it's 40 days, 40 nights, and nothing from God.
And he feels alone.
And then suddenly the water sees, he lands.
The first thing he does is he plants a crop and he becomes kind of a drunkard and
he deals with the stress, if you want to call it ptsd, whatever you want to call
it, of what he went through, feeling like God didn't care by alcohol, messes up his
kids for a bit, and uh, it was a mess.
The crazy part is, is in those stories, especially Noah, the apex of this
story, the middle of these bookends is the line, but God remembered Noah, and
there's a lot of times that we feel alone and we forget that God remembers us.
Okay, so let's jump into this now.
Crazy enough, you see these two, you're like, what does this have to do?
What you're talking about?
Now, these were two news articles that came around that I saw this past week.
Uh, one on the left.
Did you guys see the video of the whale that emerged and
swallowed the two women kayakers.
They're kayaking.
This guy's paddle boarding.
All these people, this whale comes up and swallows them.
The kayak gets kicked out and they go under and then the whale spits 'em out.
You can look online, you can watch the video.
There's a lot of different views of the video.
It's unbelievable.
Now, I'm not gonna bring up Jonah, but
okay, now they survived.
That was good spit.
Now, uh, the other part is the Earth water is officially older than the sun.
Did you guys see that?
Headlines?
Scientists said, you know what?
In fact, and look at these articles, Earth's water is older
than the entire solar system.
Has anyone ever read Genesis one?
Verses one and two.
I'm not gonna, I'm not a, uh uh, I don't deal with uh, uh, the, the earth.
I'm not a scientist.
Uh, I don't deal with an astrology, any of that.
I'm not trying to insinuate anything.
I'm just saying the knowledge that we keep coming to, sometimes it's right there
in front of us that we're reading and there's a lot to that poetry prose, you
know, how God, a relationship with man.
But it is pretty amazing that scientists now say the water.
If you could go back to Genesis one, verses one and two and see
what it says about the earth was formless, you know, just a deep
sea and that's all that existed.
The spirit, pretty interesting.
Okay.
Oh, is it not working?
This thing was on red.
All right.
I like to walk around too.
Okay.
I'm Italian.
I use my hands, I walk around, I sweat olive oil.
You, you guys might guy get hit in the front.
It's just gonna come off of me.
Okay?
So, uh, let's talk about Solomon.
So today I want to talk about Solomon.
Let me see if I can keep up with my stuff here.
Okay.
King Solomon.
Oh, how do we go back?
Push the red one point here.
Can you manually go back?
Good.
Thank you.
Okay, so we wanna talk about, we wanna talk about Solomon.
Maybe we don't wanna talk about Solomon.
All right.
So, uh, we're gonna stick with the Old Testament and I wanna look at Solomon.
I wanna talk about wisdom, and I wanna talk about our lives.
Um, you know, king Solomon, uh, was the last king of the United
Israel, so to say, at its height.
Who were the three kings of Israel as a United Nation?
Who, who started as the first king Somon Saul.
And then it went to who?
David.
And then it went to his son Solomon.
David ruled about 40 years.
Solomon ruled about 40 years.
So under King Solomon, it's the height of Israel.
They have the most land or the wealthiest.
Everybody has a home in a garden, actually.
It says, okay, uh, Solomon comes and he finishes or he builds the temple
that David said he wanted to build.
And he's the architect of this temple.
Uh, it's a time when things seem so right.
It was a realization of the promise of Abraham to Abraham, right?
That his, his seeds would become like nations and there'd be so many of
them in its building, in his building.
It's under David.
He's a man after God's own heart.
And here's his son, Solomon, and he's the architect.
He builds this thing and it's so right and then it just starts
to become a disaster in decline.
The Kingdom splits in two with his own son, Ray HaBO and Jerome.
Uh, the loss of the United Kingdom was the end of Solomon's legacy
that resulted in Nene tearing down the temple and it being destroyed.
And so how in the world you have this nation, you go from this height where God
says, your kingdom's gonna endure forever.
