Seek the Lord’s Will and the Strength to Do It

Seek the Lord's Will and the Strength to Do It

They're together. First Chronicles 28. And if you will look there, I want to pick back up in verse number six. In verse number six where he begins speaking of Solomon here specifically, and he said unto me, Solomon, my son, he shall build my house and my courts where I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father moreover. I will establish his kingdom forever if he be constant to do my commandments and my judgments as at this day. Now therefore in the sight of all Israel, the congregation of the Lord, and in the audience of our God, keep and seek for all the commandments of the Lord your God that you may possess this good land and leave it for an inheritance for your children after you forever. And thou Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy Father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind for the Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts. If thou seek him, he will be found of thee, but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off forever. Take heed now for the Lord hath chosen thee to build a house for the sanctuary, be strong, and do it.

I know that we have in our study of the kings of Israel we went through this passage, and we did not take the amount of time on the specific portion this morning that I would like to take. I was actually in my Bible reading, I was reading this week in this portion of Scripture, and it just, there are many things that the Lord has been speaking to me about, in other ways that were condensed in this passage of Scripture as I was reading it this week, and I noticed that I want to particularly focus our hearts' attention this morning on the charge that God, well, that David is giving to his son Solomon here. It is very rich in meaning and in wisdom of the words that are being given to Solomon here in this passage.

Of course, David has called and assembled the princes of the tribes, the captains of the companies, as it says in verse 1, all these leaders in Israel, he's gathered into the gathering, and he sat them down and said, we're going, God has made it clear to me that even though I wanted to build a house for him, and that's a respectable thing, I was not the one to build it. I have been a king of war, and my son Solomon will be a man of peace, and he is the one that God wants to build this temple. I am making preparation for the building of that temple, but God has made it very clear that I'm not to be the one to do that. Right there we can say that it's very clear that God, as we pointed out in the Sunday School hour, God has specific tasks for different individuals and different generations. We should not try to do something God has not called us to do. We should not try to be somebody that God has not prepared us or called us and nor does He want us to be that. That would be a bad thing, but that's not God's will for my life.

We have been raising chickens and rabbits for a number of years now, and we've learned to do some things in a homesteading sort of way. We were talking with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law this week, and we're just sharing notes about things, and they have things that they do that we don't do. Nobody, even just in a natural perspective, can do everything. God has a will for each one of us. God has a role for each of us to play, and we should not try to be everything. We should just try to be and pray and seek the Lord to help us to be what He's called us to be, and to fill the role that He has for us to fill.

We notice here that He calls them together and says that, and this is a wonderful thing that He's able to acknowledge. I know the Lord doesn't want me to build this temple, and I am at peace with that. I'm not trying to be the one who did everything in the history of Israel. I fulfilled what God wants me to do, and my son, I pray for him that he will have a heart to serve God as well. In the role that God has for him, I can't live my son's life for him. I can't, you know, we pray for our children. We pray that they will find, and they will first of all come to know the Lord and each one of them, and then they will find what it is that God wants them to do each step of the way with their life, and that they will do it.

We need to pray for ourselves that we will not grow lax as days go by. We talked about, I mentioned this morning when you first get your driver's license, you're gripping the steering wheel really hard, and you're focused on the road, but you can get lax as days go by with that. We can get lax as days go by in the calling God has put us in, and not be, not have the fervency that we once had. One thing I love about David is that amidst the sins that he committed, yes, he was restored, and there was a renewed sense of urgency about what God wanted him to do. We see that he ended his life, apparently, by all appearances, he ended his life with a tenderness toward God, and he wanted to be doing all that God would have for him to do in his latter years of life. He didn't rust out, as some of you say, he wore out for God. He did all that was on his plate that God had put there for him to do, it seems.

And he is communicating to Solomon, but he's communicating to these leaders. Y'all hold him accountable. Pray for him that he will be the man that he ought to be, that he will serve God with all of his heart, with a perfect heart. Well, and then he turns to Solomon. This is where I really, my heart has been drawn this morning, in verses 9 and 10, and thou Solomon my son, he says. There are some loaded phrases here, some powerful statements that he makes to his son. He says, and thou, my Solomon my son, number one. What does he tell him? Build the temple? No. He says, Solomon, know thou the God of thy Father. Solomon, you need to know God personally. You need to know Him yourself. It's not good enough that your daddy knew God. I want you to know the God of your Father personally.

