I Kings 11:12 Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for David thy father’s sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son
Things move at such a fast past these days that scarcely do we think about what came before us, nor have we considered what will come after us. We are just thinking about right now, this very moment. We build a business or a ministry or engage in things that absorb our mind, and before we know it, time has passed and we have not spent time thinking about what comes before or after us. In short, we are not an end unto ourselves. All of us are connecting what has been to what will be and more importantly to what should be.
In I Kings 11 we find a king who really was just a link in the chain, although he was a very prominent link. King Solomon was a very wise ruler of great wealth who knew how to govern a great people because God had given him that gifting and skill. Sadly, the Bible tells us in I Kings 11, “But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharoah.” These are women who should not have belonged to Solomon. They did not belong to God, and they did not have love for God Jehovah. Solomon had a harem, and the Bible says that “his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.”
From this point on you have a fractured history and a divided kingdom. You have a sordid tale of kings who came to power and were murdered or kings who came to power and passed on what they had to feckless sons who did not know how to use what they had been given. All this largely started with Solomon. God says in verse 12, “Notwithstanding in thy days I will not do it for David thy father’s sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.” Four times in this chapter God basically says, “The things I am going to do to the kingdom, I’m going to delay, and I will do this for David’s sake.” In other words, God had regard to the heritage David had left.
Solomon had not left a good heritage, but David did. What David had passed on was great indeed and what was taken was not taken from Solomon but from his son. God basically said, “But I will take the kingdom out of his son’s [Solomon’s] hand, and give it to Solomon’s servant.” The long and short of it is that benefits from your father that are squandered are stolen from your son, or blessings from your mother that are not taken care of are stolen from your daughter. These squandered benefits are stolen from those who come after you. We don’t live or die to ourselves. We connect what has been with what will be.
There are three things we should think about in light of this. First, be grateful. Not everyone has received the same heritage or inheritance. Perhaps you did not have a family who loved the Lord Jesus. Maybe they didn’t know the Lord and you are the first generation to know God. Well, whatever it is, you are the only link between what has been and what will be. Each of us should find cause for gratitude in what we have. If you grew up in a Christian home, it wasn’t a perfect home to be sure, but whatever you have, realize that none of us lives or dies to ourself, so what we have we ought to be grateful for.
Solomon had so much I wonder if he ever stopped to think, “You know, without my dad’s insistence on wisdom, I probably wouldn’t have asked for wisdom. Without an insistence on some of the priorities my father had, probably I would not be in the position I am in now.” So, be grateful.
Second, be cautious. All of us are stewards. We steward this life and all that is in it. We will not be here forever. Everything that we have is but for a moment, so we should be cautious with what we have. I don’t mean we cover our gifts or talents in a hole and hide them. I do mean that we are cautious. We don’t squander them because benefits from those who come before us that have been left to us can be squandered and stolen from those who come after us.
Third, be generous. Most of us don’t think about the fact that the two-year-old crawling in our living room will one day be an adult. Many of these kids will remember with adult minds what happened to them and what they learned when they were kids. It is incumbent on us to be generous with what we give to our children at the youngest age, the teaching, training, love, and discipline. Those things are important because they grow, mature, and become adults, and those adults will change the course of history.
Today, whatever we have been given is ours to steward and it will be for our children to receive.