I'm gonna be with you.
You're gonna do these great things.
And then it splits amazingly enough, Israel was only a powerful
United Nation for about 80 years.
And if you think between David and Solomon, what four
books of the Bible do we have?
What did they write?
David and Solomon, what have we got?
Psalms, Proverbs, song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, right?
A bunch of proverbs.
Um, they were the glory days.
There was peace and there was prosperity.
Solomon builds this thing.
He opens up this temple and he invites the whole world.
And he says, Hey, come worship God or God, the true God, the one, look at
what he has given us and these people, and he opens up, it's like a global
unity tour here to come and worship God.
But then it all falls apart within a generation and it falls fast.
J Bom, who was a good worker and official that was under Solomon,
he actually comes and he accuses his son of, Hey, you've left God.
You're not following God anymore.
You're not sticking to what we're supposed to do, and rightly so.
But he goes, I'm gonna go elsewhere.
I'm gonna go out elsewhere and find a place, and to the hills,
to the desert with our tents.
And he goes out there and he ends up slowly drifting away himself to the point
where he raises these golden calves and he tells these people, Hey, actually
these are the things, these are the idols that brought you out of Egypt.
And they worship these golden calves, right?
Uh, Raya Bo, um, he stays and he has Jerusalem and he has two tribes.
Your mom has 10 tribes.
The rest of, uh, Kings and Samuels.
All these prophets that keep coming, trying to bring people back to God.
Remember, well, who I am.
Remember what I told you to do?
Remember the height from which you had fallen.
And time and time again, the people reject him.
The kings reject him, and they do their own thing.
And every so often a good one comes in and they last a little
bit, and then they're out too.
And so this brief reign of David and Solomon with some highlights, some, some
good highlights, some bad parts ends.
And really it's the political demise of Israel, the United Nation of Israel.
Now, they controlled all the trade routes.
I mean, Solomon, I'm gonna show you a list.
Let's see if I can get through here.
Like, oh, by the way, I was looking up Solomon and David, and
I don't think the one on the right.
Was King Sol.
I don't think they had guns and cars, but this is what comes up.
If you look up King Solomon.
Yeah, those, those are old school posters, right?
I'm trying to go forward.
Okay, so, uh, you see here is the kingdom.
How big it was.
I was supposed to already get to this.
I'm just not clicking, I'm talking.
Um, Ray Jerome goes up north 10 tribes.
Ray Bo stays down south in Jerusalem with two tribes and it just falls
apart divided Kingdom, okay?
And it goes from the height all the way down.
And I wanna show you, cuz you guys know the story of Solomon, so I
don't wanna save this for later.
I wanna look through these.
You can read through these, these are some part of the accomplishments
or the things that Solomon gained, he built, he made that God gave him.
And I got another page.
Thank you.
I don't think I'm doing this right.
I mean, imagine.
He had kings, he had governors, he had all these people coming,
giving gifts, large amounts of gold.
He had a fleet of trading ships that would go out and get gold
and animals and you name it.
He had slaves galore that worked for him, that built most of this stuff.
He had 1400 chariots, 12,000 horses, right?
He was considered the wisest man that ever lived.
He had Egyptian chariots, Egyptian horses, 700 wives.
That's exhausting.
I'm just gonna say that's not, I'm just gonna say 300 concubines.
It was limitless what he had.
God had given him everything.
You know, you might be thinking, okay, so we have a nation,
um, I go forward one more.
You guys remember that?
Toosie Pop Al, how many looks for a Tootsie Pop?
Three.
And then he bites it.
Okay, so you might be thinking, okay, so we have the height of its nation.
Um, there's turmoil within the nation and it as big as it gets and as
glorious as it gets, it then falls.
And you think, are you talking about the United States right now?
No.
Some of you thinking that, but no, this is not a political, uh, thing.
Not at all.
You go, well, you must be talking about Christianity in general
from the height to the downfall.
Well, possibly.
