I Kings 1:20 And thou, my lord, O king, the eyes of all Israel are upon thee, that thou shouldest tell them who shall sit on the throne of my lord the king after him.
You know, it is almost always later than you think. I’ve been on Pacific and Mountain time these last few weeks and all my neighbors back at the Ranch are, of course, on Central time. So, I always feel behind. It doesn’t matter when I get up or what I do, I am always going to be an hour or two behind the people with whom I am serving. Maybe you feel like you are behind right now. Maybe you do not. In any case, it is probably later than you think. Our children are older than we remember them being just a few days ago, and our own time is a limited commodity that God has given to us.
I Kings 1:1 says, “Now king David was old and stricken in years.” This young warrior, this sweet psalmist of Israel, this shepherd boy, became old. He was stricken in years; the years kind of beat him up. I Kings 1 records the occasion of David’s runaway rebel son, named Adonijah, who exalted himself saying, “I will be king.” Now, David had not made a plan to make him king. Adonijah had made a plan to make himself king.
What follows is kingdom chaos. Bathsheba’s son, Solomon, is threatened by this usurpation of authority. So, Bathsheba went to King David and said, “And thou, my lord, O king, the eyes of all Israel are upon thee, that thou shouldest tell them who shall sit on the throne of my lord the king after him.” Bathsheba is asking for leadership. She is asking David to take action. She is asking for initiative.
For all of us, it is always later than we think and the world will not wait for us to take the initiative. When you fail to take action on the issues that matter to you and your home, the wrong people will take action. There are a couple of things we can learn from wonderful King David who, it seems, was taken a little off guard by these circumstances.
First, pay attention. Don’t isolate yourself from information. The Bible says, “Hast thou not heard that Adonijah the son of Haggith doth reign, and David our lord knoweth it not?” I think David was largely a good communicator, but somehow he did not even know what was going on in his own home, let alone his own kingdom. So, pay attention.
Second, plan ahead. Know the questions you must answer and when must you answer them. In verse 20 Bathsheba was basically saying, “Look, everyone is looking to you, King David. They are looking to you to take initiative and make a decision.” David needed to plan ahead. Death is always surprising, but it is always inevitable. So, planning for someone to take his place was a question that David needed to answer. So, know the question and know when you must answer it.
Third, take initiative. Your family and your kingdom, as it were, are totally connected. To think that David’s work as a father, king, and husband were not connected would be sheer folly. This kingdom chaos was to some extent a result of family chaos. There was a harem involved in this. There were a number of ambitious sons involved in this and there was a dad who, in this case, did not seem to know what was going on in his own home and thus in his own kingdom.
We admire and thank God for David. He was a man after God’s own heart, but like all of us, David was a man who gained age and was stricken by years. David reminds us of the importance of taking initiative on the issues that matter to your life and to your home because if you do not, somebody else most certainly will.