Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / July 22, 2018 | Game Changing Moves - A Game Changing Prayer

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July 22, 2018 | Game Changing Moves - A Game Changing Prayer · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing this morning?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, so much more life in here than Second Service.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's great.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Great to see you.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a summer series called Game Changing Moves.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Today happens to be the fourth and final day of one of the four major golf events.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's called the British Open, being held in Scotland.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe my favorite golfer, well, Gary Woodland of Topeka is, of course, my favorite, but is at the top of the leaderboard.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of a surprise.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan Speith, young guy out of Dallas, Texas, and a fervent Christ follower, won last year, British Open, but has had a terrible year since then.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Few people thought he would do well, and he's at the top, he was at the top of the leaders board about six hours ago when that started.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me how well he's done.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: But um yesterday a golf analyst said that if Jordan Speith happens to win this tournament, it will be because of a, he didn't say these words, but a game-changing move that happened on Friday.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Two days ago, he was down at the middle of the pack, about 40th place.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: He was uh not below par but over par, and he hit his drive underneath the tree, about 200 miles away from the green on a par four.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: He pulled out an eight-iron and he actually hit it on the green and then hit the putt for a birdie, and that sort of changed everything for him.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I happen to be glad about that.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that was sort of uh, I usually try to start with a sports game-changing move, and that is one.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Chad Parks, who uh wrote the book, Game Changing Moves, and who spoke here about six weeks ago, five weeks ago, and is gonna speak again in three weeks to close this series, starts his book by telling about a game-changing wrestling move by one of his star wrestlers, and I think the state championship.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: And his wrestler was down by a bunch of points, stood absolutely no chance, just seconds to go in the match.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And his wrestler, he said, sort of turned his shoulders to the mat as if he's exhausted or giving up.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And his opponent jumped on him, thinking that was, you know, golden opportunity, not just to win, but to get the pin for his team, at which point Chad's wrestler pulled the bait right back out, flipped him over, pinned him just as time ran out to win the match.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was a game-changing move.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this summer, this summer we start with the sports game-changing moves.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I was just walking by Ken Berry back there, and I was thinking, how many game-changing moves you have to have seen in Major League Baseball?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I guess the fact the Royals have won two games in a row is like a game season-changing move.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, um But really the summer, I'm talking about, you know, we're applying this to game-changing moves in your in your life that change your whole life.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Moves, actions that you take that change your own life, and oftentimes the lives of people around you.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: For example, uh the game-changing move that changed the life of one Lee Strobel, who had his master's degree from Lay Yale Law School and was the legal editor for the Chicago Tribune for 14 years and won all kinds of awards for reporting.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, this is the guy who played Lee Strobel in the movie, The Case for Christ.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: But Lee writes, for much of my life I was a skeptic.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I considered myself an atheist.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: To me, there was far too much evidence that God was merely a product of wishful thinking, of ancient mythology, of primitive superstition.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: How could there be a loving God if he consigned people to hell just for not believing in him?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what about science?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: What about the evidence for evolution?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what about suffering and human misery in the world?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: The case for me was closed, the case there was no God.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then what happened is that in the 19 late 70s, his wife Leslie decided she wasn't an atheist anymore and became a Christian, or at least a seeker.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so he decided, Lee did, that he would reconsider and reopen the case for Christ.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And this was for him the game-changing moment in his life.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: For me, he writes, re-examining the case for Christ proved to be the turning point of my life and eternity.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was the evidence, he says in his book, The Case for Christ, from science and history that prompted me to abandon my atheism and become a Christian.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there is a game-changing moment in life.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to share with you this morning the game-changing moment for one of the most famous characters in Scripture.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Open your Bible to the story of Solomon in 1 Kings chapter 3.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm calling it game-changing prayer.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Third chapter, 1 Kings, cell phone, your cell phone perhaps has it.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Bible down in front of you.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or I have a lot of the text on the screen, but this is the great King Solomon, who, although he's not mentioned much in the Bible outside of 1 Kings and at the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles, he has been, he is so well known outside the Bible.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've got the whole Ethiopian uh folks who believe that they're descendants of King Solomon and Queen of Sheba, and you have people all over the world that know about Solomon's wealth and Solomon's wisdom.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is a great man, but he had a game-changing moment in his young life.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's one of the questions.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: When did this moment happen that we're going to talk about in 1 Kings 3?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: How old was Solomon at the time of his game-changing move?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the evidence in the Bible is that he was kind of young.