THE QUEEN OF SHEBA & JESUS
1 Kings 10:1-7
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: True doctor office stories
1. JOKE.
a. About to have a blood test, Janet nervously waited while the nurse tightened a tourniquet around her arm. "I understand you're from Huntsville," she said. "Are you a Sam Houston State fan?"
b. "Absolutely!" Janet replied. "Well," the nurse continued as she raised the needle, "this may hurt a little. I'm from Nacogdoches!"
2. JOKE.
a. We brought our newborn son, Adam, to the pediatrician for his first checkup. As he finished, the doctor told us, "You have a cute baby."
b. Smiling, I said, "I bet you say that to all new parents." "No," he replied, "just to those whose babies really are good-looking."
c. "So what do you say to those with homely babies?" I asked. The doctor said, “I just tell them, ‘He looks just like you!’"
B. THESIS
1. In Jesus’ own day, the scribes and Pharisees pretended to care about whether Jesus was the Christ. They could have been easily convinced that Jesus was the promised Messiah if they had only taken the trouble to examine his credentials.
2. They had the Law of Moses, the Word of the prophets, the testimony of John the Baptist and the miracles. Surely they could have connected the parallels between Jesus of Nazareth and the Messiah who was to come; but they refused to thoroughly investigate his claims and took it for granted that he was an impostor, and therefore rejected him.
3. About them God said; “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of Me is made up only of rules taught by men” Isa. 29:13.
4. They pretended to want to know God, but made no real efforts to seek Him. Now remember; these Pharisees were very religious. They went to every church service. They read the Bible daily. They prayed. But it was all part of a routine for them; their hearts weren’t reaching up toward God. Could we fall into the same category?
5. We’re going to look at a person who was an earnest seeker of the Lord and gage our lives against hers to see if we really are seekers of God, or pretenders.
C. TEXT
1 When the queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon and his relation to the name of the LORD, she came to test him with hard questions. 2 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 she had on her mind. 3 Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her. 4 When the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon and the palace he had built, 5 the food on his table, the seating of his officials, the attending servants in their robes, his cupbearers, and the burnt offerings 1 Kgs 10:1-7.
D. TITLE: “The Queen of Sheba & Jesus.”
I. SHE HEARD & SOUGHT OUT
A. SHE WAS A SIGN TO US
1. Now Solomon was a type of Christ; he was the son of David; but there is a greater son of David – Jesus Christ. And this woman, the Queen of Sheba, represents a lost person seeking Christ. Let’s see what lengths she went to to seek Him.
2. Jesus said, “The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here” (Matthew 12:42).
B. THE EFFORTS SHE PUT OUT
1. The land of Sheba was located some 1,200 miles south of Israel. It corresponds to modern day Yemen. As she served in that country, the sailors and merchants that passed through shared the word of the greatness of King Solomon. What their testimony said about him was this: There's Nobody Like Him!
2. So she considered the distance, the dangers, the expense, the loss of time and money if the claims proved false; the loss to her reputation for chasing after a fairytale. She “counted the cost” of seeking out Solomon/Jesus and she determined that He was worth the risk and effort! The benefits – in her mind – would be worth the risks.
3. Now imagine the Lord Jesus telling the Pharisees that if the Gentiles, the “far-off ones,” should go to such lengths, then what were they doing? Because a greater than Solomon was here! The earnestness of the Queen of Sheba to learn the truth and meet the King was contrasted to the lack of effort by the Pharisees to learn about Him.
4. This definitely fits us today. Our problem is that we’re so enamored by all the social media and the multitude of distractions they bring, that we fail to focus on what should be the One great Distraction, Jesus; He’s is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Him!”
5. As great as Solomon was, and desirable to meet and listen to, behold, a greater than Solomon is here!
II. SHE COMMUNED WITH HIM “ALL” THAT WAS IN HER HEART “She communed with him of all that was in her heart” (1 Kings 10:2).
1. The Queen of Sheba was not content with merely asking him various difficult questions, but discussed with him all that lay concealed in her heart. Solomon is, of course, a type of our communing with our Lord Jesus.
2. It is not generally a wise thing to tell all that is in your heart. Solomon himself said, “A fool utters all his mind; but a wise man keeps it in till afterwards.” There are many things which you had better not tell to anybody.
3. However, we know of One, who is “greater than Solomon,” to whom it is most safe and blessed to tell out all that is in our heart. He is willing to listen to us, and to commune with us.
A. TO NOT DO SO, IS UNNATURAL
1. Are there any professing Christians here, who have lived for a month without conscious communion with Christ? If I were to speak of a longer period, I am afraid there are some who would have to reply, “That is the case with us.”
2. If so, think what that means; you profess to belong to Jesus, and to be his disciple, yet you confess that you have lived all this while without real, intimate communication with Him.
3. What’s more, if we profess to be not only one of His disciples,
but one of his friends. “Is this how you treat your Friends?”
4. I may go further; for you believe yourself to be married to Christ. That would be a strange kind of marriage in which the husband & wife would live in the same house & constantly walk by each other, but never speak for a week, or a month, or even longer!
5. For them to have no interchange of love and no communication with each other would be terribly unnatural; but don’t we act towards our heavenly Bridegroom in just that manner?
6. Are we not, too often, like the men of the world who do not know him? It ought not to be thus; we must be continually holding intimate intercourse with our Lord Jesus Christ.
B. TO NOT COMMUNE, IS TO CONCEAL
1. To conceal anything from so true a Friend betrays the sad fact that there is something wrong to be concealed. Is there anything in your heart which you would wish to hide from Him? Then most likely, it’s something wrong!
