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Man, tonight, First Chronicles Chapter 7, it's kind of a cleanup chapter. We're getting toward the end of the genealogies in First Chronicles. And there has been a certain focus on certain tribes. And Chapter 7 basically picks up all the tribes that haven't really been talked about. It's kind of like a cleanup chapter. And let me just kind of give you an overview of this genealogical section. And I'm going to use this to kind of give you an overview of the whole books of First and Second Chronicles, because there's a profound truth in this chapter, not just in what we read here, but what's also interesting is what's left out of this chapter. So I'm going to mention that in a moment. But first, let me just start out by explaining how this section in First Chronicles works. Of course, Chapter 1 takes us from Adam all the way to Israel. And then, you know, it starts with talking about all the nations of the world, but then it kind of focuses down to just Israel, right? Then when we get to Chapter 2, we focus on just the tribe of Judah. Then when we get to Chapter 3, we focus in on just the sons of David. So you can see how we're getting tighter in our genealogy from the whole world to just Israel and the tribe of Judah to just the descendants of David, right? Then after that, we start talking about some other tribes. Chapter 4, we talk about Judah and Simeon. And the reason those are connected is because Simeon was inside of Judah as far as where they geographically were. Chapter 5, we covered Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Those are the tribes that were on the other side of the river east of Jordan. Chapter 6 dealt with Levi. And then Chapter 8 dealt with Benjamin. Now it makes sense that Levi and Benjamin and Judah would get their own chapters because those are the tribes of the southern kingdom. If you remember, the children of Israel, they started out all being united, 12 tribes in one kingdom. But then after the death of Solomon, there was a split and you have the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom and then you have the two tribes of the southern kingdom along with the Levites. The main tribes of that southern kingdom ended up being Judah, Benjamin, and Levi. So it makes sense that we would focus on them in these genealogies. Benjamin gets his own chapter, Levi gets his own chapter, Judah gets his own chapter. Why? Because those are the people that are actually serving God. I mean, if you think about it, the northern kingdom of Israel hardly ever did what was right in the sight of the Lord. I mean, when you're reading through the books of first and second Kings, it's rare that it says that they did what was right in the sight of the Lord. They were usually always off the deep end, worshiping other gods into idolatry the vast majority of the time. It was the southern kingdom of Judah that although they got away from the Lord as well, they were the ones who served God the most between the two. So it makes sense that God would focus in first on Israel because they're the people that are worshiping the true God and then he would focus in on the tribes that actually stayed with the Lord the longest, right? So that makes sense. And of course, David, the man after God's own heart. So what does Chapter 7 cover then? Chapter 7 is a clean-up chapter that covers several different tribes. It actually mentions six different tribes. It covers in only 40 verses. So it's not even that long of a chapter, it's only 40 verses long, but yet it covers six different tribes. It covers Issachar, Benjamin, you know, which Benjamin got their own chapter as well, but it touches on Benjamin, Naphtali, half the tribe of Manasseh, Ephraim, and Asher, okay? So it just kind of cleans up a lot of these northern kingdom tribes, but what's interesting is the two tribes that are not mentioned, which are the tribes of Zebulun and Dan. So in these first nine chapters, we have these really detailed genealogies, sometimes it almost feels like a little too much detail, but two tribes are just completely left out, not even mentioned at all. So that's interesting, you know, why did God not mention these? And it's even more interesting when you stop and think about the fact that the tribe of Dan is the only tribe not mentioned in the New Testament. So in the New Testament, you have all the other tribes mentioned, Dan is never mentioned. And even in Revelation, when God's going to take 12,000 from each tribe, there's one tribe that he doesn't take anybody from, and that's the tribe of Dan. He ends up, and I believe, and I'm going to show you why, I believe it's because God wouldn't have been able to find 12,000 people in Dan that met that criteria of Revelation chapter 7, so that's why he ends up taking one for Ephraim and one for Manasseh to get up to the number of 12 in Revelation chapter 7. Now let's learn some things about the tribe of Dan. Go back, if you would, to Genesis chapter 49. Genesis chapter 49, these are the last words of Jacob, where he is blessing his 12 sons and giving them his final words, and he talks about what's going to happen in the last days. Some of these are blessings, some of them are a little bit negative, but I'm going to show you a couple things about Dan and Zebulun both, okay? Why are these two chapters left out? I think it's going to be obvious to you by the time we're done why Dan is left out, because Dan is a tribe that got away from the Lord really early. They went into idolatry and apostasy more than any other tribe and earlier than any other tribe and deeper into sin than the other tribes, so they were the farthest away from the Lord. Not only that, but Dan got geographically far from the Lord in the sense that God, when he carved out the land for them in Joshua, he told each tribe where to live, right? And he told them to go in and possess that land and these are going to be your borders and this is where you're supposed to live. Well, here's what Dan did, they disobeyed. They did not take over the inheritance as they were supposed to. In fact, out of all the tribes, they were the most slack to get their actual inheritance that God planned for them. So because they didn't get the inheritance that God planned for them, which was actually down by Judah and Benjamin, that's where God planned for them to be, down by Judah and Benjamin, but because they didn't take over the cities that God wanted them to take over, they ended up doing their own thing and traveling very far to the north to a place called Lakish where they renamed it Dan and they ended up living at a very far north place, far from the house of God, far from church, you know, far from the things of God. So it's like they chose to not live where God wanted them to live, they went somewhere far from that, okay? So even though if you look at maps of the 12 tribes of Israel, it'll show Dan, you know, down by Judah and Benjamin, that's not really where the Danites were though because if you study your Bible, you'll see that they left that area and they headed