Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 24th, 2015 | Route 66 - 1 Chronicles

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April 24th, 2015 | Route 66 - 1 Chronicles · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the prize winner for the most enthusiastic service of the morning, the third service.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Greetings to those of you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Mulvaine Building, College Avenue.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, if you're in the College Avenue building, I encourage you to walk across the street and come in the warehouse, the ripped-out warehouse that is the Mulvaine Building as we renovate.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: And seems like we're always making things better.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: And God's really blessed us.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for uh giving generously.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and I hear that you women are gonna have a new restroom next week.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we men really, really like ours.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Feel free to borrow ours if we're not in it.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we're on a road trip through the Bible, and it's called Route 66.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 66 books in the Bible.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we're there and we have arrived this Sunday at the book of First Chronicles.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: My son-in-law, who teaches Old Testament Canada, was telling me last week uh that uh First Thing Chronicles are, he believes, the most overlooked, unread books of the Bible.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I gotta tell you, uh you're gonna you're gonna enjoy this.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: You should enjoy it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: I uh read each book before, obviously, before I preach it.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: But anyways, I was rereading First Chronicles of the last week.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, wow, this is such a heartwarming, this is such a great book.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh grab your study sheet if you have it in front of you.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and and uh you'll see sort of a difference.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: 1 2 Chronicles, by the way, are a about 50% of them is an exact repeat of the four books that precede them.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: 1 2 Samuel, 1 2 Kings are repeated, 1 2 Chronicles, sort of like the Gospels overlap, which is one reason why people don't read Chronicles.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: But but if you remember two weeks ago when I preached 2 Kings, the theme was eventually even God runs out of slack, okay, about judgment.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you to somebody who emailed me a week ago and said, Oh, I'm so glad it's about time you preached on judgment.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, wow.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, she I I agree with her, but you know, I love the fact that whether I preach negative or positive, I always get thumbs up, so thank you.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um well, this is really positive.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: The future is as bright as the promise.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason this is such an important message, you've got to understand, the first second chronicles are the last books really written in the Old Testament at the end of the Hebrew Bible.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they're written to uh to people who are in a dark place.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was reading last week, Route 66, Old Route 66 across the country was obviously a much darker road than the interstate highway we have today.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a terrifying thing, apparently, for your car to break down in those days, back in the 50s, 60s, on Route 66.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was a very dark road.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and on Route 66 in the Bible, there is no darker road than we could call it the Death Valley of the Bible, first Second Chronicles, because these were people who'd just been in exile.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: These books are written at 400 BC.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: David, I mean, these books are about, it's like uh it's like Bill O'Reilly writing a book about George Washington or people who lived a couple hundred years ago.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: These books are written about people who lived hundreds of years before, but they are written to people in the present day.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a group of people who are in the dark, they are depressed, they are downtrodden.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: These are people who have finally returned from Babylon to Israel, but a broken down Israel.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is a generation, I don't know if you remember the story, but Babylon, 800 miles over here to the east, had come under Nebuchadnezzar and had in 586 BC seized, defeated, razed just to the ground the temple in Jerusalem, killed so many people, destroyed everything, and dragged all these Israelites back to Babylon, where for 70 years they were just depressed, books of Ezekiel, books of Jeremiah, and so forth, you know, uh written.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and finally now they're released, they get to go back to Israel.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you have this motley crew of broken down, defeated, depressed people come back, and they're poor, and there's nothing for them there in Jerusalem.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's dark, they're in the dark, as someone has said.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and so these, the message the future is as bright as the promises of God is to people who really need it.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a message which you're gonna really need or enjoy if either you or a loved one of your are are in the dark right now.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: That is, if perhaps because of your marriage, you're in the dark, or because you're one of your children or uh, you know, and you're in the dark because of them, or school maybe, or or or work, or your health.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Doctor told you something about your health.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of people who are in the dark.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't, I personally, I and we personally as a group can't identify.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: I can't imagine one day perhaps we'll be taken into captivity.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine living in an Arab country, let's say, where we were forced in the grocery store, you would buy from people who spoke Arabic, who had a different language, and who didn't care whether we lived or died, you know, and and and and and and we uh you know we're in that kind of a setting.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, imagine, imagine Israel in 500 BC, 400 BC.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know much about living in the dark, but I have to tell you that in the last 24 hours, in fact, it was almost precisely 24 hours ago, I did have a dark, an out of a darkness experience.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: On Friday and Saturday, I got to go with some friends, uh, three friends, and go ATV riding in central Missouri, place called Mark Twain National Forest, beautiful place, and it poured rain on us.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's me in the middle there uh uh with uh notice I'm having I have a helmet on.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's important for this story.