We're watching pastors now fall like dead flies all over the country right now, teaching others the principles of God, which somehow they have deceived themselves into thinking don't apply to them.
It's amazing. Convince themselves of what they're teaching others doesn't apply to themselves. And we hope to make this your place each week for a powerful insight from God's Word. Now, let's join Carter with today's message. James 1, beginning at verse 5. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally, that means generously and without reproach. Actually, you look in the original text and it means without looking for reasons not to give it, not to answer that cry of the heart, not fault finding.
That's another way of looking at it. He gives liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting. For he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For let that man suppose he'll receive anything from the Lord.
He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. God takes this so seriously that he's actually offended if we don't believe that he wants to give us wisdom. He said, if you ask for wisdom and you don't believe that I want to give it to you, I'm not going to give it to you. Because it's so in my heart and I've told you that if you ask for wisdom, I will give it to you and I will give it to you freely, generously. I will not look for reasons why I shouldn't give it to you. The only reason why you will be denied wisdom is that you don't believe I want to give it to you.
Isn't that amazing promise? I think we prove we're foolish if we fail to ask for wisdom. God, I don't want to just learn your word, which is good in itself, but I want the wisdom that comes with the word of God.
I want to be able to apply it to every area of my life and my future. It's one of the great promises of the Bible, but we should ask for wisdom with an understanding of what transpired when somebody asked for God for this before us and it was given to him. I want to look at the life of Solomon just for a moment in the book of 1 Kings chapter 3, an amazing moment in history. This young man has been called to rule and reign and he's just finished offering a thousand sacrifices on the altar. He's seen God's glory come down in a much greater measure most likely than we've experienced a measure of his glory today in worship, there's no doubt.
The glory came so powerfully in the temple that nobody could even stand in the presence of God. And at Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night or a vision and God said, ask what shall I give you? What do you want Solomon?
Ask me for anything and I'll give it to you. And Solomon said, you've shown great mercy to your servant David my father because he walked before you in truth, in righteousness and uprightness of heart. So he knew something about his father. Now his father was not perfect when you know the history.
He made mistakes but it didn't change the fact that he could be challenged by truth. He would return to a living relationship with God his father and he had an honest heart before God. And he says, you've continued this great kindness for him and you've given him a son to sit on his throne as it is this day. Now Lord God, you've made your servant king instead of my father David but I'm a little child.
I do not know how to go out or come in. In other words, you've placed me in a position but God, I'm not sure of how to do this. Have you ever felt that way in your life? You felt called to do something maybe in the kingdom of God or called to be somebody that you're not yet.
Called to be a different kind of a person than the person you have been before coming to Christ and you do cry out to God saying, God, I feel like a child. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to love people. I don't know how to forgive my enemies. I don't know how to be the husband or the wife that I should be. I don't know how to be a father the way I should or a mother the way I should. God, I just don't know how to do this.
I feel like a child. And I'm in the midst of your people whom you've chosen, a great people too numerous to be numbered or counted. Therefore, give to your servant an understanding heart to judge your people that I may discern between good and evil for who is able to judge this great people of yours. Solomon asked God for wisdom. It was a wonderful thing for him to do and then the Lord came to Solomon and he gave him a wisdom that he told him and it stands to this day. There'll never be other than Jesus Christ himself.
There'll never be another person in the world that will measure up to the wisdom I'm about to give you. As a matter of fact, he became so wise that people were afraid of him. The people of Israel, it says in verse 28 of chapter 3, it says, And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had rendered, and they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice. So he could know what was truth and what was a lie in others. Two women approached him and there was a child that was alive and a child that had passed away.
And both claimed that the living child was theirs and the child that had passed away belonged to the other one. And Solomon, the way he executed judgment in this situation, it really did cause a fear to erupt in the hearts of all those who had seen how God had made him so incredibly wise. He was given this ability to judge what was right and what was wrong in the lives of other people that were under his leadership. Now we fast forward from this all the way to the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 2 and verse 3. And Solomon, at the end of his days, deviated in a sense. There's never been a greater wisdom than was given to this man. But at the end of his days, he's listless, he's disillusioned, and he's drifted shockingly away from God and the calling that was on his life. Verse 3 says, I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine.