north and made their own place up there and that's found in the book of Judges. We're going to go there in a moment. Now Zebulun is also a pretty northern tribe and so these northern tribes, you know, are the ones that got away from the Lord the soonest because they were the furthest away from the house of God. I mean it makes sense. Now go if you would to Genesis 49 verse 13. The Bible says Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea and he shall be for a haven of ships and his border shall be unto Zidon. And again, this is not exactly where God had intended for Zebulun to be but that's where they ended up being, far north because Zidon is north of Israel so they're actually at a very far north extreme even though that's not exactly where God had originally put them. That's where a lot of them ended up, drifting farther, which is obviously symbolic, you know, of the fact that they're getting away from the Lord. And then it says in verse 16, Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. The reason why that's significant is because the name Dan means judge and not only that, the most famous judge of all was from the tribe of Dan which is Samson. But it says in verse 17, Dan shall be a serpent, by the way, an adder in the path that biteth the horse heels so that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord. Now a lot of the tribes had an animal that was sort of like their mascot or an animal that represented that tribe. It's interesting that the animal for Dan was a serpent. That's not, you know, if you're a Bible-believing Christian, that's not a good animal to represent you spiritually, the serpent, right? You don't want to be represented because that is the devil. So we can already see some foreshadowing even in the book of Genesis of a little bit of evilness associated with Dan. But jump forward to the book of Judges and we don't have time to go through the whole story. But in Judges chapter 18, we find that in verse number 1, the Danites did not inherit the land that they were supposed to. It says in verse 1, in those days there was no king in Israel and in those days the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in. They're looking for an inheritance. Why? Because unto that day all their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel. So it wasn't that God didn't set anything aside for them. It's just that they didn't want to take that God had given them. They didn't want to fight those battles. They wanted to go far north and attack people that were defenseless and they end up attacking people that have no military, that are just sitting ducks, these Zydonian people that are just dwelling carelessly and they just come in and slaughter them all. So instead of fighting the Lord's battles and inheriting where God wanted them, that was too hard so they took the easy way and just fell on some people that weren't ready for them and just took the low hanging fruit. But what was the cost? What was the cost of doing the easy thing versus doing the hard thing? It put them farther away from the Lord, put them farther away from the house of God. So sometimes the path of least resistance is going to take us far from God. Sometimes we have to do hard things and make hard decisions in order to be close to God, in order to be right with God. And that's the lesson that we can learn from the Danites. Now look what it says. This is the end of the story. How does it end up? Judges 18, 29, and they called the name of the city Dan. This is that city they wiped out, Laish. After the name of Dan, their father who was born unto Israel. Albeit the name of the city was Laish at the first. And the children of Dan set up the graven image, that's not good, and Jonathan the son of Gershom the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of Dan until the day of the captivity of the land and they set them up Micah's graven image which he made all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh. So the entire time that God's house is in Shiloh which is a long time, they've got their own idol that they're worshipping. This is early on in the history. Now the rest of the children of Israel, you know, they have a good judge and they get right with God and then they get away from God and then they get right with God and then they get away from God. But this tribe of Dan, they always had their phony priesthood that was not of the sons of Aaron. They always had the wrong priests and they always had their own idolatry going on starting early on. So this was an unrighteous tribe is what we see there. All the way until the captivity, they stayed with false religion as a whole. I'm sure there were many people that were saved. We know Samson was a man of God, etc. But in general, they were wicked, you know, in general. Now go to 1 Kings Chapter 12. In 1 Kings Chapter 12, this is where after the death of Solomon, the kingdom breaks into two pieces like we talked about earlier and the northern kingdom of Israel, the 10 tribes, is ruled by Jeroboam, the son of Nebat and the southern kingdom is ruled by the sons of David, you know, the legitimate heirs that God had chosen and they're staying with the Lord for the most part. The northern kingdom is going after other gods for the most part. Well, when that first happens, when that split first happens and Jeroboam decides to institute a false religion for the northern kingdom because he didn't want them to go down to Jerusalem. He didn't want them to go down to the southern kingdom. So he wants them to have their own religion. When he institutes that religion, where does he put the idol? Because if Jerusalem is no longer going to be the spiritual center, where is he going to have a spiritual center? Look what the Bible says in verse 28, whereupon the king took counsel and made two calves of gold and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. So he makes these two golden calves or baby cows and he makes these giant idols and he puts them in two places. What are the two places? It says in verse 29, he set the one in Bethel and the other put he in Dan. Now why did he choose these two places? Well he chose Bethel because Bethel means the house of God and so because Jacob had called that place the house of God, he could easily twist scripture and say, well this is where God really wanted us to worship. That's why he called it the house of God and Jerusalem's a fraud. Now we of course know that God chose Jerusalem as the place to put his name there. But if you're going to institute a false religion, you're going to take a little bit of truth and mix it with a lie. You're going to take scripture and you're going to twist it. So you're going to pick a place called Bethel because it's got house of God in the name and say, oh yeah, this is where you're supposed to be worshiping, right? And then why did he pick Dan? Because Dan is the most idolatrous tribe. I mean they've already got a graven image going back to Judges 18. They've already got phony priests that preach lies. So they're going to be ready to welcome this new idol because