First Chronicles chapter two. Just the first two verses here. These are the sons of Israel, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Joseph, Benjamin, Naphtali, 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. The beginning of First Chronicles. First Chronicles is bringing us through this era of history. There are 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 nine one1, 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 was conscience, of course, that regulated people. The the flood didn't wash away 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. And this gives way to what we'll look at tonight. Israel, the 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, 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 first Chronicles number eight 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. And said 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 twelve people that we just read about, these twelve people are the ones that begin to populate the Promised Land. And so God enters this into the book of First Chronicles. Because remember, First 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 Maye is the quarterback for the Patriots tonight. Supposedly. I don't even know I'm saying his name right. But. Maybe not. Judging by the response from people before him was Cam Newton for him was Tom Brady Drew Bledsoe before that Doug Flutie. My goodness. It's like Canadian football players came to the US. Now that's not the list of every quarterback the Patriots have had in the last twenty 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. Let you know that there's a long line that leads you to where you are. And that's what we have tonight. These twelve people. The Word of God in First 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 well, they break it spiritually. Moses breaks it physically and actually, and is hauled back up the mountain again and rewrites 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 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 first Chronicles. What we get in First Chronicles is the names of the twelve people that brought Israel into the world. Their father was Israel, but the nation Israel comes from these twelve, and all twelve 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 do 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 be taken into 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 nine, drawn from Malachi. But it's the truth that's 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 a pretty profound example 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. 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 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 let 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 there. 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 twelve tribes 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 first Chronicles. Levi, of course, was judged by God early on, but that judgement 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 is less than straightforward. The law leads you to a king. The law leads you to a king. Judah is the tribe of leadership, promise, in kingship. After the promises that Israel gave on his deathbed when the Israelites entered the Promised Land, Judah marches first. They're the ones that lead people. They're the ones that produce David. They preserve 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 they returned 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 eighty nine, 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. In first 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. They 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 Zebulon. Zebulon had strategic lands. The highways into Israel went through Zebulon. They controlled the trade and the travel. They had warriors in Israel. In first Chronicles they have warriors. But you know what? They never had political dominance. They never had judges didn't come from Zebulon. Nobody with authority came from Zebulon. They were there, the servants. In fact, in first Chronicles, you get all you get ten of the twelve tribes described in first Chronicles, you don't get den because they're judged by God and you don't get Zebulon. And it's kind of interesting to wonder, why does Zebulon not get described in First 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 Zebulon. The lesson from then 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 there 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? You 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 and many of the list of the twelve 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? And 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 decided 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, first 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, if you're Benjamin and say, I need, I need one of these guys to help, I'm going to be best friends here. This is like showing up to school in the first day as the the little kid, and you don't want to get beat up. So you pick the strongest kid to befriend. That's Benjamin there. The little kid here. And they picked Judah. They decided to be friends 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 Naphtali. Naphtali 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 land. Barack was from the tribe of Naphtali. 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 straw? 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, Naphtali, light to the nations is going to come here. The law leads to evangelism. The roads of the nations converge in Naphtali. And God used that to put Jesus there and preach to the world. Number eleven Gad. Gad shows 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 they're wondering why isn't God 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 and 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 worshipping 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 three, you would expect verse three to say, the sons of Reuben. Wouldn't you? If you'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 twelve words underlined and 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 three, the sons of Judah, er, Onan, Shayla, these three. And the Canaanite bore to him now urged his 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 four. His daughter in law Tamar, who married in the family, also bore him Perez and Zera. She'd 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 of Judah himself. Judah had five sons, Tamar born on Perez. And the line is going to go through Perez. So the the whole story is messed up and we have don't have time to go through it tonight. Uh, and there's kids here, verse six, the sons of Zara. And this is going through through Perez line there Ethan, Herman, Khalkhal Dara five and all the sons of Carmi. So again, we're tracing the line to get to David Aiken, 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 Aiken. 