Developing A Hearing Heart

Get our Bibles out, wave them around, as our custom is, and make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Let's say this together Say Heavenly Father, I've tuned in on purpose tonight.

I wouldn't miss Wednesday night because I'm hungry and thirsty for more, more of your spirit, more of your word, more of your glory, more of your presence.

And tonight I receive the Word of God and it changes my life from one level of strength to the next one, one level of faith to the next.

In Jesus' name, amen, that's exactly right.

We grow day by day.

Let's look at first Kings.

Tonight I was in this chapter in my normal reading and of course that's that's where I get.

I don't do sermons, I do messages.

And so I learned that, brother Osteen, he said just feed the people out of the overflow.

And so when I feed myself, I like to give you what I'm eating.

First Kings, chapter three, and we'll start reading with verse five.

And this is about Solomon tonight.

And Givvy and the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night and God said ask what I shall give thee.

And Solomon said thou has showed unto thy servant, david, my father, great mercy, and my margin says bounty.

Yeah, david was a rich dude.

A great bounty According as he walked before thee in truth and in righteousness and in uprightness of heart with thee, and thou has kept for him this great kindness that thou has given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day and now.

O Lord, my God, thou has made thy servant King instead of David.

My father and I am but a little child.

I know not how to go out or come in, and thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou has chosen, a great people that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude.

Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart.

My margin says a hearing heart, my margin says a hearing heart.

For who is able to judge this by so great a people?

And the speech, please the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing.

And keep in mind this is a dream.

And so, and God said unto him because thou hast asked this thing and has not asked for thyself long life, neither has asked riches for thyself, nor hath asked the life of thine enemies, but hath asked for thyself understanding to discern judgment.

Behold, I have done according to thy words, lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart, so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee.

And I have also given thee that which thou has not asked for, both riches and honor, so that there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee all thy days.

And if you will walk in my ways to keep my statutes and my commandments, as your father, david, did walk, then I will lengthen thy days.

And so tonight I wanted to share a message entitled Developing a Hearing Heart.

Developing a hearing heart.

And, as I mentioned midway through these verses, notice that this was a dream.

Solomon was not awake when all of this verbiage and this speech came up.

And so then God had discerned the heart of Solomon and he had placed in Solomon these desires you remember in Psalm 37, forces, delight yourself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

And I've always read it a little differently than what it sounds like to most people the light thyself is also in the Lord, and he shall give for you his desires in your heart, for you.

So that's what it sounded like.

It sounded like that he had placed within Solomon a desire to please God, a desire to have a hearing heart.

And in verse six, where we read here chapter three, he said he started bragging on his father.

Say so much of Solomon's spiritual DNA came from seed that David sowed.

You know he talked about how he had.

You know he had showed his servant great mercy and that he had walked before the in truth and righteousness and uprightness of heart and so forth and so on.

So he's bragging on his father and so he's not taking credit for anything.

He's just saying look, I came from my father and you blessed him so much and I'm just bold over that.

I'm on the throne.

And then in Psalm 89, 29,.

We can keep our place there.

And let's turn over to that one, psalm 89,.

This is one of the Psalms of David.

God had promised David that his seed would be on the throne Psalm 89, 29.

He said his seed also will I make to endure forever in his throne as a days of heaven.

So you know, in this Psalm he's going over all of the promises God made him.

And so God promised David his seed would be on the throne, on the throne forever.

Another seed, seed, seed all the way down the line.

So you know, when you look back at Solomon's birth, it's the picture of God's grace and mercy.

Remember, david and Bathsheba had an illicit affair by which she became pregnant and David wanted her, and she was married to Uriah the Hittite, one of David's mighty men, and he caused him to be put in a situation in battle where he died.

So he basically committed murder.

So, david, you know, dave, all this uprightness and all this walk before him and all this uprightness I mean he was pretty.

You know, that's amazing that God was able to forgive David.

David did repent, david did ask for forgiveness and God did forgive him and he forgot.

He forgot what David did, and to the degree that when the little baby died, that was conceived in adultery, that then David and Bathsheba had another child and that child is Solomon.

That's how David named him, solomon, but Nathan, the prophet who stood for God, named him Jedidiah, which means beloved of God.

