Week 23 — Table of Contents
June 4, 2026
1 Kings 2:13–3:15
Solomon’s reign begins with the consolidating of power, and the narrative does not pretend it is pretty. Adonijah comes to Bathsheba with a request that he wants Abishag the Shunammite — the young woman who had served the dying David — for a wife. In the world of ancient royal succession, taking a previous king’s concubine is a claim on the throne, and Solomon reads the move exactly as it is intended. "Why then do you ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? Ask for him the kingdom also!" Adonijah is executed that day, and the chain of consequences from David’s deathbed charge plays out: Abiathar the priest, complicit in Adonijah’s coup, is removed from his office and banished to his estate at Anathoth — fulfilling, the narrator tells us, the word the Lord spoke against the house of Eli. Joab flees to the tabernacle and grasps the horns of the altar, but Solomon orders Benaiah to strike him there, settling the blood of Abner and Amasa that David never finished. Shimei is confined to Jerusalem and dies three years later for breaking that confinement. The chapter ends with the sentence that the rest of the book will be a commentary on: "So the kingdom was established in the hand of Solomon."
The Solomon who emerges in chapter 3 is more attractive. He marries Pharaoh’s daughter, builds his house and the Lord’s house, and walks in the statutes of David his father — except that the people sacrificed at the high places, and Solomon himself offered at Gibeon. There, the Lord appears to Solomon in a dream and says, "Ask what I shall give you." Solomon’s answer is one of the great prayers of the Old Testament. He confesses his youth and inadequacy — "I am but a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in" — and asks not for long life, riches, or the lives of his enemies, but for "an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil." The Lord is delighted with the request and gives Solomon what he asked for and what he did not ask for: a wise and discerning mind unlike any before or after, plus riches and honor. Solomon wakes from the dream, returns to Jerusalem, stands before the ark, and offers burnt offerings and peace offerings and feasts with his servants. The famous adjudication of the two harlots and the disputed baby follows, and all Israel hears that the wisdom of God is in him.
Acts 1:23–2:21
The remaining verses of Acts 1 complete the choosing of Matthias, and then Acts 2 opens with one of the most consequential mornings in the history of the world. "When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place." The sound of a mighty rushing wind fills the house, tongues as of fire appear and rest on each of them, and they are filled with the Holy Spirit and begin to speak in other languages as the Spirit gives them utterance. Pentecost is a Jewish feast that drew pilgrims from across the Mediterranean world, and the crowd that gathers at the sound is bewildered to hear each in his own language the mighty works of God. Luke gives the geographic catalog — Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamians, Cappadocians, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Rome, Cretans, Arabians — to make a theological point. The curse of Babel, the scattering of languages, is being healed at its root. The gospel speaks every language.
Some mock — "They are filled with new wine" — and Peter stands up with the Eleven to address the crowd. His sermon begins by appealing to Joel’s prophecy: "And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy." Joel had promised that the Spirit would not be the privilege of a few but the gift of God to all flesh — sons and daughters, young and old, slave and free. Peter is announcing that the long-promised age of the Spirit has begun. Pentecost is not an isolated miracle. It is the inauguration of the last days, the era of the church, the time in which everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Psalm 69:29–36
Psalm 69 closes with a turn from lament to praise. The sufferer who had been drowning in deep waters now anchors himself in trust: "But I am afflicted and in pain; let your salvation, O God, set me on high! I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs." The psalmist understands what later prophets will repeat: the sacrifice God most wants is the song of a thankful heart.
The final verses move outward into communal hope. "Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. For God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and people shall dwell there and possess it; the offspring of his servants shall inherit it." A psalm that began with a single man’s drowning ends with a vision of a restored city, a thriving people, and a long inheritance for the generations to come. The God who hears one suffering voice is the God who rebuilds whole communities.
Three texts at the inauguration of three new kingdoms. Solomon takes the throne with bloodshed and a dream of wisdom; the Spirit comes at Pentecost and the church is born in a windstorm of languages; the psalmist’s despair ends in a song that lifts heaven, earth, and the seas. Each story is a beginning, and each beginning is a reminder that God’s purposes start in places we would not predict — in a young king’s prayer for understanding, in a borrowed upper room, in the throat of a man who thought he was drowning.
