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Man, 2 Chronicles chapter number 2. So we talked about last week how the book of 1 Chronicles is all about King David and then with 2 Chronicles we get into Solomon and then all of the other kings of Judah that follow him. And there are going to be several chapters at the beginning here that are dedicated to Solomon's reign. And in chapter 2 we're getting into the building of the temple, the building of the house of God. Now if you remember it was David's idea originally to build the temple but then he was told that he was not going to be able to do it but that rather it was going to be his son after him that would build the house unto the Lord even though it was a good idea that David had. David had shed too much blood and so God said that he wanted his son to be the one to build it. Kind of interesting how that works because Solomon is a great picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know Jesus is called the son of David. Solomon's the literal son of David. And of course Jesus said upon this rock, I will build my church. And then we've got Solomon building the house of God. Also Solomon ruling over Israel represents the pinnacle of Israel's kingdom. If you remember in chapter 1 it talked about how there was just abundance of gold and silver and cedar wood. It was a time of prosperity and it's a time of peace for Israel where they're getting along with their neighbors and this is a foreshadowing of the millennial reign of Jesus Christ which will be a time of peace on earth, unprecedented prosperity, liberty and tranquility upon the earth. And so it's interesting how just as Moses couldn't bring the people into the promised land and then Joshua who pictures Jesus brings them into the promised land. So David you know isn't able to build the temple and then his son Solomon who pictures Jesus does build the temple. So when we're reading this passage we do want to of course look at the literal interpretation but we also want to think about the symbolism and we always want to be looking for the tie-in with Christ and the New Testament. And so when we look at this and think about building a physical temple we can also think about just building the house of God in general which in the New Testament the Bible says the church is the house of God right? That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. So it says in verse number one and Solomon determined to build a house for the name of the Lord and a house for his kingdom and Solomon told out three score and ten thousand men. Now told out means that he counted out. This is sort of like the bank teller counts money right? So he told out three score and ten thousand men to bear burdens and four score thousand to hew in the mountain and three thousand and six hundred to oversee them. Now when we get to the end of this chapter we're going to find out who these people are. So jump down if you would to verse number 17 it says and Solomon numbered all the strangers that were in Israel and it's going to be the same number here as we had at the beginning of the chapter right? It says you know a hundred and fifty thousand and three thousand and six hundred and that's how many guys were just enumerated at the beginning of the chapter. What I think is interesting about this symbolically is that the temple, God's house is built by people that are not Israelites, they're foreigners right? And this is foreshadowing the fact that the church is going to be built in the New Testament not by Jews but by Gentiles right? So Solomon is the one who builds the house of God, Jesus is the one who builds the house of God in the New Testament right? And both of them use foreigners to do it, they use Gentiles to do it, they don't use the Jews or the Israelites. Because of course Jesus Christ came to this earth and he focused his ministry one hundred percent on reaching the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So for the three and a half years that he carried out his ministry that's who he and his apostles were primarily preaching to but then after Christ's resurrection he says go ye therefore and teach all nations, he says go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature and the way that it ended up working out is that the Gentiles ended up being much more receptive than the Jews and so in a very short time Christianity became a religion not of the Jews but of the Gentiles. Every once in a while you'll have these Judaizer types come at you and try to tell you well you know in the early church most of the Christians were actually Jews in the early church and then they'll try to like act like all these Jewish cultural practices were part of the early church or something like that. It's just not true. I mean if most of the early Christians, most of the early church were, I mean if you're talking about like the first five minutes of Christianity yeah you're right. But that's not what they mean they're saying like in the first century or something. Folks by the end of the first century it's Gentiles. It is by far a majority Gentile religion by the end of the first century. So if you want to say like for the first couple weeks it was a lot of Jews okay whatever but that's meaningless. If these people are right that try to say well you know most of the early Christians were Jews well then why do we have epistles written to Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, look at all the people's names. It's Greek names, Roman names, why? Because the kingdom of God was taken from Israel and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And all throughout the book of Acts we see that even though the apostles really want to reach Jews with the gospel and even the apostle Paul really wanted to reach Jews with the gospel, ultimately it was just the Gentiles who ended up being way more receptive. Finally the apostles got that through their heads and they ended up reaching just literally millions of Gentiles for Christ and the rest is history. Here we are and we've got of course churches all over the world, Bible believing Christians all over the world to this day. And so these people that he used here where it says that he numbered these people that were strangers in Israel, they're going to be used to do the heavy lifting literally when it comes to building the house of God and this is exactly what we see with the New Testament church being built