345: Max Wickham - Exhortation: Distractions

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:03

   Welcome to good Chris Delphian talks. I’m Levi. I’m Chris. I’m Jason. And I’m Brian, thank you for joining us this week. On this podcast, we select one talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. Each week we post a talk that we previewed from suggestions sent in by listeners from around the world.

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   Then we record a short intro beforehand as a personalized recommendation to you on why we are sharing the talk. And now let’s talk more about this week’s talk.

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   Hey everyone, it’s Jason Hensley. This week we are going to be listening to an exhortation given at the San Diego Ecclesia by brother Max Wickham. This exhortation is about distractions, and it was actually recommended to us by one of our younger listeners, which I thought was pretty cool because it’s awesome to have young people like that listening to Bible talks, thinking about the Bible. And thus I really wanted to post it on here, thinking about the value that this listener received from it. And I also found it to be really helpful. The big focus, as you can imagine, in this exhortation is our ability to get distracted by so many things. And it’s just a reminder to really focus on what really matters.

4. 1:35

   And I think, honestly, that’s something we all need pretty frequently. We need to be reminded of what matters in life and what we need to set our mind on. So I hope that this exhortation encourages you to do so, helps you to lay aside every weight and to ultimately seek first that Kingdom. So this is Brother Max Wickham exhortation given at the San Diego Ecclesia on distractions.

5. 2:12

   Several weeks ago a brother came up to me after a meeting and said, I thought you were supposed to speak today. And I said, yes, I was. I said. But Brother Kent needed to switch because he was going to be out of town later this month. And so you caught a break today because that was a great exhortation that he gave us.

6. 2:39

   And it was now this morning there will be no respite because this is the day I switched into you. But when I saw the reading for today in Proverbs, I was happy twice. Once because it was Proverbs and the second time because of the chapters, chapters 8 and 9, which have much about wisdom and I just had to smile.

7. 3:20

   I was sitting at my desk when I started studying in my study and I looked on the wall and I only have one Bible related verse on my wall. It’s a plaque about that square and above it in script it says wisdom.

8. 3:43

   It’s not a quote from Proverbs but what it says from Matthew 7 is ask and it will be given. Seek and you will find.

9. 3:57

   It’s interesting, that plaque, I found it in one of those shops that are sort of something between an antique shop and a garage sale. The ones that have individual little booze and one of them has records and another one has China. Another one has maybe biblical things, but not usually. And I saw this little thing some years ago and I thought, you know, that would be good.

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    I’ll put that on my wall right in front of my desk. And that will be a constant reminder to me to seek God’s wisdom and to think about the things of God.

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    But sadly, over the years I got used to that plaque on the wall and I realized how seldom I actually think about it or even notice it. It is just like some of the pictures on the wall in my study.

12. 5:15

    The other bad thing about my study is it happens to be my music room and my audio room. So although I spend really quite a lot of time in my study, I’m afraid that the bulk of my time is probably around my music, not around the things of wisdom and the things of God. Although I do find one way to combine that effectively and that’s that.

13. 5:49

    I have found that if I put Mozart on, I can study very effectively to Mozart. So in a way that is the exhortation. We are tempted by the things that distract us and certainly as we read today. And thank you for doing that split reading, Brother Phil.

14. 6:18

    That was the case with Solomon. Solomon had he had every talent, he had every gift that would make him the greatest Bible student and the greatest man. And yet when we read in the kings there what he did, how he actually ended up on his knees before these idols, worshipping them with his wives, I find that frankly terrifying. How?

15. 7:00

    How could a man that was so in touch with God, that was beloved of God, that knew, knew better? How could that happen? He was the man that said, in our reading today, wisdom is better than Ruby’s, and all the things that may be desired cannot be, cannot be compared to it. So there is a great deal about wisdom in these couple of chapters and in Proverbs in general. But Solomon also wrote a good deal about Wisdom and Ecclesiastes.

