This is how you become the man who gets the girl...
1 Kings 10:1–13
God used means to connect Solomon’s wisdom to his great wealth — and I want to tell you what those means were, so you can use those same means to add wealth to wisdom, God’s way in God’s world. There is so much hope in this scripture for young men starting out in life, who want to have a wife, a family, a home they can call their own — even in this uncertain economy. I’m not offering you a guarantee, but I am offering you hope, brother: hope that rests on the sure word of God.
I’m Nathan F. Conkey with God’s World, God’s Way. My mission is to apply God’s way to God’s world so that God’s men might know God’s blessing. Sponsored by CR101Radio.com, in association with Grace Community School and Nicene Covenant Church. Visit CR101Radio.com where you’ll find free Christian audiobooks, ebooks, and podcasts for the Christian who can’t accept the easy answers.
If you’re still listening — congratulations. It seems like you’re serious about change. But maybe, as a sincere believer in Jesus, you are feeling a bit uneasy with all this talk about wealth. Is it right to mix the physical — pounds, dollars, and euros — with the spiritual: God’s word?
In fact, I can’t get to today’s text until I help you get this mental obstacle out of your way, because all transformations — including financial transformations — come by the renewing of your mind, as Romans 12:2 tells us. And if you don’t clear this obstacle out of your way, you’ll never be able to grasp and implement God’s ways of wisdom, wealth, or anything else.
This mental barrier has to be dealt with. You can’t climb over it. You can’t bypass it. You can’t tunnel underneath it.
This impenetrable mental barrier is called spiritual religion — and it is the greatest barrier in your way to peace, godly provision, and prosperity, since it separates you from God’s blessings by separating God’s word and way from the very material world God has created for us to live in.
Here’s what I mean. When Christians think about the Bible, before they are even able to engage their brains to understand God’s way, spiritual religion thinking causes a line of code to run somewhere deep in their brain. This line of code outputs four words, which it hisses like the serpent into our ears: once upon a time.
You see, spiritual religion thinking turns the whole Bible into a fairy tale. It turns God’s word — so intimately connected with God’s physical creation, which he designed and made and sustains moment by moment — into a kind of spiritual manual that deals only with non-material things: how we feel, how we think in the abstract, how to escape the evil world of matter.
It all sounds quite convincing. But to split the world into two substances — spirit and matter — to call spirit good and matter bad, and to read this all back into the Bible, is a lie: a master lie of the master liar, the devil, whose name means deceiver, false accuser, slanderer. He turns the world on its head. Good is bad, and bad is the best.
So as we examine how King Solomon did business, we are engaging in spiritual warfare of the highest order. We are taking what the devil has torn asunder — spirit and matter, God’s ways and God’s world — and, by the grace of God, joining them both back together. Giving you hope in a place of empty spiritual words, falsely so called.
I’m excited to share this message with you. It’s a lesson I learned in part from a dear brother, Dr. Myron Golden — search YouTube for Myron Golden Solomon and you will be mightily blessed.
The Queen of Sheba
Now when the Queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with difficult questions.
Who was Solomon, the king of Israel? And who was this person who came to ask him difficult questions? She was a queen. King and queen — they were peers. They had both been ruling for quite a while, and had each been prepared to rule for an even longer time before that.
If you are going to gain wealth, it will likely come from your peers in your own speciality. If you’re a mechanical engineer specialising in vintage tractors, your wealth will likely come from serving other mechanical engineers. Or if you’re an arable farmer with hundreds of hectares in Central Africa, you can make a fortune ministering to other farmers in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Congo, Malawi, and beyond. You don’t have to go outside your God-given calling for wealth. In fact, you’d be better to focus on your vocation and forget about your recreation or avocation.
Did you notice the missing piece in verse 1? Solomon hadn’t begged the Queen of Sheba. He didn’t pester her with emails saying: please, please, I’ll give you all my wisdom for a seashell, a piece of silver, and half a jewel, please, please. No — verse 2 says:
So she came to Jerusalem with a very large retinue, with camels carrying spices and very much gold and precious stones. When she came to Solomon, she spoke with him about all that was in her heart.
What’s happening here? She had her cheque book out, her pen in her hand, and she was dying to write a very large number made payable to Mr. Solomon, the king.
But I have so many questions. In the age before social media, what did Solomon use to spread the word about his great kingly wisdom? How on earth did the Queen of Sheba even know that King Solomon existed? The route from southwest Arabia to Jerusalem would have been about 1,400 miles. This was not something done on a whim.
With Solomon and his kingdom so prosperous, it would draw merchants from all over the world, who would then spread word of Solomon’s Jerusalem and his court far and wide. But the Queen of Sheba wasn’t just curious. She had her very sizable cheque book out. She wanted answers to pressing questions.
Solomon’s Content Strategy
How did she know that Solomon would be able to answer those questions? Because Solomon was very active in the social media of his day. Did he hide his light under a bushel? No way. To hide a God-given gift is a moral evil.
In 1 Kings 4:32 it says: And he, Solomon, spake three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. That’s one post a day on his social media accounts for a full nine years.
Perhaps you’ve been taught that silence is humility, and that we shouldn’t blow our own trumpet. But do we have any right to hide our gift under a basket? Absolutely not. As Solomon judged the nation day after day and month after month, he would throw out these nuggets as he meditated on God’s word — and his scribes, or social media team if you like, would collect them, collate them, and publish them. We still have many of them today in the book of Proverbs.
My wife does this for me. She fills notebooks with things I say off the cuff in the course of my work as husband and teacher. If Solomon and his scribes hadn’t taken the time to write it all down, editorialise it, collate it, and publish it, we would forever have been bereft of his godly wisdom — and the whole world would have been a darker place.
