Ryan Hale

I picked out the word “disturbed” from the text that I chose to reflect on today to title this short post. However, my sense is that a better word, at least in English and in the context of what was happening, might have been “threatened”. Herod, in all likelihood, sensed a threat to his rule when the Magi passed through Jerusalem asking about about the king of the Jews.

“Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.

Matthew 2:2-3

The rest of the people in Jerusalem likely had a sense of wonder, or possibly anticipation. In that sense, they likely were disturbed. But if I think about Herod, I’m thinking that it was definitely a threat. He ruled over the area after having been appointed by the Roman senate. He ruled as king over the area, even if he was a “client” king, subject to Rome.

Jesus’s arrival on the scene made everyone, including Herod, presume that there would be a king that would come to overthrow the government, to cast off the oppression of the Roman government, and lead Israel to victory as God’s chosen people on the earth. That is, in fact, the same thing that the Jews wait for even today. They believe that there is a political leader, a Messiah, who is yet to come who will lead their people to greatness to save them.

Yet as Jesus arrived, similar to his cousin John the Baptist, Jesus called people to repentance, called them to believe in him, called them to place him as the king over their very lives. He never intended, nor tried, to be an earthly, political king. In fact, he had several opportunities to become king and routinely shunned the role. No, instead, Jesus called people to his kingdom, a spiritual kingdom, where he reigns as king over people’s lives. Not just in power, in government, and through laws. Not a political kingdom to rule a territory or even an attempt to rule over the entire world. Not yet, at least. No, Jesus’s claim as king is to be a king over our hearts, to give ourselves to him completely.

This same disturbance, or threat, that Herod felt, is the same that people feel even today. Jesus makes a claim for kingship and continues to call us into his kingdom.

Jesus hasn’t forced anyone. He hasn’t subjugated or conquered people or lands so that he will rule over them. No, we have to willingly repent, recognizing that our lives do not work without him as king. We have to realize the emptiness, the meaninglessness of our lives without a king that not only reigns for a short time, but reigns for eternity.

Like Herod, this disturbs many people though. It threatens them because they do not want to give up their own authority. They do not want to give up their own decision-making power. They do not want someone else having authority over them, so they refuse to follow Christ. They refuse to acknowledge his kingship. They stand in opposition to his kingdom.

This is the decision that we must make. Often, we speak of salvation from our sins, and it is true that this is what Christ did for us. He did save us from our sins. But that was done for a purpose, so that he would give us entrance into his kingdom. He purchased us away from the kingdom of darkness to come into the kingdom of God.

Yet where there is a kingdom, there is also a king and our true decision is whether or not Jesus will not only be our savior but that we will allow him to truly be also our king, our head and ruler over us. Jesus described gaining the kingdom being like finding treaure in a field or a priceless pearl, but that is a decision that each of us make make, whether we will receive the news of our king with great joy, or we will receive that same news and be disturbed or threatened because he claims to be the king of our life.

We typically think of the stories of Ishmael and Isaac and the struggle that ensued as a result of Abraham and Sarah’s disobedience. It is, I believe, a struggle that continues even today and is at the genesis of the ongoing problems that we see in the Middle East.

But beyond Ishmael and Isaac, Matthew actually also refers to Jesus as Abraham’s son.

This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Matthew 1:1

Why would that be?

Matthew traces Jesus’s lineage back to Abraham because Jesus’s coming brought fulfillment to the promises that God made to Abraham. Here is what God said to Abraham all of the way back in Genesis 12:

I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.

Genesis 12:3

And then subsequently in Genesis 15, God says this to Abraham:

“Look up at the sky and count the stars —if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Genesis 15:5

The problem, at least at that time, was that Abraham had no children. Abraham was, in fact, worried that he would need to give his entire estate to one of his servants. But God assured him that, despite his old age, he would have children, and his offspring, his descendants, would be like the stars in the sky.

As it turns out, Abraham does have even more children, even after Ishmael and Isaac, but even with all of these, they wouldn’t have necessarily been like the stars in the sky. No, that fulfillment would come through his grandchildren, and his grandchildren of his grandchildren, and so on.

So Jesus is referred to as Abraham’s son to show the lineage and connection that he had to Abraham as one of Abraham’s descendants.

Yet still, I wonder whether even these, after all of these generations and all of these descendants, would be enough to be considered like the stars in the sky. Obviously, there would be many, many people, but like the stars? That is a big number.

