1 KINGS 9:1-10:29
ACTS 8:14-40
PSALM 130:1-8
PROVERBS 17:2-3
1 KINGS 9:1-10:29
So Solomon finished building the Temple of the LORD, as well as the royal palace. He completed everything he had planned to do. 2 Then the LORD appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had done before at Gibeon. 3 The LORD said to him, " I have heard your prayer and your request. I have set apart this Temple you have built so that my name will be honored there forever. I will always watch over it and care for it. 4 As for you, if you will follow me with integrity and godliness, as David your father did, always obeying my commands and keeping my laws and regulations, 5 then I will establish the throne of your dynasty over Israel forever. For I made this promise to your father, David: ` You will never fail to have a successor on the throne of Israel.' 6 " But if you or your descendants abandon me and disobey my commands and laws, and if you go and worship other gods, 7 then I will uproot the people of Israel from this land I have given them. I will reject this Temple that I have set apart to honor my name. I will make Israel an object of mockery and ridicule among the nations. 8 And though this Temple is impressive now, it will become an appalling sight for all who pass by. They will scoff and ask, ` Why did the LORD do such terrible things to his land and to his Temple?' 9 And the answer will be, ` Because his people forgot the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt, and they worshiped other gods instead. That is why the LORD has brought all these disasters upon them.' " 10 Now at the end of the twenty years during which Solomon built the Temple of the LORD and the royal palace, 11 Solomon gave twenty towns in the land of Galilee to King Hiram of Tyre as payment for all the cedar and cypress lumber and gold he had furnished for the construction of the buildings. 12 Hiram came from Tyre to see the towns Solomon had given him, but he was not at all pleased with them. 13 " What kind of towns are these, my brother?" he asked. " These towns are worthless!" So Hiram called that area Cabul--" worthless"--as it is still known today. 14 Hiram had sent Solomon nine thousand pounds of gold. 15 This is the account of the forced labor that Solomon conscripted to build the LORD's Temple, the royal palace, the Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, and the cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer. 16 (The king of Egypt had attacked and captured Gezer, killing the Canaanite population and burning it down. He gave the city to his daughter as a wedding gift when she married Solomon. 17 So Solomon rebuilt the city of Gezer.) He also built up the towns of Lower Beth-horon, 18 Baalath, and Tamar in the desert, within his land. 19 He built towns as supply centers and constructed cities where his chariots and horses could be kept. He built to his heart's content in Jerusalem and Lebanon and throughout the entire realm. 20 There were still some people living in the land who were not Israelites, including Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 21 These were descendants of the nations that Israel had not completely destroyed. So Solomon conscripted them for his labor force, and they serve in the labor force to this day. 22 But Solomon did not conscript any of the Israelites for forced labor. Instead, he assigned them to serve as fighting men, government officials, officers in his army, commanders of his chariots, and charioteers. 23 He also appointed 550 of them to supervise the various projects. 24 After Solomon moved his wife, Pharaoh's daughter, from the City of David to the new palace he had built for her, he constructed the Millo. 25 Three times each year Solomon offered burnt offerings and peace offerings to the LORD on the altar he had built. He also burned incense to the LORD. And so he finished the work of building the Temple. 26 Later King Solomon built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber, a port near Elath in the land of Edom, along the shore of the Red Sea. 27 Hiram sent experienced crews of sailors to sail the ships with Solomon's men. 28 They sailed to Ophir and brought back to Solomon some sixteen tons of gold.10:1 WHEN the queen of Sheba heard of Solomon's reputation, which brought honor to the name of the LORD, she came to test him with hard questions. 2 She arrived in Jerusalem with a large group of attendants and a great caravan of camels loaded with spices, huge quantities of gold, and precious jewels. When she met with Solomon, they talked about everything she had on her mind. 3 Solomon answered all her questions; nothing was too hard for the king to explain to her. 4 When the queen of Sheba realized how wise Solomon was, and when she saw the palace he had built, 5 she was breathless. She was also amazed at the food on his tables, the organization of his officials and their splendid clothing, the cup-bearers and their robes, and the burnt offerings Solomon made at the Temple of the LORD. 6 She exclaimed to the king, " Everything I heard in my country about your achievements and wisdom is true! 7 I didn't believe it until I arrived here and saw it with my own eyes. Truly I had not heard the half of it! Your wisdom and prosperity are far greater than what I was told. 8 How happy these people must be! What a privilege for your officials to stand here day after day, listening to your wisdom! 9 The LORD your God is great indeed! He delights in you and has placed you on the throne of Israel. Because the LORD loves Israel with an eternal love, he has made you king so you can rule with justice and righteousness." 10 Then she gave the king a gift of nine thousand pounds of gold, and great quantities of spices and precious jewels. Never again were so many spices brought in as those the queen of Sheba gave to Solomon. 11 (When Hiram's ships brought gold from Ophir, they also brought rich cargoes of almug wood and precious jewels. 