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so we had we had a great time, and and it was we were gonna quit about noon yesterday, and it was about this time, 11:30 or so, and we'd had some great experiences.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is Don Schwartz's brother who got stuck and we pulled him out.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the the uh we're looking up a hill uh in that picture there, and and and the person in the middle on the right-hand side there, that's me, but I don't remember that moment.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because about 11:30, uh uh when we're only a half mile away from the end, I come up top of the hill and I look down and it is steep, and there's a ravine that uh dirt bikes have made, and I'm somehow gonna have to uh get down there.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and and that's the last thing I remember.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: But the person who's behind me, a couple people behind me, they remember that I got I went down and and it was going too fast, and I got a wheel caught or something, and so the so the ATB went one way and I soared like a bird.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: Beautifully and gracefully, I am told, for quite a distance, and then head planted about 60 degrees into the ground.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and Don says I was at the top of the hill, and when you didn't move, you know, for about a minute, he said, I thought everybody at TBC is gonna be so mad at me.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I just had a concussion.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of you probably, especially football players, have had a concussion, and I came out of it, and like anybody with a concussion, I felt nauseous and had a headache for a while.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: But but the funny thing is about this picture, I'm standing there, I don't remember this at all because Don Short and Ray, they're asking me things like what day is it, and I didn't know.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I and Don says I asked him five times what state we were in, and uh, but they do say the one answer I could give is I knew Melody's name and my kids' names.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that sweet?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's points there.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna make me big points.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so anyway, I was I was in the dark for a while, and that's about as uh you know, and by the way, I'd trade I I'd have another concussion if either KU or K State could get a decent high school recruit.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, uh all I'm saying is it wasn't that that bad, and and and just don't hug me.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: I I feel like somebody's like uh car ran over my ribs this morning, but I'm doing fine.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, I had a little darkless darkness moment.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: But can you imagine being Israel?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or can you imagine being someone who's living a life of darkness?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: What they really need to hear is the future is as bright as the promises of God.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: You see, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles don't give you, uh it's on your study sheet.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh look at the summary here, don't give you the negative as Samuel and Kings do.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: In the Hebrew Bible, the books of Chronicles I wrote are placed at the end.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: They were the last books of the Old Testament to be pinned.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: They were written for the depressed little group of Israelites who'd returned to broken down Jerusalem after 70 years in captivity.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: They were singing the blues.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: All seemed lost.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: The glory was gone.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Solomon's beautiful temple, rubble.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what about the promises of a royal dynasty?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: They had no king now.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: No son of David sitting on the throne, so why worship anyway?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Did God even care for them anymore?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: First and second chronicles, originally one book is brightly positive.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Though it spans the same history as Samuel and King, it doesn't repeat the negative reasons for Israel's failure in exile.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, it turns our eyes to God's gracious plan and irrevocable promises.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: It cries out to the beaten-down, depressed, hopeless believer, get your chin up, you're chosen and beloved, your future is as bright as the promises of God.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's not my line.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I agree with Simon DeVries, who wrote in his academic commentary on Chronicles, I regard Chronicles as one of the richest minds of spirituality in all of Scripture.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the outline I have here makes the book fall into two parts.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Chapters 1 through 9, the royal line of David, chapters 10 to 29, the reign of David.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Flip this over.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Chapters 1 through 9 are the begets.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got a Bible in front of you, flip it open to 1 Chronicles, any place in 1 through 9.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is the death valley of Route 66 for Bible readers.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Have any of you tried to read through the Bible?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And came through, came to 1 Chronicles, chapter, look at chapter 1.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: All it is is names we can't pronounce, right?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then you go, wow, God, I want to read through the Bible.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so eventually what you do, if you're if you're like me, okay, this is since I do it, this will be okay for you.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: You put your finger sideways, you put the top of the page, and you just slowly move it down.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you're done.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so, and you figure, you know, in chapter four, you got the Jabez prayer, you know, there's a couple of tiny little nuggets, and you go, oh God, I found, Lord, I'm gonna hang on this one for about 10 minutes because there's nothing else here.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: So this is just genealogy.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: You get to these chapters and you go, uh, wow.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, there's, now, I I would never watch The Simpsons, not me.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I I I have a vague memory that there's a lot of biblical references in the Simpsons.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and uh Homer Simpson, the father, one day, this is just a vague memory, uh, decides he's gonna listen to the Bible on tape.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, does.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: And guess who's guess who's speaking the Bible on tape?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: Larry King, of all people.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And no, it's true.