"A Listening Heart" (May 31, 2026 Sermon)

Text: 1 Kings 3:3-15

Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

God gives Solomon a blank check, and the most surprising part is how little Solomon asks for. We start with the raw backstory behind 1 Kings: David’s decline, a household already marked by violence, and a throne gained through ruthless moves that feel closer to a crime saga than a children’s Bible story. Then Solomon finally sleeps and God meets him in a dream with one simple prompt: “Ask.” 

We imagine our own answers and name the forces that often drive them: fear that wants safety, scarcity that wants money, and pain that wants payback. Solomon chooses something else entirely, asking for an “understanding mind” to govern well. Digging into the Hebrew, we find Lev Shomeah, a listening heart, not a one-time burst of insight but a lifelong posture of attention and humility. That detail flips our definition of power: leadership that listens before it speaks and discerns before it acts. 

We also hold the tension that wisdom is fragile. Even right after Solomon receives this gift, his instinct can still reach for the sword, a warning for every generation that confuses cleverness with virtue. We connect that to our moment, where information is endless and tools like artificial intelligence can amplify both good and harm. If you want a biblical framework for Christian leadership, discernment, and conflict resolution that feels painfully current, press play, then subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review. What would you ask God for if you could ask for one thing?

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Transcript

Prayer And Scripture Reading

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Let us pray. Holy Spirit, open our hearts to the reading of your word. Amen. The reading today is from 1 Kings chapter 3, verses 3 through 15. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David, except that he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places. The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the principal high place. Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night, and God said, Ask what I should give you. And Solomon said, You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant, my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward you. And you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil, for who can govern this great people of yours? It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right. I now do, according to your word. Indeed, I give you a wise and discerning mind. No one like you has been before you, and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life. No other king shall compare with you. If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life. Then Solomon awoke. It had been a dream. He came to Jerusalem, where he stood before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. He offered up burnt offerings and offerings of well-being, and provided a feast for all his servants. Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God.

Setting The Stage In Kings

SPEAKER_01 3:05

So the chapters that we will explore together over the next few months have it all palace intrigue, sexual politics, family drama. Who doesn't love some good family drama, right? And above all, a God who remains faithful through the Israelites' ebbs and flows as they, like us, try to do the same. So before we get to the meat of today's passage that Catherine read for us, it's important to remember kind of where we are in the biblical narrative. Just before the books of 1 and 2 Kings come the books of 1st and 2 Samuel, which tell the stories of King Saul and King David. You may remember the Israelites went to God at the beginning of 1 Samuel and said, Hey, everybody else, every other nation has kings. We want one of those. God says, No, you don't. Trust me. The Israelites say, no, really, we want them. And God says, okay, have your way. And tells the stories of King Saul and King David. But by the time that we reach today's passage, King David's meteoric rise has been followed by his fall from grace after the Bathsheba Uriah scandal. In fact, the very first verse of 1 Kings chapter 1 reminds us of David's fragility in his later years. This book opens up by saying King David was old and advanced in years, and although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm. The once mighty and invincible David, the very one who conquered Goliath with nothing more than a sling and a rock, now lies shivering in his bed, knocking on heaven's door. His servants bring in a beautiful young girl named Abishag to arouse his vitality, so to speak, from its slumber, but it is no use. And because David is close to death, the vultures start circling. By this point, violence has already visited David's household. One of his sons, Absalom, had already met a nasty end towards the end of 2 Samuel. Absalom never forgave his father David for failing to punish his brother Amnon for sexually assaulting their sister Tamar, and therefore he led a rebellion against David's house, against David's reign, challenging him for the throne. But Absalom met a bloody, if memorable, memorable end when you can't make this up. He's on his mule, and he's riding into battle, and his head gets caught in the branches of an oak tree and leaves him dangling while his mule keeps on going. And David's army eventually finds him and slaughters him. That's a bad way to go, isn't it? Yeah. So David is grieving his son's death, and that's possibly kind of the beginning of the end for David's reign. But once it becomes clear that David's days are near an end, another one of his sons, Adonijah, everybody say Adonijah, Adonijah, he begins vying for his father's throne kind of behind his back. He launches a PR campaign to solidify support for his candidacy. But Bathsheba, remember her? She had different plans. Though she was stripped of agency in her previous story, which I'm guessing you all know of, where David forced himself upon her and had her husband Uriah killed, she now finds an opportunity to speak up and advocate for herself. She sees the writing on the wall and knows that if Adonijah is crowned king, then she and her son, her son with David, Solomon, will be seen as a threat to Adonijah's legitimacy. So therefore she conspires with the prophet Nathan to remind David that he promised her son Solomon the crown. Now it's very interesting that nowhere in Scripture do we have a record of this promise. So we're left to wonder whether it really happened or if Bathsheba is perhaps taking advantage of David's feeble mind. And even if that's the case, can anyone blame her? She and her husband, after all, were the collateral damage of David's unsatiated sexual appetite. So perhaps she believes that this is an appropriate time for the scales of justice to be rebalanced. So to make a long story short, Bathsheba's play works. David anoints Solomon as his successor with all the pomp and circumstance required to legitimize his claim. Not surprisingly, Adonijah's time on earth was short. In a foolish move, Adonijah asked to be given Abishog in marriage, and Solomon interprets this as an attack on his legitimacy. So Solomon, rather ruthlessly, has his brother killed. If any of you have ever seen the TV show Game of Thrones, you know how this works. At long last, Solomon has consolidated his power and now sits on the throne that belonged to his father, King David, and to his predecessor King Saul before them. Now, if this is all sounding a bit like the plot of the classic movie The Godfather, you would be right. That is exactly what this part of 1 Kings is. David is kind of like Don Corleone, who's far past his prime, and the circles of power around him, such as his family and the other families of the Italian mafia, are testing one another to see who will come out on top once he sleeps with the fishes.

