Week 24 — Table of Contents
June 11, 2026
1 Kings 12:25–14:20
Jeroboam, having inherited ten tribes, immediately faces a political and theological problem: the temple is in Jerusalem, and if his people keep going up to worship there, their hearts will eventually turn back to the house of David. His solution is one of the most consequential mistakes in the Old Testament. He makes two golden calves, sets one up at Bethel in the south and one at Dan in the north, and tells the people: "You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." The line deliberately echoes Aaron’s words at Sinai, and the narrator wants us to feel the weight of it. Jeroboam appoints priests from among all the people who were not Levites, invents his own feast in the eighth month, and stations himself by the altar at Bethel to burn incense. From this moment on, "the sin of Jeroboam" — the calves at Bethel and Dan — will be the theological refrain that marks every king of the northern kingdom.
The narrative then gives us two strange and sober prophetic encounters. A man of God from Judah confronts Jeroboam at the altar, and Jeroboam’s outstretched hand withers; when Jeroboam asks for prayer, the prophet prays and the hand is restored, but the prophet refuses Jeroboam’s hospitality because of God’s strict instruction not to eat or drink in that place. An older prophet from Bethel lies to him on the road and convinces him to eat and drink against the word given. The young prophet does so, and is killed by a lion on his way home — a sobering parable about the cost of letting other voices override the clear word of God. Chapter 14 then opens with Jeroboam’s son Abijah falling ill and Jeroboam sending his wife in disguise to consult the old prophet Ahijah. Ahijah, though blind, recognizes her and delivers the judgment: the child will die, the dynasty will be cut off, and Israel will eventually be uprooted "from this good land" because of the calves. The death of the child is the only act of mercy in the oracle, the narrator notes — he alone will receive a proper burial.
Acts 7:20–43
Stephen’s sermon continues through the Joseph story and into Moses. He recounts Moses’s birth in a time of oppression, his rescue and education in Pharaoh’s house, his attempt at forty to deliver his people that resulted only in murder and flight, and his forty years in Midian. Stephen lingers on the moment when Moses’s first effort at deliverance is rejected by his own people — "the man pushed him aside, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?’" — and treats it as a pattern. The deliverer God sends is the deliverer God’s people initially reject.
Then Stephen tells the burning bush story and the exodus, with one accumulating emphasis: Moses worked his signs and wonders in Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years, and yet "our fathers refused to obey him, but thrust him aside, and in their hearts they turned to Egypt, saying to Aaron, ‘Make for us gods who will go before us.’" Stephen quotes the words exactly so that the parallel with Jeroboam — "Behold your gods, O Israel" — would have rung in any Jewish ear. The same line that opens the long history of northern apostasy in the Old Testament is the line Stephen now uses to indict the council in front of him. "They made a calf in those days, and offered a sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing in the works of their hands." God, Stephen says, gave them over to the worship of the host of heaven, "as it is written in the book of the prophets." Israel’s history of resisting the Holy Spirit, in Stephen’s reading, is not over.
Psalm 72:1–20
Psalm 72, attributed to Solomon, is the great prayer for a king who will rule with God’s righteousness and God’s justice. "Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son! May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice!" The petitions stack up: that the mountains may bear prosperity for the people, that he may defend the cause of the poor, deliver the children of the needy, crush the oppressor, endure as long as the sun and moon. "In his days may the righteous flourish, and peace abound, till the moon be no more!"
The middle of the psalm widens the lens to the nations. "May his dominion be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth!" Kings of Tarshish and Sheba bring tribute; all kings fall down before him; all nations serve him. "For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight." This is what kingship is for. The psalm closes with a doxology that may have originally ended Book II of the Psalter: "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things. Blessed be his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory! Amen and Amen!"
A king in Israel sets up calves; a deacon in Jerusalem indicts the council with the same line; a psalmist sings for the king who would actually be what kings are supposed to be. The three readings together tell us why we keep needing a better king, and where that better king is finally found. Jeroboam’s calves are the sin that defines the northern kingdom for two hundred years. Stephen names the same sin still at work in the temple establishment of his day. And Psalm 72 sings for a Messiah whose dominion will be from sea to sea, whose justice will defend the poor, and in whose days righteousness will flourish till the moon is no more.
What is sobering about the calf story is how plausible Jeroboam’s logic must have seemed at the time. Politically, he had a real problem. Pragmatically, he had a workable solution. Theologically, he was disastrous, because he chose visible idols over the invisible Lord, and convenience of worship over obedience to the place God had named. His calves were not labeled "other gods"; they were labeled "the God who brought you out of Egypt." The corruption was not denial but distortion. And the most useful question for our own day is whether we have any Jeroboam-style accommodations in our own worship — gods we have made or chosen because they were closer, easier, more pragmatic, more politically useful, while still labeled with the right name.
