Today's reading is from 2 Chronicles 9, verses 1 to 9 and verse 12.
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 that 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 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 people must be.
How happy your officials who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom.
Praise be to the Lord your God, who is 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. King Solomon gave 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. The word of the Lord.
Hey, I'm going to start by asking you a question and here's the question. Who is
the smartest person that you know? Would you take just 20 seconds, turn to the
person beside you, answer this question. Who is the smartest person you know? Go.
Okay, okay. Now I have another question for you. I want you to answer this one.
Not who is the smartest person you know, but who is the wisest person that you
know? Okay. Now again, take 20 seconds and tell that to the person beside you.
I'm not hearing a great deal of chit chat about this, but I'm going to assume
you've come up to answer these questions. Let me ask you this question. How many
of you was the smartest person the same as the wisest person? Just a show of
hands. Yeah, see, hardly any. It's hardly any, which actually proves something
really important and that is that we understand that there is a difference
between being really smart and being really wise. And that's the difference
between being really wise. If you were to ask me the question of who's the
smartest person I know, I'd probably say someone like my brother John, my
younger brother John, which is a hard pill for me to swallow because when I
was growing up, I was always a couple years older than him, always a couple
steps ahead of him, always a couple grades ahead of him. I could win every
argument. I was just smarter. I knew more, but then he started reading books and I
never read books, right? And so he slowly started to get smarter and smarter and
I did and pretty soon I realized, oh my goodness, I cannot argue this guy
anymore. He's smarter than me and it's true, he is smarter than me. He went off
to become an engineer and to this day, he's one of the smartest people that I
know. Now, one of the wisest people I know, that'd be something probably a
little different. My brother's name is John, but there's another guy named John
who was a professor at the seminary that I went to. And when I met him, I
found that he seemed like a wise fellow, but over the years we continued to meet,
we continued to chat and have these check-ins. In some ways, he became like an
unofficial mentor to me throughout the years. And the thing about him that I
found was that not only had he been through more of life than me and
kind of experienced more things and just had been like a step ahead of me in
life, but he had this deep appreciation for the scriptures and for his faith
that kind of impacted pretty much all that he did in his life. And so, I really
got a sense from him whenever I sat down and talked to him that there was wisdom
there, that there was wisdom behind his words. Not only that, but he had this
wonderful Welsh accent that makes everything that he says sounds like
wisdom. So, my point is this though, there is a big difference between being smart
and being wise. They're not the same thing. Now, if I asked you this question,
if you could choose between being wise or being smart, which one would you pick?
How many of you would choose to be smart? How many of you would choose to be wise?
Ah, you see, that's the thing. We all know that wisdom is so important because
wisdom is the thing that helps us make right decisions when we need to make
them to help us choose the right course of action. And there's so many times in
life where we need help making the right decisions. Let's say, for example, you're
a parent and you're here today. You need wisdom. You need wisdom to figure out,
you know, how to raise kids, you know, when do you put them to bed, what do you
feed them, how much screen time should they have, how do you discipline them?
You need wisdom. Or let's say you're married, you're in a relationship, you
need wisdom in a relationship. How do you treat each other? How do you forgive
each other? How do you solve problems together in a marriage or in a
relationship? You need wisdom. We need wisdom when it comes to our careers in
your workplace. You need wisdom to know, you know, do we sign the contract or not?
Do we hire this person or not? Do we fire this person or not? There's a lot of
wisdom needed there. Financially, we need wisdom. How much money should we be
saving? How much should we be spending and giving and investing and so on and so
forth? People need wisdom. People go looking for wisdom. Sometimes, though,
when they go looking for wisdom, they actually come across other things that
aren't exactly wisdom, although they look like wisdom. So, for example, one thing
that we sometimes confuse wisdom for is information, right? We think that maybe if
we just get enough smarts, we get enough degrees that we'll become wise. We go to
university and there is a connection, I think, between the information in our
heads and the wisdom in our lives, but they're not the same thing. Secondly,
sometimes we mistake wisdom for imitation. So we find someone or we get to
know somebody who's wise and we say, I'm going to do what they do and I'm going
to act like they act and therefore I will also be wiser. And I think there's
some truth to that. Really important to have mentors in your life, but it's not
the same thing as wisdom. And then thirdly, there's an old saying that says
with experience comes wisdom or with age comes wisdom. And that is certainly true
to a point, but it does not guarantee that you're going to be wiser just
because you're getting older or having more experience. So what is wisdom and
how do we get it? Today I want to suggest to you that the secret to wisdom is
found no further than your household coffee maker. I have a love affair with
coffee. I measure my life in scoops of coffee. There's every cup of coffee I
have is just a big hug in a mug, I think. And you know, I know they say you can't
buy happiness, but you can buy a coffee, right? And coffee is both the next best
thing to happiness. So this is a good old-fashioned drip coffee maker. Now I
know some of you make coffee and you've got fancy schmancy tessimo or an espresso
machines and those are good, nothing against those. Or some of you have like
the hand crafting, you know, the delonghi, you know, all the steam and the
pressure and you like to make your own cappuccino at home, that's cool too.
