"Law" 1 Chronicles 2:1-55 Sunday Evening Worship Service

First Chronicles chapter 2.

1 Chronicles 2 · chapter mention

Just the first two verses here.

These are the sons of Israel: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Joseph, Benjamin, Napptaly, Gad, and Asher.

You know, the world has not always been like it is right now.

There was a period of time in the world where there was people but no sin.

We refer to that as the age of innocence, and we looked at that at the beginning of 1 Chronicles.

1 Chronicles is bringing us through this era of history.

There were people but no sin, also called the age of innocence.

That gave way after sin entered the world to the era of sin, but no government, no law, no restraining force beyond the conscience.

And that's often called the age of conscience.

Sin was in the world, but nothing to restrain it.

No jails, no 911, no governments, no taxes, no nothing.

Just conscience and really violence.

That gave way to the flood, and after the water subsided, you had a world with government but no law.

Now nations come into being.

Nations that will check sin and evil will punish wrongdoers, but they don't have any revelation from God.

So when I say government, no law, that's what I mean.

God had not spoken his moral constraints.

There is conscience, of course, that regulated people.

The flood didn't wash away the conscience, but there was no direct revelation from God.

Perhaps stories that came down from Adam and stories of what God had told Cain and Abel.

But this is before even the Torah was written, before that was written down.

Then this gives way to what we'll look at tonight: Israel.

Time of government with no law, often called the age of promise, because God had promised Abraham that he would build a nation from him.

But beyond that promise to Abraham, there was not direct revelation.

But once Abraham's nation comes into being, that's the end of the book of Genesis.

Abraham's second son after Ishmael was Isaac, and Isaac was the son of the promise.

Isaac had Esau and Jacob.

Esau was older, Jacob his younger brother.

Jacob wrestles with the Lord and is renamed Israel.

Jacob and being renamed Israel has twelve sons.

Those twelve sons are going to be the ones that go into captivity in Egypt.

Of course, they don't start out in captivity.

Well, I guess they kind of did with Joseph, who was sold into captivity.

Joseph being the eighth of the in the list here, you see in 1 Chronicles, number 8 on the list, sold into captivity.

Well, he was in captivity.

The others came when famine came, and eventually Israel died, and the others begged for mercy from Joseph.

They were discovered to be his brothers, and they begged for mercy.

And Joseph extended mercy.

And so now you have all twelve of the sons, all twelve of the sons in Egypt together.

They grow into a massive nation.

And God leads them out of Egypt.

And you don't even get that story here.

It's probably the most commonly told story in the Old Testament, but it's not, strangely enough, here.

Instead, God leads them out of Egypt.

By this point, there's millions of them and settles them in the promised land.

And he settles them in the promised land according to these 12 people that we just read about.

These 12 people are the ones that begin to populate the promised land.

And so God enters this into the book of 1 Chronicles because remember, 1 Chronicles is functioning to let you know how we got here.

And it's not a list of narratives, those are the history books.

If you want to read the events, you can read Genesis or Judges, Samuel Kings.

They'll tell you the actual events that took place.

Chronicles is giving you the roots of the people that led them to where they are.

Somebody offered this illustration to me, and I will take it.

Drake May is the quarterback for the Patriots tonight, supposedly.

I don't even know if I'm saying his name right, but maybe not, judging by the response from people.

Before him was Cam Newton.

Before him was Tom Brady.

Drew Bledsaw before that.

Doug Flutie.

My goodness.

That's like Canadian football players came to the U.S.

Now that's not the list of every quarterback the Patriots have had in the last 20 years, but those are kind of the key ones.

And you can understand the joy of them being in the Super Bowl and all of that by that lineage.

Just giving those names lets you know the pedigree of what's happening on the field tonight in a different way than recapping each of their stats or recapping the key plays from each of those players.

Just giving you their names lets you know that there's a long line that leads you to where you are.

And that's what we have tonight.

These 12 people, the word of God in 1 Chronicles doesn't describe the way the law comes to us.

We get that from Exodus.

God speaks to Moses.

Remember, he calls Moses up the mountain, and God speaks to Moses.

They write down the Torah.

It's brought down to the Israelites.

They break it, and they break it spiritually.

Moses breaks it physically and actually, and it's hauled back up the mountain again and read writes it a second time.

And this time it is brought to them, and that's what they will abide by.

And the kings are supposed to write it down every year and put it in a scroll and follow it.

