"Simeon: Sheltered, not Scattered" 1 Chronicles 4:1-43 Sunday Evening Worship Service

The word of God in 1 Chronicles 4 gives you the genealogy of Judah and Simeon.

And once you hear the word genealogy, don't fall asleep.

Stay with me.

Because you might think it's a list of names, but if you're going through 1 Chronicles 4, you recognize that everything in 1 Chronicles 4 is showing you the depth of the Word of God.

And Dave, I don't know if it's possible for us to get the slides up.

If not, don't worry.

My outlines are three points, one word each, so they can keep up, I'm sure.

But the image we've been using as we go through 1 Chronicles is that of the tree with the roots that go down.

The way 1 Chronicles functions in the Bible is to show you the roots, not just of Israel, but the roots of messianic promise, the roots of the promise that God has given to the world that he would send the Savior.

That's what's really going on in 1 Chronicles.

So it might seem to us like a bunch of names, but these names are the lifeblood of the messianic promise.

When God promises that he's going to send a savior into the world, it's not an abstract promise.

It is a promise that is lived out and passed on through real people with real names and real lives and a real connection to God's people, Israel.

In fact, 1 Chronicles has already taken us on this theme of promise.

We understand that when the gospel first entered the world, it was through the what people call the Protangelion, or the very first good news, which was God speaking to Adam and Eve that he was going to send a seed who would crush the head of the serpent and be the Savior.

That's the first promise.

So the gospel enters into the Word of God through a promise.

It enters into human history through a promise.

From there, you have the promise given to Noah that if you turn and flee to the ark, you'll be rescued.

You have the promise given to Abram that he will produce a nation, and that nation will produce the Messiah.

And then you have a series of twelve promises given to the twelve sons of Israel, each one of them connecting back to the messianic promise in some way.

Obviously, the fourth of those promises to Judah becomes the key, that the king, the scepter, will be from Judah, and the scepter will not pass his hand, and that promise falls to David's hand.

And through David, the Messiah and the Savior will come to earth.

And so it makes sense that in 1 Chronicles 2, you hear the 12 tribes.

In 1 Chronicles 3, you get David's genealogy.

You get the tracing of the messianic promise from David all the way down through the end of exile.

And last week you recall we talked about how that promise doesn't match exactly what you see in Matthew, because this is the nature of Davidic promise that the king line will be judged and cast off.

It'll be cursed.

And so when Luke picks up the messianic promise, he goes back and follows it not through Solomon, but through Nathan, and it loops back around.

But regardless, chapter 3 tells you that God promised a savior to the world and shows you that that promise came to the Davidic heir.

But now the chronicler turns to the twelve tribes.

He does not go to them in order, but he goes to them in, you know, the order of the tribes themselves, but he goes to them in his own order, and he starts in chapter four with the tribe of Judah.

And that's because Judah received the promise.

Judah received the promise of the Savior, so we start with them.

And the main point tonight is that God protects through promise.

God protects through promise.

That's the gist of what's happening in 1 Chronicles 4.

Again, just a cast on it of your eyes, and you'll see a bunch of names.

But the gist behind all of these names is that God protects his people through promise.

Through promise.

Judah, when it received its promise, was given territory that is around Jerusalem.

And so we'll start with them.

First, the promise is carried through Judah.

The tribes receive their promise.

Judah is the fourth tribe.

They're told the king will come from them.

But in the book of Joshua, the land allotment takes place.

Judah does not even get to choose first.

Judah gets their land, I think, like seventh or something.

They're low down on the list, maybe even later than that.

And Judah ends up in the southern half of Israel.

Now, if you look at a map of Israel, Judah, like Texas, is huge.

It is it the land that Judah was given is practically half of Israel.

But Judah, also, like Texas, Texas, is mostly uninhabitable.

If you've been there, you have seen it for your own self.

I know there are people that like Lubbock and Amarillo and Midland and whatnot, but anyway.