Or some of you are like the purists of coffee and so you have one of those
Chem-X kind of brewing systems where you carefully pour just the right amount of
water over just the right amount of grains and that's all good too. But
today I want to talk to you about the workhorse of the coffee industry, the
good old-fashioned percolator, the drip coffee maker. I think it probably goes
without saying we all know how one of these works, but let's just say, you know,
that you've been hiding under a rock for the last 200 years and you don't know.
What you do is inside your drip coffee maker you've got a basket and inside the
basket there is a filter, that's right, there's a filter and what you're going to
do is you're going to take some coffee grounds, I stole these from Liz Leek's
personal supply in the office, and you pour some of those coffee grounds into
the filter, perfect, and then after that you're going to take water, good
old-fashioned tap water, and you pour it into the coffee reservoir, then you're
going to simply just close the lid, hit the start button, and if this were plugged
in you would start to hear this gurgling noise, this beautiful, beautiful
noise, and here's why, here's what's happening. Oh, better get the pot under
there, because the coffee machine is heating up the water in the reservoir,
pushing it up through a little pipe that then sprinkles it out, drip, drip, drip,
drip, over top of the basket, over top of the filter containing the coffee, and
that water is about to be magically transformed into something just like
liquid gold, what happens is that water as it drips and sifts and percolates and
soaks through the coffee, it picks up the color of the coffee, it picks up the
aroma of the coffee, and most importantly it picks up the flavor of the coffee,
and eventually you start to see this tap, tap, drip, drip, tap, tap, the coffee now
is coming back into the caraf, into the pot, you can smell it, you can see it, it
is a sight to behold, ladies and gentlemen. Now that is not a bad picture
of wisdom, by the way, because how do we get wisdom? Well, wisdom is brewed in us
in kind of a similar way, whenever we take our decisions, whenever we take our
ideas, whenever we take our lives, our lives, and we filter them through God's
truth, when we filter them through a life lived with God, whenever we take our
whole lives and we filter them through God, we pick up the flavor, we pick up
the aroma, we pick up God's wisdom as part of that percolating process, if we
are the water, then God's truth is the coffee, and wisdom occurs the more we
pour ourselves through God's truth, the more we pour our life through God's life,
then slowly drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, guess what happens? Wisdom starts to be
brewing and forming in us. Now this isn't something, I'm not making this up, you
might say, oh, that's a great analogy, but the Bible has been telling us this for
thousands of years, for the Lord God gives wisdom from his mouth, God's word
is where we find wisdom, and that's where knowledge comes from and
understanding comes from, and the more that you can soak your life in God's
word, the wiser you're going to be. Or how about this one from Psalm 19, that
the law of the Lord, you can read scriptures there, the scriptures of the
Lord are perfect, they revive the soul, the testimony of the Lord sure makes
wise the simple. So even if you would call yourself an uneducated person, or
you're not an intellectual type of person, or you might even call
yourself a simple person, you too can be made wise by soaking yourself, by
filtering your life through God's truth. Now, when we talk about the Bible, when
we talk about wisdom, we have got to talk about this guy, this is Solomon.
Solomon was the third king of Israel, he was the son of David and Bathsheba, and
he lived about 1000 BC, and he was an amazing king for the most part. He
actually presided over Israel during a time of great prosperity, a time of great
expansion, a time where there's a lot of great building projects going on, but
Solomon, when Solomon first became king, he was aware, he did not know what he
was doing. And so he says, he prays this prayer to God, he says, God, I am like
just a little child here, I do not know how to carry out these duties. So give
me a wise and discerning heart to govern your people and distinguish between
what is right and what is wrong. And God was so pleased with Solomon's request
here, that God says, I will do what you have asked. Yeah, I will give you a wise
and discerning heart so there will never have been anyone like you, nor will
there ever be. And ever since, Solomon became known as the wisest person, maybe
the wisest person in the Bible, the wisest person ever. But how did it work?
