(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

1 Chronicles chapter number 2, we continue on with these genealogies. Of course, the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles are predominantly just these lists of names and genealogies, but the Bible tells us that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. We have these chapters for a reason. They need to be read and preached. One of the great things about these chapters is that they will teach you how to read phonetically. A lot of people today struggle with how to read out loud. And if you read through these lists of chapters out loud, it will help you learn to sound things out. A lot of people learn to read the wrong way with like a see and say method. This will help you get back on phonics, because you can't see and say these names. You have to actually sound out each letter, so it will make you a better reader. So instead of skimming over these in my Bible reading, when I get to these, I stop and read them out loud. You know, in preparing this sermon, I read this chapter out loud. And especially if I'm reading the Bible in another language, this is a great way to practice your pronunciation in Spanish or Greek or whatever other language, because it forces you to sound out all these new words and new combinations of letters, get your tongue a little bit of exercise in there. So anyway, these chapters have a lot of interesting things kind of tucked in there, even though they just seem like on the surface a bunch of names. Each chapter has little nuggets in it, little interesting things that are put in there for our admonition. Now, Chapter 1 pretty much brought us from the creation of the world, Adam, Seth, Enos, all the way up to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And it explained to us where the basic 70 nations of the ancient world came from. Now when we get into Chapter 2 here, we're going to home in on the Israelites. And specifically, Chapter 2 is all about the tribe of Judah. There are actually two chapters devoted to this. Chapter 2 and Chapter 4 cover this in great detail. Other chapters will cover other tribes or the sons of David, different subjects. But tonight, we're dealing with the tribe of Judah. That's what this chapter is about. So it starts out in verse 1. These are the sons of Israel, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Isaacar, and Zebulun. Now those six people are the sons that Jacob had with his wife, Leah. So half of the tribes come from his wife, Leah, and then in the next verse, it lists the other six tribes, Dan, Joseph, and Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. These come from Jacob's other three wives. And I use the term wife loosely because he had, of course, two wives and two concubines. So the other three women that he had children with, they had two children each. So Benjamin and Joseph, of course, come from his wife, Rachel. And then the two concubines, Zilpah and Bilhah, they had two children each. So he had six children, six sons, that is, with Leah. And then he had two each with the other three women. But then it focuses in on verse three, the sons of Judah, and that's what this whole chapter is about. Now verse three says, the sons of Judah err and Onan and Shelah, which three were born unto him of the daughter of Shewa the Canaanitess. And err, the firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he slew him. Now the first thing I want to point out is that once again, we see the Israelites mixing with the heathen nations. Now what's so funny is that people today in 2018 think that the Israelites are some kind of a pure race of people, don't they? I mean, they've kept their bloodlines so pure, and even though they were mixed in with all these other nations for so long, you know, they maintained, they intermarried only with each other. That's what we're told. You know, the Jews can trace their genealogy all the way back to Adam and Eve, we're told. You know, they know which tribe, but if you actually talk to them, most of them don't know what tribe they're from, and that's because they're from the thirteenth tribe, Ashkenaz. They're Ashkenazis, right? And so we see all throughout the history of Israel, they were always intermarrying with other nations. And that's why being an Israelite, or being a Jew later, as they would become in the nation of Judah, it never had anything to do with race, as we think of race, because it just went from father to son, father to son, father to son. And often the wife was from a completely different background. Even if we look at the genealogy of Jesus Christ himself, what do we see in there? Ruth the Moabites, Rahab, who was where? From Canaan. Okay. And then we see in this passage here that right away the tribe from which our Lord would spring himself, the tribe of Judah, he has his first three kids with a Canaanitish woman, and then the other two children he had with Tamar, his daughter-in-law, and that was a story in and of itself. But let's stop and talk a little bit about that story, because in this passage, which is mainly a list of names, every once in a while God decides to give us some information that's not just a name. He gives us some moral teaching or some reference to a story. Now there are a lot of stories that are skipped in this genealogy, because these genealogies in many cases span hundreds and hundreds of years, yet he chooses to bring up certain things. Look at one of the things he brings up here in verse 3. The sons of Judah, Ur and Onan, and Shelah, which were born unto him of the daughter of Shewa the Canaanitist, and Ur the firstborn of Judah, was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he slew him. Now this is one of those interesting times in the Bible where God specifically, directly kills someone. Usually God will use other circumstances and just kind of allow people to get killed in the way he wants them to get killed, and he'll manipulate circumstances to that effect, but this is one of those times where God just killed somebody. Sort of like Ananias and Sapphira, where God just killed them. Let's go back to that story, because I want to show you what's interesting about the fact that Ur is said to have been evil in the sight of the Lord and was therefore slain by the Lord. Go back to Genesis chapter 38. Let's quickly look at that story. Genesis chapter 38, it says in verse 7, and Ur, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord. First Chronicles said he was evil in the sight of the Lord, right? Pretty much the same thing. He was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord slew him. And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his, and it came to pass when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord, wherefore he slew him also. And I want to point out the difference in wording. Why was Ur