World-Renowned Wisdom

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Solomon's life answers the question of what a Christian is supposed to do with prosperity and success. The point that I want you to see, listen, here's the point. Solomon's wisdom was not just spiritual. God gave him skill in all things. God's wisdom, you see, listen to this, applies not only to the spiritual realm, God's wisdom applies to the so-called secular realm as well. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Okay, maybe I'm the only one who's experienced this, but have you ever noticed that most of us have different personas we put on at different places and different times? We have our work self, we have our home self and our church self, and it may not even be that we want to be hypocritical or different.

We're just trying to be who we need to be in every situation to meet the different expectations and requirements placed on us in those places. But today, Pastor J.D. explains that we don't need to separate work and worship. We can be ourselves and glorify God, even in the so-called secular parts of life. Does that sound like a message you need today? He called this teaching world-renowned wisdom.

Let's join in. First Kings, chapter four. While you're turning there, several years ago, the Wall Street Journal carried the story of a man named Harry Lipsig. He was a lawyer who at 88 years old decided to leave the law firm that he had started himself and spent 60 years growing. So he left that law firm to go leave. He left to go start a new one. When he was asked why, Lipsig said that, quote, evidently he wasn't dying fast enough for the men who there at the law firm underneath him who wanted their own chance to run the firm. And so because he was in the way, they were like, we can't run it until you die.

And so he said, I wasn't dying fast enough. So at 88 years old, he left that firm and went to start a new one. His first case with the new firm involved a woman who was suing the city of New York because a drunken police officer had struck and killed her 71-year-old husband with his patrol car. The woman sued the city for a million dollars, arguing that the city had deprived her of her husband's future earning potential. The city countered that at 71 years old, he didn't really have that much earning potential.

And that was way too much of an exaggerated claim. Well, in an act of sheer genius on her part, she hired Lipsig. And so when a vigorous 88-year-old Harry Lipsig strolled into the courtroom on the opening day of the trial, the city decided to quickly settle out of court. Lipsig, in this article that I read, said that he will never retire. He said a few doctors have recommended retirement along the way, he told the Wall Street Journal, but they're all dead now.

Now, I know that we're not all lawyers and entrepreneurs like Lipsig, of course. And I know that not all of us are going to have this amount of energy in our 80s or even in our mid 40s for some of us. But deep down, I think that all of us want to live wildly successful lives like that, to feel like we got to the end of our lives and feel like I lived up to my full potential and I lived everything to its fullest capacity. I've certainly told my wife, Veronica, that when I retire from the Summit Church, I plan to start going on all kinds of dangerous mission trips, like street preaching and Saudi Arabia kind of mission trips, because I want to go out in a blaze of glory. I don't want to rust out.

I want to burn out, if anything. I want to live up to my potential. Well, living up to your full potential has probably never been truer of anybody in history more than it was true of King Solomon. We saw how God appeared to Solomon in a dream at the very beginning of his reign and said, Solomon, ask me anything.

Ask me one thing and I'll give it to you. And what we saw was that Solomon said, God, what I most want is wisdom to perceive your will and to do it so that I can be a blessing to the people that you have called me to serve. Well, you remember we saw that God was so pleased with Solomon's request that he said, not only am I going to make you the wisest man who's ever lived, I'm also going to make you one of the richest and most powerful and most successful people to ever walk the face of the earth. Well, chapter four, first Kings describes the way that the gift of wisdom that God gave worked itself out in Solomon's life.

Solomon was going to become incredibly proficient as a number of things. First of all, governor. That was a governor.

He ruled the largest territory in Israel's history. He evidently had an unbelievable ability to organize people. Chapter four tells us that his cabinet consisted of religious leaders and historians and military and financial experts. And he was able to listen to their opinions and discern the best course of action, which I've heard is one of the greatest leadership talents that you can have. Solomon was also proficient as a judge.

Solomon ruled with insight and justice and fairness and particularly compassion for the poor. He was prolific as a builder. He constructed a temple that was one of the most magnificent structures ever built. Nothing in Israel's history would ever again even come close to its beauty.

