I have often said when reading
any passage of scripture, Old Testament or New Testament, until
you find where the Lord Jesus Christ fits into the passage,
you haven't learned the meaning of it. And I say that even now. You say, well, how could the
Lord Jesus Christ possibly fit into a wild story like this. Well, he does. He does. And we'll
get to it in a minute. I would remind us that in the
New Testament, Luke chapter 24, on the day of the resurrection,
when our Lord is walking with two disciples on the road to
Emmaus, the Bible says that he expounded unto them in all the
scriptures, not some of the scriptures, but in all the scriptures, the
things concerning himself. So the Lord Jesus Christ is in
all the scriptures. He's in this passage and our
simple thought here is Christ the revealer of hearts. Christ the revealer of hearts. Now earlier in this chapter we
read about Solomon's humility in desiring wisdom to rule the
kingdom of Israel. Picking up in verse five in Gibeon,
the Lord appeared to Solomon and dream by night. And God said,
ask what I shall give thee. Here's a young man, Solomon,
that is now the king. And the Lord appears to him and
said, what shall I give thee? Solomon said, thou has 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 has kept for him this
great kindness that thou has given him a son to sit on his
throne as it is this day. And now, oh Lord, my God, thou
has made thy servant king instead of David, my father. And I am
but a little child, I know not how to go out or come in. And
thy servant is in the midst of thy people, which thou hast chosen,
a great people that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude.
And here's his request now. 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? And the speech pleased the Lord
that Solomon had asked this thing. And God said unto him, because
thou hast asked this thing and has not asked for thyself long
life, neither hast thou asked riches for thyself, nor hast
asked the life of thine enemies, but has 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
before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee. So King Solomon, given wisdom
from God, wisdom from above, was wiser than any man ever born. either before him or after him,
except for one, the God-man, the one who was both God and
man, the Lord Jesus Christ. In Luke chapter 11, we read that
the Queen of the South came from the utmost parts of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And behold, a greater than Solomon
is here. And that greater than Solomon
is the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 16 here says now, but to
get into this story, then came there two women that were harlots
unto the king. There's a lot we're not told
in this story. We're not told when they became
prostitutes. We're not told if they were ever
married. We're not told whether either
one of them wanted a baby. We are told they lived in the
same house. Perhaps they had agreed to help
each other. We can but wonder in our day, being prostitutes,
would they have gotten an abortion instead of having the babies? We know as harlots they were
not model citizens. They were not respected in society. And the first question to me,
did not the king have more important business than this to deal with? I'm sure he had plenty to deal
with, and yet the Holy Spirit You must understand the author
of this book is God. This is God's word. The Holy
Spirit, by divine inspiration, includes this little story in
the Holy Scriptures. And we read that both women had
a baby and the one's baby died. And one claimed that she stole
my living baby. and put her dead baby in the
bed with me. And the other one said, no, that's
not how it was. It was the other way around. And they bring this
debate to the king. There's nobody else in the house
we read. There's no witnesses. It's one's word against the other. It's one of those situations
that we'd say nobody can know for sure. There's no answer. And I would say to us that even
Solomon, naturally speaking, would never, never have thought
to do what he did. He did what would seem a foolish
thing. Bring me a sword. I know how
to solve this. We'll cut the living baby in
two and give each of you half. That would be fair. Well, then they'd have two babies.
How foolish would that be? The truth is Solomon never intended
to slay the child. But in God-given wisdom, he knew
that the real mother would object to him killing the baby. And
she did. The heart of the real mother
was revealed. And she said, let the other harlot
have the baby rather than kill it. That was the mother. But the other harlot's heart
was revealed also. She was in favor of cutting the
baby in half. We read that. See, this was the
wisdom of Solomon to reveal the hearts of both these two women. But behold, A greater than Solomon
is here. Understand this morning, the
Lord Jesus Christ knows your heart and mind. It's already
revealed to him. And he knows how to make us show
our colors, so to speak. We find that many times in the
New Testament. In John chapter 8, those of you
familiar with this, there was a woman taken in the act of adultery.
And the religious folks came dragging her to the Lord and
said, you know, ready, they were ready to stone her. And they dragged her into the
presence of the Lord Jesus and said, Moses in the law, the Old
Testament law said stone her. What do you say? And our Lord said, let he that is without sin among
you, let him cast the first stone. He didn't say the one of you
with the least sin among you. It wasn't any of this comparing
business. Who's better than who? Oh no. He didn't say that. He
said, let him that is sinless, let him that is without sin,
among you cast the first stone. Christ knew that he was the only
one there qualified to throw a rock. And they all had a handful
of rocks ready to stone this woman. And the Bible says, when
they heard this, when they heard what he said, they were convicted
by their own conscience. And they went out one by one,
they dropped their rocks and walked away, beginning with the
eldest, even unto the last. He's the revealer of hearts. They had been said to the Lord,
Lord Moses said, stoner, what do you say? They thought they
had him trapped. If he says, let her go, then
he's condoning lawbreaking. And if he says stoner, he's lacking
in compassion. They thought they had him trapped.
