Be God's Family
S3 E26. Solomon's Word of Wisdom
This is the Be God's Light Podcast with Ben Greenbaum and Mark Alsasser. And here in 2024 we are exploring the Old Testament for a look at how God's been at work from the very beginning, taking us right up until the time of Jesus, and really how the Old Testament speaks to Jesus, the Gospels, the New Testament, and all of human history. So it's been really fun to do that. We're up to King Solomon now, and I have with me a very, very special guest, my daughter Joy. Welcome, Joy. Thank you very much. It's so fun that you're here. Joy is a resident of the state of Florida, which is a thousand miles too far away from me. But we are honored to have you here today to speak with us. She's on staff at Harbourside Christian Church, and does a variety of things in the church. Tell a couple of those that are sort of on your plate that you are responsible for, work with or help out with. I work with children, youth, interns, which are young adults, and then songwriting and worship leading with Harbourside Music, which is our worship band from our church. That's pretty big. Your interns are pretty amazing. This summer you have how many interns? 62 in the program, 26 are full-time college-age students. They come. They apprentice in ministry and learn skills and godliness and train for leadership. They get to learn a lot of things, work alongside the staff, and then we have some high school shadows that work part-time, that shadow under the intern and gain experience in all their volunteer hours. So just continually developing people for leadership and potential call to ministry and all these things to disperse them throughout the world. That's really cool. It's unusual that churches are doing that, and I know this has been one of your babies that you have developed in your years there, and it's on full bore right now. I mean, you're doing a great job with that. So today we're going to take a look at King Solomon. Solomon took over the kingship from his father, David, and Solomon is given that these great gifts from God, many, many blessings, famously Solomon is given wisdom. He asks God says, "Hey, I'll give you anything you want," and he asks for wisdom, and God gives him this incredible wisdom that he has in his life, and he was known as a very wise person. In 1 Kings 4, in fact, it says 1 Kings 4, 30, Solomon's wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the people of the east and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt, which would have been to the south and west. So you look in any direction, he was known, and it said in fact that his fame spread to all the surrounding nations. He spoke 3,000 Proverbs, and his songs numbered 1,005. So he was a person of great wisdom, and as part of that job, he wrote Proverbs, 31 chapters in Proverbs. Help us to understand, Joy, a little bit about, I know you've really looked at Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, which we're going to touch on all three of these writings today. Tell us a little bit about Proverbs, this expression of wisdom that Solomon wrote. Yeah, I will definitely do that. Right before I do that, I'd like to just kind of tell the story of the Bible, because we're going to use that as we go into the book of Proverbs today. Bible said really simply in 15 seconds, as it starts with creation, and then there's this separation because of sin, there's a redemption through the cross and through Jesus, and then there's this unity or a oneness that leads to an eternal destiny, where Jesus promises in revelation that we will co-rule and reign with him. So let me just say that one more time. There's creation, God declares us as good. Unfortunately, there's separation, redemption, unity, and eternal destiny. And so as we look through the book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs today, we are going to look at the overarching summary, the theme, the spark notes, if you will, the trailer. We'll look at some of the things, literally, how do you apply them to your life right now in culture and in the season you're in. But honestly, I want to go really deep into how it plays as a thread woven into the full story of God and the Bible. It's 66 books in this Bible, and we could see them as 66 individual books that got glued together into a series, or we could see it as a part of the full story. And that's what I want to go for today when we start with Proverbs. So Proverbs, like you said, 31 chapters, and overall, I would say it's this call for wisdom. There's nine or so chapters are this introduction of this lady wisdom calling from the streets. Be wise. And it starts with this father instructing his son. Follow these commands, walk in this way, beware of this. We see this father instructing and commanding the son. And inside of this incredible book, full of wisdom, we see that there are two women that are the main characters of this Bible. We see there's one that's unfortunately our temptrist, and she's seductive in her ways. She's calling as well like lady wisdom, but she's calling away from the father's will. She's calling him into separation from his father. And this is definitely someone we don't want to hang around. This is someone who's crouching at the door like we see in Genesis 3. This is someone who's calling us into the pleasure of self and leading us down the path of corruption. And there's a lot of instruction, a lot of wisdom based around avoiding this. And it's not just only literally talking about avoiding a temptress of a woman. It's going up the temptress