Max Lucado Daily: Some Assembly Required
Do you want to see a father's face go ashen? Position yourself nearby as he discovers three words on the box of a just-bought toy: "Some assembly required!" What follows are hours of squeezing A into B, bolting D into F, sliding R over Z, and hoping no one notices if steps four, five, and six were skipped altogether. I'm convinced the devil indwells the details of toy assembly. Somewhere in perdition is a warehouse of stolen toy parts.
"Some assembly required." Not the most welcome sentence but an honest one. Life is a gift, albeit unassembled. The pieces don't fit. When they don't, take your problem to Jesus. He says, "Bring your problems to Me!" In prayer, state them simply. Present them faithfully, and trust Him reverently!
Before Amen
1 Kings 7
It took Solomon another thirteen years to finish building his own palace complex. He built the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon a hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high. There were four rows of cedar columns supporting forty-five cedar beams, fifteen in each row, and then roofed with cedar. Windows in groupings of three were set high in the walls on either side. All the doors were rectangular and arranged symmetrically.
6He built a colonnaded courtyard seventy-five feet long and forty-five wide. It had a roofed porch at the front with ample eaves.
7He built a court room, the Hall of Justice, where he would decide judicial matters, and paneled it with cedar.
8He built his personal residence behind the Hall on a similar plan. Solomon also built another one just like it for Pharaoh’s daughter, whom he had married.
9–12No expense was spared—everything here, inside and out, from foundation to roof was constructed using high-quality stone, accurately cut and shaped and polished. The foundation stones were huge, ranging in size from twelve to fifteen feet, and of the very best quality. The finest stone was used above the foundation, shaped to size and trimmed with cedar. The courtyard was enclosed with a wall made of three layers of stone and topped with cedar timbers, just like the one in the porch of The Temple of God.
13–14King Solomon sent to Tyre and asked Hiram (not the king; another Hiram) to come. Hiram’s mother was a widow from the tribe of Naphtali. His father was a Tyrian and a master worker in bronze. Hiram was a real artist—he could do anything with bronze. He came to King Solomon and did all the bronze work.
15–22First he cast two pillars in bronze, each twenty-seven feet tall and eighteen feet in circumference. He then cast two capitals in bronze to set on the pillars; each capital was seven and a half feet high and flared at the top in the shape of a lily. Each capital was dressed with an elaborate filigree of seven braided chains and a double row of two hundred pomegranates, setting the pillars off magnificently. He set the pillars up in the entrance porch to The Temple; the pillar to the south he named Security (Jachin) and the pillar to the north Stability (Boaz). The capitals were in the shape of lilies.
22–24When the pillars were finished, Hiram’s next project was to make the Sea—an immense round basin of cast metal fifteen feet in diameter, seven and a half feet tall, and forty-five feet in circumference. Just under the rim there were two bands of decorative gourds, ten gourds to each foot and a half. The gourds were cast in one piece with the Sea.
25–26The Sea was set on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south, and three facing east; the bulls faced outward supporting the Sea on their hindquarters. The Sea was three inches thick and flared at the rim like a cup, or like a lily. It held about 11,500 gallons.
27–33Hiram also made ten washstands of bronze. Each was six feet square and four and a half feet tall. They were made like this: Panels were fastened to the uprights. Lions, bulls, and cherubim were represented on the panels and uprights. Beveled wreath-work bordered the lions and bulls above and below. Each stand was mounted on four bronze wheels with bronze axles. The uprights were cast with decorative relief work. Each stand held a basin on a circular engraved support a foot and a half deep set on a pedestal two and a quarter feet square. The washstand itself was square. The axles were attached under the stand and the wheels fixed to them. The wheels were twenty-seven inches in diameter; they were designed like chariot wheels. Everything—axles, rims, spokes, and hubs—was of cast metal.
34–37There was a handle at the four corners of each washstand, the handles cast in one piece with the stand. At the top of the washstand there was a ring about nine inches deep. The uprights and handles were cast with the stand. Everything and every available surface was engraved with cherubim, lions, and palm trees, bordered by arabesques. The washstands were identical, all cast in the same mold.
38–40He also made ten bronze washbasins, each six feet in diameter with a capacity of 230 gallons, one basin for each of the ten washstands. He arranged five stands on the south side of The Temple and five on the north. The Sea was placed at the southeast corner of The Temple. Hiram then fashioned the various utensils: buckets and shovels and bowls.
40–45Hiram completed all the work he set out to do for King Solomon on The Temple of God:
two pillars;
two capitals on top of the pillars;
two decorative filigrees for the capitals;
four hundred pomegranates for the two filigrees
(a double row of pomegranates for each filigree);
ten washstands each with its washbasin;
one Sea;
twelve bulls under the Sea;
miscellaneous buckets, shovels, and bowls.
