All right, 1 Kings chapter 10.
Start reading verse one. And when the queen of Sheba heard
of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came
to prove him with hard questions. And she came to Jerusalem with
a very great train and with camels that bear spices and very much
gold and precious stones. And when she was come to Solomon,
she communed with him of all that was in her heart. And Solomon
told her all her questions, and there was not anything hid from
the king which he told her not. And when the queen of Sheba had
seen all Solomon's wisdom, and the house that he had built,
and the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants,
and the attendance of the ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers,
and his assent by which he went up into the house of the Lord,
there was no more spirit in her. She said to the king, It was
a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and
of thy wisdom. Howbeit, I believed not the words
until I came, and mine eyes had seen it. And behold, the half
was not told to me. Thy wisdom and thy prosperity
exceeded the fame which I heard. The title of my message tonight
is, I Believe Not the Words Until I Came. So we read here that
there once was a day when the word of the Lord was brought
to this Queen of Sheba. And why was the word brought
to her? You kind of have to ask that
question. But yet we know it was because she had to have heard
of it somewhere. Now this Queen of Sheba was from
Egypt. She lived somewhere in a town
in Egypt, the city. She was the queen. But she had
heard of the fame of Solomon, but also it says she had heard
concerning the name of the Lord. So somebody had to bring the
gospel to where she was at. Now, as far as we can tell, she
was not seeking it, but it obviously stirred up her interest when
she heard it. Isn't that how it's been in your experience?
When the Lord sought me out, it wasn't because I was seeking
Him out. The Lord reached out, and He grabbed me. And He sought
me. I wasn't seeking Him. And then
you heard. And then you heard His words.
And it's been different ever since. You've heard many things
before that didn't affect you the same way, but then once you
heard, you heard the gospel for the first time, Something clicked. Something's different. This is
not the same thing I've been hearing. And so this is what
happened to her. So you couldn't just, this is
one of those, you have questions that you just couldn't let go
of, things that are burning in your mind that you think, you
know, that this gospel seems to be answering. This is different.
It's not like what I've heard before. I've heard all these
other things before that don't sound like this. There's something
different about this. It's not just something different
amongst the other different views. This is something different,
something that I can't even put the words to but you know in
your heart. You find yourself yearning and you find yourself
with the desire to hear more. It's not just something that's
interesting. It's, I must hear more of this. To some people,
they'll find anger when they hear it. They say, this makes
me angry. I don't like what it's saying because it's taking away
what I'm standing behind. But to some, it's good news.
This is the laying down of all the work that I was doing and
all the worry about trying to do enough. At what point is it
enough? The gospel came as good news, and I can lay that down.
I don't have to keep doing this. It came as good news. So there's
one common theme. You must hear more, however you
receive it. When you first heard it, you
had to hear more. Even those whom, when the Word was brought
to them, you first were angry because of what it meant concerning
what you believed at the time, but yet you found yourself still
being drawn to it. So, first thing, my first point
is there's always a need to hear. And there always will, and there
always has, and there always will be a scarcity in terms of
the number of churches out there that do preach the truth, where
the truth can be heard. Elijah felt this way. Whenever
he called out to the Lord, he said, They've killed your prophets. They've broken down your altars.
And I'm alone, he felt at that time, and they seek my life.
There's nobody else out there. Lord, as far as I'm aware, I'm
the only one preaching your gospel and your word by your name. And
as far as he was concerned, there was nobody else. Now, that wasn't
the case. Just because we don't know and
can't see doesn't mean there aren't other places we don't
know about. And that was Elijah's experience, but yet the Lord
showed him that there were more. Now, somewhere you heard and
someone told you, and perhaps you read something. That's what
happened to Hilkiah when he read, if you'll turn with me over to
2 Kings chapter 22, when he brought the word to Josiah. 2 Kings 22, and Hilkiah, so they
found the book of the law inside the old temple. In verse eight
in chapter 22, and Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the
scribe, I found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.
And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan and he read it. And Shaphan
the scribe came to the king and brought the king word again and
said, thy servants have gathered the money that was found in the
house. That's the first thing he was worried about, the money.
And then they've delivered it into the hand of them to do the
work that have the oversight of the house of the Lord. And
Shaphan the scribe showed the king, saying, Hilkiah the priest
hath delivered me a book, and Shaphan read it before the king.
And it came to pass, when the king heard the words of the book
of the law, that he rent his clothes. And the king commanded
Hilkiah the priest, and Ahiachin the son of Shaphan, and Achbor
the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asahiah the servant
of the king, saying, Go ye and inquire of the Lord for me, and
for the people, and for all of Judah concerning the words of
this book that is found. For great is the wrath of the
Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have
not hearkened unto the words of this book to do according
unto all which is written concerning us." So what he found out He
wasn't seeking the Lord. He didn't know, it wasn't even
on his mind. He was concerned about the money that was in the
temple. And so when they reported that back, they just happened
to find the word of the Lord and it was brought to him. And
he found out that we weren't, they weren't seeking the Lord.
