A sermon on 1 Chronicles 1–9, exploring how genealogies restore hope to discouraged believers
A sermon from the Latimer: Listen channel on how the opening nine chapters of 1 Chronicles address spiritual discouragement by grounding hope in God's character and faithfulness across history.
Summary
Preached in the Latimer: Listen series, this sermon takes the genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1–9 as its primary text, arguing that these chapters were written to a post-exilic community around 450–400 BC whose hope had drained away after returning from Babylon to find God's promises apparently unfulfilled. Five truths embedded in the genealogies are identified as the remedy: the scale of God, the grace of God, the provision of God, the plan of God, and the faithfulness of God. These same truths, the preacher contends, are what contemporary Christians need to resist the drift toward living for this world rather than the world to come.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Can Christians Lose Hope?
Preacher: Let me ask you: is it possible for Christians to lose hope? We know that Christians can't lose their salvation, but can they lose their hope? Well, I'll tell you, it happens. Maybe it happens because of personal issues — chronic health issues, heartbreaking disappointments, feeling let down by others. Maybe because life, for whatever reason, just becomes too difficult, and we can begin to feel that life will never change. And we can find our hope just draining away.
Spiritually, we can lose hope. Maybe because we don't see those who are close to us showing any spiritual interest. And in the end, that lack of interest can chip, chip, chip away at our own faith, and we kind of lose the will because no one else seems to be interested either.
It's very easy to lose real hope. We may keep our faith, but it will be a watered-down faith. It'll be a faith lacking conviction. It'll be a faith that is powerless to change us. It'll be a faith that leaves us dangerously close to just being like everyone else around. Because if you don't find your hope in the living God, if you are not excited about joining him one day in the new creation, you will start living like everyone else does — for this world, now. That's what happens when Christians lose their hope. They stop living for the life of the world to come and they become just like everybody else, with their priorities here and now, dropping anchor into this world.
The Historical Context: Return from Exile
Well, that was the danger that God's people were in when they came back from exile in Babylon in the year 538 BC. For fifty years they had suffered a fate that they never thought was possible. It was inconceivable to them that God would allow his own nation to be invaded and taken into captivity. How could he? Were they not God's chosen people? How could it be that God would ever allow Israel to be invaded? But in the year 597, and then ten years later, the Babylonian tanks rolled into Jerusalem and knocked it over, and the unthinkable happened.
You've heard of Daniel — Daniel and the lion's den. Well, he was one of those people taken off into exile in Babylon. You've heard of the hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the world. That's what that empire created under Nebuchadnezzar. And now, even on return fifty years later, these believers found themselves to be just a minority grouping in a world that seemed so different. Yes, they're back in Jerusalem, but now they are just one part of a vast Persian empire — without the kind of temple that they had had before, without perhaps the sense that God was with them as he had been before.
And by the time that Chronicles was written — probably about a hundred years later, so somewhere between 450 and 400 BC — all hope had drained from them. The temple had not been rebuilt as they'd hoped it would be. God's kingdom had not been re-established. God's promises had not been fulfilled. And to all intents and purposes, therefore, it looked as if God's word had failed, and that this remnant of people was all that was left.
What Chronicles Is and Why It Was Written
It's really into this situation — this dark situation — that the book of Chronicles, originally one book but in our Bibles two books, 1 and 2 Chronicles, came to be written. Although in our Bibles it's placed next to Samuel and Kings because it's seen as the third part of the great history books of the Old Testament, in truth it was written sometime later than those. In fact, it was one of the last books of the Old Testament to be written — more in the time, let's say, of Ezra and Nehemiah, hence somewhere between 450 and 400 BC probably.
The significance of that is that the people of God are now arguably at their low point. They've been absolutely hammered in exile. They've come back with some faint hopes, and those hopes have not been realised. Now they find that this is normal life — life with them on the outside as a minority grouping. They find themselves without identity and without hope.
What is it that believers need to hear in this situation to restore hope? Well, what we're going to see in 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles is that from one point of view, the chronicler tells them their history — how it is that they fit into what has come before, that they are not marooned or isolated now, but that they are the latest in a long line of people through whom God has been working. But as the chronicler does this, it turns out he's not just the chronicler of their history, but of God's history. He's not just their chronicler, but he is God's chronicler. That is reminding them of what God is like as he charts the history of God's people.
