INTERESTING FACTS : "IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ENSLAVE MENTALLY OR SOCIALLY A BIBLE-READING PEOPLE. THE PRINCIPLES OF THE BIBLE ARE THE GROUNDWORK OF HUMAN FREEDOM." -- HORACE GREELEY

 

DAILY READING : 1 KINGS 1 - 2

 

TEXT : 1Ki 2:10  So David slept with his fathers, and was buried in the city of David. 1Ki 2:11  And the days that David reigned over Israel were forty years: seven years reigned he in Hebron, and thirty and three years reigned he in Jerusalem. 1Ki 2:12  Then sat Solomon upon the throne of David his father; and his kingdom was established greatly.

 

THEME : HUMAN NATURE

 

As  David declines in age and health, he must settle one piece of business before he dies - who will be king. A young [virgin] is brought to keep him warm - an unusual thought for us today, yet the Bible is specific that David had no sexual relation with her. Adonijah aspires to the throne, and it supported by Jaob and Abiathar. However, on hearing this news, Bathsheba is sent for to set Solomon up as king. (v. 11-31). She states David told her Solomon would reign though the Bible does not record that oath. Obviously, one was given to Bathsheba.

 

After Solomon is anointed king (v. 32-53), he is given instructions by David that are again, somewhat unusual in certain respects. Solomon is told to take the life of Joab. Why David never did, we do not know. Adam Clarke elaborates.

 

"It would have been an insult to justice not to have taken the life of Joab. David was culpable in delaying it so long; but probably the circumstances of his government would not admit of his doing it sooner. According to the law of God, Joab, having murdered Abner and Amasa, should die. And had not David commanded Solomon to perform this act of justice, he could not have died in the approbation of his Maker."

 

Further, Shimei who cursed David when he fled from Absalom is to die as well. Matthew Henry gives the details.

 

Concerning Shimei, 1Ki_2:8, 1Ki_2:9. [1.] His crime is remembered: He cursed me with a grievous curse; the more grievous because he insulted him when he was in misery and poured vinegar into his wounds. The Jews say that one thing which made this a grievous curse was that, besides all that is mentioned (2 Sa. 16), Shimei upbraided him with his descent from Ruth the Moabitess. [2.] His pardon is not forgotten. David owned he had sworn to him that he would not himself put him to death, because he seasonably submitted, and cried Peccavi - I have sinned, and he was not willing, especially at that juncture, to use the sword of public justice for the avenging of wrongs done to himself. But, [3.] His case, as it now stands, is left with Solomon, as one that knew what was fit to be done and would do as he found occasion. David intimates to him that his pardon was not designed to be perpetual, but only a reprieve for David's life: "Hold him not guiltless; do not think him any true friend to thee or thy government, nor fit to be trusted. He has no less malice than he had then, though he has more sense to conceal it. He is still a debtor to the public justice for what he did then; and, though I promised him that I would not put him to death, I never promised that my successor should not. His turbulent spirit will soon give thee an occasion, which thou shouldst not fail to take, for the bringing of his hoary head to the grave with blood." This proceeded not from personal revenge, but a prudent zeal for the honour of the government and the covenant God had made with his family, the contempt of which ought not to go unpunished. Even a hoary head, if a guilty and forfeited head, ought not to be any man's protection from justice. The sinner, being a hundred years old, shall be accursed, Isa_65:20.

 

After David expires and "sleeps" [a Biblical euphemism for death] with his fathers, Bathsheba is tricked by Adonijah to ask for Abishag to be his wife. Abishag, although David did not have sexual realtions with her, was nonetheless his wife. By asking to marry her, Adonijah would be in a position to [try] to usurp the throne from Solomon. [1 Kings 2:24 "The phrase "making a house" means "continuing the posterity" of a person, and, in the case of a royal person, "maintaining his descendants upon the throne." - Albert Barnes]

 

For this reason, Adonijah is put to death and Joab is slain a well for his support of Adonijah. Abiathar is put away and the kingdom is firmly established in the hands of a sixteen or seventeen year old man - Solomon. 

 

TRUTH FOR TODAY : ALL HAVE SINNED AND FALLEN SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD!

 

Though many things have changed over the long years of man's history on the earth, three have not. One is the nature of God. The other is the nature of Satan. The last is the nature of Man. These three are constant throughout the history of our planet.  This salient truth - that God, Satan, and Man have not changed in six thousand years is important to know, for this makes the Bible a perpetually relevant Book in every generation.