killed? Because he was wicked in the sight of the Lord. Why was Onan killed? Because he was wicked? No, it doesn't say that. It doesn't say that he was a wicked person. It doesn't say that he was an evil, rotten person. Now Ur was just a rotten person. So God just wiped him out. But Onan was killed because what he did specifically in this instance displeased the Lord. He may not have been a horrible person other than this. We don't know much about him, but I know one thing, he was specifically killed not just for general wickedness, but he was specifically killed because what he did in this story displeased the Lord. God did not like what he did in this story. And what he did in this story was that he went in unto his wife, which he was supposed to be raising up seed for his brother. Now what does this mean? First of all, let me just point out for you a little difference in grammar between our modern grammar and the grammar that you'll find in the King James Bible. Often the King James Bible will use the word should. In our modern vernacular, we would use the word would. That's what this actually is saying here. And it says in verse 8, he knew that the seed should not be his. The way we would explain that in 2018 is that he knew that the seed would not be his. So he spilled it on the ground. Now what does that mean? Well, the way that it worked is that if a young man would die before his time, before he had the chance to procreate, they didn't want him to be the end of the family line. They didn't want that name to just disappear or die out and that branch is gone. So what would happen would be that his younger brother would marry his wife, the older brother's wife, and the first son that was born from that union would basically carry on the name of the dead brother. And then subsequent children from that union would be considered his own children. But the firstborn would kind of replace the one who died and carry on his name and carry on that branch of the family. So what this guy does is he basically makes as if he's going to do that. You know, he marries the girl. You know, dad tells him, hey, you know, go ahead and marry Ur's wife now that he's died. And so he agrees to do it and he goes in and he lies with her, he copulates with her, but he doesn't want to produce a child with this woman. He's like, well, you know, I don't want to raise up seed to my brother. So he spills it on the ground. Now, there was a provision in the word of God if he didn't want to do this. There's a procedure if you don't want to do your duty in this situation where you'd go through a process of refusing to do it and that was an option. That was something that you could do. Now there was some shame associated with that, but you could refuse. But instead he agrees to do it, but then he basically cheats in a sense. And this kind of reminds me of the New Testament parable about the guy who says he's going to go into the vineyard to work. He said, I go, sir, but he went not. You know, that's kind of what Onan's doing here. And what he's doing is clearly very selfish. It's not that this guy didn't even want to have any kid at all. He said, well, I don't want to raise up seed to my brother. So he spills it on the ground and basically just wants to enjoy the pleasure of being with this woman, but he doesn't want to produce the child associated with that. Now what's noteworthy about this story also is that this is the only time in the Bible you'll find an example of someone using birth control, what we know as birth control. What we in 2018 America just take for granted as birth control. I mean, we just think, well, yeah, I mean, of course you're going to use birth control. Isn't that what people think today? I mean, it's just assumed. It's just a grant. It's just a given. And people who don't use birth control, they must be out of their minds, right? Isn't that what most people think? But in reality, the word of God does not teach us to use birth control. The word of God teaches us the opposite. It teaches us to be fruitful and multiply. And the Bible has nothing good to say about birth control. This is the only story where a guy used birth control and he's killed directly by God. That doesn't bode very well for birth control when the only guy who did it in the Bible died. Now some people say, well, it was the reason. It wasn't the fact that he used birth control. It was the reason. What was the reason? The reason was selfishness. But you know what? If you look at why people use birth control in 2018 and you make a list of all the reasons, you know what a lot of it comes down to is selfishness. They want to have more money. They don't want to invest in children. They don't want to have the inconvenience. I mean, it's a lot of selfish reasons. And then another big reason is just fear. It takes guts to produce a lot of children because it's a big responsibility. So it takes faith. You really have to trust the Lord that he's going to provide, that he's going to meet your needs. And so it takes boldness, it takes faith in the Lord, you've got to trust him. But at the end of the day, the thing that really convinced me on this, because when I first got married, I wanted to have a lot of kids. But I didn't really have any conviction about whether or not it was right to use birth control. I'd never really been taught that. I was kind of up in the air on it. I was starting to think about it, but I just wasn't really sure where I stood on that for the first few years. But I'll tell you what pushed me over the edge and made me decide, you know what, birth control is wrong and I'm not going to do it, is I made a list of every reason not to have kids that I could possibly think of, or every reason to use birth control. And I looked at the list and I thought, you know, none of these is a godly reason. None of these makes any sense in light of scripture, what God wants us to do. And you know, I just decided to trust God with having as many children as the Lord would give to us. And the thing about that is that, you know, we don't have kids every nine months. But yet we don't use any birth control. None. We don't use any kind of an abstinence method or natural family planning or rhythm method or barrier method or hormone method. I mean, we don't use any birth control methods. Because there's a little known fact that breastfeeding will actually, it's called lactation, if you want to Google it or look it up and do some research, it's called lactation amenorrhea. And what that is, is that if your wife is fully breastfeeding and follows certain guidelines, follows certain protocols about how she does it, then basically she can't get pregnant for a couple of years anyway. So it actually allows your children to be naturally spaced without using any birth control. The only thing that my wife does to basically space the children is just