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Day 223 – Thru the Bible
Today we continue in First Chronicles.
1 Chronicles 18 & 19 – Chapters 18-20 chronicle David’s Wars. The Chronicler draws from 2 Samuel 8–21 to show how God’s promises to David (especially 1 Chronicles 17:8–10b) are being fulfilled. As elsewhere in Chronicles, the materials do not always follow a strict chronology.
Over the course of the past several chapters, the Lord has dealt kindly and compassionately with David. Now, in this chapter, we see David dealing out kindness and compassion to others. David’s life of mercy and compassion is a response to the Lord’s favorable treatment of him, and such should be our response to grace (Matthew 25:40).
It is also important to observe how King Hanun responded to David’s overture of mercy and compassion: rejection, humiliation, and hostility. Believers become the willing recipients of God’s mercy and compassion. Then we pray that we would be courageous enough to dispense the very same, even if it is rejected or results in injury, for it is the rejection and injury of Jesus on our behalf that now makes us willing to do such things.
How do you look for ways to share God’s mercy with others?
1 Chronicles 20 – The accounts of war and battle recorded in the Old Testament can be difficult to understand and apply. Remember, these things do not teach us about how we must live in this world now. Rather, they remind us of the battle that our God wages on our behalf—ultimately through Jesus —as He defeats all His and our spiritual foes. Here, in this text, we see the Lord’s anointed king, David, taking the crown of another in subjugation. This event, while paling in comparison, points to something we must learn about David’s future Son, the true and better David, before whom all crowns will one day be removed (Revelation 4:10; 6:2; 14:14).
1 Chronicles 21 – After repenting of his sin, David offers his life (and the life of his household) as a substitute for the people of Jerusalem who are now teetering on the very brink of destruction. This should remind us of Moses, who after Israel’s great sin with the golden calf in Exodus 32:32 offered his own life as a substitute for the lives of God’s people, who were facing total extermination.
As noble and exemplary as are these offers of human mediation (for at times we will be called upon to give ourselves for others), it is amazing to observe that these two Old Testament heroes were denied their requests to endure God’s wrath in the place of God’s people. Why? Because these two men were sinners themselves, in need of their own substitute.
It was not until Jesus, the perfect substitute, arrived that God would grant the request for substitution: “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
How does this truth lead you to worship Jesus?
What other thoughts or questions does today’s reading bring up?
Some of these notes are from the ESV Gospel Transformation Bible study notes. We highly recommend this study Bible.
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