by Gentiles. So it's a beautiful foreshadowing of that. The other thing that's interesting here is that out of these foreigners they're not all just given grunt jobs. It's not like, okay, the foreigners are going to be the grunts but then the foremen and the supervisors and the overseers, they're going to be Israelites. No, if you pay attention here it says in verse 2 at the end there, 3,600 to oversee them. But you will see that this comes from the number of the foreigners that are being conscripted here because it says in verse number 17, and Solomon numbered all the strangers that were in the land of Israel after the numbering where with David his father had numbered them and they were found 150,000 and three score 1,600, okay? That's that number we just saw and he said three score and 10,000 of them to bear of burdens, four score 1,000 to be hewers in the mountain and 3,600 overseers to set the people a work. So notice that the overseers are also from the strangers, okay? They're also being given positions of authority. So in the New Testament church as well, right, also the pastors, the leaders, the preachers, they end up being Gentiles too. It's not like Jews are going around and running the churches and founding the churches but rather elders are being ordained in every city and they're Gentile leadership even in the first century AD. And so what's interesting here is that the overseers set the people a work. Now we have a word in the New Testament that means overseer and that word is bishop. So the word bishop literally means overseer. You have three titles, three words that are used interchangeably for the same person and that is the elder, the pastor, and the bishop, right? These are not three different offices or three different positions but what we call today a pastor is what the Bible calls also a bishop and an elder. You can easily prove this by going to Titus chapter 1 and you'll see the qualifications for the bishop and it just uses bishop and elder interchangeably going back and forth. Some people will just say like, oh elder, that's just talking about old people. Obviously the word elder can mean that and sometimes it means that but in the context of the local church, elder is a position that is synonymous with the bishop and these three words, they emphasize three different aspects of that position. Pastor is meaning shepherd, right? This is where we get like the word pastoral or pasture, same root there. So the pastor is the shepherd over the flock, okay? So he's feeding the flock of God. He's leading them to the green pastures and taking them to the drinking water and so he's teaching the people. He's feeding them with knowledge, feeding them with understanding from the word of God. Then there's the idea of being an elder and this is the fact that the pastor is not supposed to be a novice. He's not supposed to be someone who's newly saved, a beginner, someone who doesn't have a lot of experience in the Christian life. He's called elder, not necessarily the oldest person in the room when it comes to actual physical age but he's been saved for a long time. He's been serving God for a long time. He's been soul winning for a long time. He's been preaching for a long time and so in that sense, he's an elder. And then the other word is bishop and this is overseer, right? Because it's our job as pastors to guard the flock, to protect the flock, to oversee and make sure that things are going a certain way. But if you look at this passage, you can see that the overseer's job is to set the people at work at the end of verse 18 there, right? Overseers to set the people at work. You see, as an overseer of the house of God, it's not me trying to run your personal life or lord over your personal life or come into your house and start telling you how to run your household or something like that because some pastors, they can get that way where they can become like a control freak or megalomaniacal. And then in an extreme case, they could even become like a cult leader where everybody's like living on the church property and like, you know, they're just really into you. They got their fingers deep into your personal life and everything like that. And there are obviously all kinds of different shades in between and you'll have pastors say like, hey, you know, before you make any major decisions, and I'm not saying that these are cult leaders, but I'm just saying like, you know, hey, you know, before you buy a car, come talk to me about it. You know, before you buy a house, come talk to me and, you know, make sure you get my advice before making any big life decisions. And obviously there's a little bit of truth in that, that obviously it's good to get advice from people, but you know, I really don't need to hear about all your purchases, all right? So just, yeah, you can, you can just leave me out of the loop. I mean, if you really need help, you know, I can help you, but I'll probably delegate it to somebody who knows more about those things anyway than I do. But the point is, you know, I don't want to run your life. I don't want to run your finances. I don't want to run your relationships. I don't want to run your love life. I don't, you know, I don't want to control you at all. You know, as an overseer, I'm not trying to oversee your personal life or your family life or your home life. What I'm trying to oversee here is the work of the house of God, right? So I have authority in the church, right? I'm overseeing the church. I'm leading in the church. When it comes to your house, you're the boss of your house. I'm not the boss of your house. And so, you know, you should never, for example, as a wife say like, well, to your husband, like, well, the pastor said this, so, you know, it's like, well, no, you need to obey what your husband is saying to you or, you know, kids saying, well, mom and dad, I don't have to listen to you because I'm going to go with what Pastor Anderson said. You know, you need to obey your parents' children, okay? I'm not in charge of other aspects of your life outside of the church. I'm in charge of the church function here. And so I'm not overseeing your life. I'm overseeing the church, the work of the church, making sure that the work goes forward and that the doctrine's right and that we're on the same page, that we're going in the right direction. So I want to make sure that we get a biblical view of leadership, of what it means to