Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Uncovering the Bible's Easter Eggs | The Writings | 1 Chronicles 2-9

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

You might be quick to skip over genealogies in the Bible. Maybe you think they're tedious, confusing, or irrelevant. In today's episode, Jensen looks at the genealogy in 1 Chronicles 2-9 to discover what it reveals about 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 2-9

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 would venture to guess that if you've been following our reading plan through the writings this year, today's section of scripture had you at least a little bit mad at us. And I get it. When I looked at the passage to get working on this podcast, I texted Patrick that I was mad at him for giving me today's scripture. For those of you not reading along, I'll clue you into why. Today, we have been given the task of trudging through eight long chapters of genealogy. Now, here's the thing. If you try hard enough, you will find people out there who will tell you

genealogies are the best. In fact, you know one already. When I told Patrick that I was mad at him, he responded with, I love genealogies. You should be thanking me, which made me even more man, but also left me wondering, how? How can anyone see eight chapters of genealogy and go, yes, I am so excited to dive into this? The conclusion that I've come to is that reading eight chapters of names you cannot easily say is never going to be fun. It's not ever going to chart on the best-selling lists. Genealogies won't sell books. But what I've decided is that the fun doesn't come from the task of reading. It comes from understanding what the author is communicating through the genealogy. If you have a heartbeat, then you've probably heard a lot about Taylor Swift this year.

Taylor has infiltrated the NFL, and apparently in doing so has entered into the minds of everyone everywhere. And one thing that I've learned from this barrage of news stories and Swifties accounts is that Taylor likes to leave her fans Easter eggs. Now, an Easter egg is a clue, a hidden message that points to something larger. Usually, only those super familiar with Taylor Swift and her history will be able to spot these clues and piece them together to find out her hidden message.

There are whole accounts and articles dedicated to uncovering these hidden messages. Her Instagram posts, the letters she capitalizes in her captions, the clothes she wears, the time on her watch at the Grammys, the error codes on her website when it crashed. All of those things are said to have contained hidden meaning pointing her fans to the release of her next album. Now here's the thing. No one wants to read a bunch of error codes on a website. That's not fun. No one wants to count how many capital letters are in a caption. The task in and of itself, it's not fun. But a true Swifty loves the hunt. They love when they uncover an Easter egg,

when they understand what it is that Taylor is trying to communicate to them, what she's pointing them towards. Now, I want us to think about the author of Chronicles' genealogies, as though he is Taylor Swift. See, he's using a type of literature, a genealogy of the tribes of Israel, to do two things. First, the author is giving us information, telling us historically who was a part of this nation. And second, they're using their own version of Easter eggs to point us toward two larger themes that we find in the book of first and second Chronicles.

Now, if you take these eight chapters as a whole, you will notice that the author of Chronicles focuses more heavily on two different lineages. The first, the lineage of King David. The second, the lineage of Aaron. For the sake of time, we're going to just talk about the focus on King David. When he writes out the genealogy of David, he employs a cyclical literary structure that begins and ends with the same person and highlights King David as the central figure in his line. He then traces the line of David all the way down to his day. Now in doing this, the author is dropping his reader a hint. He is telling us that King David is important

in this book. He's reminding them that what comes after David is also important. God made a special promise to King David, one that his readers would know from previous books. God made David a messianic promise, a promise that David's descendants would sit on the throne forever, that his line would never end, his kingdom would never end, that someone was coming who would rule and reign perfectly forever. Now remember, the author of Chronicles is writing from a time after the people of God have returned from exile. He's waiting in the middle of the story. Everything looks bad, and he is trying to make sense of all that has happened. Now, if he merely wanted to account the history of what had happened, he could tell someone to read First and Second Samuel and First and Second Kings.

But instead, he writes these books, and he writes them with a purpose. The stories he tells and the genealogies he highlights are all communicating something to his readers. Stuck in the middle of the story, remember, this author is urging his original audience to look back and see how God has been at work in their story and how he will continue to do. deliver on his promise to send a king who is far greater than any who came before. When the people may have been tempted to forget the promises of God, when they may be thinking that things are too bad for God to redeem them, too messy for someone to come in and save them, too destroyed for anyone to ever sit on the throne again, he writes this book and he points

them to the promise that God made to David. A king is coming, a forever king, a good king. The Messianic King is still promised. We know what the author did not know. That king is Jesus. Born as a baby, he lived a perfect sinless life. He challenged the powers of his day. He turned the world's logic and values upside down, and he spent his life establishing the ways of his kingdom here on earth.

And when he was crucified for the sins of men and was raised from the dead, conquering death once and for all, his kingship was established forever. All dominion has been given to him. No enemy can prevail against him. He is king. And when he ascended to be with the father, he called his followers to go out and spread his kingdom, to bring as many people into it as they could until a time when he would return and physically join heaven and earth, bringing his kingdom to earth so he can reign forever with love, justice, and mercy. The author didn't write eight chapters of genealogies to be mean. He wrote them and weaved meaning into them so that even as we read these genealogies,

thousands of years later, living in an exile of our own, we would remember that our king, King Jesus, is on the throne, and he will return to us one day. As we continue on in First and Second Chronicles, I hope that you will keep this genealogy in mind. As we learn about King David as we see the brokenness of his line. May we be reminded of the promises of God. He promised the people of Israel to send the Messianic king, and he was faithful to that promise. And in the same way, Jesus will be faithful to return

and to bodily resurrect all who believe in him and follow in his ways to live alongside him and his kingdom forever. May we never forget the beautiful reality of that promise. Thank you.