The Message of Chronicles: One Church, One Faith, One Lord (BST)
Overview
Michael Wilcock sees 1 and 2 Chronicles as first and foremost a sermon. Its object is to foster a right relationship between God and His people. The Chronicler finds in the records of Israel the “great overall pattern” of God’s hand in history. The Lord’s constant mercy, love, and faithfulness shine through. With great perception, the Chronicler first selects and then proclaims this vibrant pattern, highlighted in the living events of the nations’s actual history.
Once its purpose is grasped, the book comes alive. It can be seen as nothing less than a final and momentous look back over the entire Old Testament. Viewed in this way, 1 and 2 Chronicles has something of the vividness, contrast, and drama of the last book of the New Testament, Revelation. Michael Wilcock sees the countless persons named and chronicled as part of one people of the living God. They make vivid to us the truths by which the Lord’s people in every generation are to live.
Get the complete Bible Speaks Today Old Testament Commentary Series (33 vols.).
Key Features
- Applies the truth of Scripture to everyday life in the contemporary world
- Engages a variety of readers with accessible, nontechnical language
- Analyzes the flow of thought in passage-by-passage exposition of Old Testament books
- Provides insightful treatment of key themes
Top Highlights
“The sins of Er (2:3) and of Achar (2:7) show that birth among the people of God does not in itself guarantee a good standing before God.” (Page 30)
“But this neglected book deserves a better rehabilitation than that. It is more than an alternative history. It is, as I shall be emphasizing right from the outset of this exposition, a sermon. Its object is the fostering of a right relationship between God and his people. It sees in the records of Israel the ‘great overall pattern … of failure and judgment, grace and restoration’,5 and with a perceptive eye to those events in the nation’s history which highlight the pattern, it first selects and then proclaims.” (Pages 14–15)
“It might almost be said that 7:14, another famous text which we owe to the Chronicler,22 has sometimes been made to live in a way that was not intended; there is no modern nation, however much it may need to repent, which God will address as ‘my people who are called by my name’. But the principles live, and it is a case of working out in each age what is meant by the land of God’s people being blasted or healed, as the case may be.” (Page 151)
“To David, the ark for all its antiquity is a central feature of his people’s religion, and so he goes back to the maker’s instructions to find out about its proper handling.” (Page 69)
“The book—two volumes in our Bibles, but a single one originally—was probably published in the fourth century bc.1” (Page 13)
- Title: The Message of Chronicles: One Church, One Faith, One Lord
- Author: Michael Wilcock
- Series: The Bible Speaks Today
- Publisher: Inter-Varsity
- Print Publication Date: 1987
- Logos Release Date: 2015
- Pages: 288
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Bible. O.T. 1 Chronicles › Commentaries; Bible. O.T. 2 Chronicles › Commentaries
- ISBNs: 0851107699, 9780851107691
- Resource ID: LLS:BST13CH12
- Resource Type: Bible Commentary
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:22:16Z