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All right, it's good to have
each one of you here tonight. And remember Brandon, he's not doing
well and his stomach's all messed up and everything. And so that's
why he's not here tonight. And so remember him in prayer
also at that time, at this time. And make sure you have a copy
of the notes here. We're in 1 Kings 4, verses 6
to 19. Usually, it's from 7 to 19, but
I stopped at verse 5. Let's go to the Lord in prayer,
and then we'll get into this some. It's got a lot of different
aspects of it, so we'll see what we can learn from it tonight.
Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, as we come
to you right now, in the name of Jesus, we do ask for forgiveness
of sin. And Father, we would thank you
for that. And Lord, we pray that you'd
open our understanding, that we would understand the scriptures.
We thank you for that. And now, Father, I pray that
you would teach us from this tonight, Lord Solomon's organization,
and kind of amazing. And so we pray that you would
allow us to learn some things from it tonight. We ask it in
Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, we look at,
you know, Solomon had all this wisdom about doing things and
he organized a lot of stuff. And so this is talking about
his organization. And so we've covered verses one
to five. We get down here to verse six
before we start verse seven. And we'll talk about a couple
of things that you really need to see. But in verse six, it
says, this is 1 Kings 4, 6, and the hasher was over the household
and Adoniram, the son of Abda was over the tribute. Now, this
particular word for tribute here, usually, you know, you think,
well, that's just taxes. But you got to realize we're
talking about a few years ago and taxes was different, right?
And so that word tribute there means to tax in the form of forced
labor. And so that's how they got stuff
done, is the king's men would go out and if they were gonna
build something, then they told these folks, well, you're gonna
work for two weeks doing this and you're gonna do this, whatever. And so when it says he was over
the tribute, that means the tax in the form of forced labor,
all right? So I don't think he was a very
popular guy at all, do you? But at any rate, that's what
he was dealing with. And another thing that I want
you to see, before we start this, Solomon had an understanding
of the word of God, and David had prayed for Solomon. Now,
when you read what David prayed about Solomon, you'd think, wow,
he's talking about Jesus Christ. So just real quick, turn to Psalm
72. Psalm 72. I want to show you
something there. And when you look at the top of it, Psalm 72. When you get there,
it says a Psalm for Solomon. See that? Your Bible has a little
thing at the top of it, what the Psalms are. If you'll look
at the top of Psalm 72, it says a Psalm for Solomon. And so when you read this psalm,
it sounds like it's just an absolute prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now look at the last verse of
Psalm 72. It said, the prayers of David,
the son of Jess are ended. And so David prayed this prayer
for Solomon, his son, okay? Now, Solomon, he knew the Word
of God, and based upon what he knew about the Word of God was
going to cause him some thought. And so what I want you to do
right now, before we go anywhere else, I want you to go to Deuteronomy
21 verse 20. Deuteronomy 21. And verse 20, because Solomon's got to pick
out some quality people. And what you find in this, we'll
read this and then we'll start on the notes and you'll understand
something here. In Deuteronomy 21, 20, It talks about, well, let's read
verse 19. Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him
and bring him out into the elders of his city and into the gate
of his place. And they shall say unto the elders
of his city, this our son is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice. He
is a glutton and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall
stone him with stones that he die. So shalt thou put evil away
from among you and all Israel shall hear and fear. Now that's
a good way to solve family problems, isn't it? You see? And so, What
you're going to learn here in just a few moments is that because
of the law and Solomon's understanding of that and the Eastern mindset,
we're going to learn something here in a minute about this.
So just keep that filed away in your mind. until we get to
talking about it. Now go to verse seven, verse
seven, 1 Kings 4, seven. It says, and Solomon had 12 officers
over all Israel. which provided victuals, victuals,
in other words, food and stuff, for the king and his household.
