“29 God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. 30 Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. 31 He was wiser than any other man, including Ethan the Ezrahite—wiser than Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol. And his fame spread to all the surrounding nations.
32 He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. 33 He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish.
34 Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom.”
“My own suspicion is that the universe is not only [stranger] than we suppose, but [stranger] than we can suppose.” That’s nineteenth century scientist Jack Haldane. He found the more he learned, the more he realized that he consistently could never have guessed his findings.
That is what we are finding. You likely learned that electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom like a planet orbiting the sun—yes and no. They do orbit and they are everywhere in their orbit all at once.
Reality isn’t just stranger than we think. Reality is stranger than we could ever think up. Daycares who charge late fees find that parents pick up their children even later. Paying the fee seems to make parents feel as if they are paying for the right to come late. Much of the reason that is earth is relatively safe from cosmic debris has to do with its liquid outer core sloshing around producing a magnetic force repelling dangers in space. Children who specifically vow never to become like their parents almost invariably play out the same pattern they resent in their parents. The DNA of a fern contains fifty times as much coding as what’s in you. Life is not only stranger than we suppose; life is stranger than we can suppose.
Admitting the strangeness ought to make us curious and curiosity is an expression of humility. Humility is, as we’re seeing in James and 1 Kings, part of wisdom. Pride is never curious. It assumes it already knows whatever is worth knowing. Wisdom is curious. Socrates was known as the wisest man in Athens because he was humble enough to be consistently curious. That’s what we see in Solomon and that’s what we are to grow into as we seek to grow wise. Wisdom is curious about God’s ways in God’s world; that’s the claim of this sermon.
We will consider this in three points. First: the greatness of wisdom. Second: the width of wisdom. Third: the fame of wisdom. First, in verses 29-31, we see the greatness of wisdom. Second, in verses 32-33, we see the width of wisdom. Third, in verse 34, we see the fame of wisdom.
We, in our first point, see that curiosity is part of the greatness of wisdom. Just as this morning was James’ conclusion of his section on trials so this evening is 1 Kings’ conclusion to its section on Solomon receiving wisdom. At the beginning of this section—the beginning of chapter 3—Solomon asked God for wisdom; he showed he received it by giving a wise ruling, by setting up his government, and now we see the concluding affirmation in verse 29, “God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore.”
This is an overview tells us that Solomon’s wisdom was deep and wide. He knew a lot about a lot, which is rare. To earn a Ph.D. you need to learn a lot about little. You must, by definition, focus on an almost claustrophobically narrow topic like The Impact of Humidity on Concrete Bridges in Mississippi’s Gulf Coast counties between 1988 and Today or The Meaning and impact of Shakespeare’s use of the word swagger in his sonnets. To earn a PhD, you must come to know a lot about that little. Problems come in when people assume that those with PhDs know a lot about a lot—as if having studied the effects of shame on widowed women in colonial Massachusetts gives you insight as to how to parent a child with Aspergers. Far, far more problems occur when people with PhDs assume they themselves know a lot about a lot.
People who actually know a lot about a lot are rare. This verse tells you that Solomon was one of them. He’s the kind of guy who could give you advice on negotiating a deal at work while helping you change your car’s transmission before grilling you the best steak you’ve ever eaten which you would enjoy while he asked you three questions which would change the way you understood yourself. That’s the force of this introductory verse.
The Lord gave him this wisdom to fulfill his calling as king. That’s the reminder of “understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore,” as seen by its parallel back in verse 20, “The people of Judah and Israel were as numerous as the sand on the seashore.” To govern people as numerous as the sand on the seashore you need a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. Good governance of many people requires the humility to learn how to care for many people. The Lord equips the called but only the called ask for His help with the intention of putting it into practice. This verse tell you yet again that what James said was true for Solomon, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you,” and it will be true for you if you ask so as to act.
