I. Not wealth, not pleasure, not fame, not victory, not length of days, but an understanding heart, was the choice of Solomon’s boyhood.—The prayer for wisdom is always pleasing to God. (1) Even intellectual wisdom—how far higher is it, how far worthier of man as God made him, than any alternative of fashion or vanity, of wit or vice! Fear not to ask of God an understanding heart, even in studies which name not His name. (2) But the speech which pleased the Lord was a prayer rather for practical wisdom. The gift which Solomon’s prayer drew down was the gift of justice. When he seated himself in the gate to hear the causes which Israel brought to him, intellect was nothing; judgment, the power to discriminate between good and bad—this was his work. This therefore was his prayer.
II. The bitter and painful thing to remember in the history before us is the wreck and ruin of that prayer, which in itself was so beautiful and so acceptable.—(1) It may have been that Solomon’s largeness of heart slipped into latitudinarianism. (2) That which cankered Solomon’s wisdom was the entrance of sinful lust.
III. We may hope that even out of this wreck the lost life found a way to arise.—We read the Book of Ecclesiastes as the record of that hope. Let us hope that the night’s prayer at Gibeon was being answered, though in dim and broken reflection, in the latest utterances of the Preacher, son of David, king of Jerusalem.
—
Dean Vaughan.
Illustrations
(1) ‘The heart—the understanding—and the right use of both together—make character. There cannot be a right character without the three. If there is no love, or if there is no intellect, or if either of them be not properly regulated, the character suffers; the character cannot be complete. And the design of all education—of our education of our children, of God’s education of us all—is, and ought to be, to make character. Character includes heart, head, conduct; and the character determines the man.’
(2) ‘I leave the mystery—that Solomon afterwards abused that vast gift; that that very “heart” went wrong! It is a very solemn thing, but there is a great deal of most grave teaching here. No one prayer can secure continuance; one period of life is no guarantee for another period of life; a very bad chapter may succeed a very good one. “A wise and an understanding heart” may fall; the intellect may become darkened, and the heart may go wrong, and the wisest man become the worst!’
(3) ‘To ask anything from God in the right way is not an easy thing. It implies that we have yielded ourselves to God and gained His entrance into our lives. There is, therefore, no true asking that does not enlarge the asker so that God can give him even more than he asked for. And God is always eager to give Him more; He is only waiting for us to hold out a bigger basket.’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
‘Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart to judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and bad,’ etc.
1Ki_3:9
I. God comes to every one of us saying, ‘Ask what I shall give thee.’—Goethe said he admired the man who knew precisely what he aimed at in life. God wishes you at the commencement of your career to come up to the height of a great choice. You must choose; your refusal to choose is itself a choice, and it is the liberty to choose your own aim in life, and at last your own destiny, that makes life so serious. Life comes to every man with its riddle; and if he answers it aright, it is well with him; but if he tries to go on neglecting the commandments of the Giver of life, if he tries to go on living in his own way, and not in God’s way, life to him will be a thing of loss, and he will become an object to be wept over. We are placed here, naked as the giant of fable, to wrestle with the rude elements of the world, to conquer in the midst of its varied probation; but remember this: no devil nor devil’s child can cast you down without your own consent.
II. Notice that ‘the speech pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing.’—It was this thing in contrast to three other things that he rejected: long life, riches, and revenge on his enemies.
III. The reasons are here assigned why it pleased the Lord that Solomon rejected the false and chose the true aim in life.—(1) Because he chose what enabled him to be serviceable to others. Our great poet has told us that ‘Heaven does with us as we do with torches; do not light them for themselves.’ We are lit in order to be the light of the world. (2) It pleased the Lord because he chose to walk in the statutes of a good father, and so to encourage him in his last days in his faith in God’s covenant. (3) It pleased the Lord because he chose God Himself as his portion rather than all His gifts.