So Judah has a massive amount of land, more than any other tribe.

And in a sense, that's a visual representation of their promise.

God will protect them and carry them.

Their land, it's important to understand this, to understand how the chronicler is putting together.

The north side of their land is Jerusalem.

Jerusalem has a function kind of like Washington, D.C.

It's on the border of north and the south.

The south and the north kind of meet along the Potomac River.

The capital of our country is right at the bridge of there between Maryland and Delaware and Pennsylvania and Virginia and West Virginia and whatnot.

All of them kind of have this confluence right there, all within driving distance.

That's how DC functions.

And that is very much how Jerusalem functions.

It's on the doorstep of Benjamin.

It's on the doorstep above that of Zebulun and those the other tribes that will be to the north.

They all kind of come together right there.

But the southern side of Jerusalem is Judah, belongs to Judah.

Bethlehem was a city given to Judah.

And that starts to expand from there.

Judah then stretches from the Dead Sea all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.

It goes from Jerusalem all the way down to Egypt, all through the wilderness land, the barren wilderness down there.

That all belongs to Judah.

So today it's from modern-day Tel Aviv.

It's a little bit south of Tel Aviv, actually, but uh Ashdad, Nashgalon, and all those cities, all the way down to Egypt.

That's all Judah.

And that's where the promised went.

And that's why the genealogy in chapter 3 traces David, but now it backs up and starts over with Judah in verse 1.

Judah has sons.

This is going back to the historical person of Judah, one of the 12 individuals that the 12 tribes come from, Prez, Hezron, Karmi, Her, Shabal.

We're not going to go through all of his sons, but it's just starting to show you the promise traces back to the 12 sons, and Judah will be called out first.

What you're going to find here is a list of names.

Judah began to multiply.

You have some female names in there, verse 3.

The sister Hezaloponi, I guess is how you call her name.

You have men and women put there together, but the point is they're expanding through this long list of names.

They're expanding and expanding, expanding because they have a massive amount of territory.

Draw your eyes down to verse 14.

Menonothai fathered Orphrah and Saraih fathered Joab, the father of Gerharashim, so-called because they were craftsmen.

So you're starting to see some trades that enter into this.

Craftsmen connect to temple worship and temple service.

And it's dropped into their craftsmen because these people come back from exile.

When Nehemiah brings the Israelites back from exile, he comes back with craftsmen to start to make supplies back for the temple again.

In verse 22, you have the linen workers in verse 22.

Joachim, the son of Khazaba, Joash, Seraph, who ruled in Moab, returned to Lahim.

Now these records are ancient, it says.

This means it goes back from before the exile.

In verse 23, you have the potters who are inhabitants of the land.

The linen workers are in verse 21 there.

So you're starting to get these occupations that come back.

The metal workers and the craftsmen, they're the closest to Jerusalem because they're making implements for the temple.

And this sounds weird to us, but even in our own world, you have cities that might be associated with certain kind of manufacturing or certain things that they would make, Detroit for cars or whatever, Alabama for, I don't know, rockets or whatever they make down there.

You just start to associate different things with different places, and that's happening in Judah.

In other words, the people come back, they're making things, they're doing things.

Even after the exile, the tribe of Judah is back and they're working.

This represents the messianic promise.

It was given to Judah, and God will protect them.

Now, again, if you're not familiar with the 12 tribes, zoom out just a few inches.

Remember that Israel fell into sin and God began sending them into exile, starting with the northern tribes, starting with Ephraim, and begin working through the north.

Eventually they all went into exile, but last to go was Judah.

When the story of exile ends, or sorry, begins, it's with the king from Jerusalem being led out with a hook in his nose.

There's a governor appointed by Babylon, and Judah are the last people there.

If the last person has to turn the lights out on their way out, it's the tribe of Judah that was the last to leave.

And this is representative of the fact that God expanded their territory and gave them a promise that he would protect them.

