1 Kings 3, since we'll be looking at the whole chapter, rather than read it all at once, what I'll do is I'll read a few verses and then comment on it, make some applications, and then we'll move on. Basically breaks down into three different sections. Solomon's prayer, verses 1 to 15, and then Solomon's test, verses 16 to 28, and then a little bit, you know, at the beginning and end. So that's the major breakdown of this section. Let's read the first half first, verses 1 to 15. Now Solomon made a treaty with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and married Pharaoh's daughter. Then he brought her to the city of David until he had finished building his own house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall all around Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the people sacrificed at the high places because there was no house built for the name of the Lord until those days. And Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father, David, except that he sacrificed and burnt incense at the high places. Now, the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there. Well, that was the great high place. Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night. And God said, ask, what shall I give you? And Solomon said, you have shown great mercy to your servant, David, my father, because he walked before you in truth and righteousness and an uprightness of heart with you. You have continued this great kindness for him, and you have given him a son to sit on his throne as it is to this day. Now, oh, Lord, my God, you have made your servant king instead of my father, David. But I am a little child. I do not know how to go out or to come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen. of great people, too numerous to be numbered or counted. Therefore, give to your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to judge this great people of yours?" The speech pleased the Lord. Solomon had asked this thing. Then God said to him, Because you have asked this thing and have not asked long life for yourself, nor have asked riches for yourself, nor have asked the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern justice. Behold, I have done according to your words. See, I have given you a wise and understanding heart so that there has not been anyone like you before you, nor shall any like you arise after you. And I have also given you what you have not asked both riches and honor, so that there shall not be anyone like you among the kings all your days. So if you walk in my ways to keep my statutes and my commandments as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days. Then Solomon awoke and indeed it had been a dream. And he came to Jerusalem and stood before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, offered up burnt offerings, offered peace offerings and made a feast for all his servants. Have you ever been in a real honest to goodness dilemma? One that is brand new, gut wrenching, and you've got to make a decision one way or the other, and there's no way out of it. Ever faced a vital, even a life and death decision that you say, we just got to make a decision. In some dilemmas like this, no decision is a decision in itself. And in those dilemmas, there's one thing in particular that we need. The word discernment. We need to know which option to choose and which is the right one. Well, that's the subject for tonight. Discernment. And we turn to this passage in the word of God, because probably more than anything else, this tells us what discernment is, how to get it. And then we find this example later on of how to use it. So we're going to talk about discernment. First, the section that we just read is Solomon's prayer and how God answered it. Let's look at the background. This is a true story. And also remember that these people didn't know the outcome of the story like we do. We know how it's all going to end. This was approximately 3,000 years ago, more or less 900 or 1,000 years before the time of Christ. And King David had recently died, and there was sort of a power struggle afterwards. Who's going to sit on the throne? But, of course, Solomon was a legitimate heir. He's now on the throne. He solidified his kingship. And now he's about to begin as the new king of Israel. And he needed the right equipment for this new responsibility. And so he cries out to the Lord and the Lord prepares him. Now, let's look at Solomon's character in these verses. Look at verse three. It says Solomon loved the Lord. What an epitaph. How would you like to have that written on your gravestone? Gary Wilson loved the Lord. Cliff Hunter loved the Lord. What a great testimony. That's what is written about Solomon here. And he fulfilled the first of the great commandments. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. Solomon did love the Lord. But behind his love for God, we find God's love for him. When he was born, it was recorded and the Lord loved him. And when he was born, Nathan the prophet gave him a little nickname, Jedidiah, which means in Hebrew, beloved of the Lord. Now, what we do is we look at these characteristics of him being loving of God and so forth. What you find is the proper soil out of which discernment arises. So what we see first here in Solomon's character is he loves God and is loved by God. And so discernment, therefore, is given to the one that loves God. Do you need wisdom? Do you need love? Do you need this wisdom and discernment to know what to do? Love God, because if you do not love God, God's going to withhold the greater wisdom. Secondly, we see that he was obedient to God. Verse three says he walked in the statutes of his father, David. Well, Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. He loved God. Therefore, he walked in commandments as best