June 30-July 4
[M] 1 Kings 10-11; 2 Chr 9; 1 Tim 6
[T] Ecclesiastes 1-3; Ps 45; 2 Tim 1
[W] Eccl 4-6; Ps 125; 2 Tim 2
[T] Eccl 7-9; Ps 46; 2 Tim 3
[F] Eccl 10-12; 2 Tim 4
Dwell Plan Day 131-135 | CSB | Digital PDF | Printable PDF
Notes from Jon & Chris
Monday
1 Kings 11 | This is one of the more depressing chapters in the Bible. Solomon started out so strong, so wise and in tune with God. But we already saw the red flag waving from early on. He married outside of God’s kingdom, and (as God warned everyone) it drew him away from God. Away from his God and right into the arms of idols. How could the wisest man who ever lived make such a catastrophic mistake? I would guess that it probably crept up on him. We all drift in life, unless we work against it. We all slowly will turn from God and true worship, unless we fight that evil selfish tendency. And it’s made that much worse by being united to unbelief. So what does the wisest man who ever lived actually become? A cautionary tale. If Solomon can fall, then what does that say about the rest of us? How much danger are we all in? Run to Jesus, fix your heart on Jesus, and ask Jesus to give you perseverance to the end. He’s the one that can do it, not us. And praise Him that He does.
1 Kings 11:1-8 | Solomon’s downfall is both tragic and familiar. The wisest man on earth, blessed beyond measure, loved many foreign women, clinging to them in love despite God’s clear command. This was not about ethnicity but idolatry; the Lord had warned that these women would turn away [his] heart after their gods. And so it happened. Solomon, who had once built a glorious temple for the living God, now built high places for Chemosh and Molech. The issue wasn’t merely disobedience—it was a loss of love. God’s commands are not arbitrary restrictions; they are expressions of His heart, designed to keep us within the orbit of His grace. To defy them is to drift from joy. Solomon wandered not only from obedience but from intimacy with God.
This passage is a sobering reminder that unchecked affections can ruin even the most gifted lives. Solomon’s heart didn’t turn all at once—it was not wholly true to the LORD. That’s the danger: a divided heart.
And yet, this text points forward to a greater King. Where Solomon’s love led him away from God, Christ’s love led Him to a cross. Jesus is the true and better Solomon, whose heart was never divided, who perfectly kept God’s commands so that our wandering hearts might be brought home. In Him, grace abounds for idolaters and those who stray. The gospel doesn’t just forgive us; it reorients our affections. It heals the divided heart that we all possess.
Interestingly, this account is only found in Kings, not Chronicles. That’s intentional. Kings is a theological explanation of the exile—a record of the people’s rebellion and God’s justice. Chronicles, written after the exile, emphasizes God’s covenant faithfulness and offers hope to a returning remnant. Together, they tell the full story: human failure and divine faithfulness. But in Jesus, these two strands converge. He takes the exile we deserve so we can know the restoration only He can give. And so, 1 Kings 11 is not just a warning, it’s an invitation to cling, not to false loves, but to the true King.
1 Timothy 6:10 | The Bible is misquoted all the time. It’s annoying. There’s this tendency in us, which perhaps you could describe as thoughtless arrogance, to edit and improve on aphoristic sayings. And somehow these slight misreadings or misquotes become a meme, a universally embraced truth that’s said and resaid millions of times. The way you often hear this verse “quoted” is: money is the root of all evil. Maybe Karl Marx started this misquote, I don’t know. But one way or the other, it isn’t money that’s evil. It’s the love of it. And that’s a problem for poor folks, rich folks, and all the folks in between. You can love it when you’ve got lots of it, and you can often love it even more when you don’t have any! What your treasure is, that’s where your heart lives.
Tuesday
Ecclesiastes | One of my favorite professors from seminary was Jerram Barrs. If you’re able to pick up his books, it’s definitely worth it. It was reading Ecclesiastes that saved his life. As a young man in England, he had come to the point of complete despair. He had no experience of Christianity that was good, and hadn’t ever read the Scriptures. For some reason, that day when he drove down the cliffs of Dover, there was a Bible in the car. The cliffs of Dover give you a perfect view of the English channel, with large cliffs towering over sandy strips of beach—much like some of our coastline here in Northern California. They had become, and still are, a popular place to visit and walk. The green rolling hills come to an abrupt halt, with paths to guide you to different vistas. It’s very pretty countryside. It’s also a destination for a number of people to commit suicide, and that’s what had brought Jerram there. Before doing that though, he had decided to at least read something in the Bible. Perhaps it might give him hope or some reason to live, so he opened it up. By God’s grace he came to this book, Ecclesiastes. He was stunned. He had read and searched in many religious and philosophical books for meaning, but this was shocking. It was so honest. It told the truth about what he was feeling and experiencing. Life had no meaning and everything seemed empty and futile. This book was describing his own heart so clearly that he changed his mind about ending his life. If this book was this honest and wise about the problem, is it possible it has an answer? That began his journey to faith in Christ.