But if you're sitting in this room and you've been here a while, you say, I
think you're talking about our church.
Hmm.
I look out in the audience and I see people have been here 30 years, 25
years, 20 years some less, all the way down to who's our newest, maybe
a week a month, which is incredible.
But you say maybe this is a story.
And then you go, you know what?
No, I know.
It always has to be personal with me and God because the person to my right, I love
them, but it's about me and God, maybe this is a story of my life as a Christian
from the height to destruction.
Okay?
So I wanna look at this and I want to, uh, examine Solomon.
So let's talk a little bit about Solomon.
Uh, David dies and in one Kings two, he puts his son in charge.
Now they think Solomon as a child was about 12 years old at this time.
Imagine being 12 years old and taking this on now for all of us.
15.
Let's say 15.
Nobody knows the real age.
Let's go 15.
Imagine the difference between a 15 year old now and a 15 year old back
then with surviving in life, right?
They had some different skills than we have now.
Okay?
But let's say 12, 15 years old.
And he has this dream.
We got the L, he has this dream, and let's pick up in, uh, open your Bibles and
we're gonna pick up in one Kings three.
And as you're looking at, I'm gonna read First Kings two.
It says, when the time drew near for David to die, he gave a charge
to Solomon his son, about 12.
I'm about to go the way of the Earth.
He said, be strong and act like a man and observe what the Lord your God
requires walk in obedience to him and keep his decrees and commands his laws
and regulations as written in the law.
Moses, do this so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go.
And so we go, okay, so, and we're gonna read Kings in a second, but
David ends up having this dream.
We all know this.
And he says, I want wisdom.
I need to figure out at 12 years old, how do I rule these people?
How do I give justice?
And God says, okay, I'll give you that and I'm gonna give you a bunch of other gifts.
Right?
Yes.
And you think about us with Jesus and Jesus says, Hey, if you leave homes
for me, if you leave your life for me, you will not fail to receive 100 times.
Homes, brothers, sisters, a similar promise.
Would you say 100 times what you have.
And so we can identify a little bit with Solomon, right?
As God's talking to him.
And so Solomon wants wisdom and to apply justice, and God gives this to him.
Except we know something Solomon didn't.
We know that in his lifetime, in just one generation, it would
be ripped in half, cut in two Northern Israel and Southern Judah.
So doesn't that take away a little bit from this story?
Like I'm reading this and I'm thinking, okay, God gives him all this wisdom and
he gives him everything under the sun.
You saw the list.
And yet he knows that it's gonna be ripped in two.
Like this isn't gonna last.
It's like you're gonna go on a trip to Europe and they go,
Hey, I know you got coach cuz that's all you can afford, right?
No, all this, but I'm gonna throw you in first class.
But they already had a briefing that the plane was gonna go down
halfway there, or the Titanic.
Hey, you're on the Titanic.
Great.
We're gonna give you the, the statesman room, whatever that is.
I'm just making that up.
I don't even know, right?
It's the nicest room on the boat with a captain, but you know it's gonna
hit an iceberg and it's gonna go down.
I mean, is this, is this a charade or a tease with God from God?
Let me give you all this wisdom and I'm gonna just tear it up in your lifetime.
Hey, become a disciple, become a Christian Love God.
But by the time you die, your heart's gonna die.
Your kids won't follow.
Do you see the comparison?
Okay.
I mean, who really cares about being smart?
If you could be smart and you could be a botanist and you could build reservoirs
and you construct giant structures, you could tell the Queen of Sheba
everything she wants to know, but at the end of your life, it's destroyed.
It's meaningless.
And no one remembers or cares.
And you, your children don't care.
Nobody cares after them.
I mean, what's the point now?
Does God provide counsel and, and, uh, advice?
I mean, does God go, Hey, let me counsel you on your career.
You should choose advice on investments or political strategies.
Well, maybe if you can apply some wisdom to that, what we're gonna talk about.
But no, God says, Hey you.
Here's what I supply.
The word of life.
The truth.
