I don't let my preachers cut
their mic on. I have to make sure it's on. There you go, Mike. Boy, he's a jewel, ain't he?
Yes, he is. Yes, he is. He said they met
with Rupert 1995, it's hard to believe that's been 20 years
ago. And he's sure been a blessing
to me and my family. And he's been a blessing to this
church. I'm glad God allowed our paths to cross many years
ago. Through many dangers, tolls, and snares, we have already come.
Tis grace that's brought us safe thus far. and grace will lead
us all the way home. If you would open your Bible
to 1 Kings chapter 3. I want us to get down to verse 16, but
I want to go back and begin reading in verse 5. God has set Solomon, excuse me,
on the throne of David. Absalom's brother, they tried
to make him king until David said, you go get Solomon, you
put him on my mule, and you blow the trumpet and let everybody
know that Absalom's brother's not king, Solomon's king. Why Solomon King? God put him
on the throne, that's why. David had a lot of wives, had
children by most all of them, had concubines. And then he had
with Bathsheba, and everybody knows the story of Bathsheba.
Where sin did abound, grace did much more abound, and from that
union, he brought Solomon to sit upon his throne. What does
that say? It's all of grace. Here we see in verse 5 of 1 Kings
3, And Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night. And God said to Solomon, Ask
what I shall give thee. He asked him this question, What
shall I give thee? And Solomon 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. And thou hast kept for him this
great kindness, that thou hast given him a son to sit on his
throne as it is this day. And now, O Lord my God, thou
hast made thy servant David, thy servant king, instead of
David, my father. And I am but a little child,
and I know not how to go out or to come in. And thy servant
is in the midst of thy people, which thou hast chosen, a great
people that cannot be numbered or counted for multitude. And
here's what Solomon asked for. Give therefore thy servant an
understanding heart to judge thy people. that I may discern
between good and bad, for who is able to judge this thy so
great a people?" I can tell you, there was wisdom even in the
fact that he asked for that. Somebody had given him wisdom.
And the speech pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing.
And God said unto him, because thou hast asked this thing, and
hast not asked for thyself long life, this is what we would have
asked for, neither hast thou asked for riches for thyself,
nor hast thou asked the lives of thine enemies, but hast asked
for thyself understanding to discern judgment. Behold, I have
done according to thy words. Lo, I have given thee a wise
and an understanding heart, so that there was none like thee.
Therefore, before thee, neither shall there any rise like unto
thee. And I have also given unto thee
that which thou hast not asked, both riches and honor, so that
there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee all
thy days. If thou wilt walk in my ways
to keep my statutes and my commandments, as thy father David did walk,
then I will lengthen thy days. And Solomon awoke, and behold,
it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem and
stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord, stands before the
mercy seat, and offered up burnt offerings, and offered peace
offerings, and made a feast to all of his servants. So here
we see God granted this man wisdom, but he's a picture of someone
else. It says in Colossians 2, 3, in whom are hid, talking about
a person, talking about the Lord Jesus Christ, and when it's greater
than Solomon, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, it's
hid in him. Then there came two women that
were harlots unto the king, and they stood before the king. And
one woman said, O my Lord, I and this woman dwelt in one house,
and I was delivered of a child with her in the house. And it
came to pass the third day that after I was delivered, that this
woman was delivered also. We were together, there was no
stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house. And
this woman's child died in the night, because she overlaid it. And she arose at midnight, and
took my son from beside me, while thy handmaid slept, and laid
in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom. And when I
arose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was
dead. But when I had considered it
in the morning, behold, it was not my son which I did bear. And the other woman said, Nay,
but the living is my son, and the dead is thy son. And this
said, No, but the dead is thy son, and the living is my son. Thus they spake, these two women,
before the king. Now you see the picture. Two
women living in the same house, both are harlots, both have children,
both have a son, one has her son three days before the other
one, and one woman during the night rolls over on her child
and kills it. So what does she do? She goes
in the night, takes her dead child to the woman who has the
living child, and she swaps it. And then takes that living child,
now she says, this is my child. And the other woman, she knows
it's her child. But here we have this woman lying,
she said, no, it's my child. And these two women now come
before Solomon, the king, to decide this matter. Whose mother is it? These are
the only two witnesses. No other witnesses in the house. Then said the king, the one saith,
this is my son that liveth, and thy son is dead. And the other
saith, nay, but thy son is dead, and my son is the living. And
the king said, bring me a sword. And they brought a sword to the
king. And the king said, divide the living child in two, and
give half to the one and half to the other. Isn't that fair?