Jerram’s experience is, in a nutshell, why this book is in the Bible. It maps out the truth of our experience with ruthless honesty, but that map isn’t complete until you find the answer in God’s love for us in Jesus. Once you trust the map itself, realizing how true and accurate it is, you can find our God’s answer. Praise Him.
Ecclesiastes | This whole book can be confusing. If you ever want to understand it better, I have an amazing book for you to check out: Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us To Live Life in Light of the End by David Gibson. It’s available for purchase in all the usual places, but if you have a SF library card, it’s also on Hoopla.
Ecclesiastes 3:5 | This reference to gathering stones and scattering stones isn’t about construction. It’s about execution in ancient Israel, which was a community thing. So gathering stones was in order to execute criminals for serious crimes, with everyone throwing the stones at the person until they died. Whenever I hear the Byrds song Turn, Turn, Turn, an old hippie song from the 60’s that uses these first eight verses for the song lyrics, I think they didn’t know what verse five meant. I’m not sure they would have included it!
2 Timothy 1:5 | Paul honors the sincere faith that first lived in Timothy’s grandmother Lois and mother Eunice—a quiet yet powerful testimony to the sacred calling of gospel-shaped parenting. Our primary mission as parents is not to produce star athletes or Ivy League students, but humble, grace-saturated disciples who know the gospel, love Christ, and see that love embodied in our daily repentance and worship. Children learn what matters most not just by what we say, but by what we treasure. That’s why I always recommend that parents read Parenting by Paul Tripp. He reframes parenting as a ministry of grace, not control. Tripp reminds us that we’re not called to be saviors, but ambassadors of the one true Savior, pointing our children to Jesus in both our failures and our faith. I think that’s what Timothy’s mom and grandma seem to have done so well.
Wednesday
Ecclesiastes 5:10 | This verse echoes the preacher’s earlier reflection in Eccl. 2:1–11, where he recounts his pursuit of pleasure, wealth, work, and status—only to conclude that it was all vanity and a striving after wind. The problem isn’t just that money can’t buy happiness; it’s that our hearts were made for something far greater than what money can offer. Jim Carrey (the national treasure and brilliant actor behind classics like Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber) once famously said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” He’s absolutely right in his diagnosis. The ache remains, even at the top. The emptiness lingers, no matter how full the bank account or impressive the résumé.
But while Carrey gets the diagnosis right, he takes the wrong medicine—turning to eastern spirituality instead of the living Christ. The preacher in Ecclesiastes wants us to feel the full weight of dissatisfaction so we’ll stop chasing wind and start chasing wisdom. That wisdom leads us to Jesus, the only one who can truly satisfy the deep hunger of the soul. He is the treasure that moth and rust can’t destroy, the fountain that never runs dry. In Christ, we’re not just freed from the tyranny of money—we’re invited into the joy of contentment that the world can’t touch.
Thursday
Ecclesiastes 7:14 | This verse stands as a quiet rebuke to our selective gratitude. Nestled in a section that mirrors the style and tone of Proverbs (Eccl. 6:10–7:24), this verse calls us to a deeper wisdom—one that sees God’s hand not only in blessings but also in burdens. We readily thank Him for the good days, but shy away from acknowledging His purpose in our hardships. Yet it is often through adversity that God does His deepest work, shaping our character, loosening our grip on this world, and drawing us nearer to Himself. The wise heart recognizes that both joy and trial come from the same sovereign hand—and both are instruments of grace.
Ecclesiastes 7:25–29 | This text pierces through the flattering illusions we often believe about ourselves. The preacher goes on a search to seek and to search out wisdom, only to find that the hearts of the children of man are full of evil. It’s a jarring conclusion, but one that aligns with the Bible’s consistent teaching: we are not basically good. At the core, we are rebels. Sin isn’t just something we do, it’s embedded in who we are apart from grace. The preacher’s frustration in not finding a righteous person highlights the human condition—fallen, broken, and in desperate need of redemption.
This flies in the face of our cultural narrative. Modern philosophy, especially existentialism, tells us to look within, find our truth, and write our own meaning. Even if we’ve never heard the term, we’ve absorbed its slogans: “You do you,” “Follow your heart,” “Be your authentic self.” But Scripture says that’s not the path to life—it’s the echo of Eden’s first rebellion. Adam and Eve’s sin was essentially the same creed: “I’ll define good and evil for myself.” What our culture celebrates as liberation, the Bible exposes as bondage to self-rule. The very thing we’re told will make us whole is what fractures us even more.
But the gospel tells a better story. Salvation does not come from within—it comes from outside of us, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We don’t achieve meaning by creating it; we receive identity by grace. In Christ, we are given a new heart, a new name, and a new community. True contentment isn’t found in self-expression but in Christ-exaltation. It’s found in turning away from self-rule and submitting to the One who rules in righteousness and love. We were never meant to carry the burden of defining ourselves. In Jesus, we find who we truly are—and it’s far better than anything we could invent on our own.