How did Solomon get so wise? Did God just like download a whole bunch of
information into Solomon's head in that moment, and then he just knew everything?
No, no, that's not how it works. I think this is how it worked. Instead of filling
Solomon's mind, what God did is he changed Solomon's heart. He gave Solomon
a love for God and a deep love for God's word, which meant that from then on, as
Solomon went through life, whenever he was faced with a problem, whenever he had
a decision to make, he would take that decision, take that problem, and he would
soak it through God's law, he would soak it through God's word, he would let it
percolate and steep in God's truth and in who God was. So much so that when
Solomon made his decisions, they had picked up the aroma, they had picked up
the flavor, and they had picked up the color of God's wisdom. So that when
Solomon made these decisions, the whole world looked and said, wow, how
incredibly wise is that? But it wasn't magic. He was just soaking his life in
the life of God and picking up that wisdom, which God has for all of us.
That's my point here today, is this is, there's nothing magical about this.
Solomon just loved to study the Scriptures. He loved to dwell in God's
presence, and that's what made him wise. For example, in one of the most
important speeches that Solomon ever made, he said this, he said, let's turn
our hearts to God and walk in obedience to him and keep the commands, decrees,
and laws that he gave our ancestors. Let's be fully committed. Let's fully
steep, fully brew ourselves in God's presence and live by his decrees and
commands. You see, this was the high point of Solomon's wisdom. It was all
because he was constantly bringing his life into contact with God's truth and
God's life. And it's interesting to say that toward the end of his life and
toward the end of his reign, Solomon stopped doing this. He stopped turning to
God. He walked away from God. He turned his back on the word of God, and as a
result, he faced all sorts of consequences and made bad decisions that
affected him spiritually, that affected the whole nation. But the point has been
made. Point has been made. Solomon shows us the secret of brewing wisdom. You
take your life. You take your life and you just let that soak in God's truth
until your heart gets changed, until your mind gets changed, until you get
changed. And you too pick up the aroma and the color and the flavor of God's
wisdom, and people will look to you and say, yeah, that person's got a lot of
wisdom. You know, what they just said was pretty wise. It's something that each and
every one of us can learn to do just by learning how to brew our lives and
filter our lives through God's word. The trouble is many of us do not do this.
Many of us instead, when it comes to making decisions in our lives, we don't
filter our life through God's word and God's truth. We filter it through
other things. Can you imagine, for example, if instead of putting coffee
into this filter, I put something like salt in there or cheese curds, or what
if I put raw ground beef in there and I close it up and I hit brew? I'll tell
you, something would come out. Something would come out of there. I wouldn't want
to drink it. It would probably kill you if you drank it. The same is true of
wisdom. Many of us, when we go about our lives, we make decisions. And the thing
that we're filtering our decisions through is not God's truth. It's something
else, you know, the many cultural influences that are out there. We say,
those are the things I'm going to allow me to make the decisions in my life,
right? Or we turn to a celebrity or to an influencer and we say, that person is
going to help me make the best decisions in my life. Or we turn to some political
party or political ideology, conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat,
and we say, I'm with them. Whatever they say is how I'm going to make my decisions
in my life. Or maybe we just go with our heart. We go with our gut. However I'm
feeling in the moment, that is going to be the thing that helps me make the
decisions in my life. But that is not what wise people do. That is not what
Solomon did. That once only when we consistently filter our decisions and
our experiences and thoughts through the truth of God's word, that we start to
brew up something truly special, rich and full-bodied wisdom of our own. I want to
show you a little story. We just read it about how that aroma of God's wisdom
followed Solomon wherever he went. The story starts telling us that the queen
of Sheba had heard about Solomon's fame. And I think you could read there, heard
about Solomon's wisdom. Now Sheba was located kind of at the southern part of
the Nile region in Egypt. And it's interesting to note that during Solomon's
reign, because he was such a successful king for the period of time, Israel had
actually developed a fleet of ships. And those ships would go around the
surrounding world there and trade. And these ships would go for years at a
time and come back. Which is interesting because Israel never really had a strong
presence on the seas and on the waterways, but under Solomon they did. And
apparently what had happened is these boats had made their ways up to Sheba.