That he would protect them.

Now, what did they do with that promise?

Well, not a lot.

God drew them, but many of them rebelled.

Many of the kings were wicked.

Nevertheless, God preserved them.

And when you read 2 Kings, a line that jumps off the page is repeated over and over again.

God tells them, I'm going to judge them.

Nevertheless, because of his promise to David, he didn't do it right then.

God kept delaying judgment because of his promise to his people.

And I will tell you, the same thing is true today.

That God has promised to shelter people from his wrath if those people flee for refuge to Christ.

When you seek forgiveness and salvation in Christ, God shelters you from wrath.

He shelters you from difficult things in this world.

Not completely.

Christians go through trials and very difficult circumstances.

But there is the basic fact that living your life under the protection of Christ shields you from so much in this life and even more in the life to come.

That's a basic gospel promise.

And the tribe of Judah lives that out.

Judah got to dwell in the land, and they had their existence built around this promise that God would send the Savior through them.

That's why the tribes start in this list with Judah.

They're the fourth tribe, but they're the first to get their list.

Now, in the middle of Judah, there's a federal law that if we preach on 1 Chronicles 4, you have to talk about Jabez, so we'll get to him next.

In the middle of 1 Chronicles 4 is Jabez, the promised prayed.

Jabez.

Oh Jabez.

Verse 9.

Jabez was more honorable than his brothers.

His mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bore him in pain.

The word Jabez there means you know it's a word that sounds like the word for pain, which is an odd thing to name your child.

This is my son pain.

His middle name is in the neck, I suppose.

That was Jabez.

But Jabez, despite being a pain in the neck in verse 10, called upon the God of Israel, saying, Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my border, your hand would be with me, and that you would keep me from harm, so that it might not bring me pain.

And God granted him what he asked.

So the prayer of Jabez, of course, a best-selling Christian book.

The main argument of the prayer of Jabez is that God wants to expand your borders if only you would ask.

And that book, I had much in my notes to say about that book, but for time, maybe it's God's way of just saying, you know, you don't need to say it.

I'll receive it.

Except to say this.

Except to say this.

That book was so complicated because it was one of the first books that came out that was a best-selling Christian book.

It kind of changed the face of Christian publishing, where its theology was very much askew.

And yet it had a very personal appeal to people to pray.

And so it became a very divisive and controversial book where you know you had so many people talking about how this book changed my prayer life, you know, and revolutionized the way I prayed.

And don't you think that God wants me to pray better and pray for bigger borders and pray to expand my territory and all that?

And along comes somebody who's like read First Chronicles 4 and is like, I don't think that it's about necessarily God wanting to expand your borders, and you're met with, like, you heathen, how dare you?

And so it was a very complicated book.

It's not an exaggeration to say that book broke Christian publishing, and Christian publishing has not really recovered from it since.

And I had more to say about that, but that's what I'm leaving behind on the floor.

But you can look at Jabez, and Jabez does really function in the story as a picture of Judah as a whole.

Jabez, I see why people are drawn to Jabez because you're reading 1 Chronicles' name after name after name after name, and you're like, give me, give me something, please.

Like, let me come up for air.

And then you're like, oh, here's a dude that prayed and everything went well.

He had a funny name, and yet God blessed him, and you're like, I can relate to that.

But he really does function as a picture of all of Israel.

Well, all of Judah.

He's in Judah.

He prays for God's blessing.

God blesses him by expanding his borders and giving him security.

Why?

Because he prayed to God and sought refuge in the shadow of the wings of the messianic promise.

And so there is a sense in which that kind of prayer Jabez language reaches to us, but it has to go through Christ.

It's not God desires to expand your borders and God has big things if only you would just ask.

You know what?

Why not just ask?

Why not just pray for a new car and a new house, a new promotion?

Hey, what can it hurt to pray?

That's kind of the logic of that book.

But Jabez means something different than that.

