Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - God's Family Tree | The Writings | 1 Chronicles 1

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

What's it like to be a part of God's family? How do you become part of his family. 1 Chronicles 1 shares a peak into the twists and turns within the family history of the Bible. In today's episode, Tanya shares an important lesson from being in God's family. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 1 Chronicles 1

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. When we open up the pages of Chronicles, we start with a long list of names, and this may at first be a total turnoff. But when we look at those names, we find something that begins with Adam. A list that traces our lineage from the garden to the return from exile in the last chapter of the book.

And this is our family tree. It's a description of our family heritage, and it actually establishes our roots in the family of God. So when we re-chronicles, we get to encounter all the saints and centers that have come before us and remember who we are as God's people. Now, a lot of us have skipped right over chronicles, because in our modern Bibles, it's not only a list to begin with, but it comes right after Samuel and Kings, and it repeats a lot of content from those books. but in the Jewish Bible it comes at the end and it acts like a summary. We're not completely sure who the author is. Some say it could be Ezra, but it was written after the Hebrew people returned from exile

and the author had time to look around and see that things weren't going, as everyone hoped. See, after being released from Babylonian captivity, the people were beginning to assimilate back into the region known as Judah, the home of Jerusalem and the temple. except the temple still wasn't restored. It wasn't finished. The economy was sagging. The people were having to guard themselves against their pagan neighbors who were involved in idol worship. And there was just an overall lack of cynicism that what was hoped for hadn't come to fruition, even though the people

were no longer in exile. The author of Chronicles sets out to remedy the main problem with the people, and that is that they don't know God's law as it was given to Moses. They don't know who they are in the family tree. They need to be retaught and reminded of what God's word says about God and about them. The book begins at the beginning with Adam, and it traces two main lineages, the lineage of the Messianic King through David and the lineage of the royal priesthood.

And these lineages are going to remind the people to turn their hope away from the pagan gods and the idol worship knocking at their doors and look to the promise of a future messianic king and restored temple. Only with their hope placed in true things, can they overcome the overall malaise and discomfort they're facing in their day-to-day lives in their worship of God. What about us? What do we find when we open the pages of Chronicles?

Will we, too, find a spiritual history that gives us our bearers? Chapter 1 tells us who we are by taking us back to our roots. These are the people that we come from, a long list of men and women, saints and sinners that are connected to Christ by faith. And today we're going to look at three things that we get out of Chapter 1 in Chronicles. First, we find that we are grafted into the family. See, if we are in Christ, we rechronicles the same way we would read a family tree. We've become part of God. family, but it's not because of our blood, but because of the blood of Christ that makes us his own. This family tree, though, it's not like the one they print out in elementary school and have you

fill out with its straight trunk and beautiful branches and leaves. This is a gnarly, old olive tree, and the people whose names form its branches experience the same kind of temptation and frustration that we do. They're farmers and traders and shepherds and kings. and they are liars and adulterers and murderers. Isn't that kind of shocking? When you look at your own family tree, you might have your own share of shock or heartbreak. Maybe you've been mistreated or abused by a family member,

or maybe your tree is smaller than you like. Maybe you have someone back there that's kind of an embarrassment. Maybe you have people that have loved you dearly but aren't with you anymore. Chronicles reminds us that we've been grafted into God's family, and that's where we belong. Even though we're not perfect, and the people aren't perfect, God chose us to be his family. Paul tells us in Romans 1117, you, although a wild olive chute were grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree. Do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember, it is not you who support the root,

but the root who supports you. So you're grafted in a God's family. his root sustains you. There's a lot of comfort in knowing that what other people are doing or saying can't catch you off. God is the root who supports you. The next thing we learn is that we are not our own. Now we tend to think that being our own is better than belonging to someone else. But Chronicles reminds us that belonging to God is better than doing what everyone else is doing, either because we don't know God's way, or because we purposefully don't obey. Ephesians 414 describes how we're to be built up in the body of Christ, so that we may no longer be children who are tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of

doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth and love, we're to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ. So knowing our place in God's family, that's the anchor that keeps us from doing the things we don't want to do and believing the things that aren't true. Without this knowledge, we're vulnerable to lies and temptations that keep us searching for meaning and significance that will never be enough. And finally, in Chronicles Chapter 1, we can develop a deep sense of identity. If you're a parent, you want your kids to have an identity. that comes from being part of a loving and successful family, or I hope you do. But what they need is a far deeper identity that comes from being rooted in God's family. Let's talk about why. Just as our

earthly family has its share flaws, so does the family tree of God's people. But when our kids look at God's family tree, they will see that there is nothing that can separate them from the family of God. There's no sin they can commit that can disqualify them from God's family tree. We need to remember this for ourselves as well. What makes the family tree of God distinguishable is the grace of God that draws in sinners and makes them into saints, worthy of his love by the blood of Jesus. By God's grace, we're included with the people on this tree who don't find their home here. Yes, we have glimpses of what heaven will be like while we're here. We have people that make us laugh, we experience deep love, we have an absolute blast going to concerts and hiking mountains, and drinking amazing coffee and walking through museums.

But we're also like the people in Chronicles, wrestling with the deep knowledge that there's more to life than what we can squeeze out of our moments and our bank accounts. God saints face the reality that sorrow is around the corner. God's saints believe the truth that nothing we can buy will fix the hole in our hearts. God's saints live in a world that is still in exile, still waiting for something better. But this doesn't take away our hope. It actually gives hope its meaning. We hope because we know God is real in the moments that take us to the bottom. We hope because we see ourselves in a bigger story than what we feel right now. We hope because if our king suffered and died and rose to live for us at the right hand of God,

we know we will live with him one day too. Chronicles reminds us that God's saints don't have an easy life, and they're not perfect, but they're God's people, and they lived just like we do in the middle of a story that has a beautiful finish where they will be included. We could just have easily been included in a different story, but by God's grace he drew us to himself. He's at work in us making us more and more into his image every single day. Find your grounding in the deep sense of belonging that you have in God's family. Find your gratitude in being God's own child.

Find your peace in the gift of His Holy Presence that will never leave you.