Stephen’s sermon and Psalm 72 together point us toward the only real answer. The pattern of Israel’s history is repeated rejection of the deliverer God sends. The remedy is not better deliverers but the perfect one — the king of Psalm 72, whose name endures forever and through whom all the families of the earth are blessed. Stephen is on his way to dying at the hands of the very people he is addressing, and the irony will not be lost on Luke. The rejected Moses is a type of the rejected Jesus. The deacon in the witness chair is following his Master. And the king of Psalm 72 is the One both of them have been pointing to all along.
June 12, 2026
1 Kings 14:21–16:7
The narrative now begins the long, sobering pattern that will run through the rest of Kings: alternating accounts of southern and northern monarchs, with the formulas of evaluation that the books rely on. "He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord… he did not turn aside from any of the sins of Jeroboam." Rehoboam reigns seventeen years in Jerusalem and Judah does what is evil — high places, pillars, Asherim, male cult prostitutes. In his fifth year Shishak king of Egypt comes up against Jerusalem and takes the gold shields Solomon had made, which Rehoboam replaces with bronze. Abijam reigns three years and walks in all the sins of his father, but for David’s sake the Lord gives him a "lamp in Jerusalem" — the dynasty is preserved by covenant promise, not by the king’s merit. Asa his son reigns forty-one years and at last does what is right in the eyes of the Lord, putting away the male cult prostitutes and removing the idols his fathers had made. He even removes his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother because she had made an abominable image for Asherah. The narrator notes that "the high places were not taken away" but commends Asa’s heart as wholly true to the Lord all his days.
In the north, Nadab succeeds Jeroboam and walks in his father’s sins. Baasha conspires against him, kills him, and wipes out the entire house of Jeroboam, fulfilling the word the Lord had spoken through Ahijah. Baasha himself reigns twenty-four years and does evil in the sight of the Lord, walking in the way of Jeroboam. The prophet Jehu son of Hanani comes to him with a hard word: "I exalted you out of the dust and made you leader over my people Israel, and you have walked in the way of Jeroboam… therefore I will utterly sweep away Baasha and his house." The pattern is becoming clear. The northern kingdom is locked in a cycle of dynasties that rise on the violence of coups and fall on the judgment of God. The sins of Jeroboam are the gravitational center of the whole region, and one dynasty after another is pulled into them.
Acts 7:44–8:3
Stephen reaches the climax of his sermon. He recounts the tabernacle in the wilderness, brought into the land under Joshua, kept until the days of David — "who found favor in the sight of God and asked to find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob" — and then the temple Solomon built. But Stephen does not let the temple have the last word. "Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says." He quotes Isaiah 66: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me? Or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?" Stephen is not attacking the temple per se. He is attacking the assumption that God can be contained, controlled, or possessed by it.
Then comes the indictment that crosses the line his hearers will not let stand. "You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered." The council is enraged, gnashing their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazes into heaven and sees the glory of God and Jesus standing — standing, not sitting — at the right hand of God. "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." They cover their ears, rush at him, drag him out of the city, and stone him. The witnesses lay their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. Stephen’s last words echo his Lord’s: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit… Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And he falls asleep. The great persecution that follows scatters the believers throughout Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.
Psalm 73:1–14
Psalm 73 is one of the most honest psalms in the Psalter, and its opening confession is what makes the rest of it credible: "Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." The psalmist names the spiritual problem that every honest believer eventually faces. The wicked seem to flourish. They have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek; they are not in trouble as others are; they speak with malice from on high and the people turn and praise them.
The middle of the psalm gives the bitter form of the temptation: "All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning." The psalmist is not pretending to a serenity he does not feel. He is admitting that the moral logic of his faith has, for a season, stopped making sense to him. He has done the right thing and it has hurt; the wicked have done the wrong thing and it has paid. The psalm pauses there, on the edge of crisis — and the next reading will pick up the second half tomorrow.
Today’s readings hold three different forms of one question: how does the faithful believer live in a world where the unfaithful seem to be winning? Asa keeps the heart of his fathers’ covenant in a season of slow southern decline; the northern dynasties tear at each other while remaining locked in the sins of Jeroboam; Stephen is stoned in the very temple square he refused to idolize; and the psalmist confesses that he has nearly lost his footing watching the wicked prosper.
Stephen is the answer to the psalmist’s complaint, and the answer is not what the psalmist expected. The Righteous One has been killed too. The prophets have been killed too. The witness in Acts 7 is killed in the act of witnessing — and the heavens are not silent. Jesus stands at the right hand of God to receive his servant. The crown does not save Stephen from the stones; the crown is given through them. The arc of Acts 7 is the New Testament’s most striking demonstration that God’s vindication is real but not always immediate, and not always located where we look for it.