The firm foundation we just sang about.
Now, those other things, if you wanna learn, go take a law, a course
on law or political science, right?
If you have a leak in your house, you need to re-pipe.
You go to the Bible, you might build an arc, right?
No, go learn how to pipe, right?
Be an electrician, go learn something and then apply it.
Computers for dummies for me, cause I'm terrible with technology, right?
But God says, don't necessarily come to me with that.
I give the word a life like the wise out.
But God does warn Solomon, he says, look, you're gonna have to follow me because
if you don't, it doesn't go well for you.
Obey my commands like your father did.
And Solomon says, yeah, yeah, I'll do that.
And he gives him this wisdom.
Okay?
So we go, okay, you get wisdom, you get what you pray for.
You ask for the right thing, your heart's in it.
And we come back to this game, the charade.
It's all pulled out for it.
It's all no good.
It's the rug's pulled out from underneath you.
You think of John 10 10, what does that say?
Life to the what?
I'm gonna give you a hundred times and I'm gonna give you life to the full.
Well, my life doesn't seem so full.
It's full of things, but not full of things that I thought that I
was gonna get or want, or need, or that God was gonna supply.
I have a lot of hardships.
I have some challenges with people.
I have some challenges within my family.
I have some challenges with relationships within the church.
My boss doesn't treat me the best.
I got bills, rents due.
I lost my job.
School is tough.
My teacher was not fair, man.
There's a lot of pressure at work to perform.
I don't have the hours to put into God because I have to perform at work.
You don't understand if I don't put in 60, 70, 80 hours, I don't feed my family.
Would he get life to the full?
And so Solomon, imagine a boy, he's wholehearted, and he says,
God, I just give me the guidance.
Let me administer justice in accordance to your law.
And God says, Hey, I'll give you that.
But where exactly does this occur?
Let's read verse Kings three.
Solomon asked for wisdom.
Verse one.
Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt to married his daughter.
He brought her to the city of David until he finished building his
palace in the temple for the Lord.
In the wall around Jerusalem, verse four, verse Kings, three, four.
The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices for that was
the most important high place.
And Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar at Gibeon.
The Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God
said, ask for whatever you want.
Me to give you.
Solomon answered.
You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David,
because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart.
You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to
sit on his throne this very day.
Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place with my father
David, but I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.
Your servant is here among the people you have chosen a great people
to numerous to count or number.
So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and distinguish it
between right and wrong for who is able to govern this great people of yours.
The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this.
So God said to him, since you have asked for this and not for a long life or
wealth or yourself, nor have you asked for the death of your enemies, but for
the discernment in administering justice, I will do whatever you have asked.
I will give you a wise and discerning heart.
Solomon said there you will never have been 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 wealth and
honor, so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings, and if
you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David the
father did, I will give you a long life.
Then Solomon awoke and he realized it had been a dream.
He returned to Jerusalem, stood before the Ark of the Lord's covenant, and sacrificed
for an offerings and fellowship offerings.
Then he gave a feast for all his court.
Okay, so Solomon,
he goes, God, I need help.
First he marries the daughter of Pharaoh.
Really?
He married Pharaoh, right?
Back then it was a political alliance.
Egypt was powerful, Pharaoh was powerful.
I need to marry into Pharaoh, and in the course of it, he falls
in love with Pharaoh's wife.
Really does.
But he says, God, I need wisdom to serve these people.
And he asks for that.
God's impressed.
He says, yep.
In a matter of fact, I'm gonna give you everything else.
He wakes, he's elated.
He makes a huge sacrifice to God.
He celebrates in Jerusalem, and he holds a three day great
feast for all these people.
And then we're gonna get into next part, which is a little strange when
suddenly these two women show up.
Okay?
Um, you hear him as being, uh, one says prostitutes, one says harps.
That's an old school word, I guess, right?
Harz, a wise ruling.
Let's read on verse 16.
Now, two prostitutes came to the king and stood before em.
One of them said, pardon me, my lord.