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: He says to God in the midst of his prayer, 1 Kings 3, 7, I am only a little child.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: The word he uses, Naar, is the word used of a dependent child still living at home, at least an immature person, a young, an indecisive person.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So our guess is that he was maybe 16, maybe 20, at most, 24, and he'd just become king of Israel.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: For we read in 1 Kings 2 that David rested with his fathers, that's a euphemism for having died.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he was buried in the city of David, which now is Jerusalem.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Once the city of David was Bethlehem, but since David lived in Jerusalem, the city of David, Jerusalem.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon sat on the throne of his father David, and quote, his kingship was firmly established.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that what that means is his kingship was firmly established by God.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're told that specifically elsewhere.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: And yet here's what happens.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon somehow doesn't trust that his kingship is established by God.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of like, you know, a person who trusts Jesus as their savior, and you know, you believe that Jesus died for your sins, and at the moment you believed, you believed that Jesus' promise of eternal life was true, but then you begin doubting it, right?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, many of us trusted Christ when I was a kid, and then I kept kept going forward or raising my hand or trusting Jesus dozens of times later.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Solomon doesn't really believe, apparently, that God's established his kingship.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because the next thing that happens is he starts going after his rivals, this young king.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: He kills his uh half-brother Adonijah, he kills General Joab, he kills a guy named Shemei.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: The last verse of 1 Kings 2 says, then the king commanded Beniah, son of Jehoiada.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he went out and struck Shemai down and he died.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the kingdom, so the kingdom was established.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: What this has to mean is that psychologically now, Solomon goes, okay, now the kingdom's established, now that I've done this.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll find people who've trusted Jesus as their savior, and they go, I'm not sure I'm a Christian, you know, because you say, well, don't you believe Jesus promised that you're going to heaven and have eternal life if you believe in him?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but I sort of need to make sure myself.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, for me, I had to avoid the nasty nine and the dirty dozen, and I had to do this, that, and the other thing, and have a daily quiet time and never sass my parents, and then, then my salvation was firmly established, right?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I think this means that it was finally established in his mind, and God's probably shaking his head, going, come on.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: We move to our chapter, 1 Kings 3, and we find that in my terms, he's sort of a bobble-headed young king.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's not someone that we can really admire.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: He loves God, but you know, he's like these people that you know, maybe yourself, and you really do love God, but you got this problem in the closet.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: You got this other thing, and thank God that he's so generous and kind and flexible.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's read here.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon made an alliance with Egypt by marrying Pharaoh's daughter.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hold it.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon, you know you're not supposed to do this.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Moses says don't make alliances with intermarriage.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is silly.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in a human standpoint, you got to be so excited and proud if you're an Israelite, because if some other nation gives you their king's Pharaoh's daughter, to marry so that you have an alliance, it means they know you're stronger than they are.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what's happened here, right?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because King David took backwater little country of Israel, struggling under the first king Saul, and David has just his charisma, maybe his red hair, maybe his ability and his strength, military might, he's conquered every country round about Israel, conquered Philistia, conquered Lebanon, conquered today Jordan, then Amman, conquered uh, you know, uh Edom and Moab and all of these countries, and now Israel is the number one military Mid East power, right?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, so Solomon's going, hey, hey, Egypt, they're begging us to intermarry.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Great idea.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So he brings her to live in the city of David until he finished building his palace, the Lord's temple, and the walls surrounding Jerusalem.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: However, the people were sacrificing in the high places.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: High places, by the way, back then Israel has these hills that are like Kansas hills.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, you know, nubbins, you know, they're like a few hundred feet tall.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're not like high mountains like Colorado.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the Canaanites had had all their pagan altars up there.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And even though most of the Canaanites were gone, the pagan altars were up on these places called high places.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And God's people decided, well, we'll put Yahweh's altars up there too, next to them.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they'd go up and sacrifice.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, Whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I just want you doing the religious thing at the tabernacle, which happens to be up at Gibeon.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, God again, he cuts them so much slack, it says they were doing this because until that time a temple for the Lord's name hadn't been built.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: So God says, okay, I guess it's sort of excusable, but bleh.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon loved the Lord.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: He really did love him by walking in the statutes of his father David, but he also sacrificed and burned incense on the high places.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Are you bobbleheaded today?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: If so, you're like Solomon, and if so, you need the game-changing move, which now happens.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: In verses 4 and 5, 1 Kings 3, God offers this young king a blank check.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: The king went up to Gibeon, eight miles north, to that high place, to sacrifice, because it was the most famous high place.