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[Music] The Sword of Solomon, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] The second reading of scripture for the evening is from 1 Kings 3, beginning at verse 16.

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"Now two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. One of them said, 'My lord, this woman and I live in the same house. I had a baby while she was there with me. The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby.

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We were alone. There was no one in the house but the two of us. During the night, this woman's son died because she lay on him. So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I, your servant, was asleep. She put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast.

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The next morning I got up to nurse my son and he was dead. But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn't the son I had born. The other woman said, 'No, the living one is my son. The dead one is yours.' But the first one insisted, 'No, the dead one is yours. The living one is mine.'

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And so they argued before the king. The king said, 'This one says my son is alive and your son is dead, while that one says, 'No, your son is dead and mine is alive.' Then the king said, 'Bring me a sword.'

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So they brought a sword for the king. He then gave an order, 'Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.' The woman whose son was alive was filled with compassion for her son and said to the king, 'Please, my lord, give her the living baby. Don't kill him.'

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But the other said, 'Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two.' Then the king gave his ruling, 'Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him. She is his mother.' When all Israel heard the verdict the king had given, they held the king in awe,

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because they saw that he had wisdom from God to administer justice. And may the same God who inspired these words incline our hearts to understand. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Henry David Thoreau, the New England transcendentalist, once heard one of his friends boasting about the education which he, the friend, had received at Harvard University. The friend said, 'At Harvard University they have explored all the branches of knowledge.' To which Thoreau replied, 'Yes, that's Harvard University. All of the branches, but none of the roots.'

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Now that's a rather severe and prejudiced judgment, not truly fair to Harvard University. Yet there is in that sentence a real insight that's worth remembering. Knowledge, education, is either the knowing of facts or the knowing of where to get them. But wisdom is much more than that. Wisdom is integrity of character.

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Wisdom is being in love with the things in life which are worth loving. Wisdom is having a sense of values that puts first things first. Wisdom is a transcendent loyalty of soul. Wisdom is a philosophy which brings meaning to the course of one's days.

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Wisdom is a spiritual gift that grants real insight. Wisdom is not a thing of the branches. It's of the roots. That's the reason the Bible says, 'Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom.' Tonight I'd like to think with you about wisdom.

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And as we think of it together, we can turn to no more appropriate person for study than King Solomon. It could be said that King Solomon is the only personality in the Old Testament who had more than one Ph.D. degree. He was a master of the fields of botany and zoology. It is recorded in Scripture that he wrote down descriptions of all the plants and animal life in his kingdom.

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He was a literary genius. Both the Book of Proverbs and the book called the Song of Solomon in large measure had their origin with him. He was a master architect. He built the temple. He brought Phoenician builders into Israel for the first time.

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He was the first one to use copper in building procedures within Israel. He was the first one to use headers and stretchers on walls and to use coin construction in the corner of buildings. He was an outstanding businessman. During the course of his career, he gained control of all the caravan routes along the eastern edge of the Great Desert.

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And many of his proverbs are directly related to the proper practice of business. For example, he wrote in one of his proverbs, "A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight." Solomon was a master of the field of political science. He entered into successful negotiations with many, including the Queen of Sheba.

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He completely reorganized the political structure of his own country and made it more efficient than it as a state had ever been before. And above and beyond all of these things, he had a Ph.D. in theology. His prayer at the dedication of the temple is one of the most sublime utterances on the page of Scripture. His building of the temple and his leading people to face toward the temple when they pray actually is a remarkable theological insight.

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You will remember, of course, that the sacrifice which was offered on the altar of the temple was a precursor of the sacrifice which Christ would offer on Golgotha once for all. And so in causing men to look toward the temple as they prayed, Solomon was speaking to generations afterwards that would look to Christ and lift all their prayers in his name. And there was in Solomon always a sublime humility. At the time when he was crowned king, his prayer to God was not for might or power or prestige.

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He prayed, "Oh Lord, give me an understanding mind so that I might discover what is right." And that phrase, "an understanding mind," means literally, "Give me an inner obedience. Help me not only in my thoughts but also in my deeds, theoretically and practically, to live as you would have me live." And God heard Solomon's prayer and he answered it.