Solomon’s Rise After The Bloodshed

SPEAKER_01 9:03

And after all of these ruthless Game of Thrones maneuvers, Solomon finally has the chance, now that he's consolidated his power, to get some sleep. So he rests his head on his bed to catch up on some snoozes as he prepares for his reign to begin. And that is where we find him in today's story, or more specifically, where God finds Solomon. As is the case often with many other characters in the Bible, God meets Solomon in a dream as he slumbers. Solomon had traveled to a place called Gibeon, a so-called high place, the text tells us, where the Israelites often made sacrifices to God to curry God's favor. And after the bloodshed that brought Solomon to this point, he certainly could use all the divine favor he could get. So

God’s Blank Check Question

SPEAKER_01 9:54

God approaches Solomon in his dream and asks a very simple question. What do you want? Ask. What should I give to you? Which begs the question: what does one do when given a blank check from Almighty God? One of the kids down here said, ask for treasure. I think that's a great suggestion. But God asks Solomon, you know, what is it that you want as you begin this next chapter? And all of us might wonder how we might respond if God were to give us this blank check. If we're governed by fear, we might ask, keep me safe, keep my family safe, keep my parents safe, make sure nothing bad ever happens to us. Or maybe give me certainty about my health, my future, my children's future. Or maybe let me know how it all ends so I don't have to be afraid anymore. If we're governed by scarcity, we might ask, give me enough money that I will never have to worry again. Or make sure that my retirement is secure, my house is paid off, and my kids are taken care of. If we are governed by violence, we may say, punish the people who hurt me. Vindicate me publicly, visibly, humiliate my enemies. What questions would you add to that list? Perhaps some that come from a place of genuine good. Not all the questions in that list are bad. Maybe you might ask that our church would continue to grow, that the cancer would be defeated, that gas and groceries would become reasonably priced again.

Choosing Discernment Over Riches

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Solomon could have asked of any of these things, though I doubt gas prices were high on his list, but he asked for none of them. His response is simple. More specifically, he asks for an understanding mind to govern God's people and to discern between what is good and what is evil. His restraint is remarkable, especially, especially because his recently deceased father, King David, was known for many things, but his restraint was not necessarily one of them.

