Give Us Wisdom - Pastor Sam Simoes - July 26, 2026

Pastor Sam Simoes message for Sunday July 26, 2026. 

Welcome to the Northwest Church of the Nazarene podcast, where we share the heart of our church’s mission: discovering and engaging in a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ through inspired worship and intentional ministry. Each episode brings you sermons, insights, and messages that challenge and encourage spiritual growth. Whether you are part of our diverse, multicultural church family, or listening in for the first time, you’ll find a community that loves Jesus and welcomes everyone with open arms. Join us online at nwnaz.org or in person in Columbus Ohio, as we journey together toward a deeper, more meaningful relationship with Jesus and each other. 

Transcript

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Every Sunday at Northwest Church of the Nazarene in Columbus, Ohio, our congregation is challenged to grow spiritually. This podcast shares the sermons, insights, and messages that encourage our congregation to mature spiritually.

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Today we live in the world that if we have a question, we can just pull out our phone and ask the question. I see that with my teenage daughters, that every time they say, hey, I wonder if this, I was like, I don't know. So they pull it out and ask, hey, Siri, does this happen? And you know, who who invented this item? Or any question that we may have, we will be able to find information on our phones. One time I went to this place that someone just renovated and just and they just told me, Pastor, look, we renovated this beautiful living room. And I said, I like the color. But then as I looked at the corners and around the outlets, I saw really, really shoddy work with um with uh with the well, I call it mudding, but with the drywalling and and the patches. And I said, Well, that's an interesting work. You know, I did not know who did it, but I was gonna say, you need to fire that foreman or the contractor. And they said, Oh, we learned how to do it on YouTube. I said, Yeah, it shows. And today we can learn on how to do anything on YouTube. I have a message in the car that says, you know, you have uh a check engine light, and I go and find out on YouTube on how to fix it. And uh, I had a check, uh, check check your gas cap is loose, so I just clean it up. And but I can find every single piece of information I could ever find. And and things that I just wonder, you know, those 2 a.m. thoughts that you have, you can just go on a phone and figure that out immediately. So we have more information today. I hear that we have more information today in one phone than there is in every computer before that. So there's so much information that we can have today. And yet, out of all this information, it's not like we are growing in how to handle all that information. It's not that we are better at making decisions, and it's not like we are uh are in a place that we know what to do just because we have information. Now, if God would appear at you uh to you at night and said, Ask for anything, our immediate thought will be, well, just like Siri, we'll just ask for anything. And our immediate thought will be that God is just asking us for information. And many times our responses will be, Well, Lord, I want better health. Oh, I, you know, my prayer has been that that I that my parents have better health, that my children, you know, uh are are successful, or that I'm successful, or that I have the things that I want that I need. But today we're gonna be talking about Solomon and when he had the opportunity to answer that question, how he answered. Now, many of us are familiar with Solomon. Solomon was the son of King David, who was king for about 40 years before. Now, before David, there was another king, Solomon, and then there was another king, and his name Saul. His name just Solomon Saul. It was King Saul, and Saul was made king, not because God had the great idea of providing a king to the people, is because the people ask God, and they ask God, can we have a king? We see the nations around us and they have kings, and the kings rule over them, and they have someone to look up to. And God's like, not a good idea to have a king. And they said, But we want a king. And God's like, it's not a good idea to have a king, because the king will rule over you, and many kings are not good kings. And they kept saying, Well, we want a good king. Well, God said, All right, I'll get you a king. A king that you always wanted. And the king that they always wanted, and that being Saul, very tall, handsome, strong, was the perfect king in their minds. But when Saul took the reign, he was not the best king. So God wanted the best king, and he found David to be the perfect person, to be king. David became king and he loved God. Now, he wasn't devoid of doing wrong, he was he didn't have a perfect life. But out of his imperfect life was the deal with Bathsheba. And Bathsheba was someone that was not David's wife, but he made an arrangement that was very ungodly to have her. And the first son she had, she lost, and the second son she had was Solomon, who David prepared to be king. That's who she wanted to be king, and that's who David desired to be king. Now, David had other sons who also have some interesting stories to them, but Solomon was someone that David spoke, taught, and discipled about God. Now, many times we think, well, he was a son of the king, but he was the son of the king who taught about God. He feared God. And because he feared God, he grew up knowing God, worshiping God, and sacrificing before God. So after 40 years, David dies. Solomon becomes king. Now he's one of the most prosperous, one of the strongest nations of the world at that time. And he becomes a king, and as he becomes a king, he desires to rule like his father, to have wisdom like his father. After 40 years of ruling, he knew how to rule a country. And he begins by sacrificing before God. He begins by worshiping God and by devoting his life to God until God comes and asks him a question. And he has the answer. And the question that he has is wisdom. And that is the title for today's passage. So as we prepare