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and so, but the funny thing is, as I recall, and I could be wrong about details, every place he turns to, whether he fast forwards or backs, it's always an Amenadab, beget machon, and machon, begat dude.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always begets.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's the joke there, and eventually go, this is ridiculous.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: These begats have a really important purpose to a rootless, lost, depressed generation who who sort of stumble back to the land and don't feel like they are connected at all with the great people of God of the past to whom the promises were given.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: But but then they open this and it's like uh you know, when I was about 2025 at a family reunion, somebody came around and passed out a conden genealogy done by a great uncle who, and it page after page, it went all the way back to Adam of all things.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I mean it does.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they have to be some some stuff in there that's a guesswork, but but I mean it, you know, they they opened this up.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: They opened this up, and this wasn't just a list of names that are hard to pronounce like it is for you and me.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: When they opened up, Jeff's one through nine, and they see their name, and then they can trace it back.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: It starts with Adam and it goes through David and all these people, and then they see their family name.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine the excitement?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: They go, wow, I I I'm part of the people of God, I have a heritage.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm related to I'm related to Abraham, I'm related to all those people who had the promise.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm one of the people of God.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: You see, we weighed our way through these chapters, they wept their way through these chapters.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because this was proof that they had roots, that they had a lineage.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: There's a story of a Bible translator, you know, who had no luck trying to get the tribe to believe the Bible.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then find somebody comes to him, a leader of the tribe, and he points to the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew, which Adam, David, and so forth.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: We can believe this.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is true.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: He says, You're kidding me.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: A genealogy convinces you the Bible is true?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, he says.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: If there's a genealogy, it means there's a family tree.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: A person is nobody without a family tree, unless you have roots.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Ask the smallest child in our tribe.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: He can tell you who his grandparents' great-grandparents are.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, you see, that's all I'm gonna say about this first part, but you understand the importance of chapters one through nine for the people of God is it's like we are the people to whom those promises were given.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And listen, there's a lot of depressed, rootless-feeling Christians today living in the dark.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can say to them, you don't understand.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: You are actually a child of Abraham, as a believer, child of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Part of your lineage is David and Jesus Christ.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Get out of bed, get your chin up.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: You've got roots, you got a pedigree, buddy.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: The promises of God were given to you.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: So that's chapters one through nine.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're the you know, you're the people of the promises.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, chapters 10 through 29 are the incredible promise that caused that generation to hold their chin up and took them out of their darkness and depression.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to take you to the key chapter of the book.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: We'll go through this chapter.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a single promise, one of the four great promises or covenants in the Old Testament, the Davidic covenant.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's up there with the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the New Covenant in the Old Testament.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: 1 Chronicles chapter 17.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Turn to that.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And this is so important, by the way, that it's not only found here, it's first found in 2 Samuel 7, and it will be found again in Psalm 89.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it is repeated almost uh word for word and much of it uh in three places in the Old Testament.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's that important, this incredible promise to them, and by the way, to you and me.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it goes like this.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: When David had settled into his palace, this is about a uh thousand, approximately a thousand BC, he said to Nathan the prophet, remember this is the same Nathan who would point a finger at him about at Bathsheba, look, he said, I'm living in a cedar house, while the ark of the Lord's covenant is under tent curtains.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hundred yards north of where he was, he had brought the ark close to the palace, but he's looking out, that's a tabernacle, that's just a tent, and the Phoenicians have built me this amazing palace.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: I need to build a palace for God, too.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but you know, it just shows his heart.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's cool.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: So Nathan, without consulting God, you know, good common sense, says, You go, boy.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you do it.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Do all that's on your heart, for God's with you.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Build.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Gets a little embarrassing for the prophet because he goes home, goes to sleep, and then the word of God wakes him up and says, Nathan, uh, go back to David, my servant, by the way.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: The greatest compliment God can pay you is to call you my servant.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's a rare title in the Bible.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Choose a Moses, Jesus, David.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: But remember, one day, hopefully, you'll go into heaven and God will say, Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you'll find that David gets called this wonderful compliment by God.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Go to David, my servant, and say, This is what the Lord says.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're not the one to build me a house to dwell in.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so Nathan, kind of embarrassed, prophet of God, got an inside track.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: I told you wrong yesterday.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: So Nathan goes back to him, and we jump down to verse 7, and Nathan says, I was wrong.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're not supposed to build the house.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: God doesn't want you building the house, he wants your son Solomon to.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're a man of war.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh uh in verse seven of this covenant, I took you from the pasture, God says, and from following the sheep.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Remember David's history?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Remember how he was a sheepherder?