They weren't going after the way in terms of their fathers,
what was given to them. And so he's saying, pray to God
and ask forgiveness for us for this. So we find here, if you
turn also over to Matthew chapter 12, Hold your finger there in
1 Kings 10. Stem with me real quick for one
verse over Matthew chapter 12. This is the only reference we
have to the Queen of Sheba in Matthew 12 verse 42. And this
is the significance of what drew me to this passage that she's
referred to as the Queen of the South. The Queen of the South
shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall
condemn it. For she came from the uttermost
parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And behold,
a greater than Solomon is here. So it says that she will rise
up in judgment and condemn this generation. Why? Why will she
be the one to condemn this generation? It said, because she came from
the uttermost parts of the earth. That meant the furthest place
imaginable just to hear the wisdom of Solomon concerning the name
of the Lord. So there was no gospel, there
was no truth where she was. But yet, the point of this is that there's
no excuse If she came from the uttermost parts of the earth
to come hear the word of the Lord, then how much more will
she judge this generation from where it's preached and people
won't go to it because they have no interest in it and don't care?
Just to hear more of the gospel she heard. So, she came because
she heard, and it's always this way, because this is the way
of grace. She came because she heard. Now,
if she heard because she came, that's works. So she's trying
to do something in order to get something. That's not the way
this works. The Lord comes to you where you are. He seeks you
out and calls you. And then she heard and said,
I've got to go hear more of this. Now in John 15, the Lord says,
you've not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that
you should go forth and bring fruit. This is the Lord causing
us to hear and then us going forth, not the other way around.
God must do something for me or I'd never see Him. This is the only way that I'll
ever have anything done for me is if He does something for me.
If He doesn't do anything for me, I'll be lost. I have no power
to believe. I have no power to stay. Maybe
I understand one time, but give me a minute, I'm gone. If He
doesn't hold me the entire way, I will be gone. And in 1 Kings
1, we read, when she heard the fame of Solomon
concerning the name of the Lord. So this name of the Lord, it's
talking about the wisdom that he had concerning the report
means the fame. So the fame of Solomon, he was
the wisest king in the land, the richest, the most powerful.
Everyone in the land knew who Solomon was, but what was significant
about him was not these things. It was his wisdom concerning
the name of the Lord. Now, she came, and I did a little
bit of background to understand a little bit about the area.
It kind of helps me wrap my head around it. We think that, I mean,
it took me four hours to drive down here, and in my mind, yes,
that takes a while. We think a five-day trip would
be long. If you're going to drive across the country, it might
take, you know, four days to get from here to Seattle. So
it would take a long time, and that sounds just awful to think
about driving for five days straight just to get somewhere. Well,
she traveled 1,400 miles. There were no cars, there were
no planes. You walked, you carried, you
had camels. And that's how you moved. So
at best, you're moving 20 miles a day, as if you're going hard
all day long, because you're dragging a lot of stuff with
you, a lot of provision. So this wasn't just an idle thing
that she thought, I'll go over here and hear the gospel. This
was a major endeavor that took six months of her life to get
from where she was to where the gospel was. And that's what it
was saying in Matthew. She's going to judge this generation
because she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear this.
And you think she had some time to think during those six months
traveling. It wasn't just that she got all
excited. And if it was just something
fleeting and past, where the Lord didn't do anything for her,
she'd have turned around and gone back after two weeks, say, you
know, we're not even out of the country we live in, and we've
been going for two weeks, and now we've still got a thousand
miles to go. So this would be the easy thing to do, let's just
turn back, why are we doing this? So she had some questions, she
had anticipations, many things that she wanted to ask. She had
the opportunity to go back, but she heard some. It was more than
just an interest. This is something that disturbed
her heart, disturbed her soul to make her continually be driven
toward it. This was her only focus. I have
to go do this. Everything stops in my kingdom
while I'm going to do this. So she drove on and it must push
for more and more understanding. When you hear the truth, this
is the one greatest thing about the truth, you know it's true
when you hear it. When the Lord gives you the ability
to have ears to hear, you know it's the truth. There's no, well,
let me check on that and see if it verifies these facts here
and these other people have written. You know the truth when you hear
it. It's instant that that's the truth. You may not like it,
but it's still the truth. The gospel divides. Gospel is
not, when the Lord said, think not that I haven't come to send
peace on the earth but a sword. So it's something to divide.
It basically exposes. That's what the gospel does.
