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’m Brian it is great to be here with you today. I trust you are doing well wherever you are on this big beautiful planet that God has given us as a gift to dwell upon. And what a joy it is that we share in this particular patch of history together. And, so, that’s what allows us to be here now and take the next step forward. And that next step forward is going to lead us into a new book. So, we concluded the book of second Kings in the Old Testament yesterday and the book of second Kings ends in a very dire kind of way. So, while we were moving our way through second Kings, the Assyrians invaded the north, right, and the 10 tribes of the nation of Israel or conquered and deported or exiled and new people were brought in. And Assyria is in control of that region but then in yesterday’s reading we saw the Babylonian Empire invade Judah and a lot of back-and-forth over a lot of years. They were kind of a vassal state, etc. etc. but ultimately Babylon came and surrounded Jerusalem and broke in and destroyed it utterly including demolishing the temple of God and burning Jerusalem to the ground and deporting or exiling Jerusalem, but also Judah. So, yeah, the thing is that we need to understand is that these people that we’ve been traveling with since the book of Genesis, we watched them form, we traveled with them. It’s over. Like ancient Israel as we knew it is over, the people are in exile. The people of the north, the kingdom of Israel, they’re gone. They’ve been assimilated. They’ll never be cohesive tribes ever again. Meanwhile, the people of Judah are exiled in Babylon and we’ll continue this story and see that the remnant is allowed to return to Jerusalem eventually, but things are never ever, ever gonna be the same. So, we just crossed a threshold and we’re kind of moving into what comes next, because what came before is no more.
Introduction to the book of Chronicles:
And, so, today we’re moving into the book of…books of Chronicles, so first and second Chronicles. And we’re not really sure who wrote, who collected the Chronicles, but there are Jewish traditions that suggest Ezra the priest was involved in this. And there isn’t even a total consensus among biblical scholars about the dating of the Chronicles, but we can generally assume that these were written probably four, four and a half centuries before the common era, so before the time of Jesus. And if that’s true, that would make the writings contemporary with the priest Ezra. So, what we’re gonna do is begin to read this and all of a sudden, things will probably sound familiar, like, “didn’t we read this already? Like, I remember this” because first and second Chronicles is gonna cover a lot of the same territory that we were covering while we were moving through the books of Samuel and the books of the Kings but the whole story is coming from a different perspective. Chronicles will look at the same history that we’ve just gone through, but it will be looking through the eyes of the priests, whereas we have previously been…been looking at the Kings. So, we ended Kings, second Kings yesterday as Judah was…was defeated and the exile began to Babylon. And, like I just said, that ended the ancient era of the promised land. The books of first and second Chronicles that we’re heading into now would have then been composed or written down from this exile. And for lots of reasons, but one reason would be the empire building tactics at this time were to deport or exile people into other conquered lands while rotating in other conquered peoples, right, so that a common story could be built while the ancient homeland story would be eradicated over time. So, these things are written down to remind the children of Israel who they even are and where they came from and what their origin is and who God is. And, so, it’s chronicling this. And, so, the first nine chapters that we’re about to cover, they’ll be a lot of genealogy. And this is the part of the Bible, we get to these hard to pronounce names and we start wondering, “like, why am I reading page after page of names?” But as we go through this we’ll see that these names are important, they tell a story. They tell generation after generation after generation. This is exile, people have been killed, families have been split apart and sent to different regions or cities. Things aren’t gonna be the same again. But then there’s these names, these names in the book of Chronicles, and they’re there as a testament, as a witness to the people that were there and who they were and how they all lined up together to be this common family, the children of Israel. And, so, let’s dive in. First Chronicles chapter 1 verse 1 through 2:17. And we’ll read from the English Standard Version this week.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word as we do every day because it is the context for why we are even here, and the centerpiece for why there is a community around this Global Campfire. And, so, we are grateful for Your word and the rhythm that it brings into our lives, day by day step-by-step forward. Certainly, forward in time, forward through a year, forward to life, but forward in life as well as we learn and grow and deepen our understanding and press into deeper depths of relationship with You. And, so, we are grateful. And as we move into this shiny sparkly new week, we invite Your Holy Spirit to lead and guide our steps in all that we do and all that we say and all that we think. Come Jesus we ask. In Your mighty name, we ask. Amen.
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And it’s just a couple of days from now. The day after tomorrow is the 7th of July and we’ve been talking about the 7th of July I guess for the last week and half, two weeks. It’s the Daily Audio Bible long walk. It’s a day that we go for a long walk with God, open our hearts to all that He has to say, say everything that we need to say uninterrupted and just allow a day with God to refocus and re-center us. It’s incredible what getting still can do. And, so, that’s coming up on Tuesday. Go somewhere…I mean it’s simple. Go somewhere beautiful weather near or far and take the day and go for a walk and…and enjoy the serenity of nature, the beauty of God’s creation and feel God’s presence all around you and say what you need to say and hear what you need to hear.
And this year we have a new resource that’s just perfect for the long walk. It’s called Heart, a contemplative journey and it’s kind of a guided prayer and a musical healing journey. It’s something that’s kind of come out of my own life over the last couple of years and it’s just fantastic conversation starter for the long walk. So, check that resource out. It is available for preorder at iTunes in the iTunes store or in the Google Play store, you know, where you get your music. And just search for Hearts, a contemplative journey, or you can search for my name and you’ll find it and it’ll to be available on Tuesday in time for the long walk. So, check that out.
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And that’s it for today, I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.