That's God's law to the Israelites.

It's the rules they're to live by.

We don't get that here in 1 Chronicles.

What we get in 1 Chronicles is the names of the 12 people that brought Israel into the world.

Their father was Israel, but the nation Israel comes from these 12.

And all 12 of them relate back to the law.

We'll go through this relatively quickly because I have more I want to say beyond these names.

My goal is to get through the whole chapter, but there is always next Sunday if things don't go well.

First, you have Reuben.

He's the first of the sons listed.

He was, of course, Israel's firstborn son.

And I'll just call him Israel the rest of the night instead of bouncing between Jacob and Israel.

He was Israel's firstborn son.

But you remember that Reuben lost his birthright through sexual sin.

A loss that's remembered throughout Scripture, often repeated.

From the Exodus onward, the tribe of Reuben settled east of Jordan.

Nothing comes from them.

No judge from them, no king from them.

They fade in before exile.

They didn't even take it in exile.

They just kind of disappeared and dissipated.

It's a sad twist.

In that world, birth order is everything.

But it's interesting in the way God often works through people, birth order is nothing, right?

Jacob is over Esau, as is written, the older will serve the younger.

Jacob I loved, Esau I hated, God says in Romans 9.

Drawn from Malachi, but it's the truth.

It's written back in Genesis.

David was not the oldest, or the second oldest, third oldest, fourth oldest, so on.

How often it is that God chooses the younger.

And so here we have a pretty profound example of that.

Reuben was the oldest son.

You would think that the promise would go through him, but it does not because of his own sexual sin.

He lost the promise.

He stands as perhaps one of the clearest examples in Scripture that natural privilege does not secure a covenantal relationship with God.

And we have this in the New Testament church, don't we?

Your parents can be believers.

That doesn't mean you are.

Some of the most mature believers in our church now and through church history did not come from Christian families.

And some of the biggest disappointments, frankly, have come from Christian families.

Reuben is an example of that.

Reuben teaches you that violating the law brings loss.

I'll give you a one-word summary of each of these people.

Reuben represents loss as it relates to the law.

After Reuben comes Simeon.

Simeon was a violent person, wasn't he?

Filled with zeal.

And his zeal and violence cast a long shadow over Israel, over his tribe's future.

After the Exodus, Simeon and his family, his tribe, received, you know, scattered cities, but always within Judah.

They never achieved cohesion.

They too were effectively absorbed before exile.

You don't get a record of them being led into exile.

They just kind of disappeared.

Probably subsumed by Judah and Benjamin, maybe even Ephraim, but they kind of faded away.

Simeon lets you know that zeal without the law brings judgment.

You can be zealous for God, but zeal without knowledge is sound and fury signifying nothing.

Third is Levi.

Now Levi is pretty straightforward, isn't he?

Levi got no land.

They're the one tribe that doesn't get land because they have the priests.

They didn't have an allotment when the land was divided up in Joshua.

Levi did not get land.

They were supposed to dwell in every tribe because every tribe needed priests.

And some lists of the 12 tribes, they don't even make it.

Because some of the lists describe where the land goes, and Levi didn't get land.

But here they are in 1 Chronicles.

Levi, of course, was judged by God early on, but that judgment was redirected into being a priest, priestly service.

Levi had access to God because his tribe was a priest.

He lets you know that the law requires priests.

There's no vision of Israel without priests, the law requires priests.

Fourth is probably the most well-known Judah.

Judah's lesson straightforward.

The law leads you to a king.

The law leads you to a king.

Judah was the tribe of leadership, promise, and kingship.

After the promises that Israel gave on his deathbed, when the Israelites enter the promised land, Judah marches first.

They're the ones that lead people.

They're the ones that produced David.

They preserved the monarchy longer than any other tribe.

Hundreds of years after the other tribes went into Israel.

Judah was still there holding on to the kingship.

And the return from kingship, when they returned from exile, Judah was again in the front, looking for a king, looking for a leader.

Some of the post-exilic books, like Zechariah, they're holding on to this idea that some Davidic offspring will come back.

Psalm 89, one of the last Psalms written, holding on to that, this idea that one of David's descendants will come back.

That's Judah.

The law leads to a king.

When the Israelites come back to exile, when 1 Chronicles is written, the tribes are a mess.

Nobody knows who's in what tribe, but they were on the hunt for somebody from Judah.

Fifthly, is Issachar.