Each man his month in a year made provision. Now there's two
things we've got to see here. We find the word the 12 listed
in verse seven. And Solomon had 12 officers. When you look at that statement
12, the number 12, it's used 165 times in the Bible. And when you talk about 12, you
got 12 apostles, you got these 12 leaders, you've got 12 months
in a year, you've got 12 and 12 and 12 and 12. Boy, it's used
a lot in the Word of God. And when you see how it's used,
then it gets interesting because that number 12 is going to teach
you something. when you look at it. Then it
said, provide victuals for the king and his household. Each
man his month and a year made provision. Now, in Solomon's
wisdom, If you've ever watched some of
the old Robin Hood movies or them old movies of that time
period, when the Kingsmen went out with most of those guys,
they just went out and plundered everything, took what they could
and took it back to the king, you see. Now Solomon didn't do
that. He was smart. Now listen, so
what he was doing was this. He was giving a time of preparation. In other words, each one of these
men in the area that they had, they had 11 months to grow something,
to raise animals, to raise the sheep, the goats, the cattle,
all that stuff. They had 11 months to prepare. And because of the massiveness
of it, they needed that time to prepare. When you read some
of those things about Solomon, when they sacrificed, you know,
a thousand cows and more, just unbelievable stuff that they
did. Somebody had to prepare to have that done. And so what
you see here is that each man his month in a year made provision. And so when you get to looking
at Solomon and his organization, you realize this man is going
to, he's going to do things, but he's going to allow for the
time to make it work. In other words, he's just not
gonna go out and pillage and plunder things. He's going to
organize it. He's going to give time for preparation. He's going to think it through. And that's what you see here
in this. There was a time of preparation.
Also now, when you go through this land, just like in verse
eight, And these are the names of the son of Hur in Mount Ephraim. Now, Ephraim is a very fertile land. You can grow all kinds of stuff
there. We've been there, looked at that,
and man, I mean, they were growing their cabbages that big around.
I mean, amazing. But guess what? Other places
aren't like that. Some of these places are mountains,
some of them have chunks of desert in it, and whatever. And so,
there's got to be a time of preparation. And so, as we go through this,
let's learn some things, all right? First of all, even when Moses
was trying to do everything, God said, you can't do all this
by yourself. you're gonna have to divide it up and get some
people to help you. And so he did. And so we start off right
here, and Solomon got these 12 officers. And these men have
something about them. First of all, Each one of these
places is filled with an officer that could be trusted. But there's
something unusual about that. So there's got to be a time of
preparation. So when you're organizing something
that's got to happen, then you gotta look at it and say, well,
uh-oh, now wait a minute, we need a time of preparation. But
now, ladies and gentlemen, you also have got to figure this
out. The seasons must be considered. Because when you go to Israel,
some of those mountainous places, it'll be cold up there, hot down
there. Then other places, we looked
at Mount Hermon, and man, the top of that place was snow. We
were down there where the sun was shining. And so what you're
looking at here then is the seasons. If these men in their time of
the year are going to provide for the household of Solomon,
then they've got to pay attention to the seasons. In other words,
boy, Ephraim can grow all of this stuff. So if they're going
to grow all that stuff, let's allow them to grow that stuff,
put that stuff up, so on like that. And we'll go over here
and get the cattle. And so he had to pay attention
to the timing of the cattle and everything like that. And so
what we see, we read this and we say, what's that all about?
It has all kinds of wisdom in it. And so we see then that in
verse seven, Solomon had 12 officers over all Israel. You know, one
thing for sure, I mean, the only way you can eat
an elephant is one bite at a time. Isn't that right? That's right. And so that means
sometimes we have to take our workload and divide it up to
where we can handle it. And that's what Solomon in his
wisdom is doing. Then the next thing is simply
this. Not only did he divide it up
into 12, then reason 12 is because they had 12 months Now he's gonna
divide it up for the sake of preparation. In other words,
those people in Ephraim don't have what they have somewhere
else. Other places are really good for cattle. And so that's
good for that, but wait a minute, cattle, and that's two different
seasons. When are these cattle gonna calve
and all that kind of stuff? And so, what he's done here,
he's divided this up, and then he divides it up according to
seasons. It's got to be that way. And
so, we realize the wisdom of this man is unbelievable. Now,
let's begin to get, so you see how it's done? He divided it
up. and he divided it up into twelves,
and then he divided it up, they've divided it up according to seasons.
