1 Kings, Chapter 3 - A Listening Heart | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] >> Shalom, friends, and welcome back to the Prophets of Israel daily. This is the Book of Kings, chapter 3, brought to you by the Land of Israel Network at the landofisrael.com. Ari here. Shalom, Jeremy. Good to see you. >> How you doing? >> Thank God, I'm doing great. Okay, my friends, let me ask you a question, and I want you to actually answer it, at least in your heart, before we go any further. If God appeared to you tonight and said, "Ask anything. Whatever you request, I will give you." What would you ask for? And and really think about that, because the answer you just gave, or you're thinking about right now, it reveals who you are. It reveals what you believe life is for. And in this chapter, a young king is asked exactly that question, and his answer will shape the next 40 years of Jewish history and leave an imprint on the history of mankind. Yesterday, we watched the kingdom get established with Solomon on the throne. The old accounts were settled. David's generation passed from the stage, and now, for the first time, we get to actually meet this young man sitting on the throne of Israel. And the chapter opens with something that should I think make us feel a little bit uneasy. Verse 1. And Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter. Pharaoh. Egypt. The house of bondage. The empire we were redeemed from. And here's the son of David making a marriage alliance with Egypt? Now, on the surface, from a purely geopolitical perspective, this is really smart. Right? Egypt was the superpower to the south. This alliance meant security, trade, prestige. Every ancient king would have called it a very wise political move. But I think the text is is planting a seed, because Shlomo's greatest tests will not come from armies. They will come from alliances, from success, from the slow accumulation of exactly these kinds of brilliant decisions. We're not there yet, uh but I think the Tanakh wants us to remember this further down the road. Um anyways, then we get to this beautiful, honest portrait. Uh words that I found hopeful and refreshing. Verse 3. Vayohev et Hashem lelechet behukot David aviv. And Solomon loved Hashem, walking in the statutes of David his father. Only he sacrificed and burned incense at the high places. loved Hashem. What an extraordinary thing for the Tanakh to say about a person. What's so beautiful about it is that it doesn't say he feared Hashem or even that he obeyed Hashem, but that he loved Hashem. And at the same time, in the same sentence, it says the people and the king are still offering sacrifices on the bamot, the scattered altars on the high places, because the temple hasn't been built yet. There's no central home for the divine presence. The nation is in an in-between moment. The love is real, but the vessel to hold that love hasn't been built yet. And I think so many of us are feeling that personally today. We talk about it in the fellowship all the time. On the Israel guys, we talk about it. It's on our minds, it's in our hearts. The love is there. The yearning is there. But the vessels through which that love can be naturally expressed, well, it feels like those vessels are still a work in progress. So goes to Givon, to Gibeon, uh the the great bamah, the central altar of that era, and he offers a thousand olot, a thousand elevation offerings. This is clearly not a man going through the motions. This is a a young king pouring out his whole heart in the way that that he best knows how. And that night, what happens? Verse five. In Gibeon, Hashem appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, "Ask what shall I give you?" There it is. The blank check of history. The original inspiration, I think, from the genie in the bottle. That's what I think. Anyways, Hashem asks "Whatever you want, I'll give you." And listen to how begins his answer. He doesn't start with the request, he starts with gratitude, recounting the kindness Hashem showed his father David. And then he says something that expresses the depth of his humility. Verse seven. And I am but a small child. I do not know how to go out or come in. The most powerful man in the region calls himself a small child. This is the son of David. Raised in the palace, tutored by prophets, already king, and his self-perception before God is I'm a child standing in front of something enormous, and I don't know the way. And then comes the request. And notice precisely what he asks for. Verse nine. Give your servant a listening heart to judge your people, to discern between good and evil. >> You know, Ari, I just think that this might be one of the most important phrases in the entire Bible for understanding what true leadership actually is, what living as a believer in Hashem is all about. was the king, but all of us are kings of our own lives. We all have to make life decisions on our own. We have our own little kingdoms all the time. And we're the kings of our own lives, and the Hebrew says of all things, Solomon wanted a lev shomea, a listening heart, a heart that can hear. And so, notice, Solomon doesn't ask for wisdom the way we usually think of it. He doesn't ask for information or brilliance or a photographic memory or a high IQ. He asks for a heart that listens. And that's a totally different thing. And knowledge is something that you acquire and hold on to. Listening is a posture. It's the way of standing before reality, before God, before the people, before the truth, with your heart actually open to receive what's really there, instead of what you've already decided is there. And so, I don't think it's a coincidence that the central declaration of our entire faith is Shema Yisrael, "Hear, O Israel." Not know, O Israel, or believe, O Israel. Hear is the foundational spiritual skill. That's like our people want to listen. And here's the young king standing at the threshold of everything. And what he asked for is to become the embodiment of Shema. A leader, it's like their greatness isn't, you know, who can talk better than someone else. It's who can hear what no one else can hear. isn't known for being the strongest king, the greatest politician. He's known for being the wisest of all men. And I think that's cuz every time he had to make a decision, he turned inside to his own heart and was really able to listen and discern. And listen, we all have to make decisions in our life all the time. And we have to answer questions that are just not going to come from the Bible or from the Shulchan Aruch. It's like, who do I marry? What do I learn? What should my career be? I mean, where do I live? What should be my community? Like the most important questions in life, you really need to go with your gut. And what Solomon is saying is, I don't want to just go with my gut. I want to go with my heart. So, please give me a listening heart and grant me my one wish to live a guided life. And that's a blessing we can all