Exposes things for what they really are. Illustration I'm
going to give you is when I was in college, I lived a couple
blocks from a place where I could go play billiards. So I liked
to play pool. And after a while, I got pretty good at it. First,
I would just grab any stick off the wall and go, you know, hit
the balls and try to, you know, try to win. I got good enough
to where I understood what to do and what not to and kind of
got decent at it. One thing I learned, to be good
at pool, you've got to have a straight stick. If you don't have a straight
stick, then you are not going to hit straight, and it's not
going to go the direction you want. But you do that using most of
the sticks that are on the wall, because those are bent and old,
and people beat those to death. So the one way you tell if you
have a straight stick is that you have to compare it against
something you know is straight. So the slate table of the pool
table, the big slate plates that they put felt over, so those
are flat and straight. So you lay a pool stick down,
and you roll it. And if it rolls nice and smooth, you know you
have a straight stick, because you compared it against something
straight. But if you roll it across and it's clump to clump
to clump to clump, you know, over and over, you know this
is not straight, it's bent. So the key to this is you've
got to have the straight stick. The gospel exposes who God is. God is the straight stick. And
you, you and I, we're the crooked stick. So whenever you compare
what we are to what God is, they don't line up. because we can't
even come close to what God is. In terms of His holiness, we
see our sin, we know that we're sinful, we can't do anything,
and yet we would compare ourselves even in any form or fashion to
God and His holiness? No. So the straight stick is
God, and the crooked stick, that's who man is. She came to prove,
she came to prove Him with many hard questions, because she saw
something in the gospel she heard, that gospel is the straight stick,
And she saw something in herself that was crooked. And she had
to prove him, meaning ask him many hard questions that she
had concerning what she heard. So she was exposed. There are
many things about herself that did not stand up. There are many
things that she had probably thought and lived in her life
that were now called into question based on this thing, if it's
true, what I've heard. She was from a land and a people
full of great idolatry. You do any looking at the Egyptian
people and all they did was worship birds and the sun and all kinds
of beasts and gods and they had a god for everything. So it was
whatever they needed at the time, that's the god they worshipped.
So great idolatry. But deep down she had to know,
even in the midst of that, this can't be true. praying to the
bird god and give your money to the god of the dead. It's
more like a good luck charm hoping that it's not true. That's really
the way they look at it. And that's what false religion
is. I'm not really committing to one thing, but just in case
it's true, I'm going to say that might be true and this one over
here and this one over here. That's what false religion is. It stands for nothing, but yet
you've got to have some value in everything. The gospel is
a straight stick. It is very clear, and it is very
straight. There is no deviation for what
the gospel teaches. It says, God is holy, man is
sinful and wicked, and there is nothing outside of that. There's
no, a little bit, not as wicked, it's either all wicked, evil,
or holy. So, she needed, she had a great
need to hear. She had many questions. So in
verse two, It says, when she came to Jerusalem with a very
great train, so it wasn't just her taking off by herself for
six months, with camels that bear spices, and she brought
much gold and precious stones, and when she was come to Solomon,
she communed with him of all that was in her heart. Isn't
this what we do when we come to God? When you come to God,
we don't put on pretense. We come to God saying, help me.
I need your help, Lord, if you don't help me, if you don't hear
my prayer, if you don't do this for me, I will be lost and you
have to hear me." So she communed with him everything that was
burdening her on her heart. You only pray, and this is important,
you only pray for what you need and that you can do nothing about.
So I don't pray for my ability to pick up this cup of water.
I can reach over and grab that cup of water. But I pray for
things that I can't do anything about. Lord, take away my sin. Lord, save my soul or I will
be lost. These are things that I can do
nothing about. And if he doesn't do something for me, I'll have
nothing. So you only pray for what you need and can do nothing
about. Every day I pray, Lord, save me. You mean you don't know
you're saved? You're standing up here trying
to preach. I can't save myself. I won't know until that day,
and then I'll continue to ask every day, because all I see
in myself is sin. And until that day, I'll always
ask, Lord, save me. And that's the simplest prayer,
but that's the one thing that every child of God will pray,
Lord, save me. You have no reason to save me.
There's nothing in me that deserves it, but Lord, because of your
word, I'm appealing to you based on your word and your mercy,
save me. I need to hear the Lord's promises
in his word. That's the only thing that gives
me any confidence. The Lord says, ask and you shall receive. Now
it might come in the way or the hour in which you decide, but
he still says to ask and you will receive. Whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Where there is
a need to hear, so that was our first thing we looked at is that
need to hear. The second thing we look at is there's always
going to be a word for the weary. The Lord never provides a need
to hear without a word to satisfy that need. This is the hope for
the hopeless. He says in Isaiah 55, ho, everyone
that thirsteth, come ye to the waters. He that hath no money,
come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. But
if you're not thirsty, It's not written to you. It's only to
those who are thirsty, who have a need. Oh, is everyone thirsty? No, not everybody's thirsty,
so not everybody's gonna come. But if you're thirsty, he's saying,
come. Buy, and there's no price. Come buy. Everything's provided.
