Week 1

Solomon

Set Apart by Consecration

Apart from fairy-tale movies and occasional stories of British royalty, our experience of coronation is limited. That moment when an existing king or queen passes on the crown to the appointed successor — the pomp and circumstance and ceremony — is tied to a fairy-tale image in most of our minds. Kings and queens are established as named leaders of a monarchy — that's coronation. But it's not consecration.

Consecration is two-way set-apartness. We are set apart by God for His purposes and His glory. But we also set ourselves apart, handing over all the parts of our lives to God — all surrendered to God for God's purposes. The word consecration is related to the word sacred. Being set apart or consecrated is a sacred and holy act.

King Solomon doesn't just have the fairy-tale coronation ceremony, one in which his father, King David, passes down the crown and they live happily ever after. He is consecrated, set apart for a holy and sacred purpose. But he will not thrive as king by relying only on his earthly crown. It is his consecration, his set-apart-by-God-ness, that makes him a great king. When he follows God's wisdom and leads by surrendering to God, he thrives. When he seeks God's wisdom first and lives a life different from the culture of idolatry around him, he finds success. But when he becomes overly enamored with the power of the crown, his story takes a turn.

I hope that you have experienced a consecration in your life — a time when another person dedicated you to God, prayed over you, and spoke words of faith into your life. But at some point, we have to consecrate ourselves to God — to hand over all the parts of our lives to God. We have to say to God, "I want to live a set apart life that glorifies you."

This week we're jumping right into Solomon's consecration story to discover more about what it means to be set apart by God and to set ourselves apart to be used by God.

Day 1: Set Apart as King

Read God's Word

1 When King David was very old, he could not keep warm even when they put covers over him. 2 So his attendants said to him, "Let us look for a young virgin to serve the king and take care of him. She can lie beside him so that our lord the king may keep warm."

3 Then they searched throughout Israel for a beautiful young woman and found Abishag, a Shunammite, and brought her to the king. 4 The woman was very beautiful; she took care of the king and waited on him, but the king had no sexual relations with her.

5 Now Adonijah, whose mother was Haggith, put himself forward and said, "I will be king." So he got chariots and horses ready, with fifty men to run ahead of him. 6 (His father had never rebuked him by asking, "Why do you behave as you do?" He was also very handsome and was born next after Absalom.)

38 So Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaiah son of Jehoiada, the Kerethites and the Pelethites went down and had Solomon mount King David's mule, and they escorted him to Gihon. 39 Zadok the priest took the horn of oil from the sacred tent and anointed Solomon. Then they sounded the trumpet and all the people shouted, "Long live King Solomon!" 40 And all the people went up after him, playing pipes and rejoicing greatly, so that the ground shook with the sound.

1 Kings 1:1-6; 28-35, 38-40

Reflect and Respond

If you have spent any time at all in the checkout line at the grocery store, then most likely you have noticed that our culture has a fascination with royalty. If you are old enough to remember Princess Diana, you'll remember the coverage of her life from the moment she came on the scene until her tragic death. And just a few years ago we became enamored with Catherine (Kate) Middleton, who married Diana's son Prince William. For some reason, the concept of royalty captures our attention and keeps us coming back for more. The idea that a human being was at some point in his or her lineage set apart and called "royal" is fairytale-like and stirs our imagination.

Extra Insight

First and Second Kings were originally written as one book, on one scroll, in Hebrew. When the text was translated into Greek, which made it longer, it was separated into two books.1

Early in the Scriptures we read that God would rather not introduce the pattern of kings. Instead, God would lead His people and speak through judges and prophets. But the people wanted a king. Other nations had kings and palaces and courts; it was all so fascinating! Even God's people were consumed with the idea of royalty — so much so that they begged God to give them a king. They couldn't be satisfied with the Creator of the Universe leading through chosen prophets and judges. They wanted something more — more ornate, more official, more royal. They wanted a king. Finally, God relented and gave them their king, but He alone would determine the first king. God would set apart a chosen man to become the first king and, for better or worse, the history of God's people would be made by the actions and leadership of a line of kings.

As the book of First Kings begins, you can sense the excitement about who will be the next king after the great King David dies. If you've ever wondered how a king became a king, you'll get an idea here in Chapter 1.

King David, widely held as the greatest king ever to rule Israel, was in his last days. Once known as a great and strong ruler, David's heyday was clearly behind him. He was so frail and chilled that his advisors brought him a young girl to serve as a human space heater (1 Kings 1:1-2). While he was still technically king, David was so out of the loop on the happenings in his own country (and his own family) that his key advisor Nathan and wife...