of life of the woman that's leading you into sin and separation. So she's kind of a picture or metaphor for doing things that are not God's way. Absolutely. So when the Bible says trust in the Lord with all your Proverbs 3 and do not lean on your own understanding, it's a version of that. Absolutely. And so if we take it literally, we're just actually talking about avoid a woman who is dressed promiscuously, but there's such a deeper layer. This deeper layer I like to refer to as the sod. I learned this from a pastor. It's the part of God that you have to dig underground for like the depth of the soil where the roots are. I refer to this area as the sod. It's the part that you can't fully grasp and understand because it's the land of where mystery lives. It's what keeps you in awe and wonder. And it's this part of God that draws you into the way he thinks as if man could actually ever even understand that. But I like to look at Proverbs in this sod level. And so when we go deep, deep, deep, and we just go beyond the application of each verse for my life, and we look at it as the tapestry of the whole gospel. We see at the very end, we're introduced to the second woman. This is not the seductress, the temptress that leads us in separation from the father's will. But this woman is referred to as the Proverbs 31 woman. Now if we were to take it literally, every female would say, this is how I'm supposed to be. I'm supposed to rise up early in the morning and make bread for my children. Oh no, I didn't do that, I gave them cereal, I'm falling short. It can be one of those moments where you see it literally. And honestly, if you were to apply it literally, you'd probably have a really successful marriage and you'd probably raise your kids really well. But when we look at this in the sod level, that mystery and depth, how does this fit into the whole Bible? What we see is as the son is receiving instruction from the father to avoid the separator, that temptress, to avoid the separator, we see that he actually is joined with a wife. And verse 10 of 31 says, an excellent wife, more precious than jewels. Her husband trusts her. We see that the son in this story is joined with one that is good, that is kind, that is precious, that is trustworthy. And we see all the things that she's doing and it points us to the story of the Bible, the son of the father, Jesus, joined with this pure, precious, good, kind, hardworking wife, the bride of Christ. It's the full story of the gospel here in the book of Proverbs. Let me read just a couple of these verses. Verse 13, she seeks wool and flax. Wool makes me think of sheep, our good shepherd, he has now a shepherdess beside, that's taking care of these sheep, the flax, she's making bread. What do we know about bread? It's the bread of life. She's preparing the communion possibly. She rises while it's night and provides food for the house, spiritual food for those under her household. She buys a field and there's fruit of her hands as she plants the vineyard. The fruit of the spirit is abundant in her life. She's tending the field, the soil of the garden of the heart. She's multiplying the vineyard. She's making disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the father, son and Holy spirit. She's fulfilling the commission. She's dressed in strength. She's wearing three colors in verse 21, scarlet, fine linen and purple. The scarlet reminds us that she's clothed in the blood of Jesus, the church, the bride of Christ is clothed in the blood. She's dressed in fine linen, the robe of the priest because she's a priest and she's wearing purple because she's royal. She's a royal priest covered in the blood prepared just for her husband. The church prepared just for Christ and I really like verse 18, it says her lamp does not go out. For we are the temple of God, we are the new tabernacle and the lampstand, the light of the Holy spirit and that center part of the lampstand, Jesus, does not go out. The wicks are trimmed and she knows no darkness. And this book ends with a theme that we're going to see in all three of our books today. She fears the Lord and is to be praised. Now remember, I'm not talking literal about females. I'm talking about the metaphorical, the sod level of what the woman represents, the church. So the church fears the Lord and is to be praised. And there is multiplication from the fruit of her hands. And so we go through proverbs and we learn all of these things that we can apply to our lives. But when we see it in the big picture, we see that once again, it's the story of the Bible, Christ, the son receiving instruction from the father and being joined with a woman, the church, that is exactly the way that she's meant to be. I love that. God is the one who gave Solomon his wisdom. He asked for wisdom. God said, I'm giving it to you and he had it. So it makes sense that God would give Solomon a wisdom that goes beyond the surface level of what it means. You know, because a lot of times I've looked at proverbs 31, like, that's kind of wife, I want to find when I was younger. And there is a sense in which that's true. In fact, many of the proverbs you could look at and say, there's definitely an application to our lives that we could say are true. But there's you're saying this deeper level beneath the surface down in the saw, down underneath where there's things that work. And so we see scripture all pointing toward Jesus, in fact, toward your last great movement of scripture, which was eternal destiny, where what God has in store for us. And it's