Asa’s reign is a small but real picture of what faithfulness can look like in a long season of decline. He could not undo his fathers’ sins. He could not even take down all the high places. But he could put away the male cult prostitutes, remove the idols, demote his grandmother from her position of religious power, and keep his heart true to the Lord all his days. Sometimes that is what we get to do. We do not get to reverse a kingdom; we get to clean up what is in front of us and stay tender to God. The psalm will turn its corner tomorrow, but its honesty today gives us permission to bring our own confusion to the Lord — and to keep showing up faithful in whatever Asa-shaped slice of the kingdom we have been given.
June 13, 2026
1 Kings 16:8–18:15
The northern kingdom’s spiral accelerates. Elah, Baasha’s son, is killed by Zimri while drinking himself drunk at the house of his steward. Zimri reigns seven days, kills off all the house of Baasha, fulfilling the word against him through Jehu son of Hanani, and then commits suicide when Omri besieges the city. Omri emerges from the civil war as king, reigns twelve years, builds the new capital at Samaria, and "did more evil than all who were before him." His son Ahab does worse: he marries Jezebel, daughter of the king of the Sidonians, builds an altar for Baal in the house of Baal he has built in Samaria, makes an Asherah, and the narrator concludes that "Ahab did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him."
Into this moment of unprecedented apostasy steps Elijah the Tishbite, with no genealogy and almost no introduction: "As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word." Then the strange sequence of God’s provision begins. Elijah is sent to the brook Cherith east of the Jordan, where ravens feed him bread and meat morning and evening. When the brook dries up, he is sent to Zarephath in Sidon — Jezebel’s home country — to a widow at the gate. She has a handful of flour and a little oil and is gathering sticks for a final meal before she and her son die. Elijah asks for a cake first, with a promise: the jar of flour will not be spent and the jug of oil will not be empty until the day the Lord sends rain. She believes him and they eat for many days. When her son later dies of illness, Elijah carries him up to the upper chamber, stretches himself on him three times, and the boy is restored. The widow’s confession is the chapter’s anchor: "Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth." Chapter 18 then opens with the Lord telling Elijah to go and show himself to Ahab, and with Obadiah, the godly servant of Ahab who has been hiding a hundred prophets in two caves and bringing them bread and water. Elijah and Obadiah meet on the road, and the great confrontation with Ahab is set in motion.
Acts 8:4–40
The scattering of the persecuted church becomes the engine of the gospel’s expansion. "Those who were scattered went about preaching the word." Philip — one of the seven chosen in Acts 6 — goes down to a city of Samaria and proclaims Christ to them. Crowds pay attention. Unclean spirits come out of many; the paralyzed and lame are healed; "there was much joy in that city." Simon, who had previously dazzled the Samaritans with magic, believes and is baptized. The apostles Peter and John come down from Jerusalem to confirm the Samaritan mission with the laying on of hands, and the Holy Spirit comes upon the new believers. Simon, when he sees this, offers them money for the same power. Peter’s response is fierce and clarifying: "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God." The gospel cannot be commodified. Simon, frightened, asks Peter to pray for him.
Then comes one of the loveliest scenes in Acts. An angel directs Philip to go south on the desert road from Jerusalem to Gaza. There he meets an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, returning from worship in Jerusalem and reading Isaiah 53 in his chariot. "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opens not his mouth." The Spirit tells Philip to join the chariot. Philip asks if he understands what he is reading; the eunuch invites him up. "Beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus." They come to some water, and the eunuch — a man whose physical condition would have excluded him from the temple — asks, "See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?" Nothing, in the new covenant, prevents him. Philip baptizes him, the Spirit carries Philip away, and the eunuch goes on his way rejoicing. The first African convert recorded in Acts is a court official heading back to the queen of Ethiopia with the gospel.
Proverbs 14:25–35
This block of proverbs gathers a series of contrasts between the wise and the fearful, the prosperous and the just. "A truthful witness saves lives, but one who breathes out lies is deceitful." The fear of the Lord is "strong confidence" and a "fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death." The proverbs are interested in what fear actually accomplishes; the fear of God produces life, while every other fear produces only paralysis.
The passage contains one of Proverbs’ most pointed political sayings: "In a multitude of people is the glory of a king, but without people a prince is ruined." Kings are made by people. Then several proverbs return to anger and pity: "Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly." And: "Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him." Proverbs locks generosity to the poor into the doctrine of creation. The image of God on the face of the poor is the same image God placed there at the beginning. To insult it is to insult the One who made it.