Could you imagine? This man has given more wisdom than anybody in the history of the world has ever had. He has been given the guardianship in a sense of the testimony, the actual physical testimony of God on the earth at that time. He's given the guardianship of that place and of the house and of the temple and of the sacrifice. And he's supposed to be the wisest man and was that has ever lived, but he starts drinking. Isn't that amazing?
Looking for happiness. I've often said it this way. He left the answer to pursue the question. He said, I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine while guiding my heart with wisdom. I find it ironic that one of the biggest questions in the Pentecostal Church and Charismatic Church today is about this issue of drinking wine among God's people. But this is the point where Solomon began to backslide. The very first thing he did is started drinking alcohol, and he didn't think it was going to lead him to building heathen temples, but it did in the long run. I sought to lay hold on folly.
In other words, I just went out and I decided I'm going to just start living life and having a good time until I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives. Verse 15, he said, So I said in my heart, as it happened to the fool, it also happens to me. So why was I then more wise than I said in my heart?
This also is vanity. So he comes to the point of saying that wisdom is pointless. There's no real point to having wisdom if I end up just as the fool does.
In verse 17 of chapter 2, he says, Therefore I hated life because the work that was done under the sun was distressing to me, for all is vanity or empty or grasping for the wind. Isn't it sad? How did this happen to this man? How do you start out with such wisdom?
People are coming from around the world just to hear you speak. That's what happened with Solomon. The queen of Sheba came with a huge entourage with questions, and the Bible says he told her all the answers to all of her questions, and she was so aghast at the wisdom this man had.
The scripture says there was no more breath left in her. He was given a mind and an understanding of things and the ability to judge, given him of God. But you see, what happened to him?
How did he drift so far from his calling? Well, the clue is in 1 Kings chapter 3 and verse 9, where he says, Therefore give to your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to judge this great people of yours? Here's the point. He asked for wisdom to judge between good and evil in others, not in himself.
That's the point. You see, and that's the human tendency, I suppose, in a lot of God's people. It could be in all of us, where we're getting this learning, we're discerning what's right and what's wrong, and we can discern everybody, but we can't discern ourselves. We fail to understand that the true measure of wisdom is in being able to discern the motives of my own heart. Listen to some of the things that Solomon told the people around him. In the book of Proverbs chapter 2 verses 16 to 19, he told the people to beware of the seductions of this world. He says, To deliver you from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. For her house leads down to death, and her paths to the dead, and none who go to her return, nor do they regain the paths of life. Now this is Solomon's instruction to other people, but when you look at his own life, later on in 1 Kings chapter 11, it says, Solomon loved many foreign women, the daughters of Pharaoh, women of the Mobites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites, from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you, and surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.
Solomon clung to these in love. Now he's warning others not to do this in the book of Proverbs. He's writing it all down for the sake of others, but he himself is not obeying what he's writing. He has this wisdom, but it's all for others.
It's not for himself. He had 700 wives. That proves he didn't have any... I was leading a men's Bible study one time, and I read this scripture, and an older man, he just sighed, and he shook his head, and he said, Only a fool would want more than one wife. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and his wives turned away his heart. But isn't that what he wrote in Proverbs? To deliver you from the seductress who flatters and forgets the coming of her God.
Her house leads down to death, her past to the dead, and none who go to her return again, nor do they find the pass of life. And so it was, 1 Kings 11, 4, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned his heart after other gods. His heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, and as was the heart of David his father. And Solomon, this is Solomon, Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom, the abomination of Milcom, the god where people would place their babies on the red hot heated hands of an idol to burn them to death. Solomon, of all people, Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not fully follow the Lord as did David his father.
And Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, on the hill that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the people of Ammon. He did the same thing, or likewise, for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. And so he was great on giving advice to others, but very poor on incorporating it into his own life. In Proverbs chapter 3 verses 5 to 7, he warns us these words. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your past. Don't be wise in your own eyes.
