2 Chro No.6 Sheba's Assessment

I'm going to play a song called The Star Spangled Banner. Just a moment for your own personal adoration. Then be seated and listen to the words of scripture.

We read this morning from the Old Testament, the second book of Chronicles and chapter nine. We've been thinking for the past few weeks about King Solomon, about the temple that he built to the glory of God, and this morning we're reading about someone who lived in a far country, who heard what had been going on, and who, like so many people today, was sceptical about what had been happening, about how great Solomon was and about God's work, and decided she would come and see for herself. So the Queen of Sheba visits Solomon.

Two Chronicles, chapter nine, and the first twelve verses. When the Queen of Sheba heard of Solomon's fame, she came to Jerusalem to test him with hard questions. Arriving with a very great caravan, with camels carrying spices, large quantities of gold and precious stones, she came to Solomon and talked with him about all she had on her mind.

Solomon answered all her questions. Nothing was too hard for him to explain to her. When the Queen of Sheba saw the wisdom of Solomon, as well as the palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, the cup bearers in their robes, and the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the Lord, she was overwhelmed.

She said to the king, The report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true, but I did not believe what they said until I came, until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half the greatness of your wisdom was told me. You have far exceeded the report I heard.

How happy your men must be, how happy your officials, who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom. Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on his throne as king to rule for the Lord your God. Because of the love of your God for Israel and his desire to uphold them forever, he has made you king over them to maintain justice and righteousness.

Then she gave the king 120 talents of gold, large quantities of spices and precious stones. There had never been such spices as those the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. The men of Hiram and the men of Solomon brought gold from Ophir.

They also brought algam wood and precious stones. The king used the algam wood to make steps for the temple of the Lord and for the royal palace and to make harps and lyres for the musicians. Nothing like them had ever been seen in Judah.

King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba all she desired and asked for. He gave her more than she had brought to him and then she left and returned with her retinue to her own country. This is the word of the Lord.

Now let's keep our Bibles open at that particular chapter. The burden on my heart last week when looking at the previous chapter, or to be precise, the seventh chapter, was this, that God was saying to us, let the church be the church. Let the church be the church, for the church is to be a praying community.

It is a salt that savors, it is light that illuminates, and all this is, it seems to me, well illustrated in Solomon's dedication of the temple, which I reminded you was known as the house of prayer. The temple lost its credibility if people were not going there to pray. The temple had no function if God did not come down amongst the people, and what the Old Testament temple prefigures is fulfilled in our Lord Jesus and in his church.

We are called to be the church, to minister in our world as the church. The world needs the church. God needs the church.

The church needs the church. The church, in terms of a spiritual community, acting as an agency for good and purification and illumination. Now I want to proceed and continue in bringing my burden to you from these chapters because it seems to me a quiet witness to the inspiration and the authority of Scripture, that when you look into the Old Testament narratives you find their isolated principles and illustrated principles which are carried through into the New Testament and set out in all their glory and in all their challenge.

The burden that is on my heart this morning is simply this. For the church to be the church, she has to give supreme and unrivaled honor to Christ. For the church to be the church, she has to give supreme and unrivaled honor to Jesus Christ.

Driving into the tab this morning, not literally, I don't want to be unduly critical to the brother who brought the address on the BBC's religious program, but I heard in his concluding remark that this is Wimbledon Sunday. It is not Wimbledon Sunday. This is the Lord's Day.

It is not a day designed primarily for two competing football teams to demonstrate which has the supreme skill. The fact that this day has been given to that purpose is unfortunate, but that's not the reason for this day. This is the Lord's Day to be maintained as a day when unrivaled worship is brought to the Lord Jesus Christ from all those who belong to him, who recognize that he is supreme.

And the church is always the church when she is defending this sort of principle. Not imposing her standards on others, but at least living up to the standards that scripture gives for ordinary people to adhere to. And the church is never more threatened than when the world comes into the church and dilutes its message and compromise comes in through the back door, even though dogmatic statements may be made at the front door.

In other words, brothers and sisters, you and I are called in an unbelieving world to profess that this day is God's day and that to Jesus in our lives this day and every day shall be accorded supremacy and unrivaled honor. So, here is our Lord speaking to his disciples. You can pick up the narrative in Mark's Gospel in chapter nine or in parallel readings in the synoptic Gospels, that is, Matthew and Luke.