It's not just pray that God would give you a raise.

The point of it is pray in the protection of Christ.

Jabez, because he's close to the Davidic promise, he's hiding in Judah, receives the blessing, and the growth of his prosperity represents the growth of Judah, which is the tribe that will produce the Savior.

He prays, Bless me, enlarge me, be with me, protect me from pain.

And this very much is the prayer of Judah.

And God is blessed.

Judah is blessed by God.

Judah is enlarged by God.

They get the largest territory.

God is with Judah, unlike the other eleven tribes, because they have the Davidic promise.

And they are protected from pain, the last ones to go into exile.

Jabez stands out as a microcosm here of Judah.

It says in verse 10, God granted him what he asked.

Certainly, you can take from this that you should pray.

You should pray for the Lord to use you.

You should pray based on your relationship to Christ.

You should go to the Father through the Son by the Spirit.

You should do all of those things.

You should be willing to be used by God in difficult circumstances like Judah was, recognizing that this all trends towards the Messiah.

So first you have the promise carried by Judah, the promise prayed by Jabez.

Thirdly, you have the promise shared by Simeon.

Simeon's next.

Verse 34.

The sons of Simeon.

Now it is odd that Simeon does come next because they are not the first tribe.

Simeon is next because they are the tribe that is going to be judged by, well, they were the tribe that was going to be judged when the promises were given to the 12 tribes.

In Genesis 49, and you kind of have to, I'm not going to drag you through the whole story of Simeon as a tribe, but if you recall, Simeon, the man Simeon, his sister, his half-sister Dina, was raped.

She was attacked, sexually assaulted.

And she was not defended.

She was not defended.

So Levi and Simeon, who were related to her, decided to avenge Dina's assault.

And do you remember how they avenged her assault?

This is not in the children's storybook Bible, by the way.

So if that's the storybook Bible that some of you are reading, don't even bother looking when you get home.

It's not there.

The way Levi and Simeon decided to avenge their sister's attack was to go to the people that did it and tell them, because we love God, we practice circumcision.

We'll make a deal with you.

If you circumcise yourselves, we won't avenge our sister's attack.

Bottom line, I'm summarizing a lot of it.

And these people do that.

They circumcise themselves for peace.

And while the men are recovering, Simeon and Levi say, Aha, and kill them all.

So they use circumcision was given by God as a sign of the covenant, a sign of covenant relationship.

And Simeon and Levi took that and used it not as a sign of covenant relationship among God's people, but as a military ploy among Gentiles to get revenge.

It's not that those people didn't deserve revenge.

Of course they deserve revenge.

Gina should have been avenged.

That's all fine.

It was that they used the symbol of their covenant relationship with God in order to extract revenge on their enemies rather than trusting the Lord.

And so when Israel or Jacob blesses his twelve children, do you remember his blessing to Levi and Simeon?

Because of what you did to avenge your sister, bad things are going to happen to you.

You're going to get scattered.

You're not going to get a blessing.

You're not getting a promise.

You're going to get scattered by God to judge you for how you used violence.

You mixed violence with the covenant.

That's the promise to Simeon.

So Simeon as a tribe is under God's judgment because of the violence they did in avenging their sister.

Now it's very interesting to think about how that plays out differently with Simeon and Levi.

It was so filled with Levi.

Levi never got land.

They never got land because of this judgment.

But God turned it into a blessing and making them priests.

So that's kind of cool.

What does he do with Simeon?

Well, he rescues them also through his own promise.

In Joshua 19, they're drawing lots, and Simeon is drawn next to Benjamin.

And both Benjamin and Simeon, I think, are sorting things out in their own mind here, and recognize that Judah is the tribe of promise.

And so both Benjamin and Simeon seek refuge by attaching themselves to Judah.

They recognize God promised that the king is going to come to Judah.

God said he's going to kill us.

So what if we hold on really tight to Judah?

