#547 1 Summation of Chronicles

The Chronicles are written in the time after the Babylonian exile, and they are giving a history to the Jews, who are returning to Israel. It's important that they know how they came to exist as a nation, their ancestry, but also how they should conduct themselves because of this. God uses this small place on the map, a man, Abraham, who he pulls out from all of fallen humanity, to be the start of this line which will come to fruition in the Son of David, redemption. A lot of this focuses on the reign of David, which for one reading the Bible as a story or only a partial history, they could miss so much of the spiritual, redemptive and prophetic nature of all the Old Testament books. 

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Romans 14:4

Some of the passages retell or give more light to sister passages in other books and vice versa. It is important that they go over this again, collect their history again, know why they were established as a nation, why David's reign is so significant, and how did we fall away? The significance of their tribal unification, being brought out of Egypt and still yet preserved, even after their apostasy, in Babylon, cannot be for the sake of their mere existence. God is not a respecter of persons, and He will have obedience rather than sacrifice. Christ says He can raise up children to Abraham from the rocks, and it is never against God's dignity to punish and oppose those that He has called His people. If we think God will preserve us for some inherent good in us, birthright or proclamation, it's not the size of a nation, the wealth of it's treasury or extent of it's borders that makes them relevant to God. He created it all, many nations will rise to power and fall to ruin, but for all of David's faults, which much was overlooked here, he was a man after God's own heart. God calls us to repent, to turn away from our sin, which is death. Is your heart affected in that way, can you see this yet, the first part of the gospel, that in Adam, all have died. 

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 1 Corinthians 15: 20-22

Once you were alienated from God and were hostile in your minds because of your evil deeds. 22But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy,unblemished, and blameless in His presence— 23if indeed you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope of the gospel you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.…Colossians 1: 21-23

Chronicles develops the government and religion that establish the rule of law and heart, kings and priest. Men preside in all these offices and while God cannot be wrong, men find it all too easy. God punishes His people even at the risk of being mocked by those looking from outside, for whom the Lord loveth, He chaseneth. This is remarkable in David's reign, it hurts him more that God is not honored, and David chooses to point at his own heart, his own sin, rather than look for another. He is in awe of God's grace, disgusted by his own lack of merit and grateful to God for the opportunity to serve Him. "Who am I and what are these people?" Israel, the nation, the tangible, historical place on the Mediterranean, is brought up, enlarged and broken down time and again, but each time there is a remnant, and there is even to this day a spiritual Israel, her numbers ever growing in the time of the gentiles. 

Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:

7 Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. Romans 9: 6-7