What about you, Christian brother? As you meditate on God’s word — especially as it touches upon your own unique calling — sooner or later you’re going to have a lot of really useful things to say. Are you going to be selfish and hide your light under a coffee pot? If you’re all intake and no output, you’re going to end up like the Dead Sea — too salty for anyone to stomach.
Share your wisdom. You don’t have to appear on screen — you can write instead. Be generous. Give generously to your peers who have the same problems you have already faced and overcome.
King ministered to queen. What are you king of? Minister in that area by sharing your wisdom, and you’ll have to beat off clients with a big stick.
The Queen’s Desperation
That’s why the Queen of Sheba came fully loaded with great treasure. She had problems — problems important enough to tear her away from her people for weeks and months on end. Problems important enough to greatly deplete her treasury. She was risking her kingdom by making this trip. After all, she had no ability to control a palace intrigue while absent. Kingdoms need treasure to run. Armies eat treasure. And if you have no treasury, you have no army — and you’ll soon have no kingdom.
King Solomon’s peer was clearly desperate for answers. Why would you leave your peers in desperation when you have the answers? Whether you be a small engine repairman, a builder, a cattleman, a fencer, or a Bible teacher — don’t underestimate how vexing these problems might be to your peers. It might even be life or death for another person’s business. It might mean the loss of a family fortune, leaving the next generation bereft.
Try to put yourself in the Queen of Sheba’s position. Feel that desperation, that anxiety pressing her down. Consider the flame of hope that must have lit in her anxious heart when she first unrolled a scroll: Proverbs of King Solomon, Volume 1. Maybe this man can answer my questions. Don’t be selfish. Overcome the very great barriers to sharing your lessons online — I know the barriers are real, it’s a real fight — but don’t just do it for yourself. Do it for those who need to hear what you have to say.
The devil can never keep you from the Lord’s blessings. But he can, through his crafty lies, prevent you from going to the post office to pick them up.
God’s Ways, Not Just Christian Ways
Now when the Queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with difficult questions.
The fame of Solomon was built on his wisdom, which he had published around the world with his three thousand proverbs and over a thousand songs. And this wasn’t some up-in-the-air neutral wisdom — Solomon’s wisdom was rooted in God’s wisdom. His prayer for wisdom was so God-focused that Solomon used the word you or your fourteen times in the space of four verses.
And it was that kind of God-focused wisdom that was a magnet to the Queen — and to all other monarchs who faced problems in their realms. What do you suppose the Queen’s testing questions were about? We can be certain she asked king-and-queen type questions: how to govern the people, manage international trade, maintain currency reform, avoid civil war, handle threats from neighbours. These were the naughty questions of how to rule.
And if you’re in business, expect others to test you too. This might be a free initial call before any contracts are signed or any money changes hands. It might mean taking questions from the comments section of your videos and answering them for free.
This is what Jacob did when he arrived at Laban’s, penniless — he demonstrated his God-given abilities by working. Solomon demonstrated his gifts by talking, giving the Queen answers to prove he was the real deal. And we are going to have to give a lot of time away to demonstrate that we are the real deal too.
This may mean answering questions that people have about your industry, day after day, week after week. Our time may be precious, but we must take the time to answer our peers’ questions. The payoff will come in time.
Does that mean we have to interact with the trolls in the comment section? Absolutely not. Deal with serious people — don’t feed the trolls. Serious people come clutching their wallet.
If you demonstrate the ability to answer the difficult questions in your field, you will attract people willing to spend serious money — and you won’t have to go looking for them.
All Her Questions
Solomon answered all her questions. Nothing was hidden from the king which he did not explain to her.
All her questions. Can you imagine how many she must have asked, on such a wide range of topics? Trade — international and internal. Taxation. Currency reform. Avoiding civil war. Threats from neighbours. Infrastructure projects. These are questions that only a ruling royal can ask — and only a wise king can answer.
If the only questions you can ask at the moment are silly little questions that pick holes in other people, stop. If the only answers you can give are memes, you’re in the toddler leagues — stop that nonsense right now. I know: I was a past master at asking nonsense questions and giving nonsense answers. That was all about me and my ego.
If that’s where you find yourself, no one is ever going to pay you for your wisdom. But it doesn’t have to be that way forever. How did Solomon get to the place where people would spend a good slice of their national wealth for good answers? He started from a position of humility. He saw himself as a steward of his gifts. He was obsessed with the Lord and his agenda for his work and business.
And he asked the right questions of the right people — asking the questions of Scripture, as all kings are commanded to do in Deuteronomy 17:18–20, copying out all of God’s word and meditating upon it. But he also consecrated himself totally to the task God had given him, with a burnt offering of a thousand bulls at enormous cost. And after he had done all that, he pleaded with God for an understanding heart to do his job.
This is God’s way to becoming wise. It is a sure path. And it is a path which does not lead us away from relevance to the world, from excellence in our chosen pursuit, or from prosperity in the marketplace.
It may take years. It may even take a decade or more to move from where you are now into the fullness of your calling. It’s taken me a very long time — but my progress has been real compared to my starting point. The time will pass anyway. And this is how wealth is built in the first place.
Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it. — Proverbs 13:11
That’s where the sure gains are — in business, in finances, in relationships, as in weightlifting. Keep showing up and the gains will come.
This has been Nathan F. Conkey with God’s World, God’s Way. I’m very excited to bring you more about Solomon and his business plan next week. If you have a question or comment, email me at questions@godsworldgodsway.com.