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: He was the youngest of the boys of Jesse, and he would follow the sheep around.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: And God says, Listen, I took you from rags to riches, I took you from the back of the sheep uh herd to the front of the sheep of Israel, he says, uh, to be ruler over my people Israel.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: I've been with you wherever you have gone, and I have destroyed all your enemies before you.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And now here comes the promise.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: I will make a name for you.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I will establish a place for my people Israel, and plant them so they may live there and not be disturbed again.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: God gives David three promises to be fulfilled during his lifetime.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Verse 7 through first half of verse 10.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Fame, reputation, a name, land, and peace.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And God fulfilled all those promises as is, which makes me very confident he's gonna fulfill the other three promises, which are future promises.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right in the middle of verse 10, it's as though uh we have this break.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Nathan sort of rears back and starts over.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Furthermore, I declare to you that the Lord Himself will build a house for you.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: In Hebrew, this is really pretty.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you want to build a house for me?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm gonna build a house for you.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a play on words because the word house has a number of meanings in the Hebrew language.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: The word house is the same as the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, bait, or buy it.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it can mean house, it can mean this building we're in, church, it can mean temple, it can mean palace, okay?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And David wants to build a building, physical, material building for God.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: God says no.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: But God says, I'll tell you what, I want to build a house for you.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And now he's not using the word about a literal palace, which David already has.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: He means the word house as it's oftentimes used in Hebrew for a family, a genealogy, a lineage, a dynasty.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: See?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: So in this plan words, a house, no, you're not gonna build me one, I'm gonna build you.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, isn't that interesting?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's a whole lot like what God says to you and me and to non-Christians under the world today.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: We come to him like the Pharisees did.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: The Pharisees say, what do we do that we do the works of God?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: How do we do the works of God?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: How do we get God on our side?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: How do we make sure we can go to hell?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: How do we how do we get this thing done?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says in the Gospel of John, this is the work of God that you believe in him whom God hath sent.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: God doesn't want you building him a house.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: God wants to build you a house.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: God doesn't want you working for salvation, God sends you his son.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's what makes Christianity different from every other religion.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: You simply sit back and allow God to do it for you.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Believe in his son Jesus Christ.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not there yet, that's great.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: No problem.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Glad you came, but you need to understand this is the essential significant thing about Christianity.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: All that stuff on the circumference, as C.S.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis says, we should Christianity shares with Hindus, with Buddhists, and so forth, like being nice to children and doing charity and so forth.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: All religions the same there.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: What's different is at the center, whether you do for God or whether God does for you.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the point here is that the Lord, he says, I'm gonna build a house for you, David.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: When your time comes to be with your fathers, that is, pass away.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'll raise up after you your descendant, name of Solomon, who's one of your sons, and I'll establish his kingdom.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: He'll build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: I will be a father to him, he'll be a son to me.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'll appoint him over my house and my kingdom forever, and his throne will be established forever.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: There this is remarkable.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Sons forever, kingdom forever, throne forever.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: No dynasty that has ever existed has even thought about the idea that it would last forever.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, David, you're gonna have a son, a boy, named Solomon.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: He'll grow up and he'll have a boy.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: That boy will have a boy, he'll sit on the throne.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then that boy will have a boy and he'll sit on the throne.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that boy will have a boy and he'll sit on the throne.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that boy, and it will go on how long?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Freaking forever.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Can you believe that?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Forever?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's almost impossible to believe.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: So no wonder that King David goes in and sits in the Lord's presence up in the tent and says, Wow, who am I, Lord God?
