Thank you, Scott, and thank all of you as well. It's a wonderful opportunity to be here again. My attempt to be with you all last year was interrupted with the birth of my daughter, who will be one on Sunday. I did actually make my way into town last year and I was a part of a very early meeting. I think it happened mid-morning on Thursday morning, but then my wife called and I had to go back home because the baby was coming and she came.

Again, in keeping with Scott's comments on Carleton coming and reading, oftentimes one of the best ways to learn something is by experience. So when someone comes and stands in the pulpit, who does a wonderful job of giving attention and taking pains to the public reading of Scripture, we are benefited as a result. We learn that the Word of God is really living and active. We're affected by it. In fact, when the apostle wrote to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, he said, Take, pardon, verse 13, until I come give attention to the public reading of scripture to exhortation and teaching.

There are a number of areas where we see encouraging reform in our churches around the globe, particularly in our country, but this is one that I would like to see further reform. It goes on in verse 15, it says, take pains with these things, be absorbed in them, giving real attention. Pastors, particularly, I'm talking to you, give attention to reading the Word of God publicly and reading it well. I'm preaching through Genesis at home right now. I just finished chapter 11.

So the past couple of weeks I've had to just fumble through is what it felt like. The genealogies that are there, just reading them in their entirety as we look at them and consider what God has for us. All of that's completely irrelevant to what I want to talk to you about, but I wanted to say it. I was so benefited and blessed by Carleton coming and reading the scriptures in that way. Matthew chapter 12 verse 42, the words of our Lord, the Queen of the South will rise up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

And behold, something greater than Solomon is here. Something greater than Solomon is here. Solomon, we're familiar with him to some degree. God came to Solomon and said, ask what you wish me to give you. Solomon, exposing that he had a measure of wisdom already said, give your servant an understanding heart.

1 Kings chapter 3 records for us that it was pleasing in the side of the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing. In fact, God went further and said to Solomon, because you have asked this thing and have not asked for yourself long life, nor have asked riches for yourself, nor have you asked for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself discernment to understand justice. Behold, I've done according to your words. Behold, I've given you a wise and discerning heart so that there has been no one like you before you nor shall one like you arise after you I've also given you what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that there will not be any among the kings like you all your days." The beginning of the next chapter, 1 Kings 4, now Solomon was king over all Israel. God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore.

Verse 30 continues, Solomon's wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the sons of the East and all the wisdom of Egypt, for he was wiser than all men and his fame was known in all the surrounding nations. He also spoke 3, 000 proverbs and his songs were 1, 005. He spoke of trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon even to the hyssop that grows on the wall. He spoke also of animals and birds and creeping things and fish. Men came from all peoples to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom Solomon was greater than all the kings on the earth Solomon was richer than anyone who had ever lived Solomon was wiser than any man who had ever lived.

Which brings us to the passage that I actually want to read with you. If you open to 1 Kings chapter 10, With the background of Solomon and his kingdom and the wisdom that God had given him and how he had blessed him, we'll read the first 13 verses initially of chapter 10. First Kings chapter 10, now when the queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord, she came to test him with difficult questions. So she came to Jerusalem with a very large retinue, with camels carrying spices and very much gold and precious stones. When she came to Solomon, she spoke with him about all that was in her heart.

Solomon answered all her questions. Nothing was hidden from the king which he did not explain to her. When the Queen of Sheba perceived all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his servants, the attendance of his waiters and their attire, his cupbearers and his stairway by which he went up to the house of the Lord. There was no more spirit in her. Then she said to the king, it was a true report which I heard in my own land about your words and your wisdom.

Nevertheless, I did not believe the reports until I came and my eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. You exceed in wisdom and prosperity the report which I heard how blessed are your men how blessed are these your servants who stand before you continually and hear your wisdom blessed be the Lord your God who delighted in you to set you on the throne of Israel because the Lord loved Israel forever therefore he made you king to do justice and righteousness. She gave the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold and a very great amount of spices and precious stones. Never again did such abundance of spices come in as that which the Queen of Sheba gave King Solomon.

Also the ships of Haram which brought gold from Ophir brought in from Ophir a very great number of Almag trees and precious stones. The king maid of the Almag trees supports for the house of the Lord for the king's house also liars and harps for the singers. Such Almag trees have not come in again nor have they been seen to this day. King Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba all her desire which she requested, besides what he gave her according to his royal bounty. Then she turned and went to her own land together with her servants.

Verse 23, so King Solomon became greater than all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. All the earth was seeking the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom that God had put in his heart. Year after year they brought gifts and came to see this great man. Men came from all peoples we saw back in verse 4 to hear the wisdom of Solomon. From all the kings of the earth they would hear about the wisdom of this man and they would make their way to Jerusalem to meet him.

