“On The Way Or In The Way?”
Text:
1 Kings 3:1-15
© August 20, 2006 by C. Edward Bowen
A
few weeks ago I was watching a show[1] on
TV where a congressman, a member of the
The
reporter said, “Well, take your time, congressman. Or maybe you could name for us even just some
of the Commandments.” But even after the
reporter sat there and waited and waited for a reply, and even though you could
tell that the congressman was trying with all his might to remember what they
were, in the end he wasn’t able to name a single, solitary Commandment.
Like
that congressman, I think there are times when many of us stand up and say, “I
think the Ten Commandments are really important. I think the Bible is really important. I think God is really important.” But even though we speak those words, when it
comes time for us to live our lives, what role do the Ten Commandments
play? Do we even know what the Ten
Commandments are? What role does the
Bible play in our lives? When it comes
time for us to live our lives, what role does God play?
In
the Bible, we come across the word “wisdom.”
But when we see that word, often we assume that a wise person is someone
with a high IQ. Often we assume that a
wise person is someone who’s smart and gets straight A’s on all their report
cards. But when the writers of the Bible
use that word “wisdom” that’s not quite what they have in mind. Instead, as far as the Bible is concerned, a
wise person is someone who not only knows stuff – a wise person is someone who
not only knows about the Ten Commandments and the Bible and God – but a wise
person is someone who also has the ability to take that knowledge and use it to
guide them in what they do with their life.
And
in the reading that we just listened to from the Old Testament, it’s that kind
of wisdom that King Solomon prayed for.
One night in a dream God appeared to Solomon shortly after he had taken
the throne of
And
in the following chapters in the Bible we are shown what kind of amazing wisdom
God gave to Solomon. For instance, there
were two women who shared a house and both of them had babies at about the same
time. But one night the one baby died in
its sleep, and while the other mother was sleeping, the mother of the dead baby
switched her dead child with the living baby.
And so in the morning a huge fight broke out between them over whose
baby had died and whose was alive. And
so they went to King Solomon, looking to him to use his wisdom to settle the
matter.
And
maybe you recall what Solomon did. He
said, “Bring me a sword, and I will cut the living baby in two, and I’ll give
half to each mother.” And the one mother
said, “That’s fine with me.” But the
other mother said, “No, if that’s what you’re going to do, then give the baby
to her. I’d rather lose my child to her
then to have it killed.” And as soon as
she said that, the king said, “Don’t lay a hand on the child. Now I know who the true mother is. Give the baby to her.” And word of Solomon’s great wisdom quickly spread. And some people, like the Queen of
Most
likely Solomon asked God for wisdom because he realized that we face a lot of
decisions in life that aren’t always so easy to make. Not every choice we have to make in life is a
simple case of choosing between right or wrong, between black or white. For example, that’s what the opening part of
this passage in 1 Kings was getting at.
There
in those opening verses we are told that King Solomon married a daughter of the
Egyptian pharaoh. At first we might read
that and just assume that Solomon fell in love with the girl and wanted her to
be his wife. But really there was
something much more complicated going on with that marriage. Solomon married the daughter of the Egyptian
pharaoh so that there would then be an alliance between Israel and Egypt, so
that if some enemy tried to attack Israel,
And
Solomon realized that being king would involve all kinds of difficult
situations like that, where the right thing to do wouldn’t always be so easy to
figure out. And so that’s why Solomon prayed
for wisdom. As he looked at his life, he
knew that he wanted to do the right thing, he knew that he wanted to make the
kinds of choices that God wanted to him to make, but he saw that by himself he
didn’t have the resources to do that.
And so Solomon prayed for wisdom – he prayed for the ability to know
more about God’s will and the ability to use that knowledge to shape what he
did with his life.
It’s
kind of like something that happened on our church’s mission trip this summer. At the end of the week we came together and
asked ourselves, “Where do we go from here?
We’ve had a great experience this week.
We’ve felt God at work in our midst.
How do we keep that going?” And
one of the answers the youth group came up with is that they want to make their
Sunday night PYC meetings a half hour longer each week. They want to make the meeting a half hour
longer not so that we can have more time for games or snacks, but so that we
can include 30 minutes of in-depth Bible study each week. Because in the course of the mission trip,
many of the young people came to the realization that they want to make the
choices in life that God wants them to make but they lack the resources to do
that.
And
in particular, they came to the realization that they don’t know nearly enough
about the Bible. And so in a sense, like
Solomon, they’re asking for wisdom. They’re
asking for the ability to know more about God’s will and the ability then to
put that knowledge to use in how they live their lives. Isn’t that great?
But
the thing about wisdom is that it’s not something that God gives to us in one
dose so that we’re then set for life.
No, it’s like in the New Testament when Jesus says, “I am the way, and
the truth and the life.” The word “way”
literally means “road.” And essentially
what Jesus is saying is that following him is like being on journey on a road,
on a road that eventually leads us to the truth – to God’s truth – and that
eventually leads us to life – that eventually leads us to eternal life. And so wisdom is an invitation to be on a
journey with God, to follow in the way that God wants to lead us, and to
discover what it is that God wants to show us so that we can become more and
more like the people that God wants us to be.
But
the question becomes: Are we on the
way? Do we accept God’s invitation to be
on a journey where we grow and learn? Are
we on the way? Or are we in the
way? Are we standing in the way of
becoming the people God wants us to be, standing pat where we are right now and
refusing to move in the direction that God wants us to move? Are we on the way, or are we in the way?
If
I were to ask who thinks the Bible is important, I imagine that most, if not
all, of you would raise your hand. But
if I were to ask you to take out a piece of paper right now and write down, say
the Ten Commandments or just ten verses from the Bible that you think are
really important, my guess is that most here wouldn’t be able to do that. Or if someone came up to you and said, “I’ve
been thinking about becoming a Christian.
But I haven’t ever read the Bible.
Could you please summarize for me what the Bible is all about?” Would you be able to respond to a request
like that?
Or
again, if I were to ask how many people think prayer is important, I imagine
that most people would raise their hands.
But if you were in a situation where a friend or neighbor was going
through some crisis and they looked at you with tears in their eyes and said,
“Would you pray for me?”, would you be able to do that – would you be able to
offer a prayer for that person?
Or
most of us know that Jesus calls us to love other people, to serve other people
– to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the lonely. But is serving other people something that’s
at the center of our lives, or is it just something that we do once in a while,
when we feel like it?
In
recent weeks in the bulletin and in the newsletter we’ve been informing you
about the Covenant Groups we’re looking to start up in September. And my hope and prayer is that you’re not
just looking at those announcements and saying, “Oh, isn’t that
interesting.” Instead, my hope and
prayer is that you’ll accept that invitation to become a part of a covenant
group and see that as an opportunity to grow as a disciple of Jesus. My hope and prayer is that you’ll see that as
an opportunity to grow in the wisdom that God wants you to have.
The
basic idea of the covenant groups is that you would gather together with a
relatively small number of people – maybe around
As
you look at your life, are you on the way or are you in the way? Are you actively on the way of growing day by
day in the kinds of ways that God wants you to be growing? Or are you are standing in the way of
becoming the person that God wants you to be?
Make the wise choice. Don’t have
your faith just be a matter of things that you believe with your mind. Instead, have the wisdom to let your faith be
your guide in all that you do.