Choose Wisely | Pastor Brandon Beals | Venture Church

I want to welcome you to Venture Church if I've

never had the opportunity to meet you.

My name is Brandon. I am the lead pastor of

the church.

I want to welcome all of you that are watching online,

also any of you that might be listening in the

weeks to come on our podcast. Thank you for joining

us today. I want to start off Antonia's story. When

I graduated from high school, all my buddies we all scattered.

We all went to different schools all over and we

tried to do the typical guy thing where we made

a commitment that we were going to stay.

Friends and then in.

The summer we would go on a long road trip together.

So that was how we were going to stay connected.

And it was the first summer after our freshman year

of college. We loaded up in my car and we

drove to southern California. I was super pumped. I'd never

been to California before. At this point is nineteen and

our motivation was the movie Point Break. I don't know

if you remember that movie from the eighties, from the

greatest movies ever, Johnny Utah Body, Patrick Swayze. We wanted

to go to all the places and do all of

the things except all the robberies that they did in

Point Break. So took us about three days and we

finally got to Huntington Beach and we were all pumped

to learn how to surf.

So we had the only thing.

We really knew about California at that point was what

we'd seen on TV or in movies. But we had

learned that things disappear in California. So we took all

the stuff that we'd brought with us in our car

out of our car and we packed them up all

together on the beach. You know, you did the smart thing,

like you take your wallet and your keys and you

slide them into your shoes, because there's nothing that keeps

thieves away from your wall it more than your shoes.

So we were taught.

So we did all that and we headed out into

the water in front of Huntington Beach.

We were there for like two hours.

In our heads, unbeknownst to us, it was more like

four or five hours. We were now like exhausted and

we thought, all right, let's go, let's go get some lunch, dinner,

whatever it was. And we began to paddle all the

way back into shore and we discovered at that point

something that we had never seen on the movies.

We scoured the.

Beach and guess what, our stuff was gone. As every

minute passed, our panic increased. We are running around trying

to find our stuff, asking everybody if they had seen

all of our stuff.

Finally, one wise.

Surfer guy says to us, what beach? Did you start

at Huntington Beach? They said, you're at Newport Beach? How

do we end up here? The current drift died you

all the way down here? Well, where's Huntington Beach? Five

miles that way. It was in that moment we discovered drift.

Have you noticed that when you drift it happens slowly.

You don't even realize that you're drifting. The next thing

you know, five hours later, you're not at Huntington Beach,

You're at Newport Beach. Somebody asked me in the lobby afterwards,

what happened to my stuff? We found our stuff. It

was just covered in sand. No one stole it, so

that was good. Did you know that just as you

drift in those circumstances, did you know that you can

also drift in your marriage? We just came off of

a marriage weekend, which, by the way, if you're at

it was incredible.

Was it not? I mean it was really We've done

about five of these.

This was so far beyond any of the other ones

that we've done. I can't even compare it. The only

thing I would tell you is that if you weren't there,

you seriously messed out, like the missed out, Like the

youth pastor side of me wants to make fun of

you that you weren't there, because it was like so good,

so much fun, so insightful, that you really really really

did miss out. But I want to give you just

a little hint of marriage teaching by talking to you

about drifting in marriage. Here are some signs that you

might be drifting in marriage. And remember this happens so

slowly you don't even recognize it. And oftentimes when you

find yourself drifting, it happens so slowly that when you

finally pay attention, you're like, how did I get so

far away? But drifting in marriage might look like your

conversations feel surface level or forced. Physical affection might be

fading away. You might find yourself avoiding spending time together

even though you live in the same house. You might

just be in different areas of the house all the time.

Maybe you feel unseen or unheard in your relationship. You

don't argue, and you've convinced yourself that's why our marriage

is healthy. But that's not necessarily good. It just means

you're not communicating. And then your futures no longer seem

like they're aligned, and you wake up one day thinking

it wasn't just one thing that caused us to grow apart.

It was just a bunch of little things. And then

we woke up one day and looked at each other

and thought, I don't really know you anymore, and I

actually don't really like you anymore.

Drifting?