We are to grow in such wisdom while remembering that Solomon is an outlier. You don’t assess yourself by the outliers. I went to seminary with a young man whose father and grandfather were Ancient Near East language experts. He was learning those languages when I was in English classes in high school. You don’t compare yourself with someone like that. He’s an outlier. That’s, “Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt.” The call upon your life from this text is to grow in wisdom but don’t imagine you’ve failed if you aren’t as wise as Solomon. That’s humility.
We are told that Solomon was wiser than all the men of the East and of Egypt because these were the intellectual hotspots of that day. It’s like saying Solomon produced more cars than Detroit in the 1950’s, exported more oil than Saudi Arabia, or had more creative irons in the fire than Leonardi DaVinci. It’s showing you that he was superior to the standouts but this assumes the real achievements of those standouts. There was a real and abundant wisdom in the East and in Egypt. That needs to be said in church because fundamentalistic tendencies undercut such achievements as if there could be no insight without possessing the written word of God. You need to beware of assuming that everything written in China or Egypt is all wrong all the time. You need to beware of assuming that someone knows better than others just because they’re a believer or that someone is unreliable in everything simply because they are unbeliever. You need to look at the arguments and the insight and the message in this verse is that they had a great deal of wisdom in the East and in Egypt but Solomon had more.
Solomon was wiser than anyone in Israel as well; verse 31, “He was wiser than any other man, including Ethan the Ezrahite—wiser than Heman, Calcol and Darda, the sons of Mahol.” Ethan the Ezrahite wrote Psalm 89. All these names show up in 1 Chronicles 2 in the lineage of Judah. The message is that there were plenty of wise people making a go at life in that day. There are plenty of wise people making a go at life today. Wisdom is humble enough to accept that. Foolishness pridefully finds a small enough fishbowl in which you can be the biggest fish. The message is that yes, Solomon was the biggest fish, but he was that by grace, by God’s electing choice. It had nothing to do with him or Ethan the Ezrahite or Darda. “There is no secret about the secret of wisdom: God gave. Grace explains wisdom,” as Davis puts it.
That needs to be said for anyone who is tempted to justify themselves by way of wisdom. A passage like this can be an ego-trip for someone who is wired to learn. If that’s the grain of your temperament—great but recognize that even that temperament is a gift to you like it was to Solomon and like a passionate temperament was to David and like a thoughtful temperament was to Daniel. Don’t get high on yourself. Recognize what comes from the Most High.
Recognize from these names as well that not one of us has ever found ourselves missing Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Calcol or Darda, or Solomon for that matter. Finding your significance in wisdom and learning will leave you with as much significance as you gave Ethan the Ezrahite when you woke up this morning. Solomon could have told you that, though; ‘I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.”
True significance isn’t found in knowing. It’s found in being known. It’s found in being known by God. Knowing about God won’t do anything for you unless you are known by God. That’s what was most precious to Jesus; “the Father knows me and I know the Father.” Is that what your life is about? Are you humble enough to ask for that to be what your life is about? That’s the beginning of the wisdom that saves.
We now consider the width of wisdom in our second point. Solomon recorded many of his insights; verse 32, “He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five.” By that count, we don’t have them all. We have about 800 individual proverbs in the book of Proverbs; that’s about a quarter of the total. We have Song of Solomon which is perhaps just one out of 1,005 songs he wrote. You can respond to this fraction by lamenting all we’re missing or by leveraging what you have for your good. Think of this way: Dave Ramsey has written fifteen books on personal finance and has hosted over 7,000 episodes of The Dave Ramsey Show. You can own all of those books on your shelf and have all those episodes on your phone and still come out well behind someone who actually applies Dave Ramsey’s financial baby steps. Doing beats merely having every day of the week. Doing just Proverbs 15:4, “The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit,” would beat you merely having the rest of those 3,000 on your shelf. Wisdom is for doing. What are you doing?
