Solomon's Choice
J. MacNeill. 1 Kings 3:5-15 In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give you.… The Gospel means, not that these old visions have vanished away, but that all that was true and substantial in them has simply been, as in a painting, made to stand out in greater vividness and nearness. The Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel stands before us, and says, literally, "Ask what I shall give thee." The thing to notice is, that Solomon showed that, humanly speaking, he was worthy of this chance, by the way in which he did not jump forward and eagerly ask for some temporal thing. Solomon showed his wisdom, his preparation for the great largess of bounty in which God came to him, in the way in which he did not use his imperative of asking upon God's imperative of offer. He seems to take a round-about road. He started off and said, "Thou hast showed unto Thy servant David, my father, great mercy, according as he walked before Thee in truth and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with Thee." Strange — is it not? — that when God comes to him with this great offer, the first thing that springs before his mind is the image and memory, the life and character, of his father. Now, I want you to reflect before you make up your minds — to do what Solomon did. It was human and heavenly wisdom combined that made him look back and see what his father did. Solomon does not indulge in great praise nor in great depreciation. David was a man that you could have overpraised. You could have talked of David as if there was never such a man. And if you were the other kind of temperament, you could have found other things in David that would lead you to run him down. Now, Solomon did neither the one nor the other. Now, we are not asked to do more than Solomon did. I neither ask you to praise your father or mother up to the skies, nor to run them down; but if you look at them fairly you can strike this average, and say what Solomon said. When I look to those who stand immediately behind me, and have been living longer than I have, I can see what Solomon saw in his father, that religion was either the best or the worst thing about them. The best thing about your father was his religion, or it was the worst. If he was a true and real follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, that was the best. You are not asked to say he was perfect, but to know and rate him according to that. It may be he was only a hedger or ditcher; he may not have been a great man at all. But what was he before God? Solomon had this great advantage, that when he looked back on his father, the light that shined from his father's record would guide him to a right decision. If it is not so, the very dimness and darkness that comes from ungodly parents should be a beacon light to put you right where they went wrong. Do not despise your father; do not despise your mother. They know what life means, and you have all that to learn yet. Solomon said, "I can see the best thing about my father was this, he rose and prospered in so far as he walked in truth and sincerity before God, and I will try to do like him there. It was religion that made him the man he was." Do not despise the religion your father had, the religion that your mother had. Depend upon it, it was the very best legacy they left you. Solomon continues: "Thou hast made me king," etc. There he looked into himself, and he passed an opinion upon himself and his powers and attainments, which is so uncommon among young people. This is where the greatness of Solomon comes out. Would God he had always remained at this point. Now, what is wrong with some of you up to this hour is the want of that humility. Be not highminded. Then Solomon looked round about him: he prospected a bit. Out in America and Canada, that great country where fortunes are made, so they say, and lost whether they say it or not, men go into certain regions prospecting. They are wanting to open a mine, and they see what a certain region is like. They tap here and there to see if they are going to make a fortune out of its rocks. So Solomon was prospecting the future. He felt life here and there, and touched its current, and he passed this verdict upon it: "I am in the midst of Thy people, which Thou hast chosen; a great people." And I think he meant, "Life as far as I can prospect it is going to mean for me hard work and plenty of it." Am I saying that you have mean ability? No, but with the best ability you will not necessarily get on. Young girl, you are sweet and fair to-day; you will grow up, marry, fall into ill-health; you will have children, maybe, and that will bring you more trouble, and by the time you are forty-five or fifty years of age you will be bent and weary to get away. Life, for a great many of us, means that. One by one the gorgeous dreams of south disappear; the rosy hopes go out into blackness; the bright expectations illumine the horizon, and then fade into the light of common day; and even if you were kings upon a throne, life would mean what I have said already. Now, will you settle yourself for the work? Life means business, toil, trouble, sweat of body and brain. Brace yourself for it; gird yourself for it. Be sure that is what is coming. Then, after looking back to his father and summing him up, and summing himself up, and saying, There is nothing in me; and, after summing up life and saying it means duty, it means hard work, and plenty of it, then he looked up. You see the process — backward, inward, outward, upward. He said, "Give me a wise and an understanding heart; build me up just where I am broken down; put the plaister on the weak place; put in Thine own great almighty arm just where I need nothing less than almightiness to under. gird me." "And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing." That is just another way of asking to be converted. The Old Testament phraseology and the New Testament phraseology run into one. It. is just the same as saying, "O God, save me from my foolishness and wrong opinions, direct my unwary feet. O God, be Thou my sufficiency, my help." Will you choose God to-day? (J. MacNeill.) Parallel Verses KJV: In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give thee. WEB: In Gibeon Yahweh appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, "Ask what I shall give you."