SPEAKER_00: The New Testament and the end of the book of Galatians concludes with this term, the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: Peace be upon you and to all the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a very controversial phrase.
SPEAKER_00: How that is interpreted is in many ways, it's not the distinction between Presbyterians and Baptists, but it is one of the many verses that are handled differently.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to kind of make an argument tonight for the Baptistic understanding of that expression, the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to use 1 Chronicles 9 to do that.
SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned, 1 Chronicles 1 through 8 is the genealogy of the 12 tribes.
SPEAKER_00: There have been people that have returned from exile.
SPEAKER_00: So you need your overview of human history.
SPEAKER_00: When you go back to 1 Chronicles 1, this is how we started, that there was Adam, and there was the era of sin, of conscience, where God restrained sin by conscience, and that didn't go very well.
SPEAKER_00: That leads to the flood and Noah and the era of government, we called that.
SPEAKER_00: And then from the era of government became the era of promise that God spoke to Abram and called Abram out of the land of the Chaldeans and sent him on a journey.
SPEAKER_00: That led to the patriarchs Isaac and Jacob and the twelve tribes.
SPEAKER_00: They settled in Egypt, they grew to the millions, they then entered the promised lands, and this leads to the era of monarchy, David and his line, the line of Judah.
SPEAKER_00: That's 1 Chronicles 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: And 1 Chronicles 3 through 8 is the 12 tribes.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Jacob renamed Israel, had 12 sons.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph was split between two, Ephraim and Manasseh.
SPEAKER_00: So that becomes the 12 tribes.
SPEAKER_00: Levi didn't get any land.
SPEAKER_00: Dan doesn't come back from exile, so you still end up with 12 tribes as they come back into the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Underneath David's reign, of course, 10 of the tribes were taken away after David.
SPEAKER_00: The ten northern tribes go into Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: Judah and Benjamin, they're taken captive into Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: They spend 70 years there.
SPEAKER_00: This is the era of Daniel.
SPEAKER_00: This is the era of Esther.
SPEAKER_00: And those guys are gone now.
SPEAKER_00: And now the return back to Israel happens.
SPEAKER_00: So Cyrus was the king in Persia.
SPEAKER_00: He defeated Babylon and he lets the Israelites go back and rebuild the land.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the time period of Chronicles.
SPEAKER_00: That's when Chronicles is written.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're catching up to now.
SPEAKER_00: Son of Chronicles is going to go backwards and look at David again, but the genealogy is kind of coming to a conclusion here.
SPEAKER_00: We've gone from Adam through the air of nations and the twelve tribes and into Israel and David and back into exile.
SPEAKER_00: And now we're getting the people that come back from exile.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the point in verse 1 there.
SPEAKER_00: So all Israel was recorded in the genealogies.
SPEAKER_00: These are written in the book of the kings of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And Judah was taken into exile in Babylon because of their breach of faith.
SPEAKER_00: And so something you might miss just in this first verse here.
SPEAKER_00: You have Israel and Judah paired together.
SPEAKER_00: So the exile is over.
SPEAKER_00: If you know much about Israelite history, you know that the ten northern tribes, they don't come back.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they were, the Assyrians, when they took people captive, they intermarried with them and intermingled with them, made them all learn their language.
SPEAKER_00: There's no tribes to come back.
SPEAKER_00: But the Babylonians didn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: The Babylonians left their people as they were, and they're allowed to come back into exile.
SPEAKER_00: And so now there's the great mystery.
SPEAKER_00: How are you going to repopulate the land when the tribes are gone?
SPEAKER_00: Do you refer to the people back in the land as Judah?
SPEAKER_00: You know, Jerusalem is the capital of what nation?
SPEAKER_00: Is it Israel or is it Judah?
SPEAKER_00: And of course it's Israel today.
SPEAKER_00: And you're seeing that in chapter 9, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: This is after the exile.
SPEAKER_00: They're coming back, and it's described the book of the kings of Israel, and then specifically Judah into exile in Babylon because of their breach of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now, these are the people that are returning back after the exile.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to refer to them as the Israel of God, and we'll make some notes about them tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Life with the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: They come back because of Judah was taken in exile because of their breach of faith.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't honor the year of Jubilee.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't return the land back to their families that had it as they were supposed to by God, and so they were sent into captivity until their punishment was complete.
SPEAKER_00: But they begin to trickle back in in verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: The first to dwell again in their possessions in the cities were Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that word Israel again.
