David's Advice, Part 2

1 Kings 2:1-4
Now the days of David drew near that he should die, and he charged Solomon his son, saying: “I go the way of all the earth; be strong, therefore, and prove yourself a man. And keep the charge of the LORD your God: to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His judgments, and His testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn; that the LORD may fulfill His word which He spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your sons take heed to their way, to walk before Me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul,’ He said, ‘you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’

We looked at the Chronicles counterpart of this a few months ago (for another random chapter day) which is in 1 Chronicles 28:9-10.

So David, the king of Israel, was going to die, and Solomon, his second-oldest son, was to take over the kingdom. According to this version of the story, David first said some comforting words. The basic gist of these words is 'I'm going to die, but everything dies, so be strong and be a man', but obviously much kinder than my version.

Then David told Solomon how to prosper in life. If Solomon followed God's words, he would be happy, and he would be on the throne of Israel.

Now, we know that Solomon didn't follow all of God's words. The whole marrying-foreign-women thing and the worshipping-their-idols thing combined to make his sin. So why was he still successful?

Because through it all, He still loved God, and worshipped Him.

There's another explanation that's necessary here, though, I think. David said that Solomon would be prosperous if he followed all of God's statutes. This doesn't mean the whole works-getcha-into-heaven thing. One of God's commandments is that we can only be reconciled to him through Christ (faith, not works, John 3:16, Romans 5:1-2). After we are saved by faith through Christ, God forgets all of our sins, as if they never happened. (Isaiah 43:25)

These were the words that David said to Solomon, and we all read them, because they have something in them to teach us.

So a new feature on here is going to be the Where is Jesus question, kind of like the response question. This was in a challenge in a devotional I was reading (and I apologize to whatever organization put it out, because I don't remember how to find it again to cite it). The challenge is that if you read a page in your Bible (or a chapter, which is how I do it) and you didn't see Jesus, you need to re-read that chapter. So for today, Where is Jesus? Today, I saw Jesus when He told us to follow God's commandments and showed us how.

Response Question: a. Where do you see Jesus in this passage? b. David said 'I go the way of the earth'. What does this mean?

In His Service,
Joyce