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: He offered a thousand burnt offerings on that site, which let God know he was serious.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so God, in a just just a feeling of generosity for this young Solomon, the son of his beloved David, at Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night, and God said, Ask.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: What should I give you?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just like a genie out of a bottle, you got one wish.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: What would it be?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is that some now?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if God asked you, if Bill Gates came to you and said, blank check, what would you like?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't that be fun?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh five bucks would be fun.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so God says, What would you like?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: One thing, right?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And here's Solomon's game-changing move.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Solomon replied, You have shown great and faithful love to your servant, my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, righteousness, and integrity.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you've continued this great and faithful love for him by giving him a son, that's me, to sit on his throne as it is today.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Basically he's saying, Hey, in the past, God, you have been amazing.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: You've been awesome.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have really been great.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then he moves to the present.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Lord my God, you've now made your servant king in my father David's place.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm just a Na'ar.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just a youth with no experience.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know anything.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Your servant is among your people.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have chosen, a people too numerous to be numbered or counted.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: In the present, he goes, Man, I'm in trouble.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: I have real need.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then he moves to the future.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Listen, would you give your servant an obedient heart, please, to judge your people and discern between good and evil?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: For who's able to judge this great people of yours?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he gave, and maybe you're saying, well, uh, what exactly does that mean, an obedient heart?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the neat thing is, the kind of heart he asked for, if you look at the Hebrew word, Lishma, it's the word that means both to hear and to obey.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, give me a heart that'll read your word, listen to your word, listen to what you say and obey it.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you say, hold it, I thought Solomon asked for wisdom.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he did in the parallel passage in 2 Chronicles.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: God appeared to Solomon and said to him, Ask for whatever you want me to give you.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And Solomon said, Give me wisdom and knowledge.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think he asked for wisdom, I think he asked for knowledge, I think he asked for leadership wisdom, strategic wisdom, and for a heart that would hear and obey God and for God's righteousness, right?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: For who's able to govern this great people of yours?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that prayer pleased the Lord.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 10.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now it pleased the Lord that Solomon had requested this.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So God said to him, Because you've requested this and didn't ask for help or wealth, long life or riches for yourself, or the death of your enemies, I think there's a little bit of a nudge-nudge by God here.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: God's going, uh, you know how you just finished getting revenge on three of your enemies?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, thanks for not asking me to kill the rest of them.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: You ask, you didn't ask for that, but you asked for discernment for yourself.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's a wisdom word.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: To understand justice, I'll therefore do what you've asked.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a wise and understanding heart, so that there's never been anyone like you before, and never will be again.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I'm going to give you what you didn't even ask for.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, I'll give you what you did not ask for, both riches and honor, so that no man in any kingdom will be your equal during your entire life.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you walk in my ways and keep my statutes and commands, just as your father David did, I'll give you a long life, too.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Health, wealth, popularity, possessions, I'm going to give it all to you.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Then Solomon awoke.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now that should maybe remind you of the words of Jesus about a thousand years later.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Who said to his disciples, and who says to us, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: If God asks you, what one thing do you want more than anything else?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully you'll ask him for wisdom, the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: And God was as good as his promise.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: He was.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's the point of the rest of chapter three and chapter four that God did give Solomon amazing wisdom.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because the very next story, one of the most famous stories in all of literature, is the story of the two prostitutes and the two babies.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Back in those days, prostitutes were always married women.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened is that it's an incredible story that tells of Solomon's concern to deal with an issue of the lowest members of his society.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: These two women both had newborns, and they were staying in the dorm or whatever else.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: One of them carelessly rolls over on her little baby in the middle of the night, smothers, and kills it.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: But she goes, I want that live baby over there.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: So she takes her dead baby, exchanges it for the live baby.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now the woman who the other woman wakes up in the morning, she looks down and she cries out, her baby is dead, but then she looks closer at it and she knows that's not her baby, looks over, recognizes her baby, and the next bunk over.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: She says, That's my baby.