And what is more, we still have the first promise that God made to Abraham. How is it that all of the peoples on the earth will be blessed through Abraham?

In Jesus, this comes to pass and these promises are fulfilled. This is how:

Matthew places Jesus within the bloodline lineage of Abraham, so he is a direct descendant, but Jesus also fulfills the promise in a different way. In Genesis 15, we see a situation where God promises that Abraham’s descendants will be like the stars in the sky and Abraham believes God. He believes what God tells him, and so God “credits” Abraham with righteousness because of his belief in what God told him.

Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Genesis 15:6

Most people would say that we have to be a good person. We need to make ourselves righteous before God and then he will accept us. But in Abraham’s case, he was considered to be righteous as he stood before God because he believed what God told him.

That’s it. He believed and so he was declared to be righteous.

As Jesus came, he taught people that they must believe that he was – and still is! – who he said he was. As people believed, he made them righteous. He forgave their sins. He sent them away telling them to sin no longer, but first, based on their belief, just as God did for Abraham, Jesus also did for those who believed. Jesus was a son of Abraham in the sense of human lineage, but he was also the son of God, in one sense amongst many, that he made people righteous as a result of their belief in him.

Even today, Jesus makes us righteous as we stand before God based on our faith in him. Jesus continues to fulfill the promises that God made to Abraham becoming a blessing to all nations. Anyone that will place their faith in Christ, believing that Jesus took the punishment for their sin upon himself, will be made righteous. The blessing of Abraham became a blessing to all nations because of Jesus. And that blessing came to all nations because, like Abraham, we can be made righteous because of our belief.

In these ways, Jesus is a son of Abraham and we, as people who believe in Christ, become a descendant of Abraham by faith, one of the stars in the sky.

After King Xerxes had approved Haman’s declaration that all of the Jews would be exterminated across the Persian empire, Mordecai began to weep and mourn, both for himself and for his people there within the empire. As Esther heard about Mordecai and what was causing him to cry out in this way, she courageously put a plan into action to reverse the course of the declaration, risking her own life in order to save her people.

Esther threw a banquet for both the king as well as for Haman, making Haman feel great about himself and his position within the empire. He was close to the king, and now he was even being honored by Esther, who was, unbeknownst to him, one of the Jews that he intended to have killed.

Upon returning home after the first of the banquets that Esther would hold for the two men, Haman was, on the one hand happy, but on the other continued to fume with anger because of what he perceived as Mordecai’s insolence, his refusal to honor and bow down to Haman as he passed. His wife suggested that he set up a pole so that Haman could soon place Mordecai on the pole when the time came to execute the Jews. In this way, not only would the Jews be killed, but Mordecai would be set up as a symbol that the Jews had been exterminated, but would also be an example to anyone else who might dare to not recognize Haman’s greatness.

His wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, “Have a pole set up, reaching to a height of fifty cubits, and ask the king in the morning to have Mordecai impaled on it. Then go with the king to the banquet and enjoy yourself.” This suggestion delighted Haman, and he had the pole set up.

Esther 5:14

Of course, as we follow the story, we find that not only was Mordecai not placed on the pole, but instead, Haman finds himself parading Mordecai around, honoring Mordecai instead in front of all of the people there in Susa. It is an incredible display of irony that won’t end there. Haman’s plan, and the motivations behind it, as a result of Esther’s wisdom, is exposed before the king and Haman himself will be placed on the pole, the very pole that he had set up to hang Mordecai.

It reminds me of a beautiful song that I’ve heard, and I believe have also noted before. A lady named Jess Ray sings it, called Gallows, which I believe was originally found within the video called Sheep Among Wolves II. Here is the song:

In this song, Jess is singing about the way in which Haman not only acts in satanic ways, but also shows himself to be a type of Satan within the story of Esther.

Why?

Satan’s hope was to destroy the Messiah in an effort to completely thwart the plans of God. If he could exterminate the Jews, the Messiah could not come as the Messiah would come only through the Jews.

Yet Jesus did come, and a “pole” was set up for him in the same way that the pole had been set up for Mordecai. Satan directed the actions of the Jewish leaders and intended to use the Romans to kill Christ, but he played directly into God’s plan. By killing Jesus, Satan himself lost the war that he had been waging with God. All of Satan’s power was stripped from him because upon Jesus, God placed all of punishment for the sins of the world. All of Satan’s power was found in the fact that he was able to accuse people for the sin that they had committed, yet on the same cross where he directed people to hang Jesus, Satan lost all of his power because Jesus took all of the punishment.

