FBC Daily Devotional – January 7, 2022

Well, good Friday morning to you. Wrapping up the first full week of this new year.

I hope you've had a good one. I hope you're looking forward to a good weekend as well and planning to gather together with God's people on Sunday.

I should be beginning a new series Sunday morning on Truth for Troubled Times from the book of 1st

Peter. And we're also in the Sunday, the adult Bible study time at 9 .30. We began a new series last

Sunday entitled Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. It's being taught by Dr.

Eric Foreman, a member of our church, and he's had taught at the

Community College Biology and Anatomy and so forth and he really understands the human body.

And so he's using that knowledge and that understanding to encourage us to marvel at our

Creator's handiwork in how he has crafted the human body. Anyway, that's that's going on in the

Sunday Bible study. So I encourage you if you're in Sterling Rock Falls area that come visit with us on this coming

Lord's Day and learn of our God and learn of how to live in these troubled times.

So I wanted to look at a passage of scripture that we begin today, probably one of the most challenging for many believers simply because of the nature of the writing.

So we're in 1st Chronicles, beginning 1st Chronicles today. And if you've read that passage and you've read

Chronicles before, this is probably one of those books of the Bible that you do a lot of skimming.

Because as the book opens up, it's just really a book of names. It's just a list of names as the book begins.

It begins with Adam and takes us from Adam to these different lines of people as descendants of Adam and so forth.

And in this whole first chapter you have only two references, I think it is, even to Israel altogether.

But anyway, the thing of it is with this list of names like this, you know, people get really bogged down in this because a lot of these names are foreign to us.

They don't sound like anything we would be familiar with. But nevertheless, it creates a challenge because we get bored with it and it doesn't seem to have any application to us and doesn't have anything of interest to us.

Well, I want to encourage you today to read these genealogical tables with your mind engaged and think about it a little bit.

Here's where I'm going with this. If you read chapter 1, as I mentioned a minute ago, it's significant that the name

Israel only shows up, I think, two times. I think that that word Israel only shows up two times.

You have all of these people, all of these names, and then when you get down to verse 43, it says, now these were the kings who reigned in the land of Edom.

These were the kings, plural, who reigned in the land of Edom. He's about to list them all before a king reigned over the children of Israel.

And then he goes through this list of all these kings who reigned in Edom before Israel was ever formed as a nation and had their very first king.

And what does that tell you about the relative significance of the nation of Israel at this time?

Irrelevant, right? I mean, they're a nobody. They're nobody. The only other reference to Israel in this chapter is to tell you that Abraham begot

Isaac in verse 34 and the sons of Isaac were Esau and Israel, or Jacob. That's it.

It's not till you get to chapter 2 that you start getting the family tree of Israel. But I think what stands out to me is in that first chapter, how at the time, when all this is going on,

Israel is really irrelevant, inconsequential, and yet Israel is central to the plan of God.

Isn't that just like what we read in the New Testament? God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty.

Yeah, exactly. Well, another thing, I know, I'm sure

I knew this before and just forgot it, but I was reminded in chapter 2 in verses 6 and 7 that Achan, you remember

Achan, the troubler of Israel? You remember what he did at the Battle of Jericho?

God said when you destroy Jericho, totally destroy it and keep nothing for yourselves. Anything of value was to be dedicated to God.

For the temple or so forth and yet Achan stole some things to keep for himself, some wedges of gold or silver and some

Babylonian garments. This caused problems because he violated

God's clear direction and in that violation they ended up losing the battle of Ai and so forth.

He's a troubler of Israel. But here's the thing that comes out here in the list of genealogies.

Did you realize that Achan was in the tribe of Judah? Achan was a descendant of Judah?

Again, I think I knew that at one point but I forgot about it and it slapped me upside the head when

I read through this the other day. That this troubler of Israel was from the most important tribe of Israel, Judah.

Why is that the most important tribe? Because it's out of Judah that's going to come the Messiah, the one who will rule and reign for all time.

I just found that to be an interesting connection. And there's one more interesting connection in chapter 2 verses 15 through 17.

You have this list that leads to David the seventh and then it says now they're sisters.

So David's sisters. This is with the listing the sons of the sons of Jesse, David's father.

So there's the list of the sons and then they had two sisters Zeruiah and Abigail and it says the sons of Zeruiah were

Abishai, Abishai, Joab, and Asahel and Abigail, David's other sister, bore

Amasa. The father of Amasa was Jether, the Ishmaelite.

All right, so what's so special about that? All right, you have to think back in 1st

Samuel, or 2nd Samuel, the rebellion of David's son

Absalom. When Absalom rebelled, he named a captain over his military forces that would fight against David and hopefully destroy him.

And the captain that Absalom chose to fight, to lead his forces against David was

Amasa. And the captain of David's forces was

Joab. Now what this passage tells us is that Joab and Amasa were cousins.

They were they were the sons of David's sisters.

So Amasa and Joab were cousins and they were also David's nephews.

All right. Now, here's where it gets even more exciting or interesting. After that conflict with Absalom was over and resolved,

David's wanting to bring everybody back together again and bring peace to the land. And David calls

Amasa, Absalom's former commander, calls him to himself and he wants

Amasa to lead in a military campaign. Even in the place of Joab, his commander.

And Joab doesn't like this. Cousin Joab doesn't like that cousin Amasa got chosen to lead this military campaign.

And so when the two end up meeting with one another, Joab pretends like he's being very friendly with him.

And he has a dagger that falls out of its sheath and he reaches down to pick it up.

It seems to be just accidental. He grasps his cousin Amasa, says, how are you, my brother?

How are you doing? And then he takes that dagger and drives it into Amasa's body and kills him, murders his own cousin, his uncle's nephew.

As I said, you know, you wouldn't have picked that up in just reading the story. You wouldn't have realized that added layer of dimension that these two individuals,

Joab and Amasa, were cousins and that they were also the nephews of the king,

King David. So there is some good stuff in these genealogies, and it can be quite interesting.

So, you know, read skim through it, you know, but do so with your thinking cap on and be looking for things and you might be surprised by what you discover.

All right. Well, let's have a word of prayer. Father, do thank you today for your word and thank you for these good things that you give to us that give insight and add some color to these passages of Scripture.

Thank you for your word. Bless it to our hearts, we pray. We ask it in Jesus name for his sake.

Amen. All right. Have a wonderful weekend and hope to see you in God's house on the