So here's this child that's beloved of God.

And you know, god does not carry grudges.

I tell you, when we ask God to forgive us, I mean it's white, clean, and that's true the Old Testament, is true in the New Testament.

And so here in these verses, I see three very plain requirements that that you need to have for a hearing heart.

The first one I see in verse six.

Solomon says you've showed, you, talked about his father, david, and and he said you've, you've kept for him this great kindness that you have given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day.

So I see gratitude.

I See gratitude there from from King Solomon.

Now, at this stage of the game, king Solomon is not wet behind the ears.

He built the temple.

I mean, he caused a lot of activity to go forward in Israel and he had already done a lot of things in the name of the Lord.

And so here he's saying you know, I'm just, I'm so grateful to have this office, I'm so grateful and and so gratitude.

If you want a hearing heart, you got to have gratitude toward God.

Opposite of gratitude is is entitlement, where you use the word deserve a lot.

You think about you deserve this and you deserve that.

You know I deserve, I Deserve this, I deserve that.

Well, you know that's entitlement, that's not gratitude.

That, that that's like.

You know, you've earned it yourself and you've earned it yourself.

And it's always good to stay full of gratitude toward God for everything we have and everything we are.

Amen, because without him we are nothing.

And so gratitude.

Then in verse 7, I see humility.

Now, lord, my God, you've made a servant king instead of David.

My father and I'm but little, I'm just a little child, I don't know how to go in or come out.

I mean you talk about humility.

As I said, he was not wet behind the ears.

He had built the temple, the glory of God had showed up there.

I mean he, he had accomplished mighty things in the early part of his reign and yet he's humble.

And Of course, the opposite of humility is pride and arrogance.

Yeah, man, you know God, you chose the right guy.

I'm telling you right now, you know you all be glad I was around.

Take this thing over from my dad.

I mean, he was good, but I'm a lot better.

No, he was, he had humility.

And then the next thing that we see here in verse 8 is Love.

He bragged on On Israel.

He said your servant is in the midst of your people, which have you have chosen a great people that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude.

They're, there are great people.

He was awestruck by Israel and the and the people.

He did not look down his nose.

He said oh boy, this is gonna be like herding cats.

You got the right guy, because if anybody can keep people in line, it's me.

I mean, these people don't deserve as good a king as I know.

I mean, you see, all these things kind of go together gratitude, humility and love.

They're kind of linked together.

If you can see, and these are our principles that you're gonna have to possess If you're going to have an understanding or a hearing heart, and how many of you want to have a hearing heart that you can discern from good and bad and know I Mean these are the days when we meet we need to know truth from error.

We need to be able to look at certain circumstances correctly and not be deceived.

So All of this in the dream I want you to know it was in the dream.

He was not conscious and what he said in the dream, please the Lord, just that blows your mind and it really does it.

So God arranged for this dream and he set the dream up and he had to get.

He had Solomon say those things and they were consistent with Solomon's heart, but he had not yet expressed them and God had him express him while he was under anesthesia, if you will.

He got credit as if he was conscious.

That's just amazing.

You talk about the mercy of God, the grace of God.

God is merciful, and, and so that shows us that we don't earn what we have from God.

It is given to us by grace.

So my point in all of this is that God will give us a hearing heart as well, because he's no Respector of persons.

If he did it, what he does for one, he'll do for any and all that will believe him.

And Of course, we have Jesus, who is the epitome of a hearing heart.

You know he.

He said I only do the things I I hear my see my father.

Do I only say the things I hear my father say?

So he had a hearing heart.

He was connected to his heavenly father.

Did he go around acting like you know that?

He was independent?

No, he was very dependent on his heavenly father, was careful to give his father all the glory and praise for things that he would do.

You know, if you've seen me, philip, have I been so long with you that you don't know him?

If you've seen me, you've seen the father, and and so I.

I see three things here.

I about a hearing heart.

The first thing is it's not just book learning.

It's not just having a great resume.

Let's look at Philippians two.

And I've met people that knew more than I did.

They could quote scripture better than I can and yet somehow, some way, they're still running around the mountain, going around the same mountain all the time, because they haven't picked up on the things I'm talking about tonight.