SPEAKER_00: The priests, the Levites, and the temple servants.
SPEAKER_00: Now it wasn't a trip to Orlando, coming back to Judah.
SPEAKER_00: Judah was destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the end of the book of Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: Every rock is turned over from each other.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing left.
SPEAKER_00: It is desolate.
SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah kind of tells the story somewhat humorously.
SPEAKER_00: It's sad.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the prophet Jeremiah is telling everybody to go into Israel, go or go into exile, go into exile, and they're like, no, no, we're staying.
SPEAKER_00: And God finally says, stay in.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, okay, we're going.
SPEAKER_00: And in the end of the book of Jeremiah, you know, they get a governor appointed from Babylon and they, you know, they murder him and then run over to Egypt of all places and hide in Egypt, and that's the end of the book of Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_00: It's sad and tragic.
SPEAKER_00: The point is there's nothing left.
SPEAKER_00: Even the foxes have reign over Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: When Nehemiah comes back to rebuild it, remember, that's what they tell Nehemiah, like, what are you guys doing, man?
SPEAKER_00: You're building your wall around your cute little city Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: That's adorable.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if a fox walks on your wall, it'll probably topple over.
SPEAKER_00: That's the people that are coming back.
SPEAKER_00: There's not a lot to go back to.
SPEAKER_00: If you've been to Jerusalem, you know it's isolated.
SPEAKER_00: It's up in the mountains, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: Don't picture rocky mountains, picture more like the Shenandoahs, but it's it's hemmed in.
SPEAKER_00: There's no river there.
SPEAKER_00: There's no highway that goes through there.
SPEAKER_00: It's not on the way to anything.
SPEAKER_00: You can't build a life there.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea.
SPEAKER_00: But that's where they head back to.
SPEAKER_00: They're not interested in building a life, they're interested in building a temple.
SPEAKER_00: And so leaving the wealth of Babylon, Babylon was rich and prosperous.
SPEAKER_00: Babylon was one of the wealthiest cities in the world.
SPEAKER_00: By the standards of the ancient Near East, Babylon was amazing.
SPEAKER_00: It had wealth and life.
SPEAKER_00: It was a thriving metropolis.
SPEAKER_00: And there were people from all over the world who came to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: You would want to stay there.
SPEAKER_00: You'd want to live there.
SPEAKER_00: That's where you could build a life.
SPEAKER_00: But now they're gonna go back into kind of exile from Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: You know, these people that are gonna come come back after exile, they are they were born in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: And this is all they've known.
SPEAKER_00: All they've known.
SPEAKER_00: I'm an exile from California.
SPEAKER_00: California is amazing.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why everyone in the world doesn't live in California.
SPEAKER_00: But my my kids don't don't know that.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is their world.
SPEAKER_00: They're Virginia kids, they've grown up.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I'll tell them stories about the beaches in in Los Angeles, and they're they're like, what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, the weather in LA, and like they don't have seasons, Dad.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing there.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing.
SPEAKER_00: This is the kids that have never been, never been to Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know what's there.
SPEAKER_00: But they're gonna pack up and move at great cost.
SPEAKER_00: So that'll be our first point, the cost of the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: They pack up and they move.
SPEAKER_00: And you get them from the twelve, from the tribes here, Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, Manasseh.
SPEAKER_00: They're moving back to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You start to get some names, and the names are gonna take you all the way back to the start of the 12 tribes.
SPEAKER_00: This is by far the most confusing genealogy in the book of 1 Chronicles, so I'm not gonna walk you through the name by name because it is a hot mess.
SPEAKER_00: You have they'll give you a name that is going back to the days of the 12 tribes, like back to Judah, and then it'll follow you forward, and then they'll give you a name that's present day, like the day of 1 Chronicles being written, and they'll trace his name by son of, son of, son of.
SPEAKER_00: So it's like a reverse genealogy.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I spent some time this afternoon trying to draw it out.
SPEAKER_00: It is just it is a hot mess.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so the people are coming back, is the point, and they can trace their lineage all the way back to uh to Jacob and Israel and the 12 tribes, and some of them are alive then, and they're gonna come back in the land.
SPEAKER_00: Uh verse six, the sons of Zerah and Jeul and their kidsmen, we've seen those names before.
SPEAKER_00: 690 of them come back.