be an overseer. Because on the one side, you have people who want to take all the authority away from the pastor and have like a committee-run church, the deacon-run church or the board of elders or whatever. And then what ends up happening is, you know, the pastor is usually the guy who's zealous and wants to be on fire for God. And then you have what my dad would call the moss-backed deacons or, you know, basically just like these kind of old dead guys just kind of slowing everything down and just trying to hold back the pastor from doing what he needs to do. Obviously, the Bible all throughout shows a leadership model of men of God rising up and leading. You know, the whole Bible is like that. There's always a leader that's taking charge and leading the way. So on the one hand, you have the error of wanting to say like, oh, it's a democracy or something. You know, democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner, okay? I don't believe in democracy. Even our country was never supposed to be a democracy. It's supposed to be a constitutional republic. There were a lot of checks and balances. It wasn't just even close to being a straight democracy, okay? And obviously, that's a human man-made institution. But when it comes to the church, the church isn't a democracy either. It's not like, oh, 51% of people want to switch Bible versions. We don't care. If 90% of people wanted to do something unbiblical, I'll just be like, no, veto. Veto that sucker, okay? Now, there is obviously a democratic element in the sense that obviously, you know, if the whole church is like, whoa, you know, calling out the pastor or something, then yeah, obviously, there's something there. But the point is that in general, it's a pastor-run model. That's what independent Baptist churches are supposed to be like. And all the best independent Baptist churches that I've ever seen or heard of in my lifetime all had a pastor run in the show. And the boring lame dead churches, they were run by presbyteries and elders and, you know, boards and trustees and all these things, okay? And so, you know, on the one end, you have that error. But then on the other hand, you have the error of the pastor having too much power where the pastor is getting out of his lane and running your personal life and running people's households and getting involved in their personal decisions and getting involved in things that he has no business getting involved in. You know, there are different spheres. You know, in the home, dad is in charge. You know, at the church, the pastor has authority. You know, out in this world, we have civil government, right? We have a criminal justice system. But it's not the job of the civil government to get inside your home and start telling you how to raise your kids. It's not the job of our civil government to get into the church and start telling us what we can and can't preach. We want these things to be separate, right? The family has an authority structure. The church has an authority structure. The government has an authority structure. I don't want the church running the government because it's not going to be the right church. It's going to be the wrong church running it. We don't want that. We don't want the church running the home. We want the home running the home, church running church, government running government. Obviously, we want there to be Christians in government, people that love the Lord in government. But at the end of the day, we want to keep that separate from the church. And so I do believe in separation of church and state. And I don't believe it's just a one-way valve. I think it's a two-way valve. I want the church to stay out of government because it will be the Catholic church or something. It will be, you know, some apostate church. It's not going to be a fundamentalist Baptist church that the government is in bed with. Let's face it. It's going to be the wrong church. So we want to keep these things separate, home, church, government, keep them all in their separate sphere. So the pastor is overseeing the work. He's setting the people to work. It's my job to preach and to teach in such a way that gets you out there doing the work of God, right? Getting you motivated and also giving you the tools to go out and preach the gospel to every creature, to win people to Christ, to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so it's the overseers, he's from the same pool of people as the people who are doing the work and obviously overseeing is a work in and of itself. And so I thought that was an interesting parallel between the building of God's house in the Old Testament and the New Testament, God's house. So let's move on here. Look at verse number three. It says, And Solomon sent to Huram the king of Tyre, saying, As thou didst deal with David my father, and didst send him cedars to build him, and house to dwell therein, even so deal with me. Behold, I build a house to the name of the Lord my God, to dedicate it to him, and to burn before him sweet incense, and for the continual showbread, and for the burnt offerings, morning and evening, on the Sabbaths, and on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts of the Lord our God. This is an ordinance forever to Israel. And the house which I build is great, for great is our God above all gods. Now one thing I want to point out is that it says in verse number four, For the burnt offerings, morning and evening, right? Burnt offerings, morning and evening, burnt offerings on the Sabbaths, burnt offerings on the new moons. Because all those prepositional phrases are going back to the burnt offerings, right? To burn before him sweet incense, for the continual showbread, for the burnt offerings, morning and evening, on the Sabbaths, on the new moons, and on the solemn feasts of the Lord our God. This is an ordinance until the first century A.D. and then it's going to be replaced by prayer. Is that what it says? No. But the Jews today, they think that they're still under that Mosaic covenant. They still think they're under that old covenant Mosaic law. But this is what they say. Well, instead of doing animal sacrifices, we just read that part of the Bible and it's like we did it. Or we just pray and prayer replaces that. No, my friend, it doesn't. The Bible's pretty clear here that this was not something that was meant to be temporary from that perspective, okay? Without the shedding of