Because this is what God's people need to remember: that our hope for the future is not rooted in our current situation — whether that's good or bad, easy or difficult. It's not rooted in what we can see around us, which might be full of problems. If you look at the world around, you get a very mixed picture of what God is like from that world. No, what we need to be told, what we need to remember, is that our hope for the future is rooted in what God has done in the past. For what he has done in the past, we are now the beneficiaries of, and we are the latest link in that chain by which God is working through history.
Why Genealogies? Identity Through Lineage
And that leads us to these first nine chapters — chapters that might seem absolutely impenetrable to the modern reader. I mean, someone walking in today to church and this is the first thing that comes across — what? This is what people spend their Sunday mornings doing, reading lists of names? It seems so strange. But maybe that's because we tend not to read history this way.
If you're a white Westerner, you're probably doing well if you know the names of your great-grandparents. Let's do a little test. Who here can name their great-grandparents? Yes, a few people, but not very many. Because we're not really connected back up the line. But other cultures, of course, locate their identity from tracing back through many generations.
You think most obviously of Māori people tracing back the whakapapa. And I don't know if this is standard practice — you may be able to inform me afterwards — but when I spoke to a young Māori fellow, a very impressive young man, and asked him about his lineage, he didn't start as many of us would with himself and his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. He went the other way and showed me on his arm tattoos which represented fourteen generations, beginning at the fourteenth generation and then the thirteenth and then the twelfth, ending up with his grandparents and then parents and then him. The effect of which is to say: the significance of where you have come from, of those who have gone before.
Well, that's what the chronicler is doing here — helping the people to trace their identity. And as he does, the people are reminded of five truths, critical truths about God that they need to keep in mind. And we need to keep in mind too, if we are to maintain a lively and vigorous hope.
Truth One: Remember the Scale of God
Preacher: These are the truths that we need to remember. First of all, remember the scale of God.
To those Israelites now settled back in the land for over a hundred years, God, if he existed at all, must have seemed very, very small. There are relatively few of them there, most certainly vastly outnumbered by those around them. And is the living God, the God of Israel — is he therefore just the God of a few people? Some people might think so. He's the God of small potatoes, a few believers here and a few there.
But the genealogy tells a very different story. The genealogy traces the history of people from Adam right through to Saul — in other words, all-encompassing. Just have a look down at chapter 1 and that very first word. There's no other introduction. The first word: Adam. It speaks of the global scope of God. The God of Israel is the God of the whole earth. He is the God who created every single person — who created you this morning and your family and everyone that we have ever met. And his plans, therefore, would extend across the whole earth.
We read up to verse 27, reminded there of Abraham. And in our first reading this morning, we were reminded of the promises that God had made to Abraham all those years before the chronicler is writing. And what did God say in one of those promises? That the whole world would be blessed through Abraham. These would not be small plans, in other words, but big plans, because he is a big God.
And again, you see this in different ways within the genealogy. One of the ways you see this is that there's a great emphasis in the genealogy that all Israel will be included. You may know the story that earlier in Israel's history, around 922 BC, the kingdom had split into two. You get the ten northern tribes and the two southern tribes of Judah, and they'd really become sworn enemies. The northern tribes were known as Samaritans. If you remember Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman, we're told in the book of John that Jews don't speak to Samaritans. Well, that's because they're from the northern tribes — they'd intermarried, and the southern people thought they'd sort of gone off the rails. Well, what you see here, although he's definitely talking to the southern kingdom and the people there, in the genealogy he includes both, to show that God is the God of all of Israel and the world beyond.
So, for example, in chapter 6, it's all about the Levites — the most high-profile Israelites who served in the temple. But in chapter 7, you get representatives from six of the northern tribes, much less well-known. In other words, no one's forgotten here. God has a plan, and it's a big plan. The scale is big.
And that's so important for us to remember as well. It may be that naturally some of us count ourselves out of God's plans. I think many people are like that. They can't imagine that God would have any interest in them. But here we see that God has a very great interest in every person in this world. The fact that he names them individually shows that his interest is for every person, because the people here are representative of even a far greater number. If God has an interest in everyone, it should reaffirm to us that he has an interest in you individually. And you're here this morning because God wanted you to be here. Whatever reason you had for coming along this morning, in God's mind, it was because he wanted you to hear this message.
And for Christians, we need to remember God's scale. At times, our Christian community might seem quite small. The average size of a church in America — you hear all about the megachurch and all of that — but the average size of a church in America is under fifty. We're made up of small churches. But don't make the mistake of thinking, therefore, that God has small plans. Not at all. His plans are big. So even if we are the only Christian in our class at school, or the only Christian in our workplace, or the only Christian in our family, don't make the mistake of thinking that God's plans are small. His plans are global. He's not just dabbling with a few individuals. His plans are worldwide. His promises are big. And one day when we see him in heaven, we will see that he is more majestic and the people of God more numerous — there'll be so many people there, too many to count — because his scale is big.
