Good morning, everyone. This morning we are in 1 Kings 5. And here we are going to see the wisdom of Solomon really do some amazing things. You know, David was not allowed to build the temple for God, although he did begin to create the plans for Solomon to build the temple.
One of the reasons given was David's war, mongering, or the fact that he was a man of war, that he wasn't going to be allowed. He had shed too much blood, so he was not going to be allowed to build the Temple of God, but his son Solomon. And I think God knows what he's doing and knew what he was doing.
because he gave wisdom to this man and as we talked about, you know, Solomon was extraordinary on leading a government on setting up all of his, uh, his people, his organization, having all the people to accomplish whatever task that Solomon had set forth.
He knew how to run things. He might recall in the previous chapter, I mentioned what's going to come ahead where the Queen of Sheba just, she had no more, no more breath in her when she saw how Solomon had everything running. So when God wanted to build the temple,
He had in store this man Solomon, David's son, to build it and he's going to do a grand job. He's going to go at first to hear him as we're going to see a king of Tyre to the north and David had a good relationship with him and Solomon's going to do a good job of managing some of the
bordering relationships with other countries and they're going to exchange timber for food and you know Solomon's going to do what he's needed to get the materials he needs you know if there's one thing that I could wish I could see I wish I could see Solomon's temple
It would have been remarkable to see this structure and to think of the volume of people and organization it took to build it I just marvel at how people in yesteryear built such amazing places and this would be one of them You know our church was all set a year and a half ago to go to Israel to go to Jerusalem and
To see the holy land and we would have saw some remnants of like walls even of David's and Solomon's day. But we were leaving and the day that evening before some of our party was leaving is when the attack from Hamas happened on October 7th.
um, 2023 and we had people leaving within hours and they had their flight got canceled and they could go. I was leaving the next day. So of course we were canceled too. And you know, we were blessed to not get stuck in Israel, but to this day, I have not been to the Holy Land. And that is a place I really want to see. I want to see all of it. I want to see, you know, Turkey and Greece and all the places the apostle Paul went
And of course, I want to see, you know, Jerusalem and Galilee and Nazareth and Capernaum and all of those places I want to go see. And boy, I wish we could see this temple. But as you might know, it's weird, you know, taking in this kind of stuff because we know that this temple that Solomon is going to be gathering together the things for in this chapter,
eventually it was lost. It's going to get built, but within about 500 years it's going to get destroyed because of the unfaithfulness of Israel. In some ways it's like
kind of a fitting, you know, here we are in a high watermark for Israel as a country with their peace and prosperity and the temple is going to be built, but then ultimately due to a lack of holiness and following God, the temple is going to be destroyed. It's almost like a picture, a metaphor of all of the Old Testament history of Israel. And here we have then now the gathering of what's necessary to build the temple. Let's take it in.
Then Hiram king of Tyre sent his servants to Solomon when he heard that they had anointed him king in place of his father. For Hiram had always been one who loved David. And Solomon sent word to Hiram saying, you know that David my father wasn't able to build a house for the name of Yahweh, his god because of the wars which surrounded him until Yahweh put them under the soles of his feet. But now Yahweh my god has given me rest on every side
there is neither adversary nor calamity. So behold, I intend to build a house for the name of Yahweh, my God. As Yahweh spoke to David, my father, saying, your son, whom I will set on your throne in your place, he will build the house for my name. Now, isn't it great to see how much Yahweh is being brought up? And the fact that Solomon is going to build a house that God won in the build, and he's gonna do it to honor David, to honor God,
And I love it. You know, what is it though about man sometimes that man can do so much good and yet not understand that God's after our holiness and our obedience and it's just interesting, you know, because there's times in Solomon's life where you'll see his devotion to God and his love for God and yet it's disconnected from
so many other things that he did. And, you know, may that not be the case of our lives. May our lives be consistent. May our whole lives reflect that we are now followers of Jesus Christ. And when we send, may we go to God and repentance and
thank him for his mercy and his grace and his forgiveness, but then get on track and not give ourselves out. It's not be like, you know what? Well, I follow God, but I really don't hold myself accountable in the area of sexual immorality or whatever the case may be where we just disconnect our behavior from that of following God. Because there was aspects of Solomon that indeed very much wanted to please God and follow God.