Solomon’s prayer is one of the great pastoral prayers in Scripture. He does not ask for what we would expect a new king to ask for. He asks for the one gift that will let him do his job: discernment between good and evil. The implication for our own asking is hard to miss. What if our prayers, like Solomon’s, started not from our wants but from our calling? What if we asked God for the wisdom to do well what he has actually given us to do, instead of asking him to give us a different life? Solomon’s prayer pleased the Lord because it took both God and the people seriously.
Pentecost answers Solomon’s prayer at a higher pitch. The wisdom Solomon asked for in a dream is now poured out on all flesh in a wind and fire. The Spirit who once filled craftsmen for the tabernacle now fills sons and daughters for witness. The age of the Spirit is the age in which Solomon’s gift becomes a community’s gift — every believer empowered, every language welcome, every generation included. The psalmist’s vision of a rebuilt Zion is, in some real sense, what the Spirit has begun to build through the church. May we, today, ask for what Solomon asked for, receive what Pentecost gave, and join the song that the seas and everything in them are already singing.
June 5, 2026
1 Kings 3:16–5:18
The famous case of the two prostitutes and the contested baby is the dramatic illustration of Solomon’s gifted wisdom. Two women, both nursing, lay claim to the same surviving infant; there are no witnesses; the truth cannot be established by testimony. Solomon’s solution is to ask for a sword and to propose cutting the baby in half. The real mother’s compassion gives her away — "Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death" — while the other woman, in the chilling logic of resentment, says, "He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him." Solomon assigns the child to the woman whose love would rather lose him than see him die. "And all Israel heard of the judgment that the king had rendered, and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him to do justice."
Chapter 4 then gives us a panoramic view of Solomon’s kingdom at its height. There are officials and twelve administrative districts, each providing the king’s table for a month. The provisions for a single day are staggering — thirty cors of fine flour, sixty cors of meal, ten fat oxen, twenty pasture-fed cattle, a hundred sheep, plus deer, gazelles, roebucks, and fattened fowl. The kingdom stretches from the Euphrates to the border of Egypt, and "Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea. They ate and drank and were happy." Solomon’s wisdom is celebrated as surpassing all the wisdom of the east and of Egypt; he speaks three thousand proverbs and writes 1,005 songs; people of all nations come to hear him. Chapter 5 then turns to the temple project: Solomon makes a treaty with Hiram of Tyre for cedar and cypress, and the great labor force is organized — thirty thousand from Israel rotating in shifts to Lebanon, seventy thousand burden-bearers, eighty thousand stone-cutters in the hills. The temple Solomon is about to build will be the wonder of the ancient world, but the labor base required to build it will eventually become a source of profound grievance.
Acts 2:22–47
Peter’s sermon at Pentecost moves from Joel to David to Jesus. He addresses the crowd directly: "Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know — this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." The sermon holds two truths together that the church has never been able to separate without distortion: God’s sovereign plan and human responsibility. The cross was not an accident. It was also not an excuse. "But God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it." Peter quotes Psalm 16 — "you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption" — and argues that David, whose tomb is right there in Jerusalem, must have spoken of a greater son. "This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses."
The conclusion of the sermon is the great evangelistic invitation. "Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." The crowd is cut to the heart and asks, "Brothers, what shall we do?" Peter answers, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself." Three thousand are baptized that day. Then Luke gives the famous summary of the new community: "They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." They sold possessions and distributed to any who had need; they ate together with glad and generous hearts; they praised God and had favor with all the people. "And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved."
Proverbs 14:5–14
This block of proverbs continues the contrast between wisdom and folly with quiet realism. "A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness breathes out lies." The mocker seeks wisdom in vain, but knowledge comes easily to one who has understanding. "Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge" — there is wisdom in walking away from conversations that cannot bear fruit. The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way, but the folly of fools is deceiving.
The sayings then turn to a kind of inner accounting. "The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy." The interior of each person’s life is finally accessible only to themselves and to God. "The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish." And then a quiet warning: "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death." Proverbs is unsentimental about the way self-deception works. Right-feeling is not the same as right-going. The proverbs urge us to slow down, to be teachable, to walk away from conversations that breed folly, and to keep our hearts honest before the One who knows what no stranger can share.
