turn with me if you would for a short time this morning as the Lord will enable us to First Chronicles chapter 2. The first book of Chronicles in the Old Testament, chapter 2 and we would wish to look and take us our text this morning verse 24. And after that Hesron was dead in Cathy Ephrathah The Nebaiot Hesron's wife bare him Asher, the father of Tekoa, and so on. Now, we're looking through some of the early chapters of First Chronicles, and as you look through these books of the Old Testament, and particularly the likes of genealogies, the genealogy that you've got here in First Chronicles, you begin to see how wonderful the Bible really is. The closer you look at the Bible, surely the more enthralled we are with how wonderful this book really is. You can read many books that men have written. Shakespeare's writings are wonderful, way of English, as is Charles Dickinson, books like that. But they're just men's books. They've been written by men. This is God's word. And the more you examine it, the more you look into it, the more wonderful you discover the Bible really is. Now you might ask yourself this morning, why do we come and look at a book like First Chronicles? Why not perhaps go to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, some of the Gospels? Well, we've done that very often, but why come to a book that even some of the names for us are difficult even to say? Some of the names are difficult to describe. to recount and to go through. So why is it then that we should come to a book like First Chronicles, the early chapters where there are all these genealogies, what are we to discover from it? And one of the things you do discover is how wonderful the Bible as God's word really is. And I want to look at that this morning. Before we go on to look at Tekoa, just at the end, because what I want to do is see how wonderful the Bible really is. And you see here the unity, first of all, the unity of God's Word, the unity of the Word of God. What were we told in chapter 2 of 1 Chronicles chapter 2? What were we being told? Well in verse 3 we're told that it's the sons of Judah, We are being told that we're giving here a narrative of the sons of Judah. Why the sons of Judah? Why does the chronicler here come down from Adam to Abraham and then come on and start to speak about Judah? You can see that the sons of Judah here go from verse three to four, Tamar his daughter, Nauberim Faraz, and then Faraz begot Hezron. And in verse nine, you have the sons of Hezron were born unto him, Jeremiel, and Ram, and Caleb. And the rest of this chapter has been taken up with the three great-grandsons of Judah. Why? Well, we've already seen, and we're going to recap a wee bit here. It's good for us to recap because people maybe might not understand or maybe forget what's already been said. But Judah is blessed here, first of all, because he's the son of Leah. If you remember, in the scripture, in the Old Testament, there was Reuben, Simeon, and there was Levi, and then there was Judah. God would see. God would hear. God would join and ultimately it came to Judah. Praise God. Leah comes to praise God. So from the very outset, from Judah's youngest days, his very name is Praise God. So you can see it's going to ultimately lead on to the blessing being upon Judah. But it's not just because of Leah, his mother, naming him this. Remember, Reuben means seen, Simeon means hear, Judah, Levi means join. Here's Leah, a woman that's unloved by her husband. She turns to God. God sees, God hears, God joins, and at the end of the day, she praises God with Judah. But that's not the only reason. You remember how Jacob blessed Judah. And the scepter will not depart out of Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his knees, until Shiloh come. Judah is being recorded here because from Judah would come the Messiah. That's why when you go to verse 10, in his great-grandsons, and they're the three of them here in verse 9, Jeremiah, Ram, and Caleb, the first one he begins with is Ram, not the most senior, But the second ram, because coming from ram, you see in verse 15, David the king. You see, 1 Chronicles is all about David. David the king. David that would unite the children of Israel under one kingdom in the Old Testament. So 1 Chronicles really is all about David the king, but it's further than that, isn't it? It's really about David's greater son. It's really recounting to us about the Messiah. It's wonderful isn't it? That here you have in the Old Testament and the genealogy and it's all about the Lord Jesus Christ. It's all about Jesus Christ. It's all about the King who was yet to come. Now what does that tell you? It tells you that Chronicles is all about God's way of salvation. You have many books that are written, books on science, books on astrology, books on this, books on that, books on medicine, all these wonderful books that are written in the world. And yet there is not one book that will tell you about this subject truly and will reveal to you God's way of salvation, even in the Old Testament. First Chronicles is talking about God's way of salvation and that's wonderful because it tells you that the Bible, that the Old Testament and the New Testament fit just the way you would put it today, they fit like a hand in a glove. They are united together in the one thing. There is a unity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament is speaking about the church. and God's dealings with the church. The church at that time is contained within one nation, Israel, who would become a nation under King David. But it's also speaking about the church in the New Testament who would come, not a nation, but a kingdom, the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, with a king. Behold, thy king cometh unto thee, meek and mild, sitting upon the ass, and upon the colt, the foal of the ass. It's pointing forward to God's kingdom that would come, the Lord Jesus Christ, the King. It's speaking about the Saviour and the way of salvation. You see, the Old Testament is speaking about the same church, the same Saviour and the same way of salvation as the New Testament. Some people might imagine. that, well, there's God in the Old Testament. He deals with his people in the Old Testament in one way, and then he comes to the New Testament and introduces something completely new. Well, that's not the case. That's not the case. The fact is that in the Old Testament, when the Old Testament is speaking, the Old Testament is bringing before us exactly the same way of salvation, the same Savior, as there is in the New Testament. just exactly the same. And how wonderful that is, that when we come to see the unity that there is between the Old Testament and the New Testament, say for example in Acts chapter 26, having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than that those which the prophets and Moses did say should come. He's not saying anything new, he's not saying anything more. He's saying exactly the same thing. And we're going to go on and see that in a minute in more detail. But what we want to see at the moment is the wonderful way that the Bible knits together. You cannot really understand the New Testament unless you have the light of the Old Testament. And if you're in the Old Testament, you can't really understand because you don't have everything until you come into the New Testament. But the Old Testament and the New Testament, the New Testament and the Old Testament are all knit together. If you want to know, for example, about Jesus Christ and his covenant engagement, go to Psalm 40. that we sang together in Psalm 40. Are these not the words of the Lord Jesus Christ? To do thy will I take delight, O thou my God that art. Yea, that most holy law I have within my heart. Is that not the testimony of one who is the spotless Lamb of God? who when he was commanded and in covenant engagement before the foundation of the world, he was told that if he would save his people, he would be required to come into this world. He would have to be spat upon and crucified and put to death. And yet always the testimony of Jesus was this, to do thy will I take delight, O thou my God that art. He was always obedient to the command that the father had given him to do. So if you wanted to know about that covenant engagement and if you want to know about the thoughts of the Lord Jesus Christ, again go to the book of Psalms. In Psalm 22 it begins, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And then it goes on to show you how Jesus himself is viewing the cross and the work that was set before him. Here we have a unity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament saint is looking forward to the coming Messiah, the New Testament saint is looking back. So that when you even come into the First Chronicles and the genealogy here, it's all to do with the Messiah. with the coming Christ. It brings you to David, the king. And that brings you, secondly, not to know, not just to see the unity of the word, the Old Testament and the New Testament, but you also see here the unity of the message. There is a wonderful unity of message. It's not two messages that are being brought to you. It's the same message. Go to Ram, for example, in verse 10. And Ram begat Amminadab. Now Amminadab was the father-in-law of Aaron. And Amminadab begat Nation, princes of the children of Judah, and Nation begat and so on and so on, until you come down into verse 15. And Ozam the sixth, David the seventh, David the king, whose sister was Riah and Abigail, and then you've got Joab, You've got Abishai, Joab, Asahel and Amasa. They're all nephews of David. Joab was a nephew of David. There is the kingship. This is what this is all about. It's all about a king that was to come. It was all about David to be king. He's the one that would unite God's people in the Old Testament in Jerusalem. They would gather together. First of all, it was the the Jews in the south and then the whole of the nation came and David was their king. Joab was and we saw a fortnight ago I think it was how Joab and these These nephews of David, the four nephews that you've got here, Amasa, Joab, Asahel and Abishai, you see the four nephews and see how they all related and how their lives planned out. We saw that a fortnight ago. But look as well when you come into the next verses, you then come into Caleb, verse 18, this is another of Judah's great grandsons, and you come down to, and Uri begat Bazariel, verse 20. Now who's Bazariel? Last week we saw who he was. He was the one that built the tabernacle out in the wilderness. You remember how God gave him, called him? He gave him the skills. He had the skill and the ability. God called him. God filled him with his spirit. He had the desire to