Solomon, his wisdom, and the splendor of his kingdom
literally took away the breath of the queen of Sheba. She came to see for herself if this man was
all she had heard. What she found was
that he was all that and then some.
Between the fleet of Hiram that went to Ophir and returned with gold and
the queen of Sheba’s gift, this passage tells us of some twenty tons of gold
that came into the treasury of Solomon. At
today’s prices for gold that would be nearly three-quarters of a billion
dollars in gold. Certainly the wealth
and prosperity of Israel at this time would have been an unimaginable thing for
the generation in the exodus. The Lord
was greatly blessing His people and His anointed ruler. The world was now seeing what it looked like
for a people to be in covenant with the living God. This was the high water mark for the nation.
In contrast to the splendor of the king in Solomon’s day we
see Jesus, bound and delivered over to Pilate who is governor of the land on
behalf of the Roman emperor. The true
king, the Messianic successor to sit on the throne from the Davidic line, the
incarnate God, bound over to a foreign power for judgment. Pilate asks a simple question, “Are you the
king of the Jews?” With all Jesus has done in their sight, all the teaching
they have heard, all His wisdom in response to their questions, they have
missed the truth. Solomon’s wisdom could
not compare with Jesus’ wisdom and yet they set their own wisdom above
Him. Pilate sees through them, he sees
that this is nothing more than jealousy from the leaders of the Jews and
attempts to do the right thing but they are bent on Jesus’ destruction, nothing
else will satisfy them. This is the low
water mark for the nation.
We all know James is right don’t we? The power of the tongue is incredible. We can bless and we can curse. We can build up or tear down. We use our tongues even when we aren’t
speaking nowadays, we use our keyboards and if James could see the result of
that on the internet he would absolutely go out of his mind. He is incredibly accurate when he writes, “no
human being can tame the tongue.” What
is the controller of the tongue? The
heart. Just as Jesus said it is not the
stuff that goes into a man that defiles, it is what comes out of a man that
matters, so is the tongue. We have
choices to make all day long about what goes into our hearts and heads, let us
choose to fill them with good things rather than allowing garbage in because
then all that comes out is garbage as well.
If we can get control of our hearts through the power of the Holy
Spirit, our tongues will surely follow.
Solomon let all his wisdom and prosperity go to his head and heart and
repented of it later (see Ecclesiastes) and the leaders in Jesus’ day let their
own jealousy get in the way of seeing God’s Anointed. We need to be equally careful.
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