And then rumor of Solomon's wisdom began to spread among the people of Sheba. And
the queen of Sheba heard about Solomon's wisdom and she said, I got to get down
there. I got to see what that's all about. I got to go check it out. Now a lot of
people think actually what she wanted to do was come down and check him out. Right?
There is some evidence that maybe the queen of Sheba and Solomon had a little
thing going on, a little romantic intrigue to the story. There's even rumors
out there that they may have even had a child together. You're gonna have to go
home and Google that for yourself. I'm not gonna spoil all that intrigue for
you. But what's important is this, is that the queen of Sheba came with all these
questions to test Solomon and what she found was that nothing was too hard for
him to explain. In fact, when she saw Solomon's wisdom, we are told that she
was overwhelmed. Now the Hebrew word for overwhelmed there can actually also mean
fainted. Right? So what some people think that actually this is where the romance
come from, that she actually swooned, swooned over Solomon's wisdom. Oh
Solomon, you're so wise. I can barely stay awake. Oh catch me, catch me as I'm
falling. Right? Was that what was going on? Maybe. Who knows? Who knows? But this is
what we know for sure, that the wisest person that she ever knew was totally
eye-opening for her. Now the thing is she understood that Solomon's wisdom was
different than other wisdom she had seen before. Yes, Solomon had been places and
experienced things and he had picked up things in his travels and learned lots
of information. But she says, no, no. The report I heard about your wisdom is true.
She says, praise be to the Lord your God. She was not a follower of Solomon's God.
She did not know Yahweh and yet she knew in that moment there's something
different about this guy's wisdom. His wisdom is coming from the Lord his God. I
know his secret now. Right? He is filtering his life and his decisions
through this God of his and that is what is making him wise. It wasn't magic. Even
Solomon would would go on to tell the secret of his wisdom. He would say the
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And that again means we too can
access this wisdom in our own lives. We face decisions. We too need to filter
that through who God's revealed himself to be. I want to share with you one story
of how Solomon did this and I'll try to go quick because I know I don't want to
go too long here but but there was this one instance when these two ladies came
to Solomon and they had a great big problem. You see one there was one baby
between them and they were fighting over whose baby this was. Apparently what had
happened these two women were living in the same house and they both had babies
and one of the babies died. I think maybe it died in the night and this
suspicion was that actually one of the mothers got up and switched the babies
when she realized that her baby had died but who knows whether that was true.
Anyways both women came in and were like this is my baby and the other woman was
like no this is my baby and they brought it to Solomon. They said Solomon you're
so wise you're gonna have to figure this one out. Whose baby is it? Now Solomon he
takes one look at the situation and he says okay I know how to figure out who
the mother is. Cut the child in half and that way each of you can have part of
them. Now you might say what the heck that does not sound like wisdom at all
that sounds like barbarism but of course Solomon was never gonna cut the child in
half instead what he was doing was something incredibly wise. You see he knew
he knew that one of these women would represent the heart and love of God. You
see because Solomon had spent so much time in God's presence in God's word he
knew that God as a parent as God as a father would do anything for his
children. He would sacrifice anything for his kids and he knew that one of these
women would do the same. The true mother would do the same because that's what
sacrificial love looks like. He learned that in his study of the scriptures and
in the study of God's life. Now he knew that one of these women was going to be
willing to sacrifice in the same way that God gave himself and sacrificed for
his own people and that's exactly what happens. He makes this proposition and
and the lady who represents the truth the lady who represents the way God
works she is willing to give that child up in order to save that child's life.
Please don't kill my son. The baby's mother screamed your majesty I love him
very much but give him to her just don't kill him. Love. He learned about God's
love he learned about the love of a parent and that enabled him to say this
is the child's mother the one who loved with such a sacrificial love give the
baby to her. We stand in awe of that but there's nothing magical about it. It just
came through his deep percolation in the life and word of God. If you don't do
that you don't gain wisdom instead you become what the Bible calls a fool.
