Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 9-10.

I am going to write about God’s answer to Solomon’s prayer dedicating the temple he had built.  The first part of God’s answer is that He has consecrated the Temple, and that He had placed his Name upon it forever.  Even today, long after the temple was last destroyed (and not rebuilt), God’s name is associated with it.  God still holds Jerusalem in His eyes and in His Heart.  Which brings me to God’s warning, both for the Israelites and for us.  God told Solomon that if he, and the people he ruled over, or their descendants turned away from Him, the temple would become a heap of rubble about which people would say, “This happened because they have forsaken the Lord their God.”  Today, the temple is a pile of rubble, and those who know God know that is the case because God’s people forsook the Lord their God.  It serves as an object lesson to us today.  The monuments of those who forsake the Lord will be rendered into heaps of rubble.  Let us not forsake God ourselves lest we find our very lives become living heaps of rubble to serve as object lessons to those who come after us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 2-3.

I find it interesting that Solomon chose to act against Shimei only after Adonijah attempted to position himself to mount a coup against Solomon by marrying Abishag, King David’s last concubine.  I find it interesting because Shimei had refused to back Adonijah when the latter tried to seize the throne while David was still alive.  The best I can come up with is that Solomon waited to act against Shimei until he had eliminated the last threat to his throne and no longer needed to fear Shimei throwing his support behind a usurper.  In many ways, the incident where God asked Solomon what he wanted God to give him foreshadows Jesus’ teaching about seeking first the kingdom of God.  Solomon asked God to give him discernment when administering justice.  God granted him that desire, and also granted him wealth and honor.  The main point of this exchange is that wisdom and discernment will often lead to wealth and honor, but wealth and/or honor without wisdom will always be short-lived.  If you seek wisdom and allow it to guide you, it will lead you to seek God’s kingdom.  Unfortunately, we learn later that Solomon allowed the wealth and honor his wisdom brought him to turn his heart from God.  Let us pray that if God grants us wealth and honor that we do not fall into the same temptation.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 22-25.

A few days back I commented on how King Hezekiah deserves the high esteem in which we generally hold him, but my favorite king of Judah is Josiah.  Today’s passage tells us that, “ He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.”  He ordered the repair and cleansing of the temple.  When the repair began, the priests found a copy of the Book of the Law and brought it to him.  When Josiah read the Book of the Law he realized that the people had badly broken their covenant with God and feared the consequences.  He inquired of God about what he had learned, and God answered that His anger would indeed fall upon the people of Judah.  Nevertheless, Josiah destroyed all of the idols throughout the land, even into the land which had answered to the kings of Samaria.  He cleansed the land of idolatry and got the people to renew the covenant which God had made with their ancestors.  He did all of this despite knowing that it would not stop the destruction which God had promised His people if they violated their covenant with Him.  Josiah did all of this solely for the reward of being faithful to God.  We too should recognize that the greatest reward for serving God is that we get to do God’s will.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Kings 19-21.

I have always wanted to write about God’s answer to Sennacherib through Isaiah, but could not figure out how to comment on the poetry Isaiah spoke in.  Today I am going to try to make my thoughts on it coherent.  In composing his message, Sennacherib thought he was belittling Hezekiah and Jerusalem, but he went beyond that.  Sennacherib told Hezekiah that God was deceiving him when He told Hezekiah that would not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria.  Sennacherib told Hezekiah that the gods of other nations had failed to deliver those other nations, so therefore God would be unable to deliver Jerusalem.  God answered through Isaiah by telling Sennacherib that he did not know Who he was ridiculing and blaspheming.  That Sennacherib thought he had succeeded by his own power.  Sennacherib had reached great heights of power and thought that nothing and no one could stop him from reaching any goal to which he aspired.  God answered that by informing Sennacherib that He had planned Sennacherib’s rise to power long ago, and now He had brought it to pass.  Everything Sennacherib had accomplished was merely carrying out God’s plans.  Further God knew where Sennacherib was, and when he went out and when he went back in, and how he raged insolently against God.  This is the negative counterpart to Psalm 121. There God promised that He would watch over those who put their trust in Him.  Here what God tells Sennacherib is a warning to those who defy Him.  He says that He will put a hook in his nose and lead him back the way he had come.  For those of you who, like me, have never worked with large livestock that are manipulated by rings in their noses, I have another image that may help understand this.  I am sure you have seen videos of women, usually a mother or a wife, who grabs someone by their nose and pulls them around in a direction they did not want to go.  Imagine that, only more painful.  At some point, those who defy God will experience God putting a hook in their nose and dragging them somewhere they do not want to go.  While those of us who put our trust in Him will experience the protection described in Psalm 121.  And in both cases, it does not matter where we have gone, nor when, we will not be outside of God’s power.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 17-18.

I love the story about Hezekiah and the king of Assyria.  And it is right to admire Hezekiah, because the passage tells us, “Hezekiah trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him.”  However, today I want to look at what the passage tells us about the exile of the people from the Northern Kingdom.  It tells us that God caused this to happen because they had sinned against God.  The phrase which really struck me was, “They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless.”  They had value because they were made in the image of God, and because God had chosen them as His people.  But, instead of doing what He asked of them, serving and worshiping Him, they chose to worship idols.  As a result, they destroyed the value which God had given them and made themselves worthless.  In the same way, we have value because we too were made in God’s image, and Jesus died for our sins so that we might become children of God, God’s chosen people.  If, instead of seeking to follow God’s commands we worship idols , we too will become worthless.  This passage even foreshadows this when it speaks of those whom the Assyrians settled in the land of Israel after taking its people into exile.  It tells us that these settlers worshiped the Lord, but also served their own gods in accordance with the customs of the lands they had come from.  The implication being that if they had given up their idols, God would have welcomed them into His people.  Today, we have the same choice.  God has chosen us and used the death if His Son, Jesus Christ, to bring us into His people and give us value.  Will we destroy that value by serving worthless idols and refusing to follow His commands?

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.