Can God kill us if we're clinging to Judah's legs?

I mean, that's really their appeal.

And God blesses them for that.

Now it happens in Joshua 9.

Simeon drew the second lot according to their clans, and their inheritance was given along to the people of Judah.

In Judges 1, this is how it goes down.

It goes down pretty interesting in Judges 1.

All the tribes in Judges 1 are going to go take their lands, but Simeon, well, all the tribes are having a hard time doing it.

Basically, bottom line, they're supposed to take their land, and they don't do it, they fail, and they get all kinds of 400 years of judgment in the book of Judges.

But Judah and Simeon hatch a plot.

They start surveying their land, and Judah and Simeon, their two tribes, talk to each other and say, Hey, everybody else is failing, but if the two of us go fight together, I'll help you beat your people, your killing, and you help us beat our people with killing, and we can take all the land together.

They do a handshake deal and they go to it and it works.

Judah and Simeon claim their land.

I'll put you these verses on the screen here.

First is Joshua 19:1.

Joshua 19:1

The lot came out for Simeon, the tribe of the people Simeon according to their clans, and their inheritance was in the midst of the people of Judah.

That's what they got.

If you look at the map of Israel, the 12 tribes are all interwoven.

Every tribe borders at least three, if not four or five.

Some tribes border five other tribes.

They're like the New England states, you know, they every every four inches is a new state they touch.

That's how most of the tribes are.

Not Simeon.

Simeon is the only tribe that only borders one.

It's entirely surrounded by Judah.

That's from this verse right here.

That leads to Joshua 1, verse, or Judges 1, verse 3.

Judges 1:3

Come up with me into the territory allotted to me, so we can fight against the Canaanites.

And I likewise will go into you, into the territory allotted to you.

That's their plan.

The result is that Simeon finds themselves protected by the promise given to Judah.

They're protected by the promise of the Savior.

Even though the promise wasn't given to them, it was given to Judah.

Now the land Simeon gets is great.

They get Beersheba, which is the southernmost city in Israel.

Judah goes around it to the south, but there's nothing really, like I said, inhabitable down there.

They get Ziklag.

Ziklag is a city that, if Jabez represents Judah, Ziklag represents Simeon.

It's a city of sorrow.

It's a city that the Amalekites had that fell.

Judah, the tribe of Judah was able to drive them out finally.

There's lots of mourning there.

David sought refuge there.

He had his wives and his family kidnapped from there.

He went back there and found it burning, if you recall.

But this was the place that David hid when he was on the run from Saul.

Ziklag became a city.

of refuge.

And that's why it's described back in First Chronicles chapter 4.

1 Chronicles 4 · chapter mention

It's described in the list here of the places that Simeon gets.

If you scan down there, the sons of Simeon and we go through all of his his whole all of his whole tribes are listed by name verse 38.

But they're mentioned by princes in their clans and their fathers' houses greatly.

But if you look at the very beginning of their their list, verse 27, Shimeah had 16 sons, six daughters, but his brothers didn't have many children, nor did their clan multiply like the men of Judah.

Simeon's existence is not one of growing like Judah.

It's one of being encompassed by Judah.

They don't get to grow.

They're kind of hemmed in on every side.

They get a much more limited number of villages, verse 32.

Well Judah had towns and cities they get, Simeon verse 32 gets villages.

They get five cities, I guess, along with the other villages around there.

They have these settlements verse 33 says basically they're more confined.

They settled by their names and their houses.

But Ziglag is one of the cities they get and that really does go on to represent all of Simeon's existence.

It becomes a place of refuge and a place of shelter in the Messianic promise, even if the messianic promise is in Jerusalem and not there.

It's a place of loss that becomes restoration.

Verse 31 lets you show the ebb and flow of territory.

You see a few cities listed Ziklag, by the way, is in verse 30 you see it hiding at the end of verse 30 that's Ziklag.

