Bible Recap Week 23

Join Pastor Julie this week as we reflect on the life of Solomon and the powerful connection between wisdom and obedience.

Have you ever found yourself repeating the same instructions to your kids over and over again? Solomon's story reminds us that wisdom isn't just about what we know—it's about what we do with what we know. The real question isn't, "Am I wise?" The question is, "Am I listening?"

As we explore Solomon's life, consider this important challenge:

What sacred thing has God entrusted to you that you've stopped intentionally protecting?

• Your time with God?
• Your family?
• Your calling?
• Your thought life?
• Your wonder for the things of God?

Tune in as we discover how listening to God's wisdom can help us faithfully guard the gifts He has placed in our care.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey everyone, and welcome to the Watertick Bible Recap Podcast. This is Pastor Eric, and I'm really glad you're listening. This podcast is one of the tools that we're using this year as we read through the Bible together. It's a chance for us to think about last week's reading. What's standing out to you? What's confusing? What might God be saying to us along the way? One of the things that we are focused on in the reading is what does our reading say about God? We call it God's job. How is it helping you trust God? I believe relationships move at the speed of trust. So the more you go to relationship with God, the more you know God and the more you trust Him. My hope is that along with this podcast and other tools that you're using, you're gonna grow in confidence. God is a missionary God, which means peace to live and to love like Jesus. So this time is a workout. A workout that builds muscle so you can live like Jesus. Love like Jesus. I love spending time in the work with you like this. So let's get started.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