work in God's temple, and he's the one that taught others. So he's the one that built the Ark of the Covenant. He's the one that built the tabernacle in the wilderness. Now, what I want you to see here, and we don't want to go into that again, but what I want you to see here is that this is a message not just about the king, not just about King David. This is a message about the tabernacle. It's the secular and the sacred coming together, the king over the nation, and yet the tabernacle where the children of Israel met with God. You remember the Shekinah glory. Here they're tied together in this genealogy. Caleb wouldn't need to be mentioned at all if it wasn't for the fact that this important man, Beziel, was the one who built the tabernacle. So here you have kingship and priesthood and the tabernacle all joined together, uniting together. Now that doesn't happen in the Bible. The king was one thing, the high priest was another thing. The king had one area and the high priest and the tabernacle was another. But here you have them coming together in this, and you see something of that already in the Old Testament, in Melchizedek, don't you? When you go back to Abraham coming to Melchizedek, what do you have there? You have Abraham doing obeisance to Melchizedek. Who's Melchizedek? Melchizedek was a high priest and he was the king of Salem. In this Melchizedek, there was united together both priesthood and kingship. And not only that, Abraham, in whose loins were to come the Aaronic priesthood, that priesthood did obeisance. to this priesthood of Melchizedek. In other words, there was a day going to come when there would be a new order of things, when there would be a high priest coming from a tribe of whom priesthood was never spoken of, and that's the tribe of Judah. This is the tribe that we are having described for us here in 1 Chronicles 2. There would be a time coming when the tabernacle would come, and tabernacle among men, What is the tabernacle? Well, it ended up the temple. And what does Jesus say? Destroy this temple and I will raise it up again. He is the temple of God. He's speaking about his own body. Once again, we're into the way of salvation. We're into the Lord Jesus Christ. Once again, we're into the tabernacle. Bezaliel is the one who built this tabernacle. But who builds the true tabernacle? Who builds the true temple? It's Jesus Christ. He is the temple of the living God. His body is that temple. And it would be, he says, destroyed and I will raise it up again. He was raised up on the third day. My friend, does that not rejoice your heart? That Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. And then when you go back into the Old Testament, it's the same message. It's not a different message. There is the unity of that message that is given. Remember what Paul says in chapter 26 of Acts? I am preaching and I add nothing to it. I simply preach the message that was there. Now, it's a fuller message. In the Old Testament, the mosaic economy is finished because these were but shadows. But it's not then a new message, it's the same message that was there. And that message is that the day would come that the Messiah would be after the order of Melchizedek. That there would be a king who would come, who would be both king and priest, and he would also be the offering. As Abraham came, and the Aaronic priesthood did obeisance to Melchizedek, so it is that the king would come, this king would come, and he would, as Paul later on says, he is after the order of Melchizedek. In other words, he's both a king and the high priest. And he's the offering, he offers up himself, a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice. Now does that not again rejoice your heart? There is, the Old Testament contains exactly the same gospel as you have in the New Testament. It's the same in substance, it's the same in faith and in practice. There's no other law given in the New Testament. The law that was given to the Old Testament saint was to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul, and with all thy spirit, and thy neighbour as thyself. There is no new law given in the New Testament. It's the same law, and it's the same gospel. And that gospel centres around Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, who is both King, King of Kings, and Lord of Glory. Think of when he entered into Jerusalem. The Lord Jesus Christ is said of him, behold, thy king cometh unto thee. And then what you have later on as time goes on, is in Jerusalem, you have both the throne of David and you have the temple where God resides. Two of them side by side in Jerusalem. David's throne, The King's house and God's house, side by side. Now my friend, that Jerusalem is the heavenly Jerusalem. When you look up to glory today, the Lord Jesus Christ is there in the presence of God. God the Shekinah Glory is there and the King is there, Jesus Christ. And the High Priest is there, Jesus Christ. And he is the offering that he once offered at Calvary's Cross to plead the case of his people. Now Jesus bypasses Jerusalem that's in this world. He has taken outside of the city gates and he says to them there would not be one stone left standing upon another of the temple that was there. It was empty. The veil is rent in two. Now you can see right into the Holy of Holies and what do you see when you look into the Holy of Holies at