as he could see how. Now, he did sacrifice in the wrong place, but as he got more wisdom, he began to do that in the right place. So he loved God, therefore he obeyed, and that's the proper order. Now, this isn't a perfect obedience, because no one is ever perfectly obeyed, but as a general course of his life, just like he could be described as a man that loved God, in the same way you could say, in a general way, he also obeyed God. So we see, secondly, discernment is given to the person that is willing to obey God. You won't need discernment. Are you willing to obey God and do what God tells you to do? Thirdly, we see his character is one of dedication, says here that he dedicate a thousand burnt offerings, verse four. What does that tell us about his character? It says that he means business. He was willing to not only obey, but to sacrifice, to do whatever God required, he meant business. The third thing we see, then, is discernment is given to the one that really means business with God. So if you're in a dilemma and you really need wisdom, God's going to test you to see, do you really mean business? Or am I just going to give you wisdom and you're going to play with it? Do you realize how important this is? Do you really mean business with God like Solomon? So there's Solomon's character and now we see the Lord's invitation. Verse 5, Gibeon the Lord, at Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night. Now this isn't the normal kind of dreams that we might have, which is kind of like reshuffling the thoughts of the day and they come up in our dreams. They don't automatically mean anything. But this was a special dream. It says in Hebrews 1 that in many ways, such as dreams, God spoke to his people of old. God doesn't do this anymore like this, but he did with Solomon. He spoke to Solomon in a special way at night. It wasn't a vision, which was what happens when you awake. A dream is when you were asleep and God came and spoke to him and appeared to him in a certain So this wasn't just his imagination, this was God actually speaking. Now what this is hinting at about discernment is something about discernment is supernatural. It's a little unusual that God comes in different ways. So it's preparing him by finding it in the right soil. Now look at the privilege here. God comes and says, ask, what shall I give you? What a high privilege. How would you like that if God simply appeared to you and said, what do you want? You know, ask, and I'll give it to you. Well, what do you ask for? He said, well, I'd like a lot of money. It's almost like the idea if you could have three wishes. A genie came out of a bottle and said, you have three wishes. Now, I know what some of you would say. You'd say, well, give me three more wishes, and three more, and three more, and you multiply it every time. Well, it's not quite like that, but where God said, What do you really want, Solomon? It's kind of a challenge. Solomon, what do you really want? What's the highest priority? What do you really need? And if he had said, well, I want a lot of money, God may have given him the money and said, if that's all you want, that's all you're going to get. But you may not be a really good king. So he was testing Solomon in this. You see, the Lord has given us an open invitation like this. Jesus said, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. But of course, it's qualified in my name. But that's not just a great privilege, it's a test. What would you ask? If God said, ask, what do you really want? What do you really want? Was Solomon asked the right thing? He asked for wisdom. So look at his response, verses six to nine. So Solomon first looks at himself and says, Well, you've shown great mercy to your servant, and I'm very humbled by this. So he recognizes God's grace, and he's very submissive to this. He doesn't boldly march and say, Well, I tell you what, God, this is what I want, and I demand it, and I'm going to hold it to your word, and I need this. I demand it. No, he starts off very humbly. That's the way we need to request things of God. The Bible says, make your requests made known to God, not your demands. God turns us away when we demand things, but when we ask humbly in the right way, then God is free to give us whatsoever he chooses. So he humbled himself. Notice he says, I'm just like a little child. Now, he's not literally a little boy, about five years old. When we look at the history at this time, we find that he's really a grown man. But what he's saying is, I'm like a little boy. I'm humbling myself before you. Jesus said we have to humble ourselves as a little child. Here we see the fourth quality that's required to gain the Lord's discernment. He humbled himself. As if he is saying, I really don't know the answers. Now, at this time, he was approximately 20 years old. He'd been well-schooled in the schools of Israel. He could have said, well, I don't need wisdom because I've been to school and I know all this. But he said, even though I'm the king's son and I have some book learning, Lord, I need true wisdom. And that takes humility. You see, what he's saying is, in effect, what I don't know, teach me. It's a humbling thing to be able to say, I don't know, rather than to just simply make up an answer. So the fourth quality we see here for discernment is discernment is given to the one that humbles himself. And it goes on to say in verse nine that what he choose, he chose wisdom and discernment. He made the right choice. And if. If you could look into the very throne room of God, I'm sure you could have seen a smile on God's face as if God said, you chose the right thing. Solomon, you didn't ask for riches. You didn't ask for the death of your enemies. You didn't ask for all this. You asked for wisdom and for discernment. Matthew Henry, the