Alright the wise heart yes receives God's commandments but a babbling fool
will come to ruin or Solomon said elsewhere he said respect and obey the
Lord this is the beginning of wisdom but a fool rejects such knowledge. So as we
head out of this place today and we go about seeking wisdom for all the things
in our own lives I want to just give you a few warnings. Watch out for types of
wisdom that actually aren't the real thing or what I want to call you call
some poor substitutes for wisdom or some bad Java bad cuppa that looks like
wisdom but it isn't wisdom. Let me let me give you an example let's say you wake
up in the morning you're excited for your morning coffee and you go and it
looks really good and you pour yourself a cup of it and then you you put it to
your mouth and you take one sip and you're like oh my gosh that is horrible
it is bitter it is bad. I'm gonna tell you so much of the wisdom that the world
is offering it looks really good it appears from the outside to be wisdom
but it is bad and it is bitter it's compromised so many of the sources of
wisdom in our world are just cultural influences and misinformation it'll
leave a bad taste in your mouth if you follow those sources of wisdom and it
won't guide you in the right direction so watch out for bitter coffee also be
on your guard against really expensive coffee right if you there are some
restaurants here in streetsville that you can spend eight dollars on getting a
very top-notch cup of coffee with a real hefty price tag and you'll probably then
taste it afterwards and say yeah it's good coffee but but I think that you
know I don't know what all the fuss was about I want to say don't be fooled by
wisdom that is all dressed up with eloquence and snobbery and is like
arrogant and say oh you can't possibly know anything you're uneducated or you
don't have nearly as many degrees as I do so you can't possibly have the
wisdom that I have don't believe it don't believe it wisdom is not expensive
like that it is available for everyone is simply found by dwelling in God's
truth beware of expensive coffee also beware of weak coffee some people do
read the Bible to find God's wisdom but what happens is then once they get out
into the world they actually feel the pressure of the people around them and
they kind of water down that wisdom or they're they're nervous or what other
people would say if they made that decision and so they water it down and
pretty soon that potent cup of coffee has become so watered down and weak and
diluted you're trying to please so many people that it's actually not strong
enough anymore to make a real difference in your life so watch out for weak coffee
watch out for old coffee we've all had this situation where that coffee is
sitting there in the coffee machine all day long and we think I might still be
good and you go and you pour yourself a cup but nah it's cold and it's nasty and
it's like stale just like old coffee sometimes we rely on old methods oh
I've always done it this way before a mom and dad used to do it that way and
sometimes we think that the old ways are the wise ways sometimes that's true but
that's not always true instead wisdom like good coffee needs to be fresh we
can't just reheat old ideas over and over again expect them to be effective
we we need to continually seek new understanding and new wisdom from God
and from God's Word and from God's Spirit as we go through our lives as we
apply it to our lives so be aware of the old coffee it's got to be fresh wisdom
and finally instant coffee let's be honest yes it's quick and it's convenient
and it'll do in a pinch but it is never as satisfying as a freshly brewed cup I
want to say that there's a lot of wisdom out there that is quick fix wisdom you
know read this and it'll answer your question and a lot of this quick fix
wisdom and advice is just it's made without deep reflection on God's Word at
all we reach for easy answers no depth no richness to the wisdom that we can get
if we would just brew wisdom over time by abiding in God's Word true wisdom
requires patience requires a willingness to let God's Word percolate in your life
over time that's why some of the wisest people out there are the oldest they
just had more time to grow in wisdom but but just because you're old doesn't mean
you're wise and just because you're young doesn't mean you're a fool what
matters most of all is are you bringing your life into contact with God's life
and God's Word we actually if we do this right could possibly become even wiser
than Solomon sounds like a shocking statement but the truth is we actually
have access to a source of wisdom that Solomon never had and that is Jesus
Christ you see Solomon he filtered his life through the commands of God and
through the Word of God that he had the laws of God but we can filter our life
through that plus the life and teachings of Jesus Christ Jesus who was the
ultimate and final revelation of who God is Jesus shows us how to live Jesus
shows us how to love and if I follow me Jesus we can make wise decisions beyond
compare in fact Jesus once said everyone who hears my words and puts them into
practice that is a wise person that is a wise man who builds his house on rock
see we've got the full story we've got the full story of God's love revealed to
us in Jesus Christ and that gives us the opportunity to be even wiser than
Solomon so you want to brew up some wisdom tell you what read your Bible day
by day by day you know what will happen drip drip drip slowly you will pick up
the flavor and the color and the aroma of who God is you want to grow in wisdom
then develop a prayer life with God day by day drip drip drip and slowly over
time you will draw close to God and you will start to to think and and love like
a god love you'll be changed by God you want to develop wisdom in your life then
then come and worship at church Sunday by Sunday or day by day and drip drip
drip you will grow in love with God and you will grasp more and more of who God
is drip by drip you'll become a wise person someone who can make wise
decisions so let's leave here today and let's start the brewing process today
about running our lives through God's life it's a beautiful thing a beautiful
cup of wisdom awaits thank be to God amen