ourselves for the word of the Lord, would you stand with me as we consider God's word for us today? In the first book of Kings, chapter 3, we're gonna read verses um five to twelve of the third chapter of the first uh book of Kings, and as we uh follow along and see what the Lord has in store for us today. Verse 5. At Gibeon, the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, Ask for whatever you want me to give you. Solomon answered, You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued his great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on this throne this very day. Now, Lord, my God, you have made your servant king in the place of my father David, but I'm only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. Your servant your servant is here among the people you have chosen, great people, too numerous to count, or or distinguish between or number. So give your servant a discerning heart and govern your people, and to distinguish between right and wrong, for who is able to govern this great people of yours? The Lord is pleased that Solomon has asked for this. So God said to him, Since you have asked for this, and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies, but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so there will never have been anyone like you, nor there will ever be. Father, we pray that you speak to our hearts today. Father, we don't want to just listen, we don't just to just perceive and have more information. We want to be transformed, we want your word to do something to us, and we want to be challenged, challenged to not only pursue wisdom, but pursue you and you above all things. We ask this and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. We find in this passage that Solomon in a dream is asked a question, a question that many of us have uh probably have been asked before. You know, if you if money was no object, what would you do? If you had a million dollars, what would you do? If you had the ability to ask for anything, what would you ask for? And God did that, and what we see is that the answer delighted God. Because the answer was something that God desires to give. And God desires and delights in giving wisdom, he delights in giving wisdom, he brightens his heart, God initiates the conversation, but it pleases God that the response that he has is for wisdom. Then it pleases God that the response that he had was for others. He could ask for anything, but yet what God says, because you have asked for others, because you did not ask for yourself, it pleases me. His mind was in his people, his mind was in serving, his mind was his caring for that great nation. So when we think of others first, we have a different mindset. We make different decisions, we take different directions. This week I had uh a conversation with Hannah. She's preparing to go back to college, and she said, Daddy, my curling iron is broken on the very top, so I can get hurt if I touched it. So I'm thinking about buying a new curling iron. But I don't know if I should just get a new curling iron that just fixes the one that I have, or should I just get a new curling iron with more accessories? And I said, Well, what do you plan on doing with curling iron? She goes, Well, curl my hair. And also curling my friends' hairs. Because they come over to my room, and then me and my roommate, we sometimes, you know, we we we we do their hair if they're going to uh uh somewhere special or if they just want to have their hair do, so we just do that in in my room. I said, Well, uh what do the extensions do for that curling iron? Because as you may understand by looking at my hair, it's not a product that I use. I said, what else do you use it for? And she goes, Well, they have different extensions, different sizes for different kinds of hair. But my hair, I only need one extension. I said, but if you are doing the hair for other girls, then you probably could use the other extensions. And she said, right. If I think of using it for other girls, then definitely I will need more extensions. Because her mind is not on just taking care of her hair, is taking care of other people's hairs or doing hairdo for other people. And the decision is not based on her own needs, but the needs of others. And that's exactly the kind of decision that we see that pleases God. It's the decision that doesn't fulfill the desires of my heart or that benefits me, but benefits others. And when we ask God for something that benefits others, God delights in that. But if we're asking God for something that benefits us, or only benefits us, like wealth or or or like a favor, but when we know it benefits others, when we ask for something, when our hearts are in those that need God, get need his presence, need his touch, need his embrace, then God delights in that. So today we see that we have many tools that God has given us, many gifts that God has given us, many opportunities for us to serve. But it's not just so we can benefit from them, but that others may benefit with what God is giving us. So we find that God delights in giving wisdom. So why is that important? It's because wisdom is divine, it's not something that we just acquire, it's not just something that we just that we just study. Wisdom, the application of information in a way that benefits others. And as soon as Jesus, as soon as God gave him the wisdom, the wisdom, he had the opportunity to exercise that wisdom. When the mothers, when two mothers came together and they explained the story, that one of them had a son that died, and the other one said, Well, that lady traded sons for my son. I woke up and realized that that wasn't my child. He said, Well, let's just cut the child in half. And the woman that said, No, no, no, you let the other woman keep it because I'd rather have the child alive, he recognized what it was. It's a very well-known story. But that wisdom was something that God has given him. Now, when we pray and say, God give me wisdom, God give me the ability to understand, give me discernment, we're asking God to let the Spirit take the lead. We're not asking God to change the information that, oh, I did not know this. I'm not able to start speaking to speaking Arabic. I'm not able to start