great puritan, said this. By this choice, Solomon made it truly appear that he desired to be good more than great, and to serve God's honor more than to advance his own honor. Those are accepted of God who prefer spiritual blessings to temporal blessings, and they're more solicitous to be found in the way of their duty than in the way of performance. So you see, God put him to a test. He passed the test. Are you passing the test? What do you really want out of life? Is your highest desires What God wants, or what you want. Solomon passed the test by saying, it's not what I want, but I want God's will and God's put me as king here. I have to have wisdom. Only God can give it. Lord, I want to further your kingdom. Lord, give me wisdom. And that was just the right thing. He wants spiritual blessings rather than physical ones. Now, of course, we do have physical needs. We're sick or maybe we need a job. But those are important, but not the most important thing. So keep that in mind in your time of prayer. Ask for the spiritual blessings and the spiritual duties. That's more important. But let's look exactly what he asked for. He asked for wisdom and to be able to discern good and evil. What exactly is this discernment that he asked for? and that he got. Well, discernment is a key element of wisdom, and that's one of the major things in Scripture. It's a key concept of Scripture. We find God's wisdom contrasted with man's pretended wisdom, and we find it exemplified in Solomon. Well, wisdom has these different components. I guess you could say it has the different fingers on the hand of wisdom. You find perception. Well, what's that? Perception is being able to perceive or to see something as it really is. and to size it up. Secondly, we see knowledge, which is like the accumulation of facts and information. But then we also see insight as part of wisdom, being able to see it a little bit deeper and to see more than just the surface, but to look deeper underneath the surface. That's part of wisdom. Then there's understanding, and that's to see, well, how all these different things, the facts and the information, all relate to one another. And you say, ah, now I understand. Of course, we'd say, I've got a grasp on it, on the whole thing. I've got the big picture, not just individual parts of it. That's understanding. Then there's awareness, where the little light clicks on, your mind says, ah, now I understand, and now I'm aware of what the situation really is. And in the last element of wisdom is discernment, which is what we're going to look at for a few moments here. Now, the word for discernment is translated in different ways in your Bible, sometimes as understanding or knowledge or wisdom, but probably discernment is the most consistent translation of the Hebrew word by yin. For example, the word is found three times in Solomon's prayer, look at verses 9, 11 and twelve, and in various forms, the Hebrew word is found something like two hundred and fifty times in the whole Old Testament. What does it mean? Well, the word Bayin basically comes from the Hebrew word meaning between or to differentiate, to cut in half and to know the difference between two different things that are right next to each other, to distinguish, to separate. And so in the sense that we're talking about tonight, discernment is the ability to distinguish right from wrong, truth and error. Notice, for example, what he says in verse nine, he says, give me wisdom and understanding heart that I might discern between good and evil to be able to know the difference when they're set side by side to each other. Now, in the dilemma that we mentioned at the beginning, you have to know which is the right alternative. You throw in a situation where you've got to choose plan A or plan B. And you say, what do I do? Do I flip a coin? Do I go around and ask all my friends? What do I do? It's got to be one or the other. That's where you need discernment to be able to distinguish which one is God's will to choose and which one's the right one, which one is the wrong one. But what's a dilemma? A dilemma is one of those things where you have two choices and only two, and you've got to make one or the other. It's kind of like the old idea that a man would be thrown in this huge pit with two doors, and the king looking in there says, oh, you have two choices. Door A or Door B? And this isn't let's make a deal and you get a car behind one and a motorcycle behind the other. You've heard the old riddle. Well, which one will you have? You choose Door A and there'll be the lovely princess and you'll be the next king. You open the other door and there'll be a lion that'll come out and eat your life. Now, which door do you want to choose? Dilemmas are like that. You're on what's called the horns of a dilemma. It's like sitting on top of a bull that has two horns and you say, which one do I get on? I hope I want to get off of this. A dilemma is where you've got to choose But on the surface, they either both look equally acceptable, or they both look equally unacceptable, and you can't tell the difference between the two of them. And you say, I don't know which to choose. What do I do? Eeny, meeny, miny, moe? Or, well, I always choose the one on the right hand. No, you've got to know what is the difference, and it takes discernment. Now, wisdom discerns the difference in these choices, not just in, well, which is the most logical or the easiest, but it always says which is the one God wants, which is the right choice, and which is the wrong one. Remember what we said, Solomon was willing to please God. He wanted to make the right choice, so he needed wisdom and discernment to know how to choose them. Discernment, then, is that wisdom that knows how to choose right over wrong and truth over error and be able to know