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And what is my house, meaning his family, not his castle, that you've brought me this far?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is a little thing to you, God, for you've spoken about your servant's house in the distant future.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: What more can David say to you for honoring your servant?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know your servant, Lord.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Lord, you've done all this greatness, making these great promises because of your servant, according to your will.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Lord, let the word you've spoken about your servant in his house be confirmed forever.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Do as you promised.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Let your name be confirmed, magnified forever.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the saying, Yahweh of hosts, is God over Israel.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: May the house of your servant, there it is.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: You get this, the key word in this book is house, keep phrase as the house of David.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: May the house of your servant David be established before you.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Since you, my God, have revealed to your servant that you will build him a house, your servant, which is me, has found courage to pray in your presence.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yahweh, you indeed are God, and you've promised this good thing to your servant.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: So now you've been pleased to bless your servant's house, that it may continue before you forever.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: See, David understands how amazing this is that this is going to happen in the distant future.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: For you, Lord, have blessed it, and it is blessed forever.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And this becomes sort of the repeated refrain in the book.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's in chapter 22, it's in chapter 28.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Chapter 22, David summons his son Solomon, instructs him to build a house for the Lord.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: My son, David said to Solomon, it was in my heart to build a house, a literal house, a temple for the name of Yahweh.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: But the word of the Lord came to me, you've shed much blood and waged great wars.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: You are not to build a house for my name, because you shed so much blood on the ground before me.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: But a son will be born to you.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: His name will be Solomon, and I'll give peace and quiet to Israel during his reign, and he's the one who will build a temple, a house for my name.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: Here we go again.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: He will be my son.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Every descendant of David, every king was called the son of God, God's son.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I will be his father, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: How long?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Forever.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Sons forever.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Kingdom forever.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Throne forever.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, isn't that just amazing that that you know during there's 20 kings of Judah, southern kingdom, and that means, okay, David, wow, he better have a son.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: He has a son.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank God.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: All the people go.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, just like the ring is the symbol of your marriage.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Guess what the symbol of God's promise is?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: The dividend coming.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's a boy.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Solomon's got to have a boy.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank God he did.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Rehoboam.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Rehoboam's got to have a boy.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank God he did.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Abijah.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Abijah's got to have a boy.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Asa, here he comes.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yay! Everybody cheers.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he and it just goes on that way all the way down for 500 years.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and everybody's scared as soon as the wedding happens.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, there's a couple of con it's a lot like uh Monaco or England, for example, the constitutional monarchies in our world, where they have a king.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And at the moment of the wedding, you know, when the boy gets when the young man gets married, the prince gets married, he's king, everybody holds their breath.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's got to be a boy.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: In Monaco, it was especially critical because the rule was uh Monaco is this little, extremely wealthy uh little city-state, little nation uh there uh uh at the very southern uh tip of France.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the law was that if there was no boy, if it was just girls or no children, if the king had no children or just girls, that the principality would revert back to France.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: It would lose its independent status.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you can imagine how scared everyone was.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And in 1956, and this is you know, before the Charles and Diana and the William and Kate and the fairy tale weddings in the modern day, the biggest fairy tale wedding of the 20th century was Hollywood actress Grace Kelly of Philadelphia marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody held their breath.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Will this Hollywood actress give our king a son?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And in one year, he came out one year, she she had a boy, and the place just went crazy.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: We get to be an independent state, we don't revert back to France.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that rule, by the way, has just changed in the last 10 years or so, so they it can be an independent state.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: But after Rainier died in 2005, uh his his uh the present king is is called Prince um uh yeah, Prince Albert and Khan.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's how I remember.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Prince Albert II.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: And he gets married finally in 2011.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: Is he gonna have a boy?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Answer yes, in December.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: He just had twins, and one of them, Jacques, is a boy.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yay, you know, everybody cheers.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's because, and and can you imagine the way it was in Israel?