As Jess sings in the song above:

The devil is gonna hang on his own gallows.

That is exactly what happens with Haman in the context of the story of Esther, and the same thing has happened also with Satan through Christ’s death on the cross.

Throughout the book of Esther, we do not see God specifically mentioned, but we can clearly see God moving. In the first three chapters that we are reading today, the plot sets by Queen Vashti being sent away as a result of her refusal to be paraded around as a trophy wife, another demonstration of Xerxes’ wealth and power.

Esther is then chosen, amongst all of the other virgins in the kingdom, to replace Vashti and Mordecai, Esther’s cousin who raised her after her parents had passed away, uncovers a plot to kill the king, only to report the plot through Esther and have his loyalty recognized, written down in the annals of the king.

Now, the table is set for the primary conflict of the story to come forward and be presented. Haman is honored by the king and all of the people at the gate, except for Mordecai, bow down to Haman as he passed by them. Haman, therefore, hated Mordecai, but he also learned that Mordecai was a Jew, so he made a plan to not only kill Mordecai but in fact all of the Jews throughout the Persian empire:

When Haman saw that Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor, he was enraged. Yet having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai. Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.

Esther 3:5-6

Haman becomes, within this story, a type of Satan or Antichrist figure in that he hopes to not only destroy one of the Jews, but their entire race. Despite the fact that the Jewish people had broken the covenant that God had made with them, no longer obeying God and thus being punished for their disobedience by being destroyed as a nation, God still intended to fulfill his promise to Abraham that a blessing would come from God, through their nation, to be a blessing to all nations.

Yet if Haman were to have his way and the Jewish people were to be destroyed as a whole as he had desired, the Messiah could not come through the Jews as God had planned. Not only is Haman threatening Mordecai, not only is he threatening the rest of the Jewish people, but he is even threatening the Messiah. Without the Jews, there would be no Messiah. And without the Messiah, there would be no relationship with God, neither for the Jews nor for the rest of the Gentiles around the world.

God’s hand continues to be visible within the story of Esther as he guides the people such that his plan will not be thwarted. God will carry his plan to completion, both in that time and even today.

As Nehemiah continued toward finishing the project to build the walls around Jerusalem, he faced quite a bit of opposition. Opposition from within and external opposition as well.

From within, the Jews were doing their best to rebuild the walls, but they had several pressures that they were facing as well. They had needed to pay taxes, so they had sold their land or even sold their children into slavery. The local nobles, the governmental officials and Jews themselves, were lending and charging interest back to their own countrymen. And they had to take out mortgages on the little bit of land or property that they did own so that they could have money to eat. They weren’t working to earn money for their families because of the project of building the wall, and to make matters worse, there was a famine that was even in progress at the same time, so it was difficult for the people to be able to eat at that time.

Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous; in order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain.”

Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.”

Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards. Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our fellow Jews and though our children are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.”

Nehemiah 5:2-5

At the same time, the Gentile leaders living in the Trans-Euphrates area, what we would roughly call today the areas of western Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, the countries to the west of the Euphrates river, very much preferred that the walls of Jerusalem remain down, leaving Jerusalem exposed to attack. They began to call Nehemiah for a meeting, even accusing him of building the walls so that Jerusalem could lead a revolt against the Persian empire.

“It is reported among the nations—and Geshem says it is true—that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports you are about to become their king and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: ‘There is a king in Judah!’ Now this report will get back to the king; so come, let us meet together.”

I sent him this reply: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.”

Nehemiah 6:6-8

As we do the work that God has called us to do, we should expect opposition. Opposition will come from within and it will come from external sources as well. Opposition will come from every side.

God may even call us to do the work in less-than-optimal conditions. In Nehemiah’s case, there was a famine at the time making it difficult for the people to continue to do the work when, in reality, it was difficult for the people to even eat.

There is rarely, if ever, an optimal time in which God’s work is meant to be done. Today, God calls his people to make disciples of all nations, to proclaim the Gospel of the kingdom of God to all of the peoples of the earth.

Is now an optimal time to do that work? Probably not. Even today, there are many wars. There is terrorism. The political climate is very challenging. There are militant people everywhere who want to stop the work, to stop God’s work and his mission from moving forward. However, in the same way that we see Nehemiah move ahead, finding solutions to the problems that he faced both internally and externally, we must do the same.