2. If I do want to hide it, then, surely, it must be because it is something of which I have cause to be ashamed; so help me to get rid of it. We need to live just as you would do if Christ Jesus were in your house, in your bedroom, in your car, or looking at your computer with you, for his spiritual presence is there!
C. TO NOT SHOWS A LACK OF CONFIDENCE
1. If we cannot tell Jesus everything, it shows a lack of confidence in his love, or his sympathy, or his wisdom, or his power. When there is something that the wife cannot tell to her husband, or there begin to be some secret things. There will soon be an end of mutual love, and peace, and joy.
2. I plead with you to love Christ too much to keep anything back from him! Love him so much that you can trust him even with the little frivolous things.
D. TRIALS: RESULT OF NOT SHARING ALL
1. I believe that trials often come out of things that we do not take to the Lord.
2. The men of Israel were deceived by the Gibeonites because they had on old shoes and clouted, and had moldy bread in their wallets, and the Israelites said, “It is perfectly clear that these men must have come from a long distance; look at their old boots and their ragged garments”; so they make a covenant with them, and inquired not the will of the Lord.
3. If it had not appeared to them to be quite so clear a case, they would have asked the Lord for direction, and then they would have been rightly guided. It is when we think we can see our way that we go wrong.
E. RESULTS IN LOSS OF COUNSEL & HELP
1. If you do not come to Jesus, and commune with him of all that is in your heart, you will lose his counsel and help, and comfort. There is many a child of God, who might be rich in peace but who continues to be as poor as Lazarus the beggar; full of doubts and fears, because they have not gone to Christ.
2. Our habit of reluctance to go to Jesus is made worse by our eagerness to tell our troubles to others. Like King Asa: when he was sick, “he sought not to the Lord, but only went to the physicians.” It wasn’t wrong to go to the physicians, but he should have gone to the Lord first. You tell a friend all your trouble, but don’t tell the Lord.
3. Suppose the Lord Jesus Christ were to meet some of you, and say; “You went to your friends first; are you coming to me last? Am I only a spare tire to you, and do you only come to me after having tried all the others?”
III. FINDING: “NOT THE HALF HAS BEEN TOLD!”
“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” 1 Kgs 10:7.
A. SOLOMON’S GREATNESS
1. His WEALTH was greater than She Had Heard - She got more from him than she gave him. His yearly income was about $40 billion in today’s money. Gold was commonplace.
2. His WORKS were greater than she had heard. When she saw the great Temple, his palaces, the great walls of Jerusalem, all his public works throughout the land, and principle cities, she was amazed.
3. His WISDOM was greater than She Had Heard - He was able to answer every one of her riddles, v. 1, 3.
4. He Was More Wonderful Than She Had Heard - She concluded that she hadn't even heard the half of his glory and greatness!
B. THE GREATNESS OF JESUS CHRIST
1. When Jesus stilled the storm, His disciples said, "What manner of Man is this? For even the winds and the waves obey him!" Who indeed is Jesus?
2. Jesus healed every sickness; drove out every demon; held the children in his arms; encouraged the depressed and lifted up the fallen. He showed mercy to those who deserved judgment. He was kind to the malevolent. He prayed for his persecutors.
3. Though being infinitely rich, he made himself poor for our sakes. Though being the King of the universe, he humbled himself to wash our feet.
4. He was Eden’s tree of life. He was Abel’s acceptable sacrifice. He was Noah's Ark of salvation in the flood. He was Abraham's RAM offered in the place of Isaac. He was Israel's Passover lamb, providing shelter from the death Angel in Egypt. He was Moses rod with which he divided the waters.
5. He was the Tabernacle in the wilderness. He was Joshua's captain of the armies of the Lord. He was Rahab's Scarlet cord in the window; He was Gideon’s sword and David's sling and stone.
6. He was Daniel's lion tamer and the fourth man in the furnace of fire. He was Isaiah's "Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).
7. He was Zechariah’s fountain for cleansing opened in the house of David (13:1). That's what we can sing, "There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel’s veins; and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains."
8. He is Malachi's Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings (4:2). He’s the Rose of Sharon, the Bright and morning star, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords!
9. At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow! Stalin, Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Buddha, Moa Tse-tung, Mohammed, Pol Pot; all the political leaders, all the media moguls, all the wealthy and powerful will bow at His Feet and acknowledge that he is Lord!
10. He reigns! He reigns in heaven, undisputed among the Angels of God. Soon he'll be coming back to take the reins of government and then "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" Isaiah 11:9.
11. His name is greater than cancer, diabetes, or leukemia. His name is bigger than drugs or alcohol; bigger than any lust torments you. There is no fear that can bind you, no darkness that can blind you, no deception that can hold you in the Name of Jesus!
12. Paul said He’s “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come” Eph. 1:21.
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION
1. Queen Mary used to go to Scotland every summer, and she was so loved by the people that she went around the countryside unescorted. One afternoon, walking with the children of the house where she was, she went too far.
2. Suddenly dark clouds came up. The Queen stopped at a house and asked to borrow an umbrella, saying to the lady of the house, "I will send it back to you tomorrow."
3. The lady, reluctant to loan a good umbrella to a stranger, gave her one that was broken and had holes in it. The next day there was a knock at the door. She opened it to a man with a Royal Uniform who held a big envelope.
4. "The Queen sent me," he said "and she asked me to thank you for the loan of the umbrella." For a moment the woman was stunned and then she burst into tears.
5. She moaned, "Oh, what an opportunity I missed, that I did not give her my best!" Let's give him our best to our Savior and will never regret it.
B. THE CALL: Call for repentance, new commitments, and prayer.
[This message probably drew on Charles Spurgeon’s thoughts on this passage.]