16. 7:45

    And there was a verse in an Ecclesiastes too, that just really puzzled me as I was getting up this exhortation. Ecclesiastes, too, is a documentation of all of the way that he lived his life, all of his excesses, his thousand women, the way he stockpiled gold, the way he multiplied horses, all of his construction projects, the gardens, the buildings, everything to the extreme.

17. 8:29

    You know that it took the vast majority of his time. Now he did write the Proverbs and he did write Ecclesiastes. He was still in touch with God at that point. But the verse that got me was verse 9 of chapter 2. He says basically I did it all. I had it all.

18. 8:53

    I denied myself nothing. I did whatever I wanted and as much of it as I wanted. And he said, you know what? I was still as wise as ever, and I thought, really, how could that be? How could one live most of their life, which he did in a life of selfishness, in a life of excess, and still have all the wisdom that God gave him in the beginning? How?

19. 9:33

    How is that possible? I think I understand it better, having gone back to Ecclesiastes again and read what he says there about wisdom and what he says about his lifestyle and what he gives by way of advice. The thing is, Solomon never recommends doing what he did. He says I’ll tell you what I did. I’ll tell you how I live my life. I’ll tell you how it turned out and how did it turn out. He said it was all nothing.

20. 10:20

    It was all vanity. He basically says, I did it, I lived it, I had it all, I tried it all, it was nothing. But he says at the end of Ecclesiastes in that verse that’s quite familiar, he says that don’t, don’t do as I did, do as I’m telling you. He says the conclusion of the matter is this fear God and keep his commandments.

21. 11:01

    It’s the whole duty of man, He said. That’s what it’s all about, is about God. And hopefully, you know, we read that that reading that piece of it in First Kings 11 and that little piece where Phil stopped is about where God takes away his peace that he had had all of his reign. And he starts giving him affliction. He starts giving him enemies.

22. 11:33

    He gives him trouble. He tells him I’m going to take the Kingdom away from you, but I’m going to wait till your son, hopefully. Ecclesiastes was written after Solomon came to his senses, Hopefully.

23. 11:59

    The thing that’s so interesting about Solomon is that in many ways he’s an excellent picture of Christ. What ways? He’s David’s son. He was king in Jerusalem. He sat on David’s throne. He was given wisdom by God. He was full of the spirit. He was loved by his Father. He was the King who ruled in peace as the Lord Jesus will. He was instrumental in building the temple in Jerusalem. So many pictures of Christ.

24. 12:38

    And yet with all of that wisdom, how did he go so wrong? And I guess more importantly for us, what can we learn from it as far as what did he do wrong and how did it go wrong? The easy answer is in First Kings 11. There he went wrong when he joined his wives in their idolatry, where he substituted the love of God into the love of his wives. It says he clung to those in love. He left the love of the Lord his God. But that’s an easy answer and it’s a right answer. But obviously if he had 1000 wives, he didn’t marry those wives when he was old.

25. 13:38

    He married those wives and his concubines probably all the way through his reign. He started early. He started early, and he went through everything that God commanded that king should not do. He ticked them off and he did every one of them.

26. 14:01

    Don’t multiply horses. Well, he did. Don’t stack up gold, he did. Don’t multiply wives, he did. Don’t marry foreign women. Well, that’s all he had with foreign women, it appears. So Solomon, in his wisdom, somehow he felt like he could do it. He could ignore what God said and live the way he wanted to live and explore the things he was curious about and it would be OK. He must have some way rationalize that in his head, and that’s very scary because that is a comment on how deceitful the mind of God can be, even for somebody that was as wise as Solomon.

27. 15:08

    Distractions. That’s really what I’d like to talk about because that’s what his wives were. Now, anything can be a distraction. One of these things can be a huge distraction. Even though this isn’t very huge, this is a smartphone, it’s a tiny 1. And I can tell you truthfully, this phone is 0 distraction to me with my eyesight and the size of this screen, I can guarantee you I spend almost zero time on this phone. That’s a fact.