A drought, a widow, an Ethiopian, and the patient wisdom of the Proverbs — today’s readings take us from the edges of empires to the edges of the human heart and show us how God’s kingdom keeps moving. Elijah is sent to a foreign widow when the river runs dry. Philip is sent to a Samaritan city and then to a single chariot on a desert road. The gospel keeps insisting that the kingdom’s destination is the outsider, the foreigner, the eunuch, the widow — not because the kingdom despises insiders, but because insiders have never been the limit of its reach.
The widow of Zarephath is one of the great Old Testament pictures of faith. She is a Gentile, a woman, a widow, and a Sidonian — and the prophet of Israel is sent to her at her last meal. The promise is concrete: bake me a cake first, and your jar of flour will not run out. She does it. The miracle she experiences in her own kitchen is the miracle the church experiences every day: when she gives what she has to the Lord first, what she has is multiplied to be enough. Jesus himself will later point to this widow as the symbol of how the kingdom comes to those outside Israel.
The Ethiopian eunuch is the New Testament’s answer to Isaiah 56’s promise that the eunuchs and the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord will not be cut off but given an everlasting name. The chariot conversation is one of the great pastoral moments in Acts. Philip joins his journey, listens to his question, opens the Scriptures with him, walks him to the water, and lets the Spirit carry him on rejoicing. Almost every line is a model of evangelism — go where the Spirit sends, ask what they understand, begin with the Scripture they are already reading, point to Jesus, and trust the Spirit with what happens next. May we today let ourselves be sent to the widow’s house and the eunuch’s chariot. The flour does not run out for those who give it away first.
June 14, 2026
1 Kings 18:16–19:21
Elijah meets Ahab with the king’s accusation already drawn: "Is it you, you troubler of Israel?" Elijah’s answer is one of the most withering rebukes in the Old Testament: "I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father’s house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals." He calls all Israel together at Mount Carmel along with the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah. His opening challenge defines the issue: "How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." Two bulls, two altars, no fire — let the God who answers by fire be God. The prophets of Baal call on their god from morning until noon, cut themselves until the blood gushes out, rave through the afternoon, but "no one answered." Elijah taunts them. Then he repairs the broken altar of the Lord with twelve stones, soaks the wood with water three times until the trench is full, and prays a short, devastating prayer: "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel… that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God." Fire falls and consumes the offering, the wood, the stones, the dust, and the water. The people fall on their faces. The prophets of Baal are seized and killed at the Kishon.
But the triumph of Carmel is followed by one of the great spiritual collapses in Scripture. Jezebel sends word that she will have Elijah’s life by the same time tomorrow, and Elijah, the man who just called down fire from heaven, runs for his life into the wilderness. Under a broom tree he asks to die: "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life." The Lord’s first response is not a rebuke but a meal — bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water, twice, with the gentle word, "Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you." In the strength of that food he walks forty days and nights to Horeb, the mountain of God. He lodges in a cave, and the word of the Lord comes to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?" His answer is full of self-pity and inaccurate accounting: "I, even I only, am left." The Lord brings him out for the famous theophany — a great and strong wind, an earthquake, a fire — but the Lord is not in any of them. After the fire, "the sound of a low whisper." The Lord then gives him three appointments: Hazael as king over Syria, Jehu as king over Israel, and Elisha as prophet in his place, and the correction that there are seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed to Baal. Elijah finds Elisha plowing, throws his cloak over him, and a new generation of prophetic ministry begins.
Acts 9:1–31
Saul, last seen approving of Stephen’s death and breathing threats and murder against the disciples, is on the road to Damascus with letters from the high priest authorizing arrests. Near the city, a light from heaven flashes around him; he falls to the ground and hears a voice: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" When he asks who is speaking, the answer is the answer that will define his life: "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." The risen Christ identifies himself with his suffering church — to persecute them is to persecute him. Saul is led, blind, into the city and fasts for three days. Ananias, a disciple in Damascus, is told to go to him; he protests for understandable reasons, but is told that Saul is "a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel." Ananias goes, lays hands on him, calls him brother, and Saul receives his sight, is baptized, and immediately begins proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues: "He is the Son of God."
The astonishment of the Damascus believers is matched by the alarm of the Jews who plot to kill Saul, and he is lowered down the city wall in a basket. He returns to Jerusalem, where the disciples are still afraid of him, and Barnabas — true to his nickname, "son of encouragement" — vouches for him to the apostles. He speaks boldly in Jerusalem, the Hellenists try to kill him, and the brothers send him off to Tarsus. The chapter ends with one of the loveliest summary verses in Acts: "So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied." Saul’s conversion is the hinge moment, but the work goes on as it has gone on — in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Spirit, with the church being built up by ordinary faithfulness day after day.
