1 Chronicles...a Life Worth Living

    We're here again with the recap of 1 Chronicles. You may be thinking..."Didn't we just finish the history of Israel?" Well, you're about to experience a recap of 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings. : )

   1 Chronicles starts off by listing a TON of genealogies...and by a ton I mean over ten chapters worth! All these have to do with retracing how we got to the kings exactly, as far as bloodline goes. It is interesting to note that the list doesn't match up with the one in Matthew exactly, so they had some different resources that all complemented one another. This gives a depth of understanding to the line of Christ. It moves on and just barely touches on Saul. Obviously, then, it transitions to David.

   Oddly enough, it just focuses on David's reign exclusively. We don't see anything about his early life, or even his sin with Bathsheba. Why do you think the Chronicler does this? Is it to protect his identity?

   I think it would be good to compare Chronicles to Samuels and Kings (I'm just shortening titles for typing's sake). The main difference between these books is the way they are written. Suppose we categorize Samuels and Kings as a bunch of biographies highlighting everything they did. Then take Chronicles and say it's a history book that sums up the entirety of the lines of kings. This shows how these books were written for the Jews. See, it is still from God's prospective, so don't think that they will talk only about the good that the kings did in their life. That would be false representation! However, from a political standpoint that holds to God's standards, David was a pretty good king. His later personal life might have been iffy, but he always repented after he sinned and made right with God.

   How are we going to be remembered? Not necessarily in the history books, but in our families and friends lives? How can we be pointing to Christ in our life?