which one it is, and that takes discernment. For example, 2 Samuel 14 7. So is my lord the king to discern good and evil. Hebrews 5.14, solid food is for the mature who, because of practice, have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Notice it's training. It's something that develops. It's not something that a little child automatically has. In fact, some time ago, we looked at some verses in the Bible that talked about young children that don't know their right hand from their left. They don't know which way to go. They don't know anything. We need discernment so we're no longer little children, but we're grown up and know how to discern truth and error. Now, of course, that presupposes that there is a right and a wrong, that all decisions can be boiled down to the right choice or the wrong choice. And God has given us the essential revelation in his word on what is ultimately right and what is ultimately wrong. And all decisions that we have to face really come down to that. And when you're in a dilemma, you say, I've got to make this decision or that one one way or the other. So what do we do? We get discernment from the Word of God so that when we're in a dilemma, we know the right choice, even though that specific choice isn't mentioned in Scripture. We get the principles out of the Word of God that teach us right and wrong so when we have a choice to make, we can look at, analyze, and say, ah, now I know what the situation is. According to the Word of God, I've got to choose choice A, not choice B. because the Bible tells us about this. Now, this also tells us that ultimately all these kinds of decisions and moral dilemmas and choices can be boiled down to either right or wrong. And that tells us God never puts us in the horns of a dilemma where you have to choose between two necessary evils or two, you know, you say, well, I'll choose the lesser of two evils. God never puts us in a situation like that where you have to choose something that is evil. He always provides us a way of escape, as he says in 1 Corinthians 10, 13. There's always a way out, but it takes discernment to see the way out. And it's not always immediately apparent, but you have to realize that God never throws you in a situation that you can't get out of. Some of you like to follow Star Trek. You remember one of those early Star Trek movies years ago, where it starts off with Captain Kirk in the helm, and they put forth this no-win situation. They're testing this other captain that's supposed to succeed him, and everything's going against him. And here come the Klingons, and the thing's on fire, and Scotty's going crazy, saying, the engines can't take it anymore, Captain. And they're testing him, saying, what's he going to do? And then, bang, it ends up, it's just a test, after all, it's a test. How are you going to respond in a no-win situation? And his successor failed. And they went to Captain Kirk, who is now a Commodore, and said, well, what did you do? You were the only one in the history of the Academy to find a way out. How did you do that? He said, simple. I don't believe in the no-win scenario. There's always a way out. And they said, what did you do? He said, well, I sneaked in and I reprogrammed the computer. Captain, you cheated. Yes, because there's no such thing as a no-win scenario. I'm not saying we should cheat. My point is, whenever you're forced to make a decision, there is always the right decision to make. It may not look like that. You say, what do I do? Do I have to cheat? Do I have to sin? Do I have to choose between two necessary evils? God never puts you in a no-win situation where you have to choose something that is evil. But it takes wisdom and discernment to see there is a way out. And only God can open it up for you. Now let's look very briefly what discernment is not. Number one, it's not confusing or mixing right and wrong. It's not relativity or relative ethics. The Bible says, woe to them that call good evil and evil good. Secondly, discernment is not being neutral, saying, well, it doesn't make any difference between them. True discernment is saying, I want to do the good. I want to choose the good, but I'm not sure what the good is yet. Lord, show me because I want to choose the good. So it's not neutral. It's positively inclined toward the good. Thirdly, it's not what some call critical thinking or skepticism or cynicism. True discernment wants to know what the truth is as God says it. Fourthly, true discernment and wisdom is not simply guessing or speculating or anything of that ilk. Fifthly, it's not simply observing. Now, this is important. It's not simply observing by the obvious or by normal standards. True discernment is insight where you look a little bit deeper and say, you know, it's not necessarily the way it appears. And you know, a lot of decisions are like that. If you just simply go for the easy answer, you'll buy the Brooklyn Bridge and everybody knocks on your door trying to sell you encyclopedias and stuff like that. You'll swallow the easy answer and then later regret it. Discernment looks deeper and says, well, it's not necessarily the way it seems in this choice. So you see, it's not judging by the obvious. but by deeper down. And lastly, true discernment and wisdom is not gullibility or following your feelings or fads or tradition or discounting opinions from people. It's basically seeing things from the way God sees it. Now, to see what discernment really is, here we've seen a few of these qualities here, but I'm glad then that God followed this up by giving us an honest life and death decision where we see it exemplified. And that's the second half of our story here. We find that God did give him discernment, and it prepared him for this next test. Look at God's response to his prayer in verses 10 and 