God Gold and Goofs (Part C)

And this would be like an unbeliever doing the work of a church. Like an unbeliever doing what we should be doing. Maybe as an individual Christian you have come across people in the workplace that are nicer than some other Christian in the workplace. I've come across this, Christians that are either lunatics or just mean, nice ones too. And you want to say, man, what is your problem? They won't let you, they'll bite at you.

Who are you to judge me? This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of 1 Kings.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. God, Gold, and Goofs is the title of Pastor Rick's message. Today he'll be teaching in 1 Kings 9.

These two sought to further their interests mutually and they entered into this joint venture, these joint ventures, these enterprises. King Solomon then gave Hyrum 20, back up a little bit more and more in verse 11, the gold, as much as he desired. Well, Solomon is going to abandon simplicity for enterprise. The supplies that he's getting, the cedar, the cypress, the gold, they're not gifts.

It's part of their business arrangement. What King Solomon desired was four and a half tons of gold. This is to build his palace. The temple had much gold, but it was Corban.

It was dedicated to the temple and you couldn't use it on his house. So as collateral, he gives to Hyrum these 20 cities. He says, I'll give you these cities. You can yield to the produce as yours. You can tax the people. You can just get your money back from this investment. Well, of course, Hyrum's going to go look at this city and find out what kind of friend Solomon is.

This is why you have lawyers, because it deals like this. So he had, for the temple, over 3,750 tons of gold. Well, he used up a lot of it. Remember, we covered the temple. The walls were all inside.

It was cold and just everywhere. But whatever was left over, according to 1 Chronicles, that was for the temple. He wanted to alone from Hyrum, which he gets. He's got these other projects, not just his temple, as was going to be itemized. So these 10 cities that he gives him, or however many, or 20 cities that he gives him, they're really Solomon trying to pull a fast one. He's a cheapskate.

And I do think cheapskates go, there's a blindness that goes with it. My lawyer, family lawyer years ago told me, he says, you know what, we had to go to court for something, and afterward we go to get something to eat, and he says, he had to get this off his chest. He said, I got a customer. We just sold his house. He took all the light bulbs out. And the new family goes in and says, we have no light bulbs. He said, and there were a lot of them. You know, it was the law, you'd have to put a ceiling, each room had to have a ceiling light, and this was for people who couldn't afford lamps.

Anyway, he said, call that guy, get back to that house, and you put those. What was wrong with that guy? Couldn't he see how stingy he would look? You know, I got a light bulb, like Uncle Fester or something.

Anyway, just some stingy people, they just get so into the deal, the saving, they trip over a dollar reaching for a penny. Anyway, this is what Solomon was doing. It's just not good. This giving of the land, he had no right to do that. This is God's land.

The Feast of Jubilee that would come every 50 years was to ensure that the land remained with the original owners, going back to the decrees of Joshua and the priests and the leaders. In this life, I believe that you can fall away from the faith, else there'd be no need to warn so many times we come across it in the New Testament. If you want to opt out, that's your prerogative, but no one's going to snatch you out of God's hands. You will be with God as long as you want to be with God.

However, I believe when we die in Christ, there is nothing that can upset that relationship. That's eternal. That's eternal salvation. And I believe the Jubilee is sort of a type of this that says, you know, within that time frame, the land can move around. But once that feast comes, it is locked in. It goes back, and you can't upset that.

So, the tribal inheritances were permanent, ultimately permanent. Now, verse 12. I hope I communicated that okay. I'll know later when I'm driving home thinking about how I said it. Anyhow, very seldom do I say, man, I nailed that one. In fact, I don't know that I've ever done that. But I sure have said, man, why did I say it like that? Oh, they're smart.

They'll figure it out. Verse 12. Then Hyrum went from Tyre to see the cities which Solomon had given him, but they did not please him. So he said, what kind of cities are these which you've given me, my brother? And he called them the land of Cabal, as they are to this day. Verse 14. Then Hyrum sent the king 120 talents of gold. Now, it reads as though he, you know, boy, this land is terrible.

Let me give you 100 talents. It's all connected. This is the gold that he borrowed. What is not told to us that he does give the land back to Solomon, and Solomon has to pay this land off. So before I get to that, Hyrum hoped to receive a rich, fertile land that could produce grain that he could sell or he could tax, and he would make his money. Instead, he gets this barren land filled with hills and things like that.

