1 Chronicles 1:1-2:17, Acts 23:11-35, Psalms 3:1-8, Proverbs 18:14-15
Today is the 5th day of July welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is wonderful to be here with you today as we continue our journey forward. And, so, yesterday we concluded the book of second Kings. And, so, we had moved through the books of Samuel and the books of Kings ending up with no kingdom left. The northern kingdom of Israel had been carried away into exile by the Assyrian Empire and then the kingdom of Judah in the south was carried away into exile by the Babylonian Empire, resulting in the destruction of Jerusalem, including the destruction of the…of the temple of the most high God. Now we are about to turn the page and open the book of first Chronicles
Introduction to first Chronicles:
Obviously, there is a second Chronicles following that and we’ll…we’ll be covering a lot of the same…same territory. So it’s almost like, didn’t we already…haven’t we already heard this story? Didn’t we already go through this territory? And the answer would be yes. We’re going back through this territory from a different perspective and time. Chronicles looks at the same history through the eyes of the priests. So, as we just said, we finished the books of Kings yesterday and Judah was exiled to Babylon. And first and second Chronicles were written from this exile. And we’re not sure who was the author or who collected the Chronicles together. There is…there is Jewish tradition that suggests that the scribe and priest Ezra was involved. And even though there isn’t total consensus among biblical scholars, which is not a surprise, the books were written about for centuries before the time of Jesus, which would make them contemporary with Ezra. And as we begin, we have the first nine chapters that will cover a lot of genealogy. It’s that part of the Bible where we have all these hard to pronounce names and…and there long lists and we’re like what is going on and I don’t even know how to pronounce these names and why are these people’s names in the Bible and what is the purpose of this? But once we understand the purpose of this, we find a pretty moving story. We just have to think about exile, just the concept in and of itself. Imagine you…well…let’s just use Jerusalem. Imagine you lived in Jerusalem and you were there under the siege, and you saw the slow erosion and you saw eventually that a tipping point had been reached and the city would eventually be conquered and…and then it was and lots of people were killed, people that you knew, maybe family members that you knew. And there are some people that maybe are in your family or are in your friend group that you can’t find. You don’t know what happened to them. And then all of a sudden you’re starting to be rounded up like cattle and shipped off to some other place where you have to march to another land and you have to go somewhere else and people are just being arbitrarily divided up into groups. And, so, families are being split up and going in different directions, and never will see each other again. Imagine that if you’re a parent, watching a child disappear or a sibling disappear or even your spouse going somewhere else being carried away into an unknown land where unknown things are going to happen. These names, these genealogies that we wrestle with they were knit together so that the people would remember where they came from and who they were and every one of those names has a story of life and loss in it. The books of Chronicles were written to remind the children of Israel who they were and where they came from and who God is. And I often tell this story when we reach this point in the Bible because it's…it’s a story that kind of snapped this into place for me. And we know about World War II and we know that the Jewish people faced more displacement. And we can visit Holocaust Museum’s throughout the world where some of the atrocities took place. I personally several years ago was in Africa, was in the country of Rwanda. And Rwanda had experienced a genocide back in the 90s, a pretty brutal genocide where a million people died over tribal warfare over the course of the summer. And, so, they too have museums and memorials throughout their country in some very, very remote places. It’s really sad how all of that happened. But they also have a national…national Memorial in Kigali in the…in the nation…nation’s capital, and I visited that. Jill and I visited that one year and went through the site. It's…it…it’s really hard. I mean so many of the skeletons…so many of the bones of the people that were killed are preserved and displayed and can be seen and the clothing that they were wearing and maybe what they were carrying when they died. And then you go into a very, very quiet, round room. Many places are like this. A very reverent room. It’s darkly lit. And from the floor to the ceiling, and it’s probably 25 feet tall, are pictures hung from floor-to-ceiling of people who had died. And you can sort of sit in that room and just be surrounded by all of these faces, all of these lives, all of these people who had relationships and loved others and had a life that was taken from them. And you sit in there and it’s quiet and there’s a soft voice, a female voice, and she’s saying the names. And it doesn’t stop. She’s just saying the names of the people that were lost. You might think of it as if she were reciting the genealogies that were lost. We can’t understate the impact of the exiles and the destruction of ancient Israel, biblical Israel as we knew it, and the book the books of Chronicles open by giving us the chance to say the names. And, so, with that we begin first Chronicles chapter 1 verse 1 through 2 verse 17.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word and we thank You for this new territory that we are moving into as we move into the books of Chronicles. And as we read the names and as we re-familiar…refamiliarize ourselves with the story we see a story of back-and-forth of ebb and flow of returning to You and watch You shower graciousness and protection on Your people only for them to abandon You again and walk away, which ultimately leads to destruction. May we see this pattern in the Scriptures and may we see this pattern as it materializes in our lives and learn the lesson. The safest place we can possibly be is in Your presence and You have not withdrawn from us. We are in Your presence. Make us aware we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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So, we celebrated Jill’s birthday on the 4th of July yesterday and now we are looking forward to this Friday which is our Daily Audio Bible community holiday that we call the Daily Audio Bible long walk. And that…that’s self-explanatory enough. That’s what it is. This is the day that we…we recognize that we’re in the center of the year. We recognize that it has taken a significant amount of energy and effort and discernment to get here to the center of the year. We realize that we have at our victories in our defeats, our mountain heights, and our deep valleys and how we are here. And, so, we are looking at the second half of the year. And this is the time to regroup and go for a long walk and say everything that needs to be said and listen, listen to anything that God might be whispering back about what the second half of this year is to look like so that we get re-oriented as we are on this journey. And, so, go somewhere beautiful. Go somewhere and enjoy a day in creation with the slow rhythms of love, the slow rhythms of just being, being with God. There’s no objective. There aren’t a certain amount of minutes of intercession that are necessary. Just be. And if you think you’re not talking enough, maybe you’re talking the right amount. Maybe more listening. Maybe more silence. Maybe more listening to all the life that is happening all around us and the rhythms of nature. And, so, yeah, that’s Friday. I can’t hardly wait. I’m looking forward to that.
There are a couple of resources that…that pair so well with the long walk. They’re musical resources that you can download or stream. The first one is Heart, a contemplative journey and the second one is Sleep, a contemplative journey. And these projects create atmosphere, just a nonintrusive kind of atmosphere out in nature to focus 0our emotions and our intentions and our prayers. And, so, certainly look for those wherever it is that you get your music like the iTunes store.
And then also we have just released our snapback hats for the third quarter this year. Daily Audio Bible leather patched baseball caps. These are navy and white in the back - beautiful, classy, perfect for summertime. You can check those out in the Daily Audio Bible Shop in the Lifestyle section. Those are in limited quantities and so get those while you can. But they’re in the Lifestyle section. So, check that out.
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And that’s all for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Coming soon…