1st Kings chapter 4. So King Solomon was king over all Israel and these were his officials. Azariah the son of Zadok the priest, Elehoreph and Ahijah the sons of Shishah scribes, Jehoshaphat the son of Ahilod the recorder, Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, over the army. Zadok and Abiathar, the priests. Azariah, the son of Nathan, over the officers. Zabud, the son of Nathan, a priest and the king's friend. Abishar, over the household. And Adoniran, the son of Abda, over the labor force. And Solomon had twelve governors over all Israel, who provided food for the king and his household. Each one made provision for one month of the year. These are their names. Ben-Hur in the mountains of Ephraim, Ben-Dekker in Maqaz, Sha'al-Bim, Beth-Shemesh, and Elon Beth-Hanan, Ben-Hesed in Arubath, to him belongs Soqal and all the land of Hefer, Bin Abinadab in all the regions of Dor. He had Tapath, the daughter of Solomon, his wife. Ba'anah, the son of Ahilud in Ta'anak. Megiddo and all Besschian, which is beside Zeratan, below Jezreel. From Besschian to Abel and Nahola, as far as the other side of Jachniyim. Bin Geber in Ramoth, Gilead. To him belong the towns of Ja'ir, the son of Manasseh in Gilead. To him also belong the region of Argab in Bashan, sixty large cities with walls and bronze gate bars. Ahinadab, the son of Iddo in Mahanaim. Ahimaaz in Naphtali. He also took Bashamath, the daughter of Solomon, his wife, Ba'anah, the son of Hushai, an Asher, an Alav, Jehoshaphat, the son of Perua, an Issachar, Shimei, the son of Elah, an Benjamin, Geber, the son of Uri, in the land of Gilead, in the country of Sihon, king of the Amorites, and of Og, king of Bashan, and he was the only governor who was in the land. Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand by the sea in multitude, eating and drinking and rejoicing. So Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river to the land of the Philistines as far as the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life. Now Solomon's provision for one day was thirty cores of fine flour, sixty cores of meal, ten fatted oxen, twenty oxen from the pastures, and one hundred sheep, besides deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fatted fowl. For he had dominion over all the region on this side of the river from Typsa even to Gaza, namely over all the kings on this side of the river. And he had peace on every side all around him. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, each man under his vine and his fig tree, from Dan as far as Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots and 12,000 horsemen. And these governors, each man in his month, provided food for King Solomon and for all who came to King Solomon's table. There was no lack in their supply. They also brought barley and straw to the proper place for the horses and steeds, each man according to his charge. And God gave Solomon wisdom and exceedingly great understanding and largeness of heart like the sand on the seashore. Thus Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the men of the East and all the wisdom of Egypt, for he was wiser than all men. And Ethan the Ezraite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda the sons of Mahol, and his fame was in the surrounding nations. He spoke 3,000 proverbs and his songs were 1,005. Also he spoke of trees, from the cedar tree of Lebanon even to the hyssop that springs out of the wall. He spoke also of animals, of birds, of creeping things, and of fish. And men of all nations from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom came to hear the wisdom of Solomon. thus far the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Our father God, we ask that you would open our hearts, help us to see your wisdom in this account of Solomon's wisdom. Grant to me that I may speak boldly, sharpen my tongue to say those things which I ought to say. Help us all to profit and indeed to feast upon your word. We pray in your son's name. Amen. Well, perhaps when we finish reading this chapter, our first question is, what does all of that have to do with anything? We've got a lot of names of faraway places where most of us have never been. Probably some of these places can't even be found today. names, lists of people, strange statements. Like verse 7, there were 12 governors. Verse 19, there was only one governor. And Solomon is wiser than these people that we haven't found in secular sources. Heman, Ethan, Chalcol, Darda. Why did the narrator put all this stuff in? And the answer is that he's writing about the answer to Solomon's prayer. Last week, chapter 3, we saw how Solomon asked for wisdom. And this week, we see what happens when God grants that prayer. Here's what a wise administration looks like. Here's how God's wisdom appeared in the way Solomon ruled in Israel. This is God's wisdom at work in this chapter. And we see really three different things about wisdom It's valuable in the daily grind that it produces order. That's verses 1 to 19. And then we see, second, the promise of wisdom. How much wisdom can do. How Israel flourished under Solomon's wisdom. And then, at the very end of the chapter, verses 29 to 34, we see the excellence of wisdom. How great wisdom is. and ultimately it's missionary nature, how it's bringing all these people, these foreigners, to hear the good news from the lips of Solomon. So these first few verses, these first 19 verses actually, that are all about names, tells us all Solomon's