READING:
One-year plan: 2 Kings 10-13
Two-year plan: Psalms 78:36-79:13, Romans 16:17-27
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I grieve today for the 4 billion+ people in the world who have little or no access to the gospel. Many of them are following false gods that have no power. They are just as impotent as Baal was in today’s Old Testament reading—and that reality breaks my heart.
Jehu had determined to lead religious reform, perhaps to eradicate the influence of Ahab on the Northern Kingdom. That reform included Jehu’s orchestrating the deaths of the servants of Baal whom he gathered in the temple of that false god. There, Baal could not protect his own prophets, nor could he guard the images and statues of idolatry in the temple. Indeed, he could not even secure the temple itself—and the people turned it into a latrine.
I cannot fathom a more obvious sign of the powerlessness of a god: the temple in which he was worshiped was now a place of dung. That’s why I grieve for the world’s lost peoples—they can have no real hope in false gods.
PERSONAL REFLECTION: Do you grieve over the lostness of the world today?
PRAYER: “God, do break my heart today for people following false gods.”
MONDAY’S READING:
One-year plan: 2 Kings 14-17
Two-year plan: Psalms 80-82, 1 Corinthians 1:1-17
MEMORIZATION VERSE (April 16-31):
“May all the peoples of the earth know that the Lord is God. There is no other!” (1 Kgs 8:60)
First published in 2019