Seize the Moment – Day 814
The Heavy Burden of Forced Labor!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Thursday, June 9.
Have you ever been forced to do a job you didn’t like or want to do? Imagine being conscripted by the President to be a forced laborer for a grand national project in Washington DC.
First Kings 5:13-16 explained how Solomon conscripted 183,300 workers to do the hard labor of building the temple:
Now King Solomon levied forced laborers from all Israel; and the forced laborers numbered 30,000 men. He sent them to Lebanon, 10,000 a month in relays; they were in Lebanon a month and two months at home. And Adoniram was over the forced laborers. Now Solomon had 70,000 transporters, and 80,000 hewers of stone in the mountains, besides Solomon’s 3,300 chief deputies who were over the project and who ruled over the people who were doing the work.
These men quarried and cut the stones for the foundation of the temple, as well as transported and prepared the necessary timber for this grand national project in Jerusalem. Unstated in this account are the countless farmers, laborers, and servants who would support this undertaking and provide for the terms of the purchase agreement with Hiram, the king of Tyre (1-12).
We read through all this way too quickly! We remain deaf and blind to the suffering of the people living under the heavy burden of Solomon’s aggressive agenda. In 1 Kings 12:4, after forty years of Solomon’s rule, the people petition Solomon’s son Rehoboam, “Your father made our yoke hard; now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you.” When he refused, the people rebelled (1 Kings 12:13-19). People can only take the heavy burden of forced labor for so long!
Seize the moment and find rest for your soul from the oppressive regime of sin by breaking the world’s heavy yoke and getting in the easy yoke of Jesus, His burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).