Tragically, it was destroyed in war. So we don't know exactly what that temple would have looked like, but had it survived, it would undoubtedly have been one of the wonders of the ancient world. We know that when Israel got back from captivity, that under the leadership of Ezra, they attempted to reconstruct the temple. And the structure that they built was really impressive, but Ezra tells us that when they had finished it, a lot of the older men who had been alive as younger men when Solomon's temple was destroyed just wept openly at the site of this new temple, which was impressive in its own right, but they wept because of how much lower it was in grandeur than what Solomon had built. He was a financial genius.

He was the Dave Ramsey of his day. He brought Israel into a time of unparalleled prosperity. If you read the description of the buildings that Solomon built, you'll see this little phrase that this was coated in gold and that was coated in gold. It was said that in Solomon's day that gold was so plenteous that silver was almost worthless, and it wasn't just the government that prospered either. Chapter four tells us that in Solomon's day, every person in Israel lived underneath his own vine and his own fig tree, which is a Hebrew way of saying there was a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. Everybody had an iPhone.

Everybody had a vacation home. It was just a great time of prosperity. He was prolific as a scientist. He became an internationally known expert in natural history, zoology, ornithology, and botany. You can see little glimpses of that in the book of Proverbs.

One tradition holds from back then that the birds loved Solomon so much that whenever Solomon would walk between his house and the temple, the doves would form a canopy so that the sun didn't shine on his head. Now, I highly doubt whether that is true, but it at least shows you the kind of reputation that he enjoyed in those areas, those subject fields. He succeeded as a military leader and as a commercial developer.

The army, chapter 10 tells us, was so large under him that no country in the world dare oppose him, not a single war during his time, and he built a massive navy that not only provided a strong national defense, but it also led to one of the first organized international import-export systems in the ancient world. And maybe best of all this, he was skilled at love. He was the love doctor. I mean, he wrote a book called Song of Solomon, which was an insightful and epic book on love and sex that Hebrew boys were not allowed to read until they were 18 years old. He was the Dr. Ruth of his day. Some of you guys remember Dr. Ruth? That's what Solomon was in his day. He was on all the talk shows.

The View had him on as a regular guest on that show. Finally, he was a prolific author and artist. 1 Kings 4 tells us that Solomon wrote more than three thousand proverbs and more than a thousand songs, many of which are included in the book of Psalms and in the book of Proverbs, not to mention the books of Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon.

What we have in the Bible, what you have there in your Bible, is just a fraction of the total writing that Solomon produced. And maybe what is even more impressive than the number of things that he wrote is the breadth of subjects that his writing covers. A lot of authors can write a lot on one subject or two subjects, but Solomon writes as an expert in theology, in love, in leadership, in workplace efficiency, in relational conflicts, parenting, science, economic, spiritual leadership, ornithology, botany, and just about every subject in between. And when he got done talking about all that stuff, he put his pen down and picked up his harp and plucked out a few gold records. Solomon was in every way a Renaissance man.

The point that I want you to see, listen, here's the point. Solomon's wisdom was not just spiritual. God gave him skill in all things. God's wisdom, you see, listen to this, applies not only to the spiritual realm, God's wisdom applies to the so-called secular realm as well.

It's like Abraham Kuyper used to say, there is not one square inch of the entire cosmos over which Jesus does not emphatically declare mine. 1 Kings gives us another intriguing detail about Solomon's reign that you might be tempted to gloss right over. Chapter 9 tells us that during Solomon's reign, he controlled three cities, Getzer, Megiddo, and Hazor. They made up what was called the Via Maris, or the Way of the Sea, which was the primary trade route of the ancient world. Most of the civilized world lived kind of around this region here, the northern kingdoms of Syria and the southern kingdoms of Egypt and Africa. And really, the only way to get between there and there was to go down this route, so he controlled the trade route.