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: My baby's living, your baby's dead.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: The other woman goes, No, no, no, no, my baby's living, your baby's dead, and who's gonna resolve that problem?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody can resolve that problem.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: So finally they go to the Supreme Court, which in those days is the king, who graciously takes this case.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there they are, how do you resolve this?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: All the people stand around wondering, this is impossible to resolve.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Solomon, because he now has wisdom into human nature and human psychology and behavior and so forth, he thinks to himself, there's only one of these two women that would do absolutely anything to save the life of that living child.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, Bring me a sword.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: He says the only fair thing to do is to slice this baby exactly in half and give you each half of the baby.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: You or I might have said, okay, from now on I'm sorry, throughout the rest of life, six months to one mother, six months to the other.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: What a dissatisfying solution.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: But Solomon's exactly right.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: The one, the one woman, the one mother goes, Yes, king, oh king, you are so wise.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and cut the baby in half.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: The other woman, of course, dissolves in tears, collapses, grabs his feet, says, anything but that.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Give the baby to the other woman, don't kill the baby.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon immediately knows whose baby, or whose, yeah, whose baby that is.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Give that living baby to this first woman and don't kill him.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: She is his mother.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: And all Israel heard about this judgment the king had given.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they stood in awe of the king because they saw that God's wisdom was in him to carry out justice.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next thing that we find in chapter four, and I won't get into it because it would make your eyes roll back in your head, is that David had left the kingdom sort of, I mean, he militarily he'd conquered, but the kingdom was sort of uh, it was so informal.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, as rich as we think David was, and he was not one, I've been in the ruins of David's old palace.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's smaller than almost any of your houses.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: None of you would trade your house for David's palace, nor would you trade what you're gonna eat at Chick-fil-A today for one of the meals he had, which had very few spices.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, so anyway, that kingdom was really informal and unprepared, but Solomon has been given all the wisdom of ministration and organization and leadership, and so he takes the whole country and he organizes it and divides it up with twelve governors in charge.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: But now I've gotten to the passage I want to get to, a passage that most people have never read.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna, these five verses, six verses are incredible.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: It summarizes what God gave Solomon by saying, God gave Solomon wisdom, very great insight and understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon's wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the people of the east, greater than all the wisdom of Egypt.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: The great wisdom in those days, of course, was always, it's got to be over in Babylon where the Magi lived, the wise men, remember who later would come and see Jesus, or down in Egypt.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now it lists some wise men that everybody, you know, the Stephen Hawkings of that day, perhaps, or whatever else.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon was wiser than anyone, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman and Kalkal and Darta, sons of Mahal, or whomever.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: His reputation extended to all the surrounding nations.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: People came from everywhere, sent by every king on earth who'd heard of his wisdom, to listen to Solomon's wisdom over and over again.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's wise.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I simply read that to get to this.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 32 and 33.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon was like the smartest university professor you can imagine, like a Harvard professor in art and literature and botany and biology and geology.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon composed 3,000 Proverbs.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: 500 of them are in the book of Proverbs.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And his songs, numbered 1,05, we have one of them, the best one, the Song of Songs, in the Song of Solomon.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: He described trees from the cedar in Lebanon, the largest tree of that day, to the hyssop, the smallest tree of that day, growing out of the wall.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: He also taught about animals, birds, reptiles, and fish.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what this really means, as the Net Bible reveals, which is written by Hebrew scholars, he produced manuals on botany, describing every kind of plant and tree.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: He also produced manuals on biology, describing animals, birds, insects, and fish.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon really was unbelievably brilliant.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I got to this place and I said, okay, that's a really cool story and interesting, but what is there that God wants us to learn from this?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer for me just boils down to three words.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: The first word's actually not even a word, it's just initials.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Which stands for game changing move.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what I want to say about this is that every single person within the sound of my voice right now needs to know that you need a game-changing move in your life.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: You could be 5, 10, 20, 30, 60, 70, 80.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've never had a game-changing move.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we tend to think maybe I don't need one because I've grown up, you know, I've grown up well.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I had good parents.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was raised well.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have had all these privileges.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, listen, listen.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't have the privileges of Solomon.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, totally provided for.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon's blood ran a royal blue.