Remember the scale of God.
Truth Two: Remember the Grace of God
Then secondly, remember the grace of God.
There was a reason why the southern kingdom ended up in Babylon, and the chronicler himself is not shy of reminding them. He tells them in chapter 9, verse 1 — if you have a look. Chapter 9, verse 1: All Israel was listed in the genealogies recorded in the book of the kings of Israel. The people of Judah were taken captive to Babylon because of their unfaithfulness. It was true the people had sinned, and that was why God brought the Babylonians in to conquer them.
But the point was that these believers who had now come back from Babylon to Jerusalem were not to be defined by their past, by their sins. They were to move on by the grace of God. I think it was C.S. Lewis who said that a good story leaves things where it did not find them. That's what a story does — it moves on. And here the chronicler finds them in exile, but by the end of 2 Chronicles, it leaves the people regathered in Jerusalem.
Now, I'll just show you one tiny example of this. If you turn to chapter 4, verse 18, you might sort of skate over this when you first read it, but we read here that his — talking about Mered — his Judean wife gave birth to Jared the father of Gedor, Heber the father of Socho, and Jekuthiel the father of Zanoah. These were the children of Pharaoh's daughter Bithiah, whom Mered had married.
So what's going on here? There's been an intermarriage — an intermarriage between Mered, who's Jewish, and this wife Bithiah, who we read here is Pharaoh's daughter. Pharaoh from Egypt. You might expect her and her family to be sworn enemies of the people of God. And in one sense, they were. But here, Bithiah has been included in the account of God's people. In fact, it seems that she may have changed her name, because her name literally means "daughter of Yahweh." In other words, from her bloodline, yes, she's come down through Pharaoh's daughter — she knows nothing of the living God. But somewhere along the line, she has come to hear of him and believe in him. She has become one of the people of God herself.
And all through the Chronicles, we'll see an open-mindedness of the chronicler that by God's grace, anyone can be included. And that teaches us a very important truth as well — that any of us can be included. In fact, that anyone we ever meet can be included, if they come to faith in Jesus Christ.
God is so different from how we might think of him. Often in the way that we relate to people, we can put up with them — everyone's got their tolerance level. But if someone goes beyond a certain point, we just can't cope anymore, and the relationship falls apart. That's where cancel culture kind of comes from. And people often think that God is like that — that if you sin in some obvious way, some terrible way, some drastic way, obviously you've gone too far for God. That's how many people think.
But here we read of the God of grace, who doesn't ignore our sins — in fact, he had to punish them for that — but who enables them to move on from them, not to be defined by their past. Isn't that a wonderful thing? That our futures don't have to be linked to our past. We can do all kinds of things in life in the past, but when we come across the grace of Christ, it actually changes a person into the future. We don't have to be the same person as we were before. And those that we marry and the families that might come from us can be different as well. We might have been part of a family that really had some terrible things happen in it — if you like, a spiral going down. But by the grace of Christ, a spiral that goes down can also become a spiral that goes up. And we can begin to be part of that changed generation where the grace of Christ is seen.
In fact, later on in the book, we're going to see some surprising omissions. There's going to be a lot on King David, but interestingly, nothing on Bathsheba. There's going to be a lot on Solomon, but nothing about his heart going after foreign women. Not, I think, because the chronicler didn't know about these things, but because they're actually not as important to him as the God of grace who can forgive such sins.
So I wonder if you know that grace in your own life. Do you know the God who can forgive and the God who can set us on a different path? Remember the grace of God.
Truth Three: Remember the Provision of God
Then thirdly, remember the provision of God — the generous provision of God.
This takes us to some of the prayers within the book of Chronicles. And Chronicles has some of the great prayers of the Bible within it, teaching the people — whose confidence was perhaps at a low ebb — that God has not abandoned his people. Rather, his eyes were attentive to see them in their current situation, and his ears were open to hearing from them. And we need to know exactly the same in our day, that God is the God who provides if only we pray to him.
Take, for example, this man Jabez in chapter 4. Why don't you turn to chapter 4, verse 9. We read of Jabez — we're told that he was more honourable than his brothers, but it seemed he didn't have a good start in life. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, "I gave birth to him in pain." Not sure how there's another way of giving birth, but clearly he didn't have a good start in life.
And Jabez cried out to the God of Israel: "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain."