And Philippians, chapter two, verse five let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

Let this mindset, let this attitude be in you.

You can either let or not.

Let See, it's up to us to let let it be in you.

What mind, the mind that Christ had.

We have the mind of Christ.

The Bible says in another verse and so we ought to have the mindset, we ought to have his mindset.

Who, verse six, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man.

He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, wherefore God had highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name.

Well, isn't that exactly what happened to Solomon.

He in the dream.

He kept using the word servant, he didn't say King, he kept telling God that he was his servant.

And so he had this lowliness of mind, he had this humility of mind.

Jesus was humble of mind and yet he knew he was equal with God.

But he made himself of no reputation as the son of man Born in a stable.

You know, he didn't vie for attention, he just let his work speak for themselves.

And so he didn't just have book learning, he had information or revelation.

Did Jesus know the scriptures?

Of course he is the Word of God.

He is the Word of God, but he had this revelation of the Father.

And then in 2 Corinthians, another verse that I like to quote from time to time people who think that they can go to school and get an anointing, they can go to Bible school and somehow they'll come out with anointing.

Look at 2 Corinthians, 3, 3, 6.

It says who also has made us able ministers of the New Testament.

And the New Testament Not of the letter but of the spirit, for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

The letter killeth.

What does that mean?

The letter killeth.

Let's look at first Corinthians eight.

I want to make a point here I think it's worth pointing out an endless amount of of book learning in a Bible school or any other kind of school, an endless amount of it without the Holy Spirit on the inside of you is useless, just makes you an educated idiot.

First, corinthians eight one Now it says now it's touching things offered under idols.

We know that we have all have knowledge.

Knowledge puff it up, but charity or the agape, the love of God edifies, and if any man think that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet, as he ought to know.

And so what is that saying?

It's just saying that that a lot of Christians rely on their head knowledge of God, their head knowledge of this word, and yet they really don't live it out in their lives.

They're not obedient to it.

The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

So, um, and knowledge puffs up, but love edifies, love bills up.

And so, as we continue to walk in gratitude, humility and love, uh, and we develop a hearing heart.

How many of you want a hearing heart again?

See, this is what we need in the 21st century.

We don't know how many more.

Uh, what timeframe we have before Jesus comes.

We have a lot of signs in the earth right now.

There's a whole lot of prophetic uh movement uh in the earth.

Things are being fulfilled almost a daily basis, and so I'm not predicting any particular time.

I just know it's near, and so if there's ever a time for the church to live in a in a world where we have a hearing heart, where we can understand and discern between good and evil, right and wrong, it's now.

So from that hearing or understanding heart proceeds number one God's ability to judge between good and bad.

Just that simple.

I mean we need God's ability.

We can't take it on the outside.

We can't just look on the outside of things and depend on our natural site.

We need that work.

That's on the inside that we get with an understanding or a hearing heart, see verse nine.

Give, therefore, verse chapter three.

Give, therefore thy servant an understanding or a hearing heart to judge your people, that he may discern between good and bad, and then from that hearing or understanding heart proceeds.

Another thing that I believe we need right now, and that is riches, verse 13,.

I've given you that what you have not asked riches, riches.

Why do we need riches?

Because it costs a lot of money to reap the harvest.

I'm never going to quit believing God for a multiplication.

I'm never going to forget.

I'm never going to quit believing God for the wealth of the wicked being laid up for the just and coming into our control in mighty ways.

Did you see how that's going to happen?

Well, I don't see how it's going to happen.

I don't look at the natural, I just look at him.

I look he owns the cattle on a thousand hills.

I mean, he, it's all his, everything on this earth is his and he has ways to bring it into the control of the righteous.

So that hearing heart will bring riches, it will bring number three, honor.

You know, god's not against us being exalted, he's against us exalting ourselves.

So you see, that heart, that God, that Jesus took of him on himself no reputation.

And that's what we do.

We humble ourselves.

We're not vying for attention, we're not saying, hey, look at me, look at me.

No, we're just pleasing God, walking in obedience, and all of a sudden he just enlarges our footprint.

All of a sudden he, he exalts us and begins to promote us.

Promotion, come with, not in the South, the East of the West.