Issachar is remembered for wisdom rather than ambition.

They settled in fertile land in Israel.

They supported David, one of the first tribes to support David.

They didn't rebel.

As far as I know of, there's not any rebellions or any rebels or any rebellions in the scripture that were led by Issachar.

The other tribes all had their fair share of rebellions, but not Issachar.

They were discerning, faithful people without prominence.

They were submitted to God's law.

Submission reveals faithfulness.

There's a cause and effect.

Submission produces faithfulness, but submission also reveals a faithfulness that was already there.

That's the lesson from Issachar, faithful to God's law.

Number six, Zebulun.

Zebulun had strategic lands.

The highways into Israel went through Zebulun.

They controlled the trade and the travel.

They had warriors in Israel.

In 1 Chronicles, they have warriors.

But you know what?

They never had political dominance.

They never had judges that didn't come from Zebulun.

Nobody with authority came from Zebulun.

They're the servants.

In fact, in 1 Chronicles, you get all, you get 10 of the 12 tribes described in 1 Chronicles.

You don't get Dan because they're judged by God, and you don't get Zebulun.

And it's kind of interesting to wonder why does Zebulun not get re-described in 1 Chronicles?

Their name is here.

That's about all you get from them.

They have a couple, you know, soldiers here and there.

They have people in the service, you know, they have street cleaners, so to speak, civil servants.

That's all they have from Zebulun.

The lesson from them that the law governs ordinary life.

They're ordinary people that were faithful.

They returned from exile.

The law governs even ordinary and daily life.

Seventh tribe, Dan.

Dan, poor Dan.

Struggled so badly to secure inheritance.

It's sad when you read about Dan in the book of Judges.

They're wandering this way and that way.

They're supposed to be in one part of the country.

When you find them by the end of the book of Judges, they're lost.

They're in the other side of the country.

And it's unclear, as you read the book of Judges, it's unclear.

Are they looking for somebody to fight or are they looking for a new place to hide?

Can't tell.

They finally did settle in the northern part of Israel, again, not where they were supposed to be.

And they built the first idols.

They built shrines to pagan gods.

They're the first tribe to be taken into exile.

It's a cautionary tale of compromised worship that leads to judgment.

Abandon the law and die.

That's the lesson of Dan.

Number eight, Joseph.

Joseph represents, of course, God's providence.

We read his story, a little bit of his story this morning in our worship service.

Suffering, fruitfulness in exile.

His descendants were Ephraim and Manasseh.

In many of the lists of the 12 tribes, you don't have Joseph listed.

You have Ephraim and Manasseh.

Because Joseph was the one of the twelve sons that provided for Israel and their growth and their protection in Egypt.

His two sons go on to be basically their own tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh.

They became dominant in the book of Kings.

They governed the northern kingdom.

They also were among the first tribes exiled.

Joseph reveals a divided loyalty.

A divided loyalty to the law.

Law divides even homes.

Number nine, Benjamin.

Benjamin held a precarious position, don't they, in the Bible?

Between compromise and promise and catastrophe.

Whenever you see Benjamin, like something catastrophic or great is happening.

Like they're almost annihilated.

They're the tribe that all the Israelites decide to kill.

And yet their first king comes from them, Saul.

From Exodus onward, like I mentioned, they nearly vanished.

And yet, here they are, 1 Chronicles, nearly a thousand years later, here they are.

They're small but resilient.

They were defended by their proximity to Judah.

Benjamin looked around and saw how small they were because they remembered the time Israel almost killed them.

So if you're going to look at this lineup of people of your Benjamin and say, I need one of these guys to help.

I'm going to be best friends here.

This is like showing up to school on the first day as the little kid, and you don't want to get beat up, so you pick the strongest kid to befriend.

That's Benjamin.

They're the little kid here.

And they picked Judah.

They decided to be frenzies with Judah.

They put their land around Jerusalem.

They didn't push their own way.

They were happy being in Judah's shadow.

And that protected them.

It also leads to judgment.

They were taken into exile.

Judgment begins with the house of God, and they sought shelter there, and so, in a sense, it began with them.

From Benjamin, you get Napptali.

Napptali got Galilee, the Galilean area.

This is where Jesus did his ministry.

Way far away from the political center of Israel.

They're out in no man's lands.

Barak was from the tribe Napptal.

They were vulnerable to invasion.

As Israel began to go into captivity, they were taken into Assyrian exile.

The Assyrians took them away to Nineveh and Babylon.