They're both going to get half. Isn't that fair? Then spake the woman, whose the living child was unto
the king, for her, I want you to say this, for her bowels yearned
upon her son. And she said, oh my Lord, give
her the living child. And in no wise slay it, that's
a mother's heart, has her child. She wasn't there to see it slain.
But what did the other woman say? But the other said, let
it neither be mine nor thine, but go ahead and divide it. I
don't care. I don't want to raise it. I didn't want him anyway. You
see the picture. Then the king answered and said,
give her the living child. and in no wise slay it, for she
is the mother thereof. And all Israel heard of the judgment
which the king had judged, and they feared the king. They respected
the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to do
judgment. So you get the picture. reveals himself in the Old Testament
in pictures just like this. Pictures, metaphors, types. Like I said in the first message,
if you miss him, you've missed it. But there's something in
these verses that picture the redemptive glory of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And may God enable us today to
be able to see it. In this picture, we have the
king and these two women, and they come before the king. Now,
here's how I picture it, because it doesn't say exactly. Maybe
I'm just assuming this. I picture when they come, I picture
the woman who killed her child, she's carrying the living child.
I believe when she stole that child, she's not going to turn
it loose, because she kept saying, it's my child. She marches in
the courtroom and she wants everybody to think it's her child. She
wants her neighbors to think that it's her child. She even
wants the king to think that it's her child. But the whole
time, it's not her child. She doesn't love this child. Well, are these women similar?
Well, the first thing it says, they are both harlots. What that
pictures, I think, it pictures every one of us by nature. Religion
is described in the scriptures as a harlot. We know what a harlot
is. She's a street walker. She's a woman that sells herself,
sells her body to the lust of the flesh. Then it also describes,
you know, as I mentioned how that Bathsheba was Solomon's
mother, Tamar. You know how she's listed? As
a harlot. You know how Rahab is listed
as a harlot, and she's the grandmother. Someone told me a while back,
David was only three generations from being a Moabite, and his
great-great-grandma was a harlot. So you have, they describe us. Our Lord said, Verily I say unto
you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of
God before you. And you'd say, well, I'm no harlot. This is how God describes us.
And this is how these two women, they said they were both harlots.
So I take that to mean they didn't have a husband. So they had these
children by fornication and both had a son. Then it says they
both dwelt in the same house. That can represent in your house
there dwells two natures, an old man and a new man, and they
are at enmity one to the other. One, listen, your old man, your
carnal mind is enmity against God. It doesn't love God, doesn't
want anything to do with God. That's your old man. That old
man pictures that woman who doesn't love the child. But what about
that new man? That new man that is a new nature,
which is a divine nature, that loves God. You know why? Because
the love of God is shed abroad in your heart. And they both
dwell in the same house. What does it also picture? It
can picture a local assembly. Inside every local church, you
have two kinds of people. You have wheat, which are God's
elect, that he's called and chosen and planted in his garden, and
you have tares. Tares look just like wheat, but
tares are not wheat. Tares have no life in them. They
are nothing more than what naturally grows from the ground. So you
see the picture? There's no perfect church as
long as we live in this world. You know what the disciples said
when they went by the field and they saw the tares growing with
the wheat? They said, you want us to go jerk the tares up? You
know what we would do? We would misjudge every time.
