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.