The only way to know God is to receive His Word. To hear His Word and believe it, right? Jesus would say to the Pharisees, He said, you have not His Word abiding in you. You know about Him. You have a religious formality about you, but you have not His Word abiding in you. For whom He hath sent, Jesus said, you believe Him, you believe not. If you had, if you knew God, you knew Me, you would know Me. If you knew God's Word, you would believe Me. That's what He said. So He said there. It's not enough to know about God. Knowing about God will not get a man to heaven. Knowing about God may help your life out in some ways, but just knowing about God will not save you. It will not do that. You must receive personally the love of the truth that you might be saved. You might be born into the kingdom of God. You must receive the love of the truth.

I think I've mentioned in years gone by, I mentioned this a couple of times, but there was a covenant and I haven't gone into a lot of depth studying all the nuances of it, but there was a covenant in Puritan New England in the early days before we were ever a country. There was a diminishing membership, I guess we can say, among the Puritan churches. And, or there was, first of all, there was a diminishing new birth, conversion experience among the children of the Puritans. And, finally, because of this becoming more and more an issue, they established what they call the halfway covenant. And the halfway covenant basically said, well, even if you're not converted or your parents aren't converted, you can still be baptized. You can still become a member of the church, even if you're not a believer personally. You haven't had a, you don't know God personally. You can just still be in the church anyway. And this bred and always does breed a lot of problems when there's not a born-again body of believers, and you just have sort of this amalgamation, well, you know, my daddy, my daddy's daddy, he was a Christian, he always went to church here, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm just, I'm just part of this church because it's one thing to go to a church, but to be a member, to be part of that body. We can't play church, we can't play God, we can, but we ought not to. We must know Him personally from a, in our hearts.

Well, Pastor Pekah often said, we can darken the doors of a church and still go to hell. We can still go to hell because we don't know God personally. It's not because God wants us to go to hell. He's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. It's not good enough to go to church just because daddy and granddaddy go to church. We got to know Him personally as our God in John 17, verse 3, John 17 and verse number 3, it's stated here. And this is life eternal that they might know the, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. What is life eternal is to know God through His Son, Jesus Christ? That's the only mediator between God and men to know God. I'm not talking about knowing about God. It was a big difference between, oh, I know about God. No, no, that's not eternal life. It's eternal life is to personally know God.

How do we know Him? How do we know Him, the one we haven't seen? Well, by faith, by faith, how shall they hear without a preacher? How shall they believe on Him whom they've not heard, right? If they hadn't heard. Well, we got to hear and faith comes by hearing the Word of God. And then we, then we can have faith on the one that wants us to know Him. Because of what He's done for us. He loved us first. We love Him now because He first loved us. Well, those who don't know God personally don't have eternal life. But each person must, must individually as Paul preached as he went through those Gentile nations. As he went from place to place, he preached what? Repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

Remember what it says in Proverbs 9, verse 10. Look in Proverbs 9, 10 with me. Proverbs 9 and verse number 10 says this, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. God wants nothing more than for every man that comes in the world. Man, one that every, every child that comes in the world to know Him. He is not trying to keep us from the knowledge of Him. In fact, He says it's quite the opposite. It says that men, when they knew the truth, they, they, they, they suppressed the truth. They, they, they, they hold the truth in unrighteous living. They, they, they reject the truth. That's the tendency of man that God doesn't want men to die in their sins, mankind to die in their sins. And this is what man to die in ignorance of Him. We are alienated from the life of God, the scripture says because of, because of sin, because of ignorance. But this is why God has brought light to man. So he might not remain in darkness. Even the light of creation, but more specifically and even higher, the light of His Son, the light of the world, the light of every man that cometh into the world.

Well, only when we know God can we truly serve Him. God does not, God can use, as He did, J. Hugh was a man who didn't have any private religion, private faith in God, personal faith in God, but he was an instrument God used. God used many instruments, didn't know Him. That's not for argument. What we're looking at here is that we can't truly serve God from the heart, unless we know Him. We can't serve Him. And what David was stressing to Solomon was more, more than just building a temple, Solomon, I want you to know God. I want you to, I want you to build the temple, God wants you to build the temple, but I want to make sure that you know God personally. That is the key. It's not enough that your daddy knew Him. And then if we know Him, we will serve Him. We will serve Him. We'll serve Him with a perfect heart. In fact, what does it say here? David said to Solomon, he says here in verse number nine, know the God of thy father and serve Him with a perfect heart.

