“Promise of Kings” – FBC Morning Light (6/21/2023)

Well, a good Wednesday morning to you. Today in our Bible reading plan, we're starting a new book in the Old Testament, 1

Chronicles chapters 1 and 2. We're also reading Romans 6 and Psalm 119 verses 33 through 40.

In a moment, I want to focus on a part of the end of 1

Chronicles chapter 1. Now that, by the way, book of the Bible is one that is, shall we say, not one of most

Bible readers' favorite books of the Bible. There's a lot of passages that are just genealogies and lists of names and so forth, and for us

Westerners, it can be kind of tedious. Well, hopefully we can find some nuggets of gold in these passages of Scripture, and I hope today will be one of those.

But before we look at that, I want to go back to the Abrahamic covenant, all the way back in Genesis, and the first occurrence of that is in chapter 12, when the

Lord comes to Abram when he's still in Ur, the Chaldees, and he says, I'm going to make you a great nation, your name is going to be great, you'll be a blessing, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

I'm going to make you a great nation. He reiterates this covenant in chapter 15, when the

Lord takes Abram still out at nighttime, tells him to look up at the stars and count them, if he possibly could.

He says, so shall your descendants be. You're going to have descendants that are as numerous as the stars in the heavens.

You won't be able to count them, is the point. Then in chapter 17, when the

Lord comes to Abram and changes his name from Abram to Abraham, he reiterates this covenant again, and he adds another layer of promise to it.

Listen to what it says, he says, no longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called

Abraham. For I have made you a father of many nations, and I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.

Kings shall come from you. Well, who was the recipient of that Abrahamic covenant?

Through whom was this covenant to come? Well, it was to come through Isaac, and then

Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. And the primary promise of the covenant was to come through Jacob.

Jacob was the one in whose line all the nations of the earth were going to be blessed, in the person of Jesus Christ, and the fulfillment of this great promise.

So Jacob was to be the one who is the primary channel through whom the

Abrahamic covenant would come. And so, is the birthright and the blessing are given to Jacob, the descendants of Jacob would rightly conclude that this promise to Abraham is going to come through us.

We're the ones that are going to receive the land of promise. We're the ones that are going to have a bunch of kings.

We're the ones through whom all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed, and this would be a reasonable expectation.

But then, here's where we come to 1 Chronicles chapter 1, in the end of the chapter, because verse 43 says this, these were the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before a king reigned over the children of Israel.

You get the contrast? These were the kings in the land of Edom before there was even a king over Israel.

Why is that significant? Because you remember that Edom is the nation built by Esau, the brother of Jacob, and Esau's descendants are called the

Edomites. And so, here's the thing. These descendants of Esau, who is not the channel through whom the

Abrahamic promise is given, that it is the descendants of Esau that have all these kings, and the descendants of Jacob, there's not even a king on the throne.

So, I want you to think about that. If you were one of these descendants of Jacob, living in the time period of this passage of Scripture, where they've seen king after king come and go over the

Edomites, and yet we're not even numerous and populous enough to even have our own land yet, to have our own nation, let alone to have a king.

Is this promise ever going to be fulfilled? Certainly, on one level, you could look at that and say, well, that promise to Abraham has been fulfilled because of all these kings.

I mean, after all, Esau is a descendant of Abraham through Isaac.

Yes, indeed, that is true, and it'd be one way to look at it. But certainly, the primary promise of this

Abrahamic covenant is to come through Jacob, and from him are going to become a number of kings that's going to ultimately climax in the

King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the primary fulfillment of all of this

Abrahamic promise. But in the time of the

Edomites and the descendants of Jacob, looking at all their kings and their having none, they could wonder, will

God's promise ever come to pass? Will it ever come true? Have you ever wondered that yourself?

You read the promises of God, you say, well, I read that, but how will that ever happen?

When will that ever happen? I think one of the conclusions we can draw from this simple little verse in 1

Chronicles chapter 1 is that God fulfills his promises in his time and in his way, and we can count on that.

Our Father and our God, we do thank you today for your promises and the certainty of their fulfillment.

May we not lose our hope and our trust simply because the way those promises are fulfilled don't come our way or in our time.

Let's count on him, Father. Help us to count on him, and be faithful to you in the meantime. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.