1 Kings 3:4-15: A Spirit of Humble Discernment

Solomon is best known for his wealth and his wisdom. This is the story that explains how he received both. But it may not be the story that you expect.

After David's death, the first thing that Solomon had to do was consolidate his power by eliminating any possible competition for the throne and by forming alliances to keep it. Even in the Bible, politics is a messy and dirty business. But as soon as he had done so, the very first thing he did was to seek the Lord’s blessing on his new task as king. We may question his priorities: first eliminating competition, then forming human alliances, and finally seeking God’s blessing. Like Solomon, sometimes we also do things in the wrong order. Think, for example, of our expression “I guess all that’s left for us to do now is pray.” Isn’t that the first thing that we should be doing?!

Solomon does deserve some credit however: at least he went to the Lord to seek blessing. Many of the people of Israel were offering devotion to pagan gods. But even here, Solomon is far from perfect. Even though he followed God like his father David, he also dabbled in pagan worship.

Our passage describes a “dream” that Solomon had after offering sacrifices to God. Dreams are one of those weird boundary regions between normal life and, well, things that aren’t so normal. Not all dreams are opportunities to communicate with God, but apparently this one was.

The dream starts out with God sounding like a genie in a bottle: “Tell me your wish, and I’ll grant it.” Unfortunately, this is how many people treat God, and prayer, today. Sure, God wants nothing but the best for His people and He desires to bless us. But we lose sight of what prayer is, and what our relationship to God is, when we start to treat Him like a cosmic Santa Claus or a spiritual candy machine. God offers blessing, not for us to puff ourselves up and satisfy our cravings and desires. He provides blessing for us to be the people he wants us to be, and to fill the roles in the world that He has prepared for us.

Fortunately for Solomon, this is exactly how he understood God’s offer. He didn’t ask for a pony or a sports car, or anything like that. He knew that he was going to face some major challenges, now that he was king. Apparently, he was a bit intimidated the task before him. But he also recognized that he hadn’t become king of a great nation because of his own merit, or even because of anything wonderful about his father. All of it was a blessing from God. The Lord had brought him into this position.

That’s one of the great things about God: when he gives you a role to fill, he provides you with the resources and abilities to need to fulfill it. He’ll never call you to do something, whether it’s becoming a parent or starting a new ministry, without giving you what you need to succeed at it. So this is exactly what Solomon asked for. His prayer basically was “Lord, you’ve given me this huge responsibility. I need insight and wisdom to make decisions and to guide your people the way you want me to.” In other words, his request for blessing was directly related to the role that God had given him. It was nothing frivolous that would swell his ego or satisfy his cravings.

God recognized and honored Solomon’s faithfulness. As king, Solomon was renowned for his wisdom; immediately after this episode, we encounter an example of his kingly wisdom. Solomon’s wisdom wasn’t “intelligence,” or the mastery of a bunch of facts. His wisdom was discernment: how to make good decisions for himself and for his nation: decisions that would draw them all closer to God’s will.

One of the other amazing things about God is that he loves to overwhelm us with blessing and joy. Not only did he grant Solomon’s request to be an insightful ruler, but he also threw in a “bonus blessing:” wealth and honor. Solomon didn’t ask for it, but God gave it to him anyway. Kind of like the loving grandparent who buys a treat or brings a present even though it’s not your birthday or any other holiday: “just because.” And Solomon’s wealth also became legendary.

As a side note, we should note that Solomon didn’t actually use his gift of wisdom and discernment as well as God would have liked. Like the rest of us, he was a sinful person who let his ambitions and passions get the better of him. He never gave up his worship of pagan gods, and married wives who led him away from his worship of God. He amassed his wealth through a system of taxation and forced labor that crushed the lives of many of his people. There’s a warning here for us: just because God gives us a gift doesn’t mean that we always use it, or use it properly.

Returning to Solomon’s request, however, we can note that in this situation he provides an example for us all to follow. Solomon was humble enough recognize that he didn’t have all the answers: he couldn’t be the leader that God wanted him to be all on his own. Instead of relying on his own sense of what ought to be done, he humbled himself and sought God’s guidance for the tasks that lay ahead of him. None of us will probably ever rise to the level of power and influence that Solomon had. But his humble spirit and his desire to be led by God’s will is something that could benefit us all. Here are two examples.

A couple weeks ago I returned home from General Assembly, the national council of our denomination. I was one of over 700 commissioners and more than 200 advisory delegates that gathered to make decisions about a wide variety of issues facing our church. During our week together, I noticed a spiritual struggle that was going on. On the one hand, I was overwhelmed and impressed by how many people shared Solomon’s spirit: a desire to be surprised and challenged by the Holy Spirit and a willingness to see past their own opinions to discover where God would lead them. I was amazed by the number of people who were able to engage in productive and meaningful discussions with others who didn’t see eye to eye with them on some significant issues, so that they could work together to discover God’s will. On the other hand, however, I was dismayed by other people showed up at General Assembly with a firm sense of what they believed, and they did their best to convince everyone else to agree with them. Instead of humble discernment, these people engaged in strident advocacy. They had their agendas, and they wanted to get everyone on board with them. These were the people who spoke about “us” and “them,” instead of “we” and “God.” The people who were so forceful and focused on their opinions stretched across the theological spectrum. Even if I agreed with someone like this on their position, they would push me to agree even more strongly and firmly and I started to feel like I had become “the enemy” that they were cornering.

The same thing could have happened in our congregation, following our decision to accept a building proposal. Almost a quarter of the people at our congregational meeting voted against the project. It would be easy for us to think of ourselves as “winners” and “losers” on this issue. Some of us could retreat into negativity and bitterness and allow this issue to separate us from the congregation. Others of us could puff ourselves up and crow about getting our own way. Either response is a bad one, and misses the whole point. We are, together, seeking to discern God’s will. How can we move forward together and continue to learn from each other? Let me lift up one person as an example. He is someone who said during the congregational meeting that he didn’t like the plan, and he later told me that he voted against it. But he has abilities and experience that we need to make the project succeed, and he’s joined the building committee in order to make it succeed. As he told me, “I was against this project, but now that it’s going forward, I’m going to do my best to make it work.” This is an example of the humble discernment which Solomon sought. It’s a willingness to move beyond our own opinions, recognize that perhaps God is leading things in a different direction than we’d prefer, and do our best to cooperate with it. This is only possible if we, like Solomon, admit that we don’t have all the answers and need his guidance. And when it comes, to be willing to follow where he leads.