This woman and I live in the same house, and I had a baby
while she was living with me.
The third day after my child was born, this woman had a baby too.
We were alone.
There was no one in the house, but the two of us, okay, real quick,
now I'm a, I'm a male, okay?
I know women have menstrual cycles that can get onto the same cycle, right?
You work together, live together.
Birthing cycles.
Has any woman in here ever ha seen that?
Five women pregnant in this fellowship.
Suddenly you give birth all at the same time.
So we have two women living in the same house who suddenly get pregnant and
get birth basically at the same time.
Pretty, pretty amazing.
Pretty amazing story, right?
Okay, so let's continue on.
Kind of weird during the night, verse 19.
During the night this woman's son died because she laid on him.
She got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side
while I, while your servant was asleep, she put him on her breast
and 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
he wasn't the son I had born.
The other woman said, no, the living one is my son.
The dead one is yours.
But the first one insisted, no, the dead one is yours.
The living one is mine.
And so they argued before the king.
The king said, this one says, my son is alive.
The other said, he's dead.
Well, and that one says, no, your son is dead.
Mine is alive.
King doesn't know what to do.
12 years old, 15 years old.
He says, here's what we're gonna do.
Bring me a sword.
So they brought a sword for the king.
Then he gave the order, cut the child in half and give half
to one and half to the other.
The woman whose son was alive, deeply moved out of love for her
son, 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.
Heartless.
Then the king gave the ruling, give the living baby to the first woman.
Do not kill him.
She is his mother.
When all Israel heard the verdict, the king given, they held the king
in awe because they saw that he had wisdom from God to administer justice.
Okay.
So two mothers come in, they have babies at the same time from the same house.
They come to this king, he's a young king.
You ask God just before this for wisdom, and they go in an argument.
He says, I don't know what to do.
Get a sword, cut 'em in half.
Done.
The woman in distress, who's really the mother, cries out in compassion.
No, I'd rather my child live without me than be torn in two.
And the other mother's cruel and heartless.
She says, I don't care.
She already killed her own child and then stole, kidnapped
another child to make her own.
Right.
It's an amazing story.
And and he says, cut 'em in Two, they figured it out.
And everyone says, oh wow, you're so wise.
Like this is unbelievable.
Look at the wisdom.
It must be from God.
So then we ask, God gives all these things, right?
I see God could be like, Hey, I'm gonna give you military mind.
And then when you go fight them, I'm gonna make them turn on each other.
Military victory.
Hey, I'm gonna give you wealth.
Wow.
You walk outside and, and this truck rose by and off goes this,
this duffle bag full of cash.
You're like, oh, God gave me that.
Right?
God gave me land.
I get an inheritance.
God does a lot of different things, but does God just go, you're wise?
My magic wand.
Wisdom.
I think we lost power.
Oh, we're back.
Does he just go wisdom?
I found a little cool record here.
Wisdom whiz.
Solomon's dreams.
I like records.
All right, so anyhow, does he just say suddenly you're wise?
How does this occur?
And what I wanna talk about today, what I've been reading and studying about
it made me think, how do I apply this to what's going on in our lives and
the world in our church and with us with God is maybe this is a mechanism.
Of how to become wise.
And you go, what?
What are you talking about?
Maybe I pray for something and God gives me a scenario in my life
about something that I prayed about.
And then either I look back and I go, ah, based on my experience in life
viewing through the lens of God's word, I make a decision good or bad.
And then the next one comes along and I go, this is the same thing.
And I reflect on my experience.
And then I look back on my prior decision with honesty and integrity.
Did you handle that well?
And so wisdom becomes the function of reflection based on experience
and reflection with honesty.
Of what we did well and what we didn't do so well.
So maybe the story is about a mechanism of how to become wise and
not necessarily two random women at the same time in the same house, had
a kid at the same time and come before this young king who just had a prayer.
Make me wise, God, you guys get that Because God is omnipotent.
Some of us say omnipotent,
but is wisdom a IQ level?
