value

1 Kings 9, Ezekiel 39

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Read 1 Kings 9 and Ezekiel 39.

This devotional is about 1 Kings 9.

David and Solomon had a good relationship with the kings of Tyre. They seemed to enjoy knowing each other but they certainly enjoyed the prosperity that their trade relationship brought to each of them. David and Solomon benefited greatly from the natural resources that Tyre sold and shipped to them. Verse 10 referenced the “twenty years” that Solomon spent building the magnificent temple of the Lord and the even more magnificent palace where Solomon lived. Now, in verse 11, we read that Solomon gave 20 towns to Hiram king of Tyre. The text doesn’t say, but it is possible that the 20 towns corresponded to the 20 years Solomon spent building–1 town to represent 1 year.

Hiram was probably delighted to be told that these towns would now be part of his kingdom. Delighted, that is, until he took a tour. Verse 12 told us that after his tour, “he was not pleased with them.” Instead of hiding his displeasure, he asked Solomon what was up: “What kind of towns are these you have given me, my brother?” (v. 13a) is a rhetorical question. Hiram’s answer to that question was not very good. At the end of verse 13 “he called them, the Land of Kabul.” “Kabul” according to the footnote in our NIV text “sounds like the Hebrew for good-for-nothing.”

Does this mean that Hiram was ungrateful for Solomon’s gift? Maybe.

But it probably indicated something of Solomon’s stinginess. These last few chapters in 1 Kings have been describing Solomon’s vast income and wealth in detail. Solomon extracted high prices and high taxes from others and became a wealthy man accordingly. But, if his gift of towns means anything, he was stingy. Solomon received extravagantly but he seems to have given very sparingly.

Solomon probably thought he was a gracious, magnanimous giver when he handed over the keys to these towns. The problem is that the receiver of his gift didn’t think so. If you want to make someone feel loved, appreciated, and that you’re spoiling them, you need to give them something that THEY value, not something that you value. To use the idea of “love languages,” you need to find out what communicates love to the other person and express your love in that language.

How are you doing on that? Are you thoughtful and generous in your giving to others or are you stingy and self-centered? When God gave us a gift of love, he gave us his very best–our Lord Jesus who willingly sacrificed himself for us. We should keep his gift in mind and treat others with that kind of love and care which Jesus showed.

2 Samuel 7, Ezekiel 15

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Read 2 Samuel 7 and Ezekiel 15.

This devotional is about Ezekiel 15.

This short chapter in Ezekiel is based on a simple observation: Vines are made of wood but they are not useful the way that wood from trees is useful. The wood that makes up a vine is too weak to be fashioned into a useful product. It can’t even be used to “…make pegs from it to hang things on” (v. 3b). Its greatest utility comes from the fact that you can burn it, so it can fuel your fire (v. 4). Other than that, it is essentially worthless. You can’t make furniture or homes with it.

In verses 6-8 God compared his people in Jerusalem to those grapevines. Just as the vines are thrown onto the fire, so God will burn his people for their disobedience (vv. 7-8).

The keyword in this chapter is the word “useful.” Just as wood from the trees is very useful for many tasks, so God wanted his people to be useful for Him. Sometimes people object to the idea of being “useful for God” or “used by God.” Shouldn’t God love us for who we are not for what we do that’s useful? Don’t we have value as people that is genuine value apart from any usefulness or uselessness in our lives? As someone said on a podcast, “You’re a human being not a human doing.”

As creatures made in God’s image, we do have intrinsic value. But, because God created us for a purpose–to glorify him–we are incomplete and unhappy when we are not being used. If your refrigerator had feelings, don’t you think it would be happier being useful than sitting in the garage, unplugged, gathering dust and useless? The most fulfilling thing in life is to be useful to the one who owns you.

If you’re dealing with unhappiness that doesn’t seem to have a cause, could it be that you are unhappy because your life is passing by but isn’t contributing much to your Creator? Assess your usefulness for God and how much you’re being used by God. If you conclude that you are not as useful as you could be, what can you do to become more useful for the Lord? And if you are potentially useful but not being used much, where could you apply your usefulness to be used by God more and more effectively?

Deuteronomy 23, Isaiah 50

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Read Deuteronomy 23 and Isaiah 50.

This devotional is about Deuteronomy 23:24-25.

The foundation of capitalism is the right to private property. The Bible affirms that right in the 8th commandment: “Do not steal” (Ex 20:15). So, any possession you have is yours, provided you acquired by righteous means such as building it, buying it, receiving it as a gift, or swapping it for something else of value.

Ownership and value are destroyed by theft, so owners and producers of value have good reasons to defend what they own. But there is a difference between defending against theft and being stingy. A stingy person isn’t someone who defends what they have against theft; a stingy person is someone who hoards things for himself.

In this chapter, God specified some ways in which his people were to show generosity to each other. One of those ways was described in verses 24-25. If you’re hungry or just want a snack as you are walking by the vineyard or field of your neighbor, you may take some of what is growing there and enjoy it. That is neighborly generosity, according to God’s law. It is not stealing.

However, if you “put any in a basket” (v. 24c) or “put a sickle to their standing grain” (v. 25c), that is not allowed. That is stealing because in those cases, you would be helping yourself to a large share of their value without doing any work to plant or cultivate the vineyard or field. That violates another family’s private property, diminishes the value of their work and assets, and materially affects their livelihood.

