1 Chronicles 23:1

1 Chronicles 23:1 says, So when David was old and full of days, he made Solomon his son king over Israel.  David was old and close to the end of his life when he made Solomon king over Israel.  We need to serve God where he has called us to serve, but we also need to realize that there is coming a day when we will be too old to serve any longer, so we need to be getting our replacement ready, even if we don't know for sure who that will be.  Verse two adds, And he gathered together all the princes of Israel, with the priests and the Levites.  When David was naming Solomon as his successor, he gathered all the other princes, or those who possibly could have claimed power, and the Levites, the religious leaders of Israel.  If we are naming a successor in the church today, we need to have everyone in agreement about the successor.  Of course, we first need to make sure this is the person God has chosen.  Verse three continues, Now the Levites were numbered from the age of thirty years and upward: and their number by their polls, man by man, was thirty and eight thousand.  There were thirty-eight thousand Levite who were thirty years old and older.  These would have been the ones actively serving.  Verse four states, Of which, twenty and four thousand were to set forward the work of the house of the Lord; and six thousand were officers and judges:  Twenty-four thousand of them were assigned the task of building or assisting in the building of the temple, and an another six thousand were to remain as officers and judges over the people.  Even though the building of the temple was to be a priority, the other duties of the Levites were not to be dismissed.  We should never get so caught working on buildings so much that we forget the other needs of the people in the church.  Verse five adds, Moreover four thousand were porters; and four thousand praised the Lord with the instruments which I made, said David, to praise therewith.  The other eight thousand Levites were set aside for other work, with four thousand who serving as porters and four thousand that serving by praising God with instruments that David had made for that purpose.  Matthew Henry says the playing of the instruments was a newly created office in the service to God.  As the world changes, we may find the need for people to serve in areas that didn't exist in the past, such as putting worship services out on social media to reach more people.  Though David assigned people to this new position, I have to believe he did it by God's leadership and that God equipped them to serve.  Verse six continues, And David divided them into courses among the sons of Levi, namely, Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.  David divided the rest among the families of the sons of Levite, Gershon, Kohath and Merari.  We may come from different families, but as followers of Christ we all become a part of the priesthood of believers, and we are all called to a purpose in God's kingdom.