Interestingly enough, the word perfect here is the word shalom. It's tied into that word shalom. We talked about recently. It's, we spoke about how it pictured health and wholeness, right? There is, it's not division and disunity, but it's wellness and health and wholeness. And this is the kind of heart that David said, Solomon, you need to serve the Lord with a perfect heart. A perfect heart and then you don't need divided loyalty. You need to serve God with all your heart. With a whole heart served the Lord. Well, we can't serve God, Matthew Henry said. Matthew Henry said, we cannot serve God aright if we do not know Him. And in vain, do we know Him if we do not serve Him? What a powerful statement that is.

Last Sunday we looked at the matter of integrity, didn't we? And when we looked at integrity, what do we say? We talked about the correlation to integers, whole numbers, right? And integrity, the man of integrity is a whole man. He's not something over here and something else over there. He is who he presents himself to be. I say, a man, I could be a woman, boy or girl, anybody. I'm just talking about this is the heart, the heart of a man or woman of integrity is a true and a genuine heart. It's not a, it's not a fake. It's not a, it's not a hypocrite. Integrity is what we need to be asking the Lord to make, make us men and women of integrity. But David said that I will praise thee with my whole heart. That's what he said in Psalm 9 verse 1. And Psalm 119 verse 10, with my whole heart, have I sought thee with my whole heart? You know when you're seeking God with your whole heart, don't you? You know when you mean business with God or when you're just kind of like, well, let's keep these people happy over here or, you know, or give an impression to someone. You know the difference between those two things.

With my whole heart, have I sought thee? Oh, let me not wander from Thy commandments. And you know, that's something that nobody else can make you do. Nobody else can make me do. Daniel, you need to seek God with your whole heart. Well, unless I want to seek God with my whole heart, I'm not going to seek God with my whole heart. Unless it is in my heart, you know, that's why righteousness cannot be legislated. You cannot legislate morality. You cannot legislate integrity because it is an individual choice between the individual and God. You can hear it and you can, amen, yeah, that's great. But at the end of the day, I say, I can do the same thing. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, it will be up to you and me whether we seek God and serve Him with our whole heart, one of them. With the whole heart, well, as with the whole heart, I've sought, David said, God commands us to love Him with all of our heart, doesn't He? He commands it to love Him with our heart, soul, mind, strength.

Remember, wasn't it Delilah, who said to Samson, how can you say you love me when your heart is not with me? You're telling me things, but you're not telling me all your heart. How can you say you love me when your heart's not with me? In Proverbs 23, it tells us to be careful. We can Proverbs 23. Proverbs 23 verse 6. This is maybe not a good context, but it gives us a little more idea of what it means with the whole heart, right? Proverbs 23 verse 6. Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye. Neither desire thou his dainty meats for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, saith he to thee, but his heart is not with thee. He has ulterior motives. Isn't it good when you find a friend that, you know, what you see is what you get. They're just, they mean what they say, and they say what they mean. Isn't that a refreshing thing? Don't we want that from other people? We don't want people to say one thing to us and then turn around and stab us in the back, right? We don't want people to say, you know, I'll say whatever he wants me to say, and then I'll get what I want out of the situation afterwards. No? Be careful about those kind of people. We want people to be genuine with us. Let's be genuine with God is what David's saying to Solomon. He's serving with a perfect heart, and he says here to serve Him with a willing mind.

A willing mind. What is a willing mind? Well, it's a mind that loves God and is willing and desiring to know and to do His will. He wants to do what God wants us to do. God sees, in fact, David says this to him, he says, he doesn't stop there. He says, for the Lord searcheth all hearts and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts. Love the Lord with your imagination. We can, each one of us have a different ability to create different things, don't we? A different ability to imagine different things. There's some things that Lydia can imagine with a paintbrush and a piece of paper that, well, I might be able to imagine it but I can't serve the Lord with that. I can't think of it. Well, what are we thinking of in our hearts and our minds? Sometimes God gives all of us different gifts than them. And we're to use this for Him, but a mind. A mind, a willing mind. To serve God willingly, we willingly with our thinking, with our imaginations in our thought life. This is how great is God's thoughts to us, to some of them, how great is the sum of God's thoughts to us? God wants our thoughts to be willingly offered up to His glory. He wants us to willingly serve Him with all of our minds. And that is what David tells Solomon that God desires to not give God this which is due to Him is to rob Him, isn't it? To engage our minds, to have our minds fervently engaged and things are just going to rust and corrupt and thieves are going to break through and steal and we don't give it for the Lord. What a sad thing that would be.

