The End of an Era, Part 1

On May 19. Chuck Swindoll introduced his classic biographical series on the life of David today on Insight for living nearly 3 months later to present the 24th and final message of the set. It's part of a hallmark teaching series and a full-length book as well. Called David a man of passion and destiny during the next half hour and again on tomorrow's program. Chuck will help us understand how David celebrated life in his reign as the king of Israel came to an end. Chuck titled this final message the end of an era years, David reigned as king over Israel. But as we all know too well. Everything in this life will someday end as we reflect on the end of David's life today from first Chronicles 28 and 29 I like for you to do something special. I like for you to think ahead to the end of your own life not David's life, but yours. Your couple questions was maybe three or you modeling your life after you living in such a way that others want to model their lives after yours. How would you like to be remembered now. With that in mind, allow me to read portions from the 28th and 29 chapters of first Chronicles from the message. These are from David's last recorded words and these are excerpts from those two chapters David call together all the leaders of Israel, tribal administrators, heads of various governmental operations, military commanders and captains stewards in charge of the property and livestock belonging to the king and his sons everyone who held responsible positions in the kingdom. King David stood tall and spoke listen to me. My people. I fully intended to build a permanent structure for the chest of the covenant of God.

God's footstool, but when I got ready to build it. God said to me, you may not build a house to honor me, you've done too much fighting killed too many people God chose me out of my family to be king over Israel forever. First he chose Judah is the lead tribe.

Then he narrowed it down to my family and finally he picked me from my father's sons pleased to make me the king over all Israel, and then from all my sons, and God gave me many he chose my son Solomon to sit on the throne of God's rule over Israel. He went on to say your son Solomon will build my house in my courts. I had chosen him to be my Royal adopted son and I will be to him a father. I will guarantee that his kingdom will last. If he continues to be as strong-minded and doing what I command and carrying out my decisions as he is doing now and now in this public place.

All Israel. Looking on in God listening in as God's people obey and study every last one of the commandments of your God so that you could make the most of living in this good land and pass it on intact to your children, ensuring a good future and you, Solomon my son get to know well your father's God serve him with a whole heart and eager mind, for God examines every heart and sees through every motive. If you seek him, he'll make sure you find him, but if you abandon him, he'll leave you for good, look sharp. Now God's chosen you to build his holy house.

Be brave, determined, and do it now versus 20 and 21. David continued to address Solomon take charge, take heart.

Don't be anxious or get discouraged God my God is with you in this. He won't walk off and leave you in the lurch.

He's at your side until every last detail is completed for conducting the worship of God. You have all the priests and Levites standing ready to pitch in and skillful craftsman and artisans of every kind ready to go to work. Both leaders and people are ready just say the word. Now the next chapter. Chapter 29 versus 9 to 13 and the people were full of a sense of celebration. All that giving and all given willingly, freely, King David was exuberant David blessed God in full view of the entire congregation. Blessed are you, God of Israel, our father from of old, and forever to you oh God belonged the greatness and the might, the glory, the victory, the majesty, the splendor, yes, everything in heaven. Everything on earth. The kingdom all yours.

You raise yourself high overall riches in glory come from you. Your ruler overall strength and power in the palm of your hand to build up and strengthen all and here we are all God, giving thanks to you, praising you splendid download is searching the Scriptures.

Studies by going to Insight.org/studies and now the message from Chuck titled the end of an era.

John Wycliffe could be called the genesis of an era.

Although the man has been virtually forgotten in our world today. This 14th century, St. was a stern and determined individual.

He was a marked man by the individuals who were threatened by his efforts, he could not bear the thought that the Bible should remain chained to a pulpit in the dead language of the clergy and the prelates of the church and so he set out as an English speaker to put into the English vernacular.

Both the old and the New Testament. It was a mammoth undertaking and it was done against all kinds of verbal and physical assault on. Nevertheless, this faithful scholar. This preacher of righteousness stayed at the task until it was virtually completed and then in bold defiance against the enemies of his day. He wrote these words in the flyleaf of that first English translation. This Bible is translated and shall make possible a government of the people by the people and for the people little bit Wycliffe realize that 500 years later, Alene and broken president of a new government that had established itself on a new continent would borrow from the flyleaf of his Bible, the very same words which he would use on a bleak November day in a place called Gettysburg and that blood drenched battlefield. Lincoln said we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth. It was less than a year and 1/2 later that Pres. Lincoln was assassinated and among the hundreds of men and women who reported his death. One very keen reporter was right on target when he said this is not a death. Lincoln's assassination is the end of an era.

