Day 350: 1 Chronicles 13-15 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebaldapartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (upbeat music) Family, welcome to day 350. Can you believe it? We are trekking through first Chronicles. You probably enjoyed today's reading. I know I did chapters 13, 14 and 15. What a familiar script to a story. You've probably heard this story in Samuel, maybe not in Chronicles. And so we're gonna highlight some of the differences between Samuel and Chronicles. And if you haven't done today's reading, you probably don't even know what I'm talking about. So, should you have not done the assigned reading for today? How about you stop this video, pause the audio and go get first Chronicles chapters 13, 14 and 15 read. It took me probably 10 minutes. I mean, it was quick reading today. I also have my audio Bible set to like two times speed. So anyway, it never takes me a super, super long time. But I think that you should get the reading done with no further ado. Like every day we're gonna jump into some context clues, some nerdy nuggets, and then we're gonna end the episode with a timeless truth.

So, let's dive into our context clues for the day. I got a lot of things to say. Also gonna wrap up some loose ends from some of the previous days that we were on, but got a lot of things today, okay? Number one, this event, David, bringing up the Ark of God in a two-fold process. He tries to do it the first time on a cart. It fails, okay? A man actually dies. We're gonna talk about that a lot on today's episode. And then the Ark just stays at a guy's house. Obed Edem, just literally in his house is flourishing. And so, and then they go to get it again, and they bring it to Jerusalem, and they finally do it successfully. Okay, this event of the Ark of the Covenant being brought into Jerusalem, you may not realize this, but like this story's a big deal. So, number one, Ezra is the one who's writing chronicles, okay? Ezra is also the one compiling the Psalms. And the number one theme that is saying about, sung about, sang, sung, I don't know, celebrated and sung, sung, sang. Nah, I don't know which one it is. The main event that is sung about in the Psalms is this moment of bringing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, okay? So, Psalm 24, Psalm 30, Psalm 68, Psalm 95, Psalm 96,

Psalm 105, Psalm 106 and Psalm 132 are all Psalms singing about and celebrating the ascension of the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem. So, this moment's a big deal. It's also just a big deal for a priest like Ezra, because who is it that's managing the temple, which is where the Ark of the Covenant is gonna be? That's right, priests. You're also gonna see in this story everything that we're gonna read today, the centrality of the Levites, the reason, the number one reason that the Ark, that David fails in bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, the first time, the reason that someone dies is because the Levites were not involved. So, Ezra, the Levite is writing this and Ezra is emphasizing the importance of Levites, which makes sense because Ezra's a Levite, okay? And so, Ezra wants his audience, his generation to understand the importance of Levites. So, he's using a story from the past to explain just how important Levites are, okay? Another just, this is kind of a nerdy nugget, but we'll say it as a context group. The end of chronicles. So, if you read the last chapter of chronicles, which I think we did yesterday or the day before, the last chapter of chronicles and the first chapter of Ezra are 100% go together, okay?

It's almost as if it's low key copied and pasted, okay? So, the last chapter of second chronicles, okay? So, the end of second chronicles or the end of chronicles and the beginning of Ezra are almost like a latch key with each other. They are a hitch and a trailer hook, like they fit perfectly with each other, which is the main reason that most people believe, yeah, Ezra's behind all this stuff, okay? All right, next, I wanna look at some of the key differences So it's kind of kind of give us a 30-foot-thousand view, okay? So this story is found in Samuel chapters 5 and 6. In Samuel chapters 5 and 6, there are four key events. The first is that David defeats the Philistines. The second is the Ark's journey, Azah, dying as he reaches out and touches the Ark, and then Obededim's house. Then third, the Ark enters Jerusalem. And then fourth, David dances and his wife, Michal, despises him because of the dancing. That's the events as described in Samuel chapters 5 and 6. When we get to Chronicles, this does not start with David defeating the Philistines, okay? Big, big, big difference, okay? In Chronicles, David bringing the Ark to Jerusalem is the very, very, very first thing he does. Let's actually go to Chronicles chapter 13, okay? So I want you to begin to just see, like, just subtle, like what's going on. Chronicles chapter 13, verse three says, let us bring the Ark of our God back to us,

for we did not inquire of it during the reign of Saul. Well, who was Saul inquiring of? He was using the witch of Endor, and he was using an occult source to inquire of Samuel. Not even God, okay? So the thing in Chronicles that actually gets Saul killed is the very thing that David is good at. So there's a natural juxtaposition in Chronicles for a religious reason for Saul's death and a religious reason for David's exaltation, okay? So it's the same events with a different interpretation. So because Saul's problem is that he doesn't inquire of the Lord, the very first thing David does is let's go get the Ark so that we can inquire of God. And it says this, verse four, the whole assembly agreed to this because it seemed right to all the people. I want you to focus on whole assembly and all the people. I think it was maybe yesterday or the day before, I can't remember, where I told you that in Chronicles, as opposed to Samuel, there is no discrepancy between whether or not Judah accepts David as king or all of Israel accepts David as king. And so this language like whole assembly, all Israel, okay? Is really communicating David is the unanimous decision because he's Yahweh's decision and all the people are going to agree, okay? So we immediately start with the arks journey. Isaiah dies because he touches the cart. The ark now goes to Obadodem's house.