Lev Shomeah Meaning Listening Heart

SPEAKER_01 12:10

But the phrase that is used, that's usually translated in your pew Bibles as understanding mind deserves a little bit more of our attention. Excuse me, of our attention. The understanding mind that Solomon asks of God is a Hebrew phrase called Lev Shomeah. Can you say that with me? Lev Shomeah, which literally in Hebrew means a listening heart or a hearing heart. You may recognize the word Shema in that phrase, Lev Shomea, because it's the same word that begins Israel's central confession of faith, the Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. So in his dream, Solomon does not ask to be heard. He instead asks Shemiah to hear. We hear in Solomon's request much of what inspired Saint Francis to write in his prayer centuries later, when you may know it, O divine master, grant me that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to what? To console. To be understood as to what? Understands. To be loved as to love. So what I think is equally important about the Hebrew phrase lev shomeiah is that the verb shomeia is in the participle form, which is a fancy grammatical term that simply indicates continuous, ongoing action. Solomon's request for a listening heart, lev shomea, isn't a one-time download from the heavens of information or enlightenment. Solomon doesn't ask for a heart that has heard and is now done, but he asks for a heart that is forever listening, forever, continuously listening. And I find in this passage a quiet rebuke of much of the power that's baked into our world today. Our current political atmosphere assumes that power means asserting yourself, making yourself heard, imposing your will, and being the one that everybody just has to listen to. But on the contrary, Solomon does not ask to be listened to. He asks to be the one who listens. Would that all of our elected leaders on both sides of the aisle adopted such a posture? Would that all of us, you and myself, could find within ourselves the resolve to adopt such a posture in our families, in our schools, in our workplaces, in our churches and faith communities. I think Solomon's prayer is a wise one for us in this modern age, also given just how much information and knowledge is out there. We live in an age where information is easily acceptable at our literal fingertips. Now, whether that information is accurate or unbiased or factual is another topic altogether. But such makes it even more important that you and I join Solomon in this continual posture of humility, asking for the Lev Shomeah. Say that one more time. But such wisdom, even when granted by God above, can slip between our fingers if we're not

Wisdom And The Instinct For Swords

SPEAKER_01 15:41

careful. I find the story that comes immediately after today's story a telling one in this regard. My guess is that you probably know it. What follows today's story is the famous passage in which two women simultaneously claim to be the legitimate mother of a child after one of the two women's child dies in its sleep. The two women bring the child and claim to be the biological mother, and Solomon famously asks for his sword, and he threatens to cut the baby in two to divide it equally between the two women. One of the two women quickly objects and begs for the child to be given to the other woman, and therefore Solomon surmises that the woman who objected was the biological mother. The passage is often lifted up as evidence of Solomon's newly found wisdom. Now, this is a complex story, and I think that two things can exist together in truth at the same time. First of all, this story perhaps is evidence of Solomon's wisdom. After all, that story concludes with the following verse said, All Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to execute justice. But I also think another thing can be true at the same time. That even with Solomon's newfound wisdom, his first instinct is nevertheless to reach for the sword. And I find that an important observation for us to make. You and I have unlimited potential at our fingernails, uh finger fingertips, unlike the other generations before us.

AI Age Needs Humble Listening

SPEAKER_01 17:24

The artificial intelligence boom that has happened just in the last three and a half years since I've been your pastor has completely changed the world around us in ways that some of us may welcome and in ways that some of us may not. In just a few years, AI has gone from a rather abstract, futuristic concept to something that feels truly avoidable. I cannot even order a chocolate frosty at my local Wendy's without using AI, because they have AI taking the orders. It's everywhere. And you know what? It may be an incredible tool that can be used for much good, but it's a tool nonetheless, and one that can also be used for great harm if not properly regulated and maintained and made accessible for all people, not just the wealthy few. Now, not to go off on too much of a tangent there, but all this is to say that I think that we need the Lev Shomeya, that listening heart, now more than ever. We all need listening hearts attuned to humanity's nearly limitless capacity for both good and ill. We need listening hearts to resist Solomon's instinct and that of his father to reach for the sword as the go-to tool for resolving conflict. We need listening hearts that can cut through the constant noise around us that we hear so that we can still hear the still small voice of the Spirit that was bestowed upon us in Pentecost last Sunday. We need listening hearts that understand that wisdom is a precious gift, one that must be tended with the same intentionality a master gardener brings to their plants.

Series Preview And Closing Blessing

SPEAKER_01 19:03

So as we continue this five-week sermon on 1 Kings, we'll see both the successes and the failures of Solomon's reign, as well as the successes and failures of Israel's attempts to live faithfully as recipients of God's liberation. And as we continue this journey, may we all together seek the Lev Shomea, the listening heart of Solomon's prayer. And understand that that wisdom should never be taken for granted. In the name of God, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us God's beloved children say. Amen.