Biblically, Naphtali is remembered for early faith and early suffering.

But what strikes me about Naphtali is they're the ones referenced in the New Testament where Jesus begins his ministry, and they're wondering, why isn't he beginning his ministry in Jerusalem?

And instead he's doing it up in the Sea of Galilee, and he says, because Napptali, light to the nations, is going to come here.

The law leads to evangelism.

The roads of the nations converged in Napptali, and God used that to put Jesus there and preach to the world.

Number 11, Gad.

God chose land east of the Jordan.

Didn't even make it across the Jordan.

They took immediate inheritance over proximity to worship.

That became an issue.

Do you remember in both Joshua and Kings are wondering why isn't Gad worshiping with us in the temple?

Because they wanted their land now.

They wanted their land now.

Well, the flip side of that is they got exiled early.

They drifted.

And there's a principle in that as it relates to the law.

In the law, you're supposed to teach your children the word of God, but if you choose family over the Lord, it sparks a drift.

When you make family your priority over worshiping God, or family becomes your priority over your relationship to Christ, you drift away.

That is the story of God.

And finally, Asher.

Asher inherited fertile land, probably the best land in Israel, and never defeated the Canaanites.

They were economically blessed and but spiritually quiet.

Abundance does not equal fruitfulness.

God gave them so much and they produced so little.

That's the twelve tribes.

Now it's interesting if you look at verse 3.

You would expect verse 3 to say, the sons of Reuben, wouldn't you?

If we're going in order, the order that they just gave, the birthright order, anything, but no, it starts with the sons of Judah.

And that's because, as I mentioned, Judah was the one who received the promise for the king.

So you look at the list on the screen.

I know Judah was on the previous one.

I'll go back.

But you look at the 12 words that underlined and you and you go back.

Well, that's too far to go back.

I'm not doing it.

You go back and you realize all of these, the one promise that interests Ezra the most is that of the king.

And so let's get there.

Verse 3, the sons of Judah.

Ur, Onan, Shelah, these three, and Veshua, the Canaanite bore to him.

Now Ur, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the sight of Yahweh, and he put him to death.

Okay, so you have Judah, the promise is going to the king to go through Judah.

So again, you would expect his firstborn son to receive the promise.

But that does not happen.

His firstborn son was wicked and God killed him.

So there's no favoritism here.

You can be in the line of Judah, that's fine.

But if you're wicked, God will kill you.

So what do you do?

How does the line of Judah go forward when the firstborn son is dead?

What are you going to do?

Well, I'll tell you what God does.

God doesn't just go to the second son, He goes in an entirely unexpected direction, verse 4.

His daughter-in-law, Tamar, who married in the family, also bore him Perez and Zerah.

Judah had five sons.

And it just says, Your daughter-in-law Tamar.

Oh my goodness, do you remember the Tamar story?

She feigned prostitution to entrap her family.

Sexual immorality to confront their hypocrisy.

God had to choose between siding with a prostitute or exposing hypocrisy.

Very interesting.

In our ethics, it troubles us.

You read commentaries on this part of Genesis, and people are troubled that God had the line of the promise go through somebody who was sexually immoral.

But he did so to expose the hypocrisy of Judah himself.

Judah had five sons, Tamar born Perez, and the line is going to go through Perez.

So the whole story is messed up, and we have not enough time to go through it tonight.

And there's kids here.

Verse 6.

The sons of Zera, and this is going through Perez's.

Line there, Ethan, Herman, Kalkal, Dara, Five and all, the sons of Carmi.

So again, we're tracing the line to get to David.

Achan, the troubler of Israel, who broke faith in the matter of the devoted thing.

So this is not a very cleaned-up genealogy here.

They're putting kind of the lowlights from Israel's history here, Tamar, and now Achan, remember his whole family got put to death.

Doesn't matter that he's a descendant.

The promise of the king goes through him.

He was stoned to death.

Verse 9, the sons of Hezron were that born to him.

Jarhamel, Ram, Chilabai.

This is David's line.

This is going to produce David right here.

We're zeroing in here.

Ram fathered Abinadab, and Abinadam fathered Nashon, prince of the sons of Judah.

Nashon fathered Salomon, Salmon fathered Boaz, and here we've got names from Matthew's genealogy into it now.

So now you know we're getting close to home.

Boaz father to Obed, Obed fathered Jesse, Jesse fathered to Eliab's firstborn.

