Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Settling for Less? | The Writings | 1 Chronicles 17

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

What are you seeking out? Money? Success? Popularity? Is there more to life than that? Are there bigger gifts? In today's episode, Jensen looks at 1 Chronicles 17 and asks, "are you missing out on the amazement of God's promises?" 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 17

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. I took my son trick-or-treating this past year for the first time. And while my son gets plenty of chocolate in our house, it's mostly just dark chocolate chips or M&Ms, which means that he knows basically nothing about the world of candy. Which is why when he walked up to the first bowl of candy he was offered, a bowl that was brimming with full-sized Reese's peanut butter cups. My son looked in and he grabbed a singular mini-tutzy roll.

He must have really liked the way the tootsie roll looked because without fail, every chance he got, he came back with a tootsie roll. I mean no hate to the tutzy roll people out there, but a tootsie roll stands no chance against the apex of Halloween candy, the full-sized Reese's peanut butter cup. Now, my son had no idea what kind of riches he was being offered. He was just focused on the one thing he wanted.

He's a toddler with a one-track mind, unable to grasp that he was being offered so much more than a tootsie roll. Now, in First Chronicle 17, David, he wants a tootsie roll. It's not a bad thing that he wants. He wants to build God a temple so that his art. has a home. In fact, it's actually a good desire that David has, and when he runs it by the prophet Nathan, Nathan immediately affirms David, saying if he has the desire to do so, he should. Nathan's like me with Jude. If David wants the tootsie roll, he should take it. Tutsi rolls are good,

but God, in his infinite wisdom and goodness and generosity, doesn't let David settle for the Tudzi roll. See, God has another plan. Instead of allowing David to have the honor of building him a house for the Ark of the Covenant, metaphorically speaking, God takes the whole bowl of full-sized Reese's peanut butter cups and dumps it into David's pillowcase. What could be as good as a whole pillowcase full of Reese's peanut butter cups, you ask? Let's find out. Verse 10, I declare to you, that the Lord will build a house for you, David. When your days are over and you go to be with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you,

one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him, as I took it away from your predecessor. I will set him over my house and my king, kingdom forever. His throne will be established forever. So what we have here is a promise from God to David

that has a twofold meaning. First, God is promising to David that his son Solomon will reign on the throne of Israel and that it is his son who will build God a temple, not David. See, David is no stranger to the fact that he came to the throne because another line ended. Saul was removed from the throne. His son never reigned. David instead took his place. So you can imagine the comfort that David finds in knowing that his son will sit on the throne. But that isn't all. God promises that he will build David a house, and that through David's offspring, he will establish his throne forever, a never-ending dynasty. But how can that be? See, by the time the author of First Chronicles is writing down this account, Solomon, David's son, has been long dead. The nation of Israel has split in two and gone into exile.

There is no king on the throne. So why include this promise if the author knew that Solomon had not fulfilled it? He includes this promise because he knows what God is promising David is even bigger than what we can first imagine. See, this is the first promise of the coming of the Messianic king, the king who will be a representative of God's people, who will have eternal favor with God, who will rule and reign forever. And this king will be different than any other. Verse 14 says that God will set him over my house and my kingdom forever.

God's house being the temple and his kingdom being his authority over all the earth. See, this king would be a priestly king. Now from this promise we see a thread of hope woven throughout scripture, all pointing to the one who would come. In Jeremiah 33 we read this. The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah. In those days and at that time, I will make a righteous branch sprout from David's line. He will do what is just and right in the land. In those days, Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will live in safety.

This is the name by which it will be called, the Lord our righteous Savior. For this is what the Lord says, David will never fail to have a man sit on the throne of Israel, nor will the Levitical priests ever fail to have a man to stand before me continually to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to present sacrifices. So we're getting hints of who this king will be and what he will be like. The Messianic King will both reign with righteousness over the people of God, and he will in some way uphold the priestly duty of interceding on behalf of the people and their sin.

Zacharias 6 tells us this of the Messianic King. Here is the man whose name is the branch, and he will branch out from this place and build the temple of the Lord, It is he who will build the temple of the Lord and he will be clothed with majesty and will sit and rule on his throne and he will be a priest on his throne and there will be harmony between the two. So echoing God's promise made to David about Solomon being the one who would build the temple, here we learned that the messianic king will build a new temple of his own. Now if you remember, the author of First Chronicles is writing to a group of people living in exile.

The temple that Solomon has built has already been destroyed. No king sits on the throne. These people understand the things of this world are not secure. Kingdoms fall, buildings are destroyed. But the prophets continue to urge the people of God to remember the promise he made to David and to put their hope in this coming king who will be unlike any that came before.

Now from our vantage point, We know that the coming king who will establish David's line forever is Jesus. We can see how David, just wanting to honor the Lord by building him a temple, receives an even greater gift in this promise that God makes him to establish his dynasty forever. But I wonder if because we have the vantage point that we do, that we miss out on how incredible the fulfillment of these promises are. Imagine the hope this passage gave to those who sat in the middle of the story. The people of God kingless.

The people of God who witnessed the destruction of their physical temple. The people of God with only the promise that God would establish David's line with an everlasting kingdom. They hoped for so long. They waited for so long. And God was faithful. In John 219, Jesus tells us that He is the truth. temple, the place where heaven and earth intersect, where God and man can dwell together.

The book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is our great high priest. In its first chapter, we read that the sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. You see this coming king, the promised king that comes from the line of David, fully human, is able to be something that no other king before him could be. Saul, David, Solomon, they all failed as representatives, they all sinned. All their accomplishments crumbled, even the temple they built could not withstand wars and time.

But this king, King Jesus, was fully human and human. fully God, the exact representation of God's being, sustainer of all things, and because of this, he could be the temple, an everlasting temple, and through his death and resurrection, he provided purification for the sins of all of God's people. Through him, we find mercy and grace and confidence to approach the throne of God. Through him, we can live in a kingdom that will have no end with a king who is perfectly good, who will never fail, who will always reign. A king who loves us so deeply that he secured our righteousness, despite our unworthy hearts and evil deeds. We follow a good king, a king that was long hoped for, a king who has been

promised for thousands of years. See, David had no idea how God would fulfill his promise. He couldn't have known the expanse or the richness of the fulfillment of what God promised him. But even with such a small glimpse of the promise, David praised and thanked God, saying, there is no one like you, Lord, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears, and who is like your people, Israel, the one nation on earth whose God went out to redeem a people for himself, and to make a name for yourself and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations from before your people whom you redeemed from Egypt. You made your people Israel, your very own, forever, and you, Lord, have become their God. See, David saw himself rightly inside of God's bigger story. He knew that

God had been faithful in the past, and he knew that he would continue to be faithful. May we be like David. We know the promised king has come. We know that God has been faithful to his people. Let us praise him for his promises, praise him for his faithfulness, and recognize that he is the one who deserves all the glory and honor. And may we rest knowing that his promise to return, to resurrect his faithful people from the dead and to establish his kingdom for all of eternity, that promise is secure. He has said it and he will do it. Even as we wait in the messiness of the in-between, God is faithful. Jesus is on the throne. He is interceding for us and our salvation is secure in him. May we worship the God of all things who orchestrated this incredible story that is far greater than we could have ever imagined.