First Chronicles chapter number six. Let's go ahead and stand and we're going to read the first 30 verses of the chapter together this evening. as we stand. We are, this evening, about two-thirds of the way through the genealogies of this book. 1 Chronicles chapter 6 and verse number 1, the sons of Levi, Gershon, Kohath, Merari, and the sons of Kohath, Amram, Islar, Hebron, and Uziel, and the children of Amram, Aaron, and Moses, and Miriam, The sons also of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. Eleazar begat Phineas, Phineas begat Abishua, Abishua begat Buki, Buki begat Uzi, Uzi begat Zerahiah, and Zerahiah begat Marioth. Marioth begat Amariah, and Amariah begat Ahitab, and Ahitab begat Zadok, and Zadok begat Amiaz. And Ahimeaz begat Azariah, and Azariah begat Johanan. Johanan begat Azariah. He it is that executed the priest's office in the temple that Solomon built in Jerusalem. And Azariah begat Amariah, and Amariah begat Ahitab. And Ahitab begat Zadok, and Zadok begat Shalom. Shalom begat Hilkiah, and Hilkiah begat Azariah. Azariah begat Sariah, and Sariah begat Jehozadak. And Jehozadak went into captivity when the Lord carried away Judah and Jerusalem by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. The sons of Levi, Gershom, Kohath, and Merari. And these be the names of the sons of Gershom, Libni and Shimei, and the sons of Kohath were Amram and Itzar and Hebron and Uziel. The sons of Merari, Mahel and Mushi, And these are the families of the Levites according to their fathers. Of Gershom, Libni his son, Jaheth his son, Zim his son, Joah his son, Iddo his son, Zerah his son, Jedarai his son, the sons of Kohath, Aminadab his son, Korah his son, Aser his son, Elkanah his son, Abiaseth his son, and Aser his son. Tehath his son, Uriel his son, Uzziah his son, Shaul his son, and the sons of Elkoriah, Amasai, and Ahimoth. As for Elkanah, the sons of Elkanah, Zophie his son, and Nahath his son, Eliab his son, Jeraham his son, Elkanah his son, and the sons of Samuel, the firstborn Vashni and Abiah, the sons of Merari, Mali, Libni his son, Shimei his son, Uzzi his son, Shimei his son, Haggai his son, Asaiah his son. And we're gonna stop there and we will pray. Father, all words of the Bible are your words. And we pray for your spirit to help us and to keep our minds' attention on the text, to extract that which is appropriate for us. We pray then your blessing. We ask for your help tonight in Jesus' name. Amen. And you may, of course, be seated. Well, this long chapter, and before we leave this evening, we will have read all of its 81 verses, is critical to understanding one of the purposes of the Book of Chronicles. I hope by now that we are familiar enough with the general history of Israel to know that they were constituted as a group of God's covenant people under Moses, and that God made a covenant with them that is technically known as the Mosaic Covenant that we call the law, the Ten Commandments, that organized them into a people. I made mention this morning, Isaiah 43, 15, God said, I created Israel. I created Israel. It is a people for his name. And the Mosaic Covenant was a conditional covenant. It required their faithful obedience to it. And they, of course, had a long history of disobedience to which God responded in a variety of ways. One, he regularly sent them prophets who reminded them of their covenant obligations. And the message of the prophets was almost always the same. I mean, different men in different times, but their message was always the same, which was returned to the faithful observance of the commandments. We would put it something along the lines of get your act together. and play by the rules that you agree to. And then God periodically dealt with them severely through things like famines and pestilences. And then God periodically brought enemies upon them. He dealt with them then spiritually. He dealt with them economically. He dealt with them physically. all to no avail, and ultimately then in 586 BC, the Babylonians came and just devastated the place. Took away almost all the people, destroyed almost entirely the lineage of David, tore down the temple, and for 70 years, the Israelites lived as truly stateless people, And then finally, they were allowed to return to their land under King Cyrus, and they were given the commission to rebuild the temple. So what we have then in chapter six, and by the way, I would always refer you, and we will eventually someday get to it, to 2 Chronicles 36, which is one of the most pointed, condensed, easy to understand records of the history of the Israelites. and all that happened to them and how God reacted until ultimately he handed them over to the Babylonians, only to hand the Babylonians over to the Persians and bring them relief. 