Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 18-19.

I have always loved the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal.  A few years ago I realized what a show Elijah put on here.  Today, as I was reading the passage my attention was drawn to the prophets of Baal.  My first thought was, “What did the prophets of Baal expect to happen?”  Did they expect Baal to send fire to light their offerings on the altar?  Or, did they think that neither Baal, nor God, would send fire, and their “show” would attract more people?  Or, perhaps they thought that the support they had from the royal family would make it not matter what results happened?  Then, I read further and realized that the priests of Baal routinely put on a show as part of their sacrifices.  First, they shouted and danced.  Then they cut themselves with swords and spears, which the writer tells us was their custom.  All of that excitement an energy made an effective contrast to Elijah’s calm. almost pedestrian, approach.  After the priests of Baal had spent most of the day exuberantly calling on Baal, Elijah called the people to his worship, where he calmly dug a trench around the altar he had built and carefully laid the sacrifice upon the altar while the people watched.  Then he got the “audience” involved by having them bring water to soak the altar.  Finally, again in contrast to the priests of Baal, he calmly prayed for God to reveal Himself to the people.  We can learn a valuable lesson about preaching the Gospel today.  While Elijah was a bit of a showman, he knew that he wasn’t the show.  God was the “show”.  If it was just Elijah vs the prophets of Baal, the prophets of Baal had the better show.  None of Elijah’s showman techniques mean anything if the fire of the Lord doesn’t fall upon the altar and burn up the sacrifice.  So, when our worship teams lead worship, when our speakers give their oration, whatever else we have going on to bring people to God, we, and they, need to remember that without God, none of it means anything and none of it will move the dial.  The show is God’s.

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 15-17.

I found it interesting that the Scripture tells us that Asa, grandson of Rehoboam, “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father David had done. ”  A couple of sentences later it says that his heart was fully committed to the Lord all of his life, even though he did not remove the high places.  Over the forty-one years which the passage tells us that Asa ruled in Jerusalem, the Northern Kingdom had six kings (not counting Jeroboam, who as king when Asa took the throne, or Tibni, who fought Omri for the throne after the death of Zimri) from four dynasties.  I am convinced that there is a connection between the faithfulness of Asa and the sinfulness of the Northern kings and the stability, or lack thereof, of their kingdoms.

I also want to write about the account of Elijah and the widow.  We can really learn a lot about faith from the widow.  When Elijah first came to her, she was about to use the last of her supplies to make a final meal for her son and herself, after which she thought they would die.  Elijah told her to go ahead and do so, but first to make him something to eat because her supplies would not be used up until the Lord sent rain.  She did as he said and his prophecy came true.  We look at that and think, “This woman had faith and acted in that faith.”  We are correct when we think that, and if that was all that we had about her, she would be someone for us to seek to emulate.  Yet we do have more, when her son died she was heartbroken and angry.  Then when Elijah raised her son from death, she declared “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.”  She acted on faith before that, and even the miracle of her food supplies not running out did not fully cement her faith.  It was only after she served God for some time that He completely removed her doubt.  Let us similarly act on faith, despite our doubts.  And we should not let our doubts make us stop acting in faith, when the time is right, God will give us certainty.

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 13-14.

Every year when I read this I am struck by two aspects about it: the old prophet who deceived the “man of God”, and the “man of God” taking the old prophet’s word about God telling him to contradict what God had told the “man of God”.  Their interaction reminds me of a tweet from Christianity Today on Easter this year where they said that the Bible does not say that Jesus was nailed to the cross.  Many people pointed out that the Gospel of John explicitly quotes Thomas as saying that he would not believe unless he saw the imprint of the nails and put his fingers where the nails had been.  The important point is that a voice which purports to speak on behalf of God directly contradicted the Bible.  Other men and women who have in the past spoken the word of God have lied to God’s people about what God’s message to them is.  We must be careful to not make the mistake which the man of God in this passage made.  We must not allow ourselves to be tricked into violating the commands which God has given us by those who lie abut what God has told them.

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 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.