Ephraim grows this, but over there they grow cattle. And different
times, everything, and so it's got to work out that way. Now
what we find is this. Before I start, I want you to
look at three things with me. All right, one, respective positions. One is respective positions. Solomon knew that if he was going
to get something done, these men had to fill certain
positions. And they had to have the power
and the authority of the king backing them to do it. The second thing is respective
reputations. They had a reputation for being
honest. They had a reputation of piety. They had some religious background. The third thing, they had respective
jurisdictions. And when you look at this, it's
divided up. And so we find ourselves now,
Solomon had 12 officers over all Israel. Each one of them had a respective
position. Each one of them had a reputation. Each one of them had jurisdiction
over it. And each one had 11 months to
prepare for that one month a year that they would provide everything
for the king's house. Boy, don't you know when month
10 come around and they knew month 11, they were next? They were busy, busy, busy, weren't
they? Now watch this. In verse eight,
it said in their names, the son of. Now when you look at this,
I want you to see this. Verse eight, the son of. Verse
nine, the son of. Verse 10, the son of. Verse 11,
the son of. Banah, the son of. Verse 13,
the son of Geber. Abinadab, I mean Ahinadab, the
son of Edo. Ahimaaz was Naphtali. Banna, the son of Hushai. Jehoshaphat, the son. Shimei,
the son. Geber, the son. You see, each
one of those mentioned the son, the son, the son, the son, right?
And just think about this now. Why is it so important that he
would pick these people, the son of, the son of, the son of,
the son of, the son of? You see, in other words, what
kind of father did you have? What kind of home did you come
out of? What kind of family background
did you have? So we find the reason I wanted
you to start off in Deuteronomy 21, 20 is because I wanted you
to understand Solomon knew this. The parents of any of these guys,
if they were a drunkard and rebellious and wouldn't listen to them,
The mom and dad had the right to take him down to the gate,
tell the people and they'd stone him to death, be done with him. So we find that these, some of
these names are pretty famous names. But we find that their sons had some quality to them. They had a worthiness to them. Solomon was going to pick people
that he could trust. And he was going to give them,
each one of them was going to have their respective position
and their respective jurisdiction. It turns out to be an absolute
amazing thing. The son of, the son of, the son
of, the son of. You see, what Solomon was looking
at was not just the man that he was going to put into office.
He was looking at the man's family. He was looking at the man's father.
He was looking at the man's family religion. He was looking at the,
I'm going to put this man in office, but I'm going to see
what type of character and integrity here is in the family. And I
want to see if that family had any problem with him. What about
him? You see, ladies and gentlemen,
if we're going to talk about Solomon, the wisest man that God ever
put on earth, apart from Jesus Christ, and we see something like this,
we've got to stop and realize, what did his wisdom do here? Remember, when you look at something
like this, one of the first things you've got to ask yourself, especially
in the Old Testament, Because the Old Testament will just drive
you nuts with all these lists of names and stuff you can't
even pronounce, right? But the reality of it is this. When you see something like this,
you've got to ask yourself, what's the purpose of it? Purpose. Number one, why are you showing
me this, God? What's the purpose in this? Now,
that makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, if it's here, there's
purpose. If he's telling us this, there's purpose in it, all right? The second thing, what about
the people that's involved in this? You got the purpose, then
you got the people that's all involved in this, right? And
guess what the people have to do? The people have to fulfill
what God or the leader has planned. So now, see what you've got?
Kind of like that advertisement on television for insurance,
the three Ps, you know, price, price, and price, right? But
we find, you know, purpose, people, and ever so important, Now, so
when we look at this, God, what is it that you want us to see? That's the question we've got
to ask, because now we see that Solomon was in control over all
Israel, and then some places outside of Israel, then some
places that wasn't too friendly to him. Some of these lands he
had subdued. All right? Now, watch this as
we journey through it. So we see now, all right, he
had 12. And these 12 had one month out
of the year that wherever they were at had to provide food and
stuff for the king. So that means each one of these
men had to make sure that the crops were planted and tended
to, that the animals, all right, were produced and gave calves, everything. These men
had to make sure everything that they were going to give to the
king had to be in place. Now, that's pretty smart on Solomon's
part, isn't it? You see, preparation is extremely important. Now listen,
preparation and provision go together. Okay? In other words, if we go to war,
guess what? We better make some preparations
for provisions. Isn't that right? See? And so that's what Solomon's
doing here. He's putting it all together.