Did you know that if you aren't careful, you also

find yourself drifting from Jesus today?

The story in our series through Solomon.

Takes us to what I believe is the most pivotal

chapter in Solomon's life because it lets us know really

what we're the big decisions in Solomon's life that set

the course of his entire life.

But in addition to that.

We begin to say, see his drift away from God.

It doesn't happen suddenly. There wasn't one major decision. It

was just that first decision that got him slowly drifting

from Huntington Beach, that would someday cause him to realize

I'm at Newport Beach. And it starts with First Kings,

Chapter three, Verse one. Everyone turned there. If you don't

have your Bible's the words will be behind me on

these screens. It says Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh,

king of Egypt, and he married his daughter. He brought

her to the city of David until he finished building

his palace, the Temple of the Lord, and the wall

around Jerusalem. I want to ask everyone to buy your heads,

close your eyes, repeat this prayer after me. Everyone say,

Dear Jesus, speak to my heart, change my life in

Jesus' name.

Amen.

I believe that this is the most important chapter to

understand the life of Solomon. We are going to see

the two sides of Solomon. We are going to see

what led him to his fame as king, but we're

also going to see what caused him to drift slowly

away from God. If you go down to verse three,

it starts happening. It says this Solomon showed his love

for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given to.

Him by his father, David.

If you missed last week's message, I talked about this

a lot. If you missed last week, you should go

back and listen to the podcast.

It was good. But David, towards the end of his.

Life, gives his final prayer, his final challenge, his final blessing,

a prophetic word over his son. He says, basically, Solomon,

God made me a promise. He said, God told me

that if my ancestors faithfully serve him, I will always

have an ancestor on the throne. So he said, Solomon,

pursue God, chase after God, don't veer away from God.

Serve God with everything. And now we're told we don't

know how long this has been. Might be several months,

might be a year since David had passed away. But

we're told Solomon was following the instructions of David, except

that he offered sacrifices and he burned incense on the

high places. The most fascinating thing about Solomon is when

he got married, he had one wife. By the time

Solomon died, he had over seven hundred wives. Last week

I said six hundred because I was giving him the benefit.

Of the doubt. My wife corrected me.

I thought she was wrong, so I researched it, and

sure enough, she's never wrong. Now, on the surface, his

marriages make sense because they were all for political reasons.

He was making one political alliance after another. It was strategic,

it was thought out, it was calculated, even from the

very first marriage.

To Pharaoh's daughter.

The problem was when he went from one wife to

two and he married Pharaoh's daughter, he immediately broke two

mosaic laws. Now I'm going to share these with you,

and here's what you're gonna think. This doesn't seem like

that big a deal. In fact, I don't even know

if I agree with this, And that was probably Solomon's

thinking too, That's why he slowly drifted. The first law

that he broke was in Deuteronomy seven to three, which

tells Jews not to marry non Jews. Now, this was

not meant to be racist. This is not like some

people will use this to argue for racism. This was

in our really terrible past when it came to racism.

But it is a total misinterpretation of that verse. This

verse is talking about being yoked versus unequally yoked back

then in those cultures, if you came from another nation,

you had your gods.

The Egyptians had their.

Gods, we see them in movies. The Greeks had their gods,

we see them in movies. The Hittites had gods, The

Philistines had gods, and the gods they worshiped were ingrained

in their cultures from birth.

So when you.

Marry a foreigner, that foreigner doesn't just give up all

of their previous understanding of the gods they served. So

when he married this Egyptian woman, she didn't give up

oli her worship of the Egyptian gods. She brought that

into the marriage. That is what God was referring to here.

There's many people in our church that have experienced what

it's like to be unequally yoked with your spouse. Like

it is just simple advice that you should marry somebody

that shares the same faith as you, because marriage is

tough with Jesus, it's super tough without Jesus. And when

you go into a marriage and you don't agree on

some of the big things, like one of the things

no matter where you land politically, which is a whole

other firestorm in a marriage, when you both agree to

serve Jesus, you agree on values, you have similarities on

the way that you're going to raise your kids. But

when you start from a standpoint where you don't even

have that in agreement, marriage is really, really, really tough. Now,

there are stellar examples in our church, some of you

out here that this is your life and your marriage

has worked. But I'm gonna bet every single one of you,

if given the chance, you would grab this microphone and

you would say, yeah, it has worked for us.

