1 Samuel 15

Chapter 15. Solomon’s ChoiceBut seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Matthew 6:33)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, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of 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, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish 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 fir long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but fir discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked 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 what you have not asked for—both riches and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. And if you walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.” (1 Kings 3:5-14)This passage gives the first keynote of Solomon’s inner life. The sacred historian has already given us a picture of his inauguration and the splendors of his throne, but here we get a glimpse of his heart and see the true man who was greater than the kingdom. Recognition of God in the Very Beginning of His Reign His first important act was to go to Gibeon, the seat of the ancient tabernacle and, up to this time, the public place of worship, to offer sacrifice and wait upon God for His message and commission. The journey was made with splendid display, as was usual with Solomon in all he did, and the sacrifices were marked by great magnificence, no less than a thousand victims being offered upon the altar during the days of this great feast. It was intended as an act of public acknowledgement of Jehovah as the true king whom he, like David, his father, only represented. And God was pleased to accept this act of homage and recognition and to bless the king and his kingdom. Recognition of God’s Goodness to David and to Solomon We see, in the language which he uses in respect to his father, David, a recognition of God’s goodness to his father, David, and to himself, as the son and successor, and especially of the principles of righteousness and uprightness which God required in the administration of the king. He speaks of God’s goodness to him as a great mercy and refers to the fact that this mercy was extended to David as he walked in truth and righteousness and uprightness of heart. These are the true principles which form the foundation of all right government, and Solomon wisely recognized them as the elements of David’s prosperity and strength, and as those which must enter into his administration also. No government deserves to be prospered or can expect permanency of blessing which is founded upon injustice or any kind of wrong. We talk about our hard times and our national troubles as the results of political errors and the outworking of financial theories and principles. These things are God’s judicial chastenings for the selfishness of His people. It is because we do not use the blessing He bestows and the means He supplies for the real object which alone is dear to Him, of building up His kingdom and blessing mankind with the gospel and the truth, that He takes them away from us and sends distress of nations with perplexity. Solomon himself crystallized this principle into an eternal epigram when he said, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34). Solomon recognized therefore the necessity of righteousness and uprightness and he traced his throne and the blessing that had brought him to it not to any merit of his own but to the sovereign goodness of the King of kings, his father’s God and his. Recognition of His Own Insufficiency and Nothingness “But I,” he says, “am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties” (1 Kings 3:7). This is the language of true modesty, and modesty is always a sign of true worth. Alas, it is rare that we hear such language on the part of young men. Youth is usually self-conscious and full of assurance of its own strength and sufficiency, and it has to go through the discipline of suffering and failure before it learns to take the true place of humility which brings greatness and blessing. Happily Solomon had learned this lesson. All God’s most honored servants have learned it, too. Moses, in the confidence of his early enthusiasm, when he sprang to the front unbidden and slew the Egyptian that oppressed his brother, was not fit for this task. But Moses, shrinking back and saying, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent,… send someone else to do it” (Exodus 4:10, Exodus 4:13), was the man that God wanted for this high commission. Jeremiah, the last of Israel’s prophets, repeated almost the very words of Solomon as he cried, “Ah, Soverign Lord,… I am only a child,” (Jeremiah 1:6), and Jeremiah became the greatest of the prophets of his country and was recognized as the patron spirit of Jerusalem in her darkest days of sorrow. Paul himself, the leader of the great missionary host, took his name of Paul just because it means “little.” And as he grew riper and richer in his high and heavenly life and work he grew downward until he called himself, first, “not even [deserving] to be called an apostle” (1 Corinthians 15:9), next “less than the least of all God’s people” (Ephesians 3:8), and, at last, the “worst of sinners” (1 Timothy 1:16). Humility is not self-degradation. It is self-forgetfulness, not counting upon ourselves at all, but looking only unto Jesus as our Strength, our Wisdom, and our All in All. Simplicity and Singleness of His Prayer There was but one thing that he asked. He might have asked much more. He might have asked anything he would, for God had given him a mighty option and said, “Ask for whatever you want” (1 Kings 3:5). And so He comes to us sometimes and tests us through our very prayers. Should He come to you just now with that splendid offer and say, “Ask for whatever you want,” what would your answer be? What was the first thing you asked this morning? The last thing you breathed in prayer last night? What is the desire that would spring to your lips if God met you with this unlimited proffer, “Ask for whatever you want”? Solomon’s answer was ready. He had but one desire, one prayer, namely, that he might have from God the grace, the strength, the power, the wisdom, to meet the situation in which God had placed him, to be equal to his post, to be God’s best in the great trust which had been committed to his hands. He did not ask anything for himself, but all for his high calling and great work. What he wanted was the power to meet God’s will and satisfy God’s expectation concerning his life. Surely this is the spirit of a single-hearted life, a life that has been rightly poised in perfect conformity with the will of God. The wisdom which Solomon asked just means the power to use the right means to bring about the right end. It needs much wisdom to get the right end and aim in life, and then it needs much more to attain it. This is what Solomon asked, that he might rightly understand the great purpose of his being, and then that he might know how to accomplish it. Surely this includes all that is worth living for. Surely this is the burden of Solomon’s deepest teachings in the volume that afterwards came from his pen in the collection of his wisest sayings—the burden that runs through it all: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 9:10) The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. (Proverbs 8:13) Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who embrace her; those who lay hold of her will be blessed. (Proverbs 3:13-18) God has left to us a greater promise. He has given us as the Wisdom of God nothing less than the very person of his own dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, “who has become for us wisdom from God” (1 Corinthians 1:30), and who comes to live in us and work out in our lives the very thought of God for us in all its fullness, blessedness and strength. It is not our wisdom that He gives us. It is not even the abstract quality of a higher sense, but it is a living personal mind, the very mind and thought and heart of Christ within us to lead us and guide us in all His will and work out for us and in us, all His plan. This is the wisdom we may have if we but truly seek Him, and the life thus guided and thus blessed can never fail of reaching God’s highest thought and life’s highest possibilities. It is this high purpose that saves us from a thousand distractions and complications. It is because we want so many other things that we miss them and the chief thing, too. The greatest blessing that can come to a soul is to desire only God and God’s will and glory. It was this that brought Solomon’s answer so swiftly to him from heaven. God saw his heart was true and He could afford to bless him not only with what he asked, but with much more besides. God’s Answer

