Tag Archives: Read the Bible in a year

April 24, 2020 Bible Study — Listening to God, Not Someone Who Claims to Speak On God’s Behalf

I am using 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.

The story about the man of God who came from Judah and prophesied against the altar which Jeroboam had built has a feature which always puzzles me: why did the old prophet mislead him about God’s will to get him to eat before leaving the Northern Kingdom?  I don’t have an answer to that question.  However, the story has a lesson for us.  When Jeroboam offered the man of God food and drink, he refused it.  But when the old prophet claimed that an angel of God had told him to bring the man of God home and give him food and drink, the man of God never questioned what the prophet said.  If someone tells us that God told them to have us do something that goes against what we have heard God tell us, we should not just take them at their word.  First, if God told them to do as they are doing, He may have done so to test us.  Second, they may be making up the message from God which they are telling us.  We should always seek God’s guidance before accepting what someone else tells us is God’s will.  Or, to put that another way, when someone claims to speak on God’s behalf we should check what they say against what God had told us.

April 23, 2020 Bible Study — King Solomon the Skirt Chaser

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 11-12.y

A short while back I came across a site which, when discussing King Solomon, said that this passage’s reference to him having 1,000 wives (well, wives and concubines) was surely an exaggeration because no man could sleep with that many women.  While I agree that 1,000 wives sounds excessive, when you think of some modern professional athletes (and other celebrities and wealthy men) you start to think that a man as rich and powerful as King Solomon could surely have done so if he desired.  Wilt Chamberlain claimed to have slept with 20,000 women, and several people who knew him said it was not out of the question.  Or to use someone more comparable to King Solomon: 8% of the people living today are descended from Genghis Khan.

One result of King Solomon being such a womanizer was that he started to take part in worshiping the gods of some of his foreign wives  Again, if we look ate men who are promiscuous on the kind of scale that King Solomon was we see that many times they also get involved in strange and “exotic” rituals.  Which would explain King Solomon’s involvement with these other gods.  Whatever the reason, it led to the dissolution of his kingdom.  It is really two-fold.  God took the kingdom away from his son, or part of it at least.  But, the revolt of the northern tribes was also a natural human reaction to King Solomon’s giving his attention to his wives and their gods rather than to the needs and wants of the people he ruled.

 

April 22, 2020 Bible Study –The Temple As An Object Lesson

I am using 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.

Today’s passage begins with God’s reply to King Solomon’s prayer of dedication for the Temple.  Solomon had asked God to watch over the Temple and to hear prayers directed towards it.  God responded that He would indeed watch over the Temple until the end of time.   But He warned the people of Israel that if they disobeyed God’s commands and worshiped other gods, the destruction of the Temple would serve as a warning to all peoples.  And today in Jerusalem we see that promise fulfilled.  The remains of the Temple are a platform upon which the worshipers of another god have built their own temple.  I believe that at some point those people will learn the lesson the Philistines learned when they put the Ark of the covenant in a subordinate position to their god, Dagon.  More importantly, it should serve as an object lesson to people today.  If we turn to God and serve Him, He will bless us, but if we turn from Him, our lands will become a desert and a ruin.

Every time I read the rest of today’s passage I am struck by how King Solomon’s wisdom led him to build a trading empire rather than one of conquest.  We see how he entered into a trading alliance with King Hiram of Tyre.  Tyre was the dominant trading empire in the Mediterranean, yet Solomon’s apparent control over the land trade routes to Asia gave him the dominant role in his partnership with Hiram.  Then once King Solomon began sending trade ships out into the Indian Ocean from the Red Sea the Queen of Sheba came to see what his intentions really were.  She had heard of his wisdom as a trading partner, but did not truly believe it until she met him.  I read this account as showing us that King Solomon entered into win-win trade relationships.  He did not seek trade agreements where he won and his trade partner lost.  We see that with both Tyre and the Queen of Sheba.  With Tyre, he sold King Hiram lands which were basically worthless, but invited Hiram into a partnership of trade out of a port city which Solomon controlled.  The Queen of Sheba brought Solomon gifts of great value, but he sent her on her way with gifts she would have considered of as great, or greater. value.