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In 1 Kings chapter 4 verse 29 we read, "God gave Solomon wisdom and breadth of understanding as measureless as the sands of the seashore. He was wiser than any other man." So if we are going to talk of wisdom, we must think of Solomon. There is, of course, much too much in his experience for us to notice it all tonight.

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I select just one story for our consideration. I've already read it in your hearing. Two women are sharing a house. Each of them has a child.

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One night, one of the women rolls on top of her child. The child suffocates to death. She discovers it. She takes the dead child, puts it beside the other woman, takes the other woman's living child, and takes it by herself.

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In the morning, the woman wakens and finds it's a dead child, looks at it, discovers it's not her own, realizes what has happened. They begin to squabble over the question and they come before King Solomon for judgment, each one claiming the one living child. Solomon hears the case and then says, "Bring me a sword." They bring to him a sword and he instructs them to cut the child in two, giving one half to each woman.

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Immediately, the real mother says, "Oh, don't do it. Let the child live. Give the child to her. It is better that he lives. She may have it." The other woman says, "That sounds fair enough to me. Cut the kid in half and give half to each one of them." And in that moment of response, of course, Solomon immediately discerns which of the women is the real mother. And he gives the child to the one to whom the child belongs.

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And all the people, the scripture says, were in awe of the wisdom of Solomon. Well, we cannot learn all about that wisdom tonight, but we can learn from this story at least these things. We can learn first that the wise man understands the futility of the sword. Solomon said, "Bring me a sword."

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Now this was, by his evident testimony, not an act that would solve the problem, that is, insofar as the use of the sword was concerned. Solomon fully understood that to split that child in half would accomplish nothing. The sword you see used as an instrument of violence in that way never accomplishes anything. The sword can shed blood. It can break limbs. It can kill. But it is utterly impotent to accomplish anything of real significance or value in this world.

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I care not whether the conflict is between two mothers or between two nations. The sword finally accomplishes nothing. If the person who is right takes to himself the sword and uses it to win, what has he accomplished? He could have won without the sword in God's good time and in God's good way. Right will always finally prevail.

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And if the person who takes the sword is wrong and wins, what has he accomplished? In the end he will not win. God's justice will out, and in the end, though he has won with the sword, he will be defeated. You cannot claim a heart or a mind or a soul with a sword. This is one of the things that troubles me so deeply about the new administration in Washington.

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Our president has recently said that he wants America to be number one. Not number one in literacy. There are other countries in the world that have a higher literacy rate than our own. Not number one in life expectancy. There are other nations in the world that have a higher life expectancy than our own. Not number one in aid to other needy countries. There are at least eleven other nations which give a greater percentage of their gross national product to the needy of the world than we do.

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Not number one in the control of illicit drugs. Not number one in the control of crime. Not number one in the control of infant mortality. Not number one in preventing suicide. No. Our president has said that he wants us to be number one, and I quote him directly, "in military dominance." But the sword never accomplishes anything of value. The nuclear gladiators of today who fight with swords made out of megatons and rays and germs, they say we need these things in order to protect our political freedom.

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Political freedom is desperately important. I've spent a lot of time in countries that do not have political freedom. I know how important it is. I know how political freedom is valued on the pages of Scripture. But I know this too, that in the Scripture, political freedom is never promised to the children of God. Look, for example, in Jeremiah, chapter 29, where the people of God have been taken into slavery in Babylon, and what does Jeremiah say to those people?

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He says to them, "Plant gardens. No more than that, build houses. No more than that, let your children marry Babylonian children. No more than that, pray with the grandchildren of those marriages." In other words, you're going to be there a long time, longer than a garden, longer than a house, longer than a generation, into a second and third, more generations, you're going to be there. And you are not to rebel, and you are not to turn against those who oppress you. Be faithful to God, and remain where you are. The Apostle Paul says the same thing in the New Testament. He writes to the people at Rome and says, "Be subject to those who are in authority over you."