And the queen of Sheba was no different. When she heard about Solomon, she made the great trek from her homeland in northern Africa to see him, to see for herself if the rumors that she was hearing were true. She came with questions, numerous questions, the Bible tells us, difficult questions. She found the reports that she had heard to be true. And not just true, she admits that the reality exceeded her expectations.

The queen was not at all disappointed. In fact, she was overjoyed, verse 9, to the point of praising God. Blessed be the Lord your God who delighted in you to set you on the throne of Israel. Consider the cost with me that this queen paid in order to make this Inquisition. A very large crew of escorts and staff and camels and gold and precious stones.

The time required for her to go the great distance, the humility on her part to recognize that Solomon was being promoted as greater than she was yet still in light of that she came eagerly eagerly with great expectations and all her expectations were exceeded verse 13 tells us she received all that she desired even stating the half was not told me. It was far too difficult a task to accurately describe what Solomon was like in her attempt to explain it. She basically is insinuating that what was true for her was true for anyone else. You have to see it to believe it. You just have to experience it.

What she had heard about him was great, yet it still didn't do him justice because he was too great to be able to be explained fully. So she moves to using superlatives and what what feels like exaggeration almost with describing Solomon and his kingdom. His wisdom surpassed all of mankind And it wasn't confined to any one particular area. It covered philosophy and the sciences and politics and morality as well as spiritual truths. Chapter 4 verse 33, he spoke of trees from the cedar that is in Lebanon even to the hyssop that has grown on the wall he spoke of animals and birds and creeping things and fish.

We can put words in the Queen's mouth here and say Solomon is inexplicable. But the picture that is being portrayed here is more than the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon. The picture that is being displayed for us is this queen, laying aside who she is, her status in this world, spending what was rightly hers in order to go and hear about this man. It's an example of the future worship that is now present among us of all the nations coming to worship a king. A king who is far more inexplicable than Solomon.

A king who himself is incomprehensible. A king who left heaven's throne on high and robed himself in frail humanity, who lived with us here on this earth, tabernacling among us, living, being tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin, all the way to the point of death, even death on a cross. And God highly exalted him and he sits now enthroned in the heavens. But no matter how clear or how accurate or how detailed we describe Christ, after hearing 10 or 12 or maybe even 15 sermons about him over this time, we still will say, because it's true we cannot fully comprehend him he is infinite we are finite we can never and will never fully understand or comprehend him he is eternal we are creatures of time time that he himself created we cannot possibly as creatures that are fashioned by him, rise then to a place of exhaustively knowing him. Isaac Watts said it well, in vain our haughty reason swells for nothing's found in thee but boundless inconceivable and vast eternity.

King David in Psalm 145, great is the Lord and highly to be praised and his greatness is unsearchable or the Apostle oh the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways. Job to his friend Bildad, behold, these are the fringes of his ways, just the very edges of who he is. How faint a word we hear of him, but his mighty thunder who can understand. So how do we respond to a Christ so majestic, so incomprehensible? How do we respond to the reality that he is beyond knowing fully because it feels like a contradiction.

There's a paradox here. It's not a contradiction, but it's an apparent contradiction. Think about the words of the prophet Hosea, my people are destroyed for not knowing me for lack of knowledge or Romans 11 who has known the mind of the Lord do you not feel the tension when we consider these remarkable truths that Hosea also says, let us know him, let us press on to know him. But then Paul also again quoting the psalmist, there are none who understand. So should our response simply be just to throw our hands up and say we cannot know him so why press on?

Why make any effort? His ways are unsearchable, they're past finding out, they're higher than our ways, infinitely higher. No absolutely not our response should not be to throw our hands up in fact if Christ could be understood or comprehended by us then he would not deserve our worship. The fact that he is incomprehensible should move us to worship him. It incentivizes us to adore him, it lures us into longing to know more of the reality of who he is.

If we were able to fully comprehend him, he would not be God. Surely there is some type of harmonization to this. He is incomprehensible, incapable of being fully known. Yet we're commanded to know him. So he's also knowable.

He is transcendent in his essence. But not only on the one hand do we have a God in Christ specifically who essentially is unknowable, transcendent, completely other. Our ability as fallen mankind to understand and comprehend him is scanty at best. He is all in all. We are refashioned dirt, animated dust.

He fills time and eternity. Our life is but a vapor. There is no greater measurable difference in all the world than the gulf between God and us. He is holy. He is righteous.

He is pure. He is all together lovely We are sin We do sin We are full of sin We drink iniquity like it's water And this creates a terrible predicament for us. Because it was this Jesus himself who said, this is eternal life to know God and his son Jesus Christ your life every individual in here every person on the face of the planet everyone who has ever lived or will ever live, your life depends on the knowledge of the incomprehensible Christ. This is not good news. Your life depends on you accomplishing the impossible feat of knowing him who dwells in unapproachable light.