The Lord’s intent here is to teach us to be generous to our neighbors, to share with them in ways that won’t substantially alter the living you make from your work. Maybe in your context, it means lending tools to someone who needs them. You might make your living with those tools but, in most instances, lending those tools to someone for a few hours to a day would be a generous thing to do. Another example, maybe, is helping a friend or another brother or sister in Christ fix or replace something in their home without charging for it, even if that’s how you make your living. That is particularly generous if the person you help is poor. If they call you every time something breaks and don’t want to pay, that is taking advantage of you and is tantamount to stealing. But, in smaller instances where we can help others, God wants us to be generous.

Are you a person who is stingy? Do you love to give and help others in need or are you always counting the cost? Faith in God should lead us toward generosity to others. This is an act of faith because, in generosity, we trust that God will provide for us and bless us when we are kind and generous to others. What opportunity might you have today to bless someone with generosity, meeting a need in their life that will cost you little to nothing but mean so much to them?

Numbers 8, Song of Songs 6, Psalm 119:49-72

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Read:Numbers 8, Song of Songs 6, Psalm 119:49-72.

This devotional is about Psalm 119:72: “The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.”

Would you rather be wealthy or smart?

On one hand…

  • You might be tempted to choose “smart” if you think that superior intellect can be used in multiple ways, including to earn you wealth, or,
  • You might be tempted to choose “wealthy” if you think that money can buy you brains.

On the other hand…

  • If you’re wealthy but lack intelligence, someone smarter than you might swindle you out of all your money.
  • And, there is no guarantee that being smart will make you wealthy. I read somewhere once that really smart people are risk-averse because they can think of ways in which things might go wrong. Earning wealth often requires risk so people with very high I.Q.s tend to take jobs instead of starting businesses because a job feels safer.

So, money or smarts? A good case can be made for either. Here in Psalm 119:72, the Psalmist knew the answer to a similar question. That question was, “Would you rather be wealthy or have God’s word?” His answer was, “God’s Word.” He put more value on God’s revelation than on a vast amount of wealth. Why?

One reason was that he had been “afflicted” (v. 67, 71a). This describes the discipline of the Lord in his life which corrected his disobedience and put him back on a righteous path. In that incident of discipline, the author of this song learned how valuable truth and obedience are. Wealth can make problems go away but only God’s word and God’s loving discipline can change your life. This is one reason why God’s word is more valuable than wealth.

Another reason is that money is temporary. Even if you inherit a large fortune and use skill to make it grow, you will die someday. After you die, your money will be useless to you and your eternity will be set. God’s word has saving power to create faith in your heart so that you can be redeemed from God’s wrath by his grace. That’s an eternal value that makes scripture more valuable than any human wealth.

What’s most valuable in your life? What would need to be true for you to value scripture above anything else?

Exodus 10, Job 28, Psalm 58

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Read Exodus 10, Job 28, and Psalm 58.

This devotional is about Job 28.

In this beautiful chapter, Job meditated on the scarce resource of wisdom.

In the first 11 verses, he talked about how people extract precious minerals from the earth. It is a complete pain to get silver, gold, iron, and precious gems out of the earth. Despite how difficult and dangerous it is, men will do it because these things have immense value. The value of owning and selling these natural resources far outweigh the expense and trouble it takes to extract them from the earth.

But what about wisdom? It is more valuable than anything, so “where can wisdom be found?” (v. 12a). You can’t mine it from the earth (vv. 13-19) and it is invisible to anyone but God (vv. 20-27). Fortunately, God has revealed it to humanity. Verse 28 says, “And he said to the human race, ‘The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.’”

We live in a society that is increasingly secular and becoming hostile to our faith. Those who denounce Christianity will try to tell you how the increase in human knowledge makes faith unnecessary and, in fact, shows how useless faith truly is. It is true that we enjoy many human inventions and innovations and most of those were not discovered or created by Christians. Yet, we also see in our society that, despite how educated and confident we are about our learning and scientific discoveries, people are becoming more and more foolish. They believe that gender is not biological, that sexual promiscuity of all kinds is acceptable and harmless to a person and society. They believe that free speech is oppressive and that human governments have the answers to all human problems–if we only gave them more power and money.

Meanwhile, people in our society are prosperous but unhappy. They have access to healthy food and excellent health care but live in despair. They form families, then tear them apart through divorce. Then they wonder why their kids are closed off emotionally and turn to destructive behaviors like drunkenness and substance abuse.

These are the consequences of not fearing the Lord. God will let you make sinful choices and live your own way. You may become very well educated, too, but you will lose all access to wisdom if you don’t fear the Lord. The poor choices people make morally and the pain they experience are symptoms of the folly of rejecting God and his word.

You and I know better to some extent if we know the Lord. But we can still be deceived by the ways of this world. This passage calls us to stop and reflect. Are we living in the fear of God and growing in wisdom? Or does the wisdom of this world seem to make better sense to us because we’ve departed from the Lord’s ways?

Wisdom is the most valuable resource humanity can have. And, it isn’t rare or hard to find like gold, silver, and iron. The Bible says wisdom calls out in the streets and beckons to the foolish. The rarity of wisdom isn’t that it is hard to mine; it is rare because it can only be found in God. To find wisdom, we must humble ourselves in repentance and faith and trust that God’s ways are higher than ours. We must learn to obey his word even when the world seems to have a better explanation. When we fear God and keep his commands, then we find wisdom. There is no other way to get it.