We should expect opposition. We should expect that the conditions will be challenging. Yet God calls us just the same. He calls us to carry out the work, praying and persevering all the same, working wisely yet moving forward, despite the opposition.

Nehemiah came to Jerusalem with a vision, a vision to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem that had been broken down when Babylon had destroyed the city nearly 140 years before. He started by surveying the work, but then he laid out his vision to recruit the other people in the work. Nehemiah didn’t, in fact, start by swinging a hammer. Instead, he knew that this was a big job and he called many people into the work.

In all, just among those that are listed in chapter 3, I counted 39 sections of workers, made up of multiple men and women in each section, who were called into service and were counted as those who were completing the work. All of the way around the city, the wall was to be rebuilt and the work didn’t require one worker, a small crew, or even a large team. No, this was a huge job and required an army of workers who would rebuild the walls.

The repairs next to him were made by the priests from the surrounding region. Beyond them, Benjamin and Hasshub made repairs in front of their house; and next to them, Azariah son of Maaseiah, the son of Ananiah, made repairs beside his house. Next to him, Binnui son of Henadad repaired another section, from Azariah’s house to the angle and the corner, and Palal son of Uzai worked opposite the angle and the tower projecting from the upper palace near the court of the guard.

Nehemiah 3:22-25

In a similar way, the work that Christ has called us into, to preach the Gospel of the kingdom to all nations, to make disciples of all nations, also requires many, many workers. It is no small work. It is a work on a global scale and requires a number of workers commensurate with the calling that Jesus has given to us. A church here, a pastor there, or a few missionaries aren’t enough. No, the work that is in front of us requires workers. A lot of them.

This is our aim. Jesus told his disciples when he sent them out – recorded in Luke 10 – to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send workers out into his harvest field. This is what we must continue to do today. Not just hope that workers will go, but pray that God will send them, and as God identifies those people who are willing to go, even some who will go to their friends and family or others that will go across the world, we must prepare them and send them.

This is the work that God has called us into. The walls are broken down. The world is in desperate need of Christ and we can no longer “play” church… – please hear what I’m saying. It isn’t enough to just go to church once a week and move on with the rest of our lives. It isn’t enough to be part of a Bible study. The Lord is sending out workers to a world that is broken and the only solution is Jesus himself. Will we be the workers? Will we rebuild the walls? Will we call others up to service to bring many into the kingdom of God?

Nehemiah was the cupbearer for king Artexerxes from the Persian empire where the Israelites had been scattered after the destruction of Jerusalem. They had been taken to Babylon and then had subsequently became part of the Persian empire as the Persians came to conquer Babylon.

Now, as Nehemiah was carrying out his duties for king Artexerxes in Susa, one of the royal capitals of the Persian empire, he received some visitors who had come from Judah, the area where Jerusalem is found. Nehemiah wanted to know about the state of Judah and Jerusalem since it had been conquered more than a century before. Unfortunately, the men, the vistors, gave him a difficult answer. They reported that the wall of Jerusalem was still broken down, the gates had remained burnt, and the result was that the people that remained there in Jerusalem were in trouble and disgrace.

Nehemiah broke down crying, mourning, and in sadness. He has received terrible news that his homeland laid in ruin. It had now been over 140 years since the time that Jerusalem had been destroyed, and while Nehemiah had personally grown up living in another empire, his desire to rebuild the city of his ancestors remained strong.

When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

Nehemiah 1:4

Nehemiah wept for his ancestors. He was broken-hearted for the city of Jerusalem. Yes, he served the king of Persia, but he was also concerned about his countrymen and the state of the city of his heritage.

This made me think today… Nehemiah was concerned about the state of Jerusalem enough to make him mourn, fast, and pray. In fact, his sorrow motivated him to make a plan to do something about the situation. He was scared to ask the king for permission to go and rebuild the walls, but yet his motivation to fix the situation was so great that he would overcome his fear, overcome that which could have held him back so that he could accomplish the mission that God had given him to do.

Few other people, including the people who even lived there in Jerusalem, including the people that lived there in Judah, felt the same motivation that Nehemiah felt. No one else in the entire set territories that surrounded Jerusalem felt the same sorrow. Yet Nehemiah had a sense that there was something deeply wrong: Jerusalem’s walls had been broken down and its gates were in ruin, having been destroyed by fire. Few others, if any, felt motivated to change the situation, but Nehemiah had been shaken to his core and he would heed the call from God to go to change the situation in Jerusalem.