28. 15:56

    I use it as a phone and that’s it. And a lot of people complain, well, your phone’s never on. And that that’s true. I turn it on if I want to call somebody. But I think for the average person, a smartphone, that’s a huge distraction. They are set up to be a distraction.

29. 16:24

    They discover your interests and they pamper to them. They will feed you more of what you are consuming in ways that are set up to be attractive to you and to keep you going on it. I’ve been in quite a few doctors offices recently waiting and while Linda’s been getting her eye treatments and that and I look around the. I look around those offices and do a little survey. You know how many people are on their phones while they’re sitting there?

30. 17:09

    9 out of 10 and whether if they’re a pair, you know, like a husband and wife or a mom and a son or a dad and A and a son or daughter, it doesn’t matter. They’re both on their phones. They’re not talking to each other.

31. 17:30

    So it’s a very, it’s a unique distraction to our age, but it’s very powerful. But as the apostle Paul observes, probably the most forceful, the most attractive distraction in our lives can be our mate. You know, Paul says a single person, they can pretty much be devoted to the Lord if they want to be like Paul was and certainly as the Lord Jesus was, he says.

32. 18:11

    But the married person, they’re concerned about pleasing their maid. It’s a natural thing. And that is what set Solomon up for for failure. He had all of these wives and he became very much in love with them and he pleased them. They wanted an idol on a hill. Well, I’ll build you one. You want a high place to to honor your God, I’ll go there with you and we’ll set one up and worship it together. He pleased his wives rather than his God. So it’s it’s something to keep in mind. It’s something to keep in mind as far as how we influence our mate, because we do so we ought to try to influence them for good.

33. 19:25

    Distractions certainly do vary. I, I have been very proud, you know, of my little smartphone. That is no problem to me. Now if you want to talk to me about my laptop, that can be a problem. The advantage of a laptop is, at least in my case, is I never unplug it from my desk.

34. 19:49

    So I do use it for Bible study as well as looking at audio gear. So like a smartphone, it can be used for good purposes, but at least I can’t carry it with me, not if I’ve got it at my desk plugged in. But it is a distraction to be sure.

35. 20:16

    In conclusion, Solomon was a type of Christ in many ways, but not in the most important ways. And Luke, when Jesus was asked what are the important commandments? The most important he says you, you need to love the Lord your God with all your heart. Well, Solomon was a dismal failure in that and your neighbor as yourself.

36. 20:46

    And I think there is very little evidence that Solomon was focused on the needs of others. I think about the fact that after his son took over and he sent the tax collector out to collect taxes, they killed him. His own people killed him. The queen of Sheba may have thought that she saw something very wonderful. I’m not.

37. 21:14

    I know she saw something very grand when she came, but it was tough on the folks that were paying for it. Very tough. It tells us in Isaiah about the Lord Jesus, that he would have a spirit of wisdom, a spirit of understanding, a spirit of the knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And I love the verse out of Colossians that says that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

38. 21:55

    And about Jesus, as a child, he grew and waxed strong in spirit and he was filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon him. So Jesus had even more wisdom than Solomon, but he acted upon his wisdom and he lived his wisdom. And so instead of Solomon who says don’t do as I did, do like I’m telling you, the Lord says follow me. He was wise enough to live what he knew. We will be distracted.

39. 22:42

    You know we will. You know, you are whatever it is you’re interested in are your distractions. But we need to keep our heart for God. That’s where Solomon went down. He still had a relationship with God until he gave away his heart. So we need to guard our heart and keep it for the Lord.

40. 23:12

    We come to the emblems before us and we see unselfishness, We see service, we see the love of God, the love of Jesus, brethren, the love of us. Love the Lord with all your heart, your soul, your strength and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. That was Jesus. No distractions, only dedication, self sacrifice and love. And that’s what we remember this morning. Thank you for listening to the Good Christadelphian Talks podcast.

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43. 24:58

    God bless and talk to you next week.