Sunday Sermon: Write Your Own Book of Chronicles

PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION
Let us pray: Gracious God, as we turn to your Word, may the Spirit of God rest upon us. Help us to be steadfast in our hearing, in our speaking, in our believing, and in our living. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

SERMON: INTRODUCTION
If you’re following along with the “Year of the Bible,” you know that today is the day for a sermon on 1 Chronicles. Most of us don’t know too much about 1 Chronicles, so I thought I’d read to you some quotes from a commentary on the Chronicles. . . Leslie Allen starts out a commentary on 1-2 Chronicles—yes there’s a sequel!—by saying, “The books of Chronicles are the Bible's best-kept secret.” What do ya think about that?

Another scholar has testified: “I regard Chronicles as one of the richest mines of spirituality in all Scripture.”2 Allen writes that “the assessment of an earlier commentator may be added: ‘Chronicles is one of the most stimulating books in the Bible, courageous and practical—a splendid achievement’”3 (Allen, NIB, 1-2 Chronicles).

That’s pretty high praise, wouldn’t you say? Sounds like we’ve got a real treat in store for us this morning in God’s Word! So, without any further ado, I give you today’s Scripture reading from 1 Chronicles chapter five:

SCRIPTURE READING 1 Chronicles 5:7-26
7 Their relatives by clans, listed according to their genealogical records: Jeiel the chief, Zechariah, 8 and Bela son of Azaz, the son of Shema, the son of Joel. They settled in the area from Aroer to Nebo and Baal Meon. 9 To the east they occupied the land up to the edge of the desert that extends to the Euphrates River, because their livestock had increased in Gilead.

Have we gotten to the part that’s the best kept secret in the Bible? Not yet, I guess. Let’s keep reading.

10 During Saul's reign they waged war against the Hagrites, who were defeated at their hands; they occupied the dwellings of the Hagrites throughout the entire region east of Gilead. 11 The Gadites lived next to them in Bashan, as far as Salecah: 12 Joel was the chief, Shapham the second, then Janai and Shaphat, in Bashan. 13 Their relatives, by families, were: Michael, Meshullam, Sheba, Jorai, Jacan, Zia and Eber-- seven in all. 14 These were the sons of Abihail son of Huri, the son of Jaroah, the son of Gilead, the son of Michael, the son of Jeshishai, the son of Jahdo, the son of Buz. 15 Ahi son of Abdiel, the son of Guni, was head of their family. 16 The Gadites lived in Gilead, in Bashan and its outlying villages, and on all the pasturelands of Sharon as far as they extended. 17 All these were entered in the genealogical records during the reigns of Jotham king of Judah and Jeroboam king of Israel.

So, how many riches of spirituality have you mined so far? What, none? Maybe they’re saving the best for last. We should keep reading.

18 The Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh had 44,760 men ready for military service-- able-bodied men who could handle shield and sword, who could use a bow, and who were trained for battle. 19 They waged war against the Hagrites, Jetur, Naphish and Nodab. 20 They were helped in fighting them, and God handed the Hagrites and all their allies over to them, because they cried out to him during the battle. He answered their prayers, because they trusted in him. 21 They seized the livestock of the Hagrites-- fifty thousand camels, two hundred fifty thousand sheep and two thousand donkeys. They also took one hundred thousand people captive, 22 and many others fell slain, because the battle was God's. And they occupied the land until the exile.

Well, NOW things are getting a little interesting. . .

25 But they were unfaithful to the God of their fathers and prostituted themselves to the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them. 26 So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria (that is, Tiglath-Pileser king of Assyria), who took the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh into exile. He took them to Halah, Habor, Hara and the river of Gozan, where they are to this day.

Well, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord endures forever, even the book of Chronicles.


#1
Now, no offense to Leslie Allen, the commentator I mentioned first this morning, but I found myself nodding a bit more enthusiastically as I read the introduction of a DIFFERENT commentary on Chronicles. THIS guy starts his book by saying, “Chronicles is not a popular book . . . . [Though our bibles divide it into 1 & 2 Chronicles, it’s really just one book, filled with 64 chapters.] To many readers, Chronicles seems little more than a dull rewrite of [the stories about] Samuel and [in 1 and 2] Kings.”

AND, he points out that the Greek name for Chronicles actually means “leftovers” (Tuell, 1-2 Chron, Interpretation, p 1) as if the author of Chronicles just gathered together all the leftover details that didn’t make it into 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings and slapped them together into a book.