45–47All these artifacts that Hiram made for King Solomon for The Temple of God were of burnished bronze. He cast them in clay in a foundry on the Jordan plain between Succoth and Zarethan. These artifacts were never weighed—there were far too many! Nobody has any idea how much bronze was used.
48–50Solomon was also responsible for all the furniture and accessories in The Temple of God:
the gold Altar;
the gold Table that held the Bread of the Presence;
the pure gold candelabras, five to the right and five to the left in front of the Inner Sanctuary;
the gold flowers, lamps, and tongs;
the pure gold dishes, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, ladles, and censers;
the gold sockets for the doors of the Inner Sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, used also for the doors of the Main Sanctuary.
51That completed all the work King Solomon did on The Temple of God. He then brought in the items consecrated by his father David, the silver and the gold and the artifacts. He placed them all in the treasury of God’s Temple.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Saturday, October 31, 2026
By Brent Hackett
TODAY'S SCRIPTURE
Ephesians 4:20-24
But that’s no life for you. You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.
In view of what God did through Jesus in choosing, redeeming, and predestining believers in Him to be His children (Ephesians 1:3-14), Paul instructs believers to “to live a life worthy of [His] calling” (4:1). We’re to “no longer live” the ungodly lives of our past (v. 17), for we’ve been given a new life (vv. 22-24). The New Living Translation puts it this way: “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Our new person is “created to be like God”—truly righteous and holy (Ephesians 4:24). We’re to “put to death . . . whatever belongs to [our] earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed” (Colossians 3:5) and to rid ourselves of “anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language” (v. 8). As we “clothe [ourselves] with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (v. 12), God will help us live an authentic, Christlike life before others.
For further study, read: Don’t Run from Your Failures
Today's Insights
No Mask, Simply Jesus
Put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Colossians 3:10
In ancient Greece, actors on stage would portray the emotions of their characters by wearing masks that either expressed tragedy or comedy. Masks also allowed the same actor to play multiple roles in the same production. They weren’t permanent, nor were they representative of the real person. Put on for the performance, the facial disguises were taken off when the production was over.
In Colossians 3:10, Paul writes to believers in Jesus to encourage them to “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” Rather than a temporary mask worn to entertain people, it should be displayed as a permanent part of life that will be seen each day. The apostle says to “put off your old self” (Ephesians 4:22)—the sinful life we lived before receiving salvation in Christ.
Taking off our old habits and putting on a new self doesn’t just happen naturally. Paul says we need “to be made new in the attitude of [our] minds” (v. 23). This starts with how we think—recognizing that as believers we’re “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (v. 24).
The actors in Greece were paid to put on fake faces. Today, by God’s grace, let’s put on the true image of Jesus so the world knows that He’s living within us.
Reflect & Pray
What are some ways you wear a mask that reflects your old life? How can you “put on” Jesus each day?
I pray, dear Jesus, that my life may be a true representation of who You are. Please help me be real each and every day for You.
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Saturday, October 31, 2026
Discernment of Faith
If you have faith as small as a mustard seed . . . — Matthew 17:20
We have the idea that God rewards us for our faith. This might be true in the initial stages of our walk with him, but we don’t earn anything by faith. Faith brings us into right relationship with God and gives God his opportunity.
If you are walking with God, he will often knock the bottom out of your experience in order to bring you into immediate contact with him. God wants you to understand that it’s a life of faith, not of emotional enjoyment of his blessings. Your earlier life of faith was narrow and intense, settled around a little sunspot of experience that had as much sensibleness as faith in it; it was full of light and sweetness. Then God withdrew his blessings—not all of them, just those you were conscious of—to teach you to walk by faith. Now you are worth far more to him than you were in your days of conscious delight and thrilling testimony.
Faith by its very nature must be tried. The real trial of faith isn’t that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God’s character has to be cleared in our own minds. Faith in its actual working out has to go through spells of inexpressible isolation. Never confound the trial of faith with the ordinary discipline of life. Much that we call the trial of faith is the inevitable result of being alive. In the Bible, faith means trusting God in the face of everything that contradicts him. Faith says, “No matter what God does, I will remain true to his character.” “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15): this is the most sublime utterance of faith in the whole of the Bible.
Jeremiah 22-23; Titus 1
WISDOM FROM OSWALD
The Bible is a relation of facts, the truth of which must be tested. Life may go on all right for a while, when suddenly a bereavement comes, or some crisis; unrequited love or a new love, a disaster, a business collapse, or a shocking sin, and we turn up our Bibles again and God’s word comes straight home, and we say, “Why, I never saw that there before.”
Shade of His Hand, 1223 L
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