You don't have to pay anything. I've already provided it. In
verse 3, it says, Solomon told her all her questions, and there
was not anything hid from the king, which he told her not.
Wouldn't you like to know what he told her? You're standing
before the wisest man in the world who is able to commune
with the Lord. How many questions you could
ask him? Wouldn't you like to know what he told her? Well,
he told her the same thing every sinner must hear. The message
doesn't change for who comes. The message, everyone gets the
same. Because what he told her was concerning the name of the
Lord. He told her that God is in the
heavens. Let the heathen say, where is now their God? Our God's
in the heavens, and heath done whatsoever he hath pleased. He's
the King of kings, he's absolute in rule and in power, and decrees
all things. He's holy, he's the Lord God,
Jehovah, that requireth perfection in all his commandments and all
his laws. Not strive for, and we'll just hope it all works
out in the end. I think that's most people's view of what they
would call religion. is they look at the Ten Commandments,
or even any of God's commandments, and say, you know, I can't do
all that. You know, so they just kind of throw their hands up
in the air and say, well, nobody can do all that, so God, I'm
just hoping, I'm banking my salvation on that. I hope God doesn't hold
me to all that, because nobody can do all that. I hope it all
works out in the end. That's really, when you get down
to it, what most people are banking on, that it's taken care of somehow,
or it will be glossed over. Well, that's not really the way
it works. If we look over in 1 Kings 9,
verses 4 through 9, he says, this is the Lord saying, If thou
wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked in integrity
of heart and uprightness, and to do according to all that I
have commanded thee, and will keep my statutes and my judgments,
then will I establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel forever. as promised to David thy father,
saying, There shall not fail thee a man upon the throne of
Israel. But if you shall turn at all, turn from following me,
you or your children, and will not keep my commandments and
my statutes which I have set before you, but you go and serve
other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel out
of the land which I have given them, and this house which I
have hallowed for my name, I will cast out of my sight. And Israel
shall be a proverb and a byword among all the people. And at
this house, which is high, everyone that passes by it shall be astonished
and shall hiss. And they shall say, why hath
the Lord done thus according to this land and to this house?
And they shall answer, because they forsook the Lord their God,
who brought their fathers forth out of the land of Egypt and
have taken hold upon other gods. and have worshipped them and
served them. Therefore hath the Lord brought
upon them all this evil." So he told her who God was. There
is no, I'm going to do some of this and get away with not doing
all of it. The Lord's saying, if you don't
do all these things, he's saying, I'm going to make you a proverb.
People will know what happened to you because you didn't do
these things. Well, who we are, he told her, that's who God is.
God is holy and in the heavens and requires absolute perfection. Who we are, Genesis 5 says, we're
only evil continually, what goes on in our hearts. That's, for
some people, hard to hear, but to someone who's honest with
themself, with their heart before God, they can say that really
all my motives, anything that I've ever said or done is either,
I said this this morning, self-purposed or self-willed. It some way benefits
me or makes me look good or makes me from having to do something
I don't want to do. If I'm really honest with myself,
that's true. We're sinners. We're guilty in word. We're guilty
in thought. We're guilty in what we do. There's
nothing we can do about it. Have you been here before where
sin is not just a word when you really feel yourself to be a
sinner? Because we talk about it, I think,
and think, you know, yes, I'm a sinner. But when we really
start looking at the corrupt nature of what we are and seeing
yourself as a sinner, seeing yourself as utterly sinful and
obnoxious to God because of what you are, Well, this is when Noah
found grace, because God at that point said, I'm just looking
at the whole lot. There's none of them good. All
they do is work evil continually, and I'm just going to drown them
all out, start over. It's not worth having this people,
but yet it says Noah found grace. Was Noah any different than any
of those other people he described that said were sinners that only
did evil continually? No, Noah was just like them.
There's nothing about Noah that made him redeemable other than
Noah found grace. Grace is something that you don't
deserve. It's getting what you don't deserve.
This is God's unmerited favor. So Noah was not any different,
but he found grace. God made a covenant, which is
promise. He said, I will take you to me
for a people And I will be to you a God, and you shall know
that I am the Lord your God." He'll make himself known. And
if God promised it, is there any way that it won't be done?