Here you get the list of the names.

It doesn't jump just to David.

It's driving the point home.

The promise of the king is not going through the firstborn, or the secondborn, or the thirdborn, or the fourthborn, or the fifthborn, or the sixthborn.

But verse 15, David the seventh.

That's where the promise goes.

They had sisters.

Zariah and Abigail, the sons of Zariah.

Abishai, Joab, and Ashael.

From there.

Abigail bore Amasah, the father of Masah was Jether the Ishmaelite.

So the line is crossing with the Arabs again there.

Caleb, the son of Herzon, fathered children by his wife, Azuba, by Jerioth, and their sons were Jether, Shoabad, and Ardon.

Azuba died, Caleb married Ephrath, who bore him her.

Her fathered Uri, Uri fathered Bazael.

Hezron once the daughter of Mekir, the father of Gilead, whom he married when he was 60 years old, and she bore him Segub.

Segu fathered Jair, who had 23 cities in the land of Gilead.

And so now you're starting to see a change.

We're still here in the line of Judah.

We're still here in the family of David.

But now we're switching from people to place.

Judah takes one of the largest land allotments in all of Israel.

Now, if you've been to Israel, you recognize there should be an asterisk right there.

It's like calling, you know, Kansas, saying hey they have so much land in Kansas.

People live in 1% of it.

That's Judah.

So much of Judah.

They have so much land of Israel, but I would say, you know, 4% of it is inhabitable.

But they start taking over the land by dwelling in the cities.

Verse 25.

You get back to Ram, who's in the line of David, his firstborn Buna.

Or in Ozem.

He also had another wife whose name was Atara.

She bore the mother of Onam.

And then you get Ram's sons in verse 27, verse 28, the sons of Onam.

Verse 29, the family keeps growing.

Verse 30, Nadab, Seliad, Apiyim, Seliad died childless.

So even where places where the line ends, it's picked up elsewhere.

The son of Apiam was Eshi.

The son of Eshi was Sheshan.

The son of Sheshan Ahalai.

The sons of Jadah, Shemaih's brother, Jether, Jonathan.

Jether died childless.

And so again, the line picks up somewhere else.

The sons of Jonathan, Peleth and Zaza, these were the descendants of Jerhemiel.

Sheshan had no sons, only daughters.

And they had an Egyptian slave whose name was Jarah.

She gets into the line.

So Sheshin gave his daughter in marriage to Jarah his slave, and she who bore him a tie.

Atai fathered Nathan, Nathan fathered Zabbad, Zabad fathered Ephrael, who fathered Aphael fathered Obed.

Obed fathered Jehu.

Jehu fathered Azaras.

Now we're going through the kings.

Ezariah fathered Helias, Helias fathered Elisha, and so forth.

Verse 42.

The sons of Caleb, you get this other part of the line here.

Jeremel, Maresh, his firstborn, he fathered Ziph.

They were in Hebron.

Verse 43, the sons of Hebron now, Korah, Tepuah, Rechem, and Shema.

Verse 44, Shema's descendants.

Verse 45, the sons of Shemai.

Verse 46, Epha also, through Caleb's concubine.

And so I'm not boring you all the names here, but I'm trying to draw out for you how messed up this line is.

You have Ishmaelites, the Arabs, you have Egyptians, you have concubines, you have slaves, you have a prostitute.

All of them married in.

Look at verse 51.

Salma, the father of Bethlehem.

A lot of the cities were named after the people, by the way, Bethlehem's in the heart of Judah, just aside of Jerusalem.

Heref, the father of Beth Kadir, Shobel, the father of Kirath Jehrim, had other sons.

Go down to verse 54.

The sons of Salma, Bethlehem, the Nedophites, the Athra, the Beth Joab, and half of the Manahites and the Zorites, the clans also of the scribes who lived at Jabez, the Tirithites, the Shemalites, the Sukathites.

These are the Kenites who came from Hama, the father of the house of Rakeb.

Now, you don't know those names.

Nobody names their kids those names.

Right?

I so badly, if Savannah was a boy, she would have been Jehu.

Anyway.

The word Obed even means slave.

Bethlehem's a good name, but you don't name a person that.

This is the line of the Savior.

This is the line that brought the law and the promise of the king into the world.

Now, why did God do it this way?

I'm going to give you a quick outline of this, why God uses law.

First, God uses law because it reveals.

God brought his words into the world to reveal his will.