cabinet members, tells us all his regional governors, mentions that two of these men were sons-in-law to Solomon. All of this is saying that ordinary people doing their jobs are important in the kingdom of God. Now the text doesn't stop and give us biographies of these people. It doesn't say who they are. They're not mentioned elsewhere except for the guy at the end of verse 6. We'll see him again in a few weeks getting stoned when Solomon's son comes to the throne. But otherwise these people are here and then they're gone. Why? Well, one of you, my brother-in-law, Jared, called me a few years ago when he was living in China and he said, did you know that China is mentioned in the Bible? And those of us who read the Bible in English have never seen the word China in the Bible. We haven't seen anything about China in the Bible. But in Isaiah 49, The Bible says, people will come from afar, these from the north, these from the south, and these from the land of Sinim. The Hebrew has that word Sinim, which looks a lot like the word Sino, which is the word for China. If you talk about the Sino-Soviet War or something like that. So, the translators in China saw this word Sinim, and they said, well, that must be a reference to China. despite the fact that Isaiah was writing at least 400 years before the first known usage of the word Sino to refer to China. Well, that didn't stop them. They were so excited to see something that sounded like China, there in the Hebrew text of Isaiah 49, that in their Bibles, it's written, people will come from China to hear the Messiah. And that's just how they translated that word. Now, if the Chinese are that excited that they show foreigners, look, we're mentioned in the Bible. If they're excited about their country having its name in the Bible, imagine how these people say, Ba'anah the son of Ahilud and Ta'anak in verse 12. You think he's proud to be in the Bible? You think that means something to him that he's right there in 1 Kings 4.12? It doesn't say who he was, other than that he was a regional administrator under Solomon. It doesn't say what he did. But it does say that he existed and that he was part of the order of wisdom. Somebody God picked out to mention in scripture. And we can see this in every genealogy, in every list of names, all through the Bible. God cares about individual people. including non-entities like probably all of us are. People whose names won't be recorded in history. People who will be forgotten within a century or so. But God cares. Service to God's kingdom isn't flashy. And we even saw that in chapter one. But God's people doing their jobs is how the kingdom grows and how it progresses and how it's preserved. And that's what the first half of this chapter tells us again. Also, that gifts of administration and order are far from pointless. God cares about having a well-run kingdom. Otherwise, why would he give 19 verses to it here in 1 Kings 4? That's more than we have on, well, the Lord's Supper, for instance. Why? Well, because God is a God of order. God tells us the names of these people who helped Solomon's wisdom come to fruition in the running of a kingdom. Well secondly we see the promise of wisdom starting in verse 20 and right away we see how many people were in Judah and Israel. The kingdom is only important based on the number of subjects that it has. A kingdom with four or five people just isn't really a kingdom. And so that's why we even see a certain amount of status or swagger on the part of people who come from places with a lot of people. Greater New York City, 18 million people. People who are from New York are very proud of that and will tell you that they're from New York. Because New York is a big place and a lot of people means a lot of everything. A lot of resources, a lot of power, a lot of restaurants, a lot of artistic and cultural opportunities, a lot of sin, all of it. So the fact that Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea means that Solomon's kingship is a big deal. But it also means that God is keeping his promises. This, as many as the sand by the sea, is God's exact words to Abraham. I will make your descendants as many as the sand by the sea. Where is that promise fulfilled? Well, right here. Judah and Israel are as many as the sand by the sea. So way back, 800, 900 years before this, God told Abraham, your descendants will be as many as the sand by the sea. God hasn't forgotten. 900 years later, he's keeping that promise. And the people are happy, eating and drinking and rejoicing. You see how big Solomon's dominions were. God promised a land to Abraham. Look at that fulfilled in verse 21. Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river. That's the river that needs no introduction, or the Euphrates we call it today. And that's way out in modern-day Iraq. Now it's not that Solomon personally ruled all of these kingdoms, but everything between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates was either under Solomon's direct dominion or was a client kingdom. That's how influential Solomon was. He was not just ruler of the tiny 8,500 square miles of what we call Israel today. He had influence all the way inland to the Euphrates. And again, a fulfillment of God's promise. To your offspring, I will give this land. Here it is. Under Solomon is where the promise is fulfilled. It's all due to this wisdom that God gave Solomon to rule. God keeps his promises, God gives wisdom, God answers prayer. Then we're