So I ask myself, and I think that many, many more of us should ask ourselves… Do we have this same sense of the spiritual ruins that we have all around us today? In many countries, including those that we would call “Christian” countries, we might have .5%, 1%, or possibly a maximum of 5% who call themselves Christians, and even fewer who are following Christ.

Do we feel that? Do we have a sense of mourning? Do we fast and pray to the extent that we would make a plan to go and do something about the situation? Do we realize that this means that 95%, 99%, or 99.5% of people do not know Christ? Do we realize that this means that this percentage of people do not know the way to the Father, and if we truly believe what Jesus says, cannot come to the Father?

Do we care? Do we care that this is an eternal reality for these people? Do we care that the kingdom of God is missing so many people? So many nations? So many tribes and languages?

Or do we, instead, shrug our shoulders and just accept the situation to be as it is?

Nehemiah was moved to make a plan. He had become a man who was changed by the news of the destruction around him. He wasn’t a contractor. As far as we know, he wasn’t a builder. He didn’t have much experience, but that didn’t matter. He was moved to change the situation to make it as it should be, to correct the problems as they were presented. Nehemiah mourned, fasted, and prayed, and then he made his plan and went to do what God had called him to do.

So what can we learn? Are we moved by the spiritual devastation around us? Will we mourn, fast, and pray, then move to make Christ known among all of the nations?

Why did Jesus perform miracles? Why did he show himself able to command the wind and the waves, to walk on water, to drive out demons, or to heal people of their sickness?

He was showing by his actions that the words that he was speaking came directly from God.

If he was able to perform actions that only God could perform, then it is reasonable to believe that his words also were the words that God intended for him to speak.

In Jesus’s case, he was not only speaking words from God, he also claimed that he himself was God, and so the miracles that he performed were also intended to confirm that he, as God, was there in Israel in the form of a human being and in the person of Jesus, and the words that he was speaking as he claimed to be God were also true.

In the case of Elijah, God had told him to go to live with a woman and her son in the town of Zarephath. In that place, he had the woman make him bread from the very last of the flour and olive oil that they owned. There was a severe famine in the area as a result of rain being withheld for several years and so the woman and her son had come to the point where they believed that they were about to die. They had come to the end of their resources, the end of what they had. Elijah, though, told them that God had said that their flour and oil would not run out while he was there with them, until the day that the rains would return.

The woman, though, seems to have remained unsure. It wasn’t until her son became sick and eventually died, only to be resurrected by Elijah’s prayers over the boy that she fully believed Elijah’s words came from God:

The LORD heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!”

Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth.”

1 Kings 17:22-24

In several cases, I have heard people in the church speak of the “authority” that they have over spirits, demons, sicknesses, and other types of difficult situations. Yet at the same time, they also speak of God in ways that run contrary to who he is and what we have already been told in the word of God. In these cases, I’m reminded that we often like the idea of seeing God give us power, and being able to exercise that power, without really knowing God or understanding his character. In other words, we like the power that God can give to us because we like to demonstrate in front of others that we have some special ability, but we do not necessarily like him for who he is, his true self.

In short, in those cases, our interest is in impressing man and being known as a type of godly person as a result of some special power, not in impressing God by living for him. In those cases, we want the glory to come to us, not to go to him.

Obviously this is a problem.

The purpose of a miracle, or some type of action that only God can perform, is to confirm the words that are being spoken. The confirmation in the form of a miracle is that those words that the person is speaking have come from God.

But our role is not to desire the miracles nor the power, but instead to know, to love, and to obey what God has told us. In this way, God receives the glory for what he has done, not us. If God decides to do a miracle, then great. He should receive glory for what he has done! He is showing his power and confirming his word. This has both happened to me and has happened through me, and I can confirm that it is possible. But the power is not ours to give. It is the Lord’s power to distribute when he is ready and to whom that he desires, so as to confirm what he has said.

Ahijah gave Jeroboam a prophecy that God had torn the kingdom of Israel away from Rehoboam and given Jeroboam the greatest part of the kingdom. But Jeroboam was an evil king, leading the people to worship the gods of the people who surrounded the people of Israel, even setting up golden calves, altars on the high places of the land, and fake religious festivals to lead people away from remembering the festivals that God had commanded.