It's clear that for some reason or other, Jabez expects a difficult life ahead. It seems to be the life that he's born into. It's very important that people understand that God doesn't treat everyone the same. If you think he does, you'll be permanently confused in life. God gives to some good health, to some ill health. To some he gives wealth, to some poverty. To some he gives one gift, to others another. To some he gives intelligence, to others not so much. And so on and so forth. God treats people differently.
Well, here, Jabez has a difficult set of cards to deal with. But as he deals with them, you notice what he does — he cries out to the God of Israel. He prays. He finds his help from outside of himself. In our culture, we find all the time the message to stand on your own two feet, find your resources from within. Here, no — find your resources from without. He prays to God. He knows that God is the God who will provide. And so in line with God's covenantal promise to give an inheritance, he says, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory" — in other words, that he would have a super inheritance to help him through this life. "Let your hand be with me and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain."
Now, famously, this prayer was used some years ago as a template for prayer. I don't know if you ever came across a little book by a man called Bruce Wilkinson that was quite helpful in alerting people to this little-known prayer. The trouble was that it made a template for Christians to pray, ignoring the fact that we live under a different covenant — where God's promises are not given in physical terms as they were in the old covenant, but much more in the new covenant in spiritual terms. So Jabez praying for his territory to be enlarged is a little bit different from us praying, for example, that our small business might be enlarged.
I remember once talking with a woman who was visiting church, explaining how her motel business had collapsed. And then she said, "Well, where was God then?" — as if God had somehow promised that this business would grow. Well, he never did. But what he has promised is that those who trust in him would gain an inheritance from him. And the prayer of Jabez teaches us that God wants to bless his people with an inheritance. And so we are wise if we pray that we will persevere in faith to gain this. And that God perhaps would enlarge our appreciation of what he's going to give us. And that God would help us to store up our treasure in heaven to maximise this inheritance.
Now, people don't like commercial words when you talk about God, but Jesus makes clear: store up treasure in heaven. You want a bigger inheritance? Live for him on earth. So why don't we pray that God would give us the faith to do that?
Or in chapter 5, there's this wonderful section — we barely have time to look at it — between verses 18 and 22. It's just a great section where two and a half tribes wage war against the enemies of God, and the odds are stacked against them, but they come out on the right side. And why does it all work out well? Verse 20: God hands their enemies over to them because they cried out to him during the battle. He answered their prayers because they trusted in him.
So pray — pray that God will help you in the Christian life to grow and to live for him and to fight against our enemies of sin and Satan, who is always against us. We read here that they seized an extraordinary amount of livestock — fifty thousand camels, two hundred and fifty thousand sheep, two thousand donkeys. Who wouldn't want a couple of thousand donkeys? And they took a hundred thousand people captive, and many others fell slain. Why? Verse 22: because the battle was God's. They realised they were part of a spiritual battle, and the battle was God's.
And so Christians are wise when we remember that God is the God who provides. What we need to do is pray to him. Remember how Jesus taught us to do that? To pray that his name would be hallowed — that we'd honour him. Honour him when we're part of a group where no one else is a Christian. Honour him when we're facing difficult circumstances in life. And to pray that his kingdom would come — that he would add to the number of those who were being saved and build up his people. Rather than us being concerned about our own little kingdoms, which are really not very significant in the grand scheme of things, let's pray that his kingdom would grow.
Remember the provision of God.
Truth Four: Remember the Plan of God
Then fourthly, remember the plan of God.
Right at the heart of the genealogy — in fact, as we'll see, at the heart of the whole book of Chronicles — is the kingship which God had installed in Israel. Once we get past the genealogies, the rest of Chronicles falls into three sections: first, speaking about David, that second great king of Israel; then Solomon; and then all the other kings of the southern kingdom.
And here is a major theme: because God had promised he would install a king on his throne who would reign forever — one who would be in the line of David — all these other kings, David included, are significant because they are preludes, or types, of the one to come. The great king who one day would come. In other words, God has a plan. And the emphasis on kingship within Chronicles shows he is committed to this plan — for his king to rule forever over this whole world. A plan which would find its fulfilment, of course, in the coming of Jesus.
Jesus, David's greater son, who would show his kingship by his power over evil — the way that Jesus could meet someone and cast out evil. Jesus, who would show his kingship over the broken pieces of this world, putting them back together again — able to heal people, able to heal the lame, able to give sight to the blind, able to heal the deaf. He shows he is the king who is able to roll back the effects of the fall and restore things to how they should be. The king who one day will be able to raise us from the dead if we put our faith in him.