The three readings today press one question from three angles: what does the wisdom of God look like when it actually shows up in human life? In Solomon, it looks like the discernment to give a contested baby to the right mother and the administrative gifts to organize a kingdom. In Peter, it looks like the courage to preach Christ crucified to the very crowd that crucified him, and the gracious community that forms in the wake of three thousand baptisms. In the Proverbs, it looks like a faithful witness, a prudent step, and the humility to admit that there is a way that seems right and ends in death.
What’s most striking about Acts 2:42–47 is how unremarkable its specifics are. Teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, prayer. Sharing what they had. Eating with glad hearts. The miracle that gave birth to the church was tongues of fire; the church that came out of the fire devoted itself to ordinary things done in extraordinary spirit. This is the same wisdom Solomon prayed for, now distributed among many — the discernment to live a common life that bears witness to a present Lord. The proverbs spell out the same in the language of daily steps.
The warning from Proverbs is worth lingering over. "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death." Solomon’s later life will be a tragic illustration of that line — the king who prayed for discernment will eventually be led astray by his own appetites. Pentecost is what makes the difference for us. The Spirit poured out on all flesh is the Spirit who keeps us in the way that does not seem right but is. May we today devote ourselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers, asking the Lord to give us the discernment that is not afraid of a sword, the community that is not afraid of generosity, and the honesty to walk away from any way that ends in death — however right it may seem.
June 6, 2026
1 Kings 6:1–7:22
"In the four hundred and eightieth year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the Lord." The narrator dates the temple construction with the precision of someone marking the great hinge of redemptive history. The temple is being built four hundred and eighty years after the exodus, which means everything the exodus made possible is now being given a permanent dwelling. The dimensions are given carefully — sixty cubits long, twenty wide, thirty high — with a vestibule and side chambers in three stories. The narrator pauses to tell us that the temple was built of stone prepared at the quarry, "so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built." It is one of the loveliest details in Scripture. The house of the Lord went up in silence.
In the middle of the description of the building, the word of the Lord comes to Solomon with a covenantal qualifier: "Concerning this house that you are building, if you will walk in my statutes and obey my rules and keep all my commandments… I will dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake my people Israel." The promise of God’s presence is not separable from the call to obedience. The narrative then unfolds the rich interior of the temple — the cedar paneling, the carvings of cherubim and palm trees and open flowers, the inner sanctuary overlaid with gold, the two olivewood cherubim ten cubits high stretching their wings from wall to wall. Chapter 7 turns to the seven years Solomon spent on his own palace complex and to the great bronze work of Hiram of Tyre — the two pillars Jachin and Boaz at the entrance to the temple, the molten sea on twelve bronze oxen, the ten stands and lavers, every piece designed to glorify the God who would dwell among his people.
Acts 3:1–26
Peter and John are going up to the temple at the hour of prayer when a man lame from birth is being carried in to be laid at the gate called Beautiful to beg. He asks them for alms. Peter fixes his gaze on him and says, "I have no silver and gold, but what I have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!" He takes the man by the right hand and raises him up, and immediately his feet and ankles are made strong. The man leaps up, stands, and walks — and then enters the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. The crowd recognizes him as the beggar from the gate and runs to Peter and John in astonishment.
Peter seizes the moment for his second sermon. He immediately deflects the credit: "Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk?" The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has glorified his servant Jesus, whom they delivered over and denied — "you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you." But God raised him from the dead, and faith in his name has made this man strong. Peter then offers a striking pastoral move: "And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers." The ignorance is real, but it is not an excuse — it is an open door. "Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord." He reminds them they are sons of the prophets and of the covenant, and that God sent his servant to them first, "to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness."
Psalm 70:1–5
Psalm 70 is short, urgent, and almost identical to the closing verses of Psalm 40. It opens with a cry of desperation: "Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O Lord, make haste to help me!" The psalmist is not asking God for new revelation or a long explanation; he is asking him to hurry. The honesty of the request gives every harried saint permission to pray the same way.
The psalm asks for shame on those who seek the psalmist’s life and for joy on those who seek God: "May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, ‘God is great!’" Then the closing line, which is the heart of the psalm: "But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay!" Poverty of spirit becomes the credential for prayer. The psalmist is not appealing to merit. He is appealing to need, and to a God who has never refused to come to the needy.