blood, there's no remission. You can't just stop doing animal sacrifices and just go on with your Jewish religion. It's just not going to work, okay? Now for us, the way we would look at this is that Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain once for all. He fulfills all that and so Jesus Christ's sacrifice is eternal. He perpetuates all this stuff. He perpetuates the priesthood. He perpetuates the Davidic monarchy. He perpetuates the sacrifice because He is the culmination of all of those things. He fulfills all of that. But for the Jews, they don't believe in Jesus. So here they've just been just for the last 2,000 years almost, right, 1,900 and some odd years, they've been without a sacrifice. And without the shedding of blood, there's no remission, right? The blood has been given as an atonement for the soul upon the altar. We have the blood of Jesus. The Jews have nothing. And so that's what we see here with this verse saying this is an ordinance forever to Israel. To Israel. Now, you know, we're spiritual Israel and we're the spiritual heirs of all these things. But physical Israel's over here, where's their bird sacrifice forever? What happened, guys? You dropped the ball. Well, we don't have the temple. Yeah, that's because God took it away from you. Is that because He likes you? Is that because He's blessing you? Is that because He's happy with you? Is that because you're the apple of His eye? Is that why He took away your temple and never gave it back? You know, those who believe that need to do a little soul searching. And the house which I build is great, for great is our God above all gods. But who's able to build Him a house seeing the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain Him? Why then that I should build Him a house save only to burn sacrifice before Him? And this is very similar to what the Apostle Paul says in the book of Acts when he's talking to the pagans. And he says that the Lord God does not dwell in temples made with hands. This is already being taught in the Old Testament where Solomon is saying, look, I want to make this clear because he's talking to a foreigner, right? He's talking to Hiram, the king of Tyre. Tyre is a foreign country. Just north of Israel along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea you have Tyre and Sidon. And so this is a foreign king and so he's telling him, look, I'm building a house for the Lord God and it's going to be a great house because the Lord's great. And he says, let me just make this clear. When I say I'm building a house for the Lord, this is not a house for Him to live in because the whole entire universe cannot contain God. God literally transcends the physical universe, right? So God is not existing within the physical universe alone. Obviously He is within the universe, but He also transcends the universe because the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. And so how do you build a house for Him? He's saying, look, I don't want you to get the wrong idea, Hiram. It's not that God is going to live inside this temple that I'm building, rather this is just a place to burn sacrifice before Him. This is just a place to worship Him, a place to honor Him. It doesn't contain Him. Whereas the pagan polytheistic types, they literally did believe that their gods lived in those temples and that they're going to visit their God. And I mean, even to this day, Hindus will go, you know, that's just a great example of a very large polytheistic religion where they'll show up at their temple, they ring a little bell to get the God's attention, they pour honey and milk all over it and they, you know, I don't know, maybe Cinnamon Toast Crunch or something, but they put food and drink on the idols and they're serving their idols like feeding them or keeping them warm or, you know, entertaining them or something like that. God doesn't need any of those things. If He were hungry, He wouldn't tell you about it. If He were thirsty, He wouldn't come to you and say, hey man, can you help me out? He'll do it Himself. He doesn't need anything. We serve Him to show our love for Him, but He doesn't actually need anything from us. He is self-sufficient. The temple is not to contain God. It's not to meet His needs. It's not He's starving, He's hungry, you know, put those burnt offerings in my belly. That's not what He's saying. No. Rather, God is just being honored by humans, worshiped by humans. He wants to have a loving relationship with humans, but He doesn't live in the temple literally. It's only a picture when it talks about it being called His house. And Solomon understands that. And he's explaining that to his foreign neighbor here so that he can have some insight into the Hebrew religion. And so it says in verse 6, who is able to build him a house seeing that heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain him? Verse 6, who am I then that I should build him a house save only to burn sacrifice before him? That's the point. Right? It's just to burn sacrifice before him. And again, you can burn sacrifice without this house because they've already been burning sacrifice without this house. But it's just taking it up a notch. It says in verse 7, send me now therefore a man cunning to work in gold and in silver and in brass and in iron and in purple and crimson and blue and that can skill to grave with the cunning men that are with me in Judah and in Jerusalem whom David my father did provide. Send me also cedar trees, fir trees, and algum trees out of Lebanon for I know that thy servants can skill to cut timber in Lebanon and behold, my servants shall be with thy servants. Now, one of the things that really stands out in this passage, 2 Chronicles chapter 2, is the cooperation and the friendly, loving spirit between Solomon and Hiram. Solomon is getting along with this guy. He's complimenting him. He's being kind to him. He's getting him involved in a way that is not like, hey man, I'm powerful. Do what I say. He's rather reaching out as a friend and getting help from him and getting along with his neighbors. You know, the Bible tells us in the New Testament, it says, if it be possible as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. We should try to get along with the people around us. We shouldn't just be picking fights with everyone all around us. And obviously we live amongst unsaved people. Now hopefully, I hope that some of your neighbors are