Every once in a while there is an individual born who is called of God to be the beginning of an era thinking first thoughts creative ideas bold and even defiant plans against public opinion that individual whether man or woman is determined to set a new course and to set out in a new foraging of thought. Such was John Wycliffe sometime God brings on the earth.

An individual who is to end an era shoes are so big that by the time of his death. Nobody can fill in and it is simply a death.

It's the end of an era. The closing out of a period of time on earth for which there will never be a duplicate.

It is my opinion that David, the king of Israel.

At his death form the end of an era as great as Solomon became. He never took the place and in my opinion never came to the level of his father David himself G. Frederick Owen puts his finger as a historian on David's life in one paragraph summarizes David satisfied the people throughout Israel. He quieted the Philistines for all time to come.

Then, in the midst of peace and plenty, wrote many songs of praise to Jehovah, the elderly King gathered vast stores of stone iron, brass, precious jewels and cedar for the erection of the temple of God, he gave his parking charge enclosed the most successful royal career recorded in the annals of history. David's life and death form the end of an era. I want us to turn first to ask chapter 13. Before we look back into the Old Testament wants to see in one verse that sort of surfaces and then dissolves into others just a summary of his life, as Paul saw it while ministering in southern Europe. Acts 13 verse 36. This is God's evaluation of a man whose mold was broken at the time of his death. Look at them carefully. Verse 36 for David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid among his father's and underwent BK study verse 36 for a moment. Take away the name of David and put your own name. There for your name after you served the purpose of God in your own generation, you fell asleep you were buried past away from the face of this earth. Every individual has a purpose for living. Everyone, not many as greater purposes. David but none an insignificant reason for living. The tragedy of all tragedies is that we would live and die. Having never found that that reason for serving our generation. You have like no other person on earth a particular set of things contributions that you want to make this generation. Once they been served. You finished they may not be as great as your dreams are. They might be far beyond what you ever expect, but whatever they are here to find them and you to invest them and then to be satisfied when your twilight years come that you have served God's purpose in your life is ended, David well. His purpose was to serve as a king help in the birth of a son whose name was Solomon and to perpetuate the righteousness of Israel in first Chronicles chapters 28 and 29 we read the last recorded words of David while he was on earth first Chronicles 28 and first Chronicles 29 form. The closing chapters of his life, and I find David in this final study that we undertake this evening involving four activities he reflects on the temple. He speaks to his son Solomon. He prays before the Lord and then with the assembly. He rejoices before he passes away like a chapter 28 beginning at verse one.

David Olden perhaps stooped by now and years. After four decades of service looks into the faces of some trusted followers as well as his own son, who is the king elect and he brings these words says were David assembled in Jerusalem, all the officials of Israel. The princes of the tribes and the commanders of the divisions that serve the king. The commanders of thousands. The commanders of hundreds, the overseers of all the property and livestock belonging to the king and his sons with the officials and the mighty men, even all the valiant man. That's quite a gathering. Maybe it numbered into the hundreds they're all surrounding David. This aged king who is to give them the final parting words of his life, having served the purpose of God.

It says that David rose to his feet and said, listen to me, my brethren and my people. I had intended to build a permanent home for the ark of the covenant of the Lord and for the footstool of our God. So I had made preparations to build as I read verse two am aware immediately of the truth of this desire in David's life he lived and died with a frustrated desire. It is one thing David wanted to do was to build the temple. Now smile when I say that because I know that beating in the heart of every thinking person is a dream is a desire when nobody is around. And when you're able to be absolutely honest with yourself before God. You entertain certain dream certain hopes you want very much. By the end of your days to have you fill in the blank. That's your desire and I say, on the basis of David's life.

It may very well be that you will die with that desire unfulfilled. LB one of the hardest things in the world face and accept. David did a beautiful job. He had this deep desire to build the temple but the Lord's answer was no.

See verse three God said to me, you shall not build a house for my name, because your man-of-war shed blood as he was. Solomon was born he was given the name that means peace and have never thought of it but the word shalom is directly related in route form to the name Solomon's name means peace. The Lord shows a peacemaker, a diplomat, not a man-of-war to build his house. He wanted a man of a different temperament than David to fulfill that dream. David realized it when God said that to him and so David accepted from the Lord is no that's awfully hard to do with his response. Beginning at verse four, down through verse eight.