all this movement toward that. Is that a fair summation of that? That's perfect. Absolutely. You know, we need wisdom and we need knowledge. And honestly, in America, we crave it. We love an A plus. We love a perfect score. We pride ourselves in our degrees and our education. We want to be Bible nerds as Christians and we disciple. Here's the thing though. We can love wisdom, but we can't worship wisdom. So my only caution as you apply every single one of these scriptures into your life, which I think you should do. My one caution is don't study this book in order to become so wise that you're now confident in your own wisdom and independent from the one who gave it. I have a friend who names Lisa and she's raising two young children. We talk about raising children. And she was talking about how, especially in the Western world, we pride ourselves on zero to 18, moving our children from dependent on mom and dad to independent. Is that a pretty fair statement? It's fair. Yeah. We want to make our kids independent, but honestly, through the gospel, we want to make ourselves a transference of dependence so that when they're at a certain age, they're no longer these independent, wise humans, yes, we want wisdom. Don't hear me wrong. We're transferring dependence from mom and dad to the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. So as we read Proverbs, yes, soak up all the wisdom, apply everything immediately. Bad company does corrupt character, apply it immediately, but dig for the sod, find the overarching story, see that it is actually part of the process to prune us and prepare us so that we're not an independent, wise human, now serving God, but we are a wise person ready to receive and steward everything that God is saying day to day. This dependence on God cannot be lost as we become wise. This is brilliant. It really is, I wish we had days and days to talk about all these wisdom books, but we don't. And so we're going to move on to the next one. I think what I'd like to do is not spend a ton of time on Ecclesiastes so we can spend more on the song of songs or song of Solomon just because of time, but we do want to look at Ecclesiastes. So it's another one of the writings of Solomon. And if you can, many people would sum up Proverbs sort of on the surface level of saying, if you live right, then the world will treat you right. But at the end of his life, Solomon as an older man was reflecting on life and he writes in Ecclesiastes, he's writing in chapter 12, it says, remember your Creator in the days of your youth before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in them. So he's looking back at life like, there's not a lot of pleasure in all the things I had. Now remember, not only did Solomon have great wisdom, he had great wealth. I mean, he amassed wealth like a crazy man and he looked around and said, it's meaningless. All of my money, all of my power, all of my authority, it's all meaningless. So we get this book of the Bible, which on one level is kind of depressing, this guy saying life's nothing, help us dig into this little bit and say, what's the nugget down in there for us? Sure. So let's say like, let's just say for today, we get a hundred years on earth. That's probably more than most of us will experience, but just for this example, can we say a hundred? Okay. It sounds good to me. We've got a hundred years on earth. Now the question is, what is the meaning of life? What's the purpose? What's the pursuit of happiness? I think we've all gone down that road. Solomon does the same thing. Is it wealth? Is it wisdom? Is it land and respect, success? What about power? Approval and applause? Okay. How about this? Health. I can still run a marathon in my 90s. Is that, is that the answer? Is it attraction? Is it maybe women and a big family? Is it security? What's the pursuit? He gets to the end of his life and he realizes, oh, it took a lifetime of toil to get all the things I've gotten and it's gone as quickly as a vapor, a campfire ember, a bubble that pops gone and he expresses disappointment. Now this is someone who received wisdom from God and he's expressing disappointment at life and probably somebody listening right now has felt that. I've done everything right. I've gone to church. I've read the Bible. I've tried to stay in line and I'm still feeling lost. I'm still feeling meaningless. Is this it? I raise kids and then they leave me and they mooch off me and they don't, is this it? And there's this moment where we can all say we've thought of that. So let's go to the sod level. Why is this in the Bible? Well, let's go back to what the Bible says, creation, separation, redemption, unity, eternal destiny. Let's focus on that eternal destiny. My friend Amos was talking about the earth and he used this expression that the earth is a womb. Just as a child is formed in a mother's womb for 40 weeks, the child gets comfortable, develops, forms, gets prepared and then is born. And when the child is leaving the world, the realm of the womb and entering into this bigger expanse, the child is crying. And everybody else on the other side is celebrating. The earth is a womb. Here we are, being formed and developed, pruned and prepared. We go through fire, we go through trial. There's ups and there's downs and then we die and everyone cries. But as we're born into this new realm, this bigger expanse, this eternal place, there's cheering on the other side, we're not meant to live for a hundred years. And that's the point. If we were meant to live for a hundred years and our life