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And who was in authority over them? The cruel, the oppressing Roman Empire. Paul did not offer any more than Jeremiah offered to these people political freedom. But he called them to an obedience to God. And what is obedience to God? Well, Peter took up his sword to defend Jesus, and Jesus said, "Peter, don't you know that those who take the sword will perish by the sword?

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I could summon, if I will, twelve legions of angels in my defense." And twelve legions of angels, in case you've never counted, is seventy-two thousand angels. What Jesus was saying to Peter was this, "If you depend upon the sword to precisely that degree, you will not depend upon your God." And as a child of God, that's where your dependence is to be. About a year ago, a major television network here in America presented a series of programs on the Holocaust.

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Those horrible things that were done by the Nazis to the Jews during the Second World War. The series, after being shown here in the United States, was shown in Germany. The first time German television had taken up that scene. More Germans watched those programs on the Holocaust than any other program ever shown on television in Germany. And in many surveys which were taken during and after the showing of those telecasts,

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it was discovered that German children repeatedly asked two questions of their parents. First, when all of this was going on, what were you doing? And what were you saying? And second, when all of this was going on, what was the Church doing? And what was the Church saying? The world is spending presently a million dollars a minute on arms.

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If we ever come to the place where we use these arms, the Holocaust of this half of the 20th century will exceed by every stretch of the imagination the Holocaust of the first half of the 20th century. And if any children are born after that, they will be born crippled and deformed and scarred. But there will come a day when they will climb up on their bent and broken limbs

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and they will look into the face of their parents and say, "When the world was arming for this, what did you do? And what did you say? When the world was readying itself for this, what did the Church do? And what did the Church say?" After Solomon, the wise understand the things of God. And one of the things of God is this,

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the utter futility of the sword. Another thing of wisdom which we can learn from Solomon's experience here is this, that there is a limit to compromise. Compromise is a very important part of our life.

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Most of our legislation comes about through a process of compromise carried out in our Congress or our state or our local legislatures. When you go into an automobile dealer to buy a car or you are buying a house, you enter into negotiations with the car dealer or with the owner of the house

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and you arrive at a figure which is mutually acceptable. It's a kind of compromise. Compromise is very important in our experience. But Solomon teaches us in this story that there are some things too big to be compromised. And one of those things that's too big is a little baby.

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I suppose no one in America is more esteemed for understanding management techniques than Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker in his book The Effective Executive, just one of a number of books he's written on the subject of management, tells of how he was doing a consultative job for Alfred Sloan. Now, Alfred Sloan was at that time the chief executive officer of the General Motors Corporation.

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Alfred Sloan called him into his office to give him the assignment, and he said, "Now, Mr. Drucker, look over our company from top to bottom and tell us the absolute truth about what you find. Do not compromise at any point. I have many working for me who know how to work out every conceivable kind of legitimate compromise.

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But in this matter, there can be no compromise. The truth is what I'm looking for, and nothing less than the truth." There are things, you see, which cannot be compromised. [Bell rings]

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Please turn your cassette to the other side. I'm sure that many of you have heard how throughout the course of the last year there has been considerable discord within the United Presbyterian Church. The United Presbyterian Church is the denomination which is associated with this colleague.

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It's the denomination in whose service I happen to be a minister. There were some issues that came before the Church that led a small percentage of the Church's ministers, less than 1%, to decide to leave the denomination. Now, when you become a minister in the United Presbyterian Church,

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you take solemn vows before God and man to be obedient to your fathers and brothers and sisters in the faith. Some ministers within the course of the last year in the Presbyterian Church decided to compromise those vows and to leave the Church. And considerable pressure was put upon me to join them. I received letters, local and long-distance telephone calls.

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A group came to see me in my home asking me to join them. Now, the three issues about which they were concerned were these. First of all, the fact that the United Presbyterian Church ordains women. That argument did not persuade me because the United Presbyterian Church has been ordaining women for 50 years.

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Every one of these people who came to me and asked me to leave the Church because it ordains women, when they themselves became part of the Church, the Church was already doing that. The second issue which they pressed was the fact that the United Presbyterian Church has recently passed a law in which they state that the property of any individual congregation belongs to the entire denomination.

