Wednesday 22 June

1 Kings 9:10-11:13

It’s just so sad.  I know I’ve given Solomon a bit of a hard time over the last few days but that was only because he showed so much promise and had so much of God about him.  He was such a brilliant man and must have been a hugely attractive leader in the kingdom.  But like a reservoir drained to puddles and cracked ground, all Solomon’s potential eventually dissipated into nothing.  His brilliant mind somehow lost sight of the most rapturous of truths.  His eye for value somehow strayed from the most precious of treasures.  We could say it was his wives who did it.  That would be a nice way of shifting the blame.  I just don’t think it sticks though.  It was Solomon who knew he should not have married women of the Edomites or Sidonians.  It was Solomon who prayed only a chapter or two ago that “the Lord is God and there is no other”.  It was Solomon who the Lord appeared to on not just one but two occasions.  I think the seeds for Solomon’s decline (if not total downfall - who knows what the Lord chose to do with him) were sown way back in chapter 6 when he failed to consult the Lord about the construction of the temple.  Solomon incrementally shifted from doing things for the Lord to doing things to the Lord to doing things apart from the Lord.  His father David had done things with the Lord but we never saw much evidence of that with Solomon.  Solomon seemed a little to self-reliant, a little too cock-sure to truly walk humbly with his God.  I know that is always the challenge for me.  I’m pretty darn good at being cock-sure.  I can collect and display all the trappings of walking with Jesus.  But when it actually comes to getting up early in the morning and opening my bible and getting on my knees, well, somehow I find I have so many other things to do.  Jesus would you save me from the fate of Solomon.  Would you forgive my complacency and my tendency to drift.  And thank you that even if we are faithless, you are still faithful because you cannot disown yourself.

Acts 15:1-21

Poor old Peter.  He gets up and addresses the crowd so eloquently and insightfully but it is only when Paul and Barnabas speak that the miserable lot become silent.  Isn’t it just so annoying when other people seem to have the run of the crowd?  Nonetheless, Peter’s words in Acts 15 are ones that we in the “justification by faith” crowd love to come back to again and again.  And rightly so.  What glorious liberty it is to know that it is “through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved”.  It is his grace, not anything of our own doing, that has flung wide the doors of the kingdom to us.  The yoke on our necks has been broken.  The obligations that were placed on us have been smashed.  We don’t need to go seeking approval.  We don’t need to go chopping off the end of our penises.  God has already shown us his acceptance.  God has already circumcised us - he has purified our hearts.  And he did it through the faith of his Son rather the swishing blade of a rabbi.  So it is no longer difficult for us to turn to God.  And it is not difficult for others to do so either.  The rule of the day is now welcome and freedom as much as God possibly permits it.  That is as radical today as it has ever been.  God is in touching distance.  And the subversive part is that it is him who is doing the touching.

Psalm 77:1-9

I meet a lot of people whose souls refuse to be comforted (v2).  Unfortunately I have to wait until tomorrow before I can read the end of the psalm and offer them any help.