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, God makes this incredible, I think, analogy in 1 Kings 11 to a candle.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: He says, My servant David always has a lamp before me in Jerusalem.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: That, by the way, is what a lamp looked like in David's day, an iron age lamp.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and so you have this you have this candle in Jerusalem, and David has a son Solomon, then David's candle goes out.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: He dies.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: But Solomon's still burning.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And Solomon gives birth to a little boy, Rehoboam.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then Solomon's candle goes out, but Asa's still burning.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then Asa has a little boy, and Asa's little boy, or Abijah's little boy, Rehoboam has a boy, Abijah and then Abijah has a little boy, Asa.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And Asa, Asa's still burning when his daddy dies.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then Asa has a little boy, Jehoshaphat, and then Asa dies.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: But Jehoshaphat's still burning.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: If Satan, if Satan can just blow out the candle, Satan can make God's word fall to the ground and break.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: He can make the Davidic covenant crash, he can make God not be as true as his word.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: And Satan gave it all he had.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: In 841 BC, a witch queen named Athaliah, her name is up there, decided she was going to eliminate the entire line of David.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: There were 70 little babies in a nursery.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: This was the entire line of David waiting to grow up.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, I want you to kill all those babies.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Fortunately, obviously, God was in charge.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: There was a girl named Jehoshaphat.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: She was an ant.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you know how ants are about their nephews?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: And she snuck in as they were slaughtering the babies, and she grabbed one, a little baby, six months old named Joash, out of the crib and ran out, ran out of the palace and hid him for seven years.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he was seven years old.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Here came Joash.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: The candle had not been snuffed out, and Joash took the throne.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually, of course, as you know, you know, it lasted for 500 years and they're in captivity.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, then we have Jesus coming.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: And has anybody used these magic relighting candles?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like it's like we're gonna blow out the candle, Satan says.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: But then the candle relights.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: I love to use this on my grandson's, we use this on our grandson's cake, you know, a few months ago because he wanted to make fun of him.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, blow it out.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: What's wrong with you, Judah?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Come on.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just just with a, you know, just having soft hearts on his birthday.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, says, you know, Gabriel comes to Mary, and Gabriel says, Listen, you're gonna have a baby, and guess what?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: He's gonna be great, he's gonna be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and here he comes.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: The candle lights.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: But Satan's after him.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Kill all the babies under the age of two in Bethlehem.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: But the angel has told Joseph, so they run off to Egypt.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: All the people in his hometown, they try to throw him off a cliff, but he survives.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: But Satan finally wins.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: He gets him nailed up to a cross, he's dead, he blows out the candle.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a magic candle that relights in three days.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that great?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that candle will not blow out.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because God's made a promise.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: And if that candle ever went out, then God's word would not be true, and we could not count on him.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now listen, in 70 AD, when the Romans conquered Jerusalem, they wiped out all the genealogies.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: No one today of the Jewish people knows whether or not they are a descendant of David.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: There is only one descendant of David in the universe that we know about.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And his name is Jesus Christ.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he will be the Son forever.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we pray for his kingdom to come back when we pray, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: And one day it will happen, but uh but if you go to certain places today in the world, universities they'll say David Who?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: David was just like Cinderella.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: David wasn't a real person.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's what they were saying up until 1993.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: When up at the northern tip of Israel, an amazing thing happened.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: A Wheaton girl who was digging in uh uh uh uh at Tell Dan out in front, turned over a piece of the ancient stair stepway up into the great city of Dan.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: There were no trees then, it was three stories high, and she flipped it over, and and all of a sudden, finding this piece of stone that she flipped over that had writing on it.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Writing on it.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it is one of the, uh, in my view, the third greatest archaeological find in the last hundred years, called the House of David inscription, the Tell Dan inscription, the first time the name of David has been found outside the Bible.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the significance of this is that is that this is a victory stone that was erected by the king of Syria in about 840 BC that lists no less than eight kings, which are listed in the Bible.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, I've killed these kings who were of the house of David.