So here we have it. So now command that they cut for me, verse 6,
with your servants, and I will give you wages for your servants according to all that you say, for you know that there is no one among us who knows how to cut timbers like the Sidonians. And you know, what a nice thing to say, by the way, he's really complimenting here. I mean, he needs timber from him, but he's like, you know what, there's no one who does it better than you. And you know, when you're going to build a house like this, a house of God, you might as well get the best people on board.
Now it happened when Hiram heard these words of Psalm. He was very glad and said blessed be Yahweh today who has given to David a wise son over this great people. So Hiram sent word to Solomon saying, I have heard the message which you have sent me and I will do what you desire concerning the cedar and cypress timber. My servants will bring them down from Lebanon to the sea.
They're gonna have to float them down to get down to that area and I will make them into rafts to go by the sea to the place where you direct me there wasn't enough timber around Jerusalem but there was to the north and the mountains and Can you imagine what it would be like to cut these trees down? You know, I mean I was looking at a map. I didn't really calculate it I could probably tell you pretty quick. It looks like from Jerusalem to tire you're talking about
Yeah, I mean, that's what it's looking on, a quick, quick reference here. Can you imagine having these logs move? There's no train, there's no semis. And Jerusalem's not even close, really close to the ocean. So I mean, it's going to be quite a project after they float them down the sea to get them to Jerusalem. Really something, what they had to go through in that day.
So anyways, and I will have them broken up there and you shall carry them away. Then you shall accomplish my desire by giving food to my household. So apparently there was better, you know, Solomon probably had the people doing it, but like better grain, you know, in the area of Solomon's region versus entire.
and they had timber so they trade. So here him gave Solomon as much as he desired of the cedar and cypress timber. Solomon then gave here him 20,000 cores of wheat as food for his household and 20 cores of beaten oil. Thus Solomon would give here him year by year. Now Yahweh gave wisdom to Solomon just as he promised him. And there was peace between here and Solomon and the two of them caught a covenant. And you know, isn't it good when you can have
positive trade, positive relationships that work well for both countries and that's what we have here. King Salman raised up forced laborers from all Israel and forced laborers numbered 30,000 men. So Israel did have some forced laborers of people that they took over the land from and he sent them to Lebanon 10,000 a month in shifts
And they were in Lebanon a month and two months at home. Isn't that interesting? So he, 10,000 people would go up there, they'd work a month and then they'd come home two months and then go back and work a month. And Adam Naram was over the forced laborers. And Solomon had 70,000, look at the volume of people you needed to accomplish tasks like this. And Solomon had 70,000 who carried loads.
in 80,000 hearers of stone in the mountains. Besides Solomon's 3,300 chief deputies who were over the project and who ruled over the people who were doing the work, then the king commanded and they quarried great stones, precious stones, to lay the foundation of the house with cut stones. So Solomon's builders and heurums builders and the gibblights carved them out and prepared the timbers and the stones to build the house.
You know, what's not really completely talked about here is can you imagine all these laborers working to do all this work and think of all the food that would be needed to provide for all of these workers and imagine, you know,
they had to have so many people working like they didn't have the the you know i'm not a farmer but the equipment to bring in grain like we do today you know i mean they had horses and they had a lot of people and they they did a lot more by hand and a lot less efficiently but they had to have more people to do the work and and not only to feed all these people but then even just to feed the whole country as well
It's just incredible, the organization and the amount of work that went into accomplishing this. And, you know, God raises up people for seasons, right? And God raised up this solid for this season when God wanted to get this temple built. He had the right man, a man of wisdom, a man who, you know, was going to do a great job in raising up and building up Jerusalem.
It's going to be marvelous. I mean, this is a dream come true for the Jews and a dream come true for Jerusalem. It's going to be quite a city, prosperous. They're going to have God dwelling in their midst in the temple. And now their job is to follow God.
And may, you know what? May we in times of plenty or in times of want. May we be faithful to God always because in the end, that's what's going to matter. God bless you all.