 

James Madison wrote of political ambition that - "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?" [James Madison: Federalist Papers No. 51, February 8, 1788]. In other words, Madison was saying effort needs to be made to counteract the nature of Man who is naturally ambitious of power that in the end is a detriment to the governing of people.

 

We see this in the death of David. Solomon will be the first heir the kingdom [unlike Saul who was replaced by David rather than his own son]. Yet, even before David is dead, there is political ambition, sedition, and intrigue going on all around him. As David lay dying, men were vying for the throne. It is in the heart of Man to want to control everything and everyone around him, so the individual can have whatever they desire. More specifically, so they can order life the way they want as opposed to what God wants. Gratefully, God rules in the earth and not Man. ["The LORD hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all." Psa_103:19] 

 

God sums up Man's problem in one word - "sin." Sin is the breaking of God's Law, in order to establish our own "law." ["Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law." 1Jn_3:4]  This is illustrated in the death of David and the struggle for his throne. Had not David been alerted to the usurpation by Adonijah and Joab, Solomon and his mother would have died, just as Adonijah and Joab died. Sin, is "lawlessness," that the Bible tells will be the predominant condition of the world prior to the return of Christ. Man by nature is lawless or sinful, for which the end result is death for the sinner.

 

The International Standard Bible Dictionary defines the word iniquity. "In the New Testament "iniquity" stands for anomia - properly, "the condition of one without law," "lawlessness" (so translated in 1Jo_3:4, elsewhere "iniquity," e.g. Mat_7:23), a word which frequently stood for ‛āwōn in the Septuagint; and adikı́a, literally, "unrighteousness" (e.g. Luk_13:27).

 

So, we see sin is lawlessness and unrighteousness, for which Christ came to deliver us. Throughout the Bible - Christ being the exception, we the sin of Man, even in the best of [God's] men. Sin has so permeated our being that we cannot know our own hearts. We need the power of Christ and His Spirit to help us see ourselves and to live a holy life. That is, to live a life without willful lawlessness and unrighteousness. This is the message of the Bible. Only God is pure and holy. Yet, He commands us to be the same and gives us the power to do so by His Spirit and His Word.

 

The Church, like the kingdoms of the world and Israel, is plagued with ambition of the most sinful kind. Men want to be noticed, heard, seen, complimented, and in control. This is the type of ambition Madison spoke of. The problem is, among professing Christians chiefly those who desire to be teachers or leaders, there is as much ambition as we see in 1 Kings. The early Church father Clement wrote in Chapter 35 of his - First Epistle to the Corinthians:

 

"How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God! Life in immortality, splendour in righteousness, truth in perfect confidence,71 faith in assurance, self-control in holiness! And all these fall under the cognizance of our understandings [now]; what then shall those things be which are prepared for such as wait for Him? The Creator and Father of all worlds,72 the Most Holy, alone knows their amount and their beauty. Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His promised gifts. But how, beloved, shall this be done? If our understanding be fixed by faith rewards God; if we earnestly seek the things which are pleasing and acceptable to Him; if we do the things which are in harmony with His blameless will; and if we follow the way of truth, casting away from us all unrighteousness and iniquity, along with all covetousness, strife, evil practices, deceit, whispering, and evil-speaking, all hatred of God, pride and haughtiness, vainglory and ambition.73 For they that do such things are hateful to God; and not only they that do them, but also those that take pleasure in them that do them. (Rom_1:32) For the Scripture saith, "But to the sinner God said, Wherefore dost thou declare my statutes, and take my covenant into thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee? When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with74 him, and didst make thy portion with adulterers. Thy mouth has abounded with wickedness, and thy tongue contrived75 deceit. Thou sittest, and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest76 thine own mother's son. These things thou hast done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest, wicked one, that I should be like to thyself. But I will reprove thee, and set thyself before thee. Consider now these things, ye that forget God, lest He tear you in pieces, like a lion, and there be none to deliver. The sacrifice of praise will glorify Me, and a way is there by which I will show him the salvation of God."

 

Let us take the words of Clement to heart, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;" [Rom_3:23] Let us approach God and His Word with humility and the will to obey, for God has not appointed us to wrath as with Adonijah and Joab, but to obtain salvation!