2 Chronicles 36, 22, and 23. So what we have then in chapter 6, you'll notice from the very beginning, what we have are the sons of Levi. So there was Abraham, Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, Jacob had the 12 sons that became the 12 tribes. Judah became the kingly tribe, and royalty was assigned to Judah, Genesis chapter 49. Now that line is really cut off at the captivity. And in fact, when you read the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter 1, It just takes you up to the Babylonian captivity. And at that point in time, the kingdom line is pretty much cut off from human standpoint. Obviously, God knows who's who. But from human standpoint, the Israelites have been scrambling since the Babylonian captivity to know who is assigned to what particular tribe of people. The second most important, or depending upon how you look at it, the first most important line was the tribe of Levi. And the tribe of Levi was assigned the religious service. And although the kingly line and independent rule of Israel goes away after the captivity, and there's not even a hint of independent Israel until 1948, which, by the way, is not the complete fulfillment of every Bible prophecy about the regathering of Israel. But between 586 BC and 1948 AD, Israel had no land that it could claim as its own. It lived in the land of Palestine, but always under a Gentile power. And until May of 1948, when England relinquished its authority over Israel and granted its independence. So when they came back to the land under Cyrus, They did not come back as a group of people under a king, but they did come back as a group of people under mandate to observe the same religious ordinances. There was supposed to be a rebuilding of the temple. This is what men like Nehemiah and Ezra and Haggai and Malachi are dealing with. The reconstruction of the temple and restored temple worship. And so this part of the book is critically important in understanding, from a Jewish standpoint, they remind the Jews, first of all, of the legitimacy of temple worship. Now, we're going to get to just a very brief some New Testament conclusions and observations, but supposing, folks, that we just kind of looked at the way a New Testament church is set up. And we go, okay, well, New Testament churches have pastors slash elders slash bishops, and they have deacons, and they have an assembly, and that just seems to be a cumbersome model. We need to change the way we do things. Do we have the right to do that? Do we have the right to streamline and attempt to make more efficient the structure of a church because we decree that the structure of a church is too difficult, not workable, out of step with the modern world? And although God had destroyed the temple, he had not destroyed the worship through the temple. And so these men, and you have these You have these marks, these notations about where some of these men fit in history. And so they are instrumental in understanding both the legitimacy of temple worship and the proper restoration of temple worship. What is temple worship supposed to look like? And we will not, again, get back into this, but you can read about it in the book of Ezra. When this very would be the best word. This very modest temple that could no way mirror the splendor of Solomon's temple was ultimately constructed and construction began. It brought about great mixed emotions on the part of the people. The old people, people like me who remembered the Temple of Solomon, they wept because they knew what they were missing. And the young people who had known only 70 years of captivity rejoiced because they had a place to worship. But there was an ongoing lingering resentment against the greatly downsized worship. Haggai asked the question, despisest thou the day of small things? Despisest thou the day of small things? So the restoration of temple worship, folks, if it doesn't matter to anybody, and I'm not suggesting for a minute that it doesn't matter to you, but it certainly matters to God, and it is the subject matter of the text this evening. And let's just look at it in three large chunks. The first chunk we have already read, verses 1 through 30. And 1 through 30 remind us that God had selected himself, he had personally selected himself, and preserved a tribe, one tribe, whose whole responsibility was worship. And to deal with the structure of it very simply, verses 1 through 15 are the line of priests. And we make then a beeline to Aaron in chapter 6, verse 3, the children of Amram, Aaron. Aaron, of course, is the older brother of Moses. He is the man who is the first priest. Moses and Aaron are both descendants of Levi. That's the tribe to which they belong. And so Exodus 28.1, take thou unto the Aaron thy brother, his sons with them from among the children of Israel, that he may minister unto me in the priest's office, even Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, Aaron's sons. And they're listed here in this part of the text. If we were just trying