11. So he said, give me wisdom and discernment. Verse 10, displease the Lord. Solomon had asked this thing, so God was pleased. Now what does that tell us about the way that Solomon asked? Now here you have to do a little bit of matching scripture text. He asked God for wisdom. He got it. It pleased God. What does that tell us? Tells us that he asked in faith without faith, it's impossible to what please God. If God was pleased by the way he asked, that tells us he was asking in faith, which then tells us discernment is given to the one that believes. And, you know, the great verse in James one, if any of you lack wisdom, ask God and it will be given. But you have to ask in faith. Otherwise it will not be given. So Solomon asking faith. And it was given to him because he asked in the proper way. Solomon recognized that wisdom is better than riches. And it's better to be a poor wise man than a wealthy fool. So Solomon was saying, I could be rich, but I'd rather be wise. What's more important to you? Wisdom? or riches, which more important to ultimately God's will or the accumulation of just goods and things here upon earth where he was willing to please God to go after the wisdom. And so God gave it to him. In fact, he gave him more than he asked for in two ways. Look at verse 12. Solomon was granted the high privilege of becoming the wisest man that ever lived. Now, you may ask the question, say the wisest man before you or anybody after you. Does that include the apostles? Well, in one way, yes, Solomon had more wisdom than even the apostles, not so much in theology, but in practical wisdom. He could probably solve certain riddles and hard cases that would stump even some of the apostles. He may not have had the greater revelation of theology and all the unfolding of God's promises and prophecies, but he had more practical wisdom than even the apostles. But secondly, you may say, well, did he have more wisdom than even our Lord Jesus? No. What the Lord says here is that you'll be wiser than any other mere man. But what did Jesus himself say? He said, Behold, a greater than Solomon is here. So this is accepting the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we also see something else here. God gave him more than he asked for here because he gave him more wisdom than he asked for. And he goes on to give him, he says, I'll give you the riches and the honor on top of that. God delights. Now, this is very important. Don't miss this. God delights to give us more than we ask for if what we ask for is what he wants to give us. Did you get that? He delights to give us more than we ask for if what we ask for is exactly what he wants to give us instead of asking for the greedy things. So if we ask for the proper thing, God is pleased and might just give us a little extra dessert on top of that. But if you ask for just the things you want, you may not even get that, let alone the extra. It's like what Ephesians 3.20 says. It says, Not to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us. Or as Jesus himself said, Seek ye first the kingdom of God. In other words, God's glory, what God wants to do. And then what does he say? And all these things will be added to you. All the other necessities. But don't ask first for the necessities, ask for the glory of God and His will, and these other things will be added to you. That's just what Solomon did here. He asked for God's will, and he ended up getting some more things on top of that. So Solomon learned that the way up is by going down. The way to gain your life is by losing it. To be a wise man, you have to recognize that you are a fool. Like the Apostle Paul says, if any man thinks himself wise, let him first admit that he is an ignorant fool and then the Lord can teach him. And now Solomon was willing to do that and he becomes wise and extra wise and even very wealthy. Then this section concludes in verse 15 that now Solomon is offering burnt offerings again. But notice one difference. I said this a little bit earlier. It says he woke up, it was a dream. He didn't say, I was dreaming a bunch of nonsense. No, he knew that was from God. But what did he do? He came to Jerusalem, stood before the Ark of the Covenant, and he offered burnt offerings in the right place. Earlier, he offered all those burnt offerings. His heart was right, but he didn't know he was doing it in the wrong place. Now he's got the wisdom. He first starts off by saying, I'm going to dedicate things to the Lord in the right place and in the right way, not there on the hills, but now in the temple I will build for him with the Ark of the Covenant. So Solomon You're off in the right direction here. Now, let's look at the second half of this chapter. This is one of those stories in the Bible I really like. Solomon having to decide between the two women fighting over the one baby. Let's read the section, then comment on it. Now, two women who were harlots came to the king and stood before him. And one woman said, Oh, my Lord, this woman and I dwell in the same house, and I gave birth while she was in the house. Then it happened the third day after I'd given birth that this woman also gave birth. And we were together. No one was with us in the house except the two of us in the house. And this woman's son died in the night because she lay on it. So she arose in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while your maidservant slept and laid him in her bosom and laid her dead child in my bosom. And when I woke in the morning to nurse my son, there he was dead. But when I had examined him in the morning, indeed, he was not my son whom I had born. And the other woman said, no, but the living son is my son, and the dead one is your son. And the first woman said, no, but the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son. Thus