And a question is put to them, who do men say that I am? And then Jesus slips in another one, more pointed, who do you say I am? And he cuts through the foliage of what is being rumored about him in the bazaars and he unearths the sincere convictions of his disciples and Peter, to his eternal credit, gets it right. You are the Christ, the Messiah. God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son.

The French version of the Bible translates the word begotten, unique. His unique Son. You are the unique one.

You are the Christ. And Peter is congratulated. All right, you say, well, Mr. Preacher, what's this got to do with 2 Chronicles 9? And the answer is this, it's got everything to do with 2 Chronicles 9. Because here you see, you get an example of a woman who comes to God's representative on the earth in those days, a man who is used at the beginning of his life especially as hardly anyone else up to this point has been used.

And she brings honor and glory, not just to the man, but to the man's God. She says of Solomon as she evaluates the experience of coming from the Yemen to Palestine, verse 5, the report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true. But I did not believe what they said until I came and saw with my own eyes.

Indeed, not even the half, not even half the greatness of your wisdom was told me. You have far exceeded the report I heard. Now listen, that is a most important statement in the Old Testament, and the reason why I underline it in your memories two or three times is because of what our Lord Jesus has to say as He backtracks, as He refers to this incident in His own preaching ministry.

Go to the Gospel of Matthew, will you, and to the twelfth chapter and the forty-second verse. As you're finding it, I'll sketch out the background. Matthew 12, verse 42, our Lord Jesus has got enemies alongside Him in His audience, critics who eventually at the human level will be responsible for His death.

He finds it a bit of a conundrum, a bit of a difficulty to understand how anyone can listen to what He has to say, see the miracles that He performs, and come to any other conclusion as to His identity but that He is the Son of God. And so He projects the day of judgment, and He refers to someone who will on that day come and add condemnation to the unbelieving Jew. Verse 42, Matthew 12, the queen of the south will rise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here.

She came to bring Solomon and his God supreme recognition as to the king and as to his deity, the one who he worshipped. Now says the Lord Jesus, the evidence that she had to do that, which stimulated such an action on her part, was inferior to the evidence that you have. Therefore, on the day of judgment, the queen of the south will rise with this generation and condemn it.

Here is an instance you see of the Jewish church, far from being the church, refusing to give to the Christ of the church the glory and the honor that is due to His name. And so I ask you as we make the application right now, do you act as the queen of Sheba did in the presence of Solomon? Only you in the presence of one far greater than Solomon? Do you give to Him what is His due? The church is never more the church than when she acknowledges the supremacy of the Lord Jesus and gives to Him her unrivaled affection. Look at the first verse of the ninth chapter, will you? And there you discover that the queen of Sheba, when she hears of Solomon's fame, she comes to Jerusalem to test him.

She makes this long journey having had information that on the throne of Israel there is one who intellectually has no rival in the world whatsoever. She goes to great pains to look out this remarkable man. As men and women, if they apply just sheer logic, ought to go to great pains to assess the Lord Jesus, to sift His teaching and to make a response to what He is saying.

One commentator says storytellers have put this narrative in the service of many traditions and have specified her name, listed the hard questions she put to Solomon, reported her conversion to monotheism, turned the encounter into sexual seduction and elaborated on the lineage of her offspring or offered a variety of fantastic legendary secrets as a development of what happened here. The fact of the matter is there is no indication whatsoever, Hollywood be blowed, that there was any sexual liaison between Sheba and Solomon whatsoever. What you do have uncovered as a principle is that this woman was prepared to go to any extent to seek out Solomon and to respond to all that she had to find in a suitable way.

And now I will admit, of course, that there was more to this quest of this woman than just seeing Solomon in and of himself. The Queen of Sheba comes from the land, as I mentioned a little while ago, the Yemen. It is a fruitful land, at least it's a prosperous land.

It was in those days simply because it was able to produce myrrh and frankincense, these aromatic spices. The economy of the country was very much dependent on using the trade routes which were now controlled by Solomon. If you check the eighth chapter you will discover the political influence of Solomon was almost legendary.

And here is this lady, I see her as a sort of Old Testament equivalent to the founder of the body shop, coming to Solomon to negotiate with him the possibility of the distribution of these resins and so on and so forth in Europe as well as in his own country as in the East where he's got an import and export business going very successfully indeed. But this surely is a secondary aspect. One of the things, the dominant thing that's in her mind is that this man Solomon has a wisdom that is unexcelled and she, Sheba, is of no mean intellectual calibre but she wants to come and benefit from what Solomon has been given from the Lord.

There's no invitation for her to come. There's no guarantee of a welcome if she does get there. There's not one trace of evidence to say that Solomon loved her, let alone this business of sexual relationship.