to breastfeed. That's what she was going to do anyway. That's just the norm. Isn't that what women have done for thousands of years, they just breastfeed? God planned it that way. Imagine that. God designed our bodies to work a certain way. And so women are designed to give birth to a child and then breastfeed that child and then while they breastfeed that child, their body's not ready to get pregnant again yet. And then once they wean that child or begin to introduce solids and so forth, then now their body's ready for the next one. So that's what we've done, just a natural cycle of pregnancy and breastfeeding. And we've done that and our children are all approximately two years apart as a result of that. That's just the way it happened. And so my wife has basically spent about 90 some percent of our marriage either pregnant or breastfeeding. You know, about 90, what, 95 percent of our marriage. Why are you shaking your head no? More like 110 percent? That math doesn't add up, all right? You can't go above 100 percent. Oh, because sometimes she does both. Okay, so there's about 150 percent of the time. So yeah, she's either pregnant or breastfeeding, right? And you say, oh, but it's a wonderful life, amen? Love it. You know, which of my children do I regret having? I love them all. I'm happy for them all. And what this all comes down to is a change in attitude that says children are a blessing. Not an onan attitude that says, oh, man, I don't have this kid and then another kid. I've got to have two kids. Let's just party and spill it on the ground. It's like, well, you know what? God's going to kill you. So that didn't work out so well. So anyway, you know, we need to renew our mind according to the scriptures. And people are like, oh, man, you know, oh, it must be a nightmare having 10 kids. I love having 10 kids. It's fun having 10 kids. I mean, it's just, you know, there's never a dull moment. And so we're never bored. We don't sit around, you know, wondering what to do. There's always something to do. So you know, there's a lot of positives. There are some negatives. But you know what? The good outweighs the bad. And you know, you trust in the Lord and you do things His way, you're going to be blessed. You know, don't let the world brainwash you with this Margaret Sanger plan baronhood mentality. Read the Word of God. Have faith in the Lord and trust Him and He'll provide. He'll take care of you. Step out in faith and do it God's way. Don't be an onan. Right? Okay. So flip back to 1 Chronicles chapter 2. That was something I wanted to point out because the Bible pointed out in 1 Chronicles 2 that this guy, Ur, he was evil on the side of the Lord. I mean, this was just a rotten person. And I strongly believe that the Lord still kills rotten people even today. People that are just rotten. I mean, how many people do you see that just live really wicked lives and they end up dying pretty young, dying in their 20s or 30s? Are there good people who die young? Of course. And there are good people in the Bible who died young. Some guy even says he died young because he was a good guy and God knew what was coming in the future and he spared him from that garbage. So we don't want to judge people based on that, but when we see people who are clearly wicked and we see them dying very young, we can see that God's just sick of that person and He just takes them out and just ends their life. So the Bible says that the wicked will not live out half their days and we see that often happen. So that was the case with Onan on the other hand was killed specifically for one thing that he did, which was where he spilled it on the ground in Genesis chapter 38. And what's funny is most pastors will never preach on that passage for whatever reason. Some of them, they think it's too graphic, which is not graphic because anybody who's too young to understand it doesn't understand what I just said. And everybody who does understand what I just said is old enough to understand it. So there's nothing graphic about it. In fact, a friend of mine went to church and they were preaching through Genesis week by week. And when he got to Genesis 38, he said, now we're going to skip this chapter because he said, I don't want to interrupt the flow of the story with Joseph. So I want to stay with Joseph and come back to this chapter. But isn't it funny? He never got back around to it. Well, you know what? God interrupted that flow of Joseph's story. Okay. So, you know, let's get on God's program. I think God decided that 37 doesn't roll right into 39. You make a little pit stop in 38. That's the way the Bible is intended to be read. And so you need a break from that Joseph story. You need to get on that Onan story. Okay. And the same pastor would censor the Bible. You know, he would censor out words like bastard or piss or damn, you know, because he was too offended by it. I mean, you know, it's the word of God. It's the Bible. And, you know, it's funny the garbage that people will watch on TV and then get offended by this book. Oh, it's too graphic. Go home and turn on stuff that's way more graphic than the Bible ever dreamed of being. Total hypocrisy. But the Bible says here, Ur died, Onan died. So remember he had three sons with the Canaanitist woman, right? He's got Ur, Onan, and Sheila, okay? Then he ends up, and I'm not going to go back to the story about Tamar, because that's, you know, then we're going to spend the whole night in Genesis. But the story with Tamar, Judah ends up having two children from Tamar. So the Bible tells us here at the end of verse 4 that all the sons of Judah were five, okay? But out of these five sons, only three of them produced any children, right? Because the first two died childless. So you have a group of people in the tribe of Judah called the Sheila Heights that come from Sheila. And the Sheila Heights are half what? They're half Canaanite, right? And then, of course, the Pharaohsites and the Zorhites from Pharaohs and Zerah, they're from Tamar, his daughter-in-law, who is probably also not an Israeli. She's probably of Canaanite stock as well. So anyway, a lot of mixing going on, even in the first generation of the nation of Israel. Look at verse number 5, the sons of Pherez, Hezron, and Hamel, and the sons of Zerah, Zimrai, and Ethan, and Heman. Heman was a lot cooler than Onan in the Bible. There's a guy in the Bible named Heman. He had 14 sons and three daughters. That guy didn't spill it on the ground. Anyway, the Bible says here, Heman and Calcol and Dara, five of them in all, and the sons of Carmi, Akar, the troubler of Israel, who transgressed in the thing accursed. Now here's another place where he kind of stops and references a story, something that happened. Akar was the troubler of Israel who transgressed in the thing accursed. Now what do we normally know this guy's