saved. I hope that some of your coworkers are saved. If you go to school somewhere, I hope that some of your classmates are saved. But at the end of the day, we are all surrounded by unsaved people. We're surrounded by heathens. This guy, Hiram, is a heathen. And yet, Solomon is able to get along with this guy, okay? And he's able to be nice to him and look, he's still evangelizing him about the true God, but he doesn't have to insult the guy or act like the guy is an idiot or something. And he's pointing out the fact that this guy actually has some skills that he and his people don't have. He's saying, look, you know, your people, they're really good at cutting timber. Like nobody can cut timber like your people. And I think that, you know, even though I've got some skilled men here, you know, I want you to send me your best worker in gold and silver. And you know, the New Testament also says that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. We don't want to get the idea that every unsaved person is stupid or an idiot or doesn't have anything to offer us intellectually or technically or skill wise. Now, here's the thing. The Bible says the fool has said in his heart, there is no God. Somebody is an atheist. The Bible is saying that they are a fool, but this does not mean that they don't have any skill in any area or any knowledge in any area. It's saying spiritually they're a fool. It's stupid of them to think that there's no God. But this doesn't mean that they don't know anything, okay? You know, Brother Hiles said, everyone knows something that I do not know. Therefore, all men are my teachers. You know, obviously, the children of this world might have certain knowledge or understanding. I mean, just think about the most menial things. I mean, here we're talking about, you know, metallurgy or cutting wood or something, right? So don't be this person that just, well, I can't learn from anybody, you know, because they're just heathens. I can't learn from them. Yeah, but you could maybe learn plumbing. You know, you could learn computer programming. You know, you could learn mathematics or something, right? You could even learn a lot of science, you know. And by the way, we don't want to, as Christians, have this attitude of just hating all scientists or thinking that science is bad. Just because there are some bogus things that are done and taught in the name of science, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater, because there are a lot of bogus and inane things done in the name of Christianity, too. You know, there are going to be bozos in all spheres, in all areas of life. We don't want to just act like it's us against them and everybody out there is an idiot. No, my friend, because you know what? It's us against the devil and his minions, and actually the unsafe people out there, most of them, you know what? The devil is their biggest enemy and they just don't know it. And we're actually their friends, and we're trying to reach them and bring them over to our side. And so you don't want to get this attitude that all unsafe people are idiots and have nothing to offer us in their lives. Now, obviously, we don't want to become unequally yoked together with unbelievers. We don't want to become best buddies with unsafe people. We don't want to get really close and really intimate with unsafe people. And God forbid that you would date and marry an unsafe person. And by the way, don't date unsafe people, because you say, well, I'm going to date this girl for a while and then eventually get her saved. You better get her saved before the dating starts. Get him saved before the dating starts. Because otherwise, what if you just get all emotionally attached, you get all deep into this relationship, and then all of a sudden it's like, ah, they're not getting saved. Or maybe they just kind of go through the motions of getting saved and you don't want to see the truth that's right in front of you that they're going through the motions, because you're just too emotionally into it. Don't get emotionally into it unless you are confident that that person is actually saved. Now, look, I won my wife to the Lord. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with winning someone to Christ and then dating and marrying that person. That's what I did. That's what Pastor Jimenez did. Pastor Jimenez won his wife to the Lord as they were working together at Subway, okay? She was his boss at Subway, and, you know, they both reached for the tomatoes at the same time and, you know, the rest is history. Actually that part was made up, you know. I could make up a whole story if you want, but none of it would be true. Yeah, if you want the true story, you have to hear it from him. But the point is, you know, yeah, we won our wives unto the Lord, but guess what? We didn't date them or become romantically involved with them or develop strong feelings for them until they were saved, right? And look, there were a lot of girls before my wife that I would give the Gospel to, bring to church, and that I was trying to reach with the Gospel so that they could be a potential person to date, but, you know, you don't date people that are unsaved, okay? Now, look, I did date a few unsaved people because I thought they were saved, but once I found out they're not saved, it's over at that point, you know, but they all professed to be saved, okay? And look, obviously sometimes you think people are saved and then you find out later that they're not. But you got to do your due diligence, and you know what always blows my mind, by the way? What always blows my mind is when, you know, you talk to teenagers, you talk to young people, and they've been dating someone for months or weeks, you know, but they've gone on a bunch of dates, and you're like, where do they go to church? I don't know. And I'm like, what are you talking about on these dates? Like you don't even know, what denomination is it? What church is it? You know, what do they believe about this? What do they believe about this? I don't know. What are you doing? You know, that's something that you should be trying to figure out right away. I mean, that's like one of the early conversations. How hard is it to be like, hey, so, where do you go to church? What do you believe about the Gospel? You know, do you know for sure if you die today you're going to heaven? You know, well, I don't want to scare her off. That's not a scary question. I could think of some scary questions to ask that would scare off a potential girlfriend or boyfriend, but are you saved? Are you a Christian? Do you believe the Bible? Do you go to church? Is it one of them? Okay. And I'm not going to bring up any weird scary questions because I don't want to freak you out, and then you're going to think I'm weird or something, you know, just because I could even dream up something weird. I can't. I'm at a loss. I don't know what to say. So the point is that, you know, you don't want to be super intimate with people that are not saved. You know, your close buddies, your close friends are obviously going to be God's people, and you don't want to get super linked up, yoked up, especially not in marriage, right? Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. Come out from among them, be separate, all that. We get that, okay? But that doesn't mean that we're not going to interact with unsafe people. We are supposed to be in the world, just not of the world. And so we are going to interact with unsafe people all the time, and probably specifically, we're going to work as men with unsafe people. We're going to work probably predominantly with unsafe people. And so when we work with unsafe people, they could be bosses, supervisors, customers, clients, co-workers, whatever. You know, you've got to learn how to get along with these people, you know? And when you're, you know, when people tell me like, oh, I got fired for being a Christian or something like that, you know, I always take it with a grain of salt. Now, obviously there are people who've been fired for their beliefs, you know, because sometimes people will even just be fired for something as simple as just, you know, they preach to some, like some of our pastor friends that have secular jobs, you know, their sermons are discovered and they're fired or something. I know that that's out there, but then you have other people who just are kind of bad workers, just getting fired all the time, and then it's like, oh, I did it for Christ, you know, they kind of just tag that on. Like to make themselves a martyr, when in reality, they're just like not working and doing a bad job and slacking and like shut down the assembly line to just talk about Jesus or something, and then that's getting fired for the cause of Christ. So we want to make sure that when we go to our jobs, when we go out in the world in whatever capacity, that we treat other people kindly and that we respect the things that they're good at and the things that they know. We're not going to respect their false religion. We're not going to respect Islam, we're not going to respect Catholicism, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to be respectful toward a Catholic or a Muslim or somebody who might have expertise in other areas or other good qualities where we could have an acquaintance that we could treat them well and get along with them and have a peaceful life. Now look, obviously there's going to be conflict in our lives. All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, but as much as possible, we should seek to live peaceably with all men. We should be trying to get along and let the conflict come if it has to, but we should be trying to get along and be cool and get along with our neighbors. I mean, look, if you pick fights with your neighbors, you're just being stupid. You have to live around these people. Even if you're 100% right, it doesn't mean you want to get in a fight with your neighbors because it's better to just suffer yourself to be defrauded and just not make war with the neighbors. Because then they're going to take revenge and it goes back and forth and it's horrible. Overcome evil with good, try to be cool, try to get along at work. People do evil to you at work, at school, in the neighborhood, at the home school co-op, at the produce co-op, whatever, you know, just whatever you do out there in this world, you know, your book club or whatever, you know, look, be cool, okay? Get along. I mean, look, Solomon here is actually getting along and having peace with his neighbor. He's being kind. He's complimenting what he's good at. He's not saying like, hey, you guys, I know you guys have a pretty cool god too, but I'm building a house for our guy. He's not going to say that stupid thing because, you know, King Attire is not worshiping the true god, then his religion is trash, but he still knows how to cut down trees. And so that's what we have here. I like this chapter. I like, I think it's beautiful to see the kindness and the compliments going back and forth and the friendly attitude between these two. You know, it's like the Bible says in Psalms, behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity, right? Obviously there's only, you know, we can't have perfect unity with the unsaved, but we can still be kind and have harmony to the best of our ability. That's what God wants us to do. He didn't send us into this world to go pick fights with everybody. I'm for peace, but when I speak, they're for war. Let that be our testimony. Where were we? Verse number eight, nine, even to prepare me timber in abundance for the house, which I am about to build shall be wonderful, great, and behold, I will give to thy servants, the hewers that cut timber, 20,000 measures of beaten wheat and 20,000 measures of barley and 20,000 baths of wine and thousand and 20,000 baths of oil. Does anybody else's Bible have like a weird little two dots above bath? Like, like do they think that we need help spelling or pronouncing the word bath? Does anybody else have that above? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don't know if they want to say like a bath. I don't know what it is. Like, what is that? Cause I'm not doing it, okay? I'm going to pronounce it bath. This is America. Love it or leave it. All right. Verse 11, thousand baths of wine and 20,000 baths of oil. These self-pronouncing Bible, I tell you. Then usually you just do that above names. That's kind of funny. All right. Then here I'm the king of Tyre answered in writing, which he sent to Solomon because the Lord has loved his people. He had made the king over them. So again, if we think about Solomon as representing Jesus, right? You know, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. He sent Jesus. The father sent the son to be the savior of the world because he loved us. He gave us Christ as our savior and also as our king, that's going to rule and reign for a thousand years on this earth. But it says because the Lord has loved his people, he had made the king over them. You know what? You know what that makes me think of is the fact that, you know, when God's not real jazzed about people, he doesn't give them a cool leader. He gives them Joe Biden. You know what I mean? He gives them, he gives them a bozo and you know, America is going to continue to be run by bozos because that's what we deserve. You know, and there are a lot of weird people in the Senate. There are a lot of weird people in Congress. You know, we have a lot of weird leaders because our country's getting weird. And so we get the leaders that we deserve. You know, at the end of the day, people are going to be all worked up in 2024 about the election and voting and the election year and who's winning and whatever. I don't really know what's going on with it. I'm guessing that we must be deep into the primary by now. Right? Or Super Tuesday. Did that even happen? Does anybody know? Is that even a thing? Is it over? And Trump won. They're the candidates. They've pretty much got the primary in the bag. Both of them. All right. So Biden and Trump have got it in the bag. You see what I mean? Like, we don't have to spend our lives like studying it because we just, it's like, we just got the whole thing in like 15 seconds. The last 15 weeks have just been compressed into 15 seconds. All right. It's going to be Trump and Biden. Okay. But you know, at the end of the day, though, whether it's Trump or Biden, it doesn't end up actually affecting me. You're like, how can you say that it's going to affect you so much? No, it's not because all things work together for good to them that love God. So even if Biden does a whole bunch of stupid stuff that's going to hurt Christians or something or hurt America, it's going to hurt people. But it's good. But, but in the end, it's all going to work together for my good. Not saying it's going to work together for America's good. It's going to work together for my good. But do you love God? Then it's going to work together for your good too. Cause here's the way I look at it. You know, when the Democrats are in charge and they're doing all this evil stuff and promoting all this weird, sick stuff, you know what? It kind of just makes more people listen to my preaching, you know, because it's like, they're so sick and they're like, they want, they're like, give me the hard stuff. I need something stronger than, you know, grace community church. You know, I need pastor Anderson the way things are going, you know, it's like, it makes some reach for that bat phone, you know, of, of the real PR get the real preaching on the line because they're freaked out. You know, whereas, you know, if let's say, uh, conservatives are in power and they're making good decisions for America. Well then I can just enjoy the prosperity that comes with that. I can just enjoy, uh, living in a more prosperous, better country. And if the bad guys are in charge, then it just freaks out normal people. And then, uh, you know, more people listen to my preaching and, and look, it's not just that I just really want people to listen to my preaching instead of people listen to my preaching, they're going to get saved. People listen to my preaching. They're going to get out soul winning. If they listen to my preaching, they're going to get their doctrine straight. They're going to do good works for the Lord. That's the point. Okay. And so at the end of the day, like I see that as a win. You know, when, when the economy crashes, the soul winning gets more receptive. When there's, when there's a pandemic, people get receptive. You know, when, when the economy is really good and thriving and everybody's healthy and happy and things are great, they're less receptive to the gospel. So like, I can't really even decide, you know, it's, it's up to God. I don't spend my life trying to run this world. You know, if I tried to solve this world's problems, I'll get a headache. If I try to figure out how to fix America, cause I used to do that. I would like fantasize about like, how would I fix things? Like if I were running the government, what are the laws that I passed? But I, you know, I'm bored with that because it's just, it, it hurts my head and I'm not interested. I'd rather hurt my head thinking about, you know, how long the children of Israel were in Egypt or something, you know, then trying to fix this mess. All right. Or which day of the week Jesus was crucified on, you know, if I want to hurt my head about something, it's going to be that kind of stuff. The point is that, you know, we get the leaders that we deserve at the end of the day. You know, if we will turn to Christ as a nation, if we will get as many people saved as we can, if we can get the morality back where it needs to be, you know, the, the leadership will follow, the politics will follow. You know, and look, if you're into politics, I don't want to take away your hobby. I don't want to take away your fun. If you, if you like politics, it's, it's good, clean fun, and it's better than going to the bar and getting drunk every night. So you know, if you want to be into politics, you go ahead, but at the end of the day, I hope you realize that politics aren't really the answer. It's really spiritual things that are the answer. It's Christ that's the answer. It's soul winning. It's discipleship. It's calling America to repentance. It's calling Americans, Christians back to a serious walk with God and evangelism and Bible study and prayer. And that's what we need. And then we'll get the leaders we deserve, you know, because you know, the Bible says here, you know, Oh, it's because the Lord loved his people. Verse 11, he made you King over them. He gave them a good leader as a blessing unto them. Hiram said, moreover, verse 12, blessed be the Lord God of Israel that made heaven and earth who had given to David the King, a wise son and dude with prudence and understanding that might build a house for the Lord and a house for his kingdom. And now I've sent a cunning man in dude with understanding of Hiram, my father's, the son of a woman of the daughters of Dan and his father was a man of Tyre. So this is kind of symbolic. He says, Hey, I'm going to send you a guy who's super skillful in these things, but he's sort of a hybrid, right? Because