And then he's going to let us see it. God wants us to look
at this. These are their names. Well,
I started defining all these names, and I thought, no, that'd
be, a couple of them fine, but if we just started going through
all of them, it'd get really wild. But here we find, first
of all, the son of Hur. And Hur was a Jew. And if you
look at it, you mentioned Ben Hur a while ago, right? Well,
that's what that comes up as, Ben Hur, all right? He was a
Jew in Mount Ephraim. And Mount Ephraim, of course,
is the most fertile land in the area. So it's interesting that
that would be mentioned first. Why? Because if they're going
to get stuff from the ground, if they're going to get their
cabbage and their carrots and their corn and stuff, it's going
to be, most of it's going to be grown in Ephraim. All right? And so he puts that first. It's a very fertile land for
growing. And the son of Hur. Isn't that
amazing? When you look at a lot of these,
it doesn't give their names, does it? It just says, the son
of, the son of, the son of, the son of. You see that? In other
words, I don't need to tell people your name. These people need
to know the name of your father. They need to know the name of
your father for what he did, what he stood for. his honesty,
his character, his integrity. And if they say, well, that was
my father, then they'll say, okay, that's what I expect out
of you. If your father had the reputation
of honesty, character, integrity, then what you're going to find
is the people are going to have that same type of expectation
from the son that has now been given this position. See how
it works? All right. Ever so important, isn't it?
Wisdom. And And you look at a lot of management
books, and one guy has a book written, it's called, Get the
Right People on the Bus. You know, he talks about management,
getting the right people on the bus, getting the right people
in the right place. And when you get the right people
in the right place, the only thing you can expect is success,
production. All right, verse nine. The son
of Dachar, and Machaz, and Shabim, and Beth-shemesh, and Elan Beth-hahanan. Wow, I almost pronounced that
one right. Now, these names, When you look them up, one says
this, another one says pierced. That word dakar means pierced. And we say to ourselves, why these
names? Verse 10, the son of Hesed and
Arubuth, to him pertaineth Soka and all the land of Heifer. Listen, folks, what you're looking
at here is something that's amazing. And the fact that the quality of the sun represents the quality of the
family. Why is it that in these Eastern
countries, even like this here, the son of, the son of, the son
of? Because the father has had a
reputation of honesty, character, integrity. The family has had a reputation
of that. Now Solomon, the son of David,
has been around a little while. And so when he goes to put this
together, He's doing something very, very
wise here. You see, most of these, he just
says the Son of. In other words, I'm not going
to give out your name. You're going to have to earn
it. Your dad earned it, and now you're gonna have to
earn it. The reason you're called the
son of Dakar and the son of Hur is because Hur and Dakar and
the others, they earned the right. Now you're gonna have to earn
the right. They earned the right to have
their name known. Now you've got to earn the right
to have your name known. You see, there's just a lot of
wisdom in that. A lot of people want their name
known up front. They don't want to be known as
the son of. They want to have number one
position. I don't want my father to have
the number one position and me standing second place to him. But Solomon said, sorry, that's
how it's going to be here. Nobody's going to know your name.
You're going to have to earn it. What a lesson for us, isn't it? But what an open opportunity.
When you look down here, you see there's one of these
guys, go to number, go to verse 15. Ahimaz was an afterlife. How do you like that? All the others said, the son
of. But when it comes to him, I'm
as was an afterlife. Wow. There's a few of these whose
name is mentioned. And he's not called the son of
anybody, is he? No. You see, ladies and gentlemen, he also took Basmuth, the daughter
of Solomon, to wife. Wow. That guy in verse 15, what
you're looking at there, this man was his own man at this point. He wasn't living in the shadow
of his father. He was his own man. He also took
Basmuth, the daughter of Solomon, to wife. You see, this man was his own
man. He was starting his own family.