to deal with this kind of academically, folks, to walk through and place all these people and their names, I would call your attention, I will do it now, to note that Nadab and Abihu are mentioned in this list. They are sons of Aaron. They are legitimate lines of priests. And when you get then to verse number 15, Josedac went into captivity when the Lord carried away Judah and Jerusalem by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. So you have here a line of men who are the high priest from the time of Aaron all the way through the time of the captivity. That's what those 15 men represent. Then what? Well, that's where Haggai 1 comes in and the rebuilding of the temple. And they came and did the work of the house in Haggai 2 and Zechariah 6. In verses 16 through 30, the attention is turned to the Levites, the sons, verse 16, of Levi. Again, this is not complicated, most of us know this, but there was Levi and his descendants, and of Levi, Aaron was chosen to be the priest. And so the priesthood from that time forward passed not simply from Levi, but from Aaron. So you might be a Levite, but not a descendant of Aaron, in which case you were a Levite by trade, but not a priest. And the Levites, of course, had the responsibility for the physical components, first of the tabernacle and then of the temple. When the tabernacle was assembled, they assembled it. When it was moved, they moved it. When it was erected, they erected it. When the furniture was arranged, they arranged it. When the showbread was put out, they put it out. They did everything except offer the sacrifices as the priests did. So collectively, these two groups of men, the Levites and the priests, were the leaders of worship in the nation of Israel. And they constitute, because Israel is a theocracy, they constitute a little more than that, but they constitute that. They constitute the leadership of Israel's religion. And folks, this is unlike, right? God called me to be a pastor. Whether or not my father should have been a pastor is a whole nother conversation that he did not address until much later in my life. But being a pastor did not pass on by heredity to my son. and it would not pass on by heredity then to his sons and to their sons. Being a pastor doesn't work like that, but being a priest did. Being a priest was a hereditary position and you couldn't just look around and take a couple of tests to see where your skill set were and go, you know what, I should be a priest. Don't mind blood, killing things doesn't really bother me. I like to boss people around. I think this would be a great job to be a priest. Didn't work like that. So we have here the reminder of the preservation of God's selected group of men to lead worship. That brings me then to the second major section. Let's turn our attention to verse 31, and we will read down to verse number 53. And these are they whom David set over the service of song in the house of the Lord. After that, the ark had rest. And they ministered before the dwelling place of the tabernacle of the congregation was singing until Solomon had built the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. And then they waited on their office according to their order. And these are they that waited with their children of the sons of the Kohathites, Heman, a singer, the son of Joel, the son of Shemuel, the son of Elkanah, the son of Jehoram, the son of Eliel, the son of Toa. the son of Zoth, the son of Elkanah, the son of Mahath, the son of Amasai, the son of Elkanah, the son of Joel, the son of Azariah, the son of Zephaniah, the son of Tehath, the son of Aser, the son of Abiasath, the son of Korah, the son of Itzar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, the son of Israel, and his brother Asaph, who stood on his right hand, even Asaph, the son of Barakiah, the son of Shimeah, the son of Michael, the son of Baaseah, the son of Melchiah, the son of Ethnai, the son of Zerah, the son of Adiah, the son of Ethan, the son of Zimah, the son of Shimei, the son of Jahath, the son of Gershom, the son of Levi, and their brethren, the sons of Merari, stood on the left hand. Ethan, son of Kishi, the son of Abdiah, the son of Malak, the son of Hashabiah, the son of Amaziah, the son of Hilkiah, the son of Amzi, the son of Bani, the son of Shamer, the son of Mali, the son of Mushi, the son of Merari, the son of Levi, Their brethren, also the Levites, were appointed unto all manner of service for the tabernacle of the house of God. But Aaron and his sons offered upon the altar of the burnt offering, and upon the altar, and on the altar of incense, and were appointed for all the work of the place most holy, and to make an atonement for Israel according to all that Moses, the servant of God, had commanded. And these are the sons of Aaron, Eleazar his son, Phineas his son, Abishua his son, Buki his son, Uzi his son, Zerahiah his son, Merioth