Psalm 46:8-11 | The other day, Chris and I (Jon) were reflecting on something that happened at a church meeting he went to. Someone prayed, “Lord, we invite you here into this place today,” with all sincerity—but also with a hint of theological confusion—God doesn’t need our permission for anything. While the sentiment may be well-meaning, it reflects a diminished view of God’s sovereignty. The Lord doesn’t wait outside the door hoping we’ll let Him in; He is the King of kings, already present, already reigning. The church is His house. He isn’t a guest—we’re the guests.
These verses in Psalm 46 give us a radically different picture. The Psalmist invites us not to invite God, but to behold Him: Come, behold the works of the Lord. God makes wars cease, breaks the bow, shatters the spear, and says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” This is not a God who waits for our permission; this is the God who speaks, and the earth melts. The majesty of God should silence us, not sentimentalize Him. He is exalted among the nations and in the earth, whether we acknowledge Him or not. True worship begins not with our invitations, but with our surrender to the God who already reigns, whose presence is overwhelming and whose peace is unshakable.
2 Timothy 3:1–9 | This text is often read as a cultural critique—a mirror we hold up to the world to confirm how broken and godless it’s become. We see the list of sins and think of headlines, celebrities, and social media influencers. And from there, many churches slide into a kind of spiritual isolationism, building bomb shelters rather than gospel outposts. We huddle up, critique the culture, and wait for Jesus to come back and rescue us from it all. But that’s a misreading of the passage and a misapplication of its warning.
If you read carefully, Paul isn’t just talking about the world out there—he’s talking about people within the church who appear godly but are in fact disqualified regarding the faith (v. 8). These aren’t secular rebels but religious pretenders, those who have the appearance of godliness but deny its power (v. 5). The real danger isn’t just outside the walls of the church; it’s inside, when we lose the gospel and substitute it with moralism, legalism, or performance. That’s why Paul doesn’t tell Timothy to retreat but to engage. In 2 Timothy 4:5, Paul tells him, do the work of an evangelist. The call is not to condemnation, but to mission.
So this passage is not a license to look down on the world with contempt—it’s a challenge to look within the church, and within ourselves, with humility. It’s a call to holy living, not spiritual superiority. The brokenness described here is what we’ve all been rescued from, and what the world still desperately needs rescuing from. We possess a story of redemption, not for hoarding, but for sharing. Rather than building bunkers, let’s build bridges. Rather than judging the lost, let’s weep for them, pray for them, and point them to the only hope that can truly transform a sinful heart—Jesus Christ!
2 Timothy 3:12 | I’ve never seen this verse cross-stitched and framed in an old lady’s living room, and I’ve never seen it tattooed on a young guy’s arm either. Just saying…
2 Timothy 3:16 | Paul actually made up new words at times, probably because there weren’t any words in Greek for certain biblical ideas. You can do that in Greek, much like you can in German—you just smush two words together and make a new one! Different cultures think differently, and you see that most clearly in language. The word that Paul created here is “God-breathed.” He needed some way to communicate a very biblical Hebrew idea: God speaks perfectly well to communicate truth through human language. Breath and spirit are also the same word in both Greek and Hebrew, so this created a bridge for communicating this truth. This is a bold statement about the Bible, and one that’s often ridiculed or dismissed. But don’t listen to any of that. Paul is telling you that God breathes in His word; that’s how He created it and that’s also how He works it in us. You can always trust it. Completely and implicitly. But it doesn’t say that your interpretation is God breathed! That’s a vital distinction. We must come to God’s word humbly. But our confidence in His word is never wrong. And notice how this concept of being “God-breathed” doesn’t sit there like an abstraction. It isn’t just a theological idea or your divine data source. It’s useful and practical for us, for all the stuff we most need: correction and training in righteousness!
Friday
Ecclesiastes 12:13 | This verse brings the whole book to a climactic conclusion: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. After chapter upon chapter of searching—through pleasure, wealth, work, wisdom, and even despair—the preacher lands here. Life under the sun is confusing, fleeting, and often frustrating. We chase meaning in all the usual places and come up empty. But the answer isn’t nihilism, it’s reverence. To fear God is to acknowledge Him as Creator, Judge, and King. It’s not about being afraid but about living in awe-filled submission to the One who gives life purpose.
Yet even that call, to fear God and obey, is something we fail to do perfectly. That’s why the true resolution of Ecclesiastes isn’t just a principle, but in a person. Jesus is the one who fully feared God and perfectly kept His commands. He enters our vapor-like world, experiences its futility, and redeems it by His death and resurrection. The true meaning of life isn’t found by searching harder, but by being united to Christ. In Him, our meaningless becomes meaningful, our toil becomes sacred, and our fleeting days become part of an eternal story. Ecclesiastes leaves us longing, and the gospel satisfies that longing.
2 Timothy 4:3 | Apparently echo chambers are not merely a modern phenomenon. Folks have been picking teachers and preachers that entertain them for as long as there have been teachers and preachers around. In our modern age, however, you can really expand your collection of “folks that tell you what you want to hear” to absurd proportions. That “itchy ear” image is so powerful. Just wanting to listen to stuff that makes you feel good, stuff that doesn’t bring so much conviction or require any real action. Paul says “the time is coming” when this would happen, and I suppose that it proves Paul was a prophet. That time has surely come in our day.