Only time in Israel's history they really controlled that. This would have been like the London, the New York City, and the Raleigh-Durham of his day. He controlled just the heart of the ancient world. So, chapter 4 tells us that his wisdom and success was so great that it gained worldwide fame. Chapter 4, verse 31, his reputation in all these things extended to all the surrounding nations, and a lot of people heard about his wisdom and it brought their attention to the God behind it all. Probably the climatic moment of Solomon's life occurs in chapter 10 when it says that the Queen of Sheba, who's a pagan queen from the regions that are now like Yemen and Ethiopia and that kind of region, very far away, she heard about Solomon's fame connected with the name of the Lord.

Let me stop there for just a second. Solomon's life answers the question of what a Christian is supposed to do with prosperity and success. What you'll notice there is that he had success, not in theology, but he had success in all these areas and it was connected for people with the name of the Lord. It presents the question to you who are successful. Do people connect your success and your fame to the name of the Lord?

Have you leveraged your success to bring attention to God? So, she connected it to the name of the Lord, keep going here, and he came to test him with riddles. Now, by riddles it doesn't mean things like, what do you call it when a cow jumps over a barbed wire fence?

Utter destruction. Not those kind of riddles, but riddles like, why do good marriages sometimes go bad? Why does God sometimes seem like he's not fair? Those kinds of life riddles. She came to test him with those kinds of questions and so she came to Jerusalem with a really large entourage because she was rich and powerful and she had camels bearing spices, gold and great abundance and precious stones. She came to Solomon and spoke to him about everything that was on her mind.

So, Solomon answered all of her questions. Nothing was too difficult for the king to explain to her. Now watch this, when the queen of Sheba observed all of Solomon's wisdom, when she saw the palace that he built, the food at his table, his servants' residences, his attendant service and their attire, their customer service and even the fashion they dressed with.

He was a fashionista. His cupbearers and the burnt offerings he offered at the Lord's temple, it took her breath away. She said to the king, the report I heard in my own country about your words and about your wisdom is true, but I didn't believe the reports until I came and saw it with my own eyes.

Indeed, I was not even told the half of it. Your wisdom and your prosperity far exceed the report that I heard. How happy are your men? How happy are these servants of yours who always stand in your presence hearing your wisdom? Blessed be the Lord your God. He delighted in you and puts you on the throne of Israel because of the Lord's eternal love for Israel. He has made you king to carry out justice and righteousness. Here you've got a so-called pagan queen who has heard about this and she comes and says I didn't understand the half of it. The beauty and the wisdom that God has put into you for building and for leadership and for understanding relationships and for peace.

I know God has to be at work in all of this. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer and we'll dive right back into today's message in just a second. But before we do, let me take a second to recognize the true backbone of this ministry. It's our gospel partners. This incredible group makes it possible to bring biblical teaching to listeners across the country every day.

And just like we do each month, we are excited to offer all of our supporters an exclusive resource. It's an eight-part study through Psalm 23 called Goodness in the Middle. And whether you're a gospel partner or you're considering joining the team, we want to encourage you to get a hold of this study to keep exploring the deep truths of this incredible Psalm. It comes with your gift of $35 or more to this ministry. To find out more and to reserve your copy of Goodness in the Middle, call us at 866-335-5220 or go to jdgreer.com.

Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. What you are seeing here is the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham to bless his people, to put his wisdom into them, and then to use them as a testimony to his blessing power so that other nations, through their wisdom, would come to believe. In Solomon, you and I get a little taste of what the reign of the kingdom of God is supposed to look like, and here is the application for you.

God has promised to put this spirit into you also. Now I want to be very, very careful here because in our day, the fullness of the kingdom has not come in any of us, and I am not saying that we can all become as smart or as proficient in these things as Solomon was. But we do know that the kingdom was fulfilled in Jesus, and Jesus has put his spirit in us, and through us, he can give people glimpses of this kingdom just like Solomon did. You see, in the New Testament, Jesus is going to refer to himself as the truer and better version of Solomon. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says about himself, the queen of the south, the queen of Sheba we just looked at, will rise at the judgment with this generation, the people who saw Jesus, and she will condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom.

