A Study of the Kings
The past 9 months I have been re-reading the Bible verse by verse. Each day I would take 2 chapters in the morning and 2 in the evening and read through them on my walk with the dog. After reading them I would pray about them, asking for discernment and passion in desiring to read my Bible. Then I would go back and re-read those 2 chapters again before my walk would end. In essence, I read the Bible twice during that time period.
Throughout all of it I started becoming more and more uncomfortable with how the average Christian, including myself, views the Kingdom of God. We spend hours listening to sermons on getting our lives right or being a good Christian, but we don’t even know what the Kingdom of God is.
In my first devotion after re-reading the Bible, I studied Matthew 1:1-17.
The very first words of the New Testament lay out the genealogy of Christ. Most of us just gloss over those first 17 verses of the New Testament to get to Christ’s birth.
Why?
There is a lot of power in those first 17 verses!
They lay the groundwork for the kingship of Christ.
If Christ is going to teach about His Kingdom, then He better be a King.
In all of our hymns, worship songs, sermons, and even the old creeds the underlying theme is the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ.
And those are important!
But if those are the only things we are supposed to be concerned with, then why are Matthew 3-26 in there at all?
Christ is a King, make no mistake of that. To simply call Him friend, brother, and other adjectives dilutes who the true Christ is.
So, as I read through verses 1-17 of Matthew 1, I came to realize that I didn’t really know much about the history of Christ. My own King, Savior and friend I knew very little about.
There are so many kings listed in those 17 verses that I had no clue about. I had read about them, but I mostly glossed over when I read about another person names Jeroboam or Jehoia(fill in the blank). I wanted to know who these men (and one woman) were who are listed in the royalty and kingship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
The past few months I have been consuming everything I could about these Old Testament Hebraic kings. I’ve been studying them through Scripture and commentary. I’ve traced each one through the verses and found the associated prophet to go along with them.
Then I went online and found others that did the same. I didn’t want to take any of their information because I wanted to mine for the information myself. What I did want to see is what format people used to document each of the kings.
That brings me to today. I finished tracing the kings and the prophets of the Old Testament from Saul to the captivity of both Israel and Judah. After doing this I find that Matthew 1:1-17 comes much to life.
Please, I want this to be a living document. If you see anything in here that is incorrect please comment or email me. I am always looking for ways to make my study of the Bible better and better. Just click the link below and it will hopefully take you to my study.
boyradd 