God's a judge, he puts down one, sets up another Amen, and I believe now is the time for the church to be exalted.

And then the last one is long life.

He said if you, if you, if you obey me, I'll not only give you riches and honor, I'll give you a long life, but you need to obey me.

See, all of these are subject to our obedience to God's ways and God's instructions.

All of us, you know, need to hear from God about our own lives and our own ministries and obey God with all of our hearts when he begins to show us what we need to be doing.

And doing is exactly what we.

It's not enough just to pray, we have to do, and in this church you get lots of opportunities to do and participate with doers.

So I just got through reading chapter 11 today.

I've been in first Kings for a few days and and so today came the chapter where let's look at first King's 11.

I'm talking about obedience now.

How important obedience is.

You can never minimize obedience, it says in verse four, for it came to pass when Solomon was old that his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not perfect with the Lord, his God, as was the heart of David, his father.

And one thing about David.

He made a lot of errors with with morals.

He did some things wrong, he numbered Israel one time and of course we heard about Bathsheba, and he had other other sins of the flesh.

But God forgave him.

And God forgot it, wiped it clean.

I heard Brother Hagin say this years ago.

He said it's almost it's harder to get forgiven for the sin of idolatry than almost any other sin.

God takes it very personally.

When we worship other gods, when we worship other gods, when we believe another gospel, when we author another name and we walk according to another spirit, those kinds of things have deep, deep consequences.

Well, no, jesus took my judgment.

I know, until you repent though that's what I'm talking about Until you wake up and realize that this is what you were doing, you were going to follow along a road that's going to bring great destruction, not because God destroys you, but because you have opened this huge door for the devil to walk in and don't think he won't take advantage of it.

So Solomon was greatly blessed most of his life, but there's a hint.

Let's turn back now to chapter three, and it says in verse one and Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh, king of Egypt and took Pharaoh's daughter and brought her into the city of David until he had made an end of building his own house and the house of the Lord in the wall of Jerusalem round about.

Later it talks about him building her house and setting up these.

In chapter 11, it starts enumerating, numbering all the ways that he worshiped the gods of all the people that Israel defeated.

The irony of it, I mean.

How is it that you know and God appeared to Solomon twice we read about one time tonight.

And so when God appears to you and warns you and then you go off and you let women, in his case, draw him away to follow God, he should never have had anything to do with these people.

The daughter of Pharaoh should not have been his wife Bathsheba.

He shouldn't have entertained Bathsheba.

He should I mean not Bathsheba, the queen of Sheba, sorry, queen of Sheba.

She came and spent a long time with him and so forth and so on.

So these many wives.

Let's look at it here in verse chapter 11.

It's hard for us to conceive of it in this day and time, but it says here he went after Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Zidomians, milcom, the abomination of Ammonites, and he built a high place for Kemos, the abomination of Moab, he gave tribute to Mollek, he burned incense and sacrificed under their gods.

And God was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the Lord, god of Israel, which had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods.

And so the Lord said, under Solomon, verse 11, for as much as this is done of thee and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I've commanded, I will surely rend the kingdom from you and will give it to thy servant, notwithstanding, in thy days, I will not do it for David's sake, but I will render it out of the hand of your sons.

Ray Abouin was his son and in the days of Ray Abouin, then, the servant became his rival.

And it talks about all the wives, the concubines, the many, many strange wives that he had that drew away his heart.

So what am I saying?

I'm saying that our obedience is paramount to having a hearing and understanding heart.

I'm convinced the sin hardened his heart, it cauterized it and caused him not to be able to discern between good and evil.

It can happen to us in the New Testament.

It can happen.

The deceitfulness of sin can harden your heart.

It can cause an understanding heart to not be so understanding and, all of a sudden, things that are obvious to other people.

I'll give you this example.

Brother Hagin talks about a preacher during the voice of healing.

I won't mention his name, I know it, but it doesn't matter who he was.

But he had a 10,000 seat tent.

He was a very accomplished preacher that he had the most marvelous miracles.

He was one of the youngest ones of the group and one time he had 15 people in a wheelchair section.

Every one of them got up and walked and so he had those kind of miracles.

