Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Prophet
- Prophet: A prophet is one of the fivefold ministry categories that is used throughout the Bible and especially lifted up in Ephesians 4:11. The prophet is primarily concerned with whether or not the people are hearing the voice of God. The prophet is also concerned about whether or not the people are responding to God’s voice.
I truly
struggled between whether to emphasize the prophetic nature of this text or the
evangelistic nature. I’ll tell you the
facts first. At the end, I’ll tell you
why I ultimately chose to focus on the prophet.
You might
be curious about how I can get to either of these topics in a genealogy. It’s really quite simple. The genealogies in 1 Chronicles are 9
chapters long. One whole chapter of the
9 is devoted to the lineage of the Davidic Kings. In the prior chapters we moved from Adam to
David, fleshing out many of the family heads in between. In the chapters to come we’ll see the twelve
tribes fleshed out to great detail. In
the midst of all of this, we have a specific chapter on the chain of people who
were the kings over Judah.
This
might not surprise you. After all, the
David kings are pretty important. But
this chapter truly emphasizes the Messianic nature of the Chronicler. One of the main reasons that this book is
being written is to make sure that the people know their identity as they
return from exile. The Chronicler wants
to connect the past with the future coming of the Messiah.
So why
did I wrestle between prophet and evangelist?
Certainly this is an evangelistic focus about the Messiah and His
identity. But remember to whom the
message is intended to be spoken. This
message is going to the Hebrew people.
This is a prophetic message from God to His people. It is God’s own people that the Chronicler
wants to prepare for the advent of the Messiah.
This lineage is in the book because the book is written for Hebrew
people in particular. The prophet
focuses on the people of God.
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