None of us know who's saved and who's not saved. We would pull
up the wheat every time. If we would have looked at Lot
and Lot's wife, we would have said, Lot's not a believer. He's
living there in Sodom. God said he vexed his righteous
soul. But what I want you to see, they
both dwelt in the same house. What am I saying this morning?
There's two types of people in this building this morning. There
are those by God's grace that love the living son, and there
are those who are tares who don't love him. They say they do, but
they don't. And that's what we see here.
As they stand before the king, they're going to be exposed.
The title of the message is The Living Son. Which one of these
women loves the living or loves the living child? No man by nature loves Christ.
We know that. No man. But you do love him if
you're a believer. You don't love him like you'd
like to. We're not going to stand and sing, oh how we love Jesus.
But you do love him. And you love the people of God.
And you love him more than anything in this world. There is no rivals.
Anything less than that is a tear. Also in this house, you find
sheeps and goats. and God never converts goats
into sheep. They were always sheep, they
were just lost sheep. So they were both harlots, both
living in the same house, and both had a son, and one died. What I can understand, trying
to read this, that at night, she rolled over, smothered her
child and didn't even know it until she woke up. And he's dead. And you know what she did? And
I want you to notice this. When did she do this? When did
she switch these children? She did it at night. As that
woman, the mother that that was her living child, she said at
midnight she came and took my living child. She took it. She stole it. You know what she
did? She substituted it for a counterfeit. She substituted the living child
for a dead child. You know what our Lord said? We've already made mention to
the tares, our Lord said, The disciples said, but where did
these tares come from? You sowed good seed. You sowed
wheat in the field. Well, where did the tares come
from? He said, while men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares
among the wheat, and he went his way. Like your pastor said
about a song, it is so subtle, isn't it? You say, well, it's
just a chorus of a song. You know what that is? While
men sleep. The enemy sows tares among the
wheat. As your pastor related to me
yesterday, he's told me that story I don't know how many times,
and I love to hear it, how God raised up this church, how God
established this church, and how back in the 1800s, The truth
was preached here. It was proclaimed here. Well,
what happened over the hundreds of years? I tell you what, while
men slept, the enemy came and stole the living child and substituted
it for a dead child. Isn't that right? And that's
what she said. And she stands before the king.
She said, while I slept. Can you imagine that, women? You have a child and you go to
sleep and you're a child and you've had this child for three
days. You've nurtured that child and you wouldn't dare, you're
gonna fix it in such a way that you don't roll over it and smother
it. It's precious, it's your heart's
desire. And you wake up in the morning,
instead of finding a living child, you wake up and it's a dead child. Religion is nothing more than
the dead child. It has no life in it. No life
in it. No satisfaction. No joy. No peace. So they're both harlots. They both lived in the same house.
They both had a child. And they both stand before the
king to plead their cause. And the king is going to decide
justice is going to be carried out. Justice is going to be carried
out. He's the discernment. He's the
wisdom of God. There is no witnesses. No one
else was in the house. But the king is the righteous
judge, and he will decide the case. I may deceive you, and
you may deceive me, but there is one you won't deceive. That's
the righteous judge. I can see that woman, if they
was walking in the courtroom, I can see that woman, that's
the pretender. I can see her with the baby on
her arm. I can see her with the diaper bag swung across her shoulder,
and she comes strutting in and says, don't I love this baby?
No, she don't. She don't love him. She didn't
love her first son. She sure don't love this one.
Do you think this harlot wants to raise this baby? Hmm, she
wants to get back to work. That's what she wants to do.
But she comes in, she comes in pretending. Let me tell you this
morning, they are a lot of people. They're nothing more but pretenders. They say they love Christ with
their mouth, but their heart is far from him. For the father judgeth no man,
and he hath committed all judgment unto the son. Which woman really loves the
child? Which woman really loves the
whole baby? One of them has justice on her side. The woman that had
justice on her side looked to the wisdom of the king to dissettle
the matter. Our Lord looked at Peter one
day and he says, Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? He said, Lord, you know all things.