And so Brother Hagin was a prophet, and sometimes, even in the New Testament, god will share with a New Testament prophet's word to give to somebody concerning their ministry.

And the very moment that happened, that was judgment.

When God uncovers the sin of someone and shows it to a seasoned minister like Brother Hagin, that's judgment all by itself.

And he said I want you to go to this minister, I want you to tell him to judge himself in three areas Judge himself in his love walk.

He's being arrogant and he's not walking in love with the other ministers.

This was the voice of healing.

He had a big association of these preachers Brother Hagin was one of them, oral Roberts, lindsey, gordon Lindsey was the head of that group and he kind of was the secretary of it and he had a magazine.

He would try to his heart was to keep them all in good communication with each other.

Because you're talking about men of big egos, I mean you've got to have a big dream and you've got to have the confidence, and sometimes in the flesh you can result in an ego problem.

And so he was always careful to try to keep a lid on that part of it.

And so he said you judge himself on his love walk, judge himself on his eating.

He weighed 400 pounds, he was huge, he's committed gluttony.

And then judge himself on money and I mentioned those 15 people getting up out of the wheelchair.

He stopped the meeting down, interrupted the healing and the wanting which was not finished, and took an offering, made merchandise of that healing and took advantage of the fervor and the excitement.

You can imagine what that crowd did when all those people started walking out of their wheelchair and he shut it down and took an offering and fattened his bank account.

It's not wrong to receive offerings.

It's not wrong to take an offering at a meeting like that, but what's wrong is to substitute an offering for the anointing that's present there and to interrupt the Holy Spirit.

So judge yourself on money, he said.

If he doesn't judge himself, he's gonna come home early.

I'm not saying God killed him, he's just that he's opening the door, as Solomon did, opening the door for Satan to end his life.

Long life goes away, and this man was only 39 years old, and so Brother Hagin started looking for opportunity to tell him.

He dreaded it.

He didn't.

He knew he wasn't gonna listen that's another thing he knew.

But he had to do it.

And so one day he saw him in a parking lot.

So he headed across the street to this parking lot and this preacher was in his convertible big old, I think, a Cadillac convertible, you know and he was talking to another preacher.

A guy was leaning over the door talking to him and he was kind of waiting for that guy to leave, and as soon as the other guy left he sped off and left and Brother Hagin didn't get to talk to him.

And then, just a few days later, he had a massive car wreck and was very, very ill broken up in the car wreck.

So they had a big prayer meeting for him and Gordon Lindsey headed it up, called a time of prayer for one of their own, and he and Oritha were sitting in the pew of this church waiting for the service to keep going.

And he said Brother Hagin, please come on up and offer the prayer for our brother.

And so Brother Hagin gets out and starts walking up the aisle.

He gets about halfway up to the front and all of a sudden he heard the Holy Ghost and he heard some audible voices.

What are you doing?

And he said well, they asked me to pray.

He says no, you're not.

I've already judged him, that's it.

Well, why did God judge him?

So his spirit would be saved in the day of judgment.

You see, if this preacher had kept going the way he was going, his heart would have gotten so hard that he may have denied the Lord, in which case there's no turning back.

Then you're gonna go to hell.

So it's really the mercy of God to turn him over to Satan, so that his flesh can be judged and he can go to heaven, even if his ministry is cut short.

And that's the mercy of God, it's not.

I mean, you know judgment.

We think about judgment as God being mad.

God is gonna kill him.

No, god didn't kill him.

The devil killed him, but God took his hand of protection off of him because of his disobedience.

Of course, brother Hagin felt a little bit bad because he hadn't been able to obey God, but then it taught him how weighty these things are, and it has this kind of heavy pastor.

I don't.

Well, we need to grow up in the things of God and realize how God thinks about certain things, and idolatry is one of the worst things to ever be involved with.

It's another reason our country's in such trouble, because we've adopted idolatry at the highest levels in our country, and we need a strong move of God.

We need a bold church to stand against all these things, and so let's continue to draw near to God and remain teachable and develop a hearing heart.

Let's lift our hands and receive the Word tonight.

Hallelujah, father, we thank you for the Word.

We believe we receive instruction from Jesus, our master.

Jesus' name, amen.