No, there's no way. If you were a child of God, is
there any possibility that his promises could not be so for
you? If your salvation was conditional upon something that you did,
then sure, because it would be up to what you did, but not if
you're a child of God. God wouldn't be God if he set
up that rule, and that's not the way he is, because that's
not the way he works. Not one person is lost, and not
one person is in heaven who's not supposed to be there, or
missing that's supposed to be there. It happens exactly as
he's laid forth. Payment must be made for our
sins. God doesn't just overlook them. The problem is you've got
nothing to pay. I've got nothing to pay. What
am I gonna pay with? The blood of animals, all the
ones that they would sacrifice just to get through the day,
you know, to sacrifice for iniquity, for all the different sacrifices
they have, they can't put away sin. That just bides me time.
That's all it does. And you could slaughter every
animal to ever live and it still would not be enough to cover
your sin. So we see here that God is not gonna bypass sin.
So if we look here in 1 Kings 10, verses four, it said, when
the Queen of Sheba had seen all of Solomon's wisdom and the house
that he built, the meat of his table, sitting of his servants,
the attendance of his ministers, their apparel, his cupbearers,
his assent by which he went up in the house of the Lord, there
was no more spirit in her. And what we find right here,
for me, I've read this passage several times, There's certain,
you know, being honest, there's certain parts of God's Word you
kind of read over fast, that maybe let's get to the meat of
things later down here where we want to get to, you know,
what she's really saying about her experience here. But yet,
we miss something if we do that. Because this is a picture of
God in the order of His house, what we see here. All His wisdom,
so that was the first thing she meant. She had seen, in verse
4 it said she'd seen all of Solomon's wisdom. Who can compare with
God's wisdom or know it? I work in a field that looks
at really tiny things in microscopy. And so we look at the smallest
things that you can visualize. And the more that scientists
find out, the more we realize they have no idea how things
work. It's all, they think this is
how it works. They do something to something
over here just so that they can see, does it work the way I thought
it did? So it's all just a big guess. And nobody really understands
or knows. And the best that we can do is
guess. And so that's the tiny stuff
that we're looking at that is, when you're talking about size,
something that is one one millionth this size that we're looking
at, this little data holder. So when you look
at something that size and then think about how big the world
is, how little do we know? We don't know anything. So she
had seen Solomon's wisdom concerning the name of the Lord. So who
can know God's wisdom? The creator of all things, the
way things work, the more that we find out, the more we know
we don't know. It's awestruck when you start looking and thinking
of all the things of who God is, what he's done, The fact
that I'm standing here, he's making my heart beat, that I've
got sensors in my eyes that are taking in and seeing vision,
that he made all this stuff work. The fact that this, to say that
this came out of some primordial soup and then grew into a frog
that came into a lizard, I mean, it's ridiculous. There's no foundation
for it other than hatred for God and not wanting things to
be made by God. That's all that is. And the other thing when Sheba
saw it said, and the house that he built, the might, the safety
of his house. He has very strong walls in his
house. So when you talk about the heavenly Jerusalem that has
the jewel walls, the jasper walls, the gold street, these are solid,
enduring things. This is not something, the house
that we're in here, the house that you go home to at night,
it's eventually gonna rot, it's gonna fall. If I don't take care
of my house, the roof rots and things fall to pieces and his
house is not that way. The house that he provides is
the house of the body of Christ. This is something, this is not
just a physical house we live in, this is the house of the
body of Christ. This is something that doesn't
age, it doesn't get full, it doesn't get empty, it all stays
one size. And the other thing she saw as
far as the picture of the house of God, the meat of his table,
which is his provision. Has there ever been a time you've
really ever done without something that you truly needed? Now there's
many things that I want that I've been without, but there's
nothing that I've ever truly needed that I've ever gone without.
I'm sure there'll be a day and I it scares me to even stand
here and say that because I know You know in back of my mind.
I'm thinking now something's gonna happen And then I'm gonna
be missing something that I say that I'd really need but it's
just something that I want and he's gonna show me really what
that means and but he's the Lord provides and he's he's been faithful
in his providing and The next thing she saw was the sitting
of his servants what that tells you is there of all one spirit
and There's no dissension among his servants. They all speak
the same thing. There's all one subject. There's
all one spirit. It's all the new man, Christ
Jesus. So this is the new man created
in us. So those who believe the gospel
whom Christ has called out and put in the Holy Spirit has put
that new spirit in you. You know what, we may have differences
on the outside, but that's just the stuff in this life. That's
all going to drop one day. But the one thing that we do
have in common is a love for Jesus Christ. And it's that love
of Christ, that's what that same spirit is. So the sitting of
His servants has to do with the same spirit throughout. There's
no dissension, nobody over here, you know, like when Paul is reproving
some of the Corinthians saying, some are saying, I'm of Apollos,
I'm of Paul, I'm of Cephas, trying to put emphasis on the man that
brought them the gospel or planted the seeds, and it doesn't matter.
All that stuff is gonna be burned up. The one thing needful is
that you're in Christ, that he's the focus, not these other things.