Then chapter 14, we get into David's family and we get into David's defeat of the Philistines, okay? So this is flipped and Samuel, David defeats the Philistines and that's what prompts him to go get the ark. In Chronicles, he just wants to go get the ark as if defeating the Philistines has nothing to do with it, even though it's the Philistines that had captured the ark, but that's a whole nother story for a whole nother time, okay? Then David defeats the Philistines verse 15. Oh, sorry, chapter 15, the ark enters Jerusalem and guess what we have a lot more of, a lot more worship because the thing that David is gonna do is he's gonna go get singers, he's gonna go get choirs, he's gonna go get Levites and David is gonna make sure that this has a way bigger emphasis and focus on worship and Chronicles is going to highlight the worship emphasis, okay? Whereas Samuel, that's not what is being highlighted in the book of Samuel. And then David dances in McCall, has an issue with it. And Samuel, the story ends with the focus being on the tension between David and McCall because of the procession of the ark. Whereas in Chronicles, this is just a footnote at the end of the major focus being worshiped during the procession of the ark, okay? So these are the subtle differences. And as Bible nerds, we care about the nerdy little details. We don't believe the devil's in the details, we believe God's in the details. All right, it is important to note that David's

very, very, very, very, very, very first act as king is to immediately think of Yahweh the true king. And so the very first thing that we're gonna get in Chronicles is David gets installed as king and what does he do? He goes and gets Israel's real king. And Israel's real king is never gonna be David. And this is what makes David a man after God's own heart. Is that David, although he's king, never sees himself as the king. He sees Yahweh as king. And that right there, that is something that Saul did not do. And that is what makes David David. And Chronicles is made... moral issues that don't even get talked about. And that may make some people feel uncomfortable. You may feel uncomfortable with the fact that chronicles and Samuel or chronicles and kings have like differences or discrepancies. And I get that. I think for me, I had to come to the realization that I can't bring my modern expectations to the Bible. Like, what makes me right, right? Like, that it's kind of like generationally arrogant to just assume that because I was born at a certain time, that I have a certain definition of truth or fact factuality. And really, if I'm going to respect the cultural norms of the people who wrote the Bible, that actually I have to submit what I think is correct to actually just what is reality. And anyway, all right, let me dive into some nerdy nuggets, okay? Let's talk through chapters 13, 14 and 15. This is obviously David's first act as king, which sets a precedent for what kind of king he's going to be, okay? Verse 8 of chapter 13, it says this, David and all the Israelites were celebrating with all their might before God with songs and harps, liars and temporal symbols and trumpets, okay? They're celebrating with all their might. This is, this is passionate worship, okay? And I want you to emphasize that word passion. When they came to the threshing floor of Cadon, Azar reached out his hand to say to the ark because the oxen stumbled, the Lord's anger burned against Azar and he

struck him down because he had put his hand on the ark so he died there before God. Okay, let's like unpack that because like, like David, that may make you angry. What does it say right here in verse 11? Then David was angry. There's a lot of things that we can take out of this. Number one, passion without protocols is a problem. Let me say that again, passion without proper protocols is a problem, okay? So David's angry, but then David has to realize I'm the problem. I'm mad at God, but really I as a leader created an unsafe environment for people to worship. And one of the things I had to learn really early on in youth ministry is that we don't just create a physically safe environment or an emotionally safe environment. We create a spiritually safe environment. And what I mean by spiritually safe, you know, we had a pop up here in Houston a couple of months ago and kind of a random guy that is not on our serve team who has not gone through any of our launch team training or anything, we're just kind of walking around giving prophetic words to people. And like we stopped him from doing that and then apologize to some of the, you know, people that he had given prophetic words to because I don't care if you have the gift of prophecy. My job as a leader is to create a spiritually safe environment. And the issue is not whether or not you're a true prophet or not. The issue is we don't know you and there are protocols in place to keep people safe. And so if you're a leader, I get it. David just wants everybody to experience the presence of God. And he's passionate, but you cannot have zeal without wisdom. You cannot have the Holy Spirit without order. Okay, Paul says in Corinthians, he's like, Hey, you can't have multiple prophetic words. Hey, let's limit it to three. And you know what, if someone's going to speak in tongues publicly, somebody needs to interpret and God's a God of order. So I'm never going to be the kind of person to like try to quench passion. Passion is great. And if protocols makes the passion go away, then you didn't really have passion. Because let me tell you the definition of passion. Passion is your willingness to suffer for something that you're excited about. That's what passion is. That's how we call that last week of Jesus's life, him going to the cross, him going to get the 70, him experiencing, excruciating pain, the passion of the Christ. Passion is not just found in how excited I am. It's how much pain am I willing to go through in order to actually experience a thing that I'm excited about. And so if protocols can quench passion, then you're not really that passionate about what you said you're passionate about in the first