You know whether I love you or not. And I tell you this one,
he's the only one that knows. He's the only one that knows. The king is the only one that
can settle the matter. Gill and Spurgeon and others
said they'd probably went to lesser courts. This woman's desperate. This woman's desperate. You know
what she wants? She wants her child. What would you give to
have your child, the one that you loved? She's desperate and
she comes to the king. And where the issue will be manifested
is when Solomon says, bring me a sword. You say, why would he
bring a sword? He's going to decide who loves
this child. And he said, you split that child
in half. You divide him. And you give her part and her
the other part. I can see that woman screaming
out. It says, her bowels yearned for that child, and she said,
don't kill him. Don't kill him. She said, let
her have the child. Don't kill him. Don't kill him. But what did the other woman
say? Go ahead and divide him. I don't care. You know why she
said that? Because if he divides the child,
nobody will know what she did. It'll be all covered up. It'll
be hid. Nobody will know the difference. What am I saying? Those who have
been born again by the Spirit of God love a whole Christ, not
a divided one, not a pieced up one. The Bible says, in him dwelleth
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and we are complete in
him. The one who loved the child could
not stand to see the one that she loved divided. Couldn't stand
it. Couldn't stand it. Wouldn't stand
it for a minute. Like your preacher said, we wouldn't
stand it for a minute. And those who love Christ, those
who've been given a new nature, wouldn't stand it for a minute. One complete person. You cannot
pick and choose. You say, well, people say, well,
I believe God is sovereign in creation, but I won't have a
God that's sovereign in salvation. You can't pick and choose. You
see what I'm saying? You can't pick and choose. They
say, well, I've accepted Jesus as my personal savior, and then
when I decide to let him be my Lord, I'll make him my Lord.
You don't pick and choose. You can't separate Him. He's
one. In Him dwells all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily. And you don't get saved and then
later on, when you've sanctified yourself, then you start speaking
in tongues and get the baptism of the Holy Ghost. You know what you're doing? You're
cutting Him up. And this woman says, you have
to divide Him. I don't care. But what's this woman saying?
Please don't do it. You see the picture? You ever noticed in the scriptures,
when it speaks about true doctrine, it says the doctrine one, the
doctrine of Christ. But when it talks about false
doctrines, it has an S on it. It's the doctrines of devils. That's what it is. It's a pieced
up bunch of junk. But not Christ. The devil is always trying to
pass off a dead child for a living child. Rupert gave me a bulletin
this morning and it was ironic that this article, this little
statement was in there from Augustine. It said, now listen. If you believe
what you like in the gospel and reject what you don't like, it's
not the gospel you believe, but it's yourself that you believe,
if you can pick and choose. When our Lord was on the cross,
the soldiers, some of them took one part, part of what he had,
what he had left. but his raiment. That raiment
was woven in one piece from top to bottom, and if you tried to
take one piece of that garment, you know what you'd do? You would
rend it, and it would be useless. I used to work in a knitting
mill. Now my shirt's made out of pieces, and it's made, it's
a bunch of pieces made into one. But not something that's knit
together. I could take a glove and I could start it and start
there at that little finger, and it would knit each finger,
it would knit the palm, and when it got done, it would be one
complete glove. You try to separate it, you'd
ruin it. He's one complete, perfect savior and redeemer. And we love
to have him so. but religion and this world want
to divide him up. The soldier said, therefore,
among themselves, let us not rend it, but cast lots for it,
whose it might be that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith,
they parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they
did cast lot. These things, therefore, the
soldiers did. To rend it and to take one piece of it would
be to render it useless and of no value. What would that woman
have thought? What's she going to do with a
dead baby? That's useless. Useless. But the woman who loved
the child would rather not have a child at all than to have a
divided child. Boy, I got a good statement here
from the hawker. He said a whole sinner needs
a whole savior. That's it, isn't it? A whole
sinner. What's a pieced up Savior going
to do for me? He can't do nothing. Listen to this statement in Proverbs
8, 36. He that sinneth against me roameth
his own soul. and all that hate me, and all
that hate me, love death. This is life or death. All that
hate me, he said, what do they love? They don't love me, they
love death. One woman loved life, one woman
loved death. Loved it. Let's look at this statement
in 1 Corinthians 16.22. Now I want you to listen. If any man, if any man, woman,
boy or girl, loves not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema
maranatha. What does that mean? Let him
be accursed when I come. That's pretty plain, isn't it? So what are you saying, preacher?