Jerusalem? In the temple there it's empty because there's no Shekinah glory. But the king has risen from the grave. And now you have the king enthroned in the heavenly Jerusalem. You have Jesus Christ risen from the dead, seen of upwards of 500 at one time, seen of the apostles, seen of Peter, seen of John and all the apostles. And he rose triumphant into glory. And there he is the king of kings. And now he's the king of his kingdom. That kingdom is today. He's the king that's raised up in glory. And you have the Shekinah glory there, the way it was in the tabernacle. When Bezalel built the tabernacle, the Shekinah glory was there so that they couldn't even look up in Abraham and Moses' face for the glory that was there. And then later on you had the king, you had the temple, and then you had the throne of David side by side. Now the Lord Jesus Christ is enthroned in that heavenly kingdom. So we see the unity of the word, the Old Testament and the New Testament. You see the unity of the message. It's the same message, the same gospel and substance in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And let us also see there is the unity of warning that is given. there is a warning that is given in the Old Testament, as there is in the New Testament, a warning that we pay heed to what God is saying to us in his word. And you get that, I think, when you come to, you certainly get a flavor of that when you come to verse 24. And after that, Hesron was dead in Kaled-Ephratah, then Abiah, Hesron's wife, bare him Asher, the father of Tekoa. Often when you see Asher there, it says the father of Toccoa it always adds that on the father of Toccoa now Why is it that Tekoa is mentioned here as the, before you go on from Caleb, the sons of Jeremiah are put in here. Very few of them are actually mentioned anywhere in the whole of the Old Testament except in the chronology here. And then it goes on after that in verse 42 back to Caleb again. But why is Tekoa? The last one that's mentioned here. Well, if you think of what tekoa means, tekoa in the Hebrew means the trumpet sound. The trumpet sound. A name, a place was named after him, tekoa. Two hours south of Bethlehem, tekoa. It was named after him. And you find that later on in 2 Chronicles, that Jehoshaphat and the children of Israel are in the wilderness of Tekoa and that it's almost as though a trumpet sound, that the trumpet sound goes out. In 2 Chronicles chapter 20 and verse 20 you read of this Tekoa the children, and they went forth into the wilderness of Koah. As they went forth, Jehoshaphat stood and said, Hear me, O Judah, ye inhabitants of Jerusalem. Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established. Believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper. It's as though the trumpet is sounding in the wilderness of Tekoa. God is calling his people to love the Lord and to believe in their God and to trust their God with all their heart. My friend, that same trumpet sound goes out today through the preaching of the gospel. The preaching of the gospel is like a trumpet sound. And if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? My friend, when the preacher preaches, he must not give an uncertain sound. Believe in the Lord thy God, and all will be well. The Lord will prosper thee, Christ Jehoshaphat, in the wilderness of Tekoa. Now Amos, if you remember Amos in the Old Testament. Amos was a wonderful prophet in the Old Testament. And where does he come from? He comes from Tekoa. And if you remember, he was a shepherd. taken from Tekoa. He was a humble man with a humble background. He wasn't among the princes of the world or the nobles of the world. Amos was simply taken as a shepherd from Tekoa. Yet he sounded the trumpet in Israel. The Lord gave him a message to bring and he sounded the trumpet, the sound of warning. I mean what we need today is the techoa, the trumpet sound, the trumpet to go out and to call sinners to repentance, to call sinners to the way of salvation, to the way that God has appointed for sinners to return unto him. You read also in the book of Jeremiah, for example, Jeremiah chapter 6 and verse 1, O ye children of Benjamin, remember how you've got Judah in the south and you've got the tribe of Benjamin just above them, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem and blow the trumpet in Tekoa. and set up a sign of fire in Beth HaKerem, for evil appeareth out of the north, and great destruction." See, once again, Jeremiah is associating the trumpet sound, the trumpet to be sounded in Tekoa, two hours south of Bethlehem. There was a trumpet. And what was the trumpet sound then? It was warning of God's judgment that was coming. My friend, is there not a need today for that trumpet sound to go forth, not just in Tekoa, but to our own nation, to the city of Edinburgh, to Scotland, to the United Kingdom, to all the ends of the earth? Is there not the need for Tekoa, for the trumpet sound in Tekoa to go forth from God's people, warning men women and children of the destruction that is to come of the judgment day of the judgment is to come how they must come and embrace this king this priest this tabernacle this one who has risen from the dead the lord jesus christ let me take you to one to one other place you discover that in the book of nehemiah when you when you see in the book of nehemiah in chapter 3 of Nehemiah, you