06/08/2021 DAB Transcript

1 Kings 3:3-4:34, Acts 6:1-15, Psalm 126:1-6, Proverbs 16:26-27

Today is the 8th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today. It’s kind of a special day at least in my life this would have been my mom’s birthday and I can’t go past this day without missing her a lot. She…she was a part of this community and I suppose it’s true to say this community couldn’t have existed without her and so, I’m missing my mom today and honoring her today and I know, I’m not the only one missing their mom today or on any day. If you lose your mom…at least, I only had one mom and I only have one experience and that’s my life but I’ve talked to lots and lots of people about grief and when you lose your mom, something feels like it’s missing from then on at least. That’s how it’s been for me so, I miss my mom. I’m grateful for her and her life and for giving me life. And so, with that life and all of our lives combined around this Global Campfire let’s take the next step forward in the scriptures this year. We’re reading from the Common English Bible this week. Today, 1 Kings chapter 3 verse 3 through 4 verse 34.

Commentary:

Okay, so in the Old and New Testament today there are parallels about leadership. And we’ll get to that in a second but in the Old Testament we’re watching King Solomon now, pretty much consolidate everything under his authority. And he’s kind of appointed his government and who’s gonna be where and responsible for and he has a vast territory. And we watch Solomon go before the Lord and simply acknowledge that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I mean that right there, that posture is not unlike his father David in his earlier years and it is the posture that the people really, really identify with they can really get behind. And we see that taking hold in his judgements in what we read today. Solomon goes before God and confesses basically, how did I get here, like, how did this happen, how is it that I’m sitting here now as the King of all the land? How is that you saw my family from way back, how is it that you loved my father the way that you did and how is that I am sitting here and how am I gonna do this? These are your people, how am I gonna lead your people? And so, Solomon asks for understanding, for wisdom, for discernment instead of a powerful army to beat up all the people around him or more slaves so he can do more development, anything that would cause glory to come upon his own name, anything that he could build, he didn’t ask for that. He asked for the tools that he would need to adequately govern the children of Israel, God’s people. And that was the key and God bestowed that upon Solomon as well as everything else he could ever want. And we’ll continue that in the days ahead. But in this king’s life, he had the where with all to not think that he knew what he was going to do and he was the only one that could get it done and that he would go ahead and make that happen, he would be forcing this sort of decisive person that’s just leading things. Rather, he kind of is a contrast to that. He’s a person who knows that he has limitation and knows that he doesn’t even know what those limitations are yet because he’s never does this before. And he doesn’t know exactly how this landed upon him and that he should be so fortunate to be entrusted with this kind of leadership to be a king over a people who are loyal to him but are also depending upon him. And so, he humbles himself before the Lord and asks God to give him what he will need to do the task. When we turn the page into the New Testament we see that the early church continues to develop and numbers to added to day-by-day so there’s a great increase happening. And people are all coming together as a community and sharing…sharing their stuff. Like, providing for each other out of their own surplus so that there is no lack so that everyone is taking care of but as the numbers grow so does the complexity and so does the need for structure and we see that in the book of Acts and this is like one of the times that we can go, I don’t know how I glossed over this all these years. I just saw the Holy Spirit come in the Book of Acts and seemed like everybody after that, when they heard the good news they got saved and they flocked to the early church and it was perfect and everybody took care of everybody else. But what we see in even caring for one another they still had to struggle through some things. In today’s particular episode food was being distributed to widows, so they were, so that is a good thing, like that is a Godly thing, the community has…has come together and one of their purposes is to make sure that the less fortunate, the vulnerable, are cared for. It’s just that now the church has a couple of different languages being spoke: Aramaic and Greek. And these were spoken in the land of, well, it was the Province of Syria in the Roman Empire at the time but in the land where Jerusalem is, the promised land. And that land had gone through Hellenization under the Greek Empire so people still spoke Greek as well as Aramaic and so, people were sort of yes, we are in the same body but no we don’t speak the same language and so people would congregate together based on the languages they would speak, right. And some people would speak