The King and the Bronze Worker (Two Gifts, One Temple)

What if the king who built the temple never picked up a hammer?

In this short solo episode, Joshua Wilson shares something he noticed reading through 1 Kings — something easy to skim past: two different men, both filled with wisdom, building one temple. Solomon was given wisdom for the vision and the plan. Huram, a bronze worker from Tyre, was given wisdom for the intricate, skilled work of the metal. Same gift from God — applied two different ways, producing two different things the house needed. Joshua wrestles with what that says about how God gives gifts to His kids to be used together, with and through other people, to produce real fruit.

What He's Wrestling With:

• Why the wall-to-wall detail in 1 Kings 7 is the point, not something to skim
• Solomon's wisdom for the whole — the vision, the plan, the temple
• Huram of Tyre, filled with wisdom and skill for all kinds of bronze work
• The same gift of wisdom, applied differently, with different outcomes
• Why Solomon didn't need to work the bronze himself
• Proverbs 14:4 — the clean stall, the strength of the ox, and the harvest
• Why the increase seems to come when we work with and through others
• "Be fruitful and multiply" as a mandate that may include our work
• Using our gifts as avodah — work as worship and service
• A challenge he's sitting with: stop envying other people's gifts, ask the Giver for yours

About the show: Upside-Down Kings is a publication of One Iron Network. Learn more at oneironnetwork.com.

Upside-Down Kings is for educational and informational purposes only and is not financial, investment, or legal advice.

Transcript

0:00

Upside down kings. Two gifts of wisdom, one temple. In 1 Kings, we see Solomon ask God for wisdom, and he gets it. He gets a lot of it. And we watch that gift of wisdom be put to work in chapter five, six, and seven. Solomon plans it, prepares it, and starts to build it. But I don't think actually Solomon's picking up a hammer and building it. There's this guy. Check this out. 1 Kings seven, thirteen, and fourteen. Solomon goes and hires a guy named Huram from Tyre. He was the son of a widow, and, he was a bronze worker filled with wisdom and understanding and skilled in working with all kinds of bronze. So he came to King Solomon and did all of his work. Same gift. It's the same gift of wisdom. For Solomon, it was different. For Huram, it was skilled to build all of these little ornaments and pillars and lattice networks that you see in chapter seven. Lots of very intricate details. Same wisdom though, applied differently. I see another verse in the Bible that kinda pops out to me when it comes to working together."Where no oxen are, the trough is clean, but much increase comes by the strength of the ox." You could keep your stall clean by working alone, or you could bring in the strength of others and get a harvest. I think a lot of times the core message here is this, is God gives gifts for us to use to produce fruit, to produce a harvest. The first mandate is be fruitful and multiply. I think that multiplication is also in our work, our mandate, and using our gifts through through worship, through work, through service for others, but it produces fruit. So I think the core message here is don't look at other people's gifts and say, "I wish I had that." Look to the creator and the gift giver and say, "I wanna be more like you. What gift do you have for me, and how do I apply that?"