they spoke before the king. What a dilemma. Two women fighting over one baby. What did the king say? Verse 23, the king said, the one says, this is my son who lives, and your son is the dead one. The other says, no, but your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one. Then the king said, Bring me a sword. So they brought a sword before the king. And the king said, Divide the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other. And the woman whose son was living spoke to the king for she yearned with compassion for her son. And she said, Oh, my Lord, give her the living child and by no means kill it. But the other said, Let him be neither mine nor yours, but divide him. So the king answered and said, Get the first woman, the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother. And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had rendered, and they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice. What we find now is God giving him a test. God gave him the wisdom, and he says, I'm going to put your wisdom to a test here. God always puts us to a test whether or not he gives us a gift. He gives us the gift of salvation immediately. We're going to be tested by God and tempted by the devil. Remember the Lord Jesus. He was crowned, as it were, at his baptism, and he was enabled now to do the work of the Messiah. But God first put him to a test for 40 days in the wilderness. Here we see a seventh ingredient concerning discernment. Discernment is given to the person who's willing to be tested. And Solomon was. And he was tested. And he passed this test. You see, he passed the other test earlier about choosing the right thing. Now he's willing to be tested with the wisdom that he's gotten. What a test. Boy, he hits the ground running with both feet. Now, we see also his responsibility here. You see, he's king of Israel, and he would have to judge the hardest cases. This would go back to, say, when Moses was the lawgiver and the judge, and he had all these other judges under him, and they would hear the lesser cases, but the hard cases would be appealed to Moses. As it were, Solomon was the Israelite Supreme Court. It was the Court of Highest Appeal. And I'm sure that this case had made its way up, and it stumped everybody else along the way. And I bet you know it's kind of like the Circuit Court of Appeals where they say, How can you choose between two women saying the same thing over the same baby? It stumps me. I'll take the easy way out. I'll just appeal it to the next guy. If you ever do that, you ever, you know, ship the buck up. And then what did Harry Truman say on his death? The buck stops here. Solomon couldn't just simply pass the buck and say, well, you take it up with God or why don't you go to another judge? He had to do something. Now, that tells us discernment carries with it responsibility, just like parents. Your parents have to make some very important decisions. You can't shift the responsibility, and you have to make the decisions. And daily, some of you parents and some of you in your workplaces, you have to take the responsibility. You have to make a decision, just like Solomon did here. Solomon didn't run from it, nor should we. Now, what's the case? What a case. And this is still proverbially known, even amongst people that don't know anything about the Bible, but they'll say, oh, the wisdom of Solomon. And they'll talk about these hard dilemmas. Who could choose between them? How would you like to be king or queen at this time and have to choose? What do you do? Say, OK, now you hear the one that spoke first. Tell you what, I'm going to flip a coin. You call it first. Heads, you get the baby. No, that wouldn't be right. Why not? The baby belongs to one of the two women, but the king doesn't know which one it belongs to. By the way, notice when it says they're brought in, it says that they're both harlots. They were prostitutes. Well, that was forbidden in the time of Israel, and they were both unmarried, or else their husbands would have been there. But why is it they said something about them being prostitutes? For one thing, they had no character references. You see, if one of them had been, say, a leading lady of the town and a member of the synagogue, or the high priest's wife, and the other one was a prostitute, Then maybe one of them could say, well, look, I've got character references. And the other one was, she's just nobody. But here comes in where they both have strikes against them. And so there's almost no difference whatsoever between the women. So Solomon has to look for something else other than character references. Can't talk to their husbands. There are no husbands. Can't talk to the baby. What's the baby going to do? And there's no other witnesses except that baby. So what does he do? Swear on the baby? Now, lift up your hand and repeat after me. Swear on the Bible? No, you can't swear on a baby. By the way, both babies were obviously sons, because it mentions one of them as a son. Obviously, if one was a boy and the other was a girl, it's obvious to tell which was which. But they were both sons. And the baby was too young to recognize its mother and to say, that's my mother. The baby couldn't talk. It was only just a few days old. But there's something else to keep in mind. This is what makes it such a human, personal story. Those two women, they knew to whom this baby belonged. A mother knows its own baby. You can't fool a mother like that. So these mothers knew which baby it was. In other words, The true mother knew the living baby is mine. I'm sorry that your baby died, but this is my baby. You can't take my baby. And the other mother knew, that's not my baby, but I want to take your baby. My baby died, and maybe because of her lack of her baby dying, and in her grief she got