And now something greater, someone wiser than Solomon is now here. John chapter seven tells us that the Jewish leaders sent guards to arrest Jesus, and the guards came back after a couple hours without Jesus, and they said, where's Jesus? And they said, we couldn't arrest him.

They said, why not? He said, their words were, because never man spoke like this man spoke. The wisdom that he spoke with, the way that it revealed our hearts, we couldn't arrest him. Jesus has put this spirit into us. In the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul described, 1 Corinthians 14, he describes a church service, and he says, unbelievers come into the church service because they've heard about what's going on in the church. But when they come in, they sense the wisdom that is at work in God's people. They see the beauty of the relationships. They see the love. They see the peace that God has put in his people. 1 Corinthians 14, 25, and the unbeliever falls down and worships God, exclaiming, God is really among you. Y'all, when Paul says that, he is making a direct reference back to that story of the queen of Sheba, because the language is very similar. It's like they come in and they say, I've heard about the wisdom.

I've heard about these things, but not the half was told to me. God is surely at work among you, and blessed are you. We are put here to give a glimpse of that spirit and how we live and how we display God's wisdom and how we display his beauty.

Now, again, I want to be careful. That doesn't mean that we're all going to become rich and skilled like Solomon and everything. Please do not assume you can go home and write your own version of the Song of Solomon about your relationship with your wife and that we're going to feature this year at Christmas at DPAC. That is not going to happen.

Nobody wants to read that stuff, okay? What it means is that the Holy Spirit will sometimes give glimpses of that in our lives through the giftings of the Holy Spirit. Think of this wisdom almost like you do the healing miracles in Jesus's life. Jesus's miracles that he did were endbreakings of the kingdom. They were demonstrations of what the world was going to look like when Jesus reigns. Jesus healed blind eyes, and he made the lame walk. That was not to say that every Christian from that point on is going to get healed immediately, but that ultimately that is where we are headed, and sometimes now God will allow us to experience a taste of that future kingdom. Well, in the same way, God puts these dimensions of his spirit into his people to testify to the greatness of God in the world and show us believers what we are all going to be like one day.

One day, one day you are going to be wiser than Solomon in all of those areas. And just like Solomon, we are supposed to be in the cultural centers, the Megiddos of our day, demonstrating the kingdom of God. Christianity, listen to this, Christianity is not supposed to exist on the fringes of society, ghettoed into subcultures, you know, Christian subculture with our Christian, exclusively Christian music and our Christian novelette series, where they're always about Amish women that are falling in love. I do not understand that at all, but it's subculture.

We're not supposed to do that. We're supposed to be in the cultural centers like the arts, government, education. We are supposed to be there demonstrating the kingdom of Jesus. In fact, the most prominent of those cities that I mentioned to you is this one right here, Megiddo, and Megiddo in the New Testament gets written down as Armageddon. So in other words, just put this together, the final battle of the world, like the battle of Armageddon, is essentially, if you understand Bible history, a battle for the cultural center of the world.

Anyway, here's something else that's interesting. Nazareth, where Jesus was raised, is right there in the edge of the Valley of Megiddo. Now, I know it seems to us that Jesus was born kind of in a backwoods, not important part of the world, and that's partially true. But if you understand kind of the biblical framework, you see that Jesus actually came and was born, if you understand the whole framework, right in the center, what represents the center of the world, and that the final battle is going to be for the cultural center of the world. And in the meantime, God's people, you and me, who are skilled at various things are supposed to be in the Megiddos of our world, demonstrating what the kingdom of Jesus looked like. Those of you in so-called secular work have got to see yourself as God's emissaries of His wisdom and His beauty and His skill in today's Megiddos.