But then he says, but if in verse number nine, if thou seek Him, He will be found of thee. They'll seek Him. Would Jesus commanded us to seek first the kingdom of God, didn't He? In His righteousness. Seek instead of doing what first. Instead of putting what first? What about the wear? What about the eat? What about the drink? Don't worry about those things. Make the aim and effort and goal of your life to seek first the kingdom of God. Don't sit around and bite your fingernails about where is my, where am I going to find the money and all these things for these things? Yes, we have to work. We have to do those things. No doubt. But even as we do that, we need to be doing it to the glory of God whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do. Seeking God's glory even in that. We should, you know, we should pray. Give us this day our daily bread, right? And we know that and have confidence that God will provide all of our needs. He will supply all of our needs according to His riches, physical and spiritual and these, all of them. He will provide them all. But we need to seek Him first, right? Seeking first. What is, the Lord said these things are the nations of the earth, seek after. What, what are we going to eat? What are we going to drink? That's all they think about. God is not in all their thoughts, right? God doesn't, God doesn't even enter into the equation in the, in the unbelievers' minds. If God is something we think about when we go to a funeral for a few minutes and then we get back to, you know, what's for lunch? I mean, and we all, I love to think about food. Don't get me wrong. But that must not be what we're seeking after. That must not be the goal. That must not be the aim of our lives.

In 1 Chronicles 16, verse 11, 1 Chronicles 16 and verse 11 says, seek the Lord and His strength. We're to seek the strength we need to do what God has called us to do. You know, if we, we're fools, if we think that we don't need the Lord's strength. We might say, well, I'm, I'm pretty smart. I'm pretty strong. I'm pretty this, whatever, whatever. Well, even the young lions do lack and they suffer hunger, right? Well, our strength will fail. But seek the Lord, seek the Lord's strength. Seek His face continually. If you seek after riches, you'll probably find them. Whenever we seek after something, we want to find it, don't we? If you, I heard someone recently that lost their wedding band, they were frantically seeking for that wedding band and they found it. Thankfully, they found the wedding band. If you, if you, if you lost a sheep, you're a shepherd and you lost that sheep, you're gonna want, you're gonna go out and seek that sheep until you find it, right? Dead or alive, you're gonna find that sheep. If you lost something, you want to go find that thing. And you, maybe in this day and time you're looking on social media, is anybody posting, we found this valuable item or something. Woo, I'm glad they found that. You know, go check all the lost and found. Did you, did you see someone's own? You're going, it's gonna be an urgency that you're seeking after that thing. But what is a man advantaged if he gained the whole world and loses his own soul? If he seeks all the things the world has to offer and he fills his life up with all these things, but he fails to seek the most important thing of all, which is the kingdom of God and His righteousness. When you, you could die a rich, maybe a miserable, but a rich person, right? You could die well from the world's eyes. But that's not what David wanted for his son Solomon. He says, you know, he says, I want you to seek the Lord.

What do you say here? Seek Him. He says, seek Him if thou seek Him, He will be found of thee. He's not gonna play hide and seek with you. He's not gonna evade you. He's not gonna call you to seek after Him and then not be found of you. Well, the Lord we read this morning for the Sunday school hour, the Lord is good unto them that wait for Him to the soul that seeketh Him. Lamentations 3:25. The Lord is good to the soul that seeketh Him. Solomon, God will be good to you. You will find so much personally about God that you don't even know now if you will seek Him. I can stand up here. You could be in a conversation with me. You could tell me, you know what, Pastor, I was reading my Bible this week and what a blessing it was when I came across this passage of scripture. And God really spoke to me. When I opened our Bibles and we read, beyond the sacred page, I seek thee, Lord. When I'm looking in the Bible, I'm looking up. My faith looks up to God. Speak to me, Lord. I want to see more of your saving fullness. I want to know more about what your will is for my life. I want you to make yourself known to me even more so in my life than you have previously. I already know you, thank, Lord, for that, but I want to know more of your saving fullness. And you may share something with me and I say, that was a blessing, wasn't it? I thank you for sharing that with me. But it still can never mean to me all that it meant to you.