supposed to be impressed by verse 22 and 23 about how bountiful Solomon's table was. with these 10 grain-fed oxen, 20 grass-fed oxen, 100 sheep, besides game animals. That's how much he served every day. As far as we can tell, probably about enough food for 32,000 people. Solomon could have invited the entire city of Gillette to come and eat at his house every day. That's a lot of food. That's a lot of prosperity. And of course, the fact that the king's table was that bountiful reminds us of our king, the Lord Jesus, and how bountiful his provision is at the Lord's Supper. He doesn't just feed us a little bit. He feeds us everything we need, all the spiritual food we need for eternal life. Solomon's kingdom, comparatively, was so small. God's kingdom encompasses the entire world. And it's even more bountiful in spiritual food than Solomon's kingdom was in physical food. Well, again, we revisit in verse 24 the size of the kingdom to focus on the peace that God gave Solomon. He had dominion, he had peace on every side. Remember his name, Solomon, comes from the Hebrew word shalom, peace. and his name in Hebrew, Shalomo, the man of peace. And what do we see here but peace in his reign. When Solomon is in charge, God's people aren't at war. David was a man of war. We go forward a few chapters, Solomon's son, Rehoboam, he's a man of war, fighting his entire life. But under Solomon, there's peace because Solomon is like the prince of peace. The Messiah. That's indeed why there are so many chapters. Eleven chapters on Solomon. Because he's like Jesus. He's a type. A prediction in things. Prophecy is a prediction in words. A type is a prediction in things. And Solomon is a type of Jesus. A prediction of what the Messiah would be like. And under the Messiah, God's promises are fulfilled. And there's peace. And that ultimately, of course, will come to pass when Christ reigns fully, when his will is done on earth as in heaven, when his kingdom has come all the way. So Judah and Israel were safe, verse 25. Why? Because Solomon had this military power. Verses 26 and 27. Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses. No wonder Judah and Israel dwelt safely. each man under his vine and under his fig tree, with no one to make them afraid." Now, later in the book, we'll see these same words again. That comes in 2 Kings, where this Assyrian commander comes and he says, stop trusting in your God. Hezekiah can't deliver you. Trust me. I'm the envoy, the emissary of the king of Assyria. And if you follow me, Then I'll take you to Assyria, and there you can sit under your vine and under your fig tree, and no one will make you afraid." Did they believe him? No. Was he telling the truth? No. The Assyrian Empire can't offer this. This is something that only God can give. dwelling under your vine and fig tree with no one to make you afraid. The prophet Micah, Micah 4.4 uses this same phrase again to talk about how God's people would flourish in the times of Messiah. So those who promise this today are wrong. The modern state can't give this any more than the Assyrian state could. Only God can give us the peace that lets us dwell under our vines and fig trees. No one to make us afraid. So Solomon had peace. He had strength. He had administrative capacity to feed 40,000 horses so that none of the horses went hungry at any time. In verse 29, we see how excellent wisdom is. How much Solomon's wisdom flourished. God gave Solomon wisdom and exceedingly great understanding and largeness of heart like the sand on the seashore. Where did this wisdom come from? It came from God. Solomon became wise by asking for wisdom in the previous chapter. And in this too, he's like the Messiah. How does Christ show wisdom? How did he become wise? Well, he became wise from his father, not in time, but from eternity. He's been the only wise God. And an exceedingly great understanding and largeness of heart. Solomon just had a big mind and a big heart. He was interested in everything. That's what the rest of the chapter tells us, especially verse 33. He spoke about all kinds of different things. Trees, hyssop, animals, birds, creeping things, and fish. Solomon's heart was large enough to love and appreciate life to the fullest. If you want to think of a great man, Solomon was the quintessential great man. The man who could really and truly look at and enjoy everything around him. That's what a large heart means. He didn't have a narrow heart. He was only interested in a few things. He had this large heart that was open to every facet of human experience. And you can read about it in the book of Ecclesiastes. The extent of Solomon's wisdom was greater than that of the wisdom of the East and the wisdom of Egypt. In Solomon's day, Egypt and the East were famous for wisdom. And the text names these four wise men, and Solomon outstripped them all, by so much that he's the only one of the five who's known today. Solomon's wisdom was amazing. It was beyond anything that anyone else had ever seen. Even these five, which when the text was written, people would say, he was wiser than them. He was smarter than Einstein? He was. So his wisdom was interested in everything. I put a quote, a short quote, about the humility of wisdom on the back of your notes page, but I have a little bit longer version of that same quote here with me. And it's worth hearing the whole thing about Solomon's wisdom was a function of his humility. Solomon had a large heart that could be interested in the