This week's reading left me thinking a lot about my own children. And honestly, my younger self. That version of me that thought she knew everything. Back then I probably thought I even had the wisdom of Solomon. But um, this week's reading is packed with material. Between Proverbs and Song of Songs, Psalm 72, and looking at Solomon's early reign, we could spend days upon days unpacking everything. Song of Songs alone could be an entire series with lessons, especially lessons for the younger generation. But as I sat with these chapters, I kept coming back to a question. When God appears to Solomon in a dream and he tells him to ask for whatever he wanted, Solomon asks for wisdom. But here's what struck me: God knows the heart, right? We've seen this previous in scripture. It's talked about with David. So when Solomon asks for wisdom or discernment, this wasn't a fake spiritual answer. It wasn't what he thought God wanted to hear. He genuinely wanted it. This was what was in his heart. For me, Solomon already sounds pretty wise. So he recognizes his own limitations, right? He knows that he needs God, and we go on to read about his wise judgments, his incredible understanding. We're told that he wrote 3,000 Proverbs and more than a thousand songs. This is the man that people traveled great distances just to hear, just to hear what he had to say. Yet if we know the rest of Solomon's story, there is a tension that we can't ignore. And without jumping too far ahead or spoiling things for those reading through scripture for the very first time, let's just say that Solomon eventually starts looking a lot more like Pharaoh than the humble king that we're reading about in these chapters. And Song of Songs will sound a little different when you think of the man who would later surround himself with hundreds of wives and concubines. But I digress. So here is the question that I've been wrestling with this week. How does someone who asked God for wisdom and meant it end up making such foolish decisions? How does someone who wrote guard your heart fail to guard his own? How does someone who loved God drift so far? And maybe a harder question. Could the same thing happen to us? If I'm honest, I want to say no. I want to say I'd never worship idols. I would never drift that far. I want to say that I'd never make those kinds of decisions. But I think that Solomon didn't think so either. And that's what makes his story so fascinating. His downfall wasn't a lack of knowledge, it was not a lack of access to God. We know it wasn't a lack of wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom are a little different. We'll talk about that. In fact, Solomon had more wisdom than most of us could ever dream of even having. Solomon was like the modern day Google, right? In that time. He was their Google. He was their AI. But that raises another question. Because if wisdom alone wasn't enough, why does Solomon fail? Maybe because wisdom and obedience are not the same thing. You can know the right thing and still not do it, right? I know vegetables are healthier than donuts. That does not mean that I'm choosing the vegetables instead of the donut when it's sitting there on the counter in the morning. I know I should exercise more consistently. That does not mean I always do it. Knowledge is knowing, wisdom is applying. But obedience, that's the missing piece. Obedience is choosing. Choosing to apply what you know and deny the temptation to do otherwise. And I think that's why Proverbs keeps repeating that same pattern. My son, listen, hear, pay attention, do not forget, keep and guard. Right? We see it over and over and over again. Because wisdom isn't something you learn once. How many parents are here that have to tell your child more than once to do something or not to do something? It can take them a while to get it, right? Wisdom becomes what you know, and then it needs action. And isn't that what we see as parents? Sometimes I can see a situation coming from a mile away. I know and I can see where a choice is about to lead. I can see the hurt, the consequences, the disappointment all waiting down the road. And I try to warn my kids, not because I think I'm smarter and not because I'm trying to control them, but because I've walked a few more roads. I've made some mistakes and I've learned some extremely hard lessons. I've experienced what happens when you ignore wisdom. How many of you have done the same? The challenge is that when you're young, feelings, and sometimes older, but most of us for when we're young, feelings often sound louder than wisdom. Because you know what you want, you know what feels right, you know what makes sense in the moment. An experience feels unnecessary until you gain some. Honestly, I was the same way. When I look back at my younger self, I can see plenty of decisions that I thought were brilliant at the time. Plenty of moments when I was convinced I knew better. Plenty of moments when I ignored advice, godly advice. I ignored the warnings, I ignored the wisdom, and yet God, God was gracious enough to keep pursuing me and my hard-headed self. That realization made me think about our relationship with the Father. How often does God speak through his word the same way a loving parent speaks to a child? Not to restrict us, not to ruin our fun, right? Not to keep us from something good, but to protect us from something harmful. Think about Proverbs. When God says, guard your heart, it's not because he's trying to take something from us, right? He knows what's at stake and what comes from the heart. When God warns us about pride or lust, greed, um, bitterness, unforgiveness, compromise, he isn't trying to control us or saying that he doesn't understand what we're going through or feeling. He is trying to spare us from pain, from a path that leads away from him. And yet we often respond exactly the way children do. We hear him, but we don't really listen. We think the situation is different. We think we know better, right? Maybe even think that we're the exception. And that's where Solomon's story becomes so personal. The man who asked for wisdom eventually stopped listening to the wisdom he had received. And maybe that's how spiritual drift happens. Have you ever been in um or a swimming pool or even the lake or the ocean, I don't know, a body of water, okay, and drifted. You don't notice it at first. You aren't trying to move, you aren't swimming away from where you started, but eventually you look up and you realize you're nowhere near where you thought you were. And isn't that exactly how spiritual drift works? We've talked about this. Nobody wakes up one day planning to walk away from God, right? Or they don't plan to compromise their values. I don't think you just wake up one day and you're like, oh, I'm done listening to God's voice. It happens slowly, right? One compromise at a time, one justification at a time, one ignored conviction at a time. And before long we find ourselves somewhere we never intended to be. Even Song of Songs hints at this principle. Because several times we read that do not awaken love until the proper time. So even there we see that sacred things require stewardship. Not everything that is good should be handled carelessly. Solomon didn't lose everything in a single day. He slowly stopped guarding what God had entrusted to him. The issue wasn't that he lacked truth, right? We know this. The issue was that he stopped submitting to it. And friends, we have access to God, to his word, to his truth, to his spirit. We don't lack truth either. And if we're honest, that's usually where our struggle begins. We try to create our own truth. We don't submit or surrender and turn from our own ways and our own understanding, right? So as I wrap up today, I keep coming back to where I first started. My kids and my younger self. Because when I was younger, I thought I knew a lot more than I actually did. I had opinions, strong ones. I had strong feelings as well, and I had plans. Plans that nobody could tell me otherwise. They were my plans and they were going to happen. And if I'm being more honest, there were plenty of times that I thought the adults in my life did not understand me. But now looking back, I realized something. Many of the warnings that I ignored weren't coming from people trying to control me, just like the Lord isn't trying to control me or you. They were coming from people trying to protect me. They had walked roads that I hadn't walked yet, and they didn't want me on them. They had those scars that I didn't have yet, and they didn't want me to get them. They learned lessons that I had yet to learn. And isn't that what Proverbs is? A father speaking wisdom to a child. Not because he wants to limit them, because he loves them. Right? Because he can see dangers that they don't yet see. And as a parent, I get it now. I see it differently. There are moments when my children hear my words, but they do not yet understand the experience that is behind them. They know what they feel and they know what they want, right? And in that moment, it makes sense to them. But they can't see what the years of walking with God and walking through life have taught us, right? The truth is, I wonder if that's how we sometimes respond to God. God tells us to guard our hearts and he tells us to walk in wisdom, tells us to avoid certain paths, and sometimes we hear him, but we are not listening. We think we know better, we think the situation is different, and we probably even sometimes think we can handle it. We have to remember our Heavenly Father is not trying to control us, He is trying to protect us. And maybe that's the lesson Solomon understood when he was younger and somehow forgot later in life. Wisdom is not simply knowing what is right, it is trusting God enough to do what is right, even when you don't fully understand why. And maybe this is a good place to pause and ask ourselves a difficult question. What sacred thing has God entrusted to me that I've stopped intentionally protecting? Is it my time with him? Family? What about your thought life? Integrity? What about your wonder for the things of God? Do you remember a few weeks ago that quote? It says, Because the things that matter most rarely disappear overnight, more often they slowly fade when we stop stewarding them. So I leave you with a bunch of questions today. But the question isn't, am I wise? Let it be, am I listening? Am I listening to the wisdom God has given me? Am I listening to the people God has placed in my life? Am I listening before experience becomes regret? Here's some questions I would like you to sit with this week on top of those, yes. But what are you protecting that God is trying to have you walk away from? What are you neglecting? Are there areas of your life that you need to attend to? What has become common that God has called sacred? And one more. What would it look like to start guarding it again? So, friends, I leave you with those questions. May your time with him and in his word soften your heart and bring you new understanding of how much you are loved by the Father.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Thanks so much for listening to the Water's Edge Bible recap. I look forward every week to walking in the Word with you. You can find more information about Water's Edge Church at www.watersedge.faith. And you can listen to our weekly message on any platform under the Water's Edge website or by downloading the Water's Edge app.