This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back to day two of our look through the Book of First Kings. We're in
week one of this great look at this great book. And we began yesterday at
looking at this transfer of leadership that happened from David to Solomon.

And the last thing that we looked at was David reminding Solomon of the wisdom
that he had. There's a great quality in wisdom. We'd all like to more
consistently make the right decisions in life.

We'd like to be better to live with the right priorities in our mind. We'd like
to have the relationships in our life work better. We'd like to be able to face
the pressures of life with a sense of confidence and of peace.

There's a single quality that enables all of those things to happen in your
life, and it's wisdom. So how do you wise up? Because wisdom is this ability to
live this kind of way.

Wisdom is the ability to view life from God's perspective and to live that life
from God's perspective. And it means you have his perspective on your decisions,
your priorities, your relationships, even your problems. How can that kind of
wisdom become a part of your life?

Well, you don't learn it in college or even in a Bible school. This type of
wisdom has nothing to do with a classroom or a higher degree. It has to do with
your heart, your heart before God.

And Solomon, this man that we're looking at right now, he was the wisest man on
earth. Chapter 4, just skip ahead a few chapters, chapter 4 verse 29 to 34 tells
us how great his wisdom was. Let me read those verses.

God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight and a breadth of understanding as
measureless as the sand on the seashore. Solomon's wisdom was greater than the
wisdom of all the men of the East and greater than the wisdom of Egypt. He was
wiser than any other man, including Ethan the Ezraite, wiser than Haman and
Calcol and Darda and the sons of Mahal.

His fame spread to all the surrounding nations. He spoke 3,000 Proverbs and his
songs numbered 1,005. He described plant life from the cedar of Lebanon to the
hyssop that grows out of the walls.

He also taught about animals and birds and reptiles and fish. Men of all nations
came to listen to Solomon's wisdom sent by all the kings of the world who had
heard of his wisdom. This is a man of great wisdom as you read this, the wisest
man on earth.

Now where did this wisdom come from? We find out in chapter 3, he had this kind
of wisdom because he asked God for it. Listen to what happens in the first few
verses of chapter 3.

Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and he married his daughter.
He brought her to the city of David until he finished building his palace in the
temple of the Lord and the wall around Jerusalem. The people, however, were
still sacrificing at the high places because a temple had not yet been built in
the name of the Lord.

Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the statutes of his
father David, except that he offered sacrifices and he burned incense in the
high places. The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most
important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on the
altar. At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream and
God said, "Ask whatever you want me to give you.

" There's a moment in the life of Solomon here. Now we do learn that Solomon,
however wise, was not perfect. We're told in these verses that he worshipped at
the high places.

This is where God had told them not to worship. They went to these high places
because they thought somehow it got them closer to God and often these became
places of actually idol worship. This doesn't say that Solomon was worshipping
idols, but he was worshipping in the wrong place.

I want you to notice something here. God met Solomon at a place he was not
supposed to be. God in his grace will meet you in places you're not supposed to
be.

And the question is, how are you going to respond when he meets you wherever he
meets you? We're going to see in Solomon's response that he is the perfect
candidate to teach us about wisdom. In chapter 3 we see four essentials for
living with genuine wisdom in our lives.

To be a person of wisdom there are four things you have to be able to say. You
have to be able to say, "I need you," second, "I don't know how," third, "I want
wisdom," and fourth, "I will serve. " When you can say those four things, you're
learning to have the kind of wisdom that Solomon had.

First, you've got to be able to say, "I need you. " You have to see how much, to
have wisdom, you have to see how much you depend on others. And it starts, of
course, with depending on God.

There's no wisdom apart from depending on God. When you depend just on yourself,
it shows how foolish you really are. In fact, that's the definition of a fool
all through the book of Proverbs, someone who depends on themselves.

When you depend on God, that immediately grows into seeing how much you are
depending on others. You're not living life on your own strength and energy and
power. God's giving you the strength and others are alongside of you to
strengthen you as well.

Solomon was able to see very clearly why he was in the position he was in. He
saw the blessings in his life and then he looked to David and how David had
built this kingdom and how he was blessed to be a part of what David had built.
In 1 Kings chapter 3 verse 6, listen to what happened.

Solomon answered, remember, God asked this big question. What do you want? I'll
do whatever you want.

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've
continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on this
throne this very day. " Solomon doesn't look at himself.

What a great person he is. He looks at David, what a great man David was, and he
recognizes the only reason he's sitting on the throne is because of the
greatness of David. Nothing clouds your wisdom quite so much as an excessive
focus on yourself as the source of life's blessings or opportunities.

Pride is the path to a lack of wisdom. When you can let go of your pride and
realize, I need you, I need you, God, and I need others, then you begin to build
wisdom in your life. Why are you where you are?

Why do the opportunities that are in your life come the way they come? Whose
work are you building on? Whose resources have you been given to depend upon?

Whose support are you counting on? Whose teaching are you living on? When you
can start to recognize those things, it's one of the keys to wisdom that Solomon
teaches us.

I need you. Second key is, I don't know. One of the greatest keys to wisdom is
admitting what you don't know.

The only way to know more is to admit what you don't know. Listen to what
Solomon says, "Now, oh Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of
my father David, but I am only a little child and I do not know how to carry out
my duties. " First thing that Solomon says is, "I don't know how.

" God says, "Ask for whatever you want. " He says, "First I have to admit to
you, God, I don't know how to do this. " An open door to wisdom is being able to
say, "I don't know how.

" If you allow yourself to be embarrassed because you don't know, one of two
results will occur. In fact, Israel's later kings who were filled with pride
experienced both of these results. First result is you'll try to act as if you
do know how and you'll end up making a real fool of yourself because you don't
know how.

The second result is you pull into a shell. You never grow. You never stretch
yourself because you're afraid to admit you don't know something.

So you just stay with what you're comfortable with. You stay with the little
that you know because you can't say, "I don't know how. " What if Jesus'
disciples had acted like this, acting as if they did know how?

They would have tried to feed the 5,000 themselves and nothing would have
happened. Jesus would have said to them, "Follow me," and they would have said,
"No, thanks, I already know how to live life. " Peter would have drowned when he
tried to walk on the water because he wouldn't have looked at Jesus.

Wisdom is this moment of saying, "There's so much I don't know. " Solomon had
this refreshing humility here where he's able to say, "I'm a child. How am I
going to do this job?

" That's one of the keys to wisdom, to be able to say, "I don't know. " And
there's two other keys to wisdom. We're going to look at those tomorrow.

Before we end today, I want to just spend a moment praying these very things
we've just talked about back to God. Would you pray with me? And just say, "God,
first I need you.

I need you and I need others in my life. Forgive me for those times and I've
tried to do it on my own. And God, I admit there's so much I don't know.

Forgive me for those times when my pride has caused me to try to act like I
didn't know when I didn't. Give me a refreshing humility, a kind of wisdom
that's able to say what I don't know and to learn from others and able to teach
others who say they don't know. Lord, I thank you that you want to put your
wisdom into my life.

And I ask for it. I come and I ask for it. And I pray that you would make me the
kind of man, the kind of woman that has these qualities of life that were in
Solomon.

And I pray it in Jesus' name, amen.