April 21, 2020 Bible Study — King Solomon Dedicates the Temple

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 8.

It tells me a lot about this passage when it tells us that all that was in the Ark of the Covenant when King Solomon moved it into the Temple was the two stone tablets.  However, in Exodus 16:34 we are told that a jar of manna was placed in the Ark in front of the stone tablets (Numbers 17:10 is worded in a way which could be interpreted that Aaron’s staff was placed there as well)..  This is one of those points where, if the author was just making it up, one would expect him to either not mention what was in the Ark, or to tell us that the stone tablets and the jar of manna were there (and possibly Aaron’s staff).  So, at some point between the death of Moses and King Solomon dedicating the Temple, the jar of manna and Aaron’ staff had been lost (Aaron’s staff may never have been in the Ark, but it would surely have been mentioned when Solomon later brought the Tabernacle to Jerusalem).

As part of dedicating the Temple, Solomon asked God to hear and honor the prayers of those who pray towards the Temple.  Solomon listed many sorts of situations where people would do so and asked God to bring deliverance and blessings to those who did so.  I believe that in all of the situations which Solomon listed, God will answer the prayers of anyone, and any group of people, who turn to Him in those situations.  Then Solomon turned to the people and invited them to pray with him in requesting that God give each and every one of them the desire to do God’s will and to follow His commands.  Let us join Solomon in praying that prayer and then follow through on the desire God gives us and do His will.

April 20, 2020 Bible Study — King Solomon Builds His Palace

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 7.

This passage describes King Solomon building his palace after completing the Temple and hiring a bronze smith to make the decorations and implements for the Temple.  He spent basically twice as long building his palace as he did building the Temple.  Perhaps this marks the beginning of Solomon’s fall from serving God which led to the division of Israel.  I have said previously that detailed descriptions of buildings and their ornamentation provide me with little spiritual insight.  Nevertheless I read such passages when they come up because I firmly believe that they are in the Bible for a purpose.  If nothing else, doing so provides examples of why re-reading the Bible time after time has value.  Once again today I noticed something I never noticed before.  It is not something of great interest, just a curious detail.  The walls of Solomon’s palace and of the inner courtyard of the Temple were built with a layer of cedar beams between every three layers of stone.

April 19, 2020 Bible Study — King Solomon Has the Temple Built

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 4-6.

The first thing I noticed when reading this was that King Solomon had time to learn about all of the subjects it later says he was knowledgeable about because he set up his government with people in charge of various aspects of it.  This included regional governors.  King Solomon demonstrated the wisdom for which he was famous by delegating his authority to others instead of trying to run everything himself.  Unlike his two predecessors, King Solomon delegated specific areas of responsibility to specific individuals.  King Saul had delegated responsibility sparingly, and only on a task by task basis.  King David had delegated responsibility on a more consistent basis, but did not clearly divide areas of responsibility.

Another item of interest to me was that the Temple of Solomon had what we would consider low ceilings.  The passage tells us that each story of the Temple complex was 7 1/2 feet high.  There was a two-fold reason for this.  Building materials were outrageously expensive, especially those used by Solomon in the Temple.  Also, the Israelites of that time had not developed the more advanced architectural techniques which make high ceilings practical.  This second point is related to the first in that what building materials one uses will impact how advanced one’s architectural techniques need to be to build high ceilings.  I will note it is likely that the impact of the level of architectural skill is more on it not occurring to them to build high ceilings than on them not being able to figure out how to do so.  Now, as I was doing a little research on the design of Solomon’s Temple I came across a reference suggesting that the design of Solomon’s Temple was a copy of the Temple of Melqart in Tyre.  This is certainly possible because King Solomon hired builders from Hiram of Tyre to assist in building the Temple.  However, while we do not know for sure, it seems probable that it was Hiram who built the Temple of Melqart in Tyre.  Which means that he may have copied Solomon’s design rather than the other way around.

 

April 18, 2020 Bible Study — What Really Tells You Who Cares

I am using 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 like the insights into the politics of ancient Israel, and really into politics in general, which one gets from the way King Solomon solidified his reign by dealing with those whose loyalty to himself, or to his father, were questionable.  I also like the way in which Solomon acknowledged that no one person could know enough to rule over a numerous population; that the only way he could successfully rule Israel was with God’s guidance.