ask for. >> Yeah, Jeremy, and I'm so glad that you were the one to share that because from the very beginning of our friendship, I don't remember how many years ago, I don't think that there is a single truth that has guided your journey more than that one. And when I would come to you for advice, very often that's the advice you would give me. That's like your thing, you know? And here you could see why because I can't help but conclude that Hashem's response to this request tells us so much about what Hashem treasures. Verse 10 says that Solomon's request was good in the eyes of Hashem. That had asked for this thing. Right? And God says, "Because you did not ask for long life and did not ask for riches and did not ask for the life of your enemies, I'm giving you a wise and understanding heart like no one before you and no one after you." And then, the greatest part, verse 13, "V'gam asher lo sha'alta natati, and also that which you did not ask, I have given you both riches and honor." He gets everything he didn't ask for because he didn't ask for it. >> You know, and that's a spiritual law that really runs through the Tanakh and I think really through our lives. And when you chase the peripheral things, the money, the honor, the status, they run from you. And even when you catch them, usually you'll find out that they're pretty hollow. But when you pursue the essential, truth, wisdom, heart aligned with God, the peripheral things come along as a byproduct. And I can't help but see the story of modern Israel in this. Think about the early pioneers and think about this generation. Nobody came back to this land to get rich. They came draining swamps and dying of malaria for an ideal, for the land, for the return. They asked for the essential thing. And look at what came as a byproduct. This startup nation, a flourishing economy, technology and innovation. Now the whole world depends on our technologies. The riches and the honor that was never the goal, but they arrived anyway. That's not [snorts] an accident. That's the Solomon principle playing out on a national scale in our own lifetime. Seek the heart of the matter and Hashem adds the rest. >> Yeah, beautiful Jeremy. You know, and then verse 15 gives us one small line that's easy to sort of skip past. Of of verse 15, and Solomon awoke and behold, it was a dream. Vehi ne chalom. And notice what does the moment he wakes up. He goes to Jerusalem, stands before the ark of the covenant, offers offerings, and makes a feast for all of his servants. The dream was at Gibeon, but he takes it straight to the ark of the covenant, straight to the center. He anchors the revelation in the covenant. And then the test arrives. Not in a palace ceremony, in the messiest, most painful case imaginable. Two women come before the king. The text tells us plainly, they are zonot, women from the margins of society with no husbands, no witnesses, no advocates. They live in one house. Each gave birth to a son 3 days apart. One night, one of the babies dies. And each mother now stands before the king claiming the living child is mine. No evidence, no witnesses, no DNA tests, it's just word against word. This is the case every court on Earth would fail, at least in those times, right? And says, "Bring me a sword." Verse 25. "Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other." And the entire courtroom holds its breath. And then verse 26, the truth reveals itself. One woman cries out because the text says her compassion burned for her son. "Give her the living child. Only do not kill him." And the other says, "Let it be neither mine nor yours. Cut." And says, "Give the first woman the living child. She is the mother." You see, he didn't find the truth in the evidence. There was no evidence. He found it in the heart. He created a moment where love and falsehood would each reveal their true nature because real love would rather lose the child than destroy it. And falsehood would rather destroy than lose. >> You know, Ari, I don't think that we can read this story in our generation without seeing something bigger cuz 400 years now, the nations of the world have been standing over the land of Israel, over Jerusalem like two claimants standing over a living child. And the world's solution is always the same. Bring a sword. Divide it. Partition it. Cut Jerusalem into two. Cut the land into two. Give half to each other. It's like Solomon's test reveals exactly what it revealed 3,000 years ago cuz who is willing to see the child cut? And who cries out? Whose compassion burns? Who would rather absorb the pain themselves than see the land bleed? Look at who plants vineyards in the land of Israel. Who makes deserts bloom in the land of Israel. Who cries at the Kotel, the Western Wall. Who sends their sons to defend every inch of the land. The true mother is revealed not by her arguments, but by her love. In the wisdom of Solomon, It isn't a courtroom trick, it's an eternal principle. The one who truly loves something is the one who refuses to see it torn apart. Even when preserving its wholeness demands sacrifice. And Israel is the mother for the land, and the land is the mother of its children. >> That's right. And that's why the chapter ends the way it does. Verse 28, all Israel heard the judgment and they were in awe of the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was within him to do justice. >> Not the wisdom of Solomon, the wisdom of God flowing through him. The lev shomea he asked for at Givon showed up in the real world in the hardest case for the most powerless people in the kingdom. And that's the whole story of this chapter, my friends. A young man stands before God and is offered anything. And he asks to become a vessel, a listener. And because he asked for that which is truly important, God poured through him everything else as well. So I want to end sort of where we began. If Hashem asked you tonight, ask, "What shall I give you?" What would you say? Because here's the secret I believe that this chapter is revealing to us. He is asking every single day. Our prayers, our choices, what we chase and what we sacrifice for, that is our answer. Every life is a reply to that question. >> Now my friends, so many of you have been walking with us on this journey from the very beginning of taking the next step and join the fellowship. And each one of you has made this global family a richer and stronger and more beautiful. If you have not joined us yet, consider this your personal invitation. We now offer a free trial so you can experience the warmth, the depth, the connection of this wonderful family. You can experience it for yourself. Come learn with us and pray with us and grow with us and discover what it means to be part of a worldwide fellowship [music] uh with its heart rooted here in the land of Israel. Find out more at the land of israel.com. Hazak ve'ematz, my friends. Bezrat Hashem, God willing, we will see you tomorrow as we dive into chapter 4 with Jeremiah.