A temple goes up in silence, a lame man enters the temple leaping, and a poor man cries to God to hurry. The three readings give us the architecture of a real relationship with God — the patient labor of building a place for his presence, the joy of finding his power at work when we expect only alms, and the willingness to admit that we are poor and needy and need him to come quickly.
What is striking about the temple narrative is the prominence of the word "if." "If you will walk in my statutes… I will dwell among the children of Israel." The temple Solomon is building is the most beautiful structure in the ancient world, but it is not a guarantee of God’s presence. Presence is given to obedient hearts, not to ornate buildings. The story of Israel’s later history is, in some sense, the story of what happens when the building remained and the obedience did not. The good news of the New Testament is that Jesus is the true temple — the place where heaven and earth meet, the place where God dwells with his people — and through him, the Spirit makes his home in the church and in every believer.
Peter’s words to the lame man are the gospel in miniature. "I have no silver and gold, but what I have I give to you." The church has often forgotten how rich it actually is. We have the name of Jesus. We have the Spirit poured out at Pentecost. We have a gospel that turns beggars into worshippers, that raises feet and ankles too weak to bear weight, that makes leaping in the temple the normal response to grace. The psalm gives us the prayer to bring it all home: "I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God." That prayer is one we can pray for ourselves and for everyone we know who is still being carried in to the gate. May we today bring our need to God and the riches we have been given to others, and may the silent house of our hearts be a temple the Lord delights to dwell in.
June 7, 2026
1 Kings 7:23–8:21
The bronze sea was an extraordinary feat of engineering — ten cubits from brim to brim, five cubits high, a line of thirty cubits around it, set on twelve oxen facing the four points of the compass. It held about ten thousand gallons of water, used for the priests’ washing. Around its rim were gourds and lilies, "cast in one piece" with the sea. The narrator lingers over the molten work that Hiram of Tyre did for Solomon: the ten stands of bronze with their basins, the pots and shovels and basins, all of burnished bronze. Then the inventory of the gold furnishings for the inner house — the lampstands, the altar, the table for the bread of the Presence, the doors, the basins, the snuffers — all in gold or pure gold. The narrator concludes the seven-year project with the deposit of David’s treasures into the new house: "Solomon brought in the things that David his father had dedicated, the silver, the gold, and the vessels, and stored them in the treasuries of the house of the Lord."
Chapter 8 is one of the great moments in the Old Testament. Solomon assembles the elders of Israel, the heads of the tribes, and the leaders of the fathers’ houses to bring the ark up from the city of David to the new temple. The priests carry the ark with the poles; the sacrifices are too many to count; the ark is placed in the inner sanctuary under the wings of the cherubim. And then it happens: "And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord." The same cloud that filled the tabernacle in Exodus 40 now fills the temple. The glory has come home. Solomon, in the presence of this glory, offers a brief speech in which he reviews the covenant history — that the Lord chose Jerusalem and chose David, and that God told David, "You did well that it was in your heart" to build a house, but the privilege would belong to his son. "And the Lord has fulfilled his promise that he made."
Acts 4:1–22
The healing at the temple gate has attracted a crowd, and the temple authorities have noticed. The priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees arrive — annoyed because Peter and John are proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead — and they arrest them. The number of those who believed grows to about five thousand men. The next day, the rulers, elders, and scribes gather in Jerusalem with the high priestly family, and they demand of Peter and John, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, answers with a directness that is striking for a Galilean fisherman in front of the Sanhedrin: "Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead — by him this man is standing before you well."
Peter’s confession then rises to the climactic line: "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." The council is astonished at the boldness of these unschooled men and recognizes that they had been with Jesus. The healed man is standing right there beside them, and the council cannot deny what has happened. They confer privately and decide to threaten the apostles into silence: "Let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name." But Peter and John answer with one of the great refusals in church history: "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard." The council threatens them further but cannot punish them because of the people, and lets them go. The man who had been healed was more than forty years old.
Psalm 71:1–8
Psalm 71 is the prayer of an older saint, looking back over a long life with God and asking for help in the season of weakness that is coming. "In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame!" The opening is a deliberate echo of Psalm 31, but the psalmist’s circumstances are now different — the strength of youth has gone, and enemies are still active. "Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come; you have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress."
