For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Those who do wrong are eager to hear gossip about others, and liars enjoy hearing others slandered. In both cases the reason is because it allows them to justify their own sins. So the question to ask yourself is, are you eager to hear gossip and do you seek out stories about what others have done wrong?
Everybody is made in the image of God, if you mock those less fortunate than yourself you are mocking God. If you enjoy when others suffer, you will experience suffering of your own.
The psalmist takes a position we should all emulate. He refuses to be proud and haughty. He does not worry about the things he fails to understand. Rather he calms and quiets himself while putting his trust in the Lord. God will provide us answers to the questions which affect our lives. If we have questions about things which do not impact our lives, let us not be so proud that we think we must know the answer.
This story in Acts is a great follow on to today’s psalm. Why did God choose Saul for this experience? Saul was arrogant and proud. He was convinced of his own righteousness, until God took him down a peg, or several. Ananias (different than the one who died a few passages back) was humble. He did as God instructed, despite his justifiable fear. We see in the rest of Acts why God chose Saul. We should keep that in mind when we see those who sinned greatly touched by the Holy Spirit.
Solomon married many women and took many more as concubines, despite God’s commands through Moses not to do so. To make matters worse he married women from nations whom God had commanded the Israelites not to marry. God had told the Israelites that if they married such women they would turn their hearts to other gods, and sure enough, Solomon took to worshiping the many gods of his wives. He went so far as to build shrines to the many foreign gods his wives worshiped. These were gods which had temple prostitutes, and gods to whom children were sacrificed.
The result of Solomon’s unfaithfulness to God was that the peace which David had established was gradually destroyed and rebellion occurred within Israel.