#DailyDevotion What’s In Your Wallet Or Who Is Your God?
August 27th
Read 1 Kng 9:1–9; 10:1–13
1Ki 9:4-9 And as for you, if you will walk before me, as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my rules, (5) then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’ (6) But if you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, (7) then I will cut off Israel from the land that I have given them, and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight, and Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. (8) And this house will become a heap of ruins. Everyone passing by it will be astonished and will hiss, and they will say, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?’ (9) Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the LORD their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore the LORD has brought all this disaster on them.'”
In today’s lesson, the Lord repeats his promise and curse which he gave to Solomon when He first appeared to Solomon. It is the same promise and curse He laid before David. They are both very similar promises and curses made to Israel by the Lord while they were in the wilderness. If they were going to be blest and upheld by the Lord then they must follow the Lord’s ways and not follow after other gods.
It is probably important to note that the Lord is not asking Solomon to be perfect. He’s asking him to walk before the Lord as David did. We know from earlier readings that not only was David not perfect, he was an adulterer and a murderer. But David did not run after other gods. When confronted with his sin, David repented.
Not only that, but the Lord, Himself, in the Law, gave through the sacrificial system a means for dealing with sin. When you sinned, you were to make use of the sacrificial system, in faith of the promises of God that your sins would be atoned for. The Lord could put up with a lot of sins if the people repented and looked to Him for mercy, love and forgiveness. The one thing He just didn’t put up with was when Israel, Solomon and the peoples and rulers of Judah and Israel running after other gods. Our Lord is a Jealous God.
So we too then should take heed and learn from this. What the Lord wants most of all is for us to trust in Jesus. He wants us to believe that Jesus has done everything necessary for us to be delivered from sin, from death and from the power of the devil. He does not want us worshipping other gods. He does not want us turning to created things, visible or invisible, tangible or intangible to get us through the day or get us through the night. He simply and only wants us, wants you, to trust in Jesus for every aspect of your life and every aspect of your death. Mastercard, Visa, American Express, cash, possessions, husbands, wives, children, jobs, political parties or leaders, diets, exercise programs, philosophical systems, self-help systems and the like are things we can and do treat as we should be treating Jesus. Jesus can put up with a lot of sin. Indeed He made atonement for every sin you ever committed which would get you in dutch with God. But if you don’t trust Him, then all that is left between you and an angry God is your sin.
Lord Jesus Christ, grant us such faith in you that you are our everything. Only you get us through the day and get us through the night. Help us to turn aside from every creature or creation that calls us away from you and help us to use such creations as you intended. Amen.