This man was respected by Solomon. This man. Do you think if Solomon
didn't like him, that Solomon would have given his daughter
to him? No, not at all. You see, if Solomon had all this
wisdom at this point in time, he knew something about this
guy, didn't he? Well, you see, what you're looking
at here is this. A compliment to this man is this
way. He was his own man at this point,
and Solomon knew it. Solomon respected him enough to let him marry one of his daughters. There's another guy up here that
took one of the daughters of Solomon also. We'll get to him
in a minute. But this guy here, when you dig around, dig around,
dig around, you find he's his own man. Respect is earned and not given. Watch this one now. Go up to
verse 11. The son of Abinadab, in all the
region of Dor, which had Tappeth, the daughter of Solomon, to wife. Now this guy is just referred
to as the son of Abinadab. and all the region of Dor, which
had Tapath, the daughter of Solomon, to wife." Well, now this guy, he was still
living in daddy's shadow, wasn't he? Doesn't even mention his
name, does it? The son of. So here you have
a young man that had not earned the respect or the right to be his own man yet. He was respected enough by Solomon
that Solomon would let him have one of his daughters to wife. But he wasn't his old man yet. So you look at him and you say,
well, he was a young man. He was. Look at verse 13. The son of Geber and Remoth-Gilead,
to him pertained the towns of Jair the son of Manasseh, which
are in Gilead. To him also pertained the region
of Argab, which is in Bashan, been there. Three score great
cities with walls and brazen bars. Ramoth-Gilead, what's that
remind you of? That was Ahab's last battle. That's where Ahab had his last
battle, was in Ramoth-Gilead. You see, what you're looking
at here, the son of Gebur in Rimat Gilead. And then you've got a whole lot
of here. Then it says, three score great
cities with walls and brads and bars. You know something? The Lord said, you know, if you've
been faithful and little, I'll give you much. Isn't that what
the Bible said? That's what it says, isn't it?
Right? Well, there's something that's
going on here. And I've hit on it, hit on it
several different ways, and we'll hit on it again right now. And
that's this. When Solomon looked at these
people, Can this man handle that? Can this guy handle that? Can
this guy handle that? When you look at the guy in 13,
verse 13, the son of Geber, you realize he had a huge responsibility,
didn't he? You know what you call that?
Trust. Solomon trusted him to handle
this situation. These were what the Bible calls
fenced cities. The Bible referred to these as
fenced cities, three score great city with walls and brazen bars. They were great cities. Listen. I've mentioned this to you before,
some of you might have even read the book years and years ago.
There was several books published and one of them teaches that
you achieve your goal of competence And then people will look at
you and say, boy, that's really good, look at him. And then they'll
promote you above your competence. And that happens quite often.
People achieve, they're really good at their goal of competence.
Then they get promoted one above it and become incompetent. Solomon didn't want to have to
do that. I believe in his wisdom. He looked
at these guys and said, he can handle that. He can handle that.
He can handle that. He's got the background to handle
that. He came out of a family that can handle that. His dad
taught him how to handle that. If he has questions, he can go
ask his dad and his dad will tell him what to do with it. He's the son of Geber, he's got
something there. And so I want you to understand
that when Solomon put these men in places, we're gonna look at
something here before we get out of here in just a minute.
We only got 10 minutes left already, rats. And so what you're gonna
find is this, when Solomon put these men in place, He was putting them in place
according to their ability. That's why you look at one right
here, and he said, Asher and Eloth. Then another one, he said,
number 17, Josaphat, the son of Perah in Ithacar. And you know, down here, you
got these guys' name. Very important. Why is it some
have the name, some do not? It's because some have earned
the right to have their name listed where
the others, they hadn't quite achieved that yet. You get it? See, Solomon was
wise in what he was doing. Now, let's drop down to 19 real
quick. Geber, the son of Uriah, was
in the country of Gilead, in the country of Sion, king of
the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan. And he was the only officer
which was in the land. Now this word officer here is
different than the word officer up in verse seven. The word officer here represents
kind of a outpost, if you want to call it that, kind of a small
little fort there. And he was the only officer which
was in the land. Look at that though. My goodness,
this is a land that had been subdued. This is a land, Og,
king of Bashan, Sion, king of the Amorites, both of those guys
were caught and captured and killed. One of them had his thumbs
and his toes cut off, so he couldn't walk and couldn't shoot with
a bow and arrow anymore, couldn't throw a spear. What we find then,
is when I see this and I thought, look, his name is mentioned. And brother, the son of Uriah
was in the country. He's the only one there. Now,
just think about this. This is a captured land, a subdued
people, and he's there by himself. and he's got to get this captured
land, these subdued people prepared to supply Solomon and his whole
entourage with food and stuff for a whole month. Now you talk
about possibly trying to herd cats. That might've been it. You're not gonna convince me
that Solomon just put anybody there. No, I think Solomon in all his
wisdom, he put somebody there that can handle that situation. I said, respective positions,
respective reputations, respective jurisdictions, I guarantee you
that that man had the respect of his position in this subdued
land. When I looked at that, I thought
to myself, look back and see what happened to Og, king of
Bashan. Look back and see what happened
to Sion, king of the Amorites. This is a subdued land. and he's going to get these people
ready to take care of King Solomon and his family for a month out
of the year. This guy had some respect. His position was respected. His reputation I bet you if you
went back in those days, you'd find out that guy had a reputation. And the fact is, he had jurisdiction
from Solomon over this. But it says he was the only officer
which was in the land. That's a whole lot of land. But that's a whole lot of trouble
also. Just think about this, folks.