So he doesn't like the cities. That Hebrew word, Cabal, translators are not sure what it means, but they are sure that it sounds like another Hebrew word, which means that it's nothing. Well, it sounds like it's nothing in English. I mean, somebody said, I bought a 19, you know, 99 Cabal. It's like, man, it's junk. It's like a, what's that, the Yugo. I don't know if you remember that car. It was appropriately named. You bought the Yugo. Didn't you see that coming? Well, the gremlin, I mean, there's a bunch of them. What was the one where you'd tink on the rear end and it would explode?

Wasn't that the gremlin? Okay, anyway, back to this. So the collateral was beneath the investment, and King Hyrum was no dummy. King Solomon was busted. He's a cheapskate, and he called him out on it, and he says, my brother, he's appealing to a part of Solomon that's not there. You would think that if you show kindness to somebody, that they would show kindness back because that's what you would do. And you can be surprised sometimes if the other people, the other side doesn't do it that way. Anyway, it is right to look a gift horse in the mouth. If someone wants to give you some beastly animal that can drop dead on your porch, I think you have a right to look in his mouth before you say, I'll take him. Because, you know, somebody can just give you something that you're saddled, you're burdened with. Anyway, you know, what if they gave you a lot of barren land?

Boy, a guy gave me a hundred acres of swamp, and I got to pay taxes on it now. Well, you should have looked a gift horse in the mouth before accepting it. Anyway, the question is, when the Queen of Sheba came, and we'll get that next chapter, she gives the same amount, a hundred and twenty talents of gold to the king, which makes you wonder, did Solomon pay off the loan with that? First Kings 10-10, then she gave the king one hundred and twenty talents of gold, spices in great quantity, and precious stones. There never again came such an abundance of spices as the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. We'll add that Hyrum, there is a possibility that Hyrum had to pay tribute to Solomon, because Solomon's kingdom went all the way to the Euphrates, and we'll be coming to that soon. All right, so a lot of questions, and I think kind of exciting questions, but we do know he was a cheapskate, because he pulled a rotten deal. Man, Solomon, what's wrong with that guy?

Well, he's filthy rich, independently wealthy, he's daffy duck of the Hebrew kings. Verse 15, and this is the reason for the labor force which King Solomon raised to build the house of Yahweh, his own house, the milo, the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. So these are his projects that I mentioned, this is why he had a desire for the cedar, the cypress, and the gold, he had to fund these projects. The milo means, or the mellow, means to fill, and it's likely, archaeologists, the consensus amongst them is that there were these terraced earthworks that could have been multi-purpose fortifications, and of course reinforcing foundations and things like that.

Retaining walls, that's the word I wanted. Verse 16, Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up to take Gezer and burned it with fire, and killed the Canaanites who dwelt in the city, and had given it as a dowry to his daughter Solomon's wife. Great, you're a Canaanite, God's people were supposed to purge you from the land, they never did, so the Egyptian comes, he purges them, and he takes this land, and he gives it, because it's valuable land, it's in trade routes, it's a good piece of property, and he gives this as a wedding gift to Solomon.

So it's again randomly placed, not, the chronology is way out of order. You read this, you say, well Ephraim was supposed to cast these people out. That was their law, or their commandment from God, and they may have conquered their cities, but they didn't keep them. And this would be like an unbeliever doing the work of a church, like an unbeliever doing what we should be doing. Maybe as an individual Christian, you have come across people in the workplace that are nicer than some other Christian in the workplace. I've come across this, Christians that are either lunatics or just mean, nice ones too, and you want to say, man, what is your problem? But they won't let you, they'll bite at you, who are you to judge me? I let the air out of the bottom part of your tires, maybe as a lesson for you.

Anyway, I think that's one thing I get out of that. Here we have an unbeliever doing what the believer should have done, and that is a rebuke. Verse 17, and Solomon built Gezer, lower Beth-horon, Beiloth, Tadmar, in the wilderness in the land of Judah. All the storage cities that Solomon had, cities for his chariots, and cities for his cavalry, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion, and that's that dominion that reached to the Euphrates that God said would be under the control of the kings, they would lose, well, they would lose it all.