Megiddos are whatever places, the control culture, entertainment, business, higher education. We are to seek to demonstrate the wisdom of the kingdom in those areas. If you are in one of those places, and the majority of you are, you are supposed to imitate the wisdom of Solomon where you can, and you are to ask God for that wisdom where you don't have it. You're going to see somebody that is going to be like Solomon, and the Queen of Sheba is going to ask you what is going on with this, and you're going to be able to use that platform to tell them about Jesus. One of my favorite stories about that kind of illustrates this is the story of Eric Little, whose story gets retold in the movie Chariots of Fire, which is an old 1970s movie.

Probably not all of you have seen it, but you should go back and watch it. Eric Little was in the 1920s, a young man, felt called by God to go be a missionary to China. And that's what he was planning on doing, but he was also incredibly fast. And so in some races, he got people's attention, and the Olympic Committee came and said, we think you should try out for the Olympics. And Eric Little said, I can't do that because I'm called by God to be a missionary.

And they said, well, we think you should try it anyway. So he has this whole kind of wrestling of what should I do? And he says, you know, I'll run. And his sister, Jenny, has a really difficult time with this because she's like, we're called to go all be missionaries over there. And he's got this famous kind of line.

This is, if you've seen any of it, this is the line you probably remember. He said, yes, I know that I'm called to be a missionary and I will do that, but God also made me fast, and he made me fast for a reason. And when I run, I feel his pleasure. And the reason that resonates with everybody and why it should resonate with some of you is there are some of you who don't do what I do. You're not called to vocational ministry, but there's something that you're skilled at that when you do it, you feel God's pleasure. Maybe it's in medicine, maybe it's in education, maybe it's in business, but you know there's something nigh unto divine in your so-called secular work.

That is that spirit of Solomonic wisdom at work in you. And so Eric Little runs and he gets all the way to the finals of the Olympics. And if you know the story, when he gets there, they're going to do the heat on Sunday. And he's like, I can't do that because I believe it dishonors God to do it on a Sunday. And so they said, well, we can't change the heat. He said, well, then I'm out. And literally the King of England meets with him and tries to change his mind.

He said, I won't do it. So eventually they say, well, they put him in a different race that was four times longer on a different day. He wins the gold medal in that one. And he's able to use that position to tell people about the greatness that is in God. That is what God is doing. That is the kind of partially what he's doing with his people. We need Christians of supernatural insight and peace, inserting themselves into the contentious discussions of our day, just like Solomon did. Y'all, I don't know about you, but I tend to get pretty discouraged when I listen to how majority and minority cultures talk to each other about reconciling the past and moving forward. Both sides, so to speak, have some important and valid points that they make, but neither seen that concern with listening to the other. I mean, rarely do you hear something from either side that is measured, gracious, and that really seeks to understand.

And you and I both know that the tone that people adopt on Facebook with these issues is deplorable. We need people of Solomonic wisdom that are leading these discussions, and God will give that to his people if we ask. World-renowned wisdom. That's the title of today's message on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Pastor J.D., this has been a great year, hasn't it? I mean, we've mentioned it before, but so far in 2023, we've been able to expand our Summit Life broadcast into brand new areas so that even more people can hear biblical teaching every day. So can you tell us about these new areas?

Yeah, that's right. We had a goal for this year of expanding into places like Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio. To be honest with you, when these opportunities were put in front of us, we did not have the resources to obtain them, but we just sensed in our spirit that this is what God wanted us to do and to go through that door. And so we stepped out in faith. And, you know, the good news is that we have a listening audience, you who responded with generosity and they believe in the kind of things they hear here and they want other people to hear them. And they were so generous in how they donated to Summit Life so that we could go into these new cities.

And we're already hearing great story, great reports of how God is at work there. We want to invite you to continue partnering with us by sharing this program or by giving financially so that we can keep offering everything that we do free of charge. So go to J.D. Greer.com and find out how you can be a part of the ministry here at Summit Life. Our gospel partners are so vital to the health of this ministry and their regular monthly gifts allow us to strategize on decisions just like we've highlighted today.

And you can become a gospel partner by giving us a call at 866-335-5220. Or you can always visit us online at J.D. Greer.com.

I'm Molly Vidovitch. Be sure to listen Monday as we continue this series called The Man Who Had It All on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.