they're already into idolatry. So you can see that Dan is associated with wickedness at all stages of the history of the children of Israel, period of the judges, and the period of the northern kings. Now go if you would to Amos chapter 8. We'll see another scripture on the tribe of Dan. Amos chapter 8. So you're starting to see why it's possible that God didn't find 12,000 virgin, righteous men to fill that calling in Revelation chapter 7. Because in the whole history of Dan, there might not have been 12,000 guys like that. Whereas all the other tribes had at least 12,000 guys like that that the Lord's able to use in the end times after the resurrection, after the trumpet sounds, that's where those people show up, the 144,000. So if you would look at Amos chapter 8 verse 14, the Bible says, they that swear by the sin of Samaria. Now the sin of Samaria is those two golden calves because Samaria is what the northern kingdom is called because the capital city of the northern kingdom was Samaria. So often the whole thing is just referred to as Samaria and the people who live there are sometimes called Samaritans, okay? So he says, they that swear by the sin of Samaria and say, thy God, O Dan, liveth. You see that? That's a false god and it's especially associated with what tribe, Dan, because that's where one of them was put, Dan and Bethel. So it says, thy God, O Dan, liveth and the manner of Beersheba liveth, even they shall fall and never rise up again. I mean, that doesn't sound good. That sounds terrible. So if you would go back to 1 Chronicles chapter number 7 and we'll look at this chapter. So why are the two tribes not mentioned? Well in order to answer that question of why in the cleanup chapter where we're cleaning up all the loose ends, you know, everything we didn't talk about in chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, whatever we're not going to get to in chapters 8 and 9. This kind of cleanup chapter where we just throw all the leftovers, oh yeah, let's mention some genealogies about the northern kingdom. Why are Zebulun and Dan left out? I think it's because Dan was such a wicked tribe, they got away from the Lord so early that by the time the book of 1 Chronicles was written, they just weren't really relevant anymore and it just didn't really matter. Nobody really cared about their families because of the fact that they probably ceased to even exist as a tribe that you could really point to and say, oh, these are the Danites and they're our brothers in the Lord here. You couldn't have really said that about them. Because keep in mind, the book of 1 Chronicles is not written in the time of David. Now in the time of David, yeah, there were Danites that fought and in 1 Chronicles chapter 12, we'll see the Danites are with the children of Israel still to some degree. But I'm talking about when the book of 1 Chronicles is written, they'd cease to be relevant. Because when you're writing the book of 1 Chronicles, you're going to pull what's relevant, right? I mean at that time, because God is not going to give them scriptures that they don't need. God gives us what matters. Now that asks the question, when was 1 Chronicles written? Well first of all, 1 and 2 Chronicles are written at the same time because they're both just two halves of the same book. And if you want to know when 1 and 2 Chronicles were written, the answer is found in chapter 3. So back up to chapter 3, we can actually pinpoint, with a lot of accuracy in fact, we can actually get pretty close to knowing almost exactly when the book of 1 Chronicles was written. Now if you're reading a Hebrew Bible, they have the exact same 39 books that we have in the Old Testament, but they put them in a different order. Now they have the wrong order, amen? We have the right order in the Christian Bible. You know why we have the right order? Because we put it in chronological order, basically you have all the historical books in chronological order, then you have the poetic books in chronological order, then you have the major prophets in chronological order, and then you have the minor prophets in chronological order. But you know what's so cool about doing it that way, is that when you get to Malachi, you end up with God telling you, hey, I'm going to send my messenger to prepare the way before me, and he says right at the end, you know, that God's going to send Elijah the prophet before the coming of the day of the Lord. And then who comes on the scene when you flip the page into Matthew? John the Baptist is Elijah, you know, he's come as the messenger before the Lord's face to prepare the way for him. So it's perfect how Malachi just rolls right into the New Testament, right? Now the Jews, they don't like that, you know, so they got their own order. And you know what they end with? They end with 2 Chronicles, which makes no sense, because after 2 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles rolls perfectly into Ezra. The end of 2 Chronicles is exactly the same as the beginning of Ezra. I mean, talk about a no-brainer of where to put what book. I mean, you know, if you were sitting down, figuring out what order to put these books in, putting Ezra after 2 Chronicles is a no-brainer. The reason that they want to end with 2 Chronicles is because 2 Chronicles ends with a call, let's go back to the land. Who's going to go back to the land? Who wants to go back to Jerusalem? And that's what their whole religion is about, isn't it? Next year in Jerusalem, right, they're all into the land. They're so carnal, they worship the land instead of the God that gave them that land. So basically, that's where they want to end on that note of, alright everybody, let's go back home to Israel. No, what we ought to end on is, hey, I'm sending Elijah the prophet, he's going to prepare the way before me, and I'm going to come into that temple, and I'm going to crack some heads. You know, I'm paraphrasing, of course. But in the book of Malachi, it's crystal clear who's coming, and it's Jehovah God Himself. Why? Because Jesus is Jehovah. I think I've preached that many times. I mean, we just did a whole sermon on the names of God a few weeks ago, and we saw that all the names of God in the Old Testament, all the names, whether it's the Lord God, the Lord of Hosts, Jehovah, all the different names, Ancient of Days, they all refer to God in general. They can be applied to Jesus, they can be applied to the Holy Spirit, the Father, whatever. Yet, you know, it seems that one of our staff members was so stupid that he thinks that Malachi 2 teaches oneness or modalism, or, you know, rolling into chapter 3, the end of chapter 2 rolling into chapter 3. Well, you know, we all believe Jesus is God, so that's a straw man. Of course we believe that John the Baptist went to prepare the way before the Lord Jehovah because of the fact that we believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. What we don't believe is that Jesus is God the Father, or that He's His own Father, okay? We don't deny the Trinity. But we definitely affirm the deity of