He was there. He was there by himself. He might
have had a few soldiers with him or whatever, but he was there
by himself. The moral of the story is this. Number one, What kind of family
did these guys come out of? The son of, the son of, the son
of, the son of, the son of. See that? Those that are named earned the
right to be named. Those were just said the son
of, they hadn't earned the right to be named yet. You see, it's a privilege. when
your name is listed. Now we find this. It's a privilege and a trust
when you're given a place of hostility and he wants you to
go in there, live there, earn respect and make sure that, boy, when
it's time for them to provide for Solomon, they have it ready. Now, I can just see some people
say, now, wait a minute. We just had an Indian uprising
last week. And you want me to go over there
and live with them now and subdue them and make sure they get this
done? Yeah, that's what I want you
to do. See, some people can be trusted even in hostile circumstances. This man could be trusted in
this hostile circumstance. When you look at verse 18, Shemai
the son of Elah and Benjamin. Verse 17, Jehoshaphat the son
of Paruah and Issachar. But man, you get verse 19, Geber
the son of Uriah was in the country of Gilead, in the country of
Sion, king of the Amorites and of all king of Bashan. Whoa! This guy got that, this guy got
that. But man, he was king over Harrison. This other guy was king over
St. Leon. But this other dude, man, he
was king over the Rhine, over the Rhine, the whole thing. There had to be a lot of things
considered. Each position was filled with
someone that could be trusted. Each place had to have its seasons
considered. You're not going to tell Ephraim
to provide for the king in the middle of winter. That's not
the growing season. So on and so forth. You have
so much consideration here of everything. And Solomon thought
about every bit of it. When I look at things like this,
I just get amazed. Because wisdom says, go to verse
seven. The last part of verse seven
says, each man his month in a year made provision. Each man in a
month, each man his month in a year
made provision. So each man had 11 months to
prepare for his time in his season. And so ladies and gentlemen,
Solomon's organization, if you and I go through the word of
God and look at Solomon's organizational skills, they were wonderful.
Unbelievable. I mean, when it come to putting
his horses in one spot, his chariots in another spot, his soldier
in another spot, all of that strategic stuff was amazing.
But he did it, and he did it with great wisdom. And so as
you look at this tonight, I want you to realize, here is great
wisdom in organization. Taking everything in, everything,
everything in from the ability of the men, to the seasons, to
the locations, everything. But then the grandest thing is
this, he just didn't say go out and take it from them. He said,
no. There's 12 of you, you go out
there, one month a year you'll provide. That'll give you 11
months, 11 months of growing, 11 months of dealing with your
animals and 11 months of preparation. That way you can have enough
for yourself and for us. That's wisdom. And there's a
lot of wisdom to be taught out of Solomon's organizational skills. Time is gone. Time is gone. Let's all stand as we would please.
We'll go to the Lord in prayer. That was a fast hour, wasn't
it? It was to me anyway.
1 Kings 4=6-19
This is a lesson is about Solomon's organization. Thoughts on who he picked & why he picked them.
Planning, preparation, & things to consider
| Sermon ID | 421251332383002 |
| Duration | 55:59 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | 1 Kings 4:6-19 |
| Language | English |
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