You can’t miss the fact that this whole section is all about wisdom for doing. The word is used six times in these verses. That’s the message of the book of Proverbs too. “Get wisdom, get understanding.” Get it and apply it to your work, your marriage, your singleness, your aging, your health, your soul, your destiny. “Get wisdom, get understanding.”
We see how into this Solomon was in verse 33, “He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish.” That might not seem like much if you aren’t into biology but the point is that Solomon was into considering life. He was into observation and categorization. He was into the process whether it was about something big or something small. You don’t want to limit your understanding of wisdom to ethics or interpersonal relations or being handy or whatever strikes your fancy. Wisdom is curious about all God’s ways in all God’s world—the way in which moss grows, the way in which love grows, the way in which a building grows.
There is a deliberation and attentiveness revealed in these verses. Solomon devoted time to consider the stuff of life as busy as he was as king. I sometimes find myself frustrated taking walks with my wife because she has this virtue. My goal on a walk is to complete the walk. Her goal is to be attentive while walking—to figure out why this tree branch is growing so strangely, to find the source of that stream. I want to keep walking. She wants to do what Solomon did while walking. You don’t want to get to the end of the walk without observing. You don’t want to get your life without observing.
Jesus observed. He observed enough about flowers to say, “See how the flowers of the field grow [in beauty]… If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?” He had watched birds long enough to come up with, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Becoming more like Jesus is more comprehensive than we often assume.
General revelation and special revelation are more mutually reinforcing than we assume, which is why we read about them during our time confessing our faith this evening. What you can know from God’s world informs what you can know from His word and vice versa. The more you’ve watched birds, the better you understand what Jesus is saying. The thirstier you’ve been, the better you understand, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for You, my God.” Likewise, the better you understand Proverbs 17:17, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity,” the better you can understand what a friend ought to do and whether you should commit to being this person’s friend. The better you understand what James says about trials the better you can understand the trial you are in. “Wisdom, Solomon shows us, is incurably and rightly curious—it ranges over the whole domain of God’s realm, joyfully investigating and describing all God’s works,” as Davis puts it. That wisdom is compelling and that’s our last point: the fame of Solomon’s wisdom.
Real wisdom is rare and useful and what’s rare and there will always be some demand for what’s rare and useful; verse 34, “Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom.” You see the same back in verse 31, “And his fame spread to all the surrounding nations.”
This was historic fact as we will see in a few weeks—leaders came to him for wisdom—but it was also historic fulfillment. God intended His people to be a display of His wisdom so the surrounding people would see how it’s done and like an entrepreneur visiting a gigafactory, come to see how to do it.
That’s part of how the children of Abraham were to bless the whole world. It’s worth noting that this has proven the case. The wisdom given Israel in God’s word is Israel’s donation to the nations. I spent years hearing people talk about the need to pass on Judeo-Christian values. I’ve never once heard someone talk about the need to pass Moabite or Assyrian values. You want to learn about those, go to a museum. You want to learn about the wisdom God gave the Jews? Visit any gathering of believers in almost any nation. It’s still being served up weekly. That’s no different than “Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom.” That’s God’s wise intention for wisdom.
That’s part of His intention with His Son. People of all nations have come to him because they’ve seen his wisdom is wise. That’s how Jesus knew it was time to go to the cross. Some Greeks came to learn from him and he responded saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” It’s worth your consideration that you are almost certainly only listening to these words because at some point in your lineage some Gentile listened to wisdom from this word and thought it was wise enough to keeping listening. It’s worth your consideration that is your part in how this is all connected.
Far more rests on being humble and curious about what God is up to than we would ever guess. The question is whether you curious about God’s ways in God’s world. If not, you won’t find anything sufficiently interesting about Jesus and it won’t matter to you whether your part of God’s ways in God’s world and the end result is that you won’t be part of God’s ways in God’s world.
It’s all tied together and a lot more interconnected than you would ever guess. Reality isn’t just stranger than we think. Reality is stranger than we could ever think and so the essence of the best wisdom is, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” Amen.