Jesus Christ. So you can see the order of the books makes sense. You know, it's just in chronological order with the Minor Prophets, but it rolls perfectly into the New Testament. When was Chronicles written? That's a good question, right? Well, when was this book written, and how can we know when it was written? The answer is in 1 Chronicles 3. Let's look down at our Bibles, and when we're looking at the genealogy of the sons of David, we go very deep into this genealogy, and we get to a guy named Zerubbabel, and this might be a name that's familiar to you if you know the Bible. He's not a big character in the Bible, but you may know who he is. In verse 19, it says, And the sons of Padiah were Zerubbabel and Shimei, and the sons of Zerubbabel, Mesholam and Hananiah, and Shalomith their sister. Now stop for a second. Let's ask ourselves, when was Zerubbabel around? Well, Zerubbabel was the son of David who was prophesied that would come when they came back from the Babylonian captivity. Zerubbabel was their governor. He was their leader, right? He was that son of David, and if you remember the two great leaders that brought the children of Israel back to the land after the 70-year Babylonian captivity, you had a political leader, for lack of a better word, and then you have a spiritual leader, and those men are the high priest, Joshua son of Jazadek, and Zerubbabel, right? So when we read books like Zechariah and Haggai, when we read books about Ezra and Nehemiah, that's where Zerubbabel's name comes up. So he's after the Babylonian captivity, right? But that's not where this genealogy stops, because then we find out that Zerubbabel has a son named Hananiah part way through verse 19, but look at verse 21, the sons of Hananiah, and then one of them is named at the end of the verse there in verse 21 as Shekiniah, and then we get the sons of Shekiniah in verse 22. One of them is Nehariah, verse 23 the sons of Nehariah, verse 24 the sons of Elioenai. So what we end up with, I'll just simplify it down for you, is that Zerubbabel begets Hananiah, begets Shekiniah, begets Nehariah, begets Elioenai, begets Anani is the youngest of his sons. That's quite a few generations. I mean that's one, two, three, four, five generations after Zerubbabel. Now people say a generation is 25 years, well, yeah, in 2018 in America, but a lot of times in the Bible, people were still having kids even when they're older. But even if you took 25 years, we're still talking about like 150 years or something, 125 years at the very minimum, but probably more like 150, 200 years. I mean so when are we talking about here? We're talking about possibly a couple hundred years after they get back that this is being written because they basically, they wrote, they knew enough down to this guy, Anani, but it's like they don't know anything beyond that because those people hadn't been born yet. Do you understand what I'm saying? So that means that this book is one of the latest books of the Old Testament and it was, you know, since we know that the Babylonian captivity ended around 536 BC, you know, this book is written probably like in the 300s BC. So we're talking like less than 400 years before Christ that this book is written, okay? So this is way after David. I mean this is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years after the events we're reading about in 1 Chronicles with David and so forth because we're getting so many generations away from David. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? So why am I bringing that up? So I'm saying even though Dan and Zebulun might have been key players around the time of David and Solomon, guess what? By the time we get to 300 and some odd BC, the Danites and the Zebulunites just didn't matter. So we don't need a big genealogy on them, you know, if you want it, look it up in, you know, Numbers Chapter 26 or whatever to get some basics or find something but, you know, it just didn't really matter. Now what can we learn from that spiritually because that's pretty interesting. Here's what we learn from that. The people that are doing the right things and serving God and worshiping the true God, that's where God's going to focus His attention. That's what God's going to emphasize. In fact, the whole Bible's like that because when we start out the Bible, it's the whole world. Then we home in on one group, Israel. Then we home in further on just the southern kingdom of Judah, right? Then when we get to the New Testament, we're talking about the Jews a lot, right? In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you know, who are they preaching to? Mainly the Jews. I mean, that's the main emphasis. Then as we get into the Book of Acts, we get even narrower. We're not talking about the Jews anymore. Now our focus is on the Jews who believe in Christ and so what are the first chapters of the Book of Acts about? The early church where? In Jerusalem, right? So in chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, you know, the events are happening in Jerusalem but we're not just talking about, you know, what the whole nation's doing. We're just focused in now on just the ones who believe in Christ, the Jews who are receiving Christ as Savior. But then not only that, as we move through the Book of Acts, the emphasis shifts again because pretty soon we're not talking about the Jews at all except as an enemy and we're talking about who? The Gentiles. Because once we meet the apostle Paul, we start seeing that it's the Gentiles that are receiving Christ en masse and then we see that even Peter is successful at winning Gentiles the Lord. And by the time we get to the end of the Book of Acts, it's all about the Gentiles and anytime we talk to the Jews, you know, they're just shaking the dust off their feet saying, we're done with you guys. We're going to the Gentiles. Right? Okay. Where does the Bible go next? The Book of Romans. Now we've completely gotten away from the Jews and we're talking to the Romans. First and second, Corinthians, Corinth is in Greece, Rome is in Italy, Galatia is in modern-day Turkey, Ephesus, modern-day Turkey, Philippi, northern Greece, what was called then Macedonia, right, Colossae, Thessalonica, all of these Gentile places, right? We get to guys like Timothy, Titus, Philemon. Just listen to the names, Timotheus, Titus, Philemon. Look at all their buddies, Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas. Why? Because we've completely shifted our emphasis away from the Jews over to the Gentiles who believe in Christ. Okay. Then we take a brief interlude and have two books, Hebrews and James, that are addressed to the Hebrews trying to straighten them out. And it's not just geared toward Jews. It's just geared toward all 12 tribes just saying, hey, anybody out there, you know, who's of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who claims to believe in the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, you know, just Israel in general, because James is made out to the 12 tribes, so it's not just the Jews, which is the southern kingdom of Judah. And then, of course, Hebrews is to the Hebrews. It's not called the Epistle of Christ, I'm sorry, the Epistle of Paul to the Jews. You know, it's the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. So when we get off of that, then we roll into what? First Second Peter, which are to the strangers scattered in all these Gentile places. And then when we get to First, Second, and Third John, we're talking about Gentiles. We're talking about guys named Gaius, and we're talking about Demetrius, and we're talking about Diotrophes, and we're clearly talking about Gentiles. And then when we get to Revelation, who's the letter made out to? All the Jews, all the Israelites. No, Revelation is not made out to the Jews, it's to the seven churches in Asia. Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. Why? Because God doesn't care what your ethnicity is, God doesn't care what your nationality is. What God is looking for are people that worship him, that love him, that follow his word. So you know, he opens that up to all of mankind. He homes in on Israel because Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were godly men that loved him. So he focuses on them. When a lot of their descendants worship other gods, he ditches them and goes with the southern kingdom. And then when the southern kingdom rejects Jesus Christ, he moves the focus away from them and moves it to Greece. Why? Because it's not about ethnicity, it's about who's worshiping the Lord. So what's interesting is that 1 Chronicles is similar. I was kind of giving you an overview of the whole Bible, how the Bible keeps focusing in on the people that serve him. Whoever serves him, that's where the focus is. I mean, why don't we get to see what all the other apostles did? I mean, think about it. Wouldn't it be interesting to hear all the adventures of Andrew and to hear all the adventures of other apostles? Thomas, you know, I want to hear about him going to India and doing all that. But why is it ending up being all about the apostle Paul? It's because the apostle Paul labored more abundantly than they all. And even though he was the least of the apostles, wasn't he? He said, I'm the least of the apostles. But yet he gets the most scripture about him. Why? Because he labored more abundantly than they all. Because he obeyed the Lord. He focused on the Gentiles. He did what Christ told him to do, and so therefore he gets the emphasis. So when you get away from the Lord, when you turn away from the Lord, you're not going to get as much scripture about you in the Old Testament because you're not serving him. And the memory of the wicked will be blotted out, the Bible says. You're not going to be remembered. You get forgotten, right? And the people who serve the Lord, then they are had in memorial before the Lord, okay? And so God focuses on them. So that's kind of the whole Bible, but then if we just take 1 Chronicles itself and think about how the book of 1 Chronicles is laid out, we already talked about how the genealogies narrow down from Adam and the whole world, and then it narrows in on Judah and on the southern kingdom and David. But if you actually read the whole books of 1 and 2 Chronicles, what are they about? 1 and 2 Chronicles are about the southern kingdom predominantly. You barely even hear about what's going on in that northern kingdom. Every once in a while, 1 and 2 Chronicles will tell you a little bit about what goes on in that northern kingdom, but when you read 1 and 2 Kings, you read a lot about the northern kingdom, right? Why? Because those books are written earlier in history, and so you read more about the northern kingdom. But even then, even in 1 and 2 Kings, the emphasis is still on the southern kingdom. But you still read a lot about the northern kingdom. But Chronicles just doesn't seem to care much about that northern kingdom, what they're doing, because it wants to focus on the people who love the Lord. That's why there's so much emphasis on David, because he loved the Lord. So much emphasis on Solomon. So much emphasis on that southern kingdom, because they were the righteous half of the kingdom. So there's a powerful lesson there just in the way the book of 1 Chronicles is laid out, in just not only what 1 Chronicles tells us, but how about what it chooses to leave out conspicuously absent to whole tribes, because by the time we get to 300 and some odd B.C., those tribes have become totally irrelevant. Nobody cares. And look, some of these other tribes are on their way out, aren't they? Because look down at your Bible. Are you there in 1 Chronicles 7? Go to 1 Chronicles 7. You can tell some of these tribes are on the way out the door. Look how much air time Naphtali gets. And this is another far north tribe. Look at 1 Chronicles 7.13. The sons of Naphtali, Jaziel and Gunai and Jezer and Shalom, the sons of Bilhah. And then next verse, we're on to the sons of Manasseh. Well, they didn't get much of a genealogy, did they? I mean, they get one short verse. Why? Because they're not as relevant. They're on their way out. Who are the more spiritual tribes? Who matter the most? Judah and Benjamin and Levi. They get the number of verses, right? Now, let me just hit a few highlights in the chapter in the brief remaining time that we have here. I'll hit a few highlights from this chapter. It's a lot of names. I'm not going to reread all the names that we've already read. But there is a theme that comes up in this chapter from start to finish. It's impossible to ignore the theme of this chapter. It's very clear because it's different than all the other chapters in this genealogy. What's the theme? All right, let's look at it. First Chronicles, chapter 7, verse 2. Look halfway through the chapter and you'll see the phrase, they were valiant men of might in their generations. Do you see that? Now jump down to verse 4. It says at the end, they had many wives and sons. And verse 5, and their brethren among all the families of Isaacar were valiant men of might. So verse 2, valiant men of might. Verse 5, valiant men of might. Look halfway through verse 7, mighty men of valor. Halfway through verse 9, mighty men of valor. Verse 11, halfway through, mighty men of valor. Do you see that coming up so far one, two, three, four, five times? And then if we jump down to the end of the chapter, verse number 40, it says all these were the children of Asher, that's one of the other tribes that are being cleaned up in this chapter, heads of their father's house, choice, usually the Bible used the word chosen, but sometimes it used the word choice, choice and mighty men of valor. There's that phrase again for the sixth time, chief of the princes and the number throughout the genealogy of them that were, watch this, apt to war and to battle, which is another way of kind of saying that they were mighty men of valor, right? They were apt to war and to battle was 26,000 men. So what does it mean to be choice or chosen? Well, a lot of people misunderstand that word chosen. Think about food. Think about, and I don't know if