This Tadmar, it's an ancient important city north in Syria, a vital caravan route, and the historians knew it as the Bride of the Desert. So this is a lot of wealth coming into the kingdom for Solomon. It just takes time to pay back Hyrum, whom Hyrum's got his number now. Hyrum's going to enter more deals with Solomon. Yeah, he's a penny pincher, but I make a lot of money with him. So this kind of stuff happens to this day, does it not?

Yeah, my partner is kind of creepy like that, but the business is doing great. So these outposts that he has, well, they're to defend his treaties. I mean, your treaty is just on paper. You need military to back it up, and so he puts these outposts there. When I was in Israel, I saw the ruins, the remains of many of these cavalry stalls and these grain areas where they kept grain, all from Solomon's day. And I just didn't, you know, I was like, can we go to somewhere where Jesus walked to kind of an attitude? Because Solomon, I don't dislike him, but he just annoys me more than anything.

Maybe because I'm afraid I might be like, I mean, he can mess up, but what about me? Well, I don't have his billions, so I might be pretty good. Anyway, 1 Kings 10, 26, and Solomon gathered chariots and horsemen. He had 4,000 chariots and 12,000 horsemen who he stationed in the chariot cities and with the king at Jerusalem.

He got those things and he had to maintain them, but that was part of his building plan and why he needed the money up front. Verse 20, all the people who were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Pezorites, Hivites, Jebusites, and who were not of the children of Israel, verse 21, that is their descendants who were left in the land after them, whom the children of Israel had not been able to destroy completely from these, Solomon raised, forced labor, as it is to this day. Well, you know, they just got tired of the killing and it ran cold. They missed the window because if they could enslave them, they certainly could have just purged them, but they weren't savages, usually. The Jews never really lost sight of their failure to purge these people from the land. It was in their law and their constitution.

They could pretend and sometimes they did. Solomon enslaved the Canaanite peoples, but not the Jewish people. In this country, we have the 13th Amendment. You know, a judge cannot make you go to work. He can put some pressure on you to do it, you know, the work release programs, other things, but he cannot make you go work for a company that would be enslavement.

A normal citizen, I mean, there are some twists and turns there. Verse 22, but of the children of Israel, Solomon made no forced laborers because they were men of war and his servants. His officers, his captains, commanders of his chariots and his cavalry. Not calvary, but cavalry, horse soldiers. Verse 23, others were chiefs of the officials who were over Solomon's work, 550 who ruled over the people who did the work.

Well, if you are a high school student, junior high school student, you should be familiar with how monarchs work and these sections of scripture are telling you what's involved in having a kingdom. As you get older, this begins to come, if you go to college, this becomes under economics. One of the places it falls under, which economics can be boring if you don't see how it affects you directly and you begin to learn that when you start paying bills. In this age, how many of us are getting a rude awakening about supply chains? Because we've been importing so much stuff. You know, we're saying with oil, for example, I'm not going political, but just a fact, the philosophy has been for a long time in America, why use up our oil, we'll just import it. When things get nasty, then we'll have reserves.

Well, the problem is you get knit with politicians who don't know when it's time to activate the reserves. So anyway, it's all meaningful, is my point. And as a young individual, listen, if you want the Bible to be exciting as a young teen, get a good Bible dictionary and encyclopedia and come across some of these verses and look it up and you'll find things open up for you.

And maybe one day, you could be like me, 20 years old and looking. Verse 24, but Solomon's daughter came up from the city of David to her house, which Solomon had built for her, then he built the milo. Again, chronology lost. This is the harem, that building was not just for her. The women, you know, and this is how it is in many Arab countries to this day, they're just in their world and they accept that. That's our world, that's the men.

Sometimes they come together, then they go back to being whatever they're doing and we come back to our world. I'm talking about the wealthy ones, the palace ones and they enjoy whatever it is that they're given. I'm not applauding it at all. I am saying that it's sort of a subculture.

It's a culture within a culture. When he had that many wives, they couldn't marry anybody else. Man down at the grocery store, hey, I married one of the king's wives.

That wouldn't go over well. Verse 25, now three times a year, Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings on the altar which he had built for Yahweh and he burned incense with them on the altar that was before Yahweh, so he finished the temple. Yeah, next chapter we find out he also started doing this for other places. These three pilgrimage feasts for men, Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles, men over 20, under 60, they were required to go there. Manhood began for the Jews at the age 20. The Bar Mitzvahs, that's a product of the rabbis. The rabbis, you know, their writings and the missions and they swallowed it hook, line and sinker, but why didn't they go to their scripture?