place. Protocols and systems and procedures and policies, that's not just bureaucracy. That keeps everybody safe because they're dancing before the Lord with all their might just celebrating. They got Azer dies, and David is angry, which also means this. God can be trusted with your anger, okay? Anger, anger in and of itself is not unhealthy, but what are you gonna do with that anger? And what does David do with that anger? He repents, he changes, he goes and he finds some Levites, okay? And what does he say? We'll kind of skip to chapter 14, and we'll go straight to chapter 15. It says this, I'll start reading in verse 11. "Then David summoned Zaidok and Abi off of the priest, and Uriel, and Azai'i. Azai'a, Azai'a, I think. Joel, Shamaya, Eliel, and Amenadab, the Levites. So he went and got some Levites. Again, Ezra, okay? Of course, Ezra believes that Levites are the solution. He goes and gets some Levites. He said to them, "You are the heads of the biblical families. You and your fellow Levites are to consecrate yourselves and bring up the ark of the Lord, the God of Israel, to the place I've prepared for it. It was because you, the Levites, did not bring it up the first time that the Lord our God broke out in anger against us. We did not inquire of him." So again, inquiring of him is a big issue, okay? We did not inquire of him about how to do it in the prescribed way. So you know, earlier I said, "Passion without protocols is a problem." I could easily say it. Passion without a prescription, like doing it the prescribed way is also a problem.

They're the prescribed way to do things, and that shouldn't quench the spirit. The spirit's not sensitive to protocols. Sometimes people are like, "We shouldn't quench the spirit." It's like, "Ah, actually, there were no protocols here, and the issue is not that the spirit got quenched." It was that the spirit broke out and killed somebody. So we should have some proper protocols. Now, why does someone die? Someone dies because an unclean, unholy person touching the holy presence of God equals death, which should help us reframe why God even kicks Adam and Eve out of the garden. He kicks them out not because he hates them, not because he's cursed them, but because he knows if they remain in the garden, they will die because unholy people are on a holy God with no sacrificial, atoning intermediary is going to mean that that holiness is going to absolutely kill the person. I'll say it this way. If you bleach your white clothes and you make a mistake and put colored clothes in there, the bleach doesn't hate the colored clothes, it's that bleach is going bleach. Bleach is going to do what bleach do. So holiness is going to do what holiness does, and holiness destroys sin. Holiness always is going to destroy sin. It just so happens that that sin is living in a host, and that host is a human being. Okay? So the Lord doesn't hate usa. The Lord has no issue with usa as a person. It's just that the holy, we, we, David traded an unsafe scenario for the holy presence of God. What if I told you that what you're learning in this video was just the tip of the iceberg? The Bible department is actually powered by Arma. What is Arma? I'm so glad you asked.

Arma is an online subscription based platform that we designed to help people. Everyday people learn the Bible for themselves. We started Arma so that anybody anywhere could have access to trustworthy and entertaining Bible and theology content. In addition to this podcast, we have over 60 courses on individual books of the Bible, on theology topics, and on some hot topics, like homosexuality, tithing, and women in ministry. But really, Arma is a community, a community of people that I've gotten to know. A community where thousands of people are currently finding family, asking questions, and nerding out on the Bible together. If you want a community to read the Bible with you this year, or if you want to dive into some deeper theological content, or if you want more exclusive access to me and the entire Arma team, how about you go to the Bible department.com, I'll be sure to post the link in the description of this video. Let's make this your year to become a Bible nerd. And God gave him pretty specific instructions for how to defeat the enemies of Israel. All right, so big theme is David's ability to inquire of the Lord. It's a massive juxtaposition to Saul who did not inquire of the Lord and was reliant on Samuel to inquire of the Lord form and then proceeded to use a, in a cult, which took a medium to get the spirit of Samuel present because of his own inability to hear from God for himself. Okay, lots and lots and lots and lots of themes going on here in first Chronicles chapters 13, 14 and 15. What's our tombow streets for the day? You could probably guess it's that passion and zeal are amazing, but order, systems, rules, protocols, procedures, make things safe.

That is our timeless truth. That's not just true for David. That's not just true for these Levites. That's not just true for Obed Edom or Azah. That's not just true for Ezra. No, no, no, that's true for you. That's true for me. That passion and zeal are awesome tools. Part of the reason why I waited until I was as close to 40 as possible to plant a church is because I wanted, if there was a matrix between wisdom and energy, I wanted to get at the exact cross point. At 25, I had a lot of energy, just didn't have enough wisdom to plant a church. And guess what, at 65, I'm gonna have so much wisdom, but I won't still have the energy. So 25, tons of energy, no wisdom, 65, a lot of wisdom, no energy. So I thought to myself, 40 will be the moment where I've got peak energy and peak wisdom. Let's plant this church. And so my advice to a lot of people would be, hey, if you've got more passion than you've got understanding, if you got more zeal than you have knowledge, man, you may wanna not calm down, but you may wanna be really intentional about getting some systems and some protocols and some procedures and some knowledge in addition to the energy and the zeal

and the passion that you have. No need to bring the passion down. Just gotta match that passion with the required amount of wisdom. All right, tomorrow we've got day 351. We're gonna be looking at first Chronicles chapters, 16, 17 and 18. I'm super, super excited to be trekking through Chronicles together. Love you guys. I'm proud of you, especially if you're on a streak. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Peace! Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebobledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.