King David's Last Instructions To His Son Solomon Series

King David, an old man, exhausted and unable to keep himself warm, called in Solomon his son, the young man who would one day replace him as king of Israel and gave him instructions on how he should live his life.

He’s also going to ask for Solomon to deal with his enemies after he is gone. David was a man. A man after God’s own heart, but a man non-the-less.

It says this, in 1st Kings chapter 2, verse 1: “When the time drew near for David to die, he gave a charge to Solomon his son.”

And this is what David said: “I am about to go the way of all the earth,” he said.

Every human being on Earth faces death. It brings a challenge to our faith as Christians. It brings despair and great fear for those who reject Christ. The world fears death, so much that we ignore the mention of it. We refuse to think about it. It’s too traumatic to even think about. Yet it happens to everyone.

First point today, take stock on your own mortality. Understand the immense consequence of rejecting Christ, and instead embrace Christ and follow him diligently.

Let us take stock of who we are. We know after death we’ll be judged by the ten commandments by God. No one can stand up to that. No one has obeyed God. Which is why we need a savior to forgive us our sins and change us from within. That’s why God sent Jesus Christ, to be our savior.

We have until our last breath to come to the saving faith in Jesus Christ. If we don’t, that’s it, no more chances.

All the earth dies. Every human born will die. So we must face it.

Next, David says to Solomon, “so be strong, act like a man.”

As we guys will sometimes say to each other, “well, it’s time to man up.” What that phrase tends to mean is, make the hard decision. Stop taking the easy route. Man up, and do the right thing.

Second point today, be strong and act like a man (or woman.) Act like a man, means to be mature, make mature choices. It’s easy to avoid the hard thing and take the easy path.

It’s time to step up, and make the hard decisions. Being a human, man or woman, means making sacrifices for your family, for others, caring for others ahead of yourself. It means doing things you don’t want to do, for the good of the future.

Your own future I mean.

Sometimes we wake up in the morning and think, I don’t want to go to church. I’m tired. I have errands to run. But, you can sense within yourself, I need to go, it’s good for me.

Now you’re faced with a decision: Will I do the easy thing, or the harder thing that’s good for me?

That’s the challenge of life. It’s like that with church sometimes. I don’t always want to go, but I know I need it. Similarly, the same is true with exercise, we know we need it, but sometimes we don’t want to. It’s when we do it anyway, even when we don’t want to, that is being strong and acting like a man, or woman.

Next David says, in verse 3, “…observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in obedience to him, and keep his decrees and commands, his laws and regulations, as written in the Law of Moses…”

Now if David was speaking to us today, under the new covenant of grace in Christ, I think he would say.. “observe what the Lord your God requires: Walk in obedience to Christ, and keep the Lord Jesus’ commands to love God and love others, and the other commands of Jesus from the parables, as well as the instructions from the new testament letters of Paul and the other apostles, as written in the New Testament of the Bible.”

Point number three today, learn and follow the commands of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. To do that we need to first read and reread and study the New Testament, and particularly look at the parables of Jesus and what he taught there, and then look at what is written in the letters, and the prophecies as well. And know it all first, then learn to follow it.

David includes this promise, that if Solomon does follow God faithfully,

He says in verse 3, “Do this so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go…”

So David is saying, if Solomon does faithfully follow God’s commands, then, he will prosper in all he does. He will have success in what he attempts to do. His plans will succeed.

That was true for David, he found success as he followed God. It wasn’t always easy, but he did find deliverance and victory.