And this is how you know a prophet. Does he speak the same thing?
So when men are invited here to preach, or you go other places,
if they speak words that are not of this book, they're not
God's prophet. They're a liar. And there are
many men that are only out there to make a dollar, to grow a church,
to do what they need to do to grow numbers. And that's not
what the Lord's gospel's here for. It never was. But yet, men
seek to line their pockets and not use the gospel as he's given
it. So that's how you know the Lord's
prophet. And God's not any different. Does He exalt Christ? How is
God? Does the prophet speak the same
words as what God does? God exalts His Son. He said,
this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him. If He speaks those words, you
hear Christ, you see Him, look to Him. He's the focus, He's
the reason, He's the glory. That's the truth. And anything
outside of that, those are lies. So the picture of God and the
order of his house, the last thing he saw was their apparel.
What were they wearing? What were they wearing? They
were all wearing the spotless white robe of Christ that he
provides. You remember the parable of the
man who went to the wedding. So back in those days, they provided
a wedding garment for you when you showed up. Everybody wears
the same thing. But the parable in the Gospels,
the guy shows up, he's got his own garment on. He thinks, well,
my stuff's a little nicer. I want to be different. And so
he shows up and the king says, friend, why don't you have your
wedding garment on? Where's your wedding garment?
That's not the one my son's provided. And he said he was speechless. He said, take him and cast him
out. What this is saying is God will have nothing other than
the spotless robe of His Christ that He provided through His
works and what He did. That's all there will be. Anything
else is cast out. So my works, I can't have that
be a part of it. So this is his apparel, that's
the righteousness of Christ. And next, it talks about the
cupbearers. That means ready to serve, ready to do this will.
That's what the cupbearers stand there waiting, do you need a
cup? Do you need me to fill it? That's all they do. All they're
doing is they're ready to serve. And so this has to do with the
order of his house, his servants. So you know when Isaiah had his
vision of seeing God on the throne, said that there were seraphims
that were flying around the throne with six wings. With two they
covered their eyes, with two they covered their face, with
two they covered their feet, and with two they didn't fly. That ready to
serve is one of the attributes of those seraphims. So one is
they can't even look upon him because he's too old. I can't
even look, so they hide their face. They cover their feet because
they're ashamed of their walk. Even though they're heavenly
beings, compared to who God is, how ashamed they are of what
they are and their walk. They hide their feet. And the
flying is, it's ready to do His will. Whatever His command is,
they fly to go do it. And so that's what this cupbearer
represents. And lastly, I like this one.
It was His ascent into the house of the Lord, by which He went
up into the house. So when we think of, you picture
Solomon, the richest, greatest king of the land. His father
David had conquered everybody. He's walking in, basically enjoying
a lot of the fruits of the blood that had been spilt by his father.
He's a pretty big guy at this time. There was nobody in the
world who didn't know who Solomon was. And so you think about how
would he ascend up the steps into the house of the Lord? Well,
Solomon was also the wisest man to ever live. Great in wisdom
is the beginning of the fear of the Lord. So wisdom is, the
beginning of wisdom is this, the fear of the Lord. So Solomon
feared the Lord. So I guarantee you it wasn't
with his head cocked high and a big parade and a big cape and
gold and all this. He went in humbly, went before
his God humbly, not in a cocksure attitude, because it's who he's
standing before. So his ascent. The Lord Jesus
Christ, when He ascended, He ascended with a great cry, It
is finished. And that's the way He went into
His Father's house because He had accomplished salvation. He
was triumphant. It was the victory that He accomplished
over sin and death. He had a reason to hold His head
high. It's because of His works He's
ascended. But you and I, we're to fear
the Lord. And that means it's a right view
of self. That's humility. So, bringing
all those the Father gave with him home, that's what the Lord
did. And in seeing this, we see in the next verse, or at the
end of the verse, there was no more spirit in her. Daniel said,
my comeliness, everything, when I saw him, everything I thought
was great about me and appealing, he said it melted into corruption
as soon as I saw him. When Isaiah had his vision and
saw the Lord of hosts lifted up, he said, woe is me. I'm a
man of unclean lips. Nobody told him that, but as
soon as he saw God, he saw that about himself. You don't come
to know you have unclean lips and see God. When you see God,
you'll know you're unclean because of seeing who he is. I'm a man
of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of people with unclean
lips. In my eyes, I've seen the King, the Lord of hosts. So first,
we have a need to hear And second, we have a coming to Christ. And
third, I've heard of you by the hearing of the ear, and everything
I've heard was one thing when I hear it in my ear, but now
my eye sees, wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and
ashes. So it's one thing to know up
here the facts. I was mentioning this to Dickie
at lunch today. As a young man, I grew up in
a church that preached the gospel from the day I was born. I didn't
come from another church that preached a false religion. And
when you are already in the false religion and you hear the truth,
it's there's the truth. You know, it's clear there's
a dividing difference. But as in growing up in a church
where you've heard the truth, at what point do I know the truth
as a fact? And what point do I start loving
the Lord and trusting him? because I'm told these things
are true and logically I can see, yeah, that is true, I believe
that. But at what point am I relying on him and I have a love for
the Lord? That is harder for someone who's
grown up in this to see that than someone that I believe,
because it's my experience at least, than someone who's never
heard it before and hear it and it's like, oh, here's the truth.