he's half Israelite and he's half of Tyre. His father's a man of Tyre and his, uh, you know, mother is one of the daughters of Dan. And so again, you know, this could even be in some ways you could even think of this as a foreshadowing. If you want to get real spiritual about this, you could think of this as a foreshadowing of like the apostle Paul, because he's, he's kind of an Israelite. I mean, obviously he is an Israelite, but he's also kind of an outsider because he's raised outside of Israel. He's a Hellenistic Jew. And so he is raised up in all of the wisdom and understanding of the Greeks. And so he's a perfect guy to reach the Gentiles because he knows all about the Greek thinking. And also he knows obviously the Bible like the back of his hand because of his unique upbringing. You could also, uh, think of this as a foreshadowing of Timothy because Timothy is in the same boat, right? Where his father's a Gentile and his mother is a Jew. And so, uh, this guy is like a hybrid guy kind of just showing, Hey, let's have peace. Let's get along. Let's work together. You know, you've complimented me and asked for our skills. Well, you know, the, the greatest skill is this guy who's from both of our lands. And so he's an expert in gold, silver, brass, iron, stone, timber, purple, blue, fine linen, crimson, any manner of graving to find out every device which shall be put to him with thy cunning man and with the cunning man of my Lord David thy father. Now therefore the wheat and the barley, the oil and the wine, which the Lord, which my Lord had spoken of, let him send unto his servants. And we will cut wood out of Lebanon as much as thou shalt need. And we will bring it to thee in floats by sea to Joppa and thou shalt carry it up to Jerusalem. And so the next chapter we'll get into the actual building of the temple. But the thing that we see in this chapter that's beautiful is the peace that Solomon had. In fact, Solomon's name means peace. And of course that's another reason why he pictures Jesus because Jesus is the prince of peace. And Solomon's reign for 40 years is a time of peace and prosperity where Israel is getting along with the people around them, working together with the people around them. And so we want to also try as much as possible to live peaceably with all men. This doesn't mean we're going to compromise our beliefs, we're not going to compromise our doctrine or sugarcoat the message of the word of God, but many times it's possible to take a stand for Christ, to do what's right, to have a good Christian testimony out in the world, and yet to get along with people. If you're just constantly having strife with people, you might want to evaluate if you are the problem. Because the Bible says when a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him. And so, look, I've raised a lot of hell in my time. And I continue to raise hell. And yet, I get along with a lot of people. I get along with a lot of unlikely people. I get along with a lot of unsaved people. I get along with people of other denominations. I get along with literal Jews. I get along with all kinds of people. Why? Because I'm not just going around, starting stuff, being a jerk. Look, I take a stand for the word of God, I preach, my heart out, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, I don't censor anything, I don't hold anything back, and I go out there and I try my best to represent the Lord Jesus Christ, and I talk to people about the Gospel, I preach the Gospel, but at the end of the day, though, I'm not just out there trying to pick fights with neighbors and people that I interact with out in the world. And so when you go to your job, I hope that you'll try to get along with people. I'm not saying that you're just going to do whatever they want, and they want you to go to the bar and get drunk, you'll do it or something, no. You need to do what's right, and obviously, you should always let it be known that you're a Christian. You should tell people, I'm a Christian, I believe the Bible, you know, and when you're alone with someone, witness to them, give them the Gospel, but at the same time, you should be trying to get along with people as much as you can. You don't want to just be a blowhard, a jerk, a chest pounder, just out there picking fights for the sake of picking fights, right? If there has to be a fight, well then bring it on, but let's not go out trying to make a fight where there needn't be one. We should try to live at peace with all men, not just with saved people, try to live at peace with all men. And you say, what about these bunch of sodomites, and you know, well here's the thing, like I don't want anything to do with them. I don't want to be around them. I want to avoid them and stay away from those freaks as much as I can, but at the same time, like I'm not going and trying to pick a fight with them because I just want to avoid them. So I'm not just going to go to some queer pride parade and just go there and just start yelling or something because I don't even want to be around it. I want to just forget it exists for a while, you know what I mean, and just kind of just live my life. And so there's a difference between taking a stand for what's right and just picking fights with the unsaved. It's vanity. It's pointless, right? We want to live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. We'll fight when necessary, but we should try to get along. And so I hope that you'll think about that and think about the way that you act and try to get along with people. I'm not saying you're going to be best bosom buddies with unsaved people, but you should be able to be civil with them and get along with them and maybe even learn things from them because of the fact that just like these guys could be an expert in gold, silver, stone, they might be good at your job and maybe they can train you or teach you without you just acting like, well, I know more than you. And people who go around telling you how much they know usually don't know very much. That's probably enough word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this chapter. Lord, help us to think about King Solomon in his greatness, his wisdom as he's in his heyday here, Lord, and help us to have the same style of attitude and have the same type of relationship with the people around us in this world that we would live peaceably. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.