“A Father’s Wisdom” – 1 Kings 2:1-4

Alright, you have one or two sentences to give me your very best life’s advice.  I want to know what advice you would give me if you could only tell me one or two things.  I remember the best advice I ever got from my dad.  “Just act like you know what you’re doing.”  I’m pretty sure it’s how I got this job and I know it is what I am doing right now! 

Now, tell me why you think people want to give other people advice.  Is it because they want to look and sound smart?  Is it because they think the other person is too stupid to figure things out?  Of course not. 

Years ago I was travelling to Georgia on my motorcycle and was in Mississippi and I was almost out of gas.  It was right after Hurricane Katrina and most of the gas stations were shut down all through the south.  It was getting dark and I didn’t know where I was and was running on fumes so I stopped to ask this guy who was directing traffic if he knew where I could get gas.

He said, “Sure.  Do you know where Hwy such and such is?”  “No sir.  I’m not from around here just point me in the right direction.”  “Well, do you know where such and such road is?”  “Nope! I live in Texas.  Can you just point the way (and hurry!)?”  “Uh, well, do you know where the graveyard is?”  (Sigh) “No, sir!  I don’t!”  With that, he thought a minute and finally asked, “Well, do you see this here road you are on?”  “Yes.  Yes, I do!  I can see the road I am on now.”  “Well, just go east on this road for about two miles and you will see a gas station.”  “Great!  I can do that.  Do they have gas?”

“No.  But you can stop in there and ask them where to go.”

We want advice from people we believe have been through what we are going through and people who see us going through something they have been through want to give us advice and they do that usually because they care about us.  Who better then to give us advice than our parents?  You have a lot in common so you will probably encounter a lot of the same obstacles.  They love you and care for you and don’t want you to make the same mistakes they did and they also want you to have a better life than they did.  So, usually parents give the best advice.  The challenge is getting your kid to listen and actually follow that advice.

The Bible is full of advice given from an older and wiser person to someone they care about.  Can you think of any biblical advice that has meant something to you?  One of my favorites is in Joshua chapter 1, verses 6-9.  Since it is from God and spoken to Joshua, it’s not really advice.  It’s actually a command but I think it makes good advice coming from anybody.

Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.  ⁷ “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. ⁸ Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. ⁹ Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Three times God says to be strong.  We know He’s not talking about being physically strong.  He is saying to be spiritually and morally strong and He tells Joshua how to do it and the benefits of doing it.  That’s how to give advice.  That’s good stuff!

I can’t help but wonder if David had read that passage in Joshua and when it came time for him to give advice to his son, he incorporated some of that into his farewell speech.  It’s possible that he had read it but we don’t know.  But if you want to read what David told his son, Solomon, at the end of David’s life, then turn to the book of 1 Kings, chapter 2, verses 1-4.  1 Kings is in the Old Testament.  It goes 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles…

David knows he is about to die.  He has lived a long time.  He was king of Israel for 40 years.  He has been there, killed that and now his son, Solomon, is the king and David wants to give him some last advice.  He wants him to be a good king.  He wants him to live a good life.  But ultimately David wants Solomon to live a life that is pleasing to God because David knows BOOCOD, right?  He knows there are benefits of obedience and consequences of disobedience and he wants his son to do well in every aspect of his life.

Let’s read his last words and his advice to his son from 1 Kings 2:1-4, a passage I thought was appropriate for Father’s Day.

When the time drew near for David to die, he gave a charge to Solomon his son.  ² “I am about to go the way of all the earth,” he said. “So be strong, act like a man, ³ and 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. Do this so that you may prosper in all you do and wherever you go ⁴ and that the Lord may keep his promise to me: ‘If your descendants watch how they live, and if they walk faithfully before me with all their heart and soul, you will never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.’

I hope my last words are good, solid advice.  Wouldn’t you hate to have your last recorded words be something dumb?  John Sedgwick was a Union Army general who was killed in 1864 by a rebel sharpshooter.  Sedgwick’s famous last words were, “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…”

No, Solomon gets some great advice from a loving father.  It is advice from one man to another but can and should be taken and applied to everyone’s life, male or female.  Let’s look closer at what he was really saying. One of the reasons I think David had read the scripture about Joshua is how he starts off.  He says he is going the way of all the earth which is exactly what Joshua said when he gave his last words to the leaders of Israel in Joshua 23:14.