Incomprehensible? Incomparable? Absolutely. Yet, he's knowable. And this is good news.

How? How can it be that we could know this one, this glorious one? Because this all-glorious God of unsearchable greatness has chosen in unbelievable kindness and inexplicable compassion. He has chosen in his mercy to reveal himself to us. And not only that, not only has God stooped, humiliating himself and becoming a man to make himself able to be known in his remarkable wisdom, he has also created us with the ability to know him.

An ability that was marred in the garden by original sin, but that is regained by recreation or regeneration by the Holy Spirit. If God did not reveal himself to us, his creatures, knowledge of him would be unattainable. And, although we can know him in part, we must remember and be aware that it is impossible for us to have an exhaustive knowledge of him. He is infinite and eternal. Which begs another question from us.

How, if we from us. How, if we must know him, how can we get to know this Christ? We are, I am afraid, too often guilty of entertaining thoughts about Christ that are immensely inconsistent with the revelation that God has made regarding him in the scriptures. We are guilty as the psalmist exposes for us of thinking that he's just like us. Psalm 50 verse 21.

We are guilty too often of assuming that he is soft on sin, that he's loving towards everyone, even unrepentant sinners. We are guilty of failing to hear him when he exclaims that our thoughts are not his thoughts and our ways are not his ways. As high as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Not just a little higher. God's not just a little bit bigger than us.

It doesn't matter how we feel. As the heavens are higher than the earth, he is infinitely beyond us. And Christ particularly is radically different from what our finite minds conceive Him to be like. It's impossible for us to fathom a being who needs nothing, who needs no one. Yet Christ doesn't need us.

Rather, he insists for our good that we desperately need him. In him we move and breathe and have our being. We need him for our everything. When we entertain faulty understanding and below par knowledge of Christ, there's a progression that results in our lives. When we allow the paltry views of the God of the Bible to exist in our hearts and our souls and our minds, then as a result we naturally support extremely high views of mankind.

And not just mankind in general, but especially of ourselves. You know, I'm not very prone of thinking too highly of me. When we think too highly regarding ourselves, we are guaranteed to host twisted, perverted, unbiblical ideas about sin. And in our arrogance then, we do not respect God's definition of sin, but rather we determine what is and what is not acceptable for ourselves, ultimately ignoring him and not heeding his word. And the progression continues in a downward spiral when we do not pardon when we do in fact have these twisted ideas about the reality of sin it inevitably corrupts our understanding of the gospel and of salvation if we wrongly define sin thinking of it as just a minor issue then the need for a god-sized salvation from that sin is eliminated when sin is treated as insignificant A small amount of salvation is assumed to be sufficient.

A little dab will do you. What then should we do? We must know him. Eternal life is knowing God and his son, Jesus Christ. How can we know him?

God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days the writer of Hebrews exclaims he has spoken to us in his son the one like whom no one else speaks He himself is the living Word of God and God has preserved his word for us that we might know him. No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him. He has made himself known to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So, instead of us fainting under the impossible expectation of knowing the unknowable, we should rather glory in the amazing reality that God became man, that he condescended from on high, that transcendence became condescension, so that scriptural truth, so that the scriptural truth with man it is impossible but all things are possible with God might be proven true in our lives for the sake of our souls when we read about the Queen of Sheba She was not in any way bemoaning that she did not know more about Solomon. She was reveling in what had been revealed about his wonderful wisdom and his glorious riches.

She didn't get there and think, oh, it's so much more. I wasn't prepared for this. I'm going back home. It's not worth it. I can't even begin to understand.

The half wasn't told her. That was a good thing to her. It's a glorious thing that there's more to God than we can wrap our minds around. The great transcendence of God in Christ is not an excuse for us to forsake seeking to know him. Rather, it is the greatest incentive imaginable for us to press on to know him more in the power of his resurrection and in the fellowship of his sufferings never being able to exhaust him is not a reason to sit by satisfied with our meager understanding rather it's an excuse a good excuse to make every effort to know him better because knowing him is what we were created for and the appetite for knowing this Christ, the God-man, is an insatiable appetite in every true Christian.

All the earth was seeking the presence of Solomon to hear from him to see for themselves his glory his wisdom and his riches Solomon was a man a wise and wealthy man yes yet a mere man and everyone on the planet desired his presence. Which is why the Queen came. Again, 1 Kings 10-1, when the Queen of Sheba heard about the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the Lord. Here's the reason the Queen came. She wanted to see what God had done.