Again, it wasn't always like that.

Before the 12 tribes produced the nation, and Moses went up on the mountain, people did not know what God wanted.

Of course, they had their conscience that convicted them.

They knew what sin was.

Their conscience told them don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie.

Their conscience told them that.

Their conscience put eternity in their hearts.

They knew something was bigger than them, but they didn't know what.

Nature reveals the glories of God, but it cannot leave, lead to salvation.

So people were lost.

The language Paul uses in the book of Acts was that they were groping in the dark, Acts 17.

They were just trying to find something to hold on to because there was no word from the Lord.

It was a sad time.

And God did not speak from the clouds, he didn't have angels declare things on every street corner.

Instead, he used these 12 people to make a nation, to speak to the nation with clarity.

Now, if you were God, you could have done it a different way.

If you were God, you might have said, I'm going to give one word for the whole world.

But that's not what God did.

He confused the languages, started a new nation, and spoke to that nation.

Notice the blessing of that.

When God speaks, people are no longer left to guess.

They're no longer left to wonder, what does the Lord have for me?

Even Gentile nations, remember Deuteronomy chapter 4?

Deuteronomy 4 · chapter mention

The Gentiles will be drawn towards Israel to find out what the word of the Lord is.

They'll hear of the wisdom of Israel and they'll say, I wonder if God can speak to me also.

When they came to Israel, they didn't get a word from on high, they didn't get a word from an angel.

Do you remember when they came to Israel, they got a word from a prophet?

Or they got a word from the word.

That's the blessing of using these 12 tribes.

Why did God do it this way?

Because he could bring his word to the world this way.

What a blessing.

People are no longer left to guess what God wants from them.

Secondly, God's gonna build.

A distinct nation.

Every other nation in the world started at Babel in some sense, but the languages were confused.

Every other nation in the world is a group of people that share some kind of culture or national identity or something like that, that bind themselves together through laws and punishment and taxes.

You say, I don't pay taxes, I'm a sovereign citizen.

Okay, through laws.

Nations are bound together by geography, laws, language, taxes.

Every nation that's true of except one.

Israel's identity is that of the promise of God.

So God doesn't choose one nation to bring his word to, he chooses one person to bring his promise to, and from that promise comes a new nation that God builds.

That's why twelve sons.

God is the one building them.

He's making the nation.

Every other nation came from Babel with their own language and culture, not this nation.

This nation will be built by God.

Twelve sons in the most unusual way.

Jacob I loved, Esau hated.

The dude fought with an angel.

What a mess.

Into the wrong country.

They were promised Israel.

He gets shipped off into Egypt as a slave, becomes prime minister, makes a nation of a million plus people that get then put into slavery and then led through the Red Sea.

Then they all die.

He rebuilds, crosses the Jordan, and takes over the land.

No nation can say that's their story except Israel.

Every other nation we can say, think of the United States.

We have Plymouth Rock or whatever, and I'd just like to point out New Mexico is like 200 years before Plymouth Rock, but whatever.

We had explorers that came over advancing religious liberty and this brave new world or looking for gold, whatever your flavor may be, and we make our own system of government here and democracy that binds us together.

That's every nation's story, is something like that, except this nation, God brought them into the wilderness, killed them all, and started over with his word as the foundation.

God built them.

Why did God build a nation?

To give a place for the Messiah to come.

The Messiah could have come to a nation without governments, but we'll get to why he didn't do that in a second.

And once the Messiah is going to come to a world with governments and with nations, you have to choose which one.

God builds a nation for the purpose of receiving the Savior.

It's a context for the Messiah.

That's the phrase I would use.

God builds Israel to be a context for the Messiah to come.

Third.

God's stewards.

God confronts.

Confronts is a better word than stewards.

God confronts.

He gives the law to confront people, to show them their sin.

You saw, even in the list of the twelve tribes, how the law confronted almost all twelve of the people, had some confrontation with God in their story.

The law convicts people of sin.

The law exposes what's in your heart.

The law shows privileges of worship, being close to Judah, for example, is proximity to the king, which can also bring judgment.

And the law brings repentance.

Those are all the things God does by confronting you.

Without the law, you wouldn't know you're a sinner.

Your conscience might say that you struggle or whatever, but the law confronts you and is like a mirror to show you who you are.

The law shows how weak and sinful you are.

From a young age, your heart convicts you of sin.

From a young age, you are battling self-control and all that in your heart.