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon was uh was spiritually mentored by none other than the prophet Nathan, the greatest spiritual man of that day.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon was uh was tutored by his beautiful and brilliant mother Bathsheba, and he learned manhood from the greatest man of his day, which is David, and he was polished by none other than God himself, and yet we find that Solomon, Solomon, needed a game-changing move.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: I needed a game-changing move, even though I was raised extremely well on a farm with 12 children, wonderful parents.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it happened to me in 1970.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: In religious history in America that they're writing, it's it's called the last, most recent revival in America.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: It started in Canada among churches and some schools up there, and then it started sweeping down in 1970 into America, primarily on college campuses, Calvin and Michigan, Wheaton College, where I was going, Illinois, Asbury in Kentucky, and it swept around until thousands upon thousands upon thousands of college students who had not been walking with the Lord were broken.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was a junior, I my priorities were all about me and all about sports and all about proving that me was better than you in sports and all that kind of stupid stuff.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I found myself in a room with 500 other people, you know, one evening, and instead of having a speaker speak to us, a student asked if he could say something one up front, a leading student, a guy we all admired.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he broke down, confessed a sin, said he wanted to get it straight, and then the Spirit of God fell.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, there were no tongues or healings or anything, but student after student started getting up, and it, because I was slower and colder than most, it took hours for me.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was just mouth hanging open.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when I was suddenly struck, I feel like, by a brokenness that came from God, I was a mess.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: We all stayed up all night and never thought about how sleepy we were.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then more and more, as people in their beds heard about it, they started filtering out and filling up until there were thousands.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then kids who went to breakfast heard about it and came over, and school was called off and so forth.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I needed a game-changing move in my life so that I would finally realize what was really important in life.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was as if God said, What's really important to you?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And up until that point, I'd always given the wrong answer.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, I had my game-changing move, and I've never been the same.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Which moves me to the next word, which is prayer.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know we say prayer is important.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: After all, we're a church, but I mean it's this is when the game-changing move happened for me and for Solomon, and maybe for you, if your game-changing move was trusting Christ as your Savior, and you prayed to God and said, Lord, I want you to know I trust in your Son as my Savior.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna stop trusting in my own human efforts and works, right?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Last 10 years or so, recognizing how far I fall short in prayer, I've been reading books, more books than you can count on prayer.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: And four of the ones that I would share with you right now, the one on the top left, Praying with Paul, by D.A.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Carsons, the one I've focused on this year, but then there's John Piper's A Hunger for God, Philippiansi's book on prayer, which sits next to my bed, and I reread it constantly.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jim Cimbala on prayer.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And related to the Solomon story, I've drawn four lessons, four things that these men say that I want to share with you today.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, God invites us, as he did Solomon, to ask plainly for what we need.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he does not scold us for our answer any more than you scold your children when they crawl up on your lap at Christmas time with their Christmas gift list, right?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: One godly man that I used to know, a seminary president down in Denver, who's died.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, his death left the opening on Jews for Jesus board, which they asked me to fill, said that he's most of the time in church, he says he was asked to pray for healings.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he's he said he said he was sad in a way that 80% of the prayers we pray in church are for physical healing.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, you know what?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: God loves it when we pray for that.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, My prayer is something like this.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Usually, God, I know you have your purposes, I know you have your plans, I know you have plans for this person, but I'm gonna tell you straight out, right now, what I would like to see happen.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he prays for them to be healed.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, admittedly, um Vernon Grounds, you know, went on to say it saddens me that 80% of our prayer requests are for physical healing.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: I can understand that.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Suffering tends to chase away everything else, but then he said, I wish I heard more prayers about poverty and about injustice and persecution, which is a different kind of pain.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: But listen, God invites us to ask plainly for what we need.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, secondly, one of the things we really need is strategic wisdom.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon recognized that.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we should pray for strategic wisdom.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: And James 1, 5 says if you lack wisdom and in context, it's yeah, you know you're lacking it, you're in trouble, you're in need, you're like Solomon, you know you're you're you know you're desperate.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: So cry out and ask and pray for it.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, I mean what Solomon prayed, I prayed nearly the exact same prayer because I was only 26 years old when this and single when this church surprised me by saying we'd, I was youth pastors, surprised me by saying we'd like you to be our lead pastor.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, there weren't this many people, but I mean, 300 people seemed like a million to me back then.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I I knew I was inexperienced, I knew I was unable, I knew I was thinking, man, can I hang on until I marry Melody and ask, then I can dump it all on her in eight months?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so but I mean, you know what?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: We desperately need wisdom.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Realize that and pray for it.