they still call it this because I don't do the grocery shopping, I don't watch the advertisements that I used to see as a kid, but I remember the big thing when I was a kid was that the beef was USDA choice. Is that still a thing? Yeah. What does that mean, USDA choice? Choice means it's a higher quality. Isn't that what that means, right? So if we said that it was a choice cut of meat or a choice delicacy, then basically, you know, these men are choice and mighty men of valor. And so what that means is that these are the guys that you would choose or you would pick. If you can only pick a certain dream team to be in your army or to be fighting your battles, these are the guys you're going to pick, right? And when we read the word chosen throughout the Bible, that's often what chosen means. Obviously, sometimes it just means, you know, just you picked people so they're chosen because they got picked or chosen. But a lot of times, chosen means choice. It just means that these are the best ones is what it can sometimes refer to. These are the top guys. These are the special forces as it were, the choice and mighty men of valor. So you know, let's just talk about that phrase there because it's something that God chose to emphasize. If it were not important, it wouldn't be repeated six times. What does it mean to be a mighty man of valor or this is also put as a valiant man of might because valiant is an adjective and valor is a noun, right? So I misspoke one time and I said valiance, you know. Valence sounds more like something to do with a curtain rod or something. So I misspoke when I said that because what we should say when we're looking for a noun for valiant, it's not valiant, it's valor, right? So valor is the noun. So valiant men of might, mighty men of valor, what does that mean? Well mighty has to do with being strong, right? This has to do with, you know, power. In fact, God will sometimes be called the almighty and then it will also say that he's omnipotent or has all power, right? Because might and power have to do with being strong but these guys weren't just mighty or powerful or strong, they were also valiant. Now why is that important? Because when you're going into battle, courage is the most important attribute that you could possibly have. It's almost more important than being mighty is having the courage, having the bravery. Why? Because when you're afraid and you're cowardly and you're fearful, you've already lost the battle. You know, it's the same thing in a fist fight, in a boxing match. That's why these fighters will often try to really intimidate each other before the fight. They talk a lot of smack and they put on a big show of how tough they are. They're trying to scare their opponent. Why? Because they know if they can scare him, they win. You know, they could get him running away, get him on defense, get him in a corner, get him scared, get him running scared. You know, the valiant men in the Bible are often described as not breaking rank. You know, meaning what? When they're lined up to fight, they're all lined up. Breaking rank would be if some of the people got scared and started running away. And the defenses fall apart, okay? So when we have a defense, you know, we need the men that are defending to be shoulder to shoulder, right? Right? So in fact, let's illustrate this. You want to be my illustration again? Dustin, Nick. When you sit in the front row, you got to expect to be used in this way. You know, so like let's say, you know, if we're fighting the enemy, just go ahead and stand. Let's not break rank, gentlemen. So you know, if we're fighting, we want to be shoulder to shoulder. We don't want anybody to get through us and get behind us because then they can attack us from behind or the side. You know, we want to have a defensive front. And I'm not an expert on war or military, but you know, this is based on my just amateur knowledge of the subject. So basically, we need to have a solid defense, and especially when you read about the ancient world and their methods of warfare, you read about people like Alexander the Great, where there's a lot written about him by historians that were around back then. You know, one of the most important things they had was the phalanx, where they would all stand shoulder to shoulder, and they had a really long spear, right? So nobody can even get close to them because they've got this really long spear. And because they're just shoulder to shoulder, not breaking rank, it's just this wall of spears. You just can't get there. You just can't get through. So then, you know, they try to shoot archery over that and try to get to them that way, and then they have the shields and they're blocking the arrows and stuff like that. So the bottom line is, though, even when you're fighting with guns, and you know, I've read a little bit about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War. You know, it's important that you stay in your place, that we're all in our place, right? That nobody just gets scared, and then what do we have now? We've got a hole and a chink in the armor. And then let's say, you know, Elijah, you know, he breaks rank too. We both just get scared. We run away. We don't want to get killed. This isn't going the way we thought it would. You know, now you have this giant gap, and some enemy can just run right in there, and then he's able to fight people from behind and from the side, and then those long spears, they're not going to help at all anymore because now they're behind you. Go ahead and sit down, gentlemen. So you can see how important it is to not flinch, you know, and not until the order is given to retreat where the commander would say, all right, you know, let's retreat. Let's do a tactical retreat. You don't break rank until you're told, okay, let's have a tactical retreat. Otherwise, you end up with what's called a route, right? And a route is when everybody just starts running away haphazardly, instead of an orderly retreat, instead of keeping rank, following orders, backing up, it just becomes chaos and everybody's just running in all directions, and it becomes a route. The Bible calls this being discomfited, you know, and just being scattered all over the place. So that's what you don't want to happen. That's why God even said, look, if you're going to go to battle, you better make sure that you don't have any cowards with you. He even said that they were supposed to, before they go to war, they were supposed to make an announcement, all right, anybody who's scared, go home. Why? Because if you're scared, you're going to cause the people around you to get scared, because fear is like an infection. And if you're fearful, that's going to rub off on the people around you. And what's he saying? You know, we'd rather just not even have you around. We'd rather just have less troops. And you know, there were 32,000 men that showed up to fight behind Gideon. And Gideon said, hey, if you're fearful, go home. 22,000 people went home. 22,000 people went home. But you know what? You're better off with the 10,000 