Psalm 73:15–28
The psalm makes its great turn. The psalmist has confessed his envy of the wicked and his near-stumble. Then comes the line that changes everything: "But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end." The wicked are not on solid ground; they are on slippery places. They are like a dream when one awakes. The picture of their final destruction sobers the envy out of him.
Then the most beautiful confession in the psalm. "When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." The psalmist has not been given a different set of circumstances. He has been given a different perspective. The God who holds his hand is enough. The psalm ends with the testimony that is its whole point: "But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works."
Today’s three readings show us how the Lord meets people in their lowest moments. Elijah is fed under the broom tree by an angel and met at the cave by a whisper. Saul is met on the Damascus road by the voice of the One whose church he has been ravaging. The psalmist, near to stumbling, is brought into the sanctuary and given a different sight. Each story is a kindness too specific to be missed.
The Elijah account is one of the great pastoral passages of the Bible because it takes spiritual exhaustion seriously. The Lord does not begin with theology; he begins with food and sleep. He does not begin with rebuke; he begins with the gentle question, "What are you doing here?" He does not give the answer in wind or earthquake or fire; he gives it in a low whisper. And the answer corrects Elijah’s self-pity ("I, even I only, am left") with the reality that there are seven thousand others, and gives him a successor to take some of the weight off his shoulders. Burnout is real, and so is the Lord’s care for the burned-out. The next time we find ourselves under our own broom tree, we should expect bread, water, sleep, and eventually a whisper.
Paul’s conversion and the psalmist’s turn are different versions of the same moment. Both involve the recognition that the case we have been building against God or for ourselves has been built on a misreading of the world. Saul thought he was serving God by persecuting the church and discovered he was persecuting God himself. The psalmist thought he was being defrauded by his faithfulness until he went into the sanctuary and saw the end of the wicked. The cure for envy and the cure for zeal-without-knowledge are surprisingly similar: a fresh sight of God. May we today let the Lord lead us into his sanctuary, hear his whisper under our broom tree, and know with the psalmist that the strength of our hearts and our portion forever is not anything we have to defend or accumulate, but the God whose right hand is already holding ours.
June 15, 2026
1 Kings 20:1–21:29
Two stories of Ahab fill the rest of chapter 20 and chapter 21, and they form a complicated portrait of a king who keeps almost-turning-but-not-quite. In chapter 20, Ben-hadad of Syria besieges Samaria with thirty-two allied kings and demands not only Ahab’s silver and gold but his wives and children. Ahab refuses the second demand, and an unnamed prophet promises that the Lord will give Ahab victory "that you may know that I am the Lord." Israel routes Syria. The next year Ben-hadad attacks again, this time on the plain, on the assumption that Israel’s God is a god of the hills only — and again Israel wins because the Lord wills to vindicate his name. But then Ahab makes a covenant with the captured Ben-hadad and lets him go, and a prophet confronts him with the judgment that he has spared a man God had devoted to destruction.
Chapter 21 is the dark center of the Ahab narrative. He covets the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite next to his palace, and Naboth refuses to sell — "The Lord forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers." Naboth’s refusal is not stubbornness; it is faithfulness to the law of Moses, which forbade the permanent alienation of ancestral inheritance. Ahab sulks. Jezebel takes matters into her own hands. She writes letters in Ahab’s name, sealed with his seal, instructing the elders of Jezreel to arrange a fake fast at which two scoundrels will accuse Naboth of cursing God and the king. Naboth is taken out and stoned. Ahab goes down to take possession of the vineyard, and Elijah meets him there with the most chilling word of the chapter: "Have you killed and also taken possession?… In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick your own blood." Disaster is announced on his house, comparing it to the houses of Jeroboam and Baasha. And then the surprising note: Ahab tears his clothes, puts on sackcloth, fasts, and goes about dejectedly. The Lord, who never minimizes repentance even from the worst of kings, defers the disaster to his son’s days. The justice will come; the mercy is real for now.
Acts 9:32–10:23a
Peter is on the move. He visits the saints at Lydda and heals Aeneas, paralyzed for eight years, with the words, "Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed." All who lived in Lydda and Sharon see him and turn to the Lord. At Joppa, the disciples send for Peter when Tabitha (Dorcas) dies — a beloved disciple known for her works of charity, full of good works. The widows show Peter the tunics and other garments she had made while she was with them. Peter puts them all outside, kneels and prays, and says, "Tabitha, arise." She opens her eyes, sees Peter, and sits up. He gives her back to the saints, and the news spreads through Joppa, and many believe.
