Wisdom for the Next Decade

Sermon from: January 3, 2010
Sermon based on: 1 Kings 3: 4-15
2nd Sunday after Christmas



When I was a boy I often imagined how exciting it would be when the year 2000 came around.

Somehow I had this childish fantasy that when the year 2000 arrived, people would be driving vehicles with no wheels. Cancer would be virtually eliminated just as polio and TB had in the late 1900s. Jet airliners would take two hours to fly from Hawaii to San Francisco.

Finally the year 2000 came around, and I still remember CNN covering the fireworks displays taking place as major cities in progression ushered in the year 2000 starting with Sydney, Australia, Hong Kong, Moscow, Paris, New York, Los Angeles and finally towards the tail end Honolulu.

But the year 2000 came and it seemed to be no change from 1999 or the 1900s. Computers did not crash when Y2K kicked in. I didn’t feel anything particularly different with the coming of 2000, and life seemed to be the same old, same old. Cars still had tires. Cancer hadn’t been eradicated. Airliners still took 4 to 5 hours to reach the West Coast from Hawaii.

But then events started to take place which indicated that the new millennium 2000 would be dramatically different than the 1900s.

There was the razor thin and bitterly contested presidential race in 2000 which brought to light that America was no longer divided between north and south but now between red and blue states.

In 2001 we were shocked into realizing that even the Pentagon was not immune from attacks by foreigners. As we closed out the first decade of the millennium 2000, the Christmas Day attempt to bring down a jet over Detroit was just another reminder that more attacks upon our country will be forthcoming.

In 2005 we watched on TV the biggest natural disaster in U.S. history, Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, we shook our heads in sadness at one of the biggest natural disasters in world history, the tsunamis in the Indian Ocean which killed over 200,000 people (200 times more casualties than Katrina.)

In the first half of the past decade we enjoyed some of the most prosperous years in U.S. history with super low unemployment, super high ease in getting credit cards, auto loans and home mortgages. In the second half of the decade, we experienced just the opposite. We witnessed the fall of great U.S. banks and auto companies.

During the first ten years of this millennium 2000 we also were bombarded with cheating and scandals going on among Ponzi scheme investors, politicians and athletes.

In 2008, we saw the inauguration of a Hawaii born and raised President, but some of us in Hawaii could not fully celebrate because his views on abortion and same gender marriage go against the biblical view of the international church body with whom our church is affiliated.

I disagree with a writer from Newsweek who called the first ten years of this millennium 2000 “the decade from hell.” As bad as these 10 years were, I would think based on books that I have read that the decade that included World War 1 and the decade that included World War 11, and the decade which included the Civil War were much more hellish than the years 2000 through 2009. Also based on having lived through the 1960s, I think the Viet Nam War, the assasignations of a president, a presidential candidate and a civil rights leader, and the rioting in Watts, Detroit, Newark and other American cities seemed more tumultuous than even the angst of this past decade.

In any event there is no mistake in saying that the first decade of the new millennium 2000 has been tumultuous.. And the next 10 years will also be challenging.


All the more then we need the wisdom that God gave to Solomon in our reading for today. Here is young king Solomon around the year 900 B.C. ready to take leadership over the strongest nation in western civilization at that particular time.

God gave to him amazing maturity and sensibleness because instead of asking for more money, power, fame and years of life, the young man Solomon requests that God would grant him wisdom.

In the Hebrew language word wisdom is closely related to the word knowledge, and at times the two words are used interchangeably. The fine difference between wisdom and knowledge is that knowledge means wealth of information, facts, observation, and experience. Wisdom implies making good and sound decisions. One needs knowledge – good information – in order to have wisdom, and that’s why wisdom and knowledge are partners, but knowledge alone does not result in beneficial results without wisdom. And vice versa, wisdom is stunted and arrested without adequate knowledge.

In the Book of Ecclesiastes we read where Solomon had much knowledge. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon catalogues all of the hours he poured into studying botany, zoology, philosophy, science, and other disciplines. Yet he emphasizes in Ecclesiastes that all this information is useless without wisdom to know the purpose of life which is to be in a right relationship with God.