Again a prominent city in Samuel where David seeks refuge but it represents how God blesses Simeon because of its proximity to Judah.

Verse 31 a couple more cities these were the cities until these were their cities until David reigned.

As David grew greater, Simeon lost some of its land under David's influence back to Judah.

By the end of the chapter verse 41 they registered by name they came in the days of Hezekiah the king of Judah and destroyed their tents Simeon's down to tents.

People were found there marked for destruction of this day they settled in their place because there is pasture for the flocks.

Five hundred men in the Simeonites went to Mount Seir.

They had as their leaders people that are named there verse 43 they defeated the remnants of the Amalekites who escaped and they lived there to this day.

So that's not sad and terrible like some of the other tribes but it's definitely not Jerusalem and we have the king.

It's an odd an odd tone to it isn't it while Judah had all these craftsmen and the linen factories and all of these things Simeon has some fields down by Ziklag.

That's nice I guess if you're into that kind of thing fields by Ziklag.

They had villages and tents the point of this is that by the end of the genealogy Simeon has not been scattered.

They're encompassed Levi was told they'll be scattered and they were scattered Simeon was told you'll be scattered and they're surrounded literally surrounded if you look at a map of the 12 tribes literally surrounded by Judah.

Why weren't they scattered?

Because they sought refuge in the promise of the Savior and God honored that.

He did not scatter them but he protected them because they clung to the promise of the Savior by the end of 1 Chronicles Simeon is still here they're named they're counted they're ebbing and flowing expanding and contracting they're never rivaling Judah they don't really have leaders they have a few princes here.

They don't really have rebels they don't really have war heroes or war you know their biggest military victory was brought to them by David from Judah.

They just had survivors quietly waiting for the Savior under their brother Judah's protection.

As you look at this outline you see that some tribes carried the promise namely Judah and some tribes were carried by the promise namely Simeon and we'll see that's true with Benjamin as well.

They were a tribe that was under God's judgment but spared God's judgment because they clung to the promised Savior.

Judah had the Davidic line but Simeon survived because of it.

So it's less helpful to think of Judah strong and Simeon weak.

It's more helpful to think of Judah chosen and Simeon sheltered by God.

Simeon scattering as they were promised in Genesis 49 doesn't become exile it doesn't become extinction but it becomes shelter.

That is a helpful way for us to think about this genealogy.

1 Chronicles 4 obviously has the prayer of Jabez in it.

But when you think of 1 Chronicles 4 I want you to remember this this basic principle that God protects through his promise.

When people cling to Christ they are protected from the wrath that God is pouring out on the whole world.

This is the promise given in the book of Revelation that if for those who are overcome for those who cling to Christ they will be spared from the wrath that God is going to pour out on the whole world.

There's a time of judgment that God will pour it on the whole world but for those of us who are in Christ God will protect us shelter us remove us from that wrath surrounding us by our faith in his Son.

It goes too far to say that Simeon is a prefiguring of the pre-chirb rapture but only a little bit too far.

Only a little bit too far.

There's a lot of ways that Simeon's existence portrays for us the reality that God knows how to rescue those who cling to the promise of Christ.

Lord we're thankful that you know how to rescue those as Peter says if you can rescue Lot from Sodom if you can rescue Simeon from scattering you can rescue us when we cling to Christ all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and we know that we deserve the judgment of God.

Lord we deserve you to punish us for our sins but rather than doing that you have chosen to protect us not through our own merit but you've chosen to protect us because Christ shields us.

His spirit dwells in us reigns above us as our king and our intercessor we seek shelter in him we are hidden in him you look at us and you see your son the true son the true king of Judah he provides us our refuge as well we're grateful for the promise of salvation for those in Christ that we will be removed from the hour of tribulation that will come upon the whole world because we have trusted in you.

We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

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 if you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington DC, please go to tms.edu Now if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service but no matter where you live it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly serve the Lord faithfully and share the gospel boldly