But it was stinking hard. So that was law number one.

Law number two was Deuteronomy twenty three to eight. They

weren't to allow a first or second generation Egyptian into

their assembly. You'd say, well, why is that a big deal?

That seems bad. Well, the Israelites had been slaves in

Egypt for four hundred years. Now we know that they

eventually cried out to God for help because of their oppression.

But it wasn't long after God delivered them from Egypt

they started looking back and missing Egypt. You do this

all the time. You complain to High Heaven about your job.

Eventually forces you to quit your job. You get a

new job, a month later. You miss your old job,

you think, because we get nostalgic of.

Where we used to live, who.

Our neighbors used to be, the house we used to have.

There's all the things that we hated about it that

made us change, we forget about and we we we

miss it. And God knew that that was going to

be the temptation, so he wanted to keep the Egyptian

influence out of it, so he made this command, you

shouldn't allow a first or second generation Egyptian into your assembly. Well, Solomon, like,

you think these are good like recommendations, but they're not

really good.

Rules, black and white rules like this isn't a big deal.

That is exactly what Solomon thought, and he started to drift.

Galatians five nine tells us that a little leven leven's

the whole lump of bread.

In other words, it's just a.

Little bit of something can spoil everything. What seems like

a small thing now over time has the ability to

affect everything. And I think the challenge for you and I,

especially when it's something little like I call it the

it's it's not that bad category, Like we all do

things that fit into the it's not that bad category,

or maybe it's disputable. If it's bad, and we do it,

maybe it's a slight modification on our tax return. Now

we have a little hint in our spirit that maybe

we shouldn't do it. But after a while we're like,

ain't that big deal. Everybody else is doing it. It's

kind of more like a standard but not a rule,

and we we go ahead and we do it anyways,

and then it's no big deal. We get our tax return,

we didn't get audited by the irs, it didn't hurt

anyone else. Life goes on, everything is great afterwards. And

that is exactly what happened to Solomon. What happened next

is the pivotal moment in Solomon's life Verse four.

Are you still with me? All right?

The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices. By the way,

these were good sacrifices, not like when he went with

his Egyptian wife to worship her gods in the high places.

And by the way, when Pharaoh. When Solomon did that,

he was just thinking, I mean, this is compromised, this

is marriage. She goes to my church, I'll go to

her church. How does it hurt me to go watch

her worship the Egyptian gods for thirty minutes. That isn't

that big a deal. He's thinking, happy wife, happy life,

and he starts drifting.

Well.

At this point, he's in Gibeon and he's worshiping Yahweh God.

Bible says that.

He offered a thousand burnt offerings to the altar like

he was super Christian. And at Gibeon, the Lord appeared

to Solomon during the night in a dream and God

said to him, ask for whatever you want me to

give you. I imagine it this way that he's at

a revival service. Worship is cranking, the Holy Spirit is

just sensed in the place, and Solomon is at the altar.

He's pressing into Jesus. I mean a thousand burnt offerings.

That is like, okay, I went to that half hour

Egyptian service. I'm going to make up for that right now.

We're going a thousand burnt offerings today.

And he like.

Worships all night long. Eventually he like falls asleep at

the altar. We just we watched him have a moment.

We didn't want to interrupt it. So the lights are

turned off. Everyone leaves and just leaves Solomon there, and

then Solomon that night has a dream, and in his

dream he has a conversation with God. In the ancient culture,

your dreams had in mense significance most of the time.

In twenty twenty six means your dreams are because you

ate too much pizza the night before.

But not then.

So he has this dream and God says, I'm gonna

give you one wish. You can ask for whatever you want,

and I will give it to you.

One thing. What do you want, Solomon.

Now, most of us, if we were given one wish

that we knew would be answered, maybe it would be

something like pay off my mortgage, you know me, give

me health, wealth, power, fame. But Solomon doesn't ask for

any of those things. Instead, verse six, he says, you've

shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because

he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart.