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 nine. The sons of Hezron were that born to him. Ram Chilubi, this is this is David's line. This is going to produce David right here. We're zeroing in here. Ram fathered Abinadab and Abinadab fathered Nahshon, prince of the sons of Judah. Nahshon fathered salmon, 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 fathered Obed, Obed fathered Jesse. Jesse fathered Eliab, his 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 second born, or the third born, or the fourth born, or the fifth born, or the sixth born. But verse fifteen, David the seventh. That's where the promise goes. Dad. Sisters Zariah and Abigail, the sons of Zariah, Abishai, Joab, and Azariah. From there, Abigail bore a mass of the father Amasa was Jether the Ishmaelite. So the line is crossing with the Arabs again there. Caleb, the son of Hussan, fathered children by his wife Azubah by Jerry oth and their sons were Jesse, Qobad and Adon. Azubah died. Caleb married Ephrath, who bore him a her. Her father, Uri Uri fathered Basil Hezron, once the daughter of Machir, the father of Gilead, whom he married when he was sixty years old, and she bore him a second father, Jair, who had twenty three 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 that it has so much land in Kansas. You're like, if people live in one percent of it, that's Judah. So much of Judah. They have so much land of Israel. But I would say, you know, four percent of it is inhabitable. But they start taking over the land by dwelling in the cities. Verse twenty five, you get back to Ram, who's in the line of David, his firstborn Buna. Oren owes him Ahijah. He also had another wife, whose name was Atara. She bore the mother of Onum. And then you get Ram's sons in verse twenty seven. Verse twenty eight. The sons of Onum. Verse twenty nine. The family keeps growing. Verse thirty. Nadab Selita PM died childless. So even where places where the line ends is picked up elsewhere. The son of opium was Ishii. The son of Ishii was Shechem, the son of Shechem. Ahala the sons of Judah, his brother Jether. Jonathan Jether died childless, and so again the line picks up somewhere else the sons of Jonathan and Zaza. These were the descendants of Jerahmeel. Shechem had no sons, only daughters, and they had an Egyptian slave whose name was Jarah. She gets into the line of succession, gave his daughter in marriage to Jarah, his slave, and she bore him a tie, a tie. Father Nathan Nathan fathered Zabad. Zabad father Rafael, who fathered Rafael, fathered Obed. Obed fathered Jehu. Jehu fathered Azariah. So now we're going through the kings. Azariah, father. Helias. Helias fathered Elisha, And so forth. Verse forty two. The sons of Caleb, you get this other part of the line here. Jerahmeel Marisha's firstborn. He fathered Joseph. They were in Hebron. Verse forty three, the sons of Hebron, now Cora, Tappuah and Shemah. Verse forty four. Shemos descendants. Verse forty five the sons of Shimei. Verse forty six Ephah also through Caleb's concubine. And so I'm not bringing you all the names here, but I'm trying to draw out for you how messed up this line is. You have Ishmaelites, you know the Arabs, you have Egyptians, you have concubines, you have slaves. You have a prostitute. All of them married in. Look at verse fifty one. Salma, the father of Bethlehem. A lot of the cities were named after the people. By the way, Bethlehem is in the heart of Judah. Jesus said, Jerusalem, the father of Bethsaida. Shobal, the father of Jehoram, had other sons. Go on. Verse fifty four. The sons of Salma, Bethlehem, the Hittites, the Athura, the Beth, Joab, and half of the Mennonites and the Zoramites, the clans also of the scribes who lived at Jabez. The lights, the lights, the lights. These are the Kenites who came from the father of the house of Jacob. 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 is a good name. But you don't name a person that it's a city. I mean, you're kind of stuck with this random motley group of people, aren't you? 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 twelve 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 seventeen. 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 twelve 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 four. 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. And 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 twelve 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 going to build. He's going to build these twelve into a nation, a distinct nation. Every other nation in the world started at Babylon in some sense with 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 and the most unusual way. Jacob I loved Esau. I hated the dude. Fought with an angel. It has twelve sons and one of the youngest ones gets shipped off into slavery. 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 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 two hundred years before Plymouth Rock, but whatever. We had explorers that came over advancing religious liberty and this, this brave new world, or looking for gold, whatever your flavor may be. And 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 him into the wilderness, killed them all, and started over with His Word as the foundation God built them. Why did God build the 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 stewards. Our 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, Had 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 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 is 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 your sin and how part 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 first Chronicles, the reconstituted in a way that shows covenantal continuity with their past, their names here, these are their forefathers, these are their patriarchs. They're still looking forward, though, through the whole book of First Chronicles, there's still this anticipation that God is going to come back and bring salvation with him. History will, of course, come to its conclusion with Christ. Then you think of the list of the twelve 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, those small grows. The older brother Reuben is. Israel is cast off. But we provoked jealousy again and come back to faith. You see, even the future for ethnic Israel coming to faith that the second coming of Christ prefigured in the composition of the twelve 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 twelve 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 in 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 crescendos with Christ. Your life also finds its meaning and its significance only as it relates to Christ. God, would you 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 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 arc 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 from 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. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to TMZ.com. 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.