greedy, or maybe she's jealous, or to cover up her guilt, accidentally smothering her baby, whatever reason, she wanted to take the other woman's baby. And she knew it wasn't her baby. So Solomon was able to reason that, saying, these two women know which is the right mother and which one is the wrong mother. And each one knows it, but they're blaming the other one. And so that's like a dilemma. Can't you just hear them quibbling and saying, no, you're the one. No, no, it's you. And they're yelling and people standing by. I bet some of the men leaning on the walls, look at that lady fighting over a baby. And I bet someone said, oh, I'm glad it's Solomon and not me that has to make this decision. What's he going to do and say? Some of you parents, you ever feel like this? Parents, two children come in and they're fighting and you say, what happened? He hit me first. No, you did it first. No, you. You see, it's kind of like Solomon here. You parents have to sit back and say, now, what really happened? Who's right? Who's wrong? And they're both blaming each other. You parents, I already see some of you parents and some of you kids grinning like it happens all the time. You say, well, which one's right and which one's wrong? And you have to make a decision like that. It's also unfortunately sometimes like that as a pastor when I counsel some married couples. It's all his fault. No, it's all her fault. It's all your fault. And here you're the counselor wondering, well, who's at fault? Neither one, both of them. It's all one, all the other. And you have to kind of sort it out. And you kind of need this wisdom of Solomon in those situations. And you're at work and you have to make decisions like this. And you say it seems equally the same on both sides. It's a dilemma. What do you do? Well, what did Solomon do? Did he say, get out of here, court dismissed, I want to think about this, trying to shift the blame? No. He did the right thing. Now, notice what he did in verse 23, and this is what I like about Solomon, and I wish that our judges in the courts today would imitate Solomon. What he does is he repeats it for everybody to hear, and he boils it down to its basic elements. Notice what he says. He says, well, this person says this, and the other one says this. He boils the dilemma down to its basic factors. This is so important, people. When you come to a dilemma, wisdom and discernment brushes away all the incidental extras that aren't pertinent to the case and boils it down to a simple thing, yes or no, one side or the other. In legal terms, we would say summing it up before the jury or basically saying, you know how a judge may say, that's irrelevant, that's got nothing to do with the case. Don't throw in a lot of extra details. Stick to the case at hand. Well, that's what Solomon did. He boiled it down here, as it were, summing it up, almost saying, now, do I hear this correct? You say it's yours and you say it's yours. Do I got it correct? I bet after he summed it up, each woman said, that's right. I say it's mine. And the other one says, I say it's mine. OK, we've got the situation here. Now, brethren, that's how we have to make decisions. You have these problems. Boil it down. And right there, you can usually see it very quickly, which is the right one or the wrong one. But there are some cases when you boil it down, even then you can't choose which is right or wrong, which is a true one and which is a false one. You need something else. And that's what Solomon saw. He said one says something, the other one says the exact opposite. It's like like a mirror. They both say the same thing. And he says, I can't just choose one or the other because why one and not the other? And so he said, I've got to do something. And this was a true honest to goodness dilemma. In fact, it's a life and death matter. For example, It would be a miscarriage of justice for him to make the wrong decision, because then he would be taking a baby away from the rightful owner and giving it to a thief, a kidnapper. So he said, I've got to do something. I've got to give it to one or the other. Nor could he have simply said, well, I'll solve it the easiest way. We'll just take the child away from both women, because then you're still stealing it away from the rightful mother, who said, I've done nothing wrong. And here goes my baby. Why should I be penalized? Because the other one is lying. So it would have been wrong for him simply to step in and take the baby away. What was there actually any legal precedent for this? This hadn't been addressed specifically in the Law of Moses. Now, there is a case in Exodus 21, verses 35 and 36, which talks about two men fighting over two oxen, and there are some principles there that are involved. What Solomon saw was that in this dilemma, he needed some extra factors like he weighed everything and says, you know, they weigh up exactly the same. So far as I can say, they're both saying the same thing. What do I do? He says, something's got to drop in the scales. Little tip the scales. But I don't know which side to drop it in. I'll let them make the decision. Because he knew one of these women's lying and one of them's telling the truth. So his discernment takes action. It's not lazy. So what do you do? He wants something to tip the scales. What he's doing is he's kind of laying a trap saying one of them's going to lie and you can't keep on lying. So he's setting a trap. Now, since he couldn't tell which mother loved the baby the most, because they both said they loved the baby, he sought to discern which mother loved the baby in a different way. And so, you know what he went for? He wanted to see where the true mother's instinct was. You see, old Solomon knew something about human nature. He said, there is such a thing as mother's instinct. Brothers