Have you ever had something that you have heard of frequently but never actually seen for yourself, and then one day you get the opportunity to see it?
When I accepted the job to come to this church in Scarborough a little over five years ago, I had never at that point in my life been to Scarborough. My first visit to Scarborough was to come and look at potential houses, and I got the chance to see the seaside town of which I had heard much but never been.
Or maybe there’s a particular band that you enjoy listening to. You love their music, you happily read all about them, but you’ve never actually gone to see them in person. And then you discover they’re going to be playing at the open air theatre. Or maybe there’s a particular novelist whose books you love to read, and you discover that one of the theatres in Scarborough, they’re going to be doing a reading from some of their books with the chance to meet the author backstage after the event. That happened to somebody in this church who shares an author that I also like, and apparently it was utterly disappointing to finally meet this person in the flesh. Just not at all what they imagined.
Or maybe before you came to the UK, you had heard of this white stuff called snow, but you had never seen it. And this winter in particular, you’ve had plenty of opportunity to experience snow for yourself. And you can have a little bit of pity for us Brits who have heard of that yellow ball in the sky called the sun and have never seen it for ourselves.
What happens when you have the experience of finally seeing that thing? It can vary. Sometimes it can be a sad moment because the actual experience is not as good as what you had hoped it would be. People regularly say that you should never meet your heroes. You enjoy them more if you don’t actually know them. Maybe though, sometimes seeing it is better than you had heard. For example, you may have heard how amazingly good the ice cream is in Italy, and then you actually get the chance to go to Italy and try it for yourself, and you discover it is even better than you had imagined. Believe me, it is.
Now, did Scarborough disappoint or delight compared to my preconceived ideas? You can decide that for yourself.
In this passage, we have the Queen of Sheba coming to visit King Solomon. So here’s from verse one.
‘When the Queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relationship to the Lord, she came to test Solomon with hard questions. Arriving at Jerusalem with a very great caravan with camels carrying spices, large quantities of gold, and precious stones, she came to Solomon and talked with him about all that was on her mind.’
So she’s the queen of a place called Sheba, which was at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, roughly where the country of Yemen is today. She had heard all about Solomon and then she came to see for herself. And the passage tells us that she was not the only one who did this. If you look at verse 24, we’re told that the whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift: articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons, and spices, and horses and mules.
So every year, dignitaries from nations all around would come to Jerusalem to see Solomon, and they’d come bearing gifts. So what we have in the first half of chapter 10 is simply a detailed description of what happened on one of those visits. But this was a story that repeated year after year with multiple leaders of foreign nations. And what they all saw was simply dazzling.
Now, this passage is not written simply to entertain us. It is not just a story of a magnificently splendid and wise king who lived in an unusually luxurious palace. It is that. But it’s more than that. This was written to give the people of Israel hope several centuries later when they were in exile in Babylon. They could read of this, read of the wonderful king they had had in Solomon. They knew God had promised them a king just like this. They knew God’s promise still stood, and they knew that one day God would again bring a king like this. In fact, even better.
But as they read of that, and as their hope was stoked, they were a bit like the Queen of Sheba before she visited. They had heard of Israel’s golden days, but they had not seen it. And so they would hunger for the day when they would get to see for themselves.
950 years later, God sent Jesus to this earth. Like Solomon, Jesus is a son of David. Jesus is greater than Solomon in every way, which means we are able to look back not only to the reign of Solomon, but to the Lord Jesus, the king that they were waiting for in their exile. He has now come. So as we read of Solomon and his splendour, we are reading of the Lord Jesus.
So what we’re going to do for the rest of our time this morning is read through chapter 10. We’re going to imagine ourselves in their shoes — in exile, in Babylon, depressing times — and yet being fed with hope that their king would come. But as we do that, we’ll be learning about the Lord Jesus Christ.
So I’ve got four things for us this morning about Jesus from 1 Kings chapter 10.
Jesus is the wisest king on earth
Let me read from verse three.
‘Solomon answered all her questions. Nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her. When the Queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon and the palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, his cupbearers, the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the Lord, she was overwhelmed. She said to the king, “The report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true. But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told me. In wisdom and wealth, you have far exceeded the report I heard. How happy your people must be. How happy your officials who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom. Praise be to the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and placed you on the throne of Israel. Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king to maintain justice and righteousness.”’
