Not Pleased

 DEVOTION

1^ST KINGS

NOT PLEASED

1 Kings 9:10-14

10 At the end of twenty years, during which Solomon built these two buildings — the temple of the LORD and the royal palace— 11 King Solomon gave twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram king of Tyre, because Hiram had supplied him with all the cedar and pine and gold he wanted. 12 But when Hiram went from Tyre to see the towns that Solomon had given him, he was not pleased with them. 13 "What kind of towns are these you have given me, my brother?" he asked. And he called them the Land of Cabul, a name they have to this day. 14 Now Hiram had sent to the king 120 talents of gold.

NIV

One hundred and twenty talents equal about four and one-half tons of gold, which is a lot of gold by any standard. In today's market, that would equal about five hundred and seventy-six billion dollars, and for that, Hiram was given twenty towns in Galilee, and he was not pleased with his reward. We could never supply our king with any gold, silver, cedar, or anything considered valuable in this world. There is only one thing that we can give to the Lord, and that is ourselves. What could be a problem is that gold is considered pure, whereas we are not pure in ourselves. However, we are washed in the blood of Jesus, which in that sense we are pure, or holy in the sight of God. At the beginning of the treaty between Solomon and Hiram, the agreement was that Solomon would pay Hiram whatever wages he set. Hiram was working for wages, but the reward was on top of that, and he was not pleased with the reward. That will never be a problem for us, as our reward is eternal life. However, we cannot work for it; we cannot do anything that would give us the right to any reward from God. We even have to be careful not to do any acts of righteousness so that people can see how good, holy, or righteous we are, because if we do, Jesus said we will have no reward from our Father in heaven. We can testify to the goodness of God in our lives, but we have to be very careful not give any illusion that His goodness to us is due to how much we do, or how holy or righteous we act. Indeed, we want to do His will, and love is the key. The two greatest commands Jesus gave us were, first, to love the Lord our God with our whole being, heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the second was to love everyone else the same way we love ourselves. When we take his definition of love, as given to us through the apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we can understand what it takes to love each other that way. However, we still need to be mindful not to be show-offs or boastful about how much we love God and each other, for that could be seen as doing acts of righteousness before men. However, because we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we have already received the reward of eternal life, and we are overjoyed by it. How could we be like Hiram and say we are not pleased?