Seize the Moment – Day 811
Deal with the Enemy Within!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Monday, June 6.
Have you ever felt like the greatest threat to your own happiness and well-being was not from the outside, but from the enemy within?
In his final charge to Solomon, King David commanded the new king, to deal with the enemies within his own gates; he started with these instructions recorded in 1 Kings 2:2-4:
I am going the way of all the earth. Be strong, therefore, and show yourself a man. Keep the charge of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His ordinances, and His testimonies, according to what is written in the Law of Moses, that you may succeed in all that you do and wherever you turn, so that the Lord may carry out His promise which He spoke concerning me, saying, “If your sons are careful of their way, to walk before Me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.”
Wisely, David gave Solomon God’s instructions for a king from Deuteronomy 17:18-20 and passed on to his son God’s covenantal promise from 2 Samuel 7:12-16. David believed the greatest threat to Solomon would be the enemies within the gate, including Joab and Shimei (1 Kings 2:5-9).
By the end of this chapter, it looked as if the enemies within the gate had been dealt with successfully. Except for one! Solomon seemingly didn’t deal with the worst of the enemies within the gate that David warned him of – himself! As we will see in the very next chapter, Solomon sowed the seeds of his own failure, not from a lack of wisdom, but from a lack of submission to God’s ways in the most intimate places of his life (Deuteronomy 17:17; 1 Kings 11:1-6).
Seize the moment and “watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23; Mark 7:15; Galatians 5:16-21; Romans 7:21-23).