his son, Amariah his son, Ahitab his son, Zadok his son, Ahimeaz his son. So God has a program of worship that he instituted. And what you have in verses 31 through 47 is a list of musicians. Now, much later in the book, or maybe not much later, but later in the book of Chronicles, we will get into those musicians. Moses appointed no musicians. Aaron appointed no musicians. But when Solomon constructed the temple, and actually prior to Solomon's construction of the temple, David, as king, made some provision and arrangements for organizing the Levites and for providing music for worship. This should not come as any great surprise to us since David himself was Israel's greatest musician. I mean, when you take our songbook, folks, it is not uncommon to see Ron Hamilton wrote many songs. Many songs. Keith Gaddy has written many songs. People wrote lots of songs. David wrote lots of songs. They are incorporated in Israel's worship. And in chapter 6 and verse number 32, we are told that they worshipped with singing. They ministered before the Lord in the dwelling place, the tabernacle of the congregation with singing. And this is just one of the reasons, by the way, that the New Testament church sings. There is no singing in Acts chapter two, but we are instructed in the books about the church, Ephesians and Colossians, to sing. And those instructions, folks, are not listening to music in your car, which I'm not saying is a bad thing, or singing to yourself in the shower, which may or may not be a bad thing. And it's not putting on Christian music while you're doing chores around the house. Those references to music in the books of Ephesians and Colossians are for us. We sing collectively to the Lord. We minister to the Lord in music, and everybody is supposed to participate in that, right? I mean, it's rarely a satisfactory answer, but people ask, well, what can I do in the church? Well, here's one thing that is under the inspired record that you can do in church, sing. We can sing the Lord's music. And so this was the arrangement. So God has a program of worship which he instituted. He has a group of people who would be overseers of worship. Worship was not a democratic process in the Old Testament. It was not something that was arranged according to the style of the age. It was divinely inspired. It was organized by God. Here are the people that I want to do it. And then that is followed up with, in verses 31 through 49, here are the people that will do it, and here is what they will do. Here are the things that they will do. And so I've already mentioned this. In verse number 48, you have the Levites who are appointed to all manner of service. And again, they dealt with the physical components of the tabernacle. Every day there was fresh bread put out, the bread of presence, or what our King James Bible calls a showbread. They put that out. The tabernacle had to be dismantled and moved. David divided the Levites into 24 different units who took turns rotating through their service. And this is where, I mean, that continued from the time of David. Zechariah, John the Baptist's father, is doing his two-week stint of service when the angel appears to him and talks to him about his son. And then in verses 49 through 53, in more detail, are the specific works of the priests. They alone went into the Holy of Holies. They alone brought the blood in. They alone performed the ritual over the scapegoat. And you'll notice, folks, in verses 49 through 53, that Nadab and Abihu are removed from this list. They are mentioned as sons of Aaron in the beginning. but they are removed from this list, and they are removed from this list because of their sin. In Leviticus 10, Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, put fire therein, put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. And I would just suggest to you folks that you don't go looking for some weird type of fire It is not the weirdness of the fire that is under the consideration there. It is not the strangeness of the fire. What made the fire strange was this. God didn't tell them to do it. God hadn't told them to do it. That's all it took to make it strange fire. That's all that it took to incite the anger of the Lord against these men. Who quite possibly, and this is a subject for another thing but I'm going to mention it to you, you can look at the text on your own. Immediately following that in Leviticus 10, God takes up the issue of drunken priests. And it is entirely possible that that argument flows out of the fact that Nadab and Abihu were probably drunk when they went in there and offered this fire. And they got in trouble with the Lord. In contrast with that, and again, if we were just trying to deal with this a little more academically, I would call your attention to the man by the name of Zadok, who is noted for his incredible faithfulness. Nadab and Abihu offer strange