And so what he's saying here is I've heard by the hearing
of the ear, I've heard it, but now the Lord has put me through
what Job said, what he did, and now I see myself, that everything
I thought was righteous in me is not righteous, and I've changed
my mind, I repent, and I hate myself when I see myself before
you. So there's no more spirit in
her. She said, there's no more spirit in her. She's been broken
by what he said to say, poor and needy, poor in righteousness
and needy for his mercy. And in verse seven, she says,
how be it? I believe not the words. Everything
that I had heard concerning this, that I wanted to come here to
prove you wrong, to prove you wrong that this is not the case.
I believe not the words until I came and mine eyes had seen
it and behold, the half was not told to me. All I knew, all I
thought I knew, revealed I didn't know the half of it. And hadn't
that been your experience? You weren't seeking the Lord
and yet he showed you all this and you learned the littlest
piece and it's great news, but the more you sit here, he reveals
himself day after day after day. in long-suffering, in faithfulness
to you, in prayer, in giving you comfort to your soul, that
He's the only one who can give me any peace and any rest. You
get that faithfulness every day, and the half's not even told.
And what it will be if I live another 30 years from today,
what I can say with what I've experienced then, in terms of
my experience in this life. I don't glory in the experience,
but wow, I mean, what a thing to behold in the Lord. What I
thought I knew is now manifest day by day, his mercy and the
forgiveness of sin, his long suffering. How long has this
Lord suffered me? How long has the Lord suffered
you? He's been long suffering. Injustice, he's made a way for
me to be clean and him to be just, not just something where
we're just gonna slide a hand and we'll say, you're clean.
No, you're really clean and he's okay for doing that. now manifest His grace, and united
me in eternity, in calling me, giving me an ear to hear, giving
me a new heart to receive His word. He's given me all this.
How faithful has He been? Happy is He, in verse eight,
happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before
thee, and blessed be the Lord God, which delighted in thee,
to set thee on the throne of Israel, because the Lord loved
Israel forever, Therefore he made thee king to do judgment
and justice. So what she sees here, happy
is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help. She's learned who
he is. And in whose gospel is the Lord
his God, the gospel is the word good news. This is good news.
And so she's saying, as happy as he that stand before thee
and happy to hear thy wisdom. And in verse nine she says, And
I think this is interesting, what she said here, because up
to this point, all she had were questions and observations. And
now we hear what she has to say after she's seen who the Lord
is. Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighted in thee to set
thee on the throne, because the Lord God loved Israel forever.
Therefore he made thee king to do judgment and to do judgment.
There is no one who doesn't love the Lord God as He is who would
say such a thing. For her to praise God, for setting
Him on the throne, for revealing Him to her. So we can see here
this heathen queen, the Lord showed her something. He showed
her something about herself and I believe He saved her. And delight,
she says, He delighted in me. This is not
a word that we think of when we think of the Lord looking
at us, to delight in me. Yet David said, He delivered
me because He delighted in me. But these were also the words
of Christ to the Father where He says, I was daily His delight.
And this was before the foundation of the world. So the only way
that we can be a delight to God the Father is to be in His Son.
He delights only in His Son. And if I'm in His Son, then He
also delights in me. The Lord delights in the prosperity
of His servants, Psalm 35. To set thee on whose throne?
It says to set on his throne. These are words from a heathen
queen turned to see his face, because the Lord loved Israel
forever, therefore he made thee king. If you will turn back a
few pages to 1 Kings 8, verse 37. This gave me some confidence
in reading this. if there be in the land a famine,
if there be pestilence, blasting, mildew, locust, or if there be
caterpillar, so any of these plagues, if an enemy besieged
them in the land of the cities, whatsoever plague, whatsoever
sickness there be, whatever prayer and supplication soever be made
in any man or by all the people of Israel, which shall know every
man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward
this house, then hear thou in heaven, thy dwelling place, forgive,
and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose
heart thou knowest. For thou, even thou only, knowest
the hearts of all men, of all the children of men, that they
may fear thee all the days that they live in the land which thou
givest unto our fathers." What he's saying up to this point
is a blessing, but this is to Israel. These are the people
of Israel. So read on here in verse 41. Moreover, concerning
a stranger that is not of the people of Israel. You know, that's
you and I. That's you and I. Nobody in here
is of the people of Israel. So we're that stranger that is
not of the people. But cometh out of a far country
for thy namesake. For they shall hear of thy great
name, and of thy strong hand, and of thy power, thy stretched
out arm. And when he shall come and pray toward this house, that
stranger, that's not one of your children, that's one of the ones
on the outside, hear thou in heaven, thy dwelling place, and
do according to all the stranger calleth to thee for, that all
the people of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee, as do
thy people Israel, as they may know that this house, which I
have built, is called by thy name. So this gives me some confidence
because I'm that stranger. I'm that stranger before God.