SPEAKER_00: The Benjamites start to populate the land, they're bringing people back.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Ibn Ian, verse 8, the son of Jeharoam, Eliad, the son of Uzziah, Mikri, Meshalim, the son of Shapatiah, and the son of Ruel, and the son of Ibnajah, there's all these people that are coming back.
SPEAKER_00: Their names have been elsewhere in Chronicles.
SPEAKER_00: The kinsmen according to their generations.
SPEAKER_00: 956.
SPEAKER_00: These are small numbers, is the point.
SPEAKER_00: You're reading these.
SPEAKER_00: All these were heads of their fathers' houses according to their father's house.
SPEAKER_00: These were families that left.
SPEAKER_00: When you tally it all up, you know, it's it's a few thousand people.
SPEAKER_00: By the end of the book of Ezra, you get another genealogy at the end of the book of Ezra that's 16,000 people.
SPEAKER_00: 16,000 isn't huge.
SPEAKER_00: It's not tiny, I guess, but it's also not huge.
SPEAKER_00: It's a start, I suppose.
SPEAKER_00: These people are beleaguered, they're hopeful, and they're laboring to rebuild Israel back in the land.
SPEAKER_00: By the time of 1 Chronicles 9, it's been 90 years since Ezra chapter 1, if you're putting those two books together.
SPEAKER_00: It's been 20 years since Nehemiah chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: By the time of 1 Chronicles 9, the temple is done.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever they were building there was done.
SPEAKER_00: They all wept at how small it was, but it's done.
SPEAKER_00: But the population has dropped now to like 10,000.
SPEAKER_00: It starts with a few thousand, grows to 16, goes back down to 10.
SPEAKER_00: The city of Jerusalem is shrinking.
SPEAKER_00: When you think of Nehemiah, Sam Balat and Tobiah, they were attacking them from the inside, but they almost didn't need to attack them from the inside.
SPEAKER_00: They could have just waited them out.
SPEAKER_00: It's just normal attrition.
SPEAKER_00: You know, exiles came back.
SPEAKER_00: The people that would leave as exiles maybe aren't married.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them had families, but over time their kids go back to Babylon and they go off to college in Nineveh or wherever.
SPEAKER_00: And the population starts to drop again.
SPEAKER_00: Because it was a sacrifice to live there.
SPEAKER_00: It was a small town now.
SPEAKER_00: In the world with Nineveh and Babylon, this is a small, small town.
SPEAKER_00: Nehemiah 11 lets you know the names that I just read, they're all in Nehemiah 11 also.
SPEAKER_00: Let's you know that they were chosen by Lot.
SPEAKER_00: That changed the way you think about it a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: They're in Babylon, and Ezra says, We need, we need people.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to go.
SPEAKER_00: And so they do the lot to choose which families are going to pack up and move.
SPEAKER_00: The lot is another way of saying that God chose them.
SPEAKER_00: The lot is cast by man, but every decision is from the will of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So God chose these families to move back.
SPEAKER_00: They respond, of course.
SPEAKER_00: The ones that are listed here, certainly not every family that was chosen by lot came back, but a lot of them did.
SPEAKER_00: That's a wonderful picture of God's sovereignty, I think, that God chose them, and because they were chosen, they chose God back.
SPEAKER_00: At great cost themselves again.
SPEAKER_00: We don't draw lots anymore because, of course, the God's Spirit guides us.
SPEAKER_00: I think it'd be immature to draw lots now, but that's how they chose who would come back.
SPEAKER_00: And it works out to about the tenth of the population of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So in that sense, it's a tithe to God.
SPEAKER_00: When they came back and tried to rebuild Jerusalem, the people that came back, they didn't have religion, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: Commentaries say, you know, don't say they don't have religion.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they had they had some form of religion, but think they didn't have Levites, they didn't have priests, they didn't have a temple, they didn't have sacrifices, they didn't have the Sabbath, they didn't have their dietary restrictions, all the things that marked Israel, they don't have.
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem is in a heap of rubble.
SPEAKER_00: Remember Esther?
SPEAKER_00: What was her religion like?
SPEAKER_00: Does the word God even escape her lips?
SPEAKER_00: These are the people that are coming back.
SPEAKER_00: They're not coming back out of a devotion to Yahweh beyond the fact that they the lot was drawn.
SPEAKER_00: They're coming back with some kind of optimism that they can rebuild.
SPEAKER_00: Well, verses 1 through 9 tells you who lives in the city, and I just want you to appreciate all they left behind.
SPEAKER_00: Second, verses 10 forward kind of tells you why it matters.