She came to test him. She came to ask him hard questions. Now, I think from the way this passage describes it, this was a trade delegation. She came to sus out whether Solomon and his kingdom would make a reliable trading partner for the kingdom of Sheba. But she didn’t stick to the script. When she met him, she saw an opportunity to ask what we’re told was all that was on her mind. ‘Solomon, while I’ve got you, I’ve always wondered — why do they put the little holes in the top of the Bourbon biscuits? And why do chips taste better by the sea?’ And Solomon could answer all of those questions.
Now the question is, though, how did she see his wisdom? Remember, she had heard his wisdom, but then she came to see it. Two key verbs in this chapter are ‘hear’ and ‘see’. She moved from hearing to seeing. How do you see wisdom?
‘Oh,’ you say, ‘that’s easy — he could answer all her questions.’ That’s how he showed his wisdom. That’s still hearing. How do you see wisdom? With your eyes.
The answer is in verse four. ‘When the Queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon and the palace he had built, the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, his cupbearers, the burnt offerings he made at the temple of the Lord, she was overwhelmed.’ That was what she saw. That was how she saw wisdom. She saw it in this state banquet. The result was she was overwhelmed. Literally, she had no breath in her. She was winded by what she saw. Couldn’t breathe.
But then you ask, well, how does a state banquet show wisdom? How do you see wisdom in a banquet? Well, it was not that Solomon had got his waiters’ uniforms particularly well pressed and their shoes particularly well shined, and they knew how to sense exactly when to clear the plates. No. Neither was it that Solomon had worked out which fork you should use to eat your fish. Neither was it that Solomon had finally solved the puzzle of whether soup is a dish that you should eat or drink. No.
This account is told very precisely. Have another look at verses four and five. There is a symmetry. It starts with Solomon’s house and his food. It ends with God’s food in God’s house. The word for the burnt offering in verse five is actually the word for the ascension offering. Now, in Old Testament times, they had a number of different kinds of offerings and sacrifices. The ascension offering was one where a portion of the animal would be burnt and the smoke would go up to heaven, and the people would then eat the rest themselves. And the smoke going up to heaven was as if it carried God’s portion to his table. So God ate his bit and we ate our bit. And so we shared a meal with God.
But in between those two meals — God’s meal and Solomon’s meal, in God’s house and Solomon’s house — the language is very precise. The vocabulary is specific. Those words — the officials, attending servants, the cupbearers, the robes — they are all used elsewhere to speak in connection with God’s worship in the tabernacle and then in the temple. So what she saw was not just a lavish state banquet. She saw a mirror copy of the temple and what went on there. And the temple itself was a mirror image of what happens beside God’s throne in heaven. What the Queen of Sheba saw was a tiny little glimpse of heaven on earth. That was how Solomon had ordered his kingdom. And it was that which blew her away.
Now, Jesus is far greater than Solomon. He was the wisest king on earth. He still is the wisest human being to have ever lived. How do we see that wisdom?
Have you noticed how in the gospels Jesus is always eating with people? 5,000 people, bread and fish. Tax collectors and sinners. Barbecue of fish on the beach after he rose from the dead. Passover with his disciples. You’re seeing a little bit of heaven on earth — human beings sharing a meal with their creator.
But it wasn’t just food. Jesus healed the sick. He restored the broken. He taught the lost. He forgave sinners. As Jesus arrives on the scene, we see the order and the wisdom of God in heaven breaking in to human society.
And one day, Jesus will return and he will spread a table for his people — the great messianic banquet that is foretold in the Old Testament. And at that point, everything on earth will be ordered according to Jesus’s beautiful wisdom. And then we will truly have heaven on earth.
Jesus, the wisest king on earth.
Jesus is the wealthiest king on earth
The nations did not just come to see his wisdom. They came to see his wealth. So have a look at verse 10: ‘She gave the king 120 talents of gold, large quantities of spices and precious stones. Never again were so many spices brought in as those the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon.’ Or verse 23: ‘King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift — articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons, and spices, and horses and mules.’ Or verse 14: ‘The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents, not including the revenues from merchants and traders and from all the Arabian kings and governors of the territory.’