entire world because he wasn't impressed with himself and so convinced that he was it. He was able to look and see the world God has made. Chesterton said, a point has no parts and no magnitude. Humility, humility like Solomon had, is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all. So that to it, all the cosmic things are what they really are, of immeasurable stature. That the trees are high and the grass is short is a mere accident of our own foot rules and our own stature. But through the spirit which has stripped off for a moment its own idle temporal standards, the grass is an everlasting forest with dragons for denizens. The stones of the road are as incredible mountains piled one upon the other. The dandelions are like gigantic bonfires illuminating the lands around. Between one stake of a paling and another there are new and terrible landscapes. Here a desert with nothing but one misshapen rock. Here a miraculous forest of which all the trees flower above the head with the hues of sunset. Here again a sea full of monsters that Dante would not have dared to dream. These are the visions of him who, like the child in the fairy tales, is not afraid to become small. to become humble. Become willing to say, the world is bigger than I am and the world is more interesting than I am. I don't want to hear myself talk. I want to listen to what God is saying in nature, in the world around me. Solomon asked, as we saw last week, for a hearing heart. And that's what a hearing heart does. It's interested in the things around it. Chesterton goes on, Let's talk about the proud person. The sage whose faith is in magnitude and ambition is like a giant becoming larger and larger. which only means that the stars are becoming smaller and smaller. World after world falls from him into insignificance. The whole passionate and intricate life of common things becomes as lost to him as is the life of the infusoria to a man without a microscope. He rises always through desolate eternities. He may find new systems and forget them. He may discover fresh universes and learn to despise them. But the towering and tropical vision of things as they really are, the gigantic daisies, the heaven-consuming dandelions, the great odyssey of strange-colored oceans and strange-shaped trees, of dust like the wreck of temples and thistledown like the ruin of stars, all this colossal vision shall perish with the last of the humble." Solomon didn't look down on the world and say, hyssop that springs out of the wall, not worth my time. I've got a kingdom to run. Just as in the last chapter we saw him paying attention to prostitutes and other lowlifes, so in this chapter we see him giving his time and effort and attention not only to wise administration and government, but to scientific pursuits, looking at creeping things, insects, Solomon was researching mosquitoes or bumblebees. And he found that worthwhile with all his pursuits. Why? Because of his humility, because of the humility of the wisdom that God had given him. Wisdom doesn't just bring order, it brings excellence. And it can extend to cover everything that exists in this world. Well, wisdom became famous in Solomon's case. Men from all nations came to hear his wisdom. And this is the first appearance in this book of the missionary theme. We're going to see it over and over where God's work is designed to draw people in. They come and worship God, or they come and hear, or they come and see the life of Israel, because that's who God is. He's not content to bless Solomon and then let it happen in a corner, not let anyone hear about it. God wants the nations to know, especially now in the New Testament, but even in the Old Testament. He was seeking to bring people in to hear wisdom. We'll see that in a couple of weeks when, well, we'll see it next week when Solomon gives a theology lesson to the king of Lebanon. He reaches out to his neighbors and says, here's who God is. You should be interested in this. And then we'll see it with the Queen of Sheba coming. We'll see it in Solomon's prayer at the dedication in the temple. Praying not just for Israelites, but praying for foreigners. We'll see it with Elijah going to the widow of Zarephath. Many, many other ways. The good news of wisdom is not just for us. Just as wisdom is interested in everything, the good news of wisdom is for everyone. Ultimately, of course, the greatest wisdom that we can see is God's wisdom in his plan of salvation. Wisdom God has manifested in finding a way to be just and the justifier and the one who believes in Jesus. Well, by wisdom a house is built, Solomon says, by understanding it's established. Of course, by wisdom a kingdom is built, by understanding it's established. As the man of peace built his kingdom by wisdom, so the prince of peace is building his kingdom by wisdom. Submit to that wisdom, especially the wisdom of his plan of salvation. Don't think you know better. Don't be Chesterton's person who rises and despises fresh universes. Be like Solomon, the humble man, who saw what God was doing and was amazed in it and rejoiced over it. Come under the sway of the Prince of Peace, and by wisdom appropriate his promises. Amen. Our Father God, we praise you for your wisdom, for your power, for revealing to us how wonderful you are. We ask father that you would give us true wisdom. Help us to walk with you and rejoice in you to be wise as you are. We pray it in the name of your beloved son who has become wisdom for us. Amen.