If you could have anything you
want, what would it be?
Would you want to win the Powerball and have more money
than you knew what to do with? That was
the dream of a lot of people here a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure there were a lot of people praying
that they’d be the big winner.
Would you want power?
Some people would say that’s better than money. After all, if you have enough power, you
don’t need money. There are a lot of
politicians right now who want power.
Now, I’m sure they’re convinced they’d do good things with that power,
and maybe they would, but still, you don’t run for a major political office if
you don’t like to have power.
Would you want fame?
There are a lot of people who do.
We have all these shows, American Idol, the Voice, America’s Got Talent,
all these shows with people who want to get noticed so they can become famous.
There are a lot of other things we might want, of course,
and a lot of them are more serious. We
might want healing for ourselves or our loves ones. We might want to find a loving relationship
or to have one restored. We might want
work that’s fulfilling and rewarding to us.
Some people would simply want to have enough to eat and a warm place to
sleep.
But as we continue our sermon series “Dream On”, looking
at dreams and dreamers in the Bible, that’s the exact question Solomon
faced. God comes to Solomon in a dream,
and God says to Solomon, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
That’d be a pretty awesome thing, right? I mean, it’s one thing to talk, as we just
did, about what we might want when we don’t really have any prospect of getting
it anyway. But here, Solomon gets asked
this question by God. And God, by
definition, has the power to give anything God decides to give. When God tells you, “Ask for whatever you
want me to give you”, it’s not an empty promise. God can actually deliver on it. Now, true, God does not explicitly say “I’m
going to give you whatever you want.”
But God does encourage Solomon to ask.
And what impresses me is that Solomon answers
immediately. I think I’d want some time
to think about it. Wouldn’t you? I mean, basically, Solomon has one chance to
get this right. There’s nothing that
says God’s going to let Solomon have something else he wants after this. I’d want to think about this for a
while. I’d want some time to weigh all
my options, to make sure I’d considered everything, to make sure I really had
my response correct if God asked what I want God to give me.
But Solomon does not stop to think. Solomon knows. And I think when we look at his answer, we
can see part of the reason he knows.
He starts out by thanking God for everything God has
done, not just for him, but for his father before him. Remember what we talked about last week,
about how most of us have gotten a lot of good breaks from God, but we either
just take them for granted or think we deserve them? Solomon does not think that way. Solomon knows God did all kinds of good
things for his father, David, and God has already done all kinds of things for
him, too. Solomon does not take the good
breaks he got from God for granted.
Solomon recognizes them and Solomon acknowledges them.
So what does Solomon ask for? None of the things we’ve talked about. Solomon does not ask for money or power or
fame. He does not ask for good health or
a rewarding relationship. He simply asks
for a discerning heart, so he would know right from wrong and be able to be a
good leader for the people of Israel.
Now, maybe you think, well, sure, it was easy for
Solomon. He already had wealth and power
and fame. He had no need to ask God for
those things. Well, maybe, but think of
it this way. Think of the richest and
most powerful people in the world. Think
of the most famous people. How many of
them are ever satisfied with their wealth and power and fame? How many of them ever say, “I’ve got enough
money, I don’t need any more” or “I’ve got enough power, I don’t need any more”
or “I’ve got enough fame, I don’t need any more”. I’m sure it’s happened, but it does not
happen very often. The very rich always
seem to want more. The very powerful
always seem to want more. The very
famous always seem to want more.
And this is not intended as a criticism of the rich or
the powerful or the famous. What this
is, is human nature. When we really
value something, when something is very important to us, no matter what that
something is, there never seems to be an amount of it that’s enough. We always want more.
But it’s what we want more of that shows what we really
value. And what we really value, in
turn, shows who we are. That’s why God
was so pleased with Solomon when he asked for a discerning heart. It showed that what Solomon valued most was
not money or power or fame. What Solomon
valued most had nothing to do with himself.
What Solomon valued most was wisdom and justice. And he valued it because he wanted to serve
God better and because he wanted to serve the people of Israel better. And when he asked for that, God was pleased,
because that showed how much Solomon loved God and loved people. And God gave him what he asked for. In fact, God gave him a lot more than what he
asked for.
And so, we ask the questions we’ve been asking throughout
this sermon series. How does Solomon’s
dream help us as we try to follow God’s dreams for us? And how does Solomon’s dream help us as we
try to follow God’s dreams for the church?
I think part of the answer comes from the question we
asked at the start of this message. What
do you really want? What do you want for
your life? And what do we, together,
want for the life of the church? And why
do we want that? Because what we want
and why we want it will show what we really value.
Now, I want to make clear that it’s not necessarily wrong
to pray for God’s help in lots of situations.
If you or a loved one is sick or has a serious medical condition or
something, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking God to heal them. We do it every week. If you’re without a job, there’s absolutely
nothing wrong with asking God to help you find one. If you’re having problems in a relationship,
there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking God to heal the relationship. And there are all kinds of other things we
could add to that list.
But ultimately, in the end, we come back to what Jesus
told us the two greatest commandments are:
that we love God and that we love others. And even though Jesus said that hundreds of
years after Solomon lived, Solomon still followed it. He asked for a discerning heart so he could
serve God better and so he could serve the people of Israel better. And that’s about the best way we can show
love to someone—by serving them.
As we try to find God’s dream for us and for the church,
I’m pretty sure it has something to do with that—loving God and loving others,
and showing that love by serving God and serving others. If our dreams focus on ourselves, they’re
probably not God’s dreams. God’s dream
for us has nothing to do with things that are just for us. God’s dream for us, and God’s dream for the
church, is that we value things that that help us serve God better and help us
serve others better.
One thing I’ve noticed, and I’ve noticed it for a long
time now, is that every time I pray for God to give me chances to serve God and
to serve others, God always answers that prayer. In fact, quite often God has answered that
prayer very quickly. In fact, I
sometimes get a little scared when I pray that prayer to God, because I know
that if I sincerely ask God for chances to serve, God may take me in directions
I did not want to go. God may ask me to
do things that scare me. When we
sincerely ask God for chances to serve, we never know what kind of chances God
will give us. We just can be confident
that the chances will come. And if we
truly value God, and if we truly value others, we’ll be able to handle things
even if we’re scared, because we’ll know that God is with us.
Solomon did not know what would happen when he asked God
for a discerning heart. He just knew
that, if he had one, he’d be able to serve God better and serve people
better. That was what he valued. And so, even though he was scared—after all,
he said he was like a little child and did not know what to do—he asked for a
discerning heart, knowing that then he would have God with him and would be
able to handle whatever he might get into.
God’s dream for Solomon was that he serve God and serve
others. And whatever the specifics may
be, I’m pretty sure God’s dream for us, both as individuals and as a church, is
that we serve God and serve others. If
that’s what we value, God will give us what we ask for. In fact, God will give us a lot more than
what we ask for.
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