What does it mean to go the way of all the earth?  He is going to die.  Everything dies.  All people die.  All living beings die.  Your car is going to die.  Your watch, your garden, your job, the very earth we live in and on is one day going to die.  The important thing is how you live because everything dies.  Not everyone truly lives.  David wanted Solomon to really live like all good fathers want for their sons.

John 10:10 tells us that God wants us to live an abundant life and we can when we have a relationship with Jesus Christ.  That relationship will last forever.  Everything else will one day die, rust, mold, be forgotten, turn to dust and go the way of all the earth.  That is God’s plan.  That’s His way and as painful as it is for those left behind when a loved one dies, it’s the perfect plan.

David knew that the life of the king was going to be difficult for Solomon.  It is difficult for everybody.  I say all the time that if we knew what everybody was going through, everybody would be at the top of our prayer list.  David knew it was going to be hard and he knew the people would be watching Solomon to see what decisions he would make and how he would handle the difficulties and the problems that came up so look at what he tells him to do first.  “Be strong.”

Just like God told Joshua – be strong.  Let me ask you a question.  Can you fake being strong?  Sure you can, at least for a little while and if people don’t look too hard.  But people are going to look.  They look especially at Christians who say, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” and “God is my strength.  He lifts me up on wings like eagles.”  They rightfully want to know if you mean what you say or if you are just faking it.

Nothing hurts the cause of Christ more than somebody who one day says that God is the source of their strength and the next day falls to pieces.  Remember the story of Paul and Silas in the jail in Acts 16?  They had been preaching the Gospel and made some people mad so the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten.  The jailer then put them in stocks.  They were chained and hurting, miserable, bloody, and had every reason to be angry and crying and complaining.  Is that what they were doing?  No.  What were they doing?  They were praying and singing hymns to God.  And what were the other prisoners doing?  They were listening.

It’s the same with you today.  People are watching you.  People are listening.  They are reading what you put on social media.  They are watching where you are going and how you live your life so BE STRONG.  Be strong because people are watching how you react to your problems.  They are listening to what you say as you battle cancer.  They are watching you as you deal with jerk bosses.  They are watching you make those financial choices.  They are watching you choose a mate, buy a car or even tip the waitress at Dos Chiles.  Don’t think they aren’t watching.

If you call the name of Jesus or claim to be a child of God then for your sake and for the sake of the Kingdom, be strong!   A young man was brought to Napoléon Bonaparte as a thief and a liar.  Napoléon asked him what his name was and the young man said it was, coincidently, also Bonaparte.  Napoléon got angry and said, “Young man you better change your ways or change your name!”

As someone who claims to have the supernatural power of Almighty God and the Holy Spirit living inside of you, you better be strong.  You represent Almighty God and the precious name of Jesus.  When difficulties come and people are watching, be strong.

Now look at the end of verse 2 to see what David tells Solomon next.  “Show yourself a man.”  Sounds like something John Wayne would say, doesn’t it?  “Show yourself a man, pilgrim.”  Is David telling Solomon to dress and look in a way that nobody would mistake him for a woman?  No. I think that’s pretty good advice if your son grows up wanting to be called Kaitlynn but it’s not what David meant.  David is talking about Solomon’s character.  He is talking about being who he is…when nobody is watching.

David is saying to Solomon, “You are physically a man.  Be a man spiritually.  Be who you really are all the time, even when nobody sees.”  That is character.  Webster says character is, “the attributes or features that make up and distinguish an individual.”  It is who you really are. You can fake being a man.  You can fake being strong but who you really are; the essence of your being and what you are really made of are your character.

John Wooden said, “Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”  I read that a good way to truly see someone’s character is to notice what makes them laugh, what makes them angry and what makes them cry.

It’s time some of us, both men and women, started showing ourselves to be men.  What I mean by that is that we need to stop crying about whether we need more or less gun control to stop a massacre or what flag so and so is flying and start crying about the sin that is behind the motives that cause people to act in such a way.  Are we crying about our wasted responsibility to tell others about what a relationship with Jesus has meant in our lives or are we just sad about what rights of ours are going to be taken away?

I learned last Sunday morning about the horror in Orlando from Brian Amerman.  I watched as he was physically moved and grieved over not just the loss of life but of the loss of opportunities to share Jesus with all those who were killed at that nightclub.  It pained him, I could tell, that no one will ever be able to share with them the Good News of how Jesus lived and died and was raised again to show us grace that we can live with Him in Heaven for eternity.