What follows is a moving statement of lifelong dependence: "For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you." The psalmist’s prayer is not the prayer of a stranger to God. It is the prayer of someone who has been carried by God since before his first breath, and who knows that the same hands that have held him this far will hold him still. His mouth is filled with God’s praise and with his glory all the day. The God of childhood is the God of old age, and the same psalm carries both.
The glory cloud fills the temple, the name of Jesus heals the lame, and an old saint prays the prayer of a lifetime of refuge. Today’s readings are about what it looks like when God comes near — in glory that drives the priests out of the building, in power that lifts a beggar to his feet, in faithfulness that has been holding a soul since before he was born. The God who fills the temple is the God who heals at the gate of the temple is the God who has been our rock from our mother’s womb.
What is most arresting about the temple dedication is not the architecture or the gold or the ten thousand gallons of water in the bronze sea. It is the silence at the beginning ("neither hammer nor axe was heard") and the awe at the end ("the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud"). The temple was built in quiet so that it could be filled with glory. There is a pattern here for any spiritual life: the slow, quiet, often-unseen labor of building a place where God’s presence can settle, followed by the gift of his presence on his own initiative. We do not summon the cloud. We build the room.
Acts 4 then tells us what to do with the presence we have been given. Peter’s "we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard" is not bravado; it is the simple report of someone for whom Jesus has become impossible to keep quiet about. The same Spirit who filled the temple in 1 Kings 8 now fills fishermen who stand before the Sanhedrin and tell the truth without flinching. And Psalm 71 reminds us that the courage of Peter and John is not reserved for one heroic moment; it is the everyday confidence of those who have leaned on God from before they were born. May we today build the silent room, receive the glory, speak what we have seen and heard, and trust the God who has been our refuge from the womb to be our refuge in whatever season is coming next.
June 8, 2026
1 Kings 8:22–9:9
Solomon’s prayer of dedication is one of the great theological documents of the Old Testament, and it walks a careful line between the localness of the temple and the universality of the God it was built for. He begins by acknowledging that no house can contain the Lord: "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!" The temple is not God’s prison; it is a meeting place for prayer. Solomon then asks God to honor the temple as the place toward which his people will direct their prayer in every conceivable circumstance — when they sin against their neighbor and need to swear an oath, when they are defeated in battle, when the heavens are shut up and there is no rain, when there is famine or pestilence or blight, when they are taken captive into a foreign land. Repeatedly Solomon asks God to "hear in heaven" and to "forgive" and to "do." The temple is the address; heaven is the throne room.
The most surprising note in Solomon’s prayer is its inclusion of the foreigner. "Likewise, when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a far country for your name’s sake… and prays toward this house, hear in heaven your dwelling place and do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel." Solomon understands, at the height of Israel’s national glory, that the point of Israel’s election is the blessing of the nations. After the long prayer comes a great blessing and a sevenfold sacrifice — twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep — and a fourteen-day feast. Then the Lord appears to Solomon a second time, in chapter 9, and gives both promise and warning: "If you will walk before me, as David your father walked… then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever." But "if you turn aside from following me… then I will cut off Israel from the land… and this house will become a heap of ruins." The covenant is gracious, and it is also serious.
Acts 4:23–5:11
Released from the council, Peter and John return to their friends and report what has happened. The community’s response is to pray, and the prayer they pray is one of the most beautiful in the New Testament. They quote Psalm 2 — "Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain?" — and apply it to what has just happened: Herod, Pilate, the Gentiles, and the peoples of Israel were gathered together against Jesus, "to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place." Then the prayer’s request: not for safety, not for the threats to stop, but for boldness. "And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal." When they had prayed, the place where they were gathered was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. The summary of the community follows: one heart and soul, no claims of private ownership, no needy person among them, with Barnabas singled out as one who sold a field and laid the proceeds at the apostles’ feet.