Fear the Lord and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh, and strength to your bones. And this is the man who wrote this, but at the end of his life wrote, All is empty, all is vanity, all is worthless, all is nothing. There's no reason why I have any wisdom in my life.
If I end up as the fool, what's the point of having wisdom? Yet he wrote all of this for you and I, and we quote this, these words that God used the hand of Solomon to write, but he himself became wise in his own eyes. He himself departed from God and moved towards evil.
He himself found himself bitter and empty and disillusioned at the end of his life. And lastly in Proverbs chapter 4 verses 5 to 13, listen to the cry, Get wisdom, he says, and there's an exclamation point that is writing, Get understanding. He tells that to you and I. Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you.
Love her, and she will keep you. We're talking about wisdom now and understanding. Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding. Exalt her and she will promote you. She will bring you to honor when you embrace her. She'll place on your head an ornament of grace and a crown of glory will she deliver to you.
Hear my son. I believe when he wrote these words, he's not writing to his own son. God is speaking to him and he's writing down what he's hearing. The Holy Spirit is speaking to Solomon saying, Hear my son and receive my sayings, and the years of your life will be many. I have taught you in the way of wisdom.
I have led you in right paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hindered, and when you run, you will not stumble. Take firm hold of instruction and do not let her go. Keep her, for she is your life.
Keep her, for she is your life. And the same man that God gave these words to and spoke these words to finished, empty, dissatisfied, sorrowful, building heathen temples, passing by the temple of God most likely on the day of worship with all his chariots and all his entourage and heading down to one of his wives' temples. The very things that God had given him in wisdom that he had written down for us to stay away from seductive relationships and be careful of the things of this world that will draw your heart away from God and learn the words and the ways of God. Apply it to your heart with diligence.
Don't lean on your own understanding. And yet he himself, you can just see the parade if you follow me in your mind's eye, just passing by the temple of God where the glory of God is behind the veil, where the sacrifice that's been decreed by God for the forgiveness of the nation and the individual people is supposed to be taking place, where people have been coming from all over the world because there was such divine order there. There was such a presence of God. It says about the Queen of Sheba when she just saw the cup bearers, the way they moved, her breath was gone.
She said, yes, I have cup bearers in my palace, in my kingdom, but not like this. Even the cup bearers are empowered by the Spirit of God and listening to this man speak in the wisdom that was in his heart. But oh God, oh God, there should be a fear of God touches your heart and touches my heart. I've been in prayer lately studying some of these things and saying, God Almighty, don't let me finish like this. Don't let me start leaning on my own understanding. Don't let me start making excuses, God, for reasons why what applies to others would not apply to me. Do you understand? We're watching pastors now fall like dead flies all over the country right now, teaching others the principles of God, which somehow they have deceived themselves into thinking don't apply to them.
It's amazing, it's amazing, and some very notable ones even in the last year who just taught the people and taught them with wisdom and taught them with authority and taught them truth, but yet somehow convinced themselves that what they're teaching others doesn't apply to themselves. Be careful. The Scripture says let everyone take heed if you think you stand lest you fall because all of us have this propensity in our hearts to somehow twist the Scriptures and convince ourselves that what applies to others doesn't apply to us. Solomon is warning people don't do this. Don't yield to these seductions of life for the society around you.
It will take away. Its path leads to death, and yet here he is in his chair going down the path to a place of death. You see, here's the point. He ended up emptied, dissatisfied, and sorrowful because in asking for wisdom, he failed to ask God for a heart to apply to himself what God would show him for the sake of others. It's really that simple.
You know, it's amazing. The Lord appeared to him twice. The first time he appears to Solomon, he says, ask for anything you want, and I'll give it to you. Today we read a Scripture that says if you don't have wisdom, ask for it, and I'll give it to you freely.
Ask for anything you want. I look back on Solomon's life, and I feel sorrowful in my heart because he asked for wisdom, but he didn't ask for a heart to follow it. And if he had asked for it, God would have given it to him.