Showing yourself to be a man of character means to laugh at what makes God laugh, to be angry at what makes God angry and to cry at what makes God cry…even when nobody is watching.  Calvin Coolidge said, “We do not need more knowledge, we need more character!”  D.L. Moody said, “Character is what you are in the dark.”  Show yourself to be a man…even in the dark.

Now, don’t you hate it when someone gives you advice but they don’t tell you how to do it?  True story.  I was on the golf team in high school and our golf coach was really just a low-level football coach who got nominated to babysit us.  He didn’t know anything about golf.  He just had the least seniority of the coaches so he was now the golf coach.

I remember I was about to tee off one day and Coach Ling came over to me and said, “Uh, Blair, you need to hit it straighter and farther.”  Then he walked off.  Thanks, coach.  David was not that way with Solomon.  He told him what to do.  He needed to be strong because everybody is watching but also to be a man even when they aren’t.  Then he told him exactly how to do it.

Look at 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.”

He has told him to be strong because people are watching.  Be a man even when they are not watching and now he tells him to be obedient because God is watching.  Now, you would think a father telling his son to be a man and to be strong would say something about being tough and not letting people get anything over on you.  Don’t let ‘em see you cry or sweat or show fear.  But that is not what David tells Solomon.

He tells him to, above all, be obedient.  Be obedient, not just to the big things like “Don’t commit murder” or “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife” as it says in the 10 Commandments but also to the smaller things like tithing as it talks about in Deuteronomy 14 or what not to eat like it talks about in Leviticus 11.

Now, remember who this advice is coming from.  Can you imagine Solomon getting advice from David that included “Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife” and “Don’t murder”?  “Uh, gee, Dad, like you did with my mom, Bathsheba, and her first husband Uriah?”

Do you ever have a hard time taking advice from someone who appears to be a hypocrite or doesn’t know what they are talking about?  Of course you do.  You don’t take dieting advice from a fat guy.  You don’t take a stock market tip from a homeless person.  You don’t take golfing tips from a football coach but when someone has made a mistake and paid the most awful price for it, you listen.

You listen when an alcoholic says, “Don’t ever take that first sip.”  You take it to heart when you visit your friend in the hospital who tells you not to text and drive.  You listen when somebody laying on their back on the sidewalk says, “Don’t step on that patch of ice.”  They have made that mistake and it cost them dearly and because they care for you, they don’t want you to make the same mistake.

That’s what David is telling his son, Solomon.  “Don’t do what I did.  Be obedient to all the laws, the rules and the commands because they are there for a reason.”  David encourages Solomon to “Walk in His ways.”  Walk in God’s ways.  How do we walk in God’s ways?  Picture a little boy walking behind his father through the snow and the little boy is walking in the same footprints that his father made.  He is going the same way, doing the same thing.  He has his eyes on his father and watching what he does and how he does it.

We need to be following in the footsteps of Jesus, watching what He did in scripture and emulating that.  How did He treat people who mistreated Him?  What did He say about forgiveness?  What was His prayer-life like?  For us at Christ Fellowship that means making disciples.  It means learning from Jesus and then teaching and encouraging others with what we have learned.

In the old hymn, “Footprints Of Jesus” it starts out, “Sweetly, Lord, have we heard Thee calling,
Come, follow Me!
And we see where Thy footprints falling
Lead us to Thee.”  Then one of the verses says, “If they lead through the temple holy,
Preaching the Word;
Or in homes of the poor and lowly,
Serving the Lord.”

Lord, we will go wherever you want us to go.  We will do what you want us to do and we will say what you want us to say.  Father, we ask for your protection and provision as we do these things that we might honor you and bring glory only to you and your Kingdom.  God, we can’t do any of this without you but we know we can do all things through you.

If you don’t have a relationship with Jesus, then today is the day of salvation.  Today is the day you ask God for forgiveness of your sin and you repent – or turn away from -  that sin.  By doing that and believing that Jesus died on the cross for you as the sacrifice for your sins and that He rose again on the third day, you can have eternal life with Him in Heaven.  It’s the only way.  Do that right now.

Invitation / Prayer

Tonight we will see why we should follow David’s advice to his son and what it means to really prosper as it says in verse 3.  See ya at 6 pm!