Against that backdrop comes the sobering account of Ananias and Sapphira. They sell a piece of property, keep back some of the proceeds for themselves with their wife’s full knowledge, and bring the rest as if it were the whole amount. Peter’s confrontation cuts to the heart of the issue: it was not the holding back that was the problem — "While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?" — it was the lying. They were trying to receive the spiritual credit of total generosity while keeping the financial security of partial generosity. "You have not lied to man but to God." Ananias falls down dead. Three hours later Sapphira comes in, repeats the lie when given the chance to tell the truth, and falls down dead at Peter’s feet. Luke ends the episode with the line, "And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things." The Spirit who filled the church and shook the building is not a mascot. He is holy God, and his presence requires honesty.
Psalm 71:9–18
The middle of Psalm 71 brings the request that the psalm has been moving toward: "Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent." The old saint is honest about his fear. He sees his enemies still circling, saying, "God has forsaken him; pursue and seize him, for there is none to deliver him." But his answer is to keep hoping: "But I will hope continually and will praise you yet more and more. My mouth will tell of your righteous acts, of your deeds of salvation all the day, for their number is past my knowledge."
Then the great line that has been the prayer of the aging church across the centuries: "O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come." The psalmist’s last and deepest desire is not personal comfort but generational witness. He wants to live long enough to tell the next generation what the Lord has done. The God who taught him from his youth is the God he hopes will keep him until he can pass on the song.
Today’s readings sit at a place where the holiness of God and the prayer of God’s people meet — sometimes with great glory, sometimes with great fear, always with the call to honesty. Solomon understands that the temple is not a place to control God but a place to address him, and the long prayer of dedication is a model of how to bring real human need to the throne. The early church, threatened and shaken, prays not for safety but for boldness, and the building is literally shaken in answer. Ananias and Sapphira show us what happens when prayer becomes performance. The psalmist closes the loop with the prayer of those who have leaned on God for a lifetime: do not forsake me until I have told the next generation what you have done.
What Solomon understood is what every honest pray-er has to learn: God is not contained by the building. The temple is the place where prayer is concentrated, but heaven is the place where prayer is heard. Whether we are in famine or in plenty, in captivity or at home, in defeat or in victory, the God who hears in heaven is near enough to forgive and act. And the inclusion of the foreigner in Solomon’s prayer is one of the most beautiful evangelistic moments in the Old Testament. The temple was not built to keep the nations out; it was built so that the nations might know the name of the Lord and fear him.
The fear that fell on the church after Ananias and Sapphira is not a fear we have to manufacture, but it is a fear we are wise to remember. The God who filled the temple cannot be triangulated. He sees what is kept back as clearly as he sees what is given. The good news is not that he requires perfect performance but that he invites honest hearts. Whatever we have been performing today — for our spouse, for our congregation, for our own self-image — the invitation is to bring it before the God who hears in heaven, to ask not for safety but for boldness, and to ask, like the old saint of Psalm 71, that we be kept faithful long enough to tell the next generation what the Lord has done.
June 9, 2026
1 Kings 9:10–11:13
The second half of 1 Kings 9 and the opening of 10 paint Solomon at the peak of his powers and his wealth. He builds and rebuilds cities, conscripts forced labor from the remnants of the Canaanite peoples, develops a navy at Ezion-geber with Hiram’s help, and brings back four hundred and twenty talents of gold from Ophir. The queen of Sheba arrives with a long train of camels, hard questions, and a small fortune in spices and precious stones, and is so overwhelmed by Solomon’s wisdom and the prosperity of his court that "there was no more breath in her." Her famous testimony — "the half was not told me; your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard" — has been the church’s favorite line about Solomon’s glory ever since. Chapter 10 ends with a catalog of gold: drinking vessels, two hundred large shields, three hundred small shields, a great ivory throne overlaid with finest gold, the golden lions on either side of each of the six steps. Silver became as common as stone in Jerusalem. Solomon’s annual income of gold was six hundred and sixty-six talents — a number whose ominous symmetry the narrator notes without comment.
Then chapter 11 opens with the sentence that ruins everything: "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women." Seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines, "and his wives turned away his heart." The deep apostasy is set out in detail. He builds high places for Chemosh and Molech on the Mount of Olives, "the mountain east of Jerusalem," and the man who once prayed for a discerning mind is now offering sacrifices to the abominations of the nations he married into. The Lord is angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord who had appeared to him twice. The judgment is announced — the kingdom will be torn from his son’s hand — but mitigated for David’s sake and for Jerusalem’s sake. One tribe will remain to the line of David; the rest will be given to another. The greatest king Israel ever had has become, by the end of his reign, the cautionary tale by which all later kings will be measured.