speaking, you know, uh Spanish. I'm not able to start speaking a language that I never learned. I don't have new information. God is giving us discernment in a way that the spirit starts leading our decisions, starts leading the information as we process the information. So what wisdom is, is a divine intervention in our heart, in our mind, in our spirit as we think and make decisions. And Solomon realized that it was a gift from God. He was the gift that God has given him. God gave him a wish. It reminds me of the story of Aladdin and the rubbing of the lamp and having a genie coming out with wishes. And there's a story, it reminds me of a story of a guy that um found a lamp in the desert, and then he rubbed it, and sure enough, a genie came out and said, I'm here to give you three wishes. What three wishes would you like? He says, Well, I wish for a large house, a lake house with a pool and easy access to the lake. And sure enough, he had a beautiful house in Minnesota. And he said, Well, for my second wish, I wish for a BMW tricked out with everything I ever want and the best radio system money can buy. And sure enough, he's driving and he's listening to the radio and enjoying, and the commercial come up and he sings along. I wish I was an Oscar Meyer winner, and poof. This is not the God that Solomon found that said, Well, give me three wishes. This is a God that says, How can I change your life? How can I be such a part of your life that I can be your God? And that's what God is asking us. What do you desire that I can transform? What do you desire that I can change? What do you desire that I can completely, completely build you to be the person that I envision you to be? So God is not asking us for us to just you know have more information. He's asking us to have this relationship with him. The wisdom that God gave Solomon when the queen of Sheba came and she asked him, and she said, This is more wisdom than I even heard of. He became a testimony of the power of God to the rest of the world. Everyone knew about the power, everyone knew about the presence of God of Israel, but yet the wisdom drifted. You see, the wiser he became, and the wealthier he became, and the more powerful he became, the more he desired. You see, the problem is when we have a lot of wisdom, when we have a lot of power, when we have a lot of wealth, there's only one thing that they want more, and that is more power, more wealth. And he pursued on on more power, more wealth. And then women came around. Oh my goodness. 300 wives. In my mind, it's 300 mother-in-laws. That must be interesting. I wonder how the conversations would go. And then 700 non-wives. And I'm thinking, I bet the conversations must be interesting. You're cheating on me with 700. You know, it's just you can't fathom that. I I I can't even imagine. But the problem isn't wasn't just the women and and the power. Well, sometimes other gods were very attractive. And that hurt God. And he began going into the wrong direction. You see, the problem with wisdom is that wisdom without obedience stops being about others, stops being about caring for God, but it begins to be about us. So wisdom comes out of experience. And when we when we are obedient to the spirit, when we allow our mistakes to be to be bathed in the spirit in a way that we can learn on how to recognize the spirit of God, we will find ourselves with wisdom. And the spirit moves us in the lessons that we are taught. But the problem is if we become very wise or become very wealthy or powerful, we must have that cultivated with obedience, and that is the key point about wisdom. Wisdom requires obedience to be godly, to be divine. So what are we to do? We see that God delights in giving wisdom. We see that wisdom is divine. So what are we to do? According to this passage, and to do what Solomon did, he sought God first. So we are to seek God first. Solomon put God first and he sacrificed and he loved God, he followed God, and he recognized God not only as the God of his nation, God of his people, but his own God. Luciano Pavarotti tells the story. When I was a boy, my father, a baker, introduced me to the wonders of song. He urged me to work very hard to develop my voice. Arrigo Pola, a professional tenor in my hometown of Modena, Italy, took me as a pupil. I also enrolled in a teacher's college. On graduating, I asked my father, shall I be a teacher or a singer? Luciano, my father replied, if you try to sit on two chairs, you will fall between them. For life, you must choose one chair. I chose one. It took seven years of study and frustration before I made my first professional appearance. It took another seven to reach the Metropolitan Opera. And now I think whether it's laying bricks, writing a book, whatever we choose, we should give ourselves to it. Commitment. That's the key. Choose one chair. Solomon chose God. He could choose himself, he could choose power, but he chose God. And in that choice, God gave him the opportunity to see God in his life, in his nation. So we seek God first. And the conversation that we see in this passage, in this dream, wasn't started by Solomon. Solomon didn't ask God, God came before him. But the relationship, even though God started the conversation, the relationship was started by Solomon. And Solomon was the one that answered the question. Solomon was the one that began first by seeking God, by sacrificing, by following God. Then God gave him the opportunity to have the greatest request ever made. What would you ever like me to give you? When we look into this passage, we recognize that Solomon wasn't just there. He was serving God. He had a relationship with God before God asked that question. And the relationship with God is the most important thing when it comes to wisdom. In the New Testament, we read that they were having problems in Acts 6. They were having problems with the widows and the orphans, and they were taking care of them. And then the apostles were spending a lot of time doing this work. So they decided to have seven men, and their designation, all that they needed, they didn't care about their age, they didn't care about where they come from, they didn't care about their skin color, they didn't care about how experienced