And if you know the Lord, it makes sense what I'm saying to you. I'm sure this morning, that makes sense to your heart. You understand it because there's just something about it as a believer when the Holy Spirit moves upon your heart as you're reading and you're seeking the Lord and you know unmistakably. This is God talking to my heart. This is God showing. He might be approving me in this thing or He might be correcting or instructing me and giving me wisdom in this thing. Thank you, Lord. The young lion, Psalm 34 verse 10, says the young lions, I alluded to this. They do suffer hunger. They lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing. We like to quote Psalm 23, don't we? And how wonderful it is. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. I will not lack because the Lord leads me. I will not lack because I have a personal relationship with the shepherd and as I follow Him, He leads me in the green pastures. He feeds me. I will not lack what I'm in need of. He doesn't give me what I need for next week today, but He gives me what I need for today today. But I got to seek it. I've got to follow after Him. I don't need to, you know, I hear His voice and I follow Him, right? Sometimes we don't always follow God as well as we should, but we should follow hard. David said, my soul, followeth hard after thee. Seek Him and really know Him.

Spend time with Him, serve Him sincerely with your whole heart and with your whole mind. Will He mind seeking before anything else? Seek Him before women, seeking before recognition, seeking before power and earthly knowledge, seeking above all else? God will bless you, yes, with the wisdom and the skill you need, but seek Him first and all the things you're needing, God will add those things to you. God will give you those things. You put Him first in your life. And then He says here in verse number nine, but if thou forsake Him, He will cast thee off forever. Forsake Him, if you refuse to know God, if you refuse to serve God, then He will refuse you. He will forsake you. This is true of every person on this planet. If a person will know God and love Him and serve Him, He will receive that individual to Himself and will teach them and bless them. But if a person rejects God's Word, if it rejects God, I mean you can't reject God's Word without rejecting God, right? If you can't forsake God's Word and not forsake Him, then God will not force Himself on anyone. God will not force Himself on any individual.

Sadly, some that have grown up, many that have grown up in church, have forsaken the way of their fathers. And it may be, some of that has to do with hypocrisy they may have seen in their fathers. But at the end of the day, we're going to all stand before God individually one day. We're not going to answer for our father or our mother. We're not going to answer for our grandfather. We're not going to answer for anybody else. We're going to answer for, I'll stand alone before we do God one day. Whosoever shall deny me before men, Jesus said, him, well, I also deny before my Father, which is in heaven. But as Christians, we ought to say, like the hymn writer says, take the world but give me Jesus. All of its joys are but in name. But His love, abideth ever through eternal years the same, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in Him, right? Taste and see that the Lord is good. Take, He says here, He says here that, don't forsake the Lord. He'll forsake you. Be the real deal Solomon. Don't settle for a side. Know the Lord, serve Him with all of your heart.

Oh, how many in Israel's history? We saw it this morning, didn't we? J.U. did the service that he was supposed to do, but he didn't know the Lord. Well, take heed now, he says, verse 10, take heed now. Don't get distracted. Attend to the matter at hand. You're going to serve God. You'll need to take heed to what He's saying. Take heed, David says to his son, son, take heed now. Give your attention for the Lord hath chosen thee to build a house for the sanctuary. Be strong and do it. The Lord has chosen thee. What is the Lord chosen you for? What is the Lord chosen? What is the Lord want to do with your life? I'm not saying you know everything that God ever wants for your life as we don't. We would, we would be dishonest if we said we know all that God has down the road for us. No, we don't. But we can know what God is saying. Hey, son, I want you to do this daughter. I want you to do this. There is, the Lord is opening some doors and closing some doors in our lives, isn't He? He's opening doors and He's closing doors. Some things we may say, I really want to do this and the Lord says, nope, nope, we're going to close that door here. Because I would really like to do this, but the Lord may not want us to do that. The Lord may be redirecting your life. Don't fight against the Lord. Seek to know what He's chosen for you to do. What He's chosen for you to do at this season may be different than what He has for you down the road for now. But that was the case with Solomon, wasn't it? There was only a period of time that he was chosen to build that house and then the house was finished. What is he going to do after that? Well, you got to know the Lord, right? You got to seek the Lord. And you've got to say, Lord, I'll do what you want me to do. I'll go where you want me to go as we sing this morning. Wherever that may be, Lord, show me the way. Show me the way.