But in divine wisdom, he didn't say either. He didn't say either. He said, let him that's qualified,
start the stoning. And none of them could start
it. He's the revealer of hearts, a greater than Solomon. Now by
revealing their hearts as sinners, he had put them all out of the
rock throwing business. And so we all are this morning. Some of you don't understand
that this business, this is not this religion. This is about
the fact that the Lord has changed our hearts and we come here to
worship him together. To sing praise to Him and to
pray to Him and to study His Word together and to enjoy one
another's presence and fellowship in Him. That's what it's about. It's not about who's better than
who, who wore what, who drives what, and all that kind of thing.
Oh, no, no, no, no. It's bigger than that. It's not
about comparing. I had a man say to me some time
ago, he said, I'd go to church If there wasn't so many hypocrites, I said to him, I sure can't argue
with you about that. I know you're right about that. But then I said, let me ask you
a question. Do you actually think you're
going to be able to stand face to face with the Lord and
use that excuse? The church was full of hypocrites. Not on your life. You're not
going to be able to do it. Here's the truth. In that hour,
when you stand before the Lord, you will be conscious that he
sees right through you. We ought to be conscious of it
right now. But we try to forget that, don't we? He sees. He knows. But in that hour, every excuse
that men use will be in vain. Understand right now, the Lord
sees plumb through me. And no excuses are necessary
because none are acceptable. Excuse is what you use when you
don't have a reason. We don't have a reason. So no excuse is necessary because
none are acceptable. We're kind of like one skunk
boasting that he don't smell as bad as other skunks. Well, a skunk is a skunk. And
God knows we're all skunks. Listen to this. Here's who our
God is. 1 Samuel chapter 2. The Lord killeth and maketh alive. He bringeth down to the grave
and bringeth up. The Lord maketh poor and maketh
rich. If He's blessed you and you ain't
got sense enough to thank Him for it, you're dumber than the
fellow that can't even spell his name. The Lord maketh poor and maketh
rich. He bringeth low and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of
the dust. and lifteth up the beggar out
of the dunghill." If you don't know what a dunghill is, I'll
let you look it up. That's where He found us. But if He's found you, He don't
leave you there. He'll clean you up. He lifteth
the beggar from the dunghill to set them among princes, to
make them inherit the throne of glory. He knows how to lift
up the lowly and put down the proud. I just remind us this
morning, it takes a fool to glory in good health. And I know it's important, and
I know most of us ought to be more conscious of it than we
are. And I'm kind of confessing something this morning, and I
probably shouldn't because I'll get in big trouble. But when I'm
trying to drive, and here's all these people, bicycles. They got on a tight suit like
they're going skin diving. And they're going to be 30 years
old all their life and forever. That ain't happening. That ain't
happening. Takes a fool to boast in good
health. It's a real blessing to have
it, but it can change overnight.
And it changes for good people as well as bad people. It takes a fool to glory in the
bank account. So many things can happen. And
it'll disappear. I'm telling you, the Lord knows
how to get down to where we live.
He knows how to get down to the nitty gritty. The Psalmist said,
he knows my down city and my uprising. He knows, he knows
every move I make. He sees me through and through. He controls whether I'll wake
up in the morning. And he controls whether I'll
be able to get up when I wake up. And sometimes I wonder about
that myself. He controls whether my mind will
slip today. And in a few hours, I won't know
if I'm in this world. He controls your mind the same
way. And you don't have to be old like me. Talking about who
God is. On Wednesday nights, we've been
studying about Jonah. Brother Jonah, he thought he was doing
quite well in his escape effort. When the Lord caught up with
him, he said, throw me overboard. Suicide is the way out. Suicide is not the way out. The Lord talked to him in the
fish's belly. How's it going, Jonah? What's
your next move? Where you going from here? And Jonah finally wound up saying,
Salvation is of the Lord. Lord, if I get out of here, it'll
be your doing. There's no other way possible.