SPEAKER_00: It's the worship of the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: Why did they have to go back to Jerusalem?
SPEAKER_00: Who cares about rebuilding Jerusalem?
SPEAKER_00: Even today it's relatively small compared to Tel Aviv or Ashkelon, or there's other cities in Israel that are, in a sense, bigger and more thriving.
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem doesn't even have an airport.
SPEAKER_00: You know, why are we rebuilding Jerusalem?
SPEAKER_00: And they're doing it because that's where worship is supposed to take place.
SPEAKER_00: And you see this beginning in verse 10 of the priests.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you remember Ezra chapter 1, this was the problem.
SPEAKER_00: They bring the people back chosen by Lot and they look around at the river and they're like, hello, the river uh Jordan.
SPEAKER_00: And they look around and they're like, hello, there's no priest.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody forgot to bring the priest, and that becomes a problem.
SPEAKER_00: Because they're trying to rebuild the temple and nobody brought a Levite with them.
SPEAKER_00: And so they got to send people back.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Ezra has to choose more Lots and send people back to Babylon and finally, this time find Levites and bring them back.
SPEAKER_00: It's a whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: We skip that here in 1 Chronicles.
SPEAKER_00: Here we just get the list of the priests.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not going to walk you through all these names because they're, again, this is the part of the genealogy that jumps back and forth.
SPEAKER_00: But there's some names you'll recognize.
SPEAKER_00: Zadok was the high priest under David's reign.
SPEAKER_00: Azariah, who's on this list, was the high priest under Solomon's reign.
SPEAKER_00: There's a second Zadok.
SPEAKER_00: I think in verse 11, he's the high priest under Hezekiah.
SPEAKER_00: Hilkiah is in this list.
SPEAKER_00: He was the high priest under Josiah.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a pedigree of people that were a high priest back then.
SPEAKER_00: And they're coming back.
SPEAKER_00: Priests, of course, are assigned to work in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Not every Levite was a priest that could work in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And so verses 11 through 13 give you a list of those that are assigned to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: You get 1,000, verse 13, 1,760 mighty men come back to work in the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: And now, verse 14, you get the Levites, the broader Levites.
SPEAKER_00: They're coming back.
SPEAKER_00: And you get them listed by names.
SPEAKER_00: These are going to populate all over the land of Israel, not just for Jerusalem, but to start to fill in the land of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: There are going to be synagogue leaders.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to assist in the worship, the teaching, and the music.
SPEAKER_00: There wasn't a synagogue system before exile.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and before exile, you were supposed to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You could offer your sacrifices where you were.
SPEAKER_00: There were priests where you were.
SPEAKER_00: But after exile is when they start this synagogue system, you get ten families together, we'll give you a Levite, boom.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a sense of it which it became kind of Mennonite, where you get ten families together and we'll draw a lot of somebody that can be the leader if we don't have a Levite around.
SPEAKER_00: That's what ended up happening.
SPEAKER_00: But this system is starting, and you see it's starting to start right here.
SPEAKER_00: The Levites are going to come back and repopulate Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to bring families around them, and you're going to start to worship Yahweh that way.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: You get gatekeepers.
SPEAKER_00: Why are gatekeepers important?
SPEAKER_00: Well, they're guarding the city.
SPEAKER_00: The gatekeepers are in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the gates are.
SPEAKER_00: The gatekeepers aren't out in, you know, you know, Gad or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: The gatekeepers are in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: They're there to defend the city.
SPEAKER_00: This is a key part of Nehemiah.
SPEAKER_00: We read gatekeepers now, and we're like, maybe you think of Monty Python's holy grail, where the gatekeepers are kind of asleep there.
SPEAKER_00: But no, these aren't sleeping guards.
SPEAKER_00: These are guards protecting the city.
SPEAKER_00: And in Nehemiah, the gatekeepers are building.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other, and they're building next to their house.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have the gates built yet.
SPEAKER_00: They're defensive people to help defend the worship of God.
SPEAKER_00: Because you've got the temple, what good is the temple if there's no fence around it?
SPEAKER_00: What good is the fence if there's no gates?
SPEAKER_00: And what good is the gate with no gatekeeper?
SPEAKER_00: So it's a way to defend the worship of God, regulating access to God's people.
SPEAKER_00: The crazy thing with gatekeepers is it was an inherited position.