bilingual but that, we can understand this, like this is not a concept that is foreign to us in this day and age because people are gonna congregate. And as it turns out the Greek speaking followers of Jesus began to accuse the Aramaic speaking members of the community for playing favoritism. And that the Greek speaking widows were being over looked. And they weren’t…there needs weren’t being met. In response to this, structure was put in place. And 7 people were appointed to take care of this matter in a fair in equitable way. And this, is functionally the birth of what we now know as the deaconate or the role of a deacon which is originally to equitably distribute resources to people who were vulnerable. That role has come to mean a lot of things in a lot of different denominations. Sometimes it’s worked out for the better and sometimes its worked out terribly. But this is the concept, this is where it comes from. These leaders were appointed for a role, an important role to fix a problem, an important problem. And so when the Apostles said you need to appoint 7 people to do this they gave criteria, and I quote from the Book of Acts: they must be well respected and endowed by the Spirit with exceptional wisdom. Wisdom, that’s what connects us back to Solomon. Wisdom is what was sought in the leadership roles. One in the Old Testament, one in the New Testament here on the same day, wisdom was the foundation piece required in order to lead and accomplish the goal. Solomon wanted to lead an entire nation of God’s people with justice and equity and fairness before God righteously. In the Book of Acts, the church in its infancy, wanted to fairly, with equity, with justice provide for the body that was in formation the body of Christ and wisdom was required. So, I think we can say, maybe two things. One that applies in our lives, we must not ignore wisdom as a category. Like, wisdom is beyond common sense and yes we need common sense but wisdom is something that is consulted, wisdom is something that is pondered, wisdom is something that is cultivated and developed. It is born out of experience, it is born out of humbly seeking the experiences of others. It is bestowed by God, wisdom, discernment, understanding, humility. If we would like to eventually and we probably would never, if we became a wiseman or woman we probably wouldn’t know that that’s what we’ve become because we’ll always be a student and we’ll always be seeking discernment and wisdom and humility. But if we want to walk the pathway of the wise then these are criteria that have to be cultivated because they’re part of wisdom, they’re the atmosphere of wisdom. I guess we could think of it like this, discernment, understanding, humility, this is the air that wisdom breaths. And if want to breath that air, if we want to be wise we have to cultivate these things. The other thing that I think we could say is, wisdom isn’t usually a criterion, it’s not even usually a category that we consider when we’re considering leaders and leadership when we have a voice in those kinds of matters whether it would be a political vote or whether it be the selection of kind of, who were gonna follow or how that’s…how that’s gonna work. Often times were just looking for where the fight, where the smoke is then we can find the fire where something’s actually happening, where there’s a lot of energy. Wisdom doesn’t usually look like that. Wisdom is usually a very ancient, solid, methodical, step-by-step observant, aware, sense of things. Wisdom isn’t usually flashy. Wisdom doesn’t have anyone to impress. If we remember wisdoms voice from the Book of Proverbs back we were in the 8th chapter of Proverbs, she’s everywhere, at every crossroad calling to everyone. She’s looking for those who are listening. In some ways you might say she is looking for those that have eyes to see and ears to hear. And so, not only should we cultivate wisdom in our own lives but as we do we become more and more clear at what is wise and what is foolish and we can see that more clearly and once we do we should expect that, the counsel and leadership of the wise is a good thing. The bible tells us it leads to justice and prosperity. And so, we view into the life of a king today seeking wisdom. And we view into the birth of the early church seeking wisdom, maybe that’s a good path, maybe we should follow it, maybe we should seek wisdom to actively not passively. Like actually in engaging with the idea of becoming wise.

Prayer:

And so, Holy Spirit we invite You into that. If there’s one thing that is very available but scarcely consulted it would be wisdom. We could say that about the world but we can certainly say that about our own lives too. And so, we can’t just point fingers out to the rest of the world we have to look in the mirror. And today we’re seeking wisdom. Today we’re considering it an actual category in our lives, an actual category required for leadership and that flicks on all kinds of lights and makes all kinds of things make sense. And so, with Solomon we pray God give us an understanding heart, give us discernment, give us wisdom, above all of the other things that we are trying to achieve give us wisdom we pray. In the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

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