So when Solomon wanted to make some ornamental shields so that he could hold a splendid kind of military parade day to show off the splendour of the kingdom, he made them out of pure gold. Verse 16 says, ‘King Solomon made 200 large shields of hammered gold; 600 shekels of gold went into each shield. He also made 300 small shields of hammered gold, with three minas of gold in each shield.’
So, 200 of the large ones at 7 kg a pop — at today’s prices, that’s £850,000 per shield.
Here’s a fun fact for you. All the gold that has ever been mined still exists in some form or other. You can’t destroy gold. Which means if you have a piece of gold jewellery on, it is just possible, is it not, that once upon a time the gold in that ring or earring started its life in one of Solomon’s 200 shields.
Or perhaps take our church refreshments. Do join us for refreshments after the service. We have cold drinks on that table, tea and coffee on that table, all served with a friendly smile. Now you’re welcome to use one of our disposable paper cups if you wish. If you come regularly and you’re a bit more environmentally conscious, you might like to bring with you your own reusable cup — we would encourage that. At home, maybe you have some glasses. We don’t use them here because they break, but maybe you have some glasses, or even some made out of crystal glass, really nice ones. Maybe you have a tankard made out of pewter, which is a metal alloy.
Solomon? Gold, of course. Verse 21: ‘All King Solomon’s goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold.’ Everyday drinking cups — yeah, gold will do. Knife and fork — gold, why not? Just use gold. In fact, Solomon crashed the silver market because there was so much gold around, silver became worthless.
The centrepiece of this description, and the centrepiece of his wealth, was his throne, described for us in verse 18. ‘Then the king made a great throne covered with ivory and overlaid with fine gold. The throne had six steps, and its back had a rounded top. On both sides of the seat were armrests with a lion standing beside each of them. Twelve lions stood on the six steps, one at either end of each step. Nothing like it had ever been made for any other kingdom.’
So the back of his throne has a rounded top. We’re told that God rules over the circle of the earth and his plan in creation was for humanity to rule with him. So it’s as if Solomon is sitting on top of the world. The throne is on top of six steps. That means Solomon is on level seven. The armrests — they’re literally places of resting. Now, you’ll remember in Genesis 2 that God finished all the work of creating he needed to do and then he rested on the seventh day. And you may remember, if you were here last week, that King Solomon had accomplished all that was in his heart to do. So, having finished all his work, Solomon sat down, resting on the seventh floor — heaven on earth. The steps were flanked by twelve lions. Solomon ruled over all twelve tribes of Israel, and either side of his seat at the top were two great lions, just as God’s throne is flanked by cherubim — heavenly creatures, each of which has the face of a lion. Heaven on earth.
Some of you in your small groups are doing our course called ‘The Bible: God’s Living Word’. And if you are doing that, when you get to week six, we look at whether the Bible can be trusted — in a number of things, but in particular its historical claims as it records things that happened in history. Did it really happen? And it’s easy to get a little bit underconfident with this. You read some very clever people arguing some very clever things. ‘The feeding of the 5,000 — that could never happen. Jesus couldn’t really walk on water.’ And you go, ‘What chance have I got? It’s just me with my Bible. I’m not a scholar. I don’t know. I just believe, but I don’t get it.’
It’s not always that hard. So here’s one example. Historians love to say that King Solomon cannot really have been as wealthy as this. It must be exaggerated. After all, they say, ‘We’ve excavated lots of sites in the near east, and we’ve found no thrones to this design from anywhere. So it must be made up.’ How do you answer that? Scary, isn’t it? Well, maybe you just read the end of verse 20: ‘Nothing like it has been made for any other kingdom.’ That’s why they haven’t found any. There aren’t any. And that is the point. There is no wealthier king. This is unique.
There’s no one like Jesus. Jesus is the wisest king. Jesus is the wealthiest king.
Jesus is the world’s king
You miss the point of this chapter if you only say that Jesus was wise and wealthy, because this chapter is about the nations streaming to Jerusalem to see Solomon for themselves. So for example, verse two — ‘arriving at Jerusalem with a very great caravan’: that is not a motor home. It’s more the ancient equivalent of a freight train, with camels carrying spices, large quantities of gold, and precious stones.