SPEAKER_00: So by the time of exile, you could be a gatekeeper because your great-grandfather was a gatekeeper, and you pay somebody else to actually do the keeping of the gate, and you're getting money from the Levites as a gatekeeper, but you wouldn't keep a gate.
SPEAKER_00: You guys haven't kept a gate in generations.
SPEAKER_00: You're just passing on the privilege of being a gatekeeper to your kids, but you pay somebody else to actually do the gatekeeping.
SPEAKER_00: Well, after exile, they don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: They're going back to guarding the gates for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 28, forward, some of them had charge of the utensils of service.
SPEAKER_00: And they were required to count the utensils when they brought them in and took them out.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, the utensils is what was ransacked before and taken off to Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't count them, they sold them.
SPEAKER_00: Well, now they're back and they're keeping watch over them.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we care about the utensils again?
SPEAKER_00: For us, it's irrelevant.
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, it's like it's like the pulpit, you know, in our evangelical church, you've got a pulpit in the in the middle of it, you know, and you're starting to build a church, you need to bring a pulpit back.
SPEAKER_00: Well, their pulpits are made of gold, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And silver, and they would sell them, and that was not good.
SPEAKER_00: And now they're trying to rebuild their place of worship, and they're gonna keep track of where the pulpit is, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna keep track of where the censors are and where the basins are for all the sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they were used for.
SPEAKER_00: The sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: What they're doing here is they're rebuilding worship.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 32, they have people that are in charge of the showbread to prepare it every Sabbath for the Levites, and you would leave it before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They had the singers in verse 33, they're coming back.
SPEAKER_00: The heads of the houses of the Levites.
SPEAKER_00: They're brought in for temple worship, and they're going to be on duty day and night.
SPEAKER_00: So they're not coming back.
SPEAKER_00: When the pilgrims sent out on the Oregon Road or wherever the pilgrims said out, when they sent out to Plymouth Rock, to the colonies, they brought people to do the works.
SPEAKER_00: When they sent out on the Oregon Road, they brought people, they brought the blacksmith with them.
SPEAKER_00: They brought people to fill out every occupation as they went to take over the wild west.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what they're bringing with them.
SPEAKER_00: There's not blacksmiths, it's singers, it's priests, it's people to worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They're coming back as worshipers.
SPEAKER_00: That's why God is rebuilding Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Could they worship in Babylon?
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
SPEAKER_00: But how?
SPEAKER_00: This is what's behind Daniel throwing open his window and praying facing Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Daniel's in exile.
SPEAKER_00: He's, in a sense, lost out there.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know what's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: He thinks he's going to die before the return happens.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when the angel comes to him and tells him that the return is going to happen, he acts like he's dead.
SPEAKER_00: But he throws open his window and prays facing Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: That was their hope.
SPEAKER_00: Like, Lord, can't we get back to our place where we can worship you?
SPEAKER_00: Why did they have to be in Jerusalem to worship?
SPEAKER_00: That's the question.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's where the temple was.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the showbread was.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the Levites were supposed to be ministering.
SPEAKER_00: That was the place the Savior was going to come.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes all about the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem is the holy city because God sets his name on it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea.
SPEAKER_00: This list here proves to you that God kept his promise.
SPEAKER_00: He was going to rebuild people with a temple so that he can come visit them in his temple.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to have priests and the showbread and the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be there to be worshipped so that Israel can worship God through the temple.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the worship of the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: The chapter ends with an unexpected twist.
SPEAKER_00: As surprising as any plot twist in a genealogy can be.
SPEAKER_00: You have one here.
SPEAKER_00: It's the hope of the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 35, we pick up with Saul's family tree again.
SPEAKER_00: Saul, I thought we buried him in the last chapter.
SPEAKER_00: What's he doing back?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Saul stands in here.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to see his death next week, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: We get his genealogy again twice.
SPEAKER_00: We have practically more of Saul's genealogy than David's genealogy.
SPEAKER_00: And that's because he's in here as the warning or as the foil of true worship.
SPEAKER_00: There will be people in the promised land that want a king like themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They want to be like the other nations.
SPEAKER_00: They want Israel and Jerusalem to be a hub of trade like the other nations have.
SPEAKER_00: That is not how God designed them.
SPEAKER_00: He put them in a place of isolation.
SPEAKER_00: Where the highways come through his Napptali, Galilee, where Jesus is going to minister.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the highways come.
SPEAKER_00: That's where the nations come.
SPEAKER_00: That's where they export things.