So what task? Maybe when the Lord places upon your heart a burden to do the thing that He wants you to do, you feel a sense of inadequacy. Oh, Lord. I don't know if I can do that. You know? I'm not an eloquent speaker, Moses said. That's okay. The Lord will be with your mouth. The Lord will help you with that. It could be that even as we read in 1 Kings. Looking at 1 Kings chapter 3. First Kings chapter 3, we notice there in verse number 7. First Kings 3:7 says, and now, oh Lord, my God, Solomon says, Thou hast made thy servant king instead of David my father and I am but a little child. I know not how to go out or come in. And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast chosen, a great people. That cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people that I may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this thy so great a people? And the speech pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this thing.

You know, the Lord hates pride, He loves humility. When we know that God has something for us to do. We may be talking about just we need to pray. That God will help us to be Godly husbands, fathers, brothers in Christ, wives, mothers. What children, whatever the case may be, what help us to be a God-honoring citizen in the society that we live in. A fellow employee, wherever we are, Lord, help me to bring glory to you in the role that you've appointed for me at this time. Help me. I want to seek your face and know you more intimately so that I can show you in the way that I live before others. Well, there needs to be this spirit that we see in Solomon. What does he say? He says, I am but a little child. I can't do this in my own strength. I can't, I'm not up to the task. If we have this sense that we don't do, the wicked don't have God in all their thoughts, but we ought to have God in all our thoughts. We ought to have God in our thinking and our motives and our desires. What task has the Lord chosen for us?

I believe that God has called me to preach His Word, but there may be short-term things that God has called us to do individually. Maybe God is laying upon your heart. There's this person, there's your neighbor over there. You need to pray and seek me about how to present the gospel to those people. How am I to go about doing that? Well, seek the Lord. He'll make it, He'll make the way plain. How am I to, I may have to give the plain an instrument. You know, I may have the gift of the Lord. The Lord may have put upon me even a trial like cancer. Lord, I need the strength to go through this thing. I need joy in the midst of this so that I can make you known. An ability God when she was going through cancer for all those years. They said she wouldn't make it to a Christmas that first year and she would have ten more years. And how God used her to speak to the nurses and the doctors and so many different ones that she went to. And that was her desire that the Lord would be seen in her even in affliction. And she had to ask no doubt all the time for strength to do that, for strength, for strength, for strength.

Strength is not talking about here the muscles. I mean, sometimes there's certain tasks that will require physical strength. But even the moral strength, the courage to do what we know God is calling us to do. The courage to do what is right, Esther needed that. She needed that courage to do the right thing even though it would have been far easier for the moment to hold her peace. She needed to stand up for such a time as she was facing. Nehemiah needed to stand up and say, okay, my people are in a bad way and the city and the walls of Jerusalem are in disrepair. Oh, King, would you allow me to go and these walls be repaired. He needed the strength. David needed the strength to go up and face Goliath. And he did, God gave him the strength, to face Goliath and bring down that giant. But you notice his focus of his heart was on the Lord. He had a perfect heart toward God. Helping this uncircumcised Philistine blasting the name of the Lord and we don't stand up against him. Is there not a cause? He had a heart to serve God because he knew God. He knew God. Do you and I have the courage to do what we ought to do? The right thing. Do we have the courage? Do we have a heart and a mind that's willing to serve the Lord and not seek our own will? Because the easiest thing to do is just say, well, I'll just do what I want to do.

That's, that's sadly a lot of our country's people just doing whatever they want to do, whatever's right in their own eyes. That's the path of least resistance, isn't it? Just do whatever you feel like. Do whatever you want to do. My life is mine. I can do what I want with it. No? That's the norm. May God help us to do what He's calling us to do. Isaiah 40, let's close there in verse 29. Isaiah 40 in verse 29. In verse 29, He giveth power to the faint. You know it so well. And to them that have no might, He increaseth strength. You don't need any strength to do the wrong thing, the devil will empower you to do the wrong thing. You don't need any strength to do what you want to do because it's easy to do what I want to do. But even the youth shall faint and be weary and the young men shall utterly fall, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. And they shall walk and not faint. May that be a description of your life and mine. May Psalm 23 be a description of your life and mine. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. You know, He leads me in the green pastures and makes me lie down beside the still waters, restores my soul. I will not want. I will not lack. And that we may have that confidence that the Lord will continue to lead us all the way to glory. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Let's pray. Father, may we take to heart the words David shared with his son Solomon in the presence of these leaders in Israel. May we take to heart the need to know you and to know you in a very personal way. If we do know you, Lord, may it be expressed in service. May we be expressed in seeking. May it be expressed in the way that you give us the moral courage, the bravery, the strength to do what you've called us to do, even though we may face adversity doing it. Help us to show forth Christ through our lives. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.