name by? Achan, right? So we know him as Achan. Here it calls him Akar. Why? Hebrew language just changed over time, and names take on different forms. Let's flip back to that story. This is a pretty interesting story. Go back to the book of Joshua. Book of Joshua, Akar or Achan is a pretty famous story in the Bible. It says he transgressed in the accursed thing. What was that accursed thing? What was it? Was it some kind of a voodoo doll? You know, what was it that brought a curse on him? Let's see what the Bible calls the accursed thing. Look at Joshua chapter 6. The children of Israel, they're coming into the Promised Land, and they're going to inherit the land, but they have to fight against the inhabitants, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites. One of the first cities, the first big city that they come up to is Jericho, and Jericho's got the walls that are going to come tumbling down. You may know that story. Look at Joshua 6 verse 18. These are the instructions when they go into Jericho. And ye in any wise, keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel accursed and troubled. He said, look, don't mess with the accursed thing. You're going to be cursed. Everybody's going to be cursed. And you know, he says, you're going to trouble everybody. You're going to cause problems. Look at verse 19. But all the silver and gold and vessels of brass and iron are consecrated unto the Lord. They shall come into the treasury of the Lord. So when it comes to Jericho, this specific battle, all the gold and silver is supposed to come into the treasury of the Lord. Usually in a war, when you find spoils, you keep it. You pocket the stuff, right, the spoils of war. The Bible talks a lot about spoils. In this instance, that stuff is all supposed to come into the Lord's treasury, and it's not to be touched. It is accursed unto them if they touch it. Go to verse 1 of chapter 7. You know, they win the battle of Jericho, but the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing. For Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdai, the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel. So he gets mad at the whole congregation because this guy took the accursed thing. Look at verse 10. And the Lord said unto Joshua, Get thee up, wherefore liest thou thus upon my face? Israel has sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them. For they have even taken of the accursed thing, watch this, and have also stolen and dissembled Also, that means that they were deceptive, they hid things, and they have even put it among their own stuff. Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turn their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed. Neither will I be with you any more, except you destroy the accursed from among you. Up, sanctify the people, and say, sanctify yourselves against tomorrow. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Israel. Thou canst not stand before thine enemies until ye take away the accursed thing from among you. This is a big story. Look at verse 20. Let's see what the accursed thing was. And Achan answered Joshua, and said, This is Achor, or Achan, Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done. When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and I took them. So these are the precious metals that God said what? Those go into the treasury of the Lord. The silver and the gold is holy unto the Lord. It's consecrated unto the Lord. What's interesting is that which is consecrated or holy unto the Lord becomes a cursed thing when it's in our pocket, when we stole it. When it's in the Lord's hands, it's a blessed thing. It's a consecrated thing. It's a holy thing. But when we steal it from him, it becomes an accursed thing. It is a curse unto us. It's a blessing to the Lord. It's a curse unto us. Why? Because it belongs to him. And he specifically asked for it, right? So it's these precious metals that he stole. They end up stoning him to death, and he dies, and he becomes such a byword that even in First Chronicles, they're still talking about the guy, how bad he is. Okay. Now look at Joshua chapter 8. What's interesting is that after this, Israel goes on to fight more battles, right? Jericho is the first battle. They're not supposed to touch those silver and gold items. That's the accursed thing. But in subsequent battles, they're allowed to have the gold and silver. It was just that first battle where they were not allowed to have it. Because look, in Ai, here's the difference with Ai, chapter 8 verse 2. And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto Jericho and her king only. What's only mean? It means only one thing's different. Only one difference, he says. Only the spoil thereof and the cattle thereof shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves. Lay thee in ambush for the city behind it. Look at verse 26. For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear until he had utterly and destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. Only the cattle and the spoil of the city Israel took for a prey unto themselves according to the word of the Lord, which he commanded Joshua. The spoil is what he called that silver and gold. Achan said, hey, I saw among the spoils gold and silver. He had a three-stage process. I saw, I coveted, I took. That is the process you go through when you sin. When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. That's how sin happens, right? First we see it. Then we covet it or lust after it or desire it. And then we take it, right? So what we need to do is we need to stop at the sea stage. So we see something that's off limits. And we need to just stop right there and not begin to desire or crave or covet or lust after that, right? And let's say we do start to covet or crave or lust or desire that, we better at least stop at that point. Now, we've already sinned at that point because it says thou shalt not covet. But we need to make sure we don't get into the bigger sin of I took it. Now, look, here's another example of something that could belong to someone else and be good and holy, but with you it's wicked. How about another man's wife? Think about that. Within marriage, that's a blessed thing. He that findeth a wife findeth a good thing and obtaineth favor of the Lord. But you know what? When that wife of someone else is with you, now that's an accursed thing. And it's a curse unto you. But specifically, this is talking about robbing from the Lord, actually. And if you would go to Malachi chapter 3 because here's what's interesting. If you count up the major battles in the book of Joshua, you'll find that there are ten major battles in the book of Joshua. And this is not a coincidence. You do the math, you have ten battles. The first battle, he says that's holy unto the Lord. The other nine, you get to keep. Now what is this? This is like a first fruits or a firstling or a tithe where it's like, okay, we give the first tenth unto the Lord. We're going to have ten major battles or campaigns. The first tenth of the spoils goes to the house of God. The other nine go to you. And this concept's all throughout the Bible of honor the Lord, the Bible says in Proverbs chapter 3, honor the Lord with thy substance and with the first fruits of all thine increase. And he says if you do, your barns will be filled with plenty and your presses will burst with new wine. That's in Proverbs 3. And we often quote, I wanted to point to the verse, but it's gone. We used to have Proverbs 3, 5 up here, right? Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. Well, just a few breaths later, he says honor the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your increase. Then God will bless you, right? What does it say in Malachi? Let me get there myself, Malachi chapter 3. This is similar to the Achan story. Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me, but ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. You're cursed with a curse, for you've robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be meat in mine house. And prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground, neither shall your vine cast a fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts. What's he basically saying? You're going to be better off with 90% and God will multiply it and bless it than to have 100% and the devourer is coming in and you're losing money here, you're losing money there. What God talks about in Haggai, which is written around this same period of Israel's history, you're making a lot of money and you're putting it in a bag with holes. And if God's not blessing us, then often we're putting money into a bag with holes. Whereas if we do right by the Lord, he can bless us and make our money go further and make us do better on 90% than on 10% if we give unto the Lord the 10%, the tithe. If we bring the tithes into the storehouse, he says that there may be meat in my house. Well guess what? God has a house in the New Testament. It's called the local church. The church is the house of God. In the Old Testament, the house of God was a tabernacle or later the temple. In the New Testament, the Bible says the house of God is the church of the living God, is the house of God. Right? And in the Old Testament, what was the purpose of the tithes? That there would be meat in his house. It was so that the Levites and the priests would basically serve the Lord full time. And they're paid through the tithes. That's how they live. That's how they support themselves. They had no inheritance among the children of Israel. The Lord was their inheritance and they lived off of the tithes and the offerings. And that's why in the book of Nehemiah, when the tithes and offerings were not there, which again is around the same time period that Malachi was preaching. When the tithes and offerings were not there in Nehemiah, it said the Levites had to go out and get secular jobs. All the Levites were returned to their fields. They're out plowing a field instead of serving the Lord. Nehemiah gets there. He straightens out the tithing and then the Levites were able to serve God full time. Now you say, well, you know, we don't need full time servants. We don't need a full time pastor. We don't need a full time deacon. We don't need full time servants and Levites and workers in the New Testament. Well, quite the contrary. If you've read the New Testament, you'll see that the apostles and Jesus Christ himself actually served full time and they did not have outside jobs. Now the exception to that was the apostle Paul talked about making tents, but you know what? He did not only work an outside job. He often lived off of the donations and giving of the churches. He talks about in his epistles how the churches provided his needs and paid his needs. Now when he went to Thessalonica, he didn't take anything from them because they were so lazy. He said, I want to show you guys how to work. So he had to go there and model the way and demonstrate hard work for them. But the vast majority of the apostles were living full time, serving God, and so that's the pattern. That's the plan. And in the New Testament, it even compares. It says, well, in the Old Testament, the people who served at the altar lived of the things that were brought to the altar and he said, even so, those which preach the gospel should live of the gospel. Now a lot of people will say, well, you know, the tithe was only for the Levites. You know, I already demonstrated on Sunday night that it actually predated that anyway. But not only that, they'll say, well, it was only, it was never money. You know, the tithe was only just food items. Just food. Well, here's the thing. The Bible says the tithe of all their increase, whatever they increased. Okay. And it did include gold, silver. It did include textiles, anything plant-based, animal-based. It wasn't just food. It was just whatever wealth was measured in, cattle, whatever. Now back then, yeah, they didn't have paper money. Aren't we so lucky that we have the Federal Reserve and paper money? But the bottom line is that back then, the way they measured money, you know, when the Bible wants to tell us about Job's portfolio, it doesn't tell us about his investments. And it doesn't tell us about, you know, his stock and bonds and his options. No, it tells us he had this many sheep, this many goats, this many cows. That was their wealth, right? And you know, when people wanted to bet and go to Las Vegas and blow some money on a bet like Samson, what did he do down in the land of Philistines, which, you know, Las Vegas is probably even worse than the land of the Philistines was. It's probably even more wicked than the Philistines. Probably the Philistines would blush walking into Las Vegas. I believe that, okay? But you know, when they wanted to gamble, what did they say? Hey, 30 changes of raiment. I see that change of raiment, and I'll raise you 30 changes of raiment. You know, so they were actually using clothing as wealth, because back then they didn't have machines, so clothing was pretty expensive. So it was worth something, right? So anyway, I've got to get off that for the sake of time. Go to 1 Chronicles 2. So you know, Achan, he caused trouble to a lot of people. He caused people to be cursed. He caused himself to be cursed. Why? Because he didn't want to let the Lord have his portion. He wanted to take that which didn't belong to him. Now, our church is a church that's based upon just tithing. And what I mean by that is that we never raise money. Have you noticed that? We've been here for 12 years. We've never one time had a fundraiser. We've never one time had a special building fund, missions fund. All right, we've