Yet the Lord, the God of Israel chose me from all the house of my father to be king over Israel forever.

He has chosen Judah to be a leader in in the house of Judah. My father's house and among the sons of my father. He took pleasure in me to make me king over all Israel. What's he doing. He's focusing on what God did allow him to do easy for us to be so distraught over a frustrated desire that we forget things God does give us the good things God does accomplish through our efforts and through our hands relevant planning away the last few years of his life with this for that unfulfilled desire.

David focused on the good things that God had given he goes on all of my sons for the Lord is given me many sons. He has chosen my son Solomon to sit on the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel he said to me, your son, Solomon is the one who shall build my house in my courts right chosen him to be a son to me and I will be a father to him and I will establish his kingdom forever if he resolutely performs my commandments and my ordinances as is done now. So now in the sight of all Israel, the assembly of the Lord and in the hearing of our God observed and seek after all the commandments of the Lord your God in order that you may possess the good land and bequeath it to your sons after you forever, but he same thing… Give me a yes answer he gave me a no answer but he did give me other things in place of that dream and I'm making the very most I can of those other things accepting the fact that I will never realize the dream of my life.

I want to pause for just a moment and ask you if you have some cherished desire that you realize by now you're having to relinquish. Usually it takes getting up in years to realize that that's going to happen because the younger we are, the greater our dream, the broader our hopes. Some of us are getting old enough to realize that some of those great hopes and dreams never going to be realized that's a hard pill to swallow, made a list of some of the things.

Perhaps it is the dream of some great accomplishment. Maybe it is the dream for a certain kind of career that you realize by now, will never be yours to enjoy. Maybe it's a hope for relief from something in your life that you had to live with for years. Perhaps as a certain kind of ministry.

Maybe a romance, maybe a choice of partner that you have made, but it's obvious to you by now that that's not God's choice. It's hard to accept. As David reflects on his life and sees this unfulfilled desire. He says, rather than aching over this unfulfilled dream.

I want to turn my attention to the things the Lord has done and I challenge you with parents.

You can live the last years of your life swamped by guilt, just overwhelmed by the failures of your past. You can eat your heart out. We say these days over some failure some lack or you can savor the grace of God I did the best I could with what I did and I claim his promise that he'll make up for me. Somehow over the years the locusts of the swarming locusts beat as David reflects. Let's also reflect, and then he turns and I feel in an emotional moment looks at his son and sees in that young man, the possibility of that dream being fulfilled. And yet David will experience my feelings with his father has for you, my son Solomon, and now he passes on advice and look at what he says to his son. He's got his final words last days on earth, and he chooses these words very carefully. First of all, he says to his son Solomon.

Solomon, no. The Lord, he speaks first of godliness, know the God of your father seems almost too obvious to mention, is not to see David is aware of the tyranny of the urgent.

He's been a king for 40 years and he knows on the throne of Israel. There is enough to keep a man busy so that he never has to take time to know God or he would be tempted not to take the time and he said Solomon above all the other things I want to pass on to you. I want you to know God.

The amplified Bible does better than any translation I found a ready rendering Philippians 310.

Listen to it for my determined purpose is that I may know him, that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of his person more strongly you could pull your son aside and given advice regarding life and be the first thing by the way, father's mother's what are you passing on what is literally being instructed into the lives of your offspring. David looked deeply into the eyes of his beloved son of Grace Solomon came from the loins of Bathsheba. Grace and he saw and Solomon. The markings of waywardness and loose living he saw those events and so he said to Solomon knowing his son know God, know God. This is inside for living, our Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll titled today's message the end of an era.

It's the 24th and final in the comprehensive series that will conclude on the next program. To learn more about this ministry. Visit us online@insideworld.org will today's passage describes the beautiful transfer of influence from one generation to the next and there's no better wisdom than the counsel David gave to Solomon to know God. Chuck describes this moment in his popular biography on David. If you been meaning to get a copy will be sure to reach out today. This book on David parallels this broadcast series goes into far greater detail. Many people have told us this particular biography is their favorite in the great lives collection. It's called David a man of passion and destiny to purchase a copy called 800-772-8888 or visit insight.org/store.

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