Then comes the long Cornelius narrative that will dominate the next two chapters. Cornelius is a centurion of the Italian Cohort, "a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God." An angel appears to him in a vision, tells him his prayers and alms have come up as a memorial before God, and instructs him to send for Peter at Joppa. Meanwhile Peter is on the housetop praying at noon, hungry, and falls into a trance. He sees heaven opened and a great sheet descending with all kinds of animals, reptiles, and birds, and hears a voice: "Rise, Peter; kill and eat." Peter protests: "By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean." The voice replies: "What God has made clean, do not call common." This happens three times, and then the sheet is taken up to heaven. While Peter is perplexed, the men from Cornelius arrive. The Spirit tells him to go with them without hesitation. The next day they set out together for Caesarea.
Psalm 74:1–9
Psalm 74 is a community lament from a moment of catastrophic loss — most likely the destruction of the temple in 587 BC. "O God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?" The opening verses appeal to God’s prior election: remember your congregation, which you purchased of old, which you have redeemed; remember Mount Zion, where you have dwelt. The destruction is then described with painful specificity: the enemy has wreaked havoc in the sanctuary, the foes roar in the midst of the meeting place, they have set up their own signs for signs, they bring their axes against the carved wood and break it down with hatchets and hammers.
The psalm names the silence that has settled over Israel’s worship: "We do not see our signs; there is no longer any prophet, and there is none among us who knows how long." The very God of Israel seems to have withdrawn the means by which his people had known him. The lament does not resolve at this point. It simply names the desolation and waits for the Lord to remember. The honesty of the psalm is precisely what makes it useful for every later community of God’s people who have stood in the ruins of something precious.
Today’s readings put us at the seams of God’s mercy and God’s justice — and at the moment when the gospel is about to break through the long wall between Jew and Gentile. Ahab’s almost-repentance buys him time but not transformation; the unnamed prophet’s prediction will stand. Peter’s vision on the roof in Joppa is one of the great hinges of redemptive history — the long-prepared ground for the gospel’s expansion into the household of a Gentile centurion. And Psalm 74 reminds us that there are seasons in God’s people’s life when no signs are visible and no prophet is speaking, and that the right thing to do in those seasons is still to bring our grief to the One who alone can answer it.
The Naboth story is one of the Old Testament’s most pointed indictments of power that loses its accountability. Ahab covets, sulks, and looks the other way while his wife forges his name and arranges a judicial murder. The prophet’s confrontation — "Have you killed and also taken possession?" — is a line every age needs to hear. There is no version of the kingdom of God in which the powerful are allowed to take what does not belong to them and call it good. And yet the chapter does not end with the judgment alone. It ends with Ahab’s tearing of his clothes and the Lord’s deferral of disaster, because even on the worst king in Israel’s history, real repentance is not lost on God. The mercy is real even when the consequences are not erased.
Peter on the roof and Cornelius in his house are God’s quiet preparation of a moment that will change the world. The vision and the visitor arrive at the same time because they were arranged in advance. The Spirit told Peter to go without hesitation because hesitation was the obvious response. The expansion of the gospel from Jew to Gentile is not Peter’s idea or Cornelius’s idea but God’s idea, and it will be told the same way twice and three times in Acts to make sure the church never forgets it. May the same God who tore Peter’s prejudices on a rooftop, who deferred judgment for one moment of Ahab’s tearing, and who is faithful even when no signs are visible, be at work in our own walls today.
June 16, 2026
1 Kings 22:1–53
Ahab proposes to Jehoshaphat of Judah that they go together to recover Ramoth-gilead from the king of Syria, and Jehoshaphat agrees with the careful proviso: "Inquire first for the word of the Lord." Ahab calls four hundred prophets, all of whom predict victory: "Go up, for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king." Jehoshaphat is unconvinced and asks if there is yet a prophet of the Lord through whom they might inquire. Ahab admits there is one — Micaiah son of Imlah — "but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil." Jehoshaphat answers, "Let not the king say so." Micaiah is brought, and at first parrots the false prophets’ cheerful prediction with such sarcasm that Ahab demands the truth. Micaiah then delivers it: "I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd." He follows with a remarkable vision of the heavenly court — the Lord asking who will entice Ahab to fall at Ramoth-gilead, and a lying spirit volunteering to be a lying spirit in the mouth of all Ahab’s prophets. Zedekiah son of Chenaanah strikes Micaiah on the cheek. Ahab orders Micaiah imprisoned on bread and water until the king returns "in peace," and Micaiah answers, "If you return in peace, the Lord has not spoken by me."
Ahab tries to outsmart prophecy by going into battle in disguise while Jehoshaphat wears his royal robes. A random Syrian arrow finds him anyway, drawn at a venture, and strikes him between the joints of his armor. He bleeds out into his chariot through the long afternoon. The chariot is washed at the pool of Samaria, and the dogs lick up his blood — fulfilling the word against him at Naboth’s vineyard. Jehoshaphat reigns long and faithfully in Judah, though the high places are not removed; he allies with Ahaziah son of Ahab in shipbuilding, and the Lord wrecks the ships. Ahaziah succeeds Ahab in Israel and walks in his father’s and his mother’s and Jeroboam’s ways. The chapter ends with another evil king on the northern throne.
