The King's Charge and the Son's Calling Text: 1 Chronicles 28:9-10
Introduction: The Weight of a Father's Words
We live in a fatherless age. I do not mean that men have stopped siring children. I mean that they have stopped being fathers in the biblical sense. They have stopped understanding that their primary duty before God is to raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They have stopped seeing their lives as one link in a great covenantal chain, receiving a charge from their fathers and passing it on, sharpened and strengthened, to their sons. The result is a generation of spiritual orphans, adrift in a sea of sentimentality, with no anchor, no charge, and no calling.
But here, in our text, we see the exact opposite. We have an aged king, David, a man after God's own heart, a warrior and a poet, standing at the end of his life. He has gathered the leaders of Israel, not for a pity party, but for a transfer of power and a declaration of God's purposes. And in the center of this great assembly, he turns to his son, Solomon, and delivers a charge. These are not mere suggestions. This is not "follow your heart" advice from a modern therapeutic dad. This is a weighty, binding, covenantal charge. It is the kind of charge that makes kingdoms and breaks them. It is the kind of charge that every Christian father ought to give, in his own way, to his own sons and daughters.
David is about to go the way of all the earth, but the covenant is not dying with him. God's purposes are not buried with His saints. The work must continue. The baton must be passed. And so David lays out for his son the fundamental grammar of a godly life and a successful reign. This charge is not complicated, but it is total. It touches on theology, piety, ethics, and vocation. It is a microcosm of the Christian life, as applicable to us today as it was to a young king-in-waiting three thousand years ago. For we too have a house to build, a spiritual house, the church of the living God. And the principles for building are precisely the same.
The Text
"As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a delighted soul; for Yahweh searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will be found; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever. See now, for Yahweh has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; be strong and act."
(1 Chronicles 28:9-10 LSB)
The Foundation: Know and Serve (v. 9a)
David begins with the absolute, non-negotiable foundation of everything else.
"As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a delighted soul..." (1 Chronicles 28:9a)
The first command is to "know the God of your father." This is not about knowing about God. This is not academic theology. The Hebrew word for know, yada, implies a deep, personal, intimate, and experiential knowledge. It is the same word used for the intimate relations between a husband and wife. David is telling Solomon, "Don't just inherit my religion. Don't just go through the motions of the court cult. You must have your own personal, living, breathing relationship with Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the God of me, your father." This is the great burden of every godly parent. You cannot have saving faith on behalf of your children. You can teach them, train them, discipline them, and pray for them, but they must, at the end of the day, yada God for themselves.
And flowing directly from this knowledge is the second command: "serve Him." True knowledge of God always, without exception, leads to service. If your "knowledge" of God leaves you inert on the couch, then you don't know God. You know a caricature of God you've invented for your own comfort. But notice the way Solomon is to serve. It must be "with a whole heart and a delighted soul."
A "whole heart" means an undivided heart. A perfect heart. It is the opposite of the double-minded man, who is unstable in all his ways. God is not interested in ninety-five percent of your allegiance. He will not be one of many interests on the smorgasbord of your life. He demands and deserves total, unreserved, unqualified loyalty. This is the first and great commandment. This is what it means to love the Lord your God with all your heart.
But it is not just a whole heart; it is a "delighted soul." The Hebrew here means a willing, pleased, eager soul. This is the death of all dour, grim, joyless religion. God is not honored by reluctant, resentful service. He is not glorified by the man who serves Him as though he were taking out the trash. He desires those who worship Him in spirit and in truth, and that truth is that He is the fountain of all joy. To serve Him is our highest pleasure. Our obedience should be characterized by gladness, by delight. When your children obey you with a sullen face and a resentful spirit, they are not truly honoring you. And so it is with God. He wants our hearts, and He wants them singing.
The Reason: The All-Seeing God (v. 9b)
David then provides the profound motivation for this kind of radical, internal piety. Why must the heart be whole and the soul delighted? Because there is no other option before the God who is.
"...for Yahweh searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts." (1 Chronicles 28:9b LSB)
This is a terrifying and a glorious truth. God's gaze is not superficial. He is not like Samuel, who looked on the height of Eliab's stature. God looks on the heart. His search is exhaustive ("all hearts") and His perception is perfect ("understands every intent of the thoughts"). There is no corner of your mind, no secret motive, no fleeting imagination that is hidden from Him. You cannot fake it with God. You cannot put on a religious costume on Sunday morning and fool the Almighty. He sees the root. He sees the "why" behind your "what."