Does that remind you of anything? I suppose it might remind you of Matthew chapter 2. Here’s Matthew chapter 2:
‘After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.’
Gold and spices.
Or here’s a description of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ from the end of the book of Revelation, chapter 21:
‘I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it.’
We get a little glimpse of that today. Just look around. You want to see the nations of the world flocking to worship the Lord Jesus on his throne? It’s happening in this very building. But one day Jesus will return, and we will see it in full.
Jesus is the world’s king.
Jesus is a wholehearted king
There is a problem with Solomon. There is a problem with Solomon. And it’s to do with Deuteronomy chapter 17. Let me read Deuteronomy 17 starting at verse 14.
‘When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, and you have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,” be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself, or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.’
It is almost as if Solomon read that chapter in Deuteronomy and deliberately set out to do all the things that the king was not supposed to do. The chapter divisions in 1 Kings are artificial, and the writer basically takes us through the three things the king was told not to do in Deuteronomy 17 and shows us how he did them all. Those three things were gold, guns, and girls — just that guns in those days were horses.
Solomon didn’t just get lots of horses. He got them from Egypt. Now here’s where, if you have a paper Bible and not your phone, it’s easier. I recommend them — paper Bibles are good. Look across to the previous page to chapter 9 verse 20, where you see that the Hittites are one of the peoples that the Israelites were told they were unable to exterminate. They had not been able to get rid of them. So as a bit of an inconvenience, they just had to stay there, and it caused a bit of a nuisance. So Solomon’s strategy: arm them. That will help.
The Arameans — up to this point in the story, going right back to the time of the judges, the big enemy number one for the people of Israel, that caused a nuisance by raiding their crops and attacking their cities, were the Philistines, a coastal people who originally came from Crete. From this point on, we’re going to see that there is a new public enemy number one in the history of Israel: the Arameans. And they got their guns from Solomon. Genius.
Now maybe we’re tempted to think, ‘Perhaps he wasn’t quite so wise after all.’ Don’t be so hasty. It was his wisdom that enabled him to do these great trade deals. This was how he got that wealth. At the peak of his wealth and wisdom, this is how that was being shown. He did all that he did because he was wealthy and wise.
So here is the sobering truth for us. If God gives you wisdom, or God gives you wealth, what that does is open up a world of possibilities that might not otherwise be there. But you can use those possibilities either to honour God or to do things that don’t please him. And Solomon used his wisdom and his wealth to ignore how God said a king should live.
But not Jesus. Jesus was the wisest person of his time. Before he came to earth, Jesus lived in the splendour of heaven. Jesus, even on earth, had the armies of heaven at his disposal. He said if he wanted, he could call down an army of angels to prevent his arrest. And he was tempted in the desert to use that privilege for three things: for provisions, for protection, and for promotion. But he said no. Jesus is greater than Solomon in every way. But unlike Solomon, Jesus is the wholehearted king.
So there is the story of how the Queen of Sheba had heard about Solomon, but then came to see for herself. And the people in exile reading this would long to see what she saw. But then Jesus was born and came to live among us. And as John says in his gospel, ‘We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only.’ Or the opening verses of the letter of 1 John: ‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched — this we proclaim. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.’
Except we haven’t, have we? We were 2,000 years too late. We’ve read about Jesus. We’ve heard about Jesus. You’re hearing about him now. But we’ve never seen him.
One day, he will return and we will see his face. And if you are one of his people — but only if you are one of his people — that will be the most wonderful day. It will be the day that all your dreams come true.
There are three idioms in the English language, common phrases that we use, that actually entered the English language from this very chapter. And these are things we will be saying over and over again on that day when Jesus comes back. Here they are: ‘I hadn’t heard the half of it.’ ‘I saw with my own eyes.’ ‘It took my breath away.’
What a day it will be to see Jesus, to look him in the eye face to face, and to say to him these words from verse six: ‘The report I heard in my own country about your achievements and your wisdom is true. But I did not believe these things until I came and saw with my own eyes. Indeed, not even half was told me. In wisdom and wealth, you have far exceeded the report I heard. How happy your people must be.’