Acts 10:23b–11:18
Peter arrives at Cornelius’s house in Caesarea to find a gathering of relatives and close friends waiting for him. Cornelius falls down at his feet, and Peter raises him up: "Stand up; I too am a man." Peter explains the rooftop vision — "God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean" — and asks why Cornelius has sent for him. Cornelius tells the story of the angel’s visit and concludes with the simple, beautiful statement: "Now therefore we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the Lord." Peter begins one of the most important sermons in Acts: "Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him." He preaches Jesus — the baptism of John, the anointing with the Spirit, the going about doing good and healing, the cross and the resurrection and the witnesses chosen by God. "To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name." While Peter is still speaking, the Holy Spirit falls on all who hear the word. The Jewish believers with him are amazed that the gift of the Holy Spirit has been poured out on Gentiles. Peter draws the conclusion: "Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" They are baptized.
Word reaches the church in Jerusalem that the Gentiles have received the word of God. When Peter comes up, the circumcision party criticizes him: "You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them." Peter rehearses the whole story from the beginning — the vision, the men’s arrival, the Spirit’s command to go, the events at Cornelius’s house, the Spirit falling on them as on us at the beginning. "If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?" The Jerusalem church falls silent, then glorifies God: "Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life." It is one of the great theological turning points in the New Testament. The gospel is for the nations, not in theory but in fact, sealed by the Spirit and accepted by the apostles.
Psalm 74:10–17
The psalm asks the hard question: "How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? Is the enemy to revile your name forever? Why do you hold back your hand, your right hand? Take it from the fold of your garment and destroy them!" The psalmist is not pretending patience he does not feel. He is pleading with God to act in the world he is meant to govern.
Then the psalm grounds its plea in God’s saving past. "Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness." The God who acted at the Sea and at creation is the same God to whom the psalmist appeals now. "Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter." The God of cosmic order is the God of redemptive history is the God being called upon now. The psalm’s argument is that the God who has done all this cannot reasonably be expected to leave his people in the ruins forever.
Today’s readings show us three places where the same God is at work: in the death of an evil king who tried to outsmart prophecy, in the breaking down of a dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, and in the prayer of a people who can no longer see the signs of God’s nearness but appeal to his ancient acts. The God of Micaiah, the God of Peter and Cornelius, and the God whose right hand divided the sea — it is the same God. He is patient. He is principled. He is also the One who will not leave his work undone.
The Ahab narrative ends as it had to. The arrow drawn at a venture finds the seam between joints of armor that human cleverness designed. Disguise cannot evade prophecy. Strategy cannot outflank the word of God. And yet the story of Ahab is not just a warning; it is also a witness. Even his worst moment ended with a deferred judgment because he tore his clothes. God’s justice is exact and his mercy is real, and the same Lord who finally took Ahab’s life had also waited for years to give him every chance to repent. There is no king so far gone that God will not honor a torn garment.
Acts 10–11 is the moment the church becomes what it was always meant to be. Cornelius’s house in Caesarea is the new earth in miniature: a Roman centurion and his family, kneeling with a Jewish apostle, all of them receiving the same Spirit and being baptized into the same Lord. The criticism Peter faces ("you went to uncircumcised men and ate with them") and the verdict the Jerusalem church reaches ("then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life") map every later argument the church will have about who belongs. The answer is the same answer every time. God shows no partiality. The Spirit settles the question. The water follows the Spirit. May the God who divided the sea and crossed the room with Peter cross our own walls today, and may we be the kind of church that, hearing the news, falls silent and then glorifies God.
June 17, 2026
2 Kings 1:1–2:25
Second Kings opens with Ahaziah falling through a lattice in his upper chamber and sending messengers to Baal-zebub of Ekron to inquire whether he will recover. Elijah meets the messengers with a hard word: "Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of Baal-zebub?" The king will not come down from his bed. Ahaziah sends three companies of fifty soldiers to bring Elijah in. The first two captains demand he come down; fire falls and consumes them. The third captain falls on his knees and pleads for his life, and Elijah goes with him. The word is delivered to Ahaziah’s face, and Ahaziah dies according to the word.