You have continued this great kindness to him, and I've

given him a son to sit on his throne this

very day. So he says, now, Lord, my God, you

have made me king in place of my dad David.

But I am only a little child.

Now. First off, I want to say it says little child.

He was actually anywhere between the age of seventeen to twenty,

so he wasn't a child. This was Solomon showing humility.

He was saying, like, I am not an expert. No

matter how gifted and talented you are. If you start

a new job, you should show some humility in that job.

You should show some understanding that you need to learn

and you need to grow.

And this was Solomon before God.

He's saying, hey, I don't know if I'm equipped to

lead like my dad. My dad was really good at this,

but I would really and he asks God for this,

and this is this is important. He says, your servant

is here among people that you have chosen, a great people,

too numerous to numbers over a million Israelites. So give

your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and

distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to

govern the great, this great people of yours. This is

what Solomon is most famous for. You've probably heard that

Solomon asked God for wisdom. We sum it up as

saying it was wisdom, but it was actually more than wisdom.

Solomon was saying, I want the ability to discern between opinions.

And cut to the heart of an issue.

I want to be able to see a heart and

know if it's good or if it is evil. It

is simplistic to say wisdom, and that's probably what you've

been taught before, So we will say Solomon asked for

wisdom to lead. The Bible tells us this about wisdom

and James. It says, the wisdom that comes from Heaven

is first of all pure, peace loving. Consider it submissive,

full of mercy and good fruit, impartial, and sincere. Now,

I want to explain quickly that there is a difference

between wisdom and knowledge. Just like there's a difference between

being somebody who's led by your head versus your heart,

somebody who has a sharp mind versus someone who has

street smarts, there's the difference between wisdom and knowledge.

One of the most prominent.

Ways that people describe the difference between wisdom and knowledge,

I wish I had a tomato.

But pretend I'm holding a tomato.

Use your creativity and imagination and imagine that I am

holding a tomato. Knowledge says this invisible thing that Brandon

is holding is a tomato. Knowledge also says tomato is

a fruit. But wisdom says, you don't put tomato in

a fruit salad. Difference between wisdom and knowledge. Well, Solomon

shockingly asks for wisdom to lead, and God was so impressed.

That he didn't ask for wealth, fame, power.

But instead he asked for the ability to see the

heart of people so that he could lead.

Well.

God said, not only will I give you this wisdom,

but I'm gonna give you all those other things too.

He said, I will make you the greatest king that

Israel has ever known.

You will have no equal.

I will give you wealth, I will give you honor,

I will give you power, I will give you fame.

And then God adds the caveat at the end and

he says, and if you serve me faithfully, I will

let you live a long life. He's basically saying, I'm

gonna make you the richest man who has ever lived.

You will have a kingdom greater than any man has

ever had, and I will let you live long enough

to actually enjoy it if you serve me. But the

problem is, we see this compromise and this drift happening

in the life of Solomon.

But early on.

God just keeps blessing him he keeps drifting, but it

he doesn't even really notice it. Maybe some people around

him are like, I'm not sure if he should do that,

but it's not that big a deal, but he keeps drifting.

You've probably seen this happen before in people's lives, where

you see them making decisions that they probably shouldn't make,

but everything seems to still be working out for them.

Their marriage is going great, their business is going great.

For all intents and purposes, they seem to be having success.

It always comes out, though it never stays small. The

drifting may be very small each moment, but over time

you find yourself at a whole other beach five miles away.

We see it with ministers, we see it with politicians,

We see it with celebrities. Everybody wanted to be in

Harvey Weinstein's movies, now no one does. Everybody wanted to

be friends with Jeffrey Epstein. That guy made millionaires out

of many of his friends, but nobody even wants to

be associated with him now. It always comes out. Word

of advice I'll always give you is no one remembers

how you start, they remember how you finish. If you

don't finish well, the way the world operates today, they

ignore everything good you ever did before if you don't

finish well, and you finish poorly when you keep drifting

into compromise. Now fascinating for Solomon is this drifting is

going on, But there is one pivotal moment in his

life that makes him world renown. You know how just

about every great leader has that one signature moment that

we always remember.

