About that time David’s son Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, began boasting, “I will make myself king.” So he provided himself with chariots and charioteers and recruited fifty men to run in front of him. Now his father, King David, had never disciplined him at any time, even by asking, “Why are you doing that?” Adonijah had been born next after Absalom, and he was very handsome. (1 Kings 1:5-6)David was king of ancient Israel and he had nothing but trouble all of his life. But one of the main reasons he had trouble was because he was such a lousy father.
Two of his sons turned on him and tried to kill him so they could be king themselves. One of them was his favorite, Absalom. Absalom finally ended up hanging from a tree full of arrows.
The other was Adonijah. He too was a handsome guy. But that stood to reason. The Old Testament said that David himself was handsome and all the girls liked him. Since he was king, that helped, of course. But his kids were also handsome.
Adonijah was his next favorite, but David had made one big mistake when Adonijah was growing up. He never told him no. He never stopped the kid and said why are you acting like this? He just let him go along doing whatever he wanted to do. After a while Adonijah thought he could get away with anything.
He wanted to be king. The only way to do so was to throw David out and take over as king. David was old and David’s other son Solomon was supposed to be king next, but Adonijah didn’t care. He wanted what he wanted and he wanted it right now.
What he got was dead. He ended up being put to death.
A lot of people get in trouble because they were never told no growing up and they think they have the right to do anything they want to do. And we do live in a free country. But that right, that freedom stops when it hurts other people. Adonijah hurt his father and his brother and acted in a way that was against the law.
And he ended up dead.
If you go the way you want to, no matter what anybody else says, you will end up dead. You may not die right now, but a lot of people on death row started by doing things they wanted to do in spite of the fact that it hurt other people.
When Jesus died, he did so knowing that a lot of people were not going to like him or care one way or another. But he put the need to bring us back to God ahead of everything he wanted.
His death meant something great. Adonijah’s death was worthless.
Which life are you living? One that helps or one that hurts? When you die, will it be good that you lived, or worthless? You can decide.
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