1 Kings 3:5

1 Kings 3:5

Solomon's prayer was acceptable to God (1) because every true and faithful prayer is so acceptable, and (2) because of all prayers He loveth best those that are wholly unselfish, those in which all thoughts of self are absorbed and annihilated in thoughts of Him and of our fellow-men.

I. Even of things earthly God says to each of us, "Ask what I shall give thee." Our lives may be very much what we choose to make them. Asking God for gifts at the hands of time or opportunity does not mean mere asking; he who asks must, if his prayer is to be listened to, be sincere in his petition, and if he be sincere, will naturally and necessarily take the means which God appoints. Were it not so if vice could with a wish yawn into being the rewards of virtue, if sluggishness could at a touch appropriate to itself the gifts of toil then prayer would corrupt the world. Action, effort, perseverance these are the touchstones that test the pure gold of sincerity.

II. Though this be true of earthly things, it is ten times more indisputably true of the better and the heavenly. Dost thou love uprightness? Ask it, will it, and thou shalt be upright. Dost thou love purity? Ask it, will it, and thou shalt be pure. " Ask what I shall give thee. " God said it to Solomon in the dim visions of the night; He says it to us by the voice of His eternal Son. "Every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened."

F. W. Farrar, In the Days of thy Youth, p. 159.

I. Not wealth, not pleasure, not fame, not victory, not length of days, but an understanding heart, was the choice of Solomon's boyhood.

The prayer for wisdom is always pleasing to God. (1) Even intellectual wisdom how far higher is it, how far worthier of man as God made him, than any alternative of fashion or vanity of wit or vice. Fear not to ask of God an understanding heart, even in studies which name not His name. (2) But the speech which pleased the Lord was a prayer rather for practical wisdom. The gift which Solomon's prayer drew down was the gift of justice. When he seated himself in the gate to hear the causes which Israel brought to him, intellect was nothing; judgment, the power to discriminate between good and bad this was his work. This therefore was his prayer.

II. The bitter and painful thing to remember in the history before us is the wreck and ruin of that prayer which in itself was so beautiful and so acceptable. (1) It may have been that Solomon's largeness of heart slipped into latitudinarianism. (2) That which cankered Solomon's wisdom was the entrance of sinful lust.

III. We may hope that even out of this wreck the lost life found a way to arise. We read the Book of Ecclesiastes as the record of that hope. Let us hope that the night's prayer at Gibeon was being answered, though in dim and broken reflection, in the latest utterances of the Preacher, son of David, king of Jerusalem.

C. J. Vaughan, Sermon Preached at St. Olave's School, 1872.

References: 1 Kings 3:5 . Clergyman's Magazine, vol. xiii., p. 19; J. Vaughan, Children's Sermons, 5th series, p. 37; Bishop Thorold, Good Words, 1878, p. 20. 1 Kings 3:7 . Outline Sermons for Children, p. 45