This is terrifying for the hypocrite, for it means his whole life is a charade played before an audience who is never for a moment deceived. All his masks are transparent to God. But for the genuine believer, this is a profound comfort. It means God sees the sincere desire to please Him, even when the outward performance is clumsy and weak. He sees the groanings of the heart that cannot be uttered. He knows the intent to obey, even when we stumble and fall. He is not a God who judges by outward appearance but by the reality of a heart that, however flawed, is bent toward Him.
The Choice: The Two Ways (v. 9c)
Based on this reality of God's omniscience, David lays before Solomon the great covenantal choice. There are only two paths, and they lead to two very different destinations.
"If you seek Him, He will be found; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever." (1 Chronicles 28:9c LSB)
Here is the promise and the warning, set side by side. "If you seek Him..." This is the active pursuit of the God you know. It is prayer, it is obedience, it is worship, it is a life oriented toward Him. The promise is not that you might find Him, or that you'll get a participation trophy. The promise is absolute: "He will be found." God is not playing hide-and-seek. He is not a reluctant deity who must be coaxed out of hiding. To the one who seeks, God reveals Himself. He draws near to those who draw near to Him. This is a covenant promise, and it is rock-solid.
But the warning is just as stark. "If you forsake Him..." To forsake God is to abandon Him, to treat Him as irrelevant, to live as though He is not there. It is to turn your back on the God of your father. And the consequence is not a slap on the wrist. It is not divine disappointment. It is to "be rejected by Him forever." This is the language of covenant curse. This is the language of disinheritance. For Solomon, this meant the loss of the kingdom. For us, it means something far more serious. To forsake God is to be forsaken by God. And to be forsaken by God forever is the definition of Hell.
We must not water this down. We live in a soft age that despises such sharp antitheses. But the Bible is full of them. Life and death, blessing and curse, seek and be found, forsake and be rejected. David is a good father, and a good father warns his son about the cliff at the edge of the field.
The Commission: Be Strong and Act (v. 10)
Finally, David brings this charge to its practical, vocational point. This is not abstract piety. This knowledge of God and joyful service must be channeled into a specific, God-given task.
"See now, for Yahweh has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; be strong and act." (1 Chronicles 28:10 LSB)
The imperative "See now" is a call to pay attention. "Look, Solomon. Get this. This is your moment." The foundation of Solomon's calling was not his own ambition or his father's preference. It was a divine election: "Yahweh has chosen you." God is the one who calls. He is the one who appoints us to our stations and tasks. Our duty is not to invent a mission for ourselves but to discern the mission He has given us.
For Solomon, the task was clear: "to build a house for the sanctuary." He was to build the Temple, the place where God's name would dwell. This was a monumental, generation-defining task. It required wisdom, resources, and immense labor. And it is a picture of our task as Christians. We are not called to build a temple of stone and gold, but we are called to build a spiritual house, the Church (1 Peter 2:5). We are living stones, being built up together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.
And so the final charge is intensely practical: "be strong and act." The Hebrew could be rendered "be strong and do." Faith is not passive. Knowing God is not an internal, mystical state of navel-gazing. A whole heart and a delighted soul are not feelings that we cultivate in isolation. True faith works. It builds. It acts. It does. God chose Solomon, but Solomon still had to quarry the stone and fell the cedars. God has chosen us in Christ, but we are still commanded to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might, and then we are to get to work, building His kingdom in the place He has put us, with the tools He has given us.
Conclusion: Your Charge, Your House
This charge from a dying king to his royal son is our charge as well. First, we must know God. Not know about Him, but know Him, personally, through His Son Jesus Christ. The Father has revealed Himself in the face of Christ. To know the Son is to know the Father.
Second, we must serve Him, not with a divided and grudging heart, but with a whole heart, gladly. Our service in our homes, our churches, and our jobs must be offered with a delighted soul, as unto the Lord. We must do this because we know that our Father in heaven sees the heart. He is not fooled by outward conformity. He desires truth in the inward parts.
Third, we must remember the two ways. If we seek Him in His Word and in prayer, He has promised that He will be found by us. But if we forsake Him, if we drift into practical atheism and live for ourselves, the warning stands. He will reject us. The covenant has promises, and it has threats. We are fools to embrace the one and ignore the other.
And last, we must see that God has chosen us for a task. He has called you to build a particular part of His house. For some, it is raising children in the fear of the Lord. For others, it is running a business with integrity. For others, it is teaching or governing or cleaning floors for the glory of God. Whatever your station, God has chosen you for it. Therefore, be strong. Take courage. And act. Do the work.