The law is convicting you of sin.

And you think it back as a teenager, you wonder, why can't I stop sinning?

That's the function of the law in your life, to expose to you that you cannot stop sinning.

You grow up, and the law is always there, reminding you that you are a sinner at every stage of life, convicting you of sin.

God does that to bring you to a place where you wonder, how can I be so sinful and stand before a holy God?

That's what the law does, it confronts you.

Fourth, the law directs.

God uses the law to direct Israel through human history.

He builds them into a nation, of course.

He's providential and sovereign over history.

He moves all of history through the law and through Israel towards Christ.

Even in the generic way, Joseph, one of the twelve sons, becomes a type of Christ in so many ways.

The law culminates in exile, as Israel's removed from the promised land, and then the return, which becomes a pattern for the death and resurrection of the Savior.

The law points to the virgin birth, which brings Christ into the world.

The law points even to evangelism.

God is directing Israel's topography and geography towards evangelism to the nations.

This is why God gives the law.

Notice how three and four work together.

The law confronts you in your sin, whether or not you're a Jew, the law confronts you, it shows you your sin and how apart you are from holiness.

And then the law directs history to a way for you to receive salvation.

And then finally, God fulfills all of this in Christ.

Israel collapses nationally.

They're reconstituted a little bit in 1 Chronicles.

They're reconstituted in a way that shows covenantal continuity with their past.

There's names here, these are their forefathers.

These are their patriarchs.

They're still looking forward, though.

Through the whole book of 1 Chronicles, there's still this anticipation that God is going to come back and bring salvation with them.

History will, of course, come to its conclusion with Christ.

Then you think of the list of the 12 tribes and their lessons, you think, obviously, as a Christian, you're reading that list and you're showing how you're thinking how all these are fulfilled in Christ.

Proximity to Christ doesn't mean you're saved, but it can bring blessing, but it also brings judgment.

The law demands a priest, Jesus is that priest.

Only not like Levi, he's Levi's priest.

The law demands a king, and Jesus is that king.

Being zealous for God can be good, but if it's done absent the law can bring judgment, Jesus fulfills the prophecy that zeal for your father's house will consume him.

He does it out of obedience to the law, turns the tables over, destroys the temple, rebuilds it again in three days as his own body when he resurrects from the grave and launches the church in the world.

I mean that's just one lesson.

Time and time again.

Divided loyalty.

The church grows, though small grows.

The older brother Reuben is Israel is cast off, but will we provoke jealousy again and come back to faith?

You see even the future for ethnic Israel coming to faith at the second coming of Christ prefigured in the composition of the 12 tribes.

That the remnant will be saved by grace.

Benjamin becomes an example of that.

Jesus is the Lion of Judah.

He's the priest that's over Levi, not under Levi, but over Levi.

He's the priest that gives access to God.

So God is using the law to confront you in your sin, to direct you towards Christ, and then to fulfill all of history at his second coming.

That's why God uses the law.

That's why he brought the law into the world through these 12 people.

He could have done it another way.

He could have come to some random nation that already existed.

But he didn't.

He built his own, revealed his word to them, and his word directs us to Christ.

I hope as you think about the role of the law in world history, you see the role and the law in your life.

That the law is used to convict you of sin, to drive your hope to Christ, and to recognize that all of history crescendoes with Christ, your life also finds its meaning and its significance only as it relates to Christ.

God, we do pray that you would see, that you would help us see how our life relates to you through the law to Christ.

We don't want conformity to the law, of course.

We want conformity to Christ.

We don't want to bring bring back the twelve tribes.

We want to we long for the return of Christ.

We're so thankful for these twelve people that you brought into the world that led to the nations, that led to the nation Israel, and ultimately to the Savior.

We know the law was a schoolmaster given to hold Israel together.

When Christ comes, he fulfills the law from the inside out.

For us as believers in that sense, school's over.

The schoolmaster is complete.

Law has been wrapped up, fulfilled in Christ.

So tonight, Lord, we don't stand under condemnation in front of the law.

We don't stand having the law convict us to condemnation.

Rather, the law now convicts us to righteousness.

It convicts us to save us and to build us up.

We have no room for the fear of the Israelites before the law.

Theirs was one of unbelief.

Our story is one of belief.

It's one of receiving a fulfilled law.

Being on the ark of history, moving towards the restoration of Israel and the redemption of all things.

We're so thankful for those promises in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

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.