I mean, we know Rosa.

Park because she refused to give up her seat that

day on the bus. Does that mean she probably didn't

do anything else good or entire life. No, but we

know that one pivotal moment. Martin Luther King had many

great speeches, but we remember I have a dream. Abraham

Lincoln was an amazing president, but we mostly remember him

for how he.

Led us through the Civil War.

One of my all time favorite stories in history is

Hernan Cortez. We don't remember every other place he explored,

but we remember the story when all of his men

were afraid and they wanted to go back to the ships,

and he said, burn the ships. So there's always that

one moment that makes the leader. This was Solomon's moment.

Here's what happened a king's role is what is referred

to as a tripartite role, meaning that they had three

primary functions as a king. Number one, they led their armies.

Number two, they administrated government. But number three they adjudicated

interpersonal conflicts. Let me explain it. If you've ever watched

ancient movies or ancient TV shows, you'll have this incredibly wealthy,

powerful king or queen, and there is the moment that

they're sitting on a throne and regular common people are

coming to the king or queen and they're having the

king or queen adjudicate disputes and make decisions between them.

That was a part of their job. I want to

show you a map of Solomon's Palace. Here it is

Die has to use this next week. She's not allowed

to make any adjustments to it. But you'll see here

where it says Solomon's Palace, So Solomon's house.

That was the palace that was built.

You'll see up above is where the temple that eventually

Solomon has built.

We're going to talk about that next week.

But you'll see right in front of Solomon's palace, it's

called the court that was also known as the Hall

of Justice. So what the king would do is he

would come out into the hall of justice, and regular

people in the kingdom would come and help the have

the king make a decision in disputes. Well, we already

know Solomon. He prayed for wisdom to help him do

this the right way. He wanted to see past all

of the conversations and arguments, and he wanted to be

able to cut to the right heart of the person.

And here's that pivotal moment. There were two women who

were prostitutes. They lived together, likely had probably been friends.

They both got pregnant, and they both had baby boys within.

Three days of each other. Because they were poor, they.

Would have their babies lay next to them in their

beds when they slept at night. But tragedy struck one

night when a mom accidentally rolled over and laid on

her child and suffocated him and he died. She woke

up in the middle of the night, tried to shake

her baby, only to realize that her child had died.

She was crushed devastated as she held this dead baby

in her arms.

She walked over to her friend's room.

She saw her friend sound asleep laying on her bed

with her baby next to her sound asleep. Now, these

two moms probably held each other's babies. They probably had

an affinity for each other's children. They were born within

three days of each other. I don't know what caused

this mom to do this, but she made a decision

to take her dead baby and swap it out with

the one that was alive.

And claimed that it was her own.

Well, the other mom wakes up in the morning, sees

that her baby is not breathing, but then discovers this

is actually not my child. I mean, a mom knows

if it's her baby or not. But it turned into

this huge she said.

She said. In the community, no one.

Could decide whose baby had died and whose was living.

There was no eyewitnesses, so they brought it before Solomon.

No one else could have switched the babies.

There is no evidence one way or the other. There's

no scientific method to determine the DNA of the baby.

There was no guilty party confessing. Solomon is stuck in

the middle of a she said.

She said scenario.

The Book of James tells us this, if any of

you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously

to all, without finding.

Fault and it will be given to you. What does

that mean.

It means there's going to be times in your life

where you can't figure out what you should do. Sometimes

you can't figure out right and wrong in the circumstances.

Other times you were presented with two options, both of

which is good. But you have to determine not what

is good, but what is best. So what are we

giving advice here to do? If that is you and

you are struggling to decide, you should pray and ask

God for wisdom. And guess what, if you ask, He'll

give it generously. So in that moment, Solomon makes the

most famous decision. These two rival women were indistinguishable. Their

testimonies went in circles, but armed with divine wisdom, he

cuts through their competitive testimony and counter testimony, and Solomon

enacts a judgment that exposes the heart of the two women,

and he demonstrates that God gave him a hearing heart,

that wisdom has the ability to differentiate between good and evil.