literally ended with our bodies being frail, our money being gone, that would be the worst thing ever. We're not meant for a hundred years. So the fact that there's disappointment at the end of this book, that a hundred years is not satisfying, is actually very hopeful. Because we were meant for eternal destiny to co-rule and co-rain with Jesus. And we need this time on this earth to learn the wisdom, to learn stewardship and to be pruned and prepared so we can be that unblemished bride. So your things are creation, separation, redemption, unity, and eternal, into eternal destiny. I think many of us will say after unity, it would be comfort, or security, or success. We're relaxation. Relaxation. Yeah. But you're saying that we don't retire to have the golden years, so to speak, but our life on earth, however long it is, is forty weeks in a womb for an eternity in heaven. Correct. Now when you see a life that way, it's not meaningless. It's all part of the development to get us ready to be born again. Wow. I feel like Nicodemus hanging out with Jesus today and getting the insights into that. So there's a ton more we could go into, well, all these, we're covering three books in one podcast. Can I say really quickly? Yeah. The book ends the same as Proverbs. Yeah. Okay. How's it? Fear the Lord and follow the instruction of God. So they had the same conclusion. Once again, fear the Lord and have followed his instruction. Good wisdom. I mean, of course, he was the wisest man ever on earth, Solomon, so he's writing these things down as a man and as an old man. And then the third and final book, we're going to just take a, just a, just touch it. We're getting a teaspoon full today out of these is the song of song, sometimes called the song of Solomon. And this was written most likely when he was much younger. Not only did Solomon have great wisdom, not only did he have great wealth, but he had a great number of women in his life. I'm assuming he was attractive, but he certainly had money and he had fame and he had power and it attracted lots and lots and lots of women to him. And so combined, there's like a thousand wives and concubines and all these things. It's a number that we can't even comprehend. He writes this down as an expression of a younger man on the surface looking at romantic love, but you would say that it's about more than that because of the wisdom downloaded to him from God. This story is about much more than a young man in pursuit of a young woman. It's about much more than that. What's it about? Yeah, I would love to tell you the story of the song of songs. I see it as a musical. The song of all songs. So all the songs ever written, this is the most beautiful song that you've written a lot of songs. I've written a lot of songs. A lot of songs. I love to write songs. I love to write songs. You've touched a lot of those songs that come out through that. And the ones that you hear are just a fraction of the ones we've tried to write. Right. Okay. We've written a lot of songs. A lot of songs have gone down in time as timeless. This is the song of all songs. Song of songs. Okay. It's a musical. I love to see it like a Broadway show. Let me tell you the story. Great. And it's between one man and one woman. Yes, he had 700 wives and concubines. This is one. This is one. And very clear that it is one. So we have this man, this son, is it sound familiar already from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes? We have this son, his name is Solomon, and we have a main character woman and her name is the Shulamite. The Shulamite is the female version of Solomon, like Michael and Michaela. So we have this woman that's actually named very similar to the man, which is, I mean, kind of already showing me we made in the image of Jesus. It's pretty cool. So we have this main character man, Solomon, this main character woman, Shulamite. It starts off in bliss. In fact, it starts like this, "Let him kiss me with the kiss divine." This is creation. The first thing God does after creating Adam is he breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. It starts with a divine kiss, a transference of breath, which causes the spirit to wake up. And he begins to immediately speak her purpose and her destiny and her identity. He says, "You are lovely." And he begins to speak into her what she's meant to be, just like in the Garden of Eden. And her response, you would think it would be, "Is she gushy?" Her response is this, "No, I am dark." Don't look at me. I am dark. I am sinful. I'm shameful. In fact, don't even come near me. She sends him away, and in a couple of chapters we see that he comes leaping over mountains of separation. Here we go. There's this separation that she's sent him away, creation, separation. Now he's leaping over mountains of separation, and he calls to her, "Come. Come to the vineyards. Come to the vineyards and produce fruit with me." Does this sound already like what we've talked about? Yes. But she's not ready. So she denies the engagement. She denies the proposal. She's not fully developed yet. She's not ready to be born. She's 20 weeks in the womb. She's not ready. She's not pruned, and she hasn't been redeemed and delivered. She still believes the lies, and so she says, "No, go ahead without me." And then she feels the veil of separation. And she cries out in her bed for the son, the man that she loves. Not her son, but the son, the man that she loves. And she begins to search everywhere for him. She goes into the city, and she says, "Have you seen the one I love?" She