Why don't Jews today just look at what the Bible says, their Bible? Numbers chapter 1 verse 3, from 20 years old and above, all who are able to go to war in Israel, you and Aaron shall number them by their armies. Exodus 30, 14, everyone included among those who are numbered from 20 years old and above shall give an offering to Yahweh. Now this 20 years old is really like 19 and 8 months or something because they had a 360 day calendar, not a 365 day calendar.

Not really that much of a difference. When I said it's likely at age 60, which would be like 59, 8 months or something like that, they were exempt from these feasts. Leviticus 27, 3, your valuation is of a male from 20 years old up to 60 years old. Unless he looks like he's 20. Verse 26, I know you think I should have picked a more reasonable number like 45 or something.

Why skimp? Verse 26, King Solomon also built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber which is near Elath on the shore of the Red Sea in the land of Edom. Well, the translators should not translate that word Red Sea, Red Sea, because it's not. It's Yam Suph, the Sea of Reeds. The difference is if you look at a map of the Red Sea, you see it has two rabbit ears. One goes west and one goes east. And if the one to the east, that's Ezion-geber. Yam Suph, where the reeds are. And that has something to do with Israel's crossing into the promise.

I mean, these things, they have a meaning. So unfortunately, it is part of the Red Sea, but it's really more specific, the Sea of Reeds up in that portion where he puts his ships. That's what it was known for. It certainly had water deep enough for ships, but it also had these reeds up there.

I don't know why it doesn't read that way. Verse 27, then Hiram sent his servants with the fleet, the seamen, who knew the sea. Well, I knew a sailor that went to CCC, and all he could see was the bottom of the deep blue CCC. Seamen who knew the sea, that's what they usually do.

Imagine a seaman that knew the forest. Okay. Verse 28, let's get away from this. They went to Ophir and acquired 400 talents of gold from there and brought it to King Solomon.

We don't know where Ophir was. It's probably good because everybody would be like the gold rush of 1849. Some of you may have been there.

Anyway, that's how you win friends and influence people. The Sidonians, they were known for the transport of lumber, and they were also seafaring people. They were also known as the Phoenicians.

This 420 talents of gold, that's about 16 tons of gold. But let's go back to, let's close it with this. The outside world, as I mentioned, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, they were not yet world powers. They were weak at this time, as a matter of fact, which makes Isaiah's prophecy when King Hezekiah brought the Babylonian emissaries in and said, oh, look what we have. And Isaiah comes in, what did you show them? I showed them everything. You nitwit.

And now they're going to take it. And Hezekiah, you know, he says, well, will it be while I'm alive? I said, no, you'll be fine. Okay, good, fine. And that's really what happens. Babylonians were not a world power then, but they went back to Babylon and they put it on record.

There's gold in that yare city, and eventually the Babylonians will come. Loose lips, sinks, ships. That's one of the lessons from that story. You just can't tell everybody everything.

Keep your cards close to your chest. Coming back to this, as I mentioned earlier, at this time in history with Solomon and Hyrum, Homer is just getting started in Greece. That's going to really influence the Greek wisdom and the knowledge that comes out of Greece and will give us our New Testament language. This is big news. So God is doing stuff in other parts of the world that He's using later, like chess pieces.

He's going to use them later. The Greek language, it's a rich language. We study it so much. We have every Bible on earth, every New Testament, comes from the Greek except the Jehovah Witnesses. That just comes from lost souls in darkness. They have no Greek scholars. They just arbitrarily edit the Bible, and I wouldn't want to be them on Judgment Day. Going back to this, godly men and ungodly men alike can be financially profitable, but they cannot be spiritually profitable without adhering to God, and that's one of the things. We've talked about the goofs of Solomon, what he did with Hyrum, leaving the simplicity of the faith because he wanted enterprise, and it did not pay off. With wealth comes unique distractions and temptations, and I wish God would let me prove that to you.

But anyway, wealth opens doors that we likely would be better off without. So I close with this verse, 1 Timothy 6, For the love of money, not the money, but the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. What a lesson we're seeing it happen in the life of Solomon. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

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