And of course there's no intermission, that Solomon would be prepared to die for her. But says a greater than Solomon, on the day of judgement this queen shall mount up in condemnation against those who have far greater reason to seek me out and to listen to what I have to say than she did. And they failed.

Those who refuse to give to Jesus the Son of God the position that is rightfully His and bring to Him unrivaled honour and worship for all He has done, on the day of judgement they will be in a perilous condition. The church is never more the church than when she is extolling the Lord Jesus, seeking Him out, adoring Him. The queen of Sheba verse one comes to hears of Solomon's fame, she comes to Jerusalem to test him with hard questions.

You drop down to the third verse, the queen of Sheba saw the wisdom of Solomon. Drop down to a later verse, the sixth verse, not even half the greatness of your wisdom was told me. What questions did she put? What hard questions were these? Well the scriptures give us no examples, Jewish legend does.

There's one idea that she came to him with a specimen of an artificial flower, so real that it fooled everyone. Would it fool Solomon? According to the legend he distinguished between the artificial flower and real flowers by putting the artificial flower amongst some natural ones out in one of his gardens. The bees went to the natural flowers and not to the artificial flower.

Well take that as you please, it doesn't really matter. What is of importance is this, that the queen sought out Solomon to put to him those conundrums in life which ever had confused her and she got such agreeable and insightful answers that she is satisfied and acknowledges him to be indeed as the rest of the kings and the princes in the world indicate the most wise, knowledgeable person in the world at that time. She seeks Solomon out because he is a wise man.

But listen to the Apostle Paul as he talks about our Lord Jesus. When in the first chapter of Corinthians and the first epistle of Corinthians and the 30th verse he says of him, it is because of Jesus that you are in Christ Jesus who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Our Lord Jesus does not have wisdom alone, he is wisdom.

And the Lord Jesus says, come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. She comes to ask questions, the greater than Solomon says to humble people, come learn of me. Ask the questions.

How can a man inherit eternal life? How can a man be young when he is old and enter into his mother's womb? How can God who is holy have anything to do with man who is sinful? How can the judge of all the earth do right when it seems as though people have an indiscriminate amount of blessing, some more than others? These great questions you can come and bring to the Lord Jesus and he will listen to your question and direct you to his scriptures and resolve those problems that there are at the back of your minds. She came to test him with questions and she responded to the wisdom that he gave to her. As men and women come to the Lord Jesus and put questions to him and then respond to his wisdom and the church is never more the church than when she is listening to every word that drops from his lips.

And when the church distances herself from scripture, when she questions the authority of this book, in effect she is questioning the wisdom of the greater than Solomon and as a result she is handicapped as she limps through life. She does not make the witness that she ought to because of this self-imposed handicap. So, this woman who seeks out Solomon, she illustrates Christian people at their best.

She goes through a journey of fourteen hundred miles. She puts up many a question and then she begins to think for herself. Not only does she listen, she cogitates on what she has been told.

She looks over the palace, verse three, when the queen of Sheba saw the wisdom of Solomon as well as the palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robe, the cup bearers in their robes and the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the Lord. She was overwhelmed. She brings her mind to Solomon as you ought to bring your mind to a greater than Solomon.

You do not throw away your reason. When you learn from Solomon, from a greater than Solomon, he will give you the ability to use your brain in the way that God intended your brain to be used. This woman is amazed, not just as she hears, but as she sees, as she reflects, this temple, what a marvel it is.

No chisel, no hammer on the chisel, no sound was ever uttered, would ever be heard within the precincts of the temple. Then how did he get all those huge slabs of marble down to the foundation on which the temple was built? She listens, she sees, she thinks this through and she realizes that this man has been impassioned by a greater mind than his own. And so she comes to the conclusion, later on, that it is not just the throne of Israel on which Solomon sits, verse 8, praise to the Lord your God who has delighted in you and placed you on his throne as king to rule for the Lord your God because of the love of your God for Israel and his desire to uphold them forever.

She's impressed by what she sees. The temple is built on Mount Zion, and just over from Mount Zion on another hill but not quite as high is the palace, and between the two there is a viaduct. If you take the optional reading from verse 4, you will get the impression that Solomon in all his glory moves from his palace into the temple and their sacrifices are offered without number.

And she watches and she sees a wise, remarkable man moving from his palace into the temple dedicated to his God. He goes there with reverence and with awe. And there is something about that temple which is utterly unique that impresses itself upon a pagan mind, the pagan mind of the Queen of Sheba.