fire and God kills them. Zadok is mentioned significantly in Exodus 40, in Exodus 44, and in Exodus 48. when God reinstitutes the temple, which you know is a whole nother can of worms to us, right? What do we do with Ezekiel's temple in Ezekiel 40 through 48, and where does it fit, and what does it look like? But there is the ministry of Zadok, because he was faithful to the Lord in his days, he is found again. So three large segments in Chronicles. One, God has a group of people that he assigns responsibility for worship, Secondly, he organizes the type of worship that they will do. So it's not like I pick the guys and then you guys figure it out. It is I pick the guys and here's what I want the guys to do, which brings us then to the third large section, which is verse 54 down through the end. Now, these are their dwelling places through their castles in their coasts. Of the sons of Aaron, of the family of the Kohathites, for theirs was the lot. And they gave them Hebron in the land of Judah, and the suburbs thereof round about it. But the fields of the city and the villages thereof gave they to Caleb, the son of Jephunneh. And to the sons of Aaron they gave the cities of Judah, namely Hebron, the city of refuge, Libna with her suburbs, Jatter and Eshtimoah with their suburbs, and Hylan with her suburbs, Deborah with her suburbs, and Ashen with her suburbs, and Beth-shemeth with her suburbs, And out of the tribe of Benjamin, Geba with her suburbs, and Alameth with her suburbs, and Anathoth with her suburbs, and their cities throughout the families were 13 cities. And under the sons of Kohath, which were left to the family of that tribe, were cities given out of the half-tribe, namely out of the half-tribe of Manasseh, Bilat, 10 cities. And the sons of Gershom throughout their families of the tribe of Issachar, and out of the tribe of Asher, and out of the tribe of Naphtali, and out of the tribe of Manasseh, and Bashan, 13 cities. Unto the sons of Merari were given by lot throughout their families out of the tribe of Reuben, and out of the tribe of Gad, and out of the tribe of Zebulun, 12 cities. And the children of Israel gave to the Levites these cities with their suburbs. And they gave by lot out of the tribe of the children of Judah, and out of the tribe of the children of Simeon, and out of the tribe of the children of Benjamin, these cities which are called by their names. And the residue of the families of the sons of Kohath had their cities of their coast out of the tribe of Ephraim. And they gave unto them of the cities of refuge Shechem and Mount Ephraim with her suburbs, they gave also Gezer with her suburbs, and Jachmim with her suburbs, and Bethlehorin with her suburbs, and Ajalon with her suburbs, and Gathrimon with her suburbs, and out of the half-tribe of Manasseh, Honor with her suburbs, and Bilim with her suburbs, for the family of the remnant of the sons of Kohath. Unto the sons of Gershom were given out of the family of the half-tribe of Manasseh, Golan and Bashan with her suburbs, Ashtaroth with her suburbs, and out of the tribe of Issachar, Kedesh with her suburbs, Daburath with her suburbs, Ramoth with her suburbs, Anum with her suburbs, and out of the tribe of Asher, Mashal with her suburbs, and Abdon with her suburbs, and Hukok with her suburbs, and Rehab with her suburbs, and out of the tribe of Naphtali, Kedesh and Galilee with her suburbs, and Haman with her suburbs, and Kerjahem with her suburbs. Unto the rest of the children of Morari were given out of the tribe of Zebulon, Rimen with her suburbs, Dabor with her suburbs, and on the other side of Jordan by Jericho on the east side of Jordan were given them out of the tribe of Reuben. Bezer in the wilderness with her suburbs, and Jezha with her suburbs, Kedemoth also with her suburbs, and Mephath with her suburbs, and out of the tribe of Gad, Ramoth and Gilead with her suburbs, and Mahanaim with her suburbs, and Heshbon with her suburbs, and Jazer with her suburbs. So the third major segment, folks, deals with the material provision of those that God had assigned to minister. material provision of those that God had assigned to minister. Remember that the land of Israel was going to be divided into 12 large parcels, one for each of the tribes. And then God said, but Levi doesn't get any land. And so he takes the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh and makes them two and then has 12 parts of land. But the Levites need a place to live, although they don't inherit the land, and so their places are divided throughout the nation by lot. They are chosen randomly, in effect, and these become their homelands. These are the places for them to raise their families, and for them to raise their livestock, and for them to have a place to dwell. And every tribe provided then some land for places for the Levites to live. And they received their sustenance, the