Acts 5:12–42
Many signs and wonders are being done among the people through the apostles. People bring out the sick on cots so that Peter’s shadow might fall on them; crowds from the towns around Jerusalem bring their sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, "and they were all healed." The high priest and the Sadducees rise up in jealousy, arrest the apostles, and put them in the public prison. During the night an angel of the Lord opens the prison doors, brings them out, and gives them an assignment: "Go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this Life." At daybreak they are in the temple teaching, while the high priest is convening a full Sanhedrin to summon them — only to discover that the prisoners are not in the prison.
The apostles are brought before the council without violence, "for they were afraid of being stoned by the people." The high priest’s complaint is significant: "We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us." Peter and the apostles answer with the line that has anchored every persecuted church since: "We must obey God rather than men." Gamaliel, a Pharisee respected by all the people, intervenes with a calmer voice: "If this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!" The council, persuaded, beats the apostles, charges them again, and lets them go. The apostles leave the council rejoicing "that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name." And every day in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.
Proverbs 14:15–24
This block of proverbs returns to themes of prudence, anger, and the long-term shape of a life. "The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps." Naive trust is not virtue; it is folly. "One who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly." The wise inherit knowledge; the rich man has many friends; the poor is disliked even by his neighbor — proverbs read like sober observation rather than endorsement of the way things are.
The passage names two of the deepest dispositional choices a person has to make. "Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor." And then a beautiful contrast about work and talk: "In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty." The proverbs do not romanticize work, but they do not romanticize words either. A life is built by toil and steadied by prudence; it is undone by laziness, hasty temper, and contempt for the poor.
Today’s readings hold up an uncomfortable mirror. Solomon, gifted beyond any other king with discernment, ends up unable to discern the slow seduction of seven hundred wives. The apostles, ungifted in worldly terms, find themselves preaching in the temple after a prison break and rejoicing that they have been counted worthy to suffer for the name. The proverbs, with their patient observation of human nature, set out the small, daily choices that compound either way. The contrast tells us that wisdom is not a status we achieve but a posture we keep — and that the gift can be lost where the posture is not maintained.
Solomon’s tragedy is one of the saddest stories in the Old Testament because it was so unnecessary. The covenant was clear. The warnings had been given. The Lord had appeared to him twice. And still his heart was turned away by the gradual accumulation of compromises he could have refused. The narrator’s careful repetition that his heart "did not remain true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father" is a sober reminder that David, for all his sins, kept turning back. Solomon, for all his wisdom, drifted away and did not come back. The lesson is not that we should be more impressed with ourselves than with Solomon; it is that we should be more humble than he was.
The apostles are the counter-witness. With no gifts of state, no army, no gold from Ophir, they preach Jesus and turn Jerusalem upside down. Their secret is the line "we must obey God rather than men" lived out in the face of beatings and threats. The Spirit who shook the building has now made their bones unshakeable. And Proverbs gives us the everyday liturgy of staying faithful — slow to anger, generous to the poor, prudent in our steps, willing to work rather than just talk. May we today turn back wherever we have drifted, ask the Spirit for the boldness of the apostles, and let our hearts be tutored by the patient wisdom that keeps us walking with God all the way to the end.
June 10, 2026
1 Kings 11:14–12:24
The Lord begins raising up adversaries against Solomon — Hadad the Edomite, Rezon of Damascus, and most consequentially, Jeroboam, an industrious young Ephraimite whom Solomon had put in charge of the forced labor of the house of Joseph. The prophet Ahijah meets Jeroboam outside Jerusalem, tears his new cloak into twelve pieces, and gives Jeroboam ten of them — a prophetic enactment of the kingdom about to be torn from Solomon’s son. The promise to Jeroboam is conditional, like the one to Solomon: "If you will listen to all that I command you, and will walk in my ways… I will be with you and will build you a sure house." Solomon hears of it and seeks Jeroboam’s life, and Jeroboam flees to Egypt and stays there until Solomon’s death. Solomon dies after forty years on the throne and is buried in the city of David, and his son Rehoboam reigns in his place.
