Word of Salvation – Vol. 41 No. 36 – September 1996

 

A Sense Of History

 

Sermon by Rev. J. Haverland on 1Chronicles 1-3

Scripture Reading: 1Chronicles 1:1-4, 2:1-4, 10-17, 3:1-5a

 

Theme: The genealogies of Chronicles show that God is at work through history in the lives of His people to fulfil His purpose and His kingdom.

Purpose: To show you that you, individually and corporately, are part of God’s great purposes and His kingdom.

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Many people are interested in following their family history.  They trace it back to their parents and grand-parents and great-grand-parents and even further.  When those names are written up in a diagram we call it a “family tree”.  Going back through our family history and drawing family trees is useful because it helps us to understand where we have come from; it gives us our roots; it gives us a sense of the history of our relatives and our family traditions.

Now the book of Chronicles begins with a family history, a family tree.  It begins with what we call genealogies.  Long lists of people!  In fact, what we have here at the beginning of the book of Chronicles are nine chapters of genealogies, nine chapters of names.  This is one reason why these books aren’t often read and aren’t very popular.  People come to all these names and they quickly turn a few pages until they get past them all.

Another problem with these books is that many think this is just a repetition of everything they have already read in Kings and in Samuel.  And so they skip right over until they get to Ezra and Nehemiah.

And yet, what we have here is a very important book of the Bible, because in this book God wanted to give the people of Israel a sense of their history, a sense of where they had come from, of what their roots were.  He did this to give them encouragement for the present and hope for the future.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In order to understand this book and the place of these genealogies it is important for us to understand something of the history of Israel and where this book fits into that.  Most of the children will remember King David.  He lived around 1000BC, an easy number to remember.  David was followed by his son, Solomon.  But when Solomon died the kingdom split into two, a Northern and a Southern Kingdom.

The Northern Kingdom was led by Jeroboam and the Southern Kingdom was led by Rehoboam.  It continued for about 200 years, but in 722 BC it was taken away into exile by the empire of Assyria.

The Southern Kingdom carried on for a bit longer but, it too sinned against God and eventually was taken away into exile in the year 587 BC by the Babylonian Armies.  The people of Judah and Benjamin were in exile for 70 years.  Eventually they were allowed to return back to Jerusalem.  A small group went back and tried to re-establish themselves in Jerusalem and in Israel.

This proved to be very difficult as we learn from the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.  The temple that was rebuilt was insignificant when compared to the glory of Solomon’s great and magnificent temple.  There were no great kings in this whole period.  The people of Israel remained a very small and weak minority in a vast Persian empire, regularly oppressed by hostile neighbours.

By the time the 5th century came nothing had improved very much.  The people of Israel began to feel that God had forgotten about them.  They lived without hope.  There was nothing to look forward to.  They were full of doubts and questions: Why is God allowing this?  Where is the glory of those former years?  Has God forgotten about us completely?  What is God doing and what is his plan for the future?

Some of you may know what it is like to feel like this.  Say you move to another country, or you change jobs, or you make some other significant change in your life, like going to another school or beginning University.  Sometimes things may not work out as you had hoped they would, as you expected them to.  You wonder, have I done the right thing?  Am I in the right place?  Have I come to the right country?  Have I taken up the right job?  Your mind is full of doubts and questions.

This was the situation of the people of Israel in the fifth century BC.  So this book was written to those people; written to give them encouragement and hope for the future; written to give them a sense of identity; to assure them that they, too, had a place in the plans and purposes of God in history.

In these opening genealogies the writer wants the people to remember two great lessons, two lessons that we need to remember as well.  The first is that we are part of God’s Purpose and the second is we are part of God’s Kingdom.

1.  WE ARE PART OF GOD’S PURPOSE

a.

In these genealogies the writer wanted the people of Israel to realise that God had a purpose for all of history and that they were part of that purpose.

In the Hebrew Bible, which is the Old Testament, the book of Chronicles is put in a different place than it is in our English Bibles.  In our English Bibles it is put along with all the other histories.  But in the Hebrew Bible it is put at the end; it is the last book.  And that is significant.

It has the same significance that the gospel of John has in being placed at the end of the gospels; the same significance the book of Revelation has being placed at the end of the New Testament.  Because all of those books, Chronicles, and the Gospel of John, and the book of Revelation interpret for us what has gone before.

The Gospel of John gives us an interpretation of the other Gospels.  The book of Revelation gives us a survey of all of history.  And the book of Chronicles gives us an interpretation of all of God’s history in dealing with the people of Israel through all of the ages.

So, as the writer begins this history, the best place to start, he thinks, is right at the beginning, and so the first word in the book of Chronicles is the word, Adam.  The writer of Chronicles wants to take the people of Israel right from the very beginning through to his day, the 5th century.

In doing this he wants to show them that God has a sovereign plan for all of history.  God was in control of everything that was happening.  God was working out his plans and his purposes in all that happens.

He was writing this to give them encouragement.  They were discouraged; they wondered what God was doing in their history.  And so God wanted to give them some hope for the future.  Look, he says, look at all that God has done up till now.  And so, if God has done all of this up till now, he’s certainly going to continue his plans in the future as well.