got to dig deep, people. We've got to raise some extra money. All right, everybody, let me pass out a copy. Here's the budget. Here's where we're at. You've got to dig deep. I need five people to give $1,000. We've never had a conversation like that, ever. Whatever has happened in 12 years, have you just noticed that we just always have enough money? We just always have enough money. We've never been late on our bills, except if we just accidentally paid one a day late or something. But we've never gotten a bill in the mail as a church and said, we don't have the money to pay this. Boy, we've been blessed. God has blessed our church. Because you know what? There are a lot of churches with a lot of red ink in their ledger. How many churches have you been to, if you've grown up a Christian, where they're in debt millions of dollars or thousands of dollars? I mean, every church I've ever been in had severe financial problems in debt my whole life. And they're constantly having to raise money and putting up a thermometer and spin the wheel and we've got to raise this money. We've never done that. We hardly ever even talk about money. I hardly ever even preach about money. Why? Because here's what I believe. I believe that if God's people just pay their tithe, then basically that covers it. Everything's covered. So I don't get up here and say, you know, you need to give 15%. You need to give 20%. Look, I've sat in church and heard sermons like that. They said, hey, tithing's just the beginning. They said, man, tithing, that's child's play. Tithing, that's kindergarten. I mean, that's just, you're just a baby Christian. You got to get into it. And I've even heard them say, if you're not giving at least 11%, you're in sin, is what they said. Who's heard that kind of preaching? It's out there. Look, that's not what we believe. I believe that if you bring your tithe to the local church, you have satisfied God's requirement financially, even if you never give another dime to anything else. And you know what? When you walk into the store and the Salvation Army's ringing their bell, you know, I tell them the same thing every single time. I tell them I do all my giving through the local church. God's satisfied. You know, they never have an answer for that. I say, oh, no, thanks. I already do all my charitable giving through the local church, you know, and then if it's the Girl Scouts, you know, then I just tell them, you know, I don't support Planned Parenthood or whatever, you know, I don't support tranny, you know, scout leaders or whatever. So anyway, that's another sermon. But anyway, so let's get back into First Chronicles here. So we get into the don't worry, the rest of chapter is going to go faster. And the sons of Ethan, verse eight, Azariah, the sons also of Hezron that were born unto him, Jeromiel and Ram and Kalubai. Now let me just stop and point something out that's a little bit confusing about this chapter. You know, we were talking about the spelling of names, right, like Achan and Akar. Well believe it or not, this guy Kalubai, that's the same name as Caleb in the Bible, but it's not the Caleb you're thinking of. But there's a guy later in this very chapter named Caleb, who is actually mentioned a lot. Jump down to verse 18, and you'll see there's a guy named Caleb, the son of Hezron, okay. Now this Caleb, the son of Hezron, that's mentioned a lot in First Chronicles two, is not the Caleb that Brother Gerrit Kirschway's son is named after, of Caleb and Joshua. This is a different Caleb, okay. But what's interesting is that Kalubai and Caleb are the same guy. They're both the son of Hezron. They're both the same person. They have the same brother, same everything. So it's sort of like Timotheus and Timothy, Nathaniel and Nathan. You know, it's just two different variants on the name, even within the same chapter. We have Kalubai and Caleb being the same guy. So this guy is not the same guy as Caleb that we think of, because the Bible's really careful every time it talks about the other Caleb to call him Caleb, the son of Jephunneh. And what's interesting about that, keep your finger here, go to Genesis 15. What's interesting about Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, is that Jephunneh was not an Israelite. This is interesting. Jephunneh was a Kenazite, okay. Now what's a Kenazite? Well, if you look at Genesis chapter 15, when God is making promise to Abraham, and he's talking about the fact that he's going to give them this promised land, he lists the nations that basically they're going to come in and they're going to take over their land, right. So he lists the inhabitants. Look what the Bible says in verse 19. The Kenites and the Kenazites, Jephunneh was the Kenazite, the Bible tells us. And the Kadmonites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Rephaims and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Girgashites and the Jebusites. Now you say, wait a minute Pastor Anderson, I know that Caleb was of the tribe of Judah because you know, when they sent out those 12 spies, they sent one from each tribe. And it says of the tribe of Judah was Caleb. And of the tribe of Ephraim was Joshua, and it lists the other tribes. Here's the thing, Caleb was of the tribe of Judah not because his dad descended from Judah because his dad was a Kenazite, that's what the Bible tells us. But that's because that's the tribe that they had joined. And see, this is where we need to get off this garbage theology that says, oh, you know, being a Hebrew, being an Israelite, being the chosen people, it's all about race and ethnicity, false. Because the Bible said that anybody who wanted to join the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, all they had to do was what? Get circumcised, keep the Passover, and you know what? They could get in on that covenant. They could get in on that Old Testament just simply by all the males being circumcised and taking the Passover and being there. They're part of it. And you say, well, what tribe are they? Well, the Bible answers that question. It says whatever tribe they sojourn among, that's their tribe. And they'll inherit with that tribe. So Jephunneh, the Kenazite, he ends up, maybe he married into it, or maybe he just decided, you know what? I want to join the nation of Israel. Hey, I love the Lord, I'll get circumcised, I'll follow the Bible. And he joined the nation of Israel, he joined the tribe of Judah. And in fact, Caleb is seen as a full-fledged member of the tribe of Judah to the point where they'll send him out to spy out the land as a representative. He's a great man among his tribe, he's a great leader of the tribe. Why? Because it's not about ethnicity. Think about it, I mean, what if you were born during the time of the Old Testament? Are you just going to keep being a Kenazite? Or are you going to