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Now, once again, there was nothing new about this. This has been Presbyterian procedure for over 200 years. You've never read about a Presbyterian Church going bankrupt, or a bank that loans money to a Presbyterian Church not getting its money back.

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Why? Because Presbyterian churches stand behind one another. The Presbyterian Church is a connectional Church. You build up and support one another, and it's understood that what is owned by any congregation is owned by all Presbyterians everywhere.

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That argument, then, because it is no change in Church policy, did not impress me either. And then they pointed out to me a theological controversy which occurred within the Presbyterian Church within the last year. A man from the Church down south, either out of ignorance or confusion

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or his inability to articulate his thoughts or indecision for some reason, gave a very, very murky description of what the relationship between the human and the divine in Jesus really is. But the Church in the area that heard him judged his murky description to be satisfactory and received him as a member of the Church.

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And this led some ministers elsewhere to describe the Presbyterian Church as apostate. Now the word apostate is very much like the word communist. If you call somebody a communist, it isn't important that they be a communist. Once you've smeared them with that word, the damage is done.

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Just so when you call someone apostate, they don't have to be apostate. Once you've smeared them with that word, the damage is done. The word apostate means to utterly and totally reject God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the ministry of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit through the Church.

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Now I travel the lengths and breadth of the Presbyterian Church. I know its creeds, I know its doctrines, I know its thoughts, and I know its practice, and I know that the Presbyterian Church is not apostate. And so when these people came to me and asked me to compromise my vow,

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when they asked me to do what Martin Luther would never do, Luther, you know, never understood himself, to have separated from the Church. He saw the Church draw apart from him, but he did not see himself as drawing apart from the Church. When they asked me to do what John Calvin said he would cross ten seas to avoid doing,

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when they asked me to do what the Apostle Paul would never do, he dealt with a Corinthian Church that was locked up in all kinds of false doctrines and obscene behavior, but he never advocated separation from the Corinthian Church. He found it administered to the Galatian Church, and then it got caught up in all kinds of false beliefs and heresies,

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yet he never suggested that anyone part from the Galatian Church. He had to do with the Ephesian Church, a Church that locked itself in licentiousness, and yet Paul never separated himself from the Ephesian Church. In fact, when the time came for him to go to Rome, he said to the Ephesian elders,

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"I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you, and they will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them, so be on your guard." You can read about that in Acts 20. Paul never advocated separation from the Church.

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Jesus told a parable about a man who had a field, and there was wheat growing in the field, and some of his enemies came and they sowed weeds, the biblical word is "tares," amongst the wheat. And the employees of the farmer said, "We'll go out and we'll tare out all those tares." And Jesus, as the farmer, said, "No. Allow the two to grow together.

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At the time of harvest, I will separate them." Jesus is saying, "There should be no tare pooling in the Church. You're not going to have a pure Church in life. You can't go and separate the weeds from the wheat, because the log in your eye blinds you

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so that you cannot see the speck in your brother's. That judgment belongs only to me." And understanding all of this, I said, "I would not compromise my vow." "Oh, don't make mistakes," they said. "Don't make mistakes.

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What we're saying is not really against you. What we're saying is against your Church." Against my Church. The Church into whose arms I was born.

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The Church where I was taken to be baptized. The Church in whose Sunday schools I learned the faith. The Church in whose confines I felt the call of God to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. The Church who ran the college in which I was educated.

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The Church who ran the seminary from which I hold two degrees. The Church who ran the other institutions that have honored me with degrees. The Church that laid its hands on me when I was ordained in the ministry. The Church in whose courts I have served.

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The Church into which I have led more than a hundred young men and women in service in the ministry. This Church for whose journals I have written. This Church whose mission fields I have visited and preached upon. Don't tell me that you don't attack me, but you attack my Church.

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I am part of the living body of my Church. When you attack my Church, you attack me. To ask me to join in that attack is to ask me to submit to some kind of spiritual masochism. And I will not do it.

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There are some things that are beyond compromise. Solomon teaches us that as part of real wisdom. And he teaches us one other thing. He teaches us that wisdom is knowing that the essence of life is love.