And as she watches what Solomon is about, so she begins to grope through the fog of her pagan ideas to a realization that the God of heaven, not just some local deity, has caused Solomon to sit on that throne. And the picture dims, goes fuzzy, and refocuses. And you see another hill near Zion, but it has the shape of a skull, none the taller atop of that hill is a cross.

And on the cross there is the greater than Solomon, who offers the supreme sacrifice and then walks from the peak of Calvary into the holiest place of all, the place where God is. And he pleads the merit of his blood. And as a result, pardons are granted to an innumerable company of people, because a greater than Solomon has been able to offer to God an atonement for the wretchedness, the stench of human sin.

Now, says Jesus, if Sheba, with less evidence and stimulus than you ever had, if she would make her way to Solomon, who was still just an ordinary man, though extraordinarily inspired from time to time, how much more should you recognize who I am? And because you have not, and because you will not, on that day of judgment she will rise to condemn you for the obduracy of your attitude, the hardness of your heart. The Jewish church fell apart. It did not remain the church.

Why? Because of this failure to give to the Lord Christ the honor and glory that is due to His holy name. And whenever the established church fails in the same way as the Old Testament church, then she bears the impending judgment of God upon her. So I repeat that the church to function as the church must give to Jesus Christ the supreme place.

Unrivaled honor and worship must be His. For, for this reason, God the Father sent His Son into the world to redeem the world and then to glorify His Son and to give Him the name that is above every name. They'll not recognize that name at Wimbledon.

They'll not recognize that name this evening in that international football match. In one sense that's secondary. What alarms me is that increasingly in the so-called church there is a failure to recognize the name and to give Him the honor and the glory that is His due.

She was overwhelmed when she was in the presence of Solomon. The church has lost its sense of being overwhelmed in the presence of God. To quote Tozer, the O has gone.

The church will never be the church until she recovers that O and that desire to bring honor and glory to the Christ of God. And this woman who so exemplifies the believer at his best, she is prepared to give to Solomon all that she has. Verse nine, she gave the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold, large quantities of spices and precious stones.

There had never been such spices as those the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. The church will never be the church. Until it is handing over its all to a greater than Solomon.

Did you hear that? Strip the word church of its corporate meaning. Interpolate your own name into posing. Until you have surrendered your all to a greater than Solomon, you'll never function in the way that God wants individuals to function.

And the ratio of glory in the church by Christ Jesus is correlated to the amount of give that there is amongst God's children. But you can't out give Solomon. King Solomon gave, verse twelve, the Queen of Sheba all she desired and asked for.

He gave her more than she had brought to him. Then she left and returned with her retinue to her own country. Give him your pants and he'll give you pounds.

Give him your days, he'll give you years. Give him your water, he'll give you his wine. Give him a pack of sandwiches for one, he'll give you food for five thousand.

Give him time, he'll give you eternity. Surrender your right to marry, he'll give you brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers without number. Offer him your suffering, he'll give you his bliss.

And what's more, he'll bequeath to you the basket to measure out what you wish according to your faith. Be it unto you. My time is spent.

No wonder Sheba went back to her own country with half her heart still remaining at Jerusalem. Verse seven, how happy your men must be. How happy your officials who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom.

What bliss is this? To be ever in your presence, King Solomon. For her the option was not profit, for you it is. Possible to live out your life in the company of one greater than Solomon.

Possible for you every week, every month, every year to give him unrivaled allegiance. Possible for you always to have in mind that great death and mighty resurrection as the stimuli by which you will live your life in a sacrificial sense. Possible for you to equal Sheba and ever to be given Solomon, the greater than Solomon.

The praise and honor that is due to his name. The world needs the church to be the church in order to pray for her. God needs the church to be the church in order for His Son to be glorified through her.

The church needs the church to be the church so that those who are apostate within her may recognize the difference. And Jesus wants the church to be the church so that He can be given the worship that is due to Him, to the one of whom it could be said, the half has never been told, whose lips always drop unparalleled wisdom, whose heart is ever full of generosity. To those who belong to Him, that's the reason why you and I are to act as the worshiping church, bringing honor to Him and on the boomerang principle, blessing, heaped up, unmeasurable blessing to yourself.

Father, may the response that we make be commensurate to the challenge which is embedded within your word. Help us, Lord, to be the people that you want us to be and to bring to you the worship that is your due in this short and certain earthly life and pilgrimage. And all the people said, Amen.