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem was supposed to be isolated, but the Israelites didn't appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00: And they said, We want a king like the other nations.
SPEAKER_00: Give us a guy tall, dark, and handsome.
SPEAKER_00: And so they get Saul.
SPEAKER_00: God had promised Abram that the Savior would come through his line.
SPEAKER_00: Jacob said the Savior would come through his line.
SPEAKER_00: He put it in the tribe of Judah.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior would come through Judah.
SPEAKER_00: The priest will come through Levi.
SPEAKER_00: The Savior will come through Judah.
SPEAKER_00: Saul was from Benjamin, which is clinging to Judah, of course.
SPEAKER_00: But they elevated their own man as the king.
SPEAKER_00: And the tribes rallied around him.
SPEAKER_00: It's sad.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to look like everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: Saul was a king according to human demand.
SPEAKER_00: That was not the line of the promise.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're trying to trace the promise of God, the first promise comes to Adam in the garden, the Perdangelion, the first promise of the gospel is given to Adam that the Savior will come and crush the head of the devil.
SPEAKER_00: That promise goes through Noah, it goes through Abraham, it goes through Jacob, it goes through Judah, and then it goes through Saul, question mark, and this genealogy is here to show you that's a dead end.
SPEAKER_00: You know, in our neighborhood, where I live off of Cherokee, there's a parallel street off of Cherokee Seminole, and sometimes there's a school bus that will slow you down in Cherokee so you can dodge the neighborhood over to Seminole and get out that way.
SPEAKER_00: And mainly Christian high school students don't do that, just wait behind the school bus.
SPEAKER_00: But not every road connects over to Seminole.
SPEAKER_00: Some of those roads, and you can't see from Cherokee.
SPEAKER_00: You think it goes over?
SPEAKER_00: I see some of you nodding your heads.
SPEAKER_00: You've made this mistake before.
SPEAKER_00: You think it goes through, but then you get on top of the hill and, like, oh no, that's a dead end.
SPEAKER_00: Wrong turn.
SPEAKER_00: About facing back.
SPEAKER_00: That's how this genealogy is functioning.
SPEAKER_00: You think you're going to get to God's promise through Saul?
SPEAKER_00: It looks like it.
SPEAKER_00: He looks like the king.
SPEAKER_00: He's got the crown.
SPEAKER_00: He's beaten Philistines left and right.
SPEAKER_00: It's got to be him.
SPEAKER_00: It's a dead end.
SPEAKER_00: U-turn.
SPEAKER_00: Gotta come back.
SPEAKER_00: Saul's line dies.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that finishes off chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: Saul's family tree had a pedigree, but it didn't have the promise.
SPEAKER_00: They endured the same hardship as everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: You see in verse 39 that Kish Father Saul saw Father Jonathan.
SPEAKER_00: There's a covenantal promise there, but the line runs out.
SPEAKER_00: The promise of the Savior doesn't go through to them.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, really, by the time of Christ, all the tribes are so garbled.
SPEAKER_00: The concept of the tribes becomes more geographic than genealogical.
SPEAKER_00: When you see the tribes listed in Revelation, it's not that the people of you know Dan that are reconstituted in Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: It's more about the land they occupy than Dan DNA versus the other tribes DNA.
SPEAKER_00: You can't ferret that out.
SPEAKER_00: It's the geography.
SPEAKER_00: They're repopulating the land, is the idea.
SPEAKER_00: When they repopulate the land, it'll be with Jesus as the king.
SPEAKER_00: He's the savior.
SPEAKER_00: And so not all of Israel is true Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's the larger point.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm borrowing that expression from Romans 9, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: Not all who are descended from Israel, being the person there, the word descent means Israel, the person, belong to the true Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Not everyone who lived as part of the 12 tribes was a true covenant-keeping member of the true Israel.
SPEAKER_00: But those who are chosen by grace.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is true even inside of the line of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: Not every descendant of Abraham received the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Ishmael was the firstborn.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't get the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Lot was perhaps most beloved, and he didn't get the promise.
SPEAKER_00: The promise goes to Isaac.
SPEAKER_00: It's through him their offspring will be reckoned.
SPEAKER_00: Isaac has two kids, Jacob and Esau.
SPEAKER_00: The promise doesn't go through Esau.
SPEAKER_00: So that we learn not all of Israel is Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Esau's every bit is descended from Abraham as Isaac was, as Jacob was.
SPEAKER_00: But no.