As Christians living hundreds of years later at the end of the 20th century, we need the same sort of encouragement.  Christians in this country are also a small minority in a larger and pagan and godless society.  You, too, might wonder what God is doing in history: Where is the glory and the power of God that you read about in the Old Testament and in the New Testament?  Does the Christian faith have any future in this land?

Well, the opening chapters of this book of Chronicles reminds us that God is sovereign.  God is in charge.  God has control over everything.  He’s got the whole wide world in his hands, as one of the children’s songs puts it.  And we need the same encouragement that the people of Israel received.  And so, God has a purpose for all of history and you are part of that purpose.  And that’s one of the things that the writer wants to bring out here.

b.

The writer also wants each of us to realise that we are a significant part of God’s purposes in history.  This book begins with a lot of names: over 600 names in the first nine chapters; over 200 names in chapter one alone.  You might say, why mention all these people?  Were all of these people important?

Well, that is part of the point that the writer wants to make.  He wants to show us that each one of these people is important.  Each one is significant.  Each one had a role to play in the out-working of God’s plan.  Many of these people didn’t even believe in God.  But God still used them in the outworking of his purposes.

And God can use you in the development of his plan.  God wants you to realise that you are significant and that you have a role to play in His purposes.

c.

In writing these genealogies, the writer also wanted the people to know that they were connected to others in God’s purposes.  They were not on their own.  They were connected with other people.  We can illustrate that with a tree.  A tree, of course, has roots.  These come up into a trunk.  Then the trunk goes out into branches and then from those branches you get little twigs and flowers.  The whole tree is connected together and it is all part of the one thing.  It’s an organic whole.

Now as the writer takes us through all these names of Old Testament history he wants us to see that all of these are connected together.  They are all interwoven.  And we, too, are connected together with all God’s people through all of the ages.  In the outworking of God’s purpose you are not on your own.  You are connected with all of these people, going right back to Adam.

But you are also connected with someone else who was even more important than Adam, because God sent a second Adam into this world.  All these names mentioned here are leading up to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ into this world, who came to do what Adam could not do; who came to live the righteous life Adam did not live.  When you believe in this Lord Jesus then you are connected with him.

And when you are connected with him you are also connected with His church.  Not only in this congregation, but you are connected with the Reformed Churches of this country and with the church of the Lord Jesus Christ throughout this world.

So, we need to see ourselves as being part of God’s purposes through history; a significant part, connected to others.

But you are also:

2.  PART OF GOD’S KINGDOM

This is the second main lesson that the writer wants these people to realise.

a.

The first point he wanted them to notice here was that they belonged to a royal kingdom.  In these opening genealogies the writer focuses his attention on one tribe, the tribe of Judah.  It was the Southern Kingdom of Judah that was brought back into the land of Israel.  God continued to work his plans and his purposes through that nation because they were the royal tribe.  They were the tribe that King David was going to come from.

There was a sense also in which all of the people of Israel were connected with that tribe of David.  As the Northern tribe began to turn more and more away from God, the faithful people in the Northern Kingdom began to drift south so they could be part of the temple worship.  So, by the time the Southern Kingdom went away into exile it had representatives of all of the Northern tribes as well as many of the Levites.  They, too, became part of the tribe of Judah and so part of God’s kingdom.

We must see this for ourselves.  We aren’t part of the tribe of Judah by line of descent or by genealogy.  But we are part of the kingdom of Judah in a spiritual sense, in that all who believe belong to Jesus; and if we belong to the Lord Jesus, we belong to His Kingdom.  We are royal citizens.  We are under his reign.  So, you are part of his kingdom.

b.

But the second point the writer wanted to make here is that Israel had had great Kings.

The focus of attention in these genealogies is on the line of Judah, and especially on the kings of that tribe, because the writer wanted Israel to realise that they had great kings.  In fact, the whole focus of the book of Chronicles is on the greatness of David and Solomon.  He makes a point of this glory and greatness because it was going to be fulfilled in the glory and greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The New Testament picks that up in Matthew chapter 1.  This opening chapter of the New Testament is also a genealogy, a family tree of Jesus that shows us how he came as the fulfilment of all of the Old Testament history, as the Great King and as the Son of God.

There was a translator once working in Papua New Guinea translating the New Testament into one of the tribal languages.  He began with the book of Matthew.  As he looked at all those names he thought to himself, “Well, this probably isn’t going to be all that helpful or that relevant to this tribe.”  And so he decided that he would skip over that first chapter and instead start in chapter two.  This is what he did, and as he finished each chapter he would give it to the tribe and they would read it and study it.

Then when he got to the end of Matthew, he went back to chapter 1 and translated that.

When the people of the tribe read that first chapter they said, “Why didn’t you give this to us at the beginning?  Now that we have read this chapter we can see where he came from.  Now we know that Jesus was the Son of God!”

This is what we must see today as well: that Jesus Christ came as the fulfilment of all those promises in the Old Testament, as the Son of David, as the King of Israel.  Today we live under the reign of King Jesus – we need to believe in him and put our lives under his sovereignty and under his rule.

So, we need a sense of history: we are part of God’s purposes in history; a significant part and interconnected with all the other parts.  And we need a sense of identity: for all who believe, belong to the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus.

So let’s remember our family tree.  Let’s recall our historical roots.  Let’s remember that we are part of God’s purpose and kingdom and that we live under the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Remember that God is working out his purposes in us, and through us, the church and kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.