Is wisdom an IQ level?
Is it if someone's really smart and they have a high iq, does that make them wise?
No.
And we all have conversations with each other in here.
We know there's not a lot of crazy IQs up in here except for my wife and Chad and
John or, but it's not a function of iq.
Is it a function of growing old?
Well, it certainly could be if you've experienced things and reflected
with integrity and honesty, and it's supposed to make you wise living
longer, but it's dependent upon how active you are in your life.
So how do we gain wisdom?
Will we gain wisdom by experiencing things and getting involved?
We get involved in each other's lives.
We get involved in God's word.
We get involved in praying.
We don't shy away from conflict and we don't shy away from interpersonal issues.
We face our fears.
We chase our challenges.
We face our sin and we call it what it is, and we're honest.
And then we build experience and then we're honest in reflection.
If we did right, if we did wrong.
But the question remains.
If Solomon in all his glory, he's God's man.
I mean, this is the son that David bore.
He's in a relationship with God.
If he didn't even have enough wisdom, prevent a civil war and
his children not be following God.
What hope do you and I have?
How do we make decisions about our lives?
How do we find the right person to date, the right person to marry?
If that's what we want to do, how do we find the right job?
How do we figure out, man, how will I accomplish this?
How do I finish school?
What will I do in life?
How do I have a new baby?
How do I raise that baby?
And if Solomon, what hope do we have?
And so I wanna jump into how wi, how this works.
Because experiences that God puts in your life is a real relationship with God.
It's the function at which God works in your life.
And he says, listen, you need this and you want this, and I'm gonna give it to you.
It may not be the way that you thought it would be delivered, but I'm gonna
walk with this through you if you obey my commands and you stay with me.
And so we have this ongoing relationship with God.
If we allow it, if we're willing in order to learn and to grow and to listen, and
we listen in prayer and the Holy Spirit moves and we listen in people's advice and
we get a lot of advice, and we'd listen and we debate, we look back on our lives.
If you want wisdom, you have to jump in and be involved in relationships.
And it says, it's interesting because all the people were in awe of what he did.
You know, if you remain in God and you learn from God's ways, that firm
foundation again from the song, and you obey and you learn and you grow, people
see the difference in you and you make decisions in your life and they say
there's something different about you.
Why are you able to almost like see through people's hearts and see
through people's motives and come back to the essence of what's going on?
How do you not fall apart when tragedy strikes or catastrophe?
And like the people that all came around Solomon and said, wow, you're so
wise, they're gonna come around you and they're gonna think those same things.
If you hang on to God's word, one of the things I have to watch out for
this is personally, and, and I think it happens when we get older, is.
We have to be aware of starting to get experience and being involved.
And then pretty soon we're telling others how it should go.
Oh man, this, he's not doing it right.
She's not doing it right.
This is how you should do it.
But we ourselves aren't pulling in the mix.
We're not jumping in the mix.
We have this wisdom now and we're just gonna sit back and tell you how
it looked, how it's supposed to look.
And I have to watch.
That doesn't mean I'm all, that, I'm not all that wise.
I'm, I'm trying to learn.
I have a lot of experiences and I need to put 'em together through God's lens.
But I know that I can sit back sometimes and be critical
instead of pulling my own weight.
And that's important.
And God expects that when he gives all this stuff.
Okay, so let's go to the next one.
I gotta try to hurry up cause I'm going a little long here.
He's like, yeah, you are.
You guys still with me?
Okay.
So, uh, the mothers, let's talk about the mothers.
Uh, next one.
Split babies.
First thing's Kirstine three.
We already read that.
There we go.
Okay.
Uh, so, uh, the second thing I wanna talk about is the mothers in the story.
Uh, maybe this vision and dream experience might, experiences, might give Solomon
insight, uh, what happens in his own way.
We know that a generation, his kingdom's gonna be torn in two on his right.
He has a son on his left.
He has Gerbo, one of his old officials, right?
And sure enough, crack the, the sword comes down and divides him two.