Isn't it amazing? He said, I'll give you whatever you ask for. And what a difference it would make if Solomon said, God, I don't know how to judge your people, and so I'm asking you for wisdom to be able to adjudicate, in a sense, all the issues that are going to come before me in the nation, but, oh, God, I'm also asking you for a heart like David, my father. I'm asking you for a heart that can be moved by the truth that I teach others. I'm asking for a life and for a heart that is not just teaching other people, but I'm teachable myself. I want to obey you, God, all the days of my life. I want to finish strong.
I want to go across that finish line with my hands raised up, having lived and walked in victory. I don't want to be a bitter disillusioned old man at the end of my days. It can happen to anybody, and if we're foolish enough to think it can't happen to us, that proves that we're foolish.
It happened to the wisest man that will ever live on the face of this planet, and I would be a fool to think it couldn't happen to me, and you would be a fool to think it couldn't happen to you. We don't know what's resonant in our heart, and if we ever give up on being diligent in the study of God's word or the study of prayer or we get used to sitting at Times Square Church and Pastor Tim is just unlocking this treasure from the word of God about the Christian worldview and how to live a Christian life and how to escape toxic relationships and all these other messages that God's giving him, and we just keep piling on the knowledge. Oh, that'll preach for somebody. Oh, yeah, John needs to hear this. Oh, yeah, Alice needs to hear that message, but we're not hearing it ourselves. We're not moving away from toxic relationships. We're not putting away the seductions of the world that are going to steal our hearts from God.
We're not letting the same word that we're learning apply to us first. That's the cry of my heart. It's exactly the same as David the king in Psalm 139, verse 23, when he says, Search me, O God, and know my heart, and I pray that constantly. God, don't let me assume that what I'm doing is right.
Don't let me assume that what direction I'm going in is right or the thoughts I'm thinking are right. God, if I search myself, I'll come out smelling like a rose most of the time, and so will you. But, God, you search me. You search my heart. You try me and know my ways. Anxiety is in the New King James, but it says ways in the original King James Version. God, know the thoughts of my heart.
Search me. Search me, God, and see if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. God, don't let me assume that everything I'm doing is right. Don't let me assume that the rules that I'm teaching others don't apply to me. You know, some of the fallings in the ministry have been so glaring. You wonder how is it possible that this man or this person taught people these things and yet had such deeply embedded sin in his own life and convinced it didn't apply.
That's what makes it even doubly perplexing. How does Solomon build temples to heathen gods that are sacrificing children in the fire and somehow not know this is wrong? He doesn't know. He doesn't understand what he's doing.
How did he convince himself that this stuff is okay? No, here's what it says. The loves that he allowed into his life turned his heart when he got old. Oh, you were getting older. Beware.
Beware. When all the natural zeal is gone and you can't cover it up with ministry anymore, who Christ really is in you is going to come to the surface. Who Christ really isn't is going to come to the surface.
You see, there's a point in life when all you have left is who Jesus is in your life. And it's gonna catch everybody. I caught Solomon when he was older. There's a story of a desert lizard, okay? And the desert lizard, it walks through the desert and its tail wags left, right, left, right, left, right like this, okay? And so it covers its tracks as it's walking through the desert and the hawk can't spot it because its tail is covering its tracks. But as it gets older, its tail starts to stiffen.
It goes a little less left and a little less right and suddenly the toes appear and as it gets older, then more of the foot appears and then eventually its tail gets very stiff and then the hawk sees it and captures it. And it's a similar thing in the Christian life. As you get older, you can't cover your tracks anymore. You can't cover it with religious zeal. You can't cover it with praise the Lord's.
You can't cover it with songs. Who you are is really going to come to the surface. Be sure your sin will find you out. Be sure it will come to the surface.
Be sure that you can't get away forever with what may be hidden now. Be sure. So the point is, are you wise?
Are you wise? Thank you for joining us this week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. You can count on a powerful message each week on A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.