1. He gave to Solomon the thing he asked—wisdom—such as none ever before or none afterward possessed. And it was not long until He vindicated this wisdom by putting Solomon into situations where it was sorely tested and where it was fully vindicated. Before another sun had set there came to him two women with a question which was surely enough to try the heart of the wisest judge. Both were disputing the ownership of their alleged child, and both seemed to the outward eye to love it with equal fondness. Instinctively did the true test come to the wise king. Commanding a sword to be brought he offered to divide the child in two and give to each a half. It was then that the mother heart shone out in all its strength. “Please,” she cried, “my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!” (1 Kings 3:26), and in that surrender she showed herself the mother and won what she had yielded. And so God will bring to you many a test in answer to your prayers. You ask Him for patience and He will immediately put you in a position where you will need great patience. And if you allow Him He will give it to you. You ask Him for joy and He will put you in a place where all earthly joy will fail you and you shall be thrown upon Him for comfort, peace and victory. You ask Him for love and He will probably test you by the most unloving things on the part of others and then He will give you His love to triumph over unkindness and wrong. You ask him for wisdom and He will bring you up to a situation so full of perplexities and difficulties as to appall you. But this is just where His wisdom will shine out and you will go through in victory while you cry, “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him” (2 Corinthians 2:14).
2. But God not only answered Solomon’s request, but expressed His peculiar approval of Solomon’s spirit and Solomon’s prayer. He was delighted with it because of what Solomon had not asked. There is quite as much in what we do not say as what we do say. The silences of our prayers are more eloquent than their words. How God must grow tired of our petulant and peevish repetitions of worry and anxious care and the thousand things we reiterate in His ears about which He knows already and has long ago provided. This is what the Psalmist meant in that beautiful sentence in Psalms 37:7, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him.” In the margin it is “Be silent unto the Lord.” Hold your peace, stop your pleading, teasing, feeble complaints and prayers. Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things (Matthew 6:32), and if you will only think for Him, you will find Him thinking much more for you. But, further, God gave Solomon the very things he had not asked. He said unto him, “I will give what you have not asked for—both riches and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings” (1 Kings 3:13). So when we cease to think about the temporal needs of this earthly life, God gives them to us with an abundance that we never can know as long as we are anxious and worried concerning them. Indeed, when we cry too much for them, we are better without them; but when we care supremely for Him and His kingdom, then they lie lightly in our hands and do not become a snare but only a means of greater blessing, and He is pleased to add them to us. This is the very essence of the Master’s perfect and lofty teaching in the Sermon on the Mount all summed up in our text, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33), or, as it is better expressed by the other evangelists, “But rather seek ye the kingdom of God” (Luke 12:31). It is the only thing to seek; and “all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). It is to be noted that the word “added” is used. This looks as though in many cases they might not be given until later in our history, namely, in that millennial day when the earthly shall be added to the heavenly, and the material shall crown the spiritual inheritance of the saints. This would be true to the type, for Solomon, who was so richly endowed with these outward blessings, was the special type of the millennial age when we shall receive the glory and the hundredfold for every sacrifice and deprivation here. In conclusion, the story of Solomon’s choice speaks to each of us as we stand today in the same place of difficult perplexity or high and holy trust. Each of us, like him, has a kingdom for which we are unequal and insufficient of ourselves. Perhaps it is the kingdom of your own soul, and you feel that you are not wise enough or strong enough to sway the scepter over your thoughts and passions and will. Bring it to Him, as Solomon did. Ask Him for but one thing: to make you equal to your post, to glorify Himself in you and enable you as a helpless little child to please Him and accomplish the real purpose of your being and trust Him for all besides. Then you will surely find the blessing that Solomon found and the addition which so enriched his life. Perhaps it is the kingdom of your home. Perhaps you are an anxious and troubled mother with many an encompassing difficulty, uncongenial surroundings, poverty, toil, lack of sympathy and help and a thousand temptations surrounding the path of those you love, until your heart sinks and shrinks, and you cry, “Lord, I know not how to go out or come in. I am but a little child. Oh, give me wisdom. Whatever else you withhold help me to be my best,” and God will hear you and bless you and make you a blessing to your household and help to save your loved ones and lead them up to Him. Perhaps you are a Christian worker in some place of difficult responsibility, feeling that you are unequal to the obligations that rest upon you and the expectations of those that look to you. Go to Gibeon. Bring a simple, single heart. Ask for but one thing, that you may please and glorify God and be enabled to do His perfect will, and He that answered Solomon will enable you for all His perfect will, will bless you and make you a blessing, and will add unto you all things. Or, perhaps, you are a young man or woman setting out in life with some new position opening to you, some place of important influence or service, some influential situation, some place of public trust. Oh, do not try to be the architect of your fortune. Like Solomon, begin with God. Hand over your life and all its possibilities to Him. He will take pride in being your Patron, and seeing you through and some day rejoicing with you amid the raptures of the glory, because through His grace you have not run in vain (Galatians 2:2) nor labored in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).