Wow! We are already in the second week of the year 2024. The staff and well-wishers of ScriptureSource Ministries greet you all in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! During the past few months, many of us were actively preparing to welcome and celebrate the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year seasons. With the New Year’s celebrations, all those long anticipated seasons and celebrations are concluded. Again, as usual, preparations for the new cycle of similar seasons come and go year after year. In the midst of all such celebrations, the question here is that – Do we glorify God, the giver of life and the source of all our blessings, in and through our celebrations? Or we celebrate without giving glory to God? If we take a survey of all of God’s creation, we can understand that all of the creations of God (living or non-living and visible or invisible) follow God’s commands exactly the way He commanded them to follow, except human beings. Human beings are created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27; 2:7), and the Lord crowned them with glory and honor (Psalm 8:5b) and commanded them to obey His commands and walk in obedience to Him (Deuteronomy 10:12). However, they failed Him in following His commands (Genesis 2:16-17; 3:1-24; Deuteronomy 30:19-20). The universal fact is that all of creation performs their duties without fail ever since they were appointed, yet the human race failed in giving due glory and honor to God. The entire creation obeys God’s commands and shows their gratitude by praising the Lord, their creator (1 Chronicles 16:23-33; Psalm 19:1; 66:4; 96:11-12; 98:8; 148:1-14; Isaiah 55:12; Revelation 5:13). Yet, when it comes to us, the human race; the Lord has to remind us time and again to obey and follow His commands ever since we were created.

The passage (1 Kings 2:3 mentioned-above) we have chosen for this week’s Scripture for the Week meditation is an earnest reminder to obey and follow God wholeheartedly. When the time drew near for David to die, he made his son Solomon king over Israel and gave a charge to him to follow God’s commands with complete sincerity and total commitment (1 Kings 1:29-30; 2:1-4). David, who knew God very personally and experienced God’s grace and mercy to an extensive degree, obeyed God wholeheartedly. Now, David commands his son Solomon, the newly made king, to follow God’s commands wholeheartedly (1 Kings 2:1-4). This week’s our Scripture passage is: … 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 (1 Kings 2:3). Let us examine the key thoughts in this passage:

• • Observe everything the Lord your God requires
  • Walk in obedience to the Lord
  • Keep God’s decrees and commands
  • Obey God’s laws and regulations,
  • Follow what is written in the Law of Moses
  • You will prosper in all you do if you love and obey God’s commands
  • You will be blessed wherever you go if you love and obey God’s commands

Although the above-mentioned specific charge was given to king Solomon by his father king David, this is applicable to everyone who loves God and obeys His commands (Deuteronomy 12:28; 27:10; 30:10; Joshua 22:2-3; Jeremiah 7:23). When we study the Scripture, we can see that several saints in the Old and New Testaments followed God wholeheartedly and God blessed them all. For instance:

• • Enoch obeyed God’s commands and walked with God and God took him away (Genesis 5:21-24)
  • Noah obeyed God’s commands and walked before God righteously (Genesis 6:9) and God saved him and his family (Genesis 7:20-23)
  • Abraham obeyed God and lived a life of righteousness and made an everlasting covenant with him and made him and his descendants a blessing to all people on earth (Genesis 12:4a; 15:6; Romans 4:3; Galatians 3:6; Titus 3:8; Hebrews 11:8-10, 17-19; James 2:23). Also, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph obeyed God and walked in His ways.
  • Job (a blameless and upright man who feared God and shunned evil) obeyed God’s commands and lived righteously (Job 1:1, 8) and the Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part (Job 42:12-15)
  • Samuel lived a righteous life (1 Samuel 3:19-21; 12:1-5, 24), David served the Lord faithfully (1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22, 36), King Hezekiah walked before God faithfully (Isaiah 38:3) and all who lived a saintly life received blessings from God
    

    *Jesus’ Disciples including Apostle Paul lived a life that is worthy of God’s calling in their lives and God promised them blessings in here on earth and in the age to come (Matthew 19:29; Mark 10:29-30; Luke 18:28-30).

The Biblical truth is that the Lord blesses anyone who loves Him and obey His commands. God is faithful and He blessed His saints during the Old and New Testament times who walked according to His will and lived their lives for His purpose. We are blessed and God blesses all His saints in our days. We can see both the Old Testament and New Testament saints who followed God wholeheartedly were blessed and honored by the Lord and received His blessings in their lives.

God made an everlasting covenant with king David (2Samuel 7:8-17; Psalm 89:29-37) and He renewed it with David’s son king Solomon (2Chronicles 6:14-16). After Solomon became David’s successor and king in Israel, David charged his son Solomon to follow God’s commands wholeheartedly (for instance: 1Chronicles 28:9-10). In addition to David’s commands to his son Solomon, God Himself commanded king Solomon to follow His commands wholeheartedly (for instance: 1Kings  6:11-12). Yes, he did! King Solomon obeyed God’s commands and kept the decrees and laws in the early stages of his reign (1 Kings 3:3a, 15). In response to Solomon’s devotion to God, He blessed king Solomon with wisdom and wealth more than what he asked for (1Kings 3:10-14; 4:29-34; 10:23-24; 2Chronicles 1:11-12). However, as years passed, king Solomon was not fully committed to follow neither his father David’s commands nor God’s commands to him. King Solomon despised the divine commands and did evil in the sight of God:

1 King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 2 They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. 3 He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 4 As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done (1Kings 11:1-6)

The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. 10 Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. 11 So the Lord said to Solomon, Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates. 12 Nevertheless, for the sake of David your father, I will not do it during your lifetime. I will tear it out of the hand of your son. 13 Yet I will not tear the whole kingdom from him, but will give him one tribe for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem, which I have chosen (1Kings 11:9-13).

As we have seen above, the Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice (1Kings 11:9). God’s judgement fell upon king Solomon and God tore apart a large part of the kingdom away from Solomon and give it to one of his subordinates (1 Kings 11:11b). Yet, for the sake of his father David, God did not break the everlasting covenant He made with David that He will never fail to have a descendant sitting on the throne of Israel (2 Samuel 7:12-13, 16; 1Kings 8:25; Jeremiah 33:17). In the light of what we learned from this week’s Scripture passage and the meditation, let us not hesitate to love and obey God’s commands wholeheartedly. Let us give glory and honor to God’s name and walk in His ways all through our life’s journey on earth. As God’s servant Joshua advised the Israelites to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord gave to them; as followers of Jesus, let us also be very careful to love the Lord our God, walk in obedience to Him, keep His commands and laws, hold fast to Him and to serve Him with all our heart and with all our soul (Joshua 22:5). May the Lord God Almighty bless us all! Amen!