Chapter 2 is the great transition. Elijah and Elisha walk from Gilgal to Bethel to Jericho to the Jordan, and at each stop Elijah tries to send Elisha back. "As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you." At the Jordan, Elijah rolls up his cloak and strikes the water, and they cross over on dry ground — the exodus and the conquest miracle now condensed into a prophetic handoff. "Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken from you." Elisha asks for a double portion of his master’s spirit — the inheritance of the firstborn son. Elijah names the condition: if you see me as I am taken, it shall be granted. Chariots of fire and horses of fire appear, separating them, and Elijah goes up by a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha cries, "My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!" He picks up Elijah’s cloak, strikes the Jordan with it, and the waters part again. The new prophet has been confirmed. The sons of the prophets at Jericho recognize that "the spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha," and they bow before him. Elisha heals the bad water at Jericho with a bowl of salt, and on the way to Bethel forty-two boys mock him — "Go up, you baldhead!" — and are mauled by two bears. The ministry of Elisha begins as it will continue: with the power of God present in unmistakable and often unsettling ways.
Acts 11:19–12:19a
The scattered believers from the persecution that arose over Stephen had been speaking the word only to Jews. But some of them, Cypriots and Cyrenians, come to Antioch and speak to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. The hand of the Lord is with them, and a great number believe and turn to the Lord. The Jerusalem church sends Barnabas to investigate, and Barnabas — a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith — exhorts them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose. He goes to Tarsus to look for Saul, brings him back, and for a whole year they meet with the church and teach a great many people. Luke gives the historic note: "And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians." The church that crossed the wall in Caesarea now has its own multi-ethnic congregation in Antioch, big enough to need a name. A prophet named Agabus predicts a great famine, and the Antioch disciples take up a collection for the believers in Judea — the first major intra-church relief effort, delivered by Barnabas and Saul.
Then the persecution touches the apostolic circle directly. Herod (Agrippa I) lays violent hands on the church. He kills James the brother of John with the sword — the first apostle to be martyred. When he sees this pleases the Jews, he proceeds to arrest Peter during the days of Unleavened Bread, intending a public trial after Passover. Peter is in prison, sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, with sentries before the door. The church is earnestly praying for him. The night before his trial, an angel of the Lord stands beside him; a light shines; the angel strikes Peter on the side, raises him, and his chains fall off. Peter follows him out, thinking he is seeing a vision, past the first and second guards and through the iron gate that opens to them of its own accord. When they have passed one street, the angel leaves him, and Peter comes to himself: "Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting." He goes to Mary’s house, where the church is praying for him, knocks at the gate, and Rhoda the servant girl is so overcome with joy at the sound of his voice that she leaves him standing outside while she runs to tell the others, who do not believe her: "It is his angel." It is one of the gentlest comedies in the New Testament — a church praying for a miracle and not quite ready to receive it when it walks up to the door.
Proverbs 15:1–10
The opening of Proverbs 15 contains some of the most quoted lines in the book. "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." The proverbs are interested in the small choices that change rooms. "The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly." "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good." A gentle tongue is a tree of life; perverseness in it breaks the spirit.
The passage’s pastoral counsel is steady. "A fool despises his father’s instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent." "In the house of the righteous there is much treasure, but trouble befalls the income of the wicked." "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him." The Lord cares about the disposition behind the offering, not just the offering itself. And the closing line of this section is sober: "There is severe discipline for him who forsakes the way; whoever hates reproof will die." Proverbs holds the door open, gently, for whoever will turn back.
Today’s readings close out the week with a series of transitions and miraculous deliverances. Elijah is taken up in a whirlwind; Elisha picks up his master’s cloak and crosses the Jordan; the disciples are first called Christians in Antioch; an angel walks Peter past sleeping guards and through an iron gate that opens by itself. Behind every transition is the same God, present in chariots of fire and in a soft answer that turns away wrath.
The handoff from Elijah to Elisha is one of the most theologically rich moments in the Old Testament. Elijah does not leave a vacuum; he leaves a cloak. The double portion Elisha asks for is the inheritance of the firstborn — he is not asking for twice as much spirit as Elijah but for the eldest son’s share of his master’s prophetic estate. And the strange detail that "if you see me as I am taken" is the condition makes the moment costly: it requires staying close, watching all the way through to the end. There is a lesson here for every generation that wonders whether the next will carry the work forward. The cloak is left where eyes that were watching can pick it up.
The Antioch story is the church’s quiet glory. A multi-ethnic congregation, big enough to need a name, teaching itself the Scriptures with Barnabas and Saul for a year, sending relief to fellow believers in another region during a famine. And Peter’s escape from prison is the comedy that the same God writes when his children pray. The church prays earnestly for Peter and is not ready when the answer is standing at the gate. We should expect such answers more often than we do, and be more willing to recognize them when they come. May we today watch with Elisha, sing with Antioch, and pray with the church at Mary’s house — bold enough to ask for what we need, and humble enough to open the door when it arrives.