Even in the midst of a mere man she wanted to see verses 8 and 9, the glory of this person and the joy of his people, how many had benefited because of his greatness. The Queen of Sheba had zero regrets for making sure that she met with this man. She didn't regret at all the cost that she had paid. May it be true of us as well. The Queen traveled from the ends of the earth to hear from Solomon and this Jesus whom we've been talking about says that we will hear from her again.

The queen of the south will rise up with this generation at the judgment and will condemn it because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And behold, something greater than Solomon is here. We will hear from her at the final judgment as she is raised up to condemn those who refuse to seek to know God in Christ, because something greater than Solomon is here. The conduct of the Queen serves as condemnation for us. She had merely heard a report, second third hand, about Solomon's wisdom and there was interest on her part sufficient enough for her to do what it takes to go and meet him.

She believed the report about him when she heard it. She didn't doubt it. She sought to go and see for herself. She acted on the report when she heard about it. She gave up much in order to meet Solomon face to face.

She herself stooped from her high position, leaving a throne empty as she went into a foreign land. She took advantage of the time that was afforded her with him, asking questions, gazing at the house that had been built, the food on his table, the seating of his servants. She wanted to know the details about this man. Not only does her conduct serve as condemnation, but the circumstances as well. The report would have most likely...the report about Solomon and his wisdom would have most likely gotten to the Queen of Sheba by means of trade merchants between the countries.

Not exactly the best source of information. The report about Solomon was based on his general wisdom or temporal wisdom. And the report about Solomon wasn't near as moving as the report that we have about Christ, the one who came and lived and died and was raised again, the one who rules enthroned on high effortlessly over us all. Her report was not accompanied by a divine command again, most likely trade merchants. She didn't receive an invitation from Solomon.

She had no promise of being received. These circumstances serve as a condemnation because in light of this, she still made her way to meet with him. Listen, the Queen of Sheba had much less truth and far less privilege than you and I do. She had Solomon's wisdom on the horizon. She was an outsider, she wasn't one of Solomon's people.

She had no potential even of becoming one of Solomon's people, yet she came to hear Solomon's words. We, on the other hand, have the wisdom of God in Jesus Christ. And not only that but the promise of sonship, the invitation to come, come to me all you who are weak and heavy laden and all who come to me I will in no way cast any of them out. There's a promise that we will be received. Solomon could impart knowledge, he could explain things about the trees and politics and philosophy and even spiritual things, But Solomon could not enable the queen or anyone else the ability to comprehend it.

Jesus does both for his people. Now there's a danger in us simply praising the Queen for her willing humiliation and her desire to be in the presence of one who is wiser. But if at the end of the day we merely sit aside and pat the Queen on the back and fail to live out the relevance of her story, then we may be one of those who one day see her making her way into the judgment room condemning us. Our greater privilege will not secure our immunity. Rather, our greater privilege, young people specifically, growing up in a Christian home, your greater privilege does not secure immunity but rather it aggravates your responsibility.

For some reason we're a people who are prone to assume that increased privilege somehow negates responsibility. However, neither light granted nor privilege gained will ensure your salvation. Information at your fingertips, the Bible in your lap or on your app is not revelation in our hearts. We must press on seeking to know Him. We cannot know God apart from the person and work of Jesus Christ and we cannot know God apart from the Holy Spirit's application of that work to our souls.

But listen, these truths, these cannots, are not meant to keep us at bay. They're not stiff arms from God to keep us on the outside. They are the most enticing, the most inviting truths known to mankind. The Queen counted no expense or trouble too great to obtain a meeting with Solomon. Do you think your labors are too difficult in order to meet with Christ?

It seems in our day that almost anything is a sufficient excuse to keep us from both private meetings with God as well as public meetings with him and his people. The Queen did not consider the affairs of an entire empire important enough to prevent her from seeking a meeting with a mere man. Oh, that we would allow nothing, absolutely nothing, to detain us from meeting with this Christ. Oh, that we would come and see and hear and commune with and get to know this man, this incomprehensible, incomparable Christ, the one in whom that in whom all the fullness of deity dwells. Yes, it's true he is incomprehensible, he is transcendent, and his ways are past finding out.

But it is also true that God has made himself both knowable and known to his own in his matchless son Jesus Christ the Lord let us know him Let us press on to know him in the power of his resurrection, in the fellowship of his suffering, that as pursuing him and seeing his glory revealed on the pages of his word that we might gaze and gaze at his glory, that we might be transformed as a result from one degree of glory into another, that our hearts might be increasingly soft and pliable, conformed into the image of Jesus himself, that we might walk with him so near, that we might love him so dear, that we might take great pains to obey him in every aspect of our lives, that his glory might be made known in us through the church for all generations amen