However, I really love the insight into judging people which his ruling in the dispute between the two women who both claimed to be the mother of the baby.  The woman who wanted the baby to live was the child’s mother, regardless of whether the child came out of her womb or not.  Let us care more for the well-being of others than for our own selfish desires.

April 17, 2020 Bible Study — Passing Our Responsibilities On To The Next Generation

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 1.

I find that the NIV translation of this passage makes it clearer what happened when David’s son Adonijah decided to make himself king.  In the NLT, it seems as if the story about King David and Abishag is a story about David.  In the NIV, you can see that it is included because it explains why Joab and Abiathar thought that Adonijah should take the throne.  What is not clear is why David’s other advisers opposed Adonijah becoming king.  This is not because we cannot read the passage and think of many good reasons for them to do so.  Rather it is because the passage gives us little insight into their reasons.  However, there is one telling point which allows us to believe that their reasons were not selfish.  When Adonijah made his move he invited all of David’s other sons to join him, except Solomon.  This suggests that David had already made it clear that Solomon was his choice as a successor.  The fact that Nathan the prophet pulled the strings to get David to have Solomon crowned suggests that Solomon was God’s choice as well.

I started out thinking that this story had little to give us a lesson today.  Yet, when I finished writing the previous paragraph I realized that was not true.  This situation arose because David failed to turn over authority to a chosen successor when he became unable to truly exercise that authority himself.  If David had appointed Solomon as his successor sooner, Adonijah would never have tried to seize the throne.  We need to recognize when it is time to pass our responsibilities on to someone else.  This is the flip side of the lesson we learn from the story of Caleb in the Book of Joshua.  That lesson was that we are never too old to do the tasks to which God has called us.  This lesson is that sometimes those tasks are to hand our life’s missions on to the next generation.

April 16, 2020 Bible Study

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Samuel 23-24.

The compiler of this book had a few more stories about David and his mighty men which did not fit into the narrative thread along with the other stories.  I suspect that the stories about the mighty warriors who followed David included here did not have any information which would allow the writer to say, “Oh, that happened in this battle.”  So, instead of sticking them in throughout his narrative and making it appear that they occurred at a different time than they actually did, he put them here at the end.  Something similar is likely true about the story of David’s census and the plague.  The story about the census was included because it explains why David built an altar on the location where the Temple was later built.  Knowing human nature, this story was considered important to counter other stories which were probably going around that the Temple was built upon the temple of some other god, or some other story which made the Temple more holy than God.

April 15, 2020 Bible Study — The Faithful Will Learn That God Is Faithful, the Deceitful Will Discover That God Is Shrewd

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Samuel 20-22.

After defeating Absalom, David gave the post of commander of the army to Amasa in order to get Amasa to convince the elders of Judah to make David their king once more.  Amasa had been Absalom’s commander of the army, while Joab had been David’s.  Like Joab, Amasa was a nephew to David.  Despite the fact that Amasa was his cousin, Joab killed him at the first opportunity.  After that. one of Joab’s men made clear to the army of Judah that their choice was to follow Joab, or rebel against David a second time (this time without a leader).  The story ends by showing us another time that Joab was a skilled political operative.  When Joab and the army of Judah managed to corner Sheba, Joab made it clear that he, and by implication David, would hold only Sheba responsible for the rebellion.

The rest of 2 Samuel following the account of Sheba’s rebellion contains stories about King David which the compiler wanted to relate but could not easily fit into the timeline up to that point.  I struggle with understanding what to make of the story about the Gibeonites.  On the other hand, I have always loved the images in the song which David composed when he was rescued from King Saul.  I suspect that he originally composed this song after the time where King Saul had to return to fight the Philistines when he had been on the verge of catching David and his men.  David used amazing imagery to portray the power which God has to rescue us.  David’s imagery lets us know that even if we are far from any apparent source of rescue, God can reach us even there.  Those who are faithful will discover God’s faithfulness. Those with integrity will discover God’s integrity.  Those who are pure will learn that God is pure.  But those who are crooked and deceitful will discover that God is shrewd.