Rehoboam goes to Shechem — the old covenant city of the north — for his coronation by all Israel, and the moment is one of the worst-handled political negotiations in the Bible. Jeroboam returns from Egypt as a spokesman for the assembly, and the people make a reasonable request: "Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you." Rehoboam asks for three days, consults the old men who served Solomon, and is given wise counsel: speak to them kindly and they will be your servants forever. He rejects it and consults the young men he grew up with, who give him the now-famous answer: "My little finger is thicker than my father’s thighs. And now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions." Rehoboam speaks the harsh words to the assembly, and Israel answers, "What portion do we have in David? To your tents, O Israel!" The kingdom splits. Ten tribes follow Jeroboam; only Judah and Benjamin remain to the house of David. The narrator gives the theological commentary: "It was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord that he might fulfill his word."
Acts 6:1–7:19
The growth of the church creates an internal tension. The Hellenist widows are being neglected in the daily distribution, and a complaint arises against the Hebrew-speaking believers. The Twelve gather the congregation and propose a structural solution that takes both their own calling and the practical needs of the community seriously: "It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word." The seven are chosen — all of them, notably, with Greek names — and prayer and the laying on of hands set them apart. "And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith."
Stephen, full of grace and power, is doing great wonders and signs among the people. Opposition arises from members of the synagogue of the Freedmen — Cyrenians, Alexandrians, those from Cilicia and Asia — but they cannot withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he is speaking. So they suborn false witnesses to bring him before the council, and his great defense begins. Stephen’s sermon, which will continue tomorrow, walks the Sanhedrin through Israel’s history — the call of Abraham out of Mesopotamia, the covenant of circumcision, the going down of Joseph into Egypt, the bondage in Egypt. At every turn he is making the point that God has been at work outside the land, outside the temple, outside the existing structures of Jewish religious life — and that the people of God have repeatedly failed to recognize what God was doing. The opening of the sermon is also the opening of the church’s long argument about whether the gospel is bigger than the temple it has so far inhabited.
Psalm 71:19–24
The closing verses of Psalm 71 lift the lament into doxology. "Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?" The old psalmist looks back on a life full of troubles — "you who have made me see many troubles and calamities" — and trusts that the same God who has shown them will revive him and bring him up again from the depths of the earth. The God who has carried him this far will not abandon him at the last turn.
The psalm ends with the singing it has been working toward. "I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God; I will sing praises to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel. My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to you; my soul also, which you have redeemed." The vindication asked for at the beginning has not yet arrived in full, but the psalmist has already settled into the disposition of praise. His tongue will talk of God’s righteous help all the day long. The closing line — "for they have been put to shame and disappointed who sought to do me hurt" — is sung as the final freedom of a soul whose long trust has been honored.
The kingdom of David tears in half, a new church is structured for love of its widows, and an old saint closes his prayer with song. The three readings together tell the story of how communities live and die — and how, in the providence of God, both the dying and the living are folded into a longer work he is doing in the world. Rehoboam loses the kingdom in a single conversation; the Twelve preserve the church by listening to a complaint and trusting the Spirit to lead a structural change.
Rehoboam’s mistake is one we should know in our own bones. He preferred the counsel of those who flattered his ego to the counsel of those who had actually served his father. The young men told him what he wanted to hear: be tough, double down, show them who is in charge. The old men told him the truth: serve them, and they will serve you. Leadership in the kingdom of God runs in the opposite direction from leadership in the kingdom of the world, and Rehoboam, given a clear choice, picks the wrong one — and ten tribes walk away forever. The contrast with the apostles is instructive. When the Hellenist widows complain, the apostles do not double down; they listen, share authority, and let the structure grow.
The psalm holds it all together with the long view of an old saint. Whatever has gone wrong, however many troubles and calamities God has let him see, the song still rises: "You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?" That is the song the church learns to sing through both Rehoboams and the seven full of the Spirit. It is the song that survives the splitting of kingdoms and the multiplying of disciples. May we today take the long view, listen to the right counselors, trust the Spirit to lead the structure changes our communities need, and keep singing — even on the day the cloak gets torn — the song of the One who is doing great things still.