Reading from Sunday, June 6

Hello.

Reading for June 6
1 Kings 1:1-53
Yes. A new book. So just based on the title, it looks like we go from a period of Judges to a period of Kings.


So this whole first section is about the selection of the new king to replace David. It's clear that David is very sick and will only live a little longer, so one of his sons, Adonijah sort of declares himself the next in line for the throne and gets a lot of support from the other officials in the kingdom, and it appears that he is all but confirmed as king.

But then, Bathsheba is reminded that David swore to her that their son Solomon would become king after David. Bathsheba then goes to David to remind him of the vow and he makes good on it. He declares Solomon as king and the land rejoices. Well, it's not long before Adonijah hears about Solomon being the new king, but instead of being pissed, he actually terrified. He comes to Solomon and bows in his presence and Solomon just tells him to go home, essentially saying "I'm not gonna kill you, bro."

One thing that sticks out to me is the practice of the Issraelites to refer to themselves as servants of others. Like this example of Adonijah speaking:

'Let King Solomon swear to me today that he will not put his servant to death with the sword.'

Usually this only happens when someone is speaking to a king, or someone of authority, but this is what Jesus commands us to do with everyone. We are commanded to be servants of one another. Try that today - refer to yourself as someone else's servant. See how that goes over.

Acts 4:1-37
The trouble starts all over again. The religious Jewish leaders, after seeing the miracle performed by the disciples, once again feel their authority being threatened. They try to arrest the disciples, but have nothing to hold them on. They demand that they stop preaching in the name of Jesus, and I love Peter's reply here:

"Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. ²⁰For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard."

They have adopted the technique which Jesus used to win, or at least get out of, every argument. It's cool to see the disciples grow in such a way. In the gospels they were constantly misunderstanding, misinterpreting, and sometime just missing things entirely. It says here that they spoke with great authority to the leaders and priests. That's character growth baby.

Psalm 124:1-8

¹ If the LORD had not been on our side—
       let Israel say-
 ² if the LORD had not been on our side
       when men attacked us,
 ³ when their anger flared against us,
       they would have swallowed us alive;
 ⁴ the flood would have engulfed us,
       the torrent would have swept over us,
 ⁵ the raging waters
       would have swept us away.

That movie that got me so riled up a couple weeks ago about whether or not God was in fact "good" or not, had a big chunk of the main scene devoted to the idea that God was never good, he was merely on the side of the Jewish people. Here's the clip if you haven't seen it. It's intense.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A5MM9XBGT8

Here in this psalm, we see direct language that validates that statement. But I was thinking today about the Old Testament. I was thinking about as a history of humanity rather than a history of God or God's people. The Jews were ruthless killing and pillaging machines in the Old Testament, but every nation was like that. Now that doesn't make it right, but talking about character growth there from the Acts reading, think about the character growth of Humanity. Has there been any? Not really...The US government is currently sanctioning murder in the war in Iraq. No different than what God sanctioned in the Old Testament. Granted we're not committing genocide over there, but my point is humanity is still the same. However, because of the grace of God and because of Jesus' sacrifice, we no longer have to suffer for our inborn desire to be selfish jerks.

Proverbs 16:24
 ²⁴ Pleasant words are a honeycomb,
       sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

I wonder what he means by honeycomb...do you think he's talking about the cereal? Me want Honeycomb!