they were or how much scripture they knew. They asked for two things: filled of the Holy Spirit and full of wisdom. And I don't think you can have one without the other. And I don't think you can have one without the other really making a big part of your life. So filled with the Holy Spirit and full of wisdom, He goes hand in hand. So the Spirit is the one that's going to lead us to have wisdom. So when we seek God first, we're seeking his spirit, we're seeking his way, we're seeking his relationship, and then God will give us wisdom. We don't need to have that question. He's already giving us wisdom when we have the Holy Spirit. But he goes beyond that. Because when we seek God first, and when God says, What do you need? What do you want? Solomon had a discerning heart. So we have a listening heart. He had a heart for the people, he had a heart for the nation. He had a heart for God. And that discernment is a listening heart. And that's something that is very hard for us to do. Why? Because we Christians, we know what the word says and we want to fix people. We want to fix things. We want God to fix it. But he didn't ask God to fix it. He asked God to give him wisdom because he had a discerning heart. He asked for a heart for the people, a discerning heart, not a discerning mind. He asked for a heart, a listening heart. He recognizes limitations, how he was young. He was just a child. At 20, he said, I am 20 years old, he's just a child. And I know many 20-year-olds who desire many things, but not necessarily wisdom. But today we see that he had a discerning heart, and that's what he asked for. So when we have a listening heart, God will allow the difficult situations that we've gone through, the different experiences, and the times of suffering, and the times of pain, and the times of trial and turmoil, to recognize that God was preparing us for times in which we're going to need the wisdom that we glean from those times. Because wisdom is the spirit working in us that we may discern what is the spirit doing. So when we listen, we are not trying to fix it, we're not trying to change it, we're not trying to transform it. We recognize that God is working and God allows it for us to receive wisdom. In the book of James, we read if any of you lacks wisdom, ask the Lord. In other words, if we ask for wisdom, God will give us wisdom, especially if it's for others. So I have a challenge for you this week. And it's a different challenge. We've been talking about the one, the one person that we identify in our lives. We're talking about the one person we want to minister to. We want to talk, we want to identify someone we can connect with, someone we can bring to Jesus, discipling them into a way that one day they will open up their hearts and will be able to share about Jesus. It's not just getting a project and someone just saved so they can go to church, but really investing in someone mentoring, discipling. And as we've been talking about that one person, I have a challenge for you this week with that one person. Listen to someone's story this week. Don't try to fix it. Don't listen to the story so you can tell them about Jesus. Don't listen to the story so you can just tell them about how a situation like yours just happened. Don't try to fix people. Listen to their story in a way that they can share. And if they ask, do you have any wisdom on that? Will you pray with me on that? Or you can ask, well, can I pray for you on that situation? But everyone has a story, and everyone has a story that they're dealing with each day. And they will open the opportunity for you to share about Jesus. But if they don't trust that you would hear about them first, they don't care about the Jesus you you have. They want to hear that you care before they can hear about Jesus. So listen to someone's story this week. Just try not to fix it, just try to be quiet. I know that that is a hard thing for me sometimes. But it's something that when we do it, we're having a discerning heart. We have a listening heart. We don't have to fix people. Let the spirit do that. But we can be listening and letting the spirit reveal to us how can we better pray for them, how can we better serve them, how can we better equip them, and how can we better disciple them. So we ask, we listen, we love, and we don't fix it, we just love them. And the wisdom in the listening will let us know on how to pray for them. I'd like to ask the worship team to come forward as we conclude with a song. I don't know where you are on your journey with God, and I don't know what God has spoken with you today about. But today He has an opportunity to change our hearts by giving us wisdom. But wisdom is not just something that that we we receive, but it's something that we connect with. And it is the relationship with the Spirit that gives us wisdom. And it was the relationship with God that gave wisdom to Solomon. So if today you are struggling with a situation, maybe maybe a situation that we want to God to reveal or we want God to to bring peace, ask the Lord to give you wisdom. Ask the Lord to let the Spirit lead. And you will see that in the listening, God will speak. Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you for what you had for us today. But as we prepare to go, we pray that as we minister to others, that our eyes are not just on the things that we need or the things we want. But our eyes are in ministering to those who do not know you. So Lord, open opportunities for us to listen to people, but create in us such a spirit-filled life that others recognize that there is something very special about what we have. And that very special, it's you. So, Father, lead us today, and we pray these things in your Son Jesus Christ's name. Amen.

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As it is known in our community, Northwest Church is committed to discovering and engaging in a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ, with inspired worship and intentional ministry. People from all walks of life are welcome and received as family members. Our family is diverse, multicultural, and although not perfect, in love with Jesus. Join us online at nwnat.org or by visiting us in Columbus, Ohio. God bless you.