Year 3, Day 277: 1 Chronicles 3

Genealogy – Chapter 3

In case you haven’t looked forward, the genealogies run through chapter 9.  So if you don’t like genealogies I’ll apologize beforehand.  But we’ll get through them quickly enough, so just be patient and don’t set your expectations too high for the next six or so readings.

However, what we might not gain in the actual names we can gain a bit from the context.  Notice that the chronicler spends an entire chapter on the genealogy of David.  Yes, there is a list for each of the tribes.  But among the tribes, David gets his own list even among the list of Judah!

This shows that the chronicler is indeed rather interested in the Messianic line.  Of all the lines to focus upon among the Hebrew people, the chronicler focuses upon the Davidic line.  Now, naturally, this makes sense.  It is the one great line of the greatest Hebrew king. 

But it demonstrates that the chronicler has an agenda.  The purpose of this book is to remember the promises of God from the past.  But it is also to look forward to the future when those promises will be fulfilled in God’s Messiah.  There would come a king of David’s line that would eclipse even David.  The chronicler desires to do his part in keeping the watch for God’s Messiah alive as the exiles return from captivity.

So what can we take away from this context?  I think there are a few lessons to be had here.  First of all, how interested am I on a daily basis towards revealing God’s Messiah to the world?  How active am I at helping direct people’s attention to looking for the Messiah?

Second, how serious am I in continuing to look for the Messiah?  The chronicler went to great pains in pointing the people towards God’s hand at work in the world.  Am I as diligent in looking forward to what God is doing?

Third, I can’t help but wonder how good I am at remembering God’s promises in the past.  The chronicler focused on David because of the past.  The chronicler focused on David because it was a fulfillment of God’s word in the past.  What’s even more amazing is that the chronicler is roughly 500 years beyond David.  This would be like us looking back to the time of Martin Luther and looking with interest into what God was saying to the people and how God was active in their lives.

Okay, so maybe that’s not the greatest example, since we actually can look back to Martin Luther and see what God was doing among His people.  But hopefully I’ve still made my point.  Am I that interested in declaring God’s work to the people around me, especially with reference to how God was at work in the past?  I hope so. 

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