There came a time that Jeroboam’s son was sick, so Jeroboam sent his wife to Ahijah, the same prophet that had given Jeroboam the news that he would rule over the northern tribes of Israel. Her task was to see if their son would live.

Ahijah gave a terrible response to Jeroboam’s wife. Not only would the boy die, but it would be the most merciful thing that God would do within Jeroboam’s house as a result of his wickedness:

Because of this, I am going to bring disaster on the house of Jeroboam. I will cut off from Jeroboam every last male in Israel—slave or free. I will burn up the house of Jeroboam as one burns dung, until it is all gone. Dogs will eat those belonging to Jeroboam who die in the city, and the birds will feed on those who die in the country. The LORD has spoken!

As for you, go back home. When you set foot in your city, the boy will die. All Israel will mourn for him and bury him. He is the only one belonging to Jeroboam who will be buried, because he is the only one in the house of Jeroboam in whom the LORD, the God of Israel, has found anything good.

1 Kings 14:10-13

Jeroboam’s son would die, but he would, at least, be buried. All of the rest would die and their bodies experience incredible indignities, becoming a warning for all of Israel and all of the peoples who surround them.

Why would they be a warning? Because they rejected God as their God and instead followed the evils of the gods of the other nations while even doing religious activities that had the pretense of being like those that God had commanded.

God completely destroyed Jeroboam and the people of his royal house. And in many ways, what happened to them is very similar to the description and imagery that we see the scriptures speak of Jesus’s return. There will be wrath and there will be justice, not only for disobedience against God, but most of all, for rebellion in placing ourselves in the place of God. When we choose to do what we believe is right based on our own ideas, based on our own plans, believing that we know what is right and what is wrong, we replace God and his sovereignty over our lives with our own plan. We become our own gods and we worship ourselves. We see this throughout our societies and across the earth even today, just as man has done from the beginning.

The wrath that God will one day bring upon us will have been of our own making, just as the wrath that Jeroboam brought upon himself was also of his own making. Yet there is good news that is available. When we say that we are “saved” by Christ, it means that we are saved from this wrath that will come. If we will repent from this sin of rebellion and turn back to God, placing our faith in Jesus’s sacrifice, we also can be saved from the wrath that is coming from God. We can instead live with him.

But it also means that we acknowledge him, Jesus himself, as king over all. Jesus is the king in the kingdom of God. We are no longer our own kings, but we are his people. We must look to him so that we will be saved from the coming wrath that will wipe away every evil until it is all gone.

As Solomon came to power as the king over Israel, one of the main things for which he is credited is for having asked God for wisdom. God, in fact, commends Solomon for not asking for riches or for long life, but instead for insight on how to be a good king, how to govern his people well.

Before he asked to have wisdom, though, we could also ask: where did Solomon obtain the wisdom to ask for wisdom? What was the primary motivating force for him to ask for this instead of riches? Or instead of fame or for power?

Solomon’s primary motivation, his reason to ask for wisdom, was his sense of humility as he took the throne over Israel. Solomon’s humility in recognizing that he doesn’t know how to rule his people well caused him to ask for wisdom. He asked God for wisdom and insight because he wanted to do the job well that he had been called to do.

Now, LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number.

1 Kings 3:7-8

Making good decisions starts with a posture of humility. It starts with truly recognizing that we do not know everything. It starts with understanding that even if you have some knowledge, you may not have the experience to know the right steps to take. You may not have the understanding to know the right direction in which you are to go.

And we should, of course, consider how different this is from the world’s typical way of leading. How often do we, as people who know little, try to make others think that we know exactly what should happen next? We realize and feel within us that we know nothing, but before others, we try to make a good impression and make them think that we know what we are doing.

I believe that this is at the core of the reason that Jesus came preaching that we must repent and believe. Repentance begins with a humble heart. It begins with a deep understanding that we have been wrong and we do not know the steps that we should take forward. Repentance sheds our pride and instead places our dependency on God.

This is what Solomon was doing. Not necessarily repenting, but fully recognizing his need for God. He recognized that he had been given a responsibility that he didn’t know how to fulfill. He needed God’s wisdom and his guidance. This is what we also need. We need God’s wisdom. We need his guidance, shedding our pride and recognizing that all that we have and all that we need comes from him.