What I understand from this Metaphor here, this story of Solomon and
these two women, you either love the Lord Jesus Christ with all
your heart or you don't. And there's no middle ground. And the only way you know that
you can love him is for God to enable you and put something
in your heart. You know, this, if you think
about this, it's, you don't see many harlots that love a child. Most of them would go, in the
day in which we live, you know what they would do? They would
go to some abortion clinic and have it done away with, right? Why would this woman love this
child? You know why you love Christ? It's totally against
your human nature to love him. Isn't it, isn't it, Rupert? Totally
against your nature to love him. But Doug, for some reason, he put something in your heart. The false mother did not love
the child. She just didn't want the other woman to have the child.
She tried to act like she loved the child. She wanted her neighbors
to think that she loved the child. She tried to deceive the king
into thinking that she loved the child, but the whole time,
she hated him. Can you imagine Judas? Judas,
being a picture of a goat, being a picture of a tear, being a
picture of this woman. They didn't love the child. He
was with our Lord all those years. Nobody ever questioned the reality
of Judas. Everybody would have thought,
well, Judas is a believer. Judas has been born again. But
what did Judas do? He said, I will sell him for
30 pieces of silver, the price of a common slave. Did Judas
love our Lord? He act like he did. He even walked
up in the garden and kissed him on the cheek. Judas kissed him
on the cheek and went to hell. Is everybody listening to me?
This thing of salvation is serious. It is a serious matter. It is
a matter of life and death. One day, you, me, every one of
us, are gonna stand before God, and the issue will be settled.
It will be settled. The woman who loved the child,
her life was wrapped up in the child, and without the child,
she had no life. People say, well, Christ is a
big part of my life. If he's just a big part of your
life, you don't know him. You know what Paul said? When Christ, who is my life, when he shall appear. When that woman, she looked over
and she seen that old pretender had her child claiming it was
her child and she knew better. She knew it was her child. Solomon
takes that sword and said, let's kill that child. She said, I
can't stand it. I can't stand it. The wicked woman only wanted
to justify herself. She was a pretender. She'd rather
the child be killed than for that other woman to enjoy that
child. False religion doesn't love our
God. They don't enjoy Him, and they don't want you to enjoy
Him. Here's why our Lord said, Woe unto you lawyers, for you've
taken away the key of knowledge, and you entered not in yourself,
and they that were entering in, you hindered them. but children of God, one day
our Lord will settle the matter. Everyone in that day, everyone
in that day will discover who wisdom is. Here's what he said. If I listen
to me, coming that day, there is gonna be a division. there's
going to be a separating. When he sits upon the throne,
it says in Matthew 25, 31, when the Son of Man shall come in
his glory and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon
the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered
all nations. You see the picture? They're
all gathered before him. And he shall separate them one
from another as the shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on
his right hand and the goats on the left. Then shall the king
say to them on the right hand, come you blessed of my father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation. I think it was Spurgeon or somebody
said one time, said, how would they be amazed when they get
to heaven? Said, well, I was amazed that some people I thought
was going to be there were not there. And some people that I
didn't think was going to be there was there. But he said,
the greatest amazement of all is that I'll be there. Yes, I'll be there. I pray this morning, if you don't
know Jesus Christ, I pray he'd make himself known to you. I pray he'd take away your stony
heart and give you a heart of flesh. And you know what you do when
He gives you a heart of flesh? You love Him more than anything
or anyone in this world. There's no rivals. He said if
you love your father or your mother or your children or your
brother or your sister or your own life, you can't be my disciple. Which one of those women? Love
the living God. Amen.