God doesn't hear those whom he hates. He only hears his children,
but we're the adopted children that are grafted into the tree.
We're not part of the physical Israel, we're spiritual Israel.
And so we're that stranger, the stranger they were told to keep
away from in terms of in that time. Anytime you read Israel
in there, it is referring to the people of Israel. It's also
referring to spiritual Israel, but here it makes a difference
in talking who Israel is and who's a stranger, but yet it
says to answer them the same prayer. if they pray toward this
house, toward the Lord. And so we know here, this is
that Grafton and people that weren't part of that, because
I always worried about that. I was like, you know, what if this message
is just, you know, spiritual or it's a physical Israel? But
yet this says, this is to the stranger, the one on the outside,
the one that doesn't belong. the ones not supposed to be there,
but if they will do these things, to pray toward thy house, because
they've heard of thy name, and they came from a far land. So,
and that may be some of your experience tonight. So, you know,
it happens I live eight minutes from the place where I go to
worship most weeks. But yet some of you drive over
an hour, some of you maybe even further, just to come to hear
the gospel. How many places do you pass between here and there?
The Lord honors that, and the Lord will bless you for that.
She said, therefore he made thee king. It's God's man on the throne.
There's nobody there that God didn't put. He's king by birth,
king by right, but if he's God's king, he's the king of righteousness. This is the Melchizedek we read
about in the scriptures. That's Christ. To do judgment
and justice. These are two words that I fear.
Judgment and justice. It sounds like cold. It sounds
hard. It sounds like something that
if I don't meet up to the measure, then I'm gonna get stomped out. Judgment and justice. But if
I'm in Christ, these words are my liberation. That's good news,
judgment and justice. Judgment's not subjective. Judgment
is what must be done. If I'm in Christ, he's not guilty. Judgment is executing what justice
demands. Set him free. He's not guilty.
This is what judgment demands. It demands my release if I'm
in Christ. Now, if I'm not in Christ, judgment
and justice are things that I need to fear. But if I'm in Christ
and relying on what he did, if the Father's pleased with Christ,
can he not also be pleased with me if I'm in Christ? Yes. Turn
with me, if you would, over to Galatians chapter 2. Galatians 2.16, knowing that a man is not justified
by the, this is in keeping in mind the judgment and justice
here, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the
law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we that have believed
in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of
Christ. and not by the works of the law,
for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. But if
while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves are also
found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid. For if I build again the things
which are destroyed, that which Christ already did, I make myself
a transgressor. For I through the law am dead
to the law that I might live under God. I am crucified with
Christ. Never the less I live, yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved
me and gave himself for me. So if I'm united to Christ, my
faith is in what he did. And my faith is not what saves
me, it tells us right there, we're saved by the faith of Christ. So I don't even need to worry
about, when I look at my faith, I mean, I have unbelief, so give
me a minute. And so I live by his faith, by
what he did, and that's what I trust in. Jesus Christ endured
God's judgment for my sins. He established justice for me
by his death and the putting away sin. Who shall lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? It's Christ that died. If he
died, you know sin had to be present, and therefore if he
died, therefore that sin's put away. Because he's risen again,
the Father's pleased with him. So that sins no more. So we have
a need to hear, which is what caused me to come. You heard
the word, but now my eye sees and behold, a half's not been
told to me. Full, free, frank forgiveness
in Christ. How do I come then? You just
heard the gospel. You come the same way the leper
did. He said, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. You come
as a sinner needing mercy. And we never graduate beyond
that, whether it's your first time or the last time before
you die. You come as a sinner needing mercy, and God honors
that. He promises that in his word. And the scripture promises
in Hebrews 7.25, all those who come unto God by him, he is able
to save to the uttermost. That means you can't be too bad.
You can't be, you know, no matter what your state is, the uttermost
covers it all. So I can have confidence when
I come to him that He will hear me for Christ's sake and save
me too. So, the half wasn't even told, and I came, and the half
wasn't even told. Let's bow our heads in prayer
and we'll let you go.