12 The king used the almug wood to make railings for the Temple of the LORD and the royal palace, and to construct harps and lyres for the musicians. Never before or since has there been such a supply of beautiful almug wood.) 13 King Solomon gave the queen of Sheba whatever she asked for, besides all the other customary gifts he had so generously given. Then she and all her attendants left and returned to their own land. 14 Each year Solomon received about twenty-five tons of gold. 15 This did not include the additional revenue he received from merchants and traders, all the kings of Arabia, and the governors of the land.16 King Solomon made two hundred large shields of hammered gold, each containing over fifteen pounds of gold. 17 He also made three hundred smaller shields of hammered gold, each containing nearly four pounds of gold. The king placed these shields in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon. 18 Then the king made a huge ivory throne and overlaid it with pure gold. 19 The throne had six steps and a rounded back. On both sides of the seat were armrests, with the figure of a lion standing on each side of the throne. 20 Solomon made twelve other lion figures, one standing on each end of each of the six steps. No other throne in all the world could be compared with it! 21 All of King Solomon's drinking cups were solid gold, as were all the utensils in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon. They were not made of silver because silver was considered of little value in Solomon's day! 22 The king had a fleet of trading ships that sailed with Hiram's fleet. Once every three years the ships returned, loaded down with gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks. 23 So King Solomon became richer and wiser than any other king in all the earth. 24 People from every nation came to visit him and to hear the wisdom God had given him. 25 Year after year, everyone who came to visit brought him gifts of silver and gold, clothing, weapons, spices, horses, and mules.26 Solomon built up a huge force of chariots and horses. He had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses. He stationed many of them in the chariot cities, and some near him in Jerusalem. 27 The king made silver as plentiful in Jerusalem as stones. And valuable cedarwood was as common as the sycamore wood that grows in the foothills of Judah. 28 Solomon's horses were imported from Egypt and from Cilicia; the king's traders acquired them from Cilicia at the standard price. 29 At that time, Egyptian chariots delivered to Jerusalem could be purchased for 600 pieces of silver, and horses could be bought for 150 pieces of silver. Many of these were then resold to the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Aram.
ACTS 8:14-40
When the apostles back in Jerusalem heard that the people of Samaria had accepted God's message, they sent Peter and John there. 15 As soon as they arrived, they prayed for these new Christians to receive the Holy Spirit. 16 The Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them, for they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 17 Then Peter and John laid their hands upon these believers, and they received the Holy Spirit. 18 When Simon saw that the Holy Spirit was given when the apostles placed their hands upon people's heads, he offered money to buy this power. 19 " Let me have this power, too," he exclaimed, " so that when I lay my hands on people, they will receive the Holy Spirit!"20 But Peter replied, " May your money perish with you for thinking God's gift can be bought! 21 You can have no part in this, for your heart is not right before God. 22 Turn from your wickedness and pray to the Lord. Perhaps he will forgive your evil thoughts, 23 for I can see that you are full of bitterness and held captive by sin." 24 " Pray to the Lord for me," Simon exclaimed, " that these terrible things won't happen to me!" 25 After testifying and preaching the word of the Lord in Samaria, Peter and John returned to Jerusalem. And they stopped in many Samaritan villages along the way to preach the Good News to them, too. 26 As for Philip, an angel of the Lord said to him, " Go south down the desert road that runs from Jerusalem to Gaza." 27 So he did, and he met the treasurer of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under the queen of Ethiopia. The eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and he was now returning. Seated in his carriage, he was reading aloud from the book of the prophet Isaiah. 29 The Holy Spirit said to Philip, " Go over and walk along beside the carriage." 30 Philip ran over and heard the man reading from the prophet Isaiah; so he asked, " Do you understand what you are reading?" 31 The man replied, " How can I, when there is no one to instruct me?" And he begged Philip to come up into the carriage and sit with him. 32 The passage of Scripture he had been reading was this: " He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.
And as a lamb is silent before the shearers,
he did not open his mouth.
33 He was humiliated and received no justice.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth."
34 The eunuch asked Philip, " Was Isaiah talking about himself or someone else?" 35 So Philip began with this same Scripture and then used many others to tell him the Good News about Jesus. 36 As they rode along, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, " Look! There's some water! Why can't I be baptized?" 38 He ordered the carriage to stop, and they went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away. The eunuch never saw him again but went on his way rejoicing. 40 Meanwhile, Philip found himself farther north at the city of Azotus! He preached the Good News there and in every city along the way until he came to Caesarea.
PSALM 130:1-8
A song for the ascent to Jerusalem.
1 From the depths of despair, O LORD,
I call for your help.
2 Hear my cry, O Lord.
Pay attention to my prayer.
3 LORD, if you kept a record of our sins,
who, O Lord, could ever survive?
4 But you offer forgiveness,
that we might learn to fear you.
5 I am counting on the LORD;
yes, I am counting on him.
I have put my hope in his word.
6 I long for the Lord
more than sentries long for the dawn,
yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.
7 O Israel, hope in the LORD;
for with the LORD there is unfailing love
and an overflowing supply of salvation.
8 He himself will free Israel
from every kind of sin.
PROVERBS 17:2-3
A wise slave will rule over the master's shameful sons and will share their inheritance. Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but the LORD tests the heart.
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