that are courageous, valiant, brave men, and you're better off kissing the 22,000 goodbye. And then, even then, God said, you got too many people. And he whittled them down to 300 people just to show his power, just to show his might. But there were 10,000 that were viable troops. You know, God just did it with less because he wanted to get more glory. But there were 10,000 that were viable. And you know what? It's the same thing in a church. You know, it's amazing to me how people are just so quick to not side with the man of God, to side with the pastor. It just blows me away. You know, here I am trying to lead us into battle here. You know, I'm following the Word of God. Christ is the captain. Christ is the shepherd. I'm studying my Bible every day. I'm digging into the Word of God. I'm learning these truths. I'm getting up and preaching these things to the best of my ability. I'm praying for the fullness of the Holy Ghost to preach effectively, to win souls, to do and look, there's a lot that we're trying to accomplish as a church, whether it be the soul-winning program, you know, to go out and preach the gospel to every creature in the Phoenix area, all the Indian reservations, whatever the case may be. You know what? We are in a spiritual battle. We're not wrestling against flesh and blood, but we're wrestling against principalities and powers. And you know what? The Bible says we're casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against God. And if you would just, we'll close there. Go to 2 Corinthians. We're going to look at 2 Corinthians 10 and 11 as we close here. 2 Corinthians 10 and 11, it says in verse number 3, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. Look what it says in chapter 11, verse 2, for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your mind should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if you receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. Look, I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy, there is another Jesus being preached. And you know what? In our church, there were people that were preaching another Jesus. And in fact, even if you ask them, they'll tell you, it's another Jesus. That's what they say. They say, you that believe in the Trinity have another Jesus. And I say, amen. We do have another Jesus. We have the right Jesus. We have the Jesus that did not come in his own name. He came in the name of his Father, which is in heaven. We have the Jesus who didn't glorify himself. He didn't honor himself to be made a high priest. We have the Jesus that did always those things which pleased the Father. And the Bible says, I'm come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not, he said to the unbelieving Jews, but if another come in his own name, him ye will receive. That's another Jesus that comes in his own name. You better have both, both the Father and the Son. That's not oneness, that's two-ness. And the Holy Spirit makes three. And you know what? It's amazing to me how people can be so quick to break ranks with the Church of God and the man of God and the Spirit of God for another Jesus. Look, if there's another Jesus, it's the serpent who's trying to beguile people. And you know what? We're supposed to wrestle against that. We're supposed to war against that. We're supposed to fight against, not a physical fight, not a boxing match, not a showdown at the OK Corral, but a spiritual fight. But you know what? The Bible doesn't say we don't fight, we don't wrestle, we don't war. It just says it's a spiritual fight, it's a spiritual wrestling, it's a spiritual war. I don't know about you, I'm at war right now. You say, you're always at war. You got it right. You know, you think that you're just going to go out as a church and have 200-some people out soul-winning every week and there's going to be no fight. You think we're just going to load 55 people into a bunch of vans, drive up to the India – how many people got saved up on the res? Yeah, and just have 58 salvations on Monday, 55 soul-winners, 58 salvations. You think you're just going to do that and have no fight? Of course there's going to be a fight. Of course our church has a big fat target on it and the devil and his minions are transformed into the ministers of light and the angels of light and their wolves in sheep's clothing that would love to stop us and they would love to stop me personally and they would love to stop you and get you out of church and you know what? It's of the devil and we need to fight it. And you know what? There are very few people in this church but there are certain people in this church that need to figure out what team they're on and figure out who's on the Lord's side and not be like these people that are halting between two opinions and Elijah said, hey, who's on the Lord's side? It's just silence. Nothing. Well you know what? That's not enough. That's not enough. You know, we need to get on the Lord's side and you know what? Your pastor loves you, preaches to you, teaches you the Bible. You know what? You ought to back him up, period, period, because it's not me. I didn't invent the Trinity, stupid. You know, it's funny. First I invented the reprobate doctrine. I mean that's what people say. People literally call it Stephen Anderson's reprobate doctrine even though I grew up hearing it. I learned it as a little kid sitting in church. I mean I heard it in every church I did. I never attended a church for any length of time until I got into the NIV church but when I was in fundamental Baptist churches, they all preached that, the reprobate doctrine. It was like, oh, Stephen Anderson's reprobate. So not only did I supposedly invent the reprobate doctrine, not only did I supposedly write Leviticus 2013, now all of a sudden I have invented the Trinity, the orthodox Trinity. What kind of stupidity is that? The Trinity has been around before I was born. It's been settled. It's only been a very small minority of cults and weirdos that have rejected the Trinity. It's never been an issue in evangelical churches or Baptist churches that was a big issue. I was talking to the religion professor at the university here and he said, you're having a Trinitarian controversy in your church? He's like, man, this is like the third century AD all over again. He's like, that's so cool. He's like, I learned about that back in seminary. I thought that was settled like 1800 years ago. Talk about a throwback. You're actually having a Trinity. We don't have a Trinitarian controversy in our church because we took out the trash. Let me explain something to you. By the way, if you're this bleeding heart for these people, I guess your favorite song is Sympathy for the Devil, but I was never allowed to listen to that song because my parents told me it was satanic and they told me not to listen to the Rolling Stones, but you seem to have sympathy for the devil. You know what? If people bring in another Jesus and damnable heresy, if you're friends with them, you're a partaker of their evil deeds. If you bring them into your house and if you