Solomon, the wisest man ever, teaches us that honoring God is life’s supreme target

3 min read

“I have built this temple for the honor of the LORD God of Israel.”

2 Chronicles 6:10

I recently tried my hand at axe throwing. It looked easy enough. “Just throw it, and it’ll stick,” the guy said. But not for me. I barely managed to get the axe to stick anywhere, much less in the bullseye. I may as well have been throwing bowling balls.

All I did was make a lot of noise.

Speaking of a bullseye, may I ask, what you are aiming for in life? What is your target?

A certain job? A level of income? To build your retirement fund? Status in the eyes of people? Just to be happy?

It may not be something you consciously think about or express, but most likely you have some internal goal that is guiding you today. We all have an impression of the ideal future situation that we’d like to experience. As James Smith says in a book called You are What You Love, “You are what you love because you live toward what you want.” That is, we all have a neverland in our minds that’s drawing us. This situation that we romanticize in our heads has a way of becoming our telos, our supreme objective in life, or our bullseye.

For Solomon, the bullseye was the glory of God

Solomon was a visionary and builder par excellence. You might consider him the Jeff Bezos or the Elon Musk of his day, because he was an icon of fame and wealth. But Solomon was also a man of faith. Though far from perfect, his relationship with God was his greatest asset and the singular source of his legendary wisdom.

Solomon was blessed to oversee the building of the first permanent Temple in Jerusalem, a project that took 20 years to complete. The Temple was more glorious than any other place in the world.

But notice, when it was all finished and time for the dedication, this is what Solomon said publicly:

“…I have built this Temple to honor the name of the LORD, the God of Israel.” -2 Chronicles 6:10

Solomon didn’t slap his name over the door and say, “Look at what I did.” Instead, he leveraged his moment in time to bring attention to the goodness and majesty of God. He wanted people to know God better because of his life and how he lived it. The glory of God was the goal. That was his bullseye.

Sure, Solomon probably got sidetracked from time to time like the rest of us, but on his clear-eyed days the most important thing to him, his supreme goal, was to bring honor to God.

And in this respect, Solomon’s is a worthy model. Let’s take note. Because life is best when the glory of God is our ultimate bullseye.

The Apostle Paul is another example of someone oriented to the glory of God. In fact, the phrase, ‘glory of God‘ appears some 20 times in Paul’s New Testament letters. This is how he summed it up for the Christians at ancient Corinth:

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.-1 Corinthians 10:31

That means that no matter what we are doing today – whatever our job, whatever our status, whatever our circumstances – if we do it for the glory of God, we’re living right on target.

He wanted people to know God better because of his life and how he lived it. The glory of God was the goal.

Turns out, the glory of God is everyone’s bullseye.

No more throwing bowling balls. Let’s put an axe right smack in the middle of the target today…and may God get the glory.

It’s a new day with God. Run with it.