SPEAKER_00: The promise goes to Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about being first, it's about being chosen by God.
SPEAKER_00: Now it goes to Jacob, but Jacob holds on to the promise.
SPEAKER_00: He puts his faith in the Lord, he wrestles the Lord and ends up submitting himself to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so inside of Israel, throughout the Old Testament, there's this remnant theology.
SPEAKER_00: Elijah says, Lord, take me away.
SPEAKER_00: There's nobody left.
SPEAKER_00: Remember what the Lord tells him, man, I got hundreds of you.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm using Elijah in a unique way, of course, but there are hundreds of others that haven't bowed the knee to Baal.
SPEAKER_00: Elisha is used in such a unique way by the Lord, but he's not in an island.
SPEAKER_00: God has always kept a remnant.
SPEAKER_00: And there's always the Israel, the true covenant-keeping people of God.
SPEAKER_00: Even here in exile, there were those that held on to the promise.
SPEAKER_00: They come back to worship God.
SPEAKER_00: And they come back waiting for the promise of the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: And when the Savior comes, he does export the gospel to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: But one of the nations is, of course, Israel.
SPEAKER_00: If the gospel goes to the nations, you have to ask yourself, is Israel one of the nations to whom it goes to?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is obviously yes.
SPEAKER_00: And if the gospel goes to the nation Israel, it follows then that some in Israel would believe.
SPEAKER_00: And those that believe are the true Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians 6, verse 15 through 16.
SPEAKER_00: Neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, circumcision was a sign pointing forward to the Savior who's coming by DNA, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00: He's coming by family line, by pedigree, by genealogy.
SPEAKER_00: Circumcision is a very graphic way of pointing towards the genealogy of the promise.
SPEAKER_00: It is passed down seminally and it goes to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Circumcision after Christ is no more, but that doesn't nullify Israel as God's covenant people in a sense.
SPEAKER_00: They're broken off as it relates to Christ because they rejected him, but they will eventually come to faith.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is now not passed down through circumcision or uncircumcision.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you're Jew or Gentile.
SPEAKER_00: It's passed down by faith, which by the way is why we baptize believers and not children, because it's no longer pointed forward to the covenant family being the propagating means of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The family is of God is passed down through saving faith.
SPEAKER_00: So circumcision doesn't count for anything, nor uncircumcision.
SPEAKER_00: Who cares?
SPEAKER_00: But as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone who follows the gospel has the peace of God on them.
SPEAKER_00: And inside of that big group is this subset, the Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews that have held on to the promise, that have put their faith in Christ coming, who will be the true temple, who trust God and belong to Christ and order their lives around him.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what Jesus does.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to Jerusalem, of course.
SPEAKER_00: He enters into Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He is the true temple.
SPEAKER_00: He comes in being the temple of God on earth.
SPEAKER_00: He comes in as the showbread.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Don't you know how David ate the showbread?
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't law for him for him to do that.
SPEAKER_00: And I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.
SPEAKER_00: He comes as the true priest.
SPEAKER_00: He sets aside the Levitical priesthood because he comes as a priest higher than Levi from the line of Melchizedek.
SPEAKER_00: So he is the true temple, he is the true priesthood, he is the true showbread.
SPEAKER_00: All of the things prophesied here in 1 Chronicles 9 find their fulfillment in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And as those who descend from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob place their faith in Christ, they become the true Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: Being the Israel of God has never been defined by proximity to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: It's always defined by proximity to the Lord and believing in his promise.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're grateful that the promise of Christ as a Savior has come to the world and it goes to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: We're here tonight, pretty far away from Jerusalem, yet the promise of Christ has come to us.
SPEAKER_00: And we believe.
SPEAKER_00: We think of the Jewish brothers and sisters that we have in the faith who descends biologically from Abraham, but also spiritually.
SPEAKER_00: They are the true Israel of God.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the promise goes Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, but ultimately through Christ to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: So we receive it by faith.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham is, of course, our forefather in the faith because he is our model of faith, the model of justification by faith, salvation by faith.
SPEAKER_00: So we are his children in that sense.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful for those who were his children in a dual sense.
SPEAKER_00: From him by blood and from him by faith.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful that Christ fulfills all of these promises.
SPEAKER_00: We look forward to the day when he will return to earth with the new temple reigning over the nations from the new temple in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Until that day, Lord, strengthen our faith.
SPEAKER_00: We know when he comes, we will come with him, and so we long for that day.
SPEAKER_00: We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.