First Kings 1

God’s message to me: We must act on God’s will and remember that we are either sheltered by his will or overcome by it. Adonijah was the little brother of Absalom and even had the same mother but didn’t learn anything from his big brothers foolishness. As David was growing to old to be effective Adonijah convinced many in leadership to follow him and invited them to a feast and sacrifice to make him king. He didn’t invite the prophet, the priest or any others who knew that God had planned to place Solomon in power and he sought to reinforce his position so that Solomon couldn’t take the throne after David’s death.

David failed to correct Adonijah. He simply ignored his foolishness until Adonijah was celebrating his being made king.

Promises: God will not be subverted. He intended Solomon to be king and none who attempted to take the throne from him succeeded.

Commands: Do not attempt to undermine God’s will. Adonijah knew full well that God and David intended Solomon to be the next king. Because he knew this he was careful not to include Solomon or any of the people involved in choosing Solomon as the successor to celebrate and make him king. He thought he could get around the issue by reinforcing his position enough to get everyone else behind him before Solomon could be named. Once in power he could easily overcome them all. God ensured that his treachery was found out and undermined before he could get a following and so those who had come to help him become king abandoned him and left him in fear that Solomon would kill him for treason.

Timeless principles: The surest way to get a power-hungry person to go to far is to not stop him when he is starting out. Adonijah and his brother Absalom could have both been dealt with when they first started making trouble and a great deal of pain would have been averted. David failed to discipline his sons and to correct their improper behavior resulting in long term trouble.

How can I apply what I’ve learned: Don’t sit still and quiet when you see trouble coming.

Allow me to demonstrate at the risk of offending some who read this. This country is heading down a road of pain because we have allowed our leaders to get away with to much. As a result of our failure to reign them in when they first started overreaching their authority, we now have a government who believes they have the authority to:

Remove the CEO of a private company from his job.
Appoint their own people to run private companies.
Confiscate the earnings of private individuals without due process or cause.
Tell private citizens what they can buy and how much of it they can buy.
Punish private individuals for being successful.

let’s skip past the political and move on to security.

Threaten God’s chosen people if they defend themselves.
Sanction God’s chosen people for defending themselves.
Force God’s chosen people to bow to those who wish their destruction.
Demand God’s chosen people give up part of the land Promised to them by God to people who want to destroy them.

Do I really need to continue?

Bless Israel, Be blessed. Curse/oppress Israel and face destruction. The bible is extraordinarily clear on this matter. We have given over the running of our nation to a group of people who will use our resources and power to undermine Israel, tear down our Judeao-Christian values, weaken our defenses and empower the enemies of the United States, Israel and God and the only reason they have been able to gain the power to do this is because we didn’t stop them. The constitution doesn’t grant the power they are wielding. The constitution forbids them from having most of these abilities and yet, when they took that power for themselves and admitted, “it’s a violation of the constitution but the government needs to have the power anyway”, no one stopped them. Now we will pay the price.

Don’t believe me? Look at the history, The great depression and WWII came after we backed the idea of Eugenics which declared Jews were subhuman and a drain on society. The recession and problems of the late 1970’s including the Iran Hostage Crises came after the United States demanded that Israel trade land for peace. Clinton tried to make similar demands without the full backing of the legislature and the personal cost could be seen in the constant cloud of legal scandals over his administration. As former president Bush and current President Obama continued to pursue more and more strenuous actions to force land for peace and “2 state solutions” on God’s chosen people we have dipped into one of the worst recessions in decades, had a US Cargo ship captured by pirates and slipped quickly into the anarchy we haven’t seen since 1979.

See a problem? Fight the problem. If you don’t, you can count on the problem to get a lot bigger until your forced to confront it at much greater cost.

tomorrow: First Kings 2-4