goes into the church, and she says, "Have you seen the one I love?" And when she finds him, he embraces her. He doesn't reject her, just like that prodigal father embraces her, speaks identity, truth redeems her, marries her, unifying her, and then the last two chapters gives her her assignment to co-rule and co-rain, to tend not only the vineyard within, but to tend the vineyard of others to produce fruit of ministry and sends her out to evangelize, and it ends with them co-ruling and reigning together, her now fully redeemed and believing it, and the fruit of their ministry. It's our story. It's the story of the Bible, and it is the most beautiful, musical song of all songs, this person who thought, "Don't even look at me," being set up to co-rule and co-rain with Jesus. So, what's the upshot of that for us today? We are the church, the family of God. We are the bride. What's the application for people who are followers of Jesus today as you see yourself in this story? I think the bride is trying to do what we do in the western world. Get smarter, gain education, try to be independent, successfully serve, but our training is not the training of this world. Your training involves, first of all, receiving the love of God. So, last one of God is receiving his love. It's not Genesis chapter 1. A lot of times we look at the Bible as a textbook to get me smarter and to get me ready, but it is so much more that it's not just the best-selling book. It's not like of all the books that have ever been written, this is the best seller, and so we're going to take as much info from this. It is, but what it actually is, it's manna. Manna in the Old Testament, when they said, "What is it?" They called it manna, which means mystery. What is it? This book is not just intellectual head knowledge to be studied, understood, so that we're smart. The bride of Christ, to get trained for eternity and ruling and reigning with Christ, needs to move past the head knowledge only and needs to eat of the manna, the mystery, eating proverbs, eating ecclesiastes, consuming song of songs, not just learning the information, but receiving it and being transformed by it. The church, the bride of Christ, is meant to be transformed. We are meant to be lookalikes of Christ, Christians, little Christ's. We're meant to be lookalikes of Jesus, because we're about to become unified with Him, and then we will be eternally destined to rule with Him. So we need to become completely transformed into His image. So what's the church need to do? Yes, sharpen the mind and apply the wisdom and gain understanding and knowledge. All of these things are part of the Seventh Old Spirit of God, Isaiah 11, Spirit of Wisdom, counsel, might, power, understanding, knowledge, fear of the Lord. We need all those things, but what we actually need is to be transformed by the love of Jesus. And so I love these books because they offer philosophy and wisdom and song, but they're actually presenting to us the life of the transformed bride of Christ. But beyond the phenomenal, I mean, they're a week ago forever, I think, and maybe chapter by chapter into all of these writings. Well, the sod is a very deep place. In fact, you probably can't get to the bottom of the sod. I try to dig a hole in China when I was a kid. It's even farther than digging a hole in China. It is. Yeah. So we won't be satisfied. Down about eight inches with his mom's spoon that she stirred soup with. Well, sorry, mom. We apologize. You know, so yeah, there's a lot there and it's so deep. We would hope and encourage everyone to, but I heard so many people say, I don't really need to read the Old Testament. It doesn't apply anymore. I don't really need to worry about the book of Romans or other things in the New Testament because it doesn't apply anymore. I can filter through the gospels. I'm not culturally there. I don't live in Rome. Exactly. And it's like it misses so much of the depth of what God wants to teach us. And I thank you for bringing that to us today. So well, that will wrap our time up. I wish we had a zillion more hours to be able to do this. Well, we're trying to cover three books in a few minutes. It's pretty rapid fire. Yeah. It's okay. But like the listener, you know, that's what you need to do is to be a reader and a learner and a grower and a lover. It's a sumer. Yeah. Of what God is saying to you and just feast on what the Lord has, which is really, really good. Well, next week, we're going to take a look at the end of Solomon's time and his death that resulted in the kingdom being divided, the Civil War, north and south, and the two nations that would ultimately result in the rest of the New Testament being written out in the demise of those two nations. So the story gets harder from here or not. They didn't listen to this, their own wisdom. In fact, Solomon didn't listen to his own wisdom and we'll take a, we'll be taking a look at that throughout the podcast and the sermons that are part of this folks. If you want to jump in deeper, we encourage you to go to our church's website, fishersumc.org and click on the be God's light link and that will take you to more info related to all of these things we're doing from the daily vibrating devotions and poems to the weekly sermons and other episodes of this podcast. Thanks for listening today and until next time, have a great week, great time with the Lord, grow deeply into Him and may God bless. (gentle music)
Mark Ellcessor and his daughter Joy Ellcessor talk about King Solomon's God-given gifts, including his great wisdom.