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, when God is sought in desperation, he responds.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: If that first lesson came from Carson's book and the second lesson came from Piper's, third one comes from Symbolis.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: When God is sought in desperation, in desperation, he responds.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, basically our prayer request prayers fall into two categories: trouble prayers and trivia prayers.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Trouble prayers are the kind of prayers that you prayed if like me.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you were outside this last Wednesday when the rain started pelting down and the lightning.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: My sons and I were at the far side of a golf course walking, and all of a sudden, and there we are, they are running back, bouncing bags, you know, and and me, 17 times their age, you know, trotting back, you know, as the lightning's striking.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And my prayer of desperation was about this theological, three words long.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, God, help, you know.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that's about all you can get out, partly because you can hardly breathe.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but when God has sought and he sought in desperation, he responds.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Moses cried prayers of desperation.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Abram cried prayers of desperation, Job cried a prayer of desperation.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And when God sought in desperation, he responds.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: There are no, army chaplains like to say, there are no atheists in foxholes.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't see atheists over by ICU beds at Stormont Vale either.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're desperate.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's natural for us to cry out to God, and he likes it when we cry out to him in desperation, because so many of our prayers, as someone has said, are like middle class whinings, you know, for Lord, you know, help all the lights be green because I left home late and I'd like to get to work on time because that'll be embarrassing.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or Lord, my kid dropped my cell phone into the toilet.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Would you please make it work now?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, help me find my keys.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're sort of trivial prayers.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when you look at the 12 plus prayers, street specific prayers Jesus prayed in the gospels, none of them fall into that category.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're all like trouble help prayers.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, help me pick the right 12 disciples, he prayed, or at the transfiguration of the baptismers is death is coming.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're prayers in time of need.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when God has sought that way in desperation, he responds.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, and related to it, is that God, I find God rewards us when we wrestle with him.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Ian bounds, whom power through prayer, wrote eight books on prayer, says, This is the best definition of prayer I can think of: wrestling with God.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the people in the Bible who wrestled with God, God just, the Jobs and the Abrams and the Daniels and the Paul's and the Jesuses in the Garden of Gethsemane.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: God rewarded them.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: God loves that.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: In week two of this game-changing series, Chad preaching on a game-changing move, picked the one literal wrestling with God story.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: One in Genesis 32.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob, remember Abram's grandson, Abram's grandson, and his name, he'd always been the tricker.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's 20 years later, and now it's all coming home to him.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: His brother Esau, whom he's tricked out of all the family inheritance and so forth, is coming to meet him.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hasn't seen him a long time.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: He knows Esau has bloodlust in his eye.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's scared to death.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob sends all of his family and possessions across the river as a buffer.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, if Esau comes in the middle of the night, tell him that he can have whatever he wants.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: He stays alone on this side of the river.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, in the twilight or in the dark, somebody bumps up hard against him, and Jacob does what he always does.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: He fights, he wrestles.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: And don't think for a moment, we sometimes hear Jacob was a sissy, Esau was strong.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, Jacob was this incredible muscle bound.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: He lifted a huge rock that guarded a well.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: And now he wrestles to a draw, someone that we know is a divine figure.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob doesn't, but I mean they're wrestling, and no one can gain an advantage.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then as the sun peaks up and daylight comes, the other guy says, Let me go.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob says, No.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: The other guy touches a power finger to the hip of his joint and his hip and dislocates it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And now he knows this guy is something special.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy says, I told you, let me go.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob says, No, not until you bless me.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the other guy could have used his power finger, touched his neck, dislocated his neck, end of story, but he doesn't.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: He smiles inside himself, I think, thinks, that's that's the kind of guy I like.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he does bless him.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: He says, your name's always been tricker, heel grabber, Jacob.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm changing it to Israel, which means God wrestler.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when Jacob finds out who he's been wrestling with.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because God loves it when we wrestle with him, when we're desperate with him, when we grab hold of him and we say, please, I don't want to let you go until you give me what I really want and what I really need.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: What is it you really want, God says, in that key question?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: What one thing, if you could, if I could write you a blank check, what would you want?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: God loves to ask questions like that to the Samaritan woman.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Why don't you go home and call your husband?