We can all say that this morning. There is no hope for any of us
except in the mercy and grace of God. Job thought he really had a claim,
you know. He was brought to say, I'm not
really running things here, Lord, you are. He knows how to bring
us down. He does. The Apostle Paul wrote
and said, Who art thou, O man, that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to
the He that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? And he talked
about a vessel of clay. He talked about a pottery. I
don't see one right now. It was plastic. Sorry. Plastic. But pottery. He said, can the vessel say unto
the potter, can the clay say unto the potter, why hast thou
made me thus? Why no. The potter does as he
pleases. You say, but I'm a good person.
Why should God let anything bad happen to me? No, no, there is
none good. No, not one. We're good in comparison,
but who are we comparing ourselves with? People. But the bottom line is we're
all made out of the same stuff, dirt. You might look a little better
and it'll cost you a little, but you might smell a little
better than some of the rest of us. But what's that worth? It's worth nothing when the breath
leaves this body. Talking to you about Christ,
the revealer of hearts. I know our time's about gone,
but I'm really having a good time here. In John chapter four,
y'all know this story, there was a woman at the well and the
Lord come and met her there. She didn't know he was coming,
but he knew she was coming. This will help you in your Bible
reading to understand that our Lord is sovereign in all things.
He knows all. And they got to talking and he
said to her, go call your husband. And she said, I don't have one.
She thought he didn't know that. He said, no, but you've had five. Well, you're right. And then
he didn't stop there. And he said, and the one you're
shacked up with now is not your husband. He knows. He knows. Simon Peter said to
the Lord, I'll never deny you. I'll not do it. And the Lord said, Simon, just
so you'll know that I know, let me give you this bit of information.
Not only will you deny me. You'll do it three times. And you'll do it tonight. And
you will have done it three times before the rooster crows at daylight.
He knows. He knows. He knows all about you. He knows
all about me. Well, I wouldn't have done so-and-so
if so-and-so had. Hey, hey, just save it. Just
save it. He knows us through and through. There was a fella in Matthew
chapter eight. Boy, he made a very impressive profession. Master, I will follow thee whether
so ever thou goest. Don't that sound good? He didn't
say, Lord, I'll follow you if I go and don't get too rough.
He didn't say that. He's a master. I will follow
thee whether so ever thou goest. That's a good profession. But
it was here. It wasn't here. You know what
the Lord said to him? He said, foxes have holes. The
birds of the air have nest. All of our creatures have got
somewhere to sleep. But the Son of Man hath not where
to lay his head. And you know what? That fellow's
history, he's not mentioned anymore. He's not heard of anymore. It
was time for him to get on down the road. He learned that following
the Lord did not mean staking potatoes
every evening. and sleeping at the finest hotel
in town. No. Said, Bud, you got a bit off
more than you can chew here. And he did. He went the other
way. All I'm saying is the Lord knows every heart. He knows yours.
He knows mine. He's the revealer of hearts. And here is the fearful truth.
He can leave you alone. He can let you go on and live
Prosperously, financially, live healthy, live cold and cold-hearted, and play Mr. Big for 90 years
in this world until you drop into hell. God
can do that. You better pray he don't. Might sound like a nice way to
live, but it's a terrible way to die. I'll tell you where,
I'll tell you who's blessed in this world. Here's who's blessed. And there's many of you here
this morning. It's folks the Lord thinks enough
of to do something, to break that
hard heart. to bring you to the end of yourself,
to bring you to see your helplessness and your hopelessness without
Him. It may be sickness or disease. It may be financial trouble.
It may be family trouble. That spouse may walk out on you.
It might be a wayward child that worries you to death. Bottom line is none of us are
nearly as big as we act like we are. No, no. Oh, the blessedness of being
brought low and willing to bow to him who knows us better than
we know ourselves. This thing with Solomon. And
these two harlots, we'd call it a genius idea. No, no, it
wasn't a genius idea. Solomon never just thought of
this in his own wit and wisdom. No, no. It was wisdom given by
God. And yet a greater than Solomon
is here. Christ. knows us. And it would be very wise for
every one of us to be talking to the Lord about self, about
self. Me telling him how low down you
are won't help me. And it really won't hurt you. He deals with us one on one. The most blessed people on earth
are those who are brought to cry from the heart. Have mercy
on me. Oh Lord. Can you do that this
morning? Not everybody can. They just
don't need the Lord that bad. They're just not that desperate, but blessed are the desperate. Blessed are those who know when
the doctor says there's nothing more we can do. Blessed are those
who have it in their heart to say it don't matter whether you
can do anything or not. I'm in hands greater than yours.
When it's time for me to leave here, I'm leaving. And when it's
not, I'm not. Oh, my. How comforting, how comforting
this morning just to trust in Him and rest in Him.