and sisters, there is a mother's instinct. The feminists laugh at it, they pour scorn upon it. But thank God for mother's instinct and a mother's love like this. And that's what he knew. He says, now there will be something in the true mother's instinct that I need to bring out and show that the other woman doesn't have it. And so we put it literally to a life and death situation, says, bring in that sword here and we'll cut the baby in half. It could be that what he was doing was he was really testing their character in a life and death situation. Now, is there anything like that earlier in the Bible? Abraham. Maybe he was thinking of Abraham, what God said, Abraham, kill your son. And Abraham's character was tested. His faith was willing to do it. At the very last minute, God stopped him. It's kind of similar to here. A baby was about to die and God stopped him at the last minute because he saw what was in the heart of the two women. So he calls for the sword. And what do you think people in the court thought? What do you think the women thought? Here comes the sword. What's he going to do with that sword? Kill the baby. Cut the baby in half there and give part of it to one part to the other one there. Now, look at how the two women responded. The innocent woman, that is, the woman that was the true mother, had the true mother's instinct, and she was willing to sacrifice the baby. And, of course, this is true mother's instinct. She was put on the dilemma, and she said, it's either the baby dies, she said, well, then give the baby to the other one. That's the mother's instinct. Immediately sacrificed. She said, I'd rather not have the baby than to have the baby die. There's a mother's instinct, willing to sacrifice like that. What about the other woman there? The other woman there was spiteful and she showed she really didn't care. She was greedy as if to say, well, if I can't have it, then nobody will have it. She exemplified what the Bible says without natural affection. And she was willing to say, well, if I can't have it, we'll kill the baby. That's right. And that's what came out immediately in her test. She failed the test. This chapter is filled with tests. You know what this woman was? In a way, she was like a feminist. No natural affection, no love for the little baby. It's almost like, well, if I can't have it, I don't want her to have that baby either. So it's like she wanted to bring in abortion or infanticide. So we have women like that with us today. This woman will be the patron saint of the feminist movement today. So when Solomon brought in the sword, he immediately, in the sword as it were, cut between the dilemma and it became very obvious. who was the right mother in the wrong. Some have suggested that Solomon already knew, maybe from the expression on their faces, which one was the true one or not, but he couldn't go by that. You see, a judge has to make it abundantly evident why he makes this ruling and why that one. Parents have to make it abundantly evident to themselves and to their children why you are choosing this and why not that one. So Solomon made it evident to everybody. And he was able to discern immediately and prove it to everyone around there, which was, you know, he didn't waste any time as soon as they said, give it away to them. The other one, he said, that's the right mother right there. And everybody gasped. You know, you're right. How? Because they immediately said, that's a mother's instinct. A mother would do that. And the other one, well, that's no mother like that. Now, of course, by Jewish law, the false witness, the other mother would have been punished as a false witness. in the case, what he went for, what was in the heart of the true mother. You know, there is an unusual case like this in Greek history a couple of hundred years after this. It's recorded by some of the classical writers. A case where a king in one of the provinces of Greece had died, and the king in another province had to decide who's going to be the heir. And three men step forward, each one saying, I am the rightful heir, I am the prince. And no one says, no, I'm the prince. No, I'm the prince. And the other king, I said, well, they all saying the same thing. So what do I do? I don't know. Maybe you heard about the case of Solomon. So what did he do? He said, well, I'll tell you what, there's the father over there that's dead. Tell you what we're going to do. Your father taught you how to throw a spear real good. I'll tell you what, whoever's going to be the next king probably had to learn how to throw the spear correct. I'll tell you what, you step up one by one and throw a spear and whoever can hit the body will be the next king. Well, the first two guys stepped up and bang, they hit it and won a little bit better. And the third one said, I can't throw a spear at my dead father. And the king said, that's the real son of the king. Give it to him. You see, it's kind of like the wisdom of Solomon. He tested what was in the heart. of these two women, and he gave it to the right person. I looked, lastly, at the public's response, verse 28. All Israel heard of the judgment which the king had rendered. They feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice. True discernment then begins to spread, and it's obvious to all, and it's almost a fearful thing to other people. Brethren, we all face dilemmas like this, maybe not quite as extreme as this, but we all have to make some very hard decisions. A couple of quick applications. The only way to get discernment is to ask for it from God. Secondly, ask in the right way, realizing only God can give it, but be prepared to use it in the right way, just like Solomon did. Well, may the Lord use this study tonight on discernment to give us discernment as only God can give. Let's pray.