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thanks.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: She's had five.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: She's living with someone who isn't.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: You don't think Jesus knew that?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: He loves to ask questions that help you to face your need.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: 5,000 people on the hillside starving.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, Philip, come on over here, Jesus says.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Where are we going to buy all the food for these people?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Philip goes, wow, the 7-Eleven's got two loaves.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: But Philip has to face his need and be desperate and call out for help.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or years later, Jesus risen from the dead, all the disciples out there, you know, in the boat, having caught naked nothing, just like me most of the time.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus does what I hate.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: I hate this when people do that.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Have you guys caught anything?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: From the shore.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Of course they haven't.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: But he loves it when he makes us face our real need.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: What do we really want?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he says to Solomon, what do you want?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he says it to you.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you really want out of life?
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: What would you wish for if you had one chance?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: If the genie came out of the bottle and says, you don't have three wishes, but you have one.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: What do you really, really want?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes what we pray for, what we want, is so trivial.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just because it was on this day, July 22nd, way back in 1284, when the magician called the Pied Piper went into the little town of Hamlin and he said, What would you like?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: They said to him, We'd like to get rid of our rats.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: He played a tune on his pipe, and thousand rats followed him out of town and drowned in the river.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: He went back to collect his thousand gilders that they had promised.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: They said, No, that was way too easy.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're not going to pay you anything for that.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: You just played a tune.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: He played another tune, and the 135 children from the town followed him out of town.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And depending on whether you're reading the brother's grim or whatever else you're reading, they either disappeared forever or else they quickly brought him the money and they and he brought the kids back.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: We want to get rid of our rats.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: The genie came out of the bottle and asked the cat, What do you want?
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then said, You have just one wish.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Are you sure you want a can of tuna?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: But when God asks you what you want, is your answer usually trivial?
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you ask God for what's important?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: He was so pleased at what Solomon asked for.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this, 1 Kings 3, 10 through 12.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: Five times he uses this word ask.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: So God said to him, Because you've asked this and didn't ask for long life or riches for yourself, health and wealth, to the death of your enemies, but asked discernment.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'll therefore do what you have asked.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: And listen, what Solomon didn't know is that by asking for wisdom, he was asking really for Jesus Christ.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Who many years later sat on a hillside and said, Listen, the Queen of Sheba came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom, and now one greater than Solomon is here.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you want wisdom, you want Christ.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Paul said that to the Corinthians.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Christ Jesus has become to us wisdom from God, and in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Colossians 2.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you're crying out for wisdom and righteousness, you're really calling out for Jesus Himself.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the point that we've come to this morning.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: That the game-changing move of Solomon is that he asked for the right thing, the thing he really wanted, more than anything else.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted God.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, God is happiest with us when we are happiest with him.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: When our heart's desire and desperate prayer is for his wisdom, his presence.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: Read that out loud with me, will you please?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: God is happiest with us when we are happiest with him.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: When our heart's desire and desperate prayer is for his wisdom, his presence with him.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: God offered you anything you wanted, just one thing.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: What would you ask for?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'd say, Lord, you are more precious than silver.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Anything else I desire.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for your son Jesus.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: His wisdom, his righteousness, his character, for the fact that we can ask for him, the fact that we you love it when we grab hold of you and won't let you go and desperately cry out for strategic wisdom for the Lord Jesus Christ inside us, all around us, guiding us.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's your son, Father.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's your son that we want.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.