discover that when the walls of Jerusalem are being rebuilt, when the trumpet sound goes out for the walls of Jerusalem to be rebuilt, you discover that the Techoites are among those building the wall. They were there among those who are building the wall. The trouble is the nobles among the Ticoites, their heart really wasn't in it. Their heart really wasn't in it. Look at what it says here. Nehemiah chapter three. Here is Nehemiah back down rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem after the time of the exile. And in verse 3, verse 5, you've got different groups of people, some of them coming in from outside of Jerusalem to build the walls, to help with the work. And next unto them the Tychoides repaired, but their nobles put not their necks to the work of their lord. They weren't committed. They were half-hearted. And it's as though when it says Tychoides, the Tychoides are a warning to us even today that we be not half-hearted in our following of the Lord Jesus Christ, in our love of the gospel, of our love of the things, that when the trumpet sounds, that when the walls are to be built, that not to be like the nobles of Tekoa, there were other nobles before them from other tribes and from other places, but those whose names signified the trumpet or the trumpet sound Their nobles were the very ones who were half-hearted in their labour, half-hearted in their work. Other nobles weren't proud, but it appears that these Ticoids, their nobles were proud. They were too proud to build the walls. Let someone else build the walls, but we're not going to put our heart into it. Maybe they thought themselves above the labouring among God's people. My friend, every single Christian, and we'll say this time and time again, every single Christian has a work to do in God's house. And it doesn't matter who you are. You might not be a minister of the gospel, you might not be an elder, you might not be someone that can do things that other people can do, but there is no one in God's house but that they have a duty to undertake the labor that the Lord gives to them. That might simply be praying for God's preachers, praying for the word, praying to God that sinners would be saved. But my friend, let us not be half-hearted in it, the way the Tekoa were half-hearted. Their name was that they had the trumpet. The Jehoshaphat went into the wilderness of Tekoa and cried out to the people, Amos came from Tekoa and he had a message. And yet these nobles, despite the fact that they had a name, yet they were half-hearted. May it be today that we would be wholehearted. What are we to learn from all this then? Well, let us see how wonderful the Bible really is. Let's not just pass by over chronicles and say, well, that's just genealogy, that's nothing. My friend, in that, as we go through it, and individuals may not go through it, but through the preaching of the word, a preacher, very often a preacher would say, let's just skim through this. But my friend, there is a wealth for us to find in God's word, even in these, because in these verses, because in these verses, we are finding the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. the same Christ that came into this world, the same Christ that is believed on today, the same Christ who is the King, the High Priest, the Tabernacle, the Sacrifice, the same King who is raised up in glory today. May we then blow the trumpet. May we then have that not uncertain sound. May the preaching of the word have no uncertain sound, but may it bring glory to God. because even in faith there is nothing to boast of. Where is boasting, it is excluded. May we not be like the nobles of Tekoa, but may we be humbled, thinking nothing of ourselves, thinking everything of the Lord, and may it be that through the preaching of the word and through the witness of his people that sinners will be brought into his kingdom, that the Lord would bring in such as should be saved. We see through it all that God's purposes have come to pass. God's purposes are ye and amen in Christ Jesus the Lord. Let us join together in prayer. Let us pray. Most gracious and ever blessed Lord, we thank thee for the goodness of thy grace this day. We thank thee for the many blessings that we receive through the word We thank thee that through thy word, thy word is truth, for holy men of old speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. There is a sure, a more sure word of prophecy that we do well, that we take heed unto. And we thank thee today that thou art giving to us, thou hast given to us that word, and thou hast given to us that more sure word of prophecy. Lord, may we listen to what the Lord has to say in his word, and may he bless the gospel to our souls, Bless the gospel to poor sinners, up and down the length and breadth of this nation, even this day, and may it be that sinners would be brought into thy kingdom. We pray and ask, O Lord, and bless thee, that thy word is like a two-edged sword. It is able to divide asunder between the joints and the marrow. May it be that we today would rejoice in having such a word in our midst, and may thou bless it to us. Be with us this evening in our evening service. Undertake for each one of us. Keep us safe, we pray thee, in the days to come, and may it be to thy glory. Undertake for us now, for we ask all these things with the pardon of all our sins, for Jesus' sake. Amen.