So where is the wisdom in these leftovers? I believe it is there somewhere—otherwise, why include it in the Bible? But I still keep asking myself as I wrote this sermon, where are the best-kept secrets and the rich mines of spirituality? Where’s the courage and the practical wisdom?

So I poked and I prodded, and I dug around in these verses for a while, and I think I came up with some nuggets of wisdom hidden inside these “leftover.”

1. Lesson #1: Family is important. Look at all those lists of fathers and sons and grandsons. I know it doesn’t seem terribly interesting to us, BUT, if it was MY family tree written down in the Chronicles, I’d be trying to memorize every word of it. This is history. This is someone’s life story. It is important to know where you came from and who your family is. Sometimes you have to know where you came from in order to figure out where you’re going. The author of Chronicles wants us to remember that family is important.

2. Lesson 2 is related to Lesson 1: You can’t ride your parents’ coattails forever. We all do it for a while, especially if our parents’ have a good reputation. It comes in handy during our teenage years. But we can’t ride their coattails forever. In our passage this morning, it tells us that the first generation of Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh cried out to God for help in the midst of battle and won the battle. But the next generation was “unfaithful to the God of their fathers and prostituted themselves to the gods of the peoples of the land.” Though their fathers’ generation chose to be faithful, the sons did not. And they were punished for that. You can’t ride your parents’ coattails forever.

3. Lesson 3 is related to Lessons 1 and 2: “God has no grandchildren.” “Each generation had the responsibility of [learning and accepting] the faith handed down by its [mothers and fathers].” Again, you can’t ride your parents’ coattails when it comes to faith. Though they may have taught you about God, you must come to know God for yourself. (Allen, 1-2 Chronicles, NIB) Nobody gets “grandfathered” in to heaven. We are all directly sons and daughters of God.

#2
But I saved what I THINK the best lesson for last: we see God’s presence most clearly in the every day events and details in our lives. To chronicle something is to narrate or report something. So, Chronicles is a report of God’s presence as it is seen in the daily lives of God’s people.

Sure these lists of names and little stories seem to be mundane and tedious, but really the writer of Chronicles is telling the story of how God worked in the details of ordinary life. There are sixty some other books in the Bible that tell us all about the BIG things God has done in history. But Chronicles tells us about the little tiny everyday ways God is at work in our lives.

I think we ought to pay more attention to the details in life. I think we ought to keep track of where and when we see God at work in the details of our lives. I think we need to chronicle or to report those things for ourselves. SO . . . I have a little present for you. I am giving you your own “Book of Chronicles.” The pages are blank because YOU are going to the author of your book of Chronicles—look, it even says “My Book of Chronicles” on the front! You are going to create your own record of what God is doing in your life.

This is all you have to do: when you see God at work in your life, write it down—write down where you were, what time it was, and what happened. Remember to think about the ordinary, mundane details of life where God is at work.

CONCLUSION
As the priests would get ready to celebrate Yom Kippur, they would read from an assigned list of Scriptures (Tuell). Reading these Scriptures were meant to help keep them awake as they read ALL night long. And Chronicles was on that list of books to read to keep from falling asleep. It was exciting for them to read because it is a story of their families and their lives, and it is a story of their faith, passed on from generation to generation.

Think about how precious the book of Chronicles was to them. And now think about how precious your book of Chronicles could become to your family. It will be a well you can drink from when your faith gets a little parched. It will be a testimony of God’s faithfulness, something that can be shared with your children and grandchildren. It will be a way for you to continue to pass on the faith to future generations in your family even after you are partying with Jesus in heaven. Think of all the ways God could use your words and experiences years from now.

THAT’S why the book of Chronicles is in the Bible. THAT’S why it’s a mine full of spiritual riches and wisdom. Because it’s the story of what God was doing in people’s lives. And now you can write the story of what God is doing in your life.

You can start chronicling where you see God at work starting today. You can think back over your life and start from when you were a child. It’s up to you. There are no rules for what goes into your book of Chronicles. You don’t have to write in it every day or you can write in it a couple times of day. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are making a record of seeing God at work in your life.

And I’m going to give you 60 seconds to work on your first chronicle about where you see God at work in your life. You don’t have to write it down now. Just start thinking about it. Ready? Go.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.