In the upcoming decade 2010 to 2019, we pray that God would grant us wisdom to make sound decisions as we undoubtedly will be placed in circumstances where bad choices will bring pain, grief and ruin.



Red Blue Divisions

The two elections in the past decade especially the 2000 election brought to the surface the deep fracture that exists between people in red states and blue states.

We can talk all we want about the one hundred or so issues that divide the red and blue states, but the big ugly divisive issue that most of use including myself would rather avoid is the abortion issue. Red states want to make it illegal; blue states want to keep it legal.

We pray that God would grant us wisdom to apply Biblical principles to this issue of abortion. For me it is very clear that conception is the beginning of life. One example is when Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit. At that moment he takes on humanity. He is a human being at conception.

Another issue that many say divides blue and red states is the legalization of same gender marriage. In comparison to abortion, however, this issue doesn’t cut across so consistently between red and blue states. For example, California is the ultimate blue state but a majority of voters recently turned down an opportunity to legalize same gender marriages. Iowa, on the other hand, which has been more of a red state last year legalized same gender marriages. Go figure.

It seems though that the trend is for more and more states whether blue or red will go in the direction of making same gender marriages legal. For those who again take the Bible for what it clearly states, we will need wisdom to convey that it is a sin to persecute, tease, harass, harm and ridicule persons who practice physical intimacy with persons of the same gender and yet it is also a sin to be physically intimate with a person of the same gender.


The Terrorism of Militant Islam

With regard to the attacks upon us by militant Muslims, what kind of wisdom will we need? We will need the wisdom from God to not fall into the two extremes of being naïve and of becoming ourselves fanatical.

With regard to being naïve, in spite of all the bombings in England, Spain, Indonesia, Philippines, and other nations for which Al Qaeda and other militant Muslim groups have boasted, I don’t sense that most of us in America sense how much extremist Muslims hate Israel and hate the U.S. Yeah, September 11, 2001 was horrific, but we haven’t been attacked since. We’ve got it under control. According to Harvard professor Samuel Huntingon who wrote the classic book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, widespread clashes caused by fanatical religious groups could continue for the next 1000 years. We need to continue to be alert and vigilant.

Yet on the other hand, we need to watch that we don’t gravitate to the other extreme of ourselves becoming fanatical. Not all Muslims are terrorists. Not all Muslims support Al Qaeda. We must not persecute and prosecute the innocent. We also need to pray for our enemies as Jesus commanded. By the love of Christ working in our hearts, we will pray for our enemies to diffuse their bombs and that the Lord would subdue their hate. At the same time, we pray that there would be fairness in Israel and that justice would prevail for all nations.

The Recovery of our Economy

It may very well be that the recession will someday end. We pray though that we will learn from the sin that dragged us into the recession. Greed, lowering standards, ignoring regulations, selfishness, let someone else worry about the consequences. These drives contributed to the melt down of the past decade.

We pray that we will have the wisdom to handle prosperity. Unfortunately, Solomon in his later years lapsed. The wealth he had made him lax and spiritually flabby. He indulged himself in his extravagances. And the kingdom of Israel tumbled soon after he died.

Yet apparently he was repentant and asked for forgiveness because in the New Testament, Jesus speaks favorably of Solomon. We pray that if the economy gets back on its feet, we will remember the mercy of the Lord. And when we get into lapses where we forget who is the Source of all our blessings, we will ask for forgiveness. We beg of the Lord to remind us of the devotion that Jesus had to His Father. We remember how Jesus perfectly realized at all times that any sunshine or rainfall we receives comes out of the kindness of our Heavenly Father.

As the Holy Spirit grants us this awareness of how our lives are completely dependent upon the Lord, we will have the wisdom to trust in Him and His Son Jesus Christ who was not greedy or indulgent and who handled successes and rejection with equal thankfulness to God the Father. We think of Christ who is the embodiment of all Wisdom and who gives us His wisdom centered in His suffering on the Cross and His triumph over death.

May the wisdom of the Lord be with us in the next decade of the millenium 20000 and always.