2 Samuel 22:1-23:23, Acts 2:1-47, Psalms 122:1-9, Proverbs 16:19-20
Today is the 8th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is…it is a delight to be here with you today as we gather again around the Global Campfire. It’s a special day of memory for me today. Today was my mom’s birthday and she has been gone for several years now. Both of my parents are. But when these days come around each year, certainly those of us who have lost somebody along the way, they come to mind. And, so, she is certainly on my mind today. I miss my mom very, very, very, very much. I also believe she is very, very, very whole, and very, very happy. And I’m glad that we are here and that we have gathered yet again to take the next step forward together each and every day as we continue to immerse ourselves in the story of the Scriptures, and that will lead us back into the book that…well…we’re kind of moving into books in both old and new Testaments. But we’re in the book of first Kings now. We experienced the death of King David yesterday. His son Solomon is now on the throne in his place. Solomon’s had a little bit of drama in the transition, but Solomon is now firmly established as the King of all Israel. And, so, now we turn our focus onto Solomon’s reign as we move through first Kings. Today chapter 3 verse 3 through 4 verse 34.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in first Kings today Solomon has consolidated his power. He is in firm control of the kingdom of Israel. He is on…he is on the throne of his father David and things are beginning to prosper and Solomon does something that is certainly famous, but he does something that is certainly necessary, he goes before the Lord and certainly offers sacrifices but praise to God, puts himself before the Lord, sits before the Lord, opens himself before the Lord, and the Lord comes to him and…and says, ask anything. What do you request? And that’s when we see the character of Solomon beginning to rise and emerge because he can ask for anything, that his enemies be destroyed, that he live twice as long as anybody else, that…that is people are at peace and prosperous, any…anything that he wants to ask. And he asks for wisdom and discernment. He confesses before the Lord, that he knows where he’s at, that he is the king of Israel sitting on the throne of his father. So, he gets it. He gets where his position is, but he also sees his own deficits and inadequacies to do this job. It’s too big for him. It’s bigger than he is. It’s bigger than anyone can be. And, so, he asks God to help them administer justice, to have wisdom as he stewards the people of God. And God tells Solomon, that because this is what he seeks that he will have that and he will have all of the things that he could’ve named that he didn’t name. And, so, this is certainly a beautiful picture. If we want to apply this to our lives, we all have stewardship over something. May…maybe the only thing we’re stewarding right now is our sock drawer or maybe we are stewarding human beings in the form of our children or maybe we lead an organization or a department and there are hundreds of people that we are responsible for, at least for their output and work. So, in one way or another we have stewardship at a certain level in our lives. And we spend a lot of our lives trying to figure out how to make it work when this example from Solomon is maybe the right example, understanding that life is too big for us to manage and life is moving too fast for anybody to manage and maybe what we actually need is a discerning heart full of wisdom so that we are able to differentiate between the things that are just going to take life from us and take an enormous amount of energy, things we don’t even belong spending time on so that were focusing on the things that were stewarding.
Then we move into the book of Acts today and we see the further…the furtherance of the emerging church in the first century around Jerusalem as people are flocking to this message of Jesus and people are being cared for in certain ways in. And that’s causing some conflict. We have these Hellenistic Jews, so, like Jews of Greek origin, and then we have these Hebraic Jews who consider themselves ethnically more true to what a Jew is and it seems that the widows are being cared for in different ways. So, lest we read the book of Acts as this glorious moment, it is a glorious moment. It wasn’t a perfect moment. People were involved. And, so, it’s an imperfect moment. So, we see these things beginning to crop up in the early church where people have to sort of figure out and discern and understand like the way forward. And that leads us to what we now know as the diaconate as deacons. This is where we get this deacon. Helpers were appointed today to distribute food and to care for the people so that the apostles could focus their attention on hearing from the Holy Spirit and being out sharing the good news. And, so, we see helpers coming in that are appointed to serve God’s people. And we met somebody today that was one of those appointees named Stephen. We’re gonna have a minute with Stephen over these next couple of days. So, he is doing what he was appointed to do. He is full of the Holy Spirit. He is well respected. These things we get from the book of Acts. But he does engage in these kind of theological sparring matches with other people and a plot is hatched against Stephen to drag him before the high council because of the things that he is saying. So, basically where we sit at the moment is that this new appointed helper, Stephen, who is in good devout person is being accused of grievous things like blasphemy. And we haven’t gotten to hear Stephen defend himself. That’s where we’re going. Stephen is going to have an opportunity to say his piece and that’s an important piece for us at this point in the New Testament because what Stephen has to do is convince the council that he truly is Hebrew, that he truly does understand the Hebrew story and the Hebrew context and that this Jesus is part of that Hebrew context. And, so, as he shares his testimony, we will be reviewing in pretty fast motion all of the stories that we have been working our way through since the beginning of the year. And, so, that testimony is coming out before us here in the next couple of days.
Prayer:
Father, we love You. We thank You for Your word. We thank You that we have the opportunity to have Your word freely and to pour over it and to allow it to speak into our lives and we thank You for the Global Campfire. We thank You that You have allowed us to live at a time on the earth where we can gather together no matter where we are geographically and the center ourselves in the Scriptures, allowing them to speak the world over and fall into our lives and transform us so that we might reveal Your kingdom wherever we may be. And, so, come Holy Spirit and plant what we’ve read into our lives we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Coming soon…