Levites did, this entire tribe of people, one twelfth of the nation, received their sustenance through the tithes and the offerings of the other 11 parts of the nation. That was the way that it worked. Numbers 18.25, the Lord said, now here's what you're going to do, you're going to collect the tithe, and then a tithe of the tithe, and then the tithe is gonna go to the Levites, and then the Levites are not exempted from paying the tithe, they will pay the tithe off the tithe that they get. Everybody does this, Numbers chapter 18. Now, all of that, folks, right, again, so that's history, that's Bible history, we all know that. What does it have to do with anything? Well, two things. Number one, it has to do, first of all, and primarily, folks, with the group of people who are going back to the land. We are not the primary, I mean, we're recipients of this in that we're the recipients of the word of the Lord. But this is not primarily to us or about us, not directly. But you'll notice, folks, that what is happening here is that God is reminding the people that worship and what worship does and how worship is funded hasn't changed. The same group of people doing the same things, living in the same places, being sustained in the same way. So that folks, when you get, right, when we as New Testament people go back to the book of Malachi, which is at the very end of the Old Testament, and we hear the Lord say, you have robbed me in tithes. Remember, That's not just a random sentiment thrown out there for New Testament preachers to pound upon. But there's a very real sense in which it is a reminder that Israel didn't learn anything from 70 years of captivity. They were up to their same old habits. And their failings which brought them into captivity are repeated almost one for one in the post-captivity books. However, indirectly, right, we look at it as New Testament people and we ask, what do we learn? And folks, what we learn is that the Lord takes worship very seriously. And even though we are New Covenant people, it has not become some kind of a setting where we sit down and figure out what is most appealing to most people. But we are constrained by a different set of guidelines. But we are constrained, first and foremost, by the mandate to proclaim the word of the Lord. Which you find, folks, every pastor doing in the New Testament. Right? Jesus said to Peter, feed the sheep. How did Peter feed the sheep? What were the apostles doing? What do you almost always find them doing? What do you find them almost exclusively doing? Preaching the word of the Lord. teaching the people. Right? This is not up for debate. This is not up for grabs. We don't, we don't get to look at it and go, well, you know, 500 years ago, people had a greater toleration for routine, mundane, rather boring kind of things, and they don't have it today. So we'll get very creative. We don't have those kinds of liberties because worship still belongs to the Lord. worship still belongs to the Lord, and we are to view it primarily in that light. What does the Lord tell us to do? And then, you know, this is kind of a sad question that comes of it, but we all ask it, well, what if that doesn't really work? Well, what if it doesn't really work? What if it doesn't really work? And the other thing that I would add, and by the way, the answer to that, folks, is then it doesn't work. Define what you mean by working, and then we can go from there. But the other thing I would point out, folks, is that Israel never really fully abandoned the mechanics of their worship. They just did it indifferently and half-heartedly, without zeal and passion. And oftentimes their worship is characterized by that. Did they bring sacrifices? Yes. But they didn't bring the sacrifices right. The sacrifice that God demanded was, go out to your flock and find the best animal that you have. That's the one that belongs to me. They went out to their flock and found the one that looked like it might be dead by sunset. And that's the one they gave to God. They brought the lame. They brought the sick. They brought the diseased. They kept up the mechanics, but their heart wasn't in it. They didn't have obedience. And that's the other point of this, folks. We never want to presume that we have nailed down all that is acceptable to God in worship simply because we are insistent upon retaining a conservative dimension to worship. We must worship with the heart. Let's pray. Father, may we worship you truthfully in spirit and in truth. the truth of your word and the power and the energy of your spirit and your spirit bearing witness to our spirit that we are your children. And may our primary preoccupation with our worship not be its impact upon people, but its pleasure to you. You are our God, our creator, our Redeemer, our Judge. And may all that we do be pleasing to you. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.