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You know a man without wisdom standing watching those two women fight in front of King Solomon about which one had the living baby. Might have thought that he was seeing a quarrel that had arisen out of hatred. That's a wrong understanding. Solomon was wise. He understood that he was seeing a quarrel that arose out of love.

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You see the one woman was fighting for her child because she so loved him. The other woman had loved her child and lost her child and in a selfish perverted kind of love wanted to get another child for herself so she would have something to love. But both of them were coming at this matter out of their love.

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Love, you see, is the one thing that's present in all of us. It's the one way in which we're all alike. If there's any common denominator to the human experience it is this. We all love to be loved.

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And we all love love. And we all love to love. William Glasser, one of the noted psychologists of our day, has said that there is no such thing as mental illness. Mental illness is always the result, he argues, of one of two things.

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Of being unloved or of having no sense of worth. And of course the sense of worth comes from being loved. Now why is it that love is the very essence of our human experience? It's because we're made in the image of God. And God is love.

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That phrase "God is love" appears on page 1317 of my Bible. And if I'm not mistaken it does not appear in exactly those words on any earlier page. Now why is it that the Bible says that affirmation that God is love to the very end? It's because the Holy Spirit in leading the Bible to come into being wanted us first of all to see God's love manifested in creation.

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Then he wanted us to hear the call of God's love to Abraham and the assignment to take that love to all the world. Then he wanted to see God's love bring his people out of slavery in Egypt. Then he wanted us to see the history of Israel. The moments of triumph and the moments of defeat.

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Then he wanted us to see the passion of the prophets and the magnificent love that is spread across Scripture and the pages of the Gospel. He wanted us to know all the record of the early church. He wanted us to read the letters of Paul and know about the sufferings and the hardships that Paul knew in all of his life. And then after knowing all of this, after all of this record, all of this experience of the church, after all of this,

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comes the three monosyllables in our language, "God is love." Those three words have changed the mental climate of the whole world. You see, they're not put at the beginning like some casual introduction to an easy and frothy philosophy, not at all. They come as a final testimony.

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After all the sorrow of the human experience, all the tragedy of the human experience, after all the blood has been shed, after those who love God have come forth out of every conceivable storm and vortex in the human experience, after all of the agony of believing is shown on the pages of Scripture, and all of the ecstasy of believing is recorded there too, then, after all of that, knowing all of it, comes the fruit of it.

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And what is the fruit of it? What is the church's final affirmation after going through all of this? What is the sum of its experience? The total at which it arrives after two thousand years of life and death is this.

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God is love. That's why Jesus came as he did, not with swords loud clashing, but loving, not with announcements and arguments, but loving God so loved the world. In this is love, not that we love him, but that he loves us.

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So, when they called me to Sam's dead side, I went. And Sam was dying, and Sam was an evil man. And he'd lied and stolen and cheated and spent some time in jail and been separated from his family and had no friends. And I knelt on the floor beside his bed, and I whispered into his ear,

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"Sam, God made you, and God loves you, and God sent his Son to die for you." "And if you'll make his Son your Lord, he'll take you now to spend eternity with him." And Sam grunted in response, "Say it again." "God made you. God loves you.

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God sent his Son to die for you. And if you'll accept his Son as your Lord, he waits to give you welcome home." And Sam, weeping, said, "Oh, I do. I do." And thanked God.

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And then he closed his eyes and went off to thank him personally. What is wisdom? Wisdom is understanding the foolishness of what the world calls strength, the sword. Wisdom is knowing the peril of exceeding the limits of compromise.

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And wisdom is understanding that the very essence of life is as God made it to be, love. Hear, then, the word of the Lord. Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore, seek wisdom.

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Let us pray. [Prayer is sung.] Our Father, we come seeking education, knowledge, service, jobs, awards.

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Be gentle with us. Give us, first and instead, wisdom. For Jesus' sake, and for our own sake, and for the whole world's sake.

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And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love.

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And to all those whom nobody loves. His peace. [ noticed Mark is asking a lot of weird questions today lol... sorry about that ]