For the readers of Chronicles, this all seemed hopelessly distant. As they came back to Judah and set up shop there, there was no kingdom anymore. The line of kings petered out with Zedekiah, who was the last king before the Babylonian invasion. For them, it seemed hopeless. They're now a hundred years further on. There's no king in sight, so far off any completion.
I think we can relate to that, can't we? It doesn't seem as if Jesus is about to return and set up his kingdom forever. It doesn't sort of feel that way. I mean, goodness sakes, you look at the headlines every day and this world seems like an absolute basket case getting worse and worse. Why is there all the suffering in the world? Well, the answer is because the rule of the king has not yet been fully established. And we can easily lose hope that anything will ever change.
But the genealogy should have reminded the people that God had a plan — a plan that is on time and on budget, which he would fulfil. A plan to establish a perfect and supremely powerful king who would reign forever.
And so within chapters 1 to 9, the biggest portion of the genealogy is all about the line of Judah. Why? Because it's from Judah that the king would come. Genesis 49, verse 10 promised that from Judah the sceptre would never depart — in other words, the king would come from the line of Judah. And so from chapter 2, verse 1 through to chapter 4, verse 23, it's all to do with the line of Judah. Judah gets the most airtime. Coincidence? No — teaching us a lesson that God is committed to this line of kings, which would issue one day in the great king who one day would come.
The chronicler therefore shows that God's plan has not fallen to the ground. And we need to remember that, though life is sometimes unremarkable and every week sort of follows on from the next and it feels as if nothing ever changes — one day soon, bang, it will change. Jesus will return and be installed as God's king. And the wise people in this world are therefore people who make him the king of their life now, submit to him and live for him.
Remember the plan of God.
Truth Five: Remember the Faithfulness of God
And then lastly, remember the faithfulness of God.
Stepping out from the details of these nine chapters, of which there are many — what do they tell us above all? They remind us that God is faithful. The descendants of those who had lived through the exile may have felt small in number and distant from the ancient promises of God. But these genealogies connect them right back in. It's like a continuation — it's a sample of the book of life itself, coming down from Adam, down through over the years and over the centuries, connecting those in the present with what has gone before.
And the chronicler ties their future success to the full scope of history, reassuring Judah's banished generation that God was not finished with them yet — that his redemptive story was still in motion, because his was a faithful love. His was a covenantal love that would transcend any one individual generation, to prove itself one day in the fulfilling of his promises.
And maybe significantly, although in our Bibles Chronicles is very much stuck in the middle of the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible originally, Chronicles was the last book of the Old Testament. In other words, that meant there was only one page between what had been written in Chronicles and the next genealogy — the genealogy that would finish with Jesus, who is called Christ, in Matthew chapter 1.
The original readers, of course, did not know that Jesus would appear in a relatively short time after them. They wouldn't live to see his amazing life and his powerful deeds, his sacrificial death and his triumphant resurrection, his ascension as the Lord of all. They wouldn't get to see the work of his Spirit in the great missionary endeavours carrying the gospel and his name to the ends of the earth. What they needed to know in their generation was that they were still part of God's story — a story in which God was yet to bring the final chapter. In other words, they needed to persevere, because God is faithful.
Chapters 1 to 9 proved that he had not given up. And not too long after this, his promises would come into full flower. All of which is a reminder to us that we should not give up either.
Now is not the time to take your foot off the pedal in the Christian life. Now is not the time to slip away from the people of God. Why does that happen? Well, it tends to happen because we lose our hope in the life of the world to come, and we drop anchor into this world. And Chronicles reminds us not to do that. God is alive and well and will soon fulfil the final chapter — the final chapter when Jesus Christ returns to this world.
And when Jesus does return to this world, there is only one question that you and I will be interested in, and that he will be interested in: did we have our faith in him? Were we looking forward? One of the defining marks of the Christian in the New Testament is that we are awaiting people — waiting patiently and earnestly for the return of Jesus. And Chronicles reminds us that we need to keep on waiting patiently, because God is a faithful God who always delivers what he has promised.
Closing Prayer
Let's pray together.
Dear God in heaven, we praise you and thank you. We thank you for the scale of your plans, because you are an amazing, big, and powerful God, able to save people from across the world. We praise you for your grace, for your provision. We praise you for your promises and plans. We thank you that you are faithful to fulfil those. So we simply ask this morning that you would help us to be faithful as well. Please help us to keep believing in the promises of Jesus. Help us to look forward to the day when he will return. We ask in Jesus' name.