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: David was apparently such a significant figure, even 200 years later, that the king of Syria says, Whoever I kill is of the house of David.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: That phrase, which is the key phrase in Chronicles, house of David.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: I declare to you, said Nathan, that the Lord himself will build a house for you, a dynasty for you.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Does David really exist?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is David just a tribal chieftain?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, David was this remarkable king, and Jesus Christ is the son of David.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: So when you hear the words, the house of David, you and I can think the king is coming, he's going to return.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: He is the only descendant of David left.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: He will live forever.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And when he returns, he will sit on the throne of David, and he will rule us in such grace and fairness and kindness and mercy that we can all say today, no matter how dark things get, our future is as bright as the promise of God.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: That line came from an amazing person, Adonairam and Anne Judson went out in the early 1800s.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: The first foreign missionaries that ever went out from the United States, they tried to join William Carey, the Britisher who had gone to India, but they couldn't get in.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so they went to a place called today, Myanmar, which was then called Burma, which is a horrible place.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: There was all kinds of sickness and people hated them, and Anne died, and then some of the children died, and it was just horrific.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: But Adaniram kept on it, and when he finally died, he'd left a hundred churches, but it was really tough.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: And in the midst of all that darkness, he wrote back, the future is as bright as the promises of God.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: And listen, dear friend, no matter how dark your life is and how dark my life is, that's still true today.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Before I hit my head on a stone and couldn't think of anything original, I was as I was writing, I was thinking of the promises of God this weekend.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Say these out loud with me.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Here's some of the promises of God.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Say it with me.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: I will be with you.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: I will never leave you.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: I will supply all you need.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: I will love you always.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: I will rescue you.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: I will give you eternal life.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'll return to be your king forever.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: I will not forget my promises.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: That line is in Chronicles.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: The promises of God.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: When your life is darker than ever, his promises then are like the stars.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: The darker the night, the brighter they shine.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you can cling to those promises, one of the greatest of which is the king is coming.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, we love Jeremiah 29, 11, right?
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: I have plans for you, the plans for future and a hope.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've got to tell you, we take that out of context, which is okay.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: We do that a lot.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: But that verse is written, that verse is 1 Chronicles.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah is writing that to these very same people and saying, your plans, the future and the hope, is that you get to return back to Jerusalem from exile, and that the house of David will rise one day and you will have a king.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, apply it any way you want, but if you read Jeremiah 29 in context, he's giving us the same lesson that I'm giving you this morning.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: That your future and my future is as bright as the promises of God, one of the greatest of which is that the king is coming, the Lord is returning, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why, that's why we're able to sing, though doubt and fear assail, I'm standing on the promises of God.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Get your chin up, dear friend.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: It may be so dark you don't feel like getting out of bed.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Awful things that may have happened in your family, in your life, in your career, to your health.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm here to tell you on the basis of 1 Chronicles, life can't get worse for you than it was for them with all of the slaughters, all of the death, all of the depression, all of the darkness.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: But God says, listen, there's something I want you to know because you're part of the people of God, your future is as bright as my promises, and that's what I want you to stand on.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, thank you so much.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: And even though even though all kinds of fears and anxieties and depressions assail us because we live in this dark world, yet there is this beam of light, there is this candle which can never go out in heaven, which will return and rule over us in this wonderful and great and perfect kingdom.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: I ask, dear Lord, for those folks who are sitting here who are struggling with something and it's really hard for them.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Life is so dim.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: I pray that this morning they will hear you whisper to them, my dear child, when life is at its darkest, remember your future is as bright as the promises of God.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Standing on the promises of Christ might keep through eternal age, let his praises ring.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Glory in the highest I will shout and sing.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Standing on the promises of God standing, standing, standing on the promises of God.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Standing on the promises that cannot fail when the howling storms of doubt and fear assail.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: By the living word of God I shall prevail.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm standing on the promises of God.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sing in church is upon sandy, sandy.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm standing on the promises of God.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're dismissed.