say, hey, I want to be part of God's people. I want to be one of the chosen, I want to get in on that. Oh, sorry, wait till your next life, buddy. Like the Hindus or something? Like you've got to be born into it. No you don't. You could join that nation. And so, and look, that's why even Jesus picked a disciple called Simon the Canaanite. Simon the Canaanite. And you know, the pre-Tribbers and the Zionists, they don't know what to do with him. What do we do? Everybody, they were Jews, in Matthew 24, so yeah, he's preaching to a guy named Simon the Canaanite, but it's all to the Jews. And I've had them tell me, he wasn't a Canaanite. I'm like, so why was his name the Canaanite? Well, I still don't think he's a, they're like, he just lived in Canaan. They all live in Canaan. That whole region, you know, what's Canaan? Israel is Canaan. Well, you know, they just can't handle it that this guy was a Canaanite. And you say, well, you know, what's he doing with a Canaanite disciple? Because he was a Canaanite who was circumcised and keeping the law and had gotten in on that old covenant. So was, was Simon the Canaanite a Jew? Yeah, I mean, he'd become a Jew, like in Esther where it says they became Jews. Does that mean they changed their DNA? No, it means they joined in that covenant with the Lord. And so Caleb, isn't that an interesting thing about Caleb? He was like that because his father was the Canaanite. This other Caleb in chapter two is a different guy. We read about Caleb, the son of Jephunneh in chapter four in a chapter. That's all about the sons of Judah and it's listing off all the different branches of the tribe of Judah. And then it just says, okay. And then these are the sons of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, but there's no genealogy of Jephunneh. Who's Jephunneh? Oh, I'll tell you why. Cause he's a Canaanite and that's what the Bible says. So anyway, that's an interesting thing about him, but we don't want to confuse Caleb from chapter two with Caleb from chapter four cause they're two totally different guys. They have different brothers, different parents and different kids. Now the only thing that, that, that threw me for a loop, I remember when I was first studying this as a teenager, cause I read this and I'm like, well, these are clearly two different guys. I figured out that Colubi and Caleb are the same guy, but then when I started comparing Caleb, the son of Jephunneh with Caleb, the son of Hezron, I'm like, these are two totally different guys. I don't want to be the same person. Nothing fits. But then here's what threw me for a loop is that they both have a daughter named Axa. One of them has an H on the end and one of them doesn't, but it's a real similar name. They both have a daughter named Axa. You say, I'll explain that. Here's how that's explained. If you look at the tribes in the Bible, a lot of the same names keep coming up cause that's just a popular name in that tribe. That's like somebody's named, you know, Rebecca. Like how about my daughter, Rebecca? Why is my daughter named Rebecca? Well, because, you know, my great grandmother is named Rebecca. So because I have a great grandmother named Rebecca who is a really neat person, I thought to myself, I'd like to name my daughter after Rebecca. That's somebody that my grandma really loved her mother and would tell stories about and really thought was a wonderful person. So I thought, you know, let's name her after her. Let's name her Rebecca, right? So that's the point is that just like there are three different Calybs and just like there are, you know, when you look at other families in the Bible, how many Marys are there in the New Testament? You know what I mean? I mean, that's confusing. How many John's? You get confused, right? There's even another guy named Jesus. You know, I mean, you know, there are all kinds of people that have these names because they're popular names. That's all. But it cannot, it's impossible for it to be the same person. So anyway, we're about out of time tonight, but as we go down through this chapter, I've pretty much pointed out the most interesting things I think in this chapter. It goes through the genealogy leading up to David. You know, it gives us the basic teaching about, you know, Hezron, begat Ram, Ram begat Amenadab, Amenadab begat Meneasan in verse 10, Prince of the Children of Judah, and the Asan begat Salma, Salma begat Boaz, Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse. And then it begins to list Jesse's children, of course, verse 15, David is the seventh. And then it talks about how David had a sister named Zeruiah and a sister named Abigail. And the sons of Zeruiah are great warriors of the Old Testament that we're going to read about later in the Book of First Chronicles, Abishai, Joab, and Asahel. These are the sons of Zeruiah. These are David's nephews that play an important role. And then also Emesa is another great warrior that's going to become a key player later on. And then as we go down through this, it just begins to list a lot more sons of Judah, guys that aren't really that famous. And one other thing I want to point out, verse 34 says, Now Shishan had no sons but daughters. And Shishan had a servant, an Egyptian, whose name was Jarrah. But of course, an Israelite would never marry an Egyptian. That would never happen, because, man, they've kept that bloodline super pure. And Shishan gave his daughter to Jarrah's servant wife, and she buried him at Tei. So you got all kinds of Egyptians and Canaanites and Kenazites and everything coming into the into the bloodline here. And even on the man's side, you say, wow, this is the women don't count. Oh, really? Because this is the man here. He gives his daughter to this guy and then gives everything to the Egyptian. Here inherit everything, right? And then we go on and on list of names, list of names. Most of these are people that we haven't heard of, or we don't really know much about from the rest of the Bible. One other interesting thing in verse 55, the families of the scribes, which dwelt at Jabez, the Terethites and the Shemeothites and the Succothites. These are the Kenites that came of Hamath, the father of the house of Rechab. And so of course, the house of Rechab is a famous house in the Bible. And also the families of the scribes. It's interesting how there were just basically a great group of scribes at this time. I mean, there were whole families of people. There's a whole town of people or a whole area that's really big on being a scribe, which what's a scribe. It's somebody who spends their time doing nothing but just writing because this is before they had printers and printing presses. So I mean, people just had to copy everything by hand. All the books. They're just copied by hand. There's a manuscript. Manuscript comes from the Latin root word for hand, like