bid them Godspeed, if you say, hey, have a good trip, hey, I wish you all the best, God bless you, you know what? You're wrong there. I lost my train of thought what I was going to say because I got off on that. We're not going anywhere until I figure out what to say. Don't you hate it when that happens? What was I talking about? Somebody help me. Help me. Yeah, but no, you're going back too far. It was only back a little bit. Right before I went off on the being buddies with these people that we've thrown up sympathizing with them. No, something else. Man, it drives me nuts. This was the closing point. Yeah, that's good too, but that bears repeating. There we go, halting between two. Now, was that it? I don't know. You go into the live stream back up a little bit, see what I was saying? I mean, I might just have to let it go and say, oh, I just thought of it. Yes, I love it. Don't you love that? I love that. All right, I got it. This is what I wanted to close on. A parable, okay? This is one of my favorite parables is in Matthew chapter 13, the parable of the net cast into the sea. Like I did a whole sermon on a while back, the net cast into the sea. When you go soul winning, and this is what I'm going to close on. This is exactly what I was trying to think of. But when you go soul winning, it's like fishing, right? We're fishers of men. Okay, when you go fishing, it's not like fishing with a fishing pole with a hook though. Is that how they fish in the Bible? How do they fish in the Bible? With nets, right? So fishing is like throwing a net into the sea, right? And the Bible says that when you cast a net into the sea, you gather it up, and basically then you have to do a sorting of what's there. And basically you're going to catch a lot of fish, but what else are you going to catch? Trash. The more fish you catch, the more times you cast the net, the more times you go fishing, the more nets you let down, you're going to get more fish, amen? But you're also going to get more trash. And the Bible says that at the end of the world, it's going to be like going through that net, and they're going to gather the good into vessels and cast the bad away. So there's going to be a great throwing away of trash in the end times, right? So basically, that's what I want to say about soul winning. When you go out and you win a lot of people to Christ and win a lot of souls, you know what you're also going to do? You're also going to bring in a lot of trash. And sometimes you've got to take out the trash. So if people wonder like, how is there so much trash? Look how many fish there are. Look how many souls are saved. Look at all the people that do love the Lord. Look at all the people who are growing. And look, to live the Christian life, you've got to be a valiant man of might. You've got to be a mighty man of valor. You've got to have some courage. You've got to have some boldness. You've got to be ready to fight the good fight of faith. You know, so why don't you have the courage? You know, if somebody hates our church, if somebody hates the Trinity, why don't you have the courage to tell them, no, you're a heretic. I don't believe that garbage. That's the voice of a stranger. That's not the voice of a shepherd. You know, you've got to have the boldness to do that. And not be so scared like, oh, I'm so nervous, pastor's yelling again. Oh no, pastor's up there taking out the trash again. You know what? You've got to be able to handle it. And you know what? A church with no fighting is a church that's not doing anything. Yeah, we could go down to some church that has no soul-winning program, us four, no more. You're not going to have fights. Why? Because the devil's not even attacking because he doesn't even care. The devil doesn't even have to attack the tribe of Dan anymore. They're so idolatrous. But he's going to provoke David. He's going to mess with David and tempt him to number the people and whatever. The more you do for the Lord, the more there are going to be attacks. But you know what? At the end of the day, I say it's worth it. At the end of the day, you win a bunch of souls. You fight a bunch of battles. You make a lot of friends. You make a lot of enemies. That's the Christian life. And at the end of it, you receive the crown. When the battle's over, we shall wear a crown. But during the battle, it gets ugly sometimes. And you know what? That's just part of God's will. God's plan. Because God's plan was for the tares and the wheat to grow together and for these things to happen. So anyway, thank you to everyone who supports our church, which I know is the vast majority of people. Thank you to everybody who showed up on Monday and made that soul-winning event such a big success. 55 people showed up, which was twice what was signed up, which is awesome. And thank you to those who stand with us. And look, if you're one who's been on the fence right now, you're halting between two opinions, you know, it's time for you to decide tonight, I'm getting all the way in, I'm getting on the Lord's side, and I'm done with the trash. And if you're one of the people that's an infiltrator, that's here behind enemy lines, reporting back to your motorless buddies, you better just hit the road, Jack, and don't you come back no more. Because we're not playing games around here, we're not playing church. The stakes are high. And you know what? If you want to know why I'm so mad at heretics, just remember that heretics send people to hell for all eternity. That's not, you know, but I'm mean for fighting heresy? You know what? I'm fighting heresy pulling people out of the fire. I'm up here on Sunday morning pulling people out of the fire. I'm on Sunday night, Wednesday night, Wednesday afternoon, Thursday, Friday afternoon, I'm pulling people out of the fire. Okay? And you know what heretics are doing? Pushing them into the fire. And you know what? There's something wrong with you when you're just like, oh, I just feel so bad for these heretics. Damn them. Damn them all to hell. They hate the Lord. Let them be anathema. And you know what? Why don't you get on board with your brothers and sisters in Christ who love the Lord and fight the good fight instead of consorting with devils. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this great chapter, Lord, and these examples of mighty men of valor, Lord. Help us to be mighty, Lord. And through the power of your might, not through our own carnal strength, but through the spiritual might of the Holy Spirit. And Lord, help us to be valiant, Lord. Help us not to be scared and cowardly, Lord. Help us to face these things head on, Lord, and fight the good fight, fight the battle, take a stand for what's right, and not be cowards who hide and sneak around with our doctrine, Lord. Help us to shine the light of what we believe, Lord, and not hide it under a bushel. And Lord, we pray that you would bless our church and continue to bless our soul winning ministry. And Lord, keep us pure, keep us doctrinally right, Lord. And we thank you and love you, and in Jesus' name we pray, Amen.