But what are these mothers with these opposing outlooks for?
Solomon, obviously is the two kings vying for custody of Israel.
For us, it's the story of God and the world.
It's God the mother, and I don't wanna leave out fathers.
Fathers are like mothers.
It, they describe it as a mother because a mother's love is.
Insane.
Right?
You'll, you'll dive through a fire to save your child.
You'll go without, you'll go hungry, you'll search right, and, and hunt down
whatever you need to to feed your kid.
But it's us with God and the world.
Our, our attention is pulled and divided by cries that matter,
but have no eternal standing.
There's no shortage or drama in the world, or brilliant way to tug you in.
So what do I mean?
So here's the current things I looked up, uh, green, saving the planet.
We need to save the planet.
Here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna go to do X, Y, and Z.
And here's our thing, okay?
Yes.
All right, cool.
We're gonna do that.
Nope.
We're gonna go March and we're gonna go do this.
And my whole life is now I need to save this planet.
And then I refer and, and, and stay with me.
Here I look in first Corinthians 31, the second half it says, for this world
and it's present form as passing away.
So then I go, nah, we need to focus on wealth, man.
I need wealth.
I need generational wealth to pass down.
I need to supply a nice house for my myself and money,
money, money in the world.
In Mark 10 25, it says, easier for a camel to go through the eye of
a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
So I pursue richness as a disciple, even though it makes it more
difficult for me to stay faithful.
Politics.
Luke 2025.
Give the Caesar, what a Caesar to God.
What is God?
But my whole life is defined by politics.
Man, when you're not around, I talk so bad about the side you're on.
I'm gonna tell you a million bad things about Trump, but I'm gonna tell you a
million bad things about Biden, and I'm only gonna hang around with people that
think the same way like me, void of God in his love void of being indifferent
because I don't care about that.
I care about people's souls,
sexual rights of all kinds.
Romans 12, two.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind.
Now of course, we're supposed to be good stewards of the earth of money.
We're supposed to love every kind of person, no matter their background,
their race, their creed, their culture, because we're representing God.
But the problem is, is we get enticed and there's these two mothers and
there's God, and we're being ripped apart because we allow ourselves to still hang
on to these things that come up from our coworkers, from the internet, from
social media, from school, from whatever.
And we say, yeah, but I gotta take a stand on this.
And you can.
You can care, but that's not your mission.
That's not your cause.
That's not your identity, right?
Your mission is to be a representative for God in a world that doesn't understand.
Nobody should be able to love like you love.
No one should be as understanding as we should be understanding the
complete opposite of what some of us do or we get pulled to do.
So the good mother, God, pure, kind, concerned, heartbroken,
she may lose her child.
Actually, she even cries out in compassion and says, let the child live.
I'd rather it live and one day possibly come back to me than die.
And the cruel one, Satan, evil liar, world, whatever you want to call
it, I don't care, rip you apart.
Let's destroy you.
In fact, none of us will have you.
It's a crazy story.
And so we become the child pulled back and forth as the world tries
to tell us what we should think, what we should care about, and
we must choose and we must apply.
Experience reflecting in honesty.
And choose which direction we're gonna go.
In Second Samuel seven, David says, Hey, I'm gonna build you this, this
big temple and Psalm and, and God says, I don't even care about the temple.
I live in a tent.
My people move around in a tent.
I move with their people.
You don't have to do this.
And he says, no, I'm gonna do it.
He says, no, you can't do it.
Your son's gonna do it.
Right.
I wanna give you a quick video real quick on what the temple looked like.
Just so you see.
All right, so I'm gonna cut it short cuz I'm going along here on the video.
If we can go back to that last one.
Thank you.
So that's the city of David now, right?
In Jerusalem.
Uh, so Solomon spent seven years building this temple.
He spared no expense, the best cedar, juniper, all kinds of gold.
He brought in bronze workers and they made a bronze sea, right?
He, he no expense, and he was on fire for God and everything was about it.