the Spanish word, mono, right? Manuscript, right? Which has to do with writing by hand. So something that's a manuscript is something that is handwritten. And so, you know, back in those days, that was the only way you got anything written was by hand. So there were people whose full time job was just to write things down, write things down, write things down. So even back then, there were a lot of written records, a lot of things being written down. People just spending all day writing things down. But the difference is that very few things from back then have survived over the course of thousands of years because they were written on materials that decayed and disintegrated. And that's why we have very little writing from back then. Most of the writing that we have from thousands of years ago is stuff that was engraved into stone or engraved into pottery because then it could last for thousands of years. or certain papyrus that was in the right dry climate could last a long time. But you know, most of that stuff hasn't survived. But just because writing hasn't survived, don't get this dumb idea that people didn't read back then. Oh, back then, nobody could read and write. You know, I've been hearing that my whole life about, oh, back then, barely anybody could read or write. Because they want you to think this evolutionary mentality, like everybody was real dumb back then and we're way smarter now. But you know, I've noticed articles coming out in the last few years that are saying, you know, it turns out a lot more people were literate back then than we thought. It turns out that 3,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago, it turns out most people in this area were literate because we found all this evidence. Look, think about all of our paper and books. How long does it take a book to disintegrate and start falling apart? I mean, think about picking up a book from 100 years ago. Think about a book from 1918. That thing will crumble in your hand. I remember finding old newspapers in a cabin. You pick them up, they just disintegrate. You pick up a book, it'll just crumble to dust. Okay. Well, guess what? The books from 3,000, 4,000 years ago, they crumbled to dust a long time ago. And the ones that were worth preserving and worth keeping, they had to copy them and keep copying them to keep them alive. The Bible, of course, is the greatest book of all time, and it has many manuscripts that go back over 1,000 years. We have, of the New Testament, for example, we have over 5,900 handwritten Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, over 5,900, because that's a pretty important book. Now most of them only go back about 1,000 years or maybe even a little more, a little less. They go back around 900, 1,000, 1,100, 1,200, 1,300 AD, and then the printing press comes along around the 1400s, 1500s, it gets popular and they start cranking out the printing of books and then the manuscripts are a thing of the past. So the manuscripts are from around that time, but I'll tell you why most of the Bible manuscripts are so late. Why are most Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, why are they so late? The reason why is that what they would do is that they would have a Bible and when it started to get worn out or faded and it became unusable, they didn't just throw it away, they were very green about it. They were recycling before recycling was even a thing. Because when they took some of these parchments and things, they would wash them and reuse those pages and write them over again because it was an expensive process to get some of those materials. So what you'll find on a lot of Bible manuscripts from 1,000 years ago, you'll see what's written on the manuscript, but then you'll see something else that's been erased. It's like when you erase a paper, you can still faintly see what used to be written there and what you'll find is Bible manuscripts that have been erased and rewritten or maybe it used to be a hymn book, now it's a Bible. It used to be a Bible, now it's a hymn book. What they would do is they would reuse paper. So what we have today in the Bible, we have a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. We don't just have one original that's 2,000 years old. Now a lot of people, they wish they had that. Man, I just wish I could see the one from 2,000 years ago. But you know what that is? It's a lack of faith that God promised to preserve his work. Now you say, well does that make you nervous having a copy of a copy of a copy? Well no, because I don't have a copy of a copy. We have thousands and thousands of copies and now we even have millions and millions of copies of the King James Bible. So people say, man, they're changing our King James Bible. Well you know what? We have a replica of the first edition back there so we can go back there and check if something's been changed, right? Think about that. So we have to sit and wonder like, oh man, it's the Mandela Effect, you know? The Bible used to say something different. Because what? We have so many millions of Bibles. If we all get out our Bibles and like a hundred of us all have the same thing and one guy says something completely different, we know, hey, that guy's Bible's been changed, but we got the right thing. We've got the original reading here. We've got what it says here. So you know, what's the devil going to do? Go around and change everybody's Bible? It would have been impossible. Even the Book of Revelation, it was written in seven copies. So if you want to change it, you'd have to go running around changing each one. That's why the mainstream Book of Revelation that we have today, the received text is correct. But there are other screwed up versions of Revelation out there that are just based on one manuscript or three manuscripts or five manuscripts. They're not based on the main stream of the text being passed down throughout history. So anyway, let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for the Book of First Chronicles, Lord, and we thank you that it's been passed down to us, preserved, and that the Book of First Chronicles is 100% accurate. This is the truth about where nations come from, the truth about the characters in the Bible, who they were related to, how they lived their lives when they died, when they had children, when they were childless, Lord. Thank you for giving us something that we could have as an anchor where we don't have to wonder if it's true because we know that it's God-breathed. And so we thank you for this treasure of your word, Lord. And I pray that we would just study it and read it. Instead of rewriting it, Lord, let's reread it and help us to have faith in it all the time and not to doubt or question your perfect, preserved word that's been passed down to us, Lord, intact. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.