The Past Has No Future Series

THE PAST HAS NO FUTURE (1 KINGS 1:11-22, 41-53)

I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed,

To find out why I killed the cat and blacked my husband’s eyes.

He laid me on a downy couch to see what he could find,

And here’s what he dredged up from my subconscious mind.

When I was one, my mommie hid my dolly in the trunk,

And so it follows naturally that I am always drunk.

When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid lady,

And that is why I suffer now from kleptomania.

At three I had the feeling of ambivalence for my brothers,

And so it follows naturally I poison all my lovers.

But I am happy: Now I’ve learned the lesson this has taught,

That everything I do, is someone else’s fault. - Anna Russell (Calvin Miller May 95, SBC Life)

Are you a prisoner or victim of the past?

Today our message is rising above the past, especially its cruel, complex, and colored past.

When King David was old and ill, Solomon, one of his youngest sons assumed the throne in a most unlikely manner. It began when his brother Adonijah plotted to ascend the throne and invited all the brothers except Solomon to the self-proclaimed coronation.

Solomon’s father was David, the most recognizable, the highly regarded, and the greatly revered king of Israel. However, David failed as a husband and father. Other than his first wife who was Saul’s daughter Michal, he had at least seven wives (1 Chron. 3:1-5) and ten concubines (2 Sam. 15:16). 1 Chronicles 3 records that six became his wives in his seven and a half years of exile in Hebron, and Bathsheba he forcibly took from Uriah while in Jerusalem. He had ten sons from his seven wives and another nine sons whose mothers were not named, not counting daughters and more sons from his concubines.

Why was Solomon able to better his past? How was he able to escape and overcome the past?

Free Yourself from Past Consummation

16 Bathsheba bowed low and knelt before the king. “What is it you want?” the king asked. 17 She said to him, “My lord, you yourself swore to me your servant by the LORD your God: ’Solomon your son shall be king after me, and he will sit on my throne.’ 18 But now Adonijah has become king, and you, my lord the king, do not know about it. 19 He has sacrificed great numbers of cattle, fattened calves, and sheep, and has invited all the king’s sons, Abiathar the priest and Joab the commander of the army, but he has not invited Solomon your servant. 20 My lord the king, the eyes of all Israel are on you, to learn from you who will sit on the throne of my lord the king after him. 21 Otherwise, as soon as my lord the king is laid to rest with his fathers, I and my son Solomon will be treated as criminals.” (16-21)

On the morning of his 42nd birthday, Grabwell Grommet awoke to the peal of particularly ominous thunder Glancing out of the window with bleary eyes, he saw written in fiery letters across the sky:

“SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL YOU, GRABWELL GROMMET!”

With shaking hands, Grommet lit his first cigarette of the day. He didn’t question the message. You don’t question messages like that. His only question was, “Who?”

At breakfast, he salted his fried eggs, he told his wife Gratia, “Someone is trying to kill me.”

“Who?” she asked with horror.

Grommet slowly stirred the cream and sugar into his coffee and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

Convinced though he was, Grommet couldn’t go to the police with such a story. He decided his only course of action was to go about his daily routine and hope somehow to outwit his would-be murderer.

He tried to think on the drive to the office. But the frustrations of making time by beating lights and switching lanes occupied him wholly. Nor, once behind his desk, could he find a moment, what with jangling phones, urgent memos and the problems and decisions piling up as they did each day.

It wasn’t until his second martini at lunch that the full error of his position struck him. It was all he could do to finish his lasagna Milanese.

“I can’t panic,” he said to himself, lighting up his cigar. “I simply must live my life as usual.”

So he worked till seven as usual. Drove home as fast as usual. Had his two cocktails as usual. Studied business reports as usual. And took his usual two sleeping pills in order to get his usual six hours of sleep.

As the days passed. he manfully stuck to his routine. And as the months went by, he began to take a perverse pleasure in his ability to survive.