In fact, he had so many people chiseling stones outta quarries.
They actually had said that no chisel or hammer was heard in Jerusalem because
they spent so much time in getting it out.
It was perfect when they built this whole temple.
And so he builds for seven years.
He goes into detail, grandiose detail.
I'm gonna build this for God and I'm gonna give this to you, God.
Cause I want to make it great for you.
I'm invested in you and everyone who saw his passion for God and
what he built was astounded.
But they usually don't put together Solomon back in the stories
presented with these women.
See there was a competition for his heart at the time, and it, if you want to call
it a love triangle, who did he marry?
He married Pharaoh's daughter and we find out how Solomon, if you keep reading,
he built God's house for seven years and then he built his own house for 13
years and his own house became the object of all his time and money and energy.
And along the way we find out, oh, in First King's in, in First King seven,
sorry, it says nine through 11 in First King, seven in verse eight, there's
a little blur that we also find out.
They had a third project going on at Palace for Pharaoh's daughter.
Then Chapter nine 11 comes, he marries all these foreign wives.
He ends up worshiping all these gods.
Som Som Solomon aligned himself with Pharaoh because he loved Pharaoh
and he loved that part of him.
And what I want to get at is that two things.
If you're young as a Christian, You gotta see if there's
something you don't wanna let go.
Is there something that you didn't let go?
Pride being closed, not being open relationships, romantic or not?
Is there something that you desire that you just haven't given up, right?
Like Pharaoh's daughter and to the older ones?
I want to ask, when you became a Christian, you were on fire.
We believe that we could change the world in a generation, right, Ramon?
Yep.
And somewhere along there, we were building God's church.
We were building God's church, and we were building his house and we
were preaching Christ crucified.
And we were excited to bring people to church and open the Bible and
say, look, look at all I've received a hundred times forgiveness, peace,
ability to have relationships.
I don't feel alone when I'm in a room of other people.
I feel alive and I have the answers to hard questions about life.
And after seven years, somewhere along here, we became like Solomon
and we worried about building our own lives and less about God's house.
And our time and effort went into what pleases us, what I want to do with my
time, you know what's best for my kids.
I'm gonna build my house.
And our, I affection for a bull kept growing and we go back and forth and
I'm gonna give it a lot for special.
Cause I'm gonna do this for God.
Oh, I'm gonna fast and I'm gonna fast because I'm gonna sway God's heart.
Like, like you can like, it, it, it's like, uh, what do you call that word?
Um, it's like bribing.
God.
I'm not gonna actually follow your commands, but I'm gonna fast and
show you how much I really love you.
Right.
I'm gonna give money to show, but I haven't eradicated the thing in
my heart, in my life that keeps tearing me apart, that has a hold
of me ripping me down the center.
And so we ask ourselves, when did I stop building?
What investment am I gonna make?
You know, desires, fantasies, and sometimes emotional
affairs with things like that.
It doesn't have to be people.
It can be things are very real and they become a relationship
of sort or romantic or not.
And a house divided, it's like riding two horses and they eventually
diverge and it splits you in half.
Many of us spent years, months, days, and hours building God's house, and we
did it out of affection and passion.
But if you find yourself today, finish with God's house and more
invested and focused on your own life, something went wrong.
And you gotta look at experiences, you gotta reflect with integrity and honesty.
And cheaper imitations of life that you think you want that are
trying to capture your heart.
They're not real, and your faithful diminish.
And one day you'll wake up married to foreign gods and foreign things
that you never thought was possible, and you'll tolerate foreign gods
that you never thought you would.
It's time to ask ourselves, if I stop building God's house,
who's competing for my heart?
God just wants, he doesn't want a tent.
He doesn't want to tell.
I mean, he doesn't want a temple.
He wants us to wake up every morning, look to him and say, thank you.
I love you.
I adore you.
I want to serve you.
Want to give you everything I have for communion.
We're gonna watch a quick video and then take communion, and that'll be it.
Thank you guys so much for listening.