Many of you don't know the story. He says this

and verse twenty four Before I read it, I got

a few minutes. Okay, any of you watched Seinfeld Good

Good crowd if you don't watch Seinfeld, you should famous

episode of Seinfeld. Kramer and Elaine bought a there's a

dispute over a bicycle that they had. Kramer claimed ownership

of the bike. Some would agree. Alaye claimed overship of

the bike. Some would agree, and they needed someone outside

to make the judgment on whose bike it is.

So they went to Newman, and Newman.

Does the famous thing where he says.

All right, here's what we're gonna do. Kramer, you have

a claim. Elaine, you have a claim. Both of your

claims are justifiable. So cut the bike in half.

Kramer, you get half the bike. Elaine, you get half

the bike. And Elaine is like, whatever, cut the bike

in half. And Kramer is like, no, don't do it. Elaine,

you can have the bike. And then Newman says, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Only the true owner of the bike would not allow

the bike to be destroyed. Kramer, the bike is yours.

And one of my all time favorite sign for the lines.

Kramer goes, Newman, you are wise and walks out of

the room with the bike. Where did that come from?

Huh? You're about to find out Verse twenty four. Then

the king said, bring me.

A sword, so they brought a sword for the king.

He then gave an order.

To cut the living child in two, give half to

one and half to the other.

The one who wasn't the mom.

So that seems fair. Neither of us should have a

living child. But how would the true mom respond? Like

a true mom, she said no, no, no, no, no, let.

The baby live. Give the baby to the.

Other mom so that the baby can live.

And in that moment, Solomon knew the truth, and.

He says, stop, don't hurt the child. Only the child's

real mother would want no harm to come to the child.

That is the mother that is not the mother. Well,

Solomon does this and word spreads verse twenty eight. It says,

when all Israel heard the verdict of the king, they

held the king in awe because they saw that he

had wisdom from God to administer judgment. Solomon from this

point becomes famous not just for how large his kingdom was,

not just for how large his army was, but how

he adjudicated justice.

People were amazed.

They would come from all over the world to be

witness to these moments. Sages, priests, kings, and queens.

From all over the world.

Would come to visit Solomon to watch him make verdicts.

And as Solomon.

Grows more and more famous, he marries more and more wives,

and he drifts further and further from God. Don't let

that be you. Before you drift too far, come home.

I want to ask everyone to buy your heads and

close your eyes. If you're here today and you do

not know Jesus but you want to, I want to

pray for you. The wisest decision you could ever make

is the decision to surrender your life to Jesus. So

I'm going to count to three, and if that's you,

you want to leave this place knowing I am a

follower of Jesus. When I say three, I want you

to raise your hand. There's also some of you. If

you were brutally honest, you'd say, pebe, I'm drifting. I'm

drifting far. If you're ready to say, but enough is enough,

I want to leave right with Jesus. When I say three,

I want you to raise your hand to So here

I go, no one looking around. One, two, raise your

hand now, three hands up all over our ushers missed

their moment. Everybody go ahead and stand up.

For those of you that raised your hand. We do

have a card that we would like to give you.

Please swing by.

The guest booth after the service and they have a

card that will share with you next steps.

But I want to ask.

Everyone here to pray this prayer with me. So this

prayer in itself doesn't mean anything, but there's probably twenty

of you that raised your hand. And for the twenty

of you that raised your hand, if you mean this prayer.

This is for you. You leave this place knowing you are

right with Jesus.

So I want to ask everyone to buy your heads,

close your eyes, repeat this prayer after me. Everyone say,

Dear Jesus, I stand before you today.

And I admit I'm messed up.

But today I ask you to forgive me, and I

invite you to come into my life.

And to change me.

I choose from this day forward to serve you with

my life. Thank you for forgiving me and for saving

me in Jesus' name.

Amen, Amen, thank you so much for being here today

at Venture and on your way out, I just want

to point your attention to the fact that we have

a page on our app called What's Next. If you're

wondering what you do next, this is a great place

to go. It gives you some next steps, gives you

a Bible reading plan for this week, as well as

some resources to dig in. We send you out with

the charge to go. Stay close to Jesus as you leave.

Have a great day.