History is His Story: The Unbreakable Chain of Grace Text: 1 Chronicles 1:1-27
Introduction: Why God Loves Lists
We live in an age that despises its own history. We are a people with a profound case of cultural amnesia, and it is a self-inflicted wound. We want to believe that we are the first people to ever exist, that we have sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus, with no debts to the past and no obligations to the future. Our motto is "nothing matters but the now," and the result is a frantic, meaningless present, untethered from the wisdom of our fathers and unconcerned with the inheritance of our children.
Into this shallow puddle of historical ignorance, the book of 1 Chronicles lands like a granite boulder. The first nine chapters are, to the modern reader, a desert of unpronounceable names. We are tempted, as we read through our Bibles in a year, to put the pedal to the metal and speed through this section, our eyes glazing over. Adam, Seth, Enosh. Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared. And on and on it goes. We think, "What in the world does this have to do with me? What possible relevance could this litany of patriarchs have for my life in the twenty-first century?"
But we must stop and ask ourselves a fundamental question. If all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable, what is God teaching us here? Why does the Holy Spirit dedicate so much inspired parchment to these long lists of "begats"? The answer is that God is teaching us to think historically. He is teaching us that our faith is not a myth, not a philosophy, not a set of abstract principles. Our faith is rooted in real history, with real people, in real time and space. These are not characters in a story; they are our ancestors in the faith. This is our family tree.
The Chronicler is writing to the remnant of Israel who have returned from the Babylonian exile. They are discouraged. Their temple is a pale shadow of Solomon's, they have no king on the throne, and they are a vassal state to a pagan empire. They are asking, "Are we still God's people? Have His promises failed?" The Chronicler answers with a resounding "No!" by taking them all the way back to the beginning. He is reminding them of their identity by showing them their lineage. He is demonstrating that from Adam to Abraham, through the mess of the nations and the judgment of the flood, God has been faithfully preserving a covenant line. History is not a random series of unfortunate events. History is His story, the unfolding of His unbreakable covenant promises.
This chapter is a high-speed flyover of the book of Genesis. It is the backbone of redemptive history. And if we have eyes to see, we will find that it is not a dry list of names at all, but a glorious testament to the faithfulness of a God who keeps His promises through generations, a God who is weaving all of human history into a grand tapestry that finds its center, its meaning, and its climax in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.
The Text
Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Diphath, and Togarmah. The sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim. The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabta, Raama, and Sabteca; and the sons of Raama were Sheba and Dedan. Cush was the father of Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. Mizraim was the father of the people of Lud, Anam, Lehab, Naphtuh, Pathrus, Casluh (from which came the Philistines), and Caphtor. Canaan was the father of Sidon, his firstborn, Heth, and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites. The sons of Shem were Elam, Asshur, Arpachshad, Lud, Aram, Uz, Hul, Gether, and Meshech. Arpachshad was the father of Shelah, and Shelah was the father of Eber. Two sons were born to Eber, the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided, and his brother’s name was Joktan. Joktan was the father of Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Ebal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab; all these were the sons of Joktan. Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, Abram, that is Abraham.
(1 Chronicles 1:1-27 LSB)
The Unbroken Line (vv. 1-4)
The Chronicler begins at the absolute beginning, with the headwaters of the human race.
"Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth." (1 Chronicles 1:1-4)
Notice the economy of language. There are no stories here, just names. This is history in shorthand. But every name is an anchor in reality. Adam was a real man, our first father, who plunged us all into sin. This list immediately confronts the lie of evolution and the folly of treating Genesis as mere poetry. The Bible presents Adam as the historical head of humanity, and the entire logic of salvation depends on it. As Paul argues in Romans 5, "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous." If the first Adam is a myth, the second Adam, Jesus Christ, is a solution to a non-existent problem.
The line from Adam to Noah is the line of Seth, the replacement for the murdered Abel. This is the godly line, the seed of the woman, through whom the promise of Genesis 3:15 would be carried. Even in the midst of the antediluvian chaos and wickedness, God preserved His people. He always has a remnant. Then we come to Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. These are the fathers of the entire post-flood world. Every person on earth today is a descendant of one of these three men. This is the foundation for the biblical truth of the unity of the human race. There is only one race, the human race, descended from one man, Adam, and reconstituted through one family, Noah's.
The Table of Nations (vv. 5-23)
What follows is a condensed version of the Table of Nations from Genesis 10. The Chronicler lays out the descendants of Noah's sons, beginning with Japheth, then Ham, and finally, Shem.
"The sons of Japheth... The sons of Ham... The sons of Shem..." (1 Chronicles 1:5, 8, 17)
The descendants of Japheth (vv. 5-7) are generally understood to be the peoples who settled in Europe and Asia Minor, the Indo-European peoples. The descendants of Ham (vv. 8-16) populated Africa, Arabia, and the land of Canaan. The descendants of Shem (vv. 17-23) settled primarily in the Mesopotamian region. This is not just a dusty geography lesson. This is God showing His sovereignty over all nations. He is the one who determines the boundaries of their habitation (Acts 17:26). All the nations, in their vast diversity, are under His rule and part of His plan.
But the Chronicler inserts a few crucial details. In the line of Ham, he singles out one man: "Cush was the father of Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth" (v. 10). Why mention Nimrod? Because Nimrod represents the organized rebellion of man against God. He is the founder of Babel, the first great statist project, the first attempt to build a city of man that reaches to heaven and makes a name for itself, independent of God. Nimrod is the prototype of the tyrant, the antichrist spirit that seeks to unify humanity in rebellion against their Creator. The Chronicler reminds his readers of this because the spirit of Babel is the spirit of Babylon, the very empire that just carried them into exile. The lust for centralized, godless power is an ancient and persistent enemy.
In the line of Shem, another detail is highlighted: "Two sons were born to Eber, the name of the one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided" (v. 19). This division almost certainly refers to the judgment at the Tower of Babel, where God divided the languages and scattered the peoples. Peleg's name, meaning "division," is a permanent reminder of God's judgment on human pride. God will not allow humanity to be unified on any basis other than Himself. All man-made attempts at global unity, from Babel to the United Nations, are doomed to failure because they are built on the sand of human rebellion. True unity is found only in Christ.
The Covenant Line in Focus (vv. 24-27)
After outlining the nations of the world, the Chronicler zooms in. He has shown the broad scope of God's sovereignty, and now he brings the camera in tight on the one family through whom He will bring salvation to the world.
"Shem, Arpachshad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, Abram, that is Abraham." (1 Chronicles 1:24-27)
Here the pace slows. The Chronicler repeats the line from Shem, but this time he carries it all the way down to the man who is the focal point of the entire Old Testament narrative after the flood. This is the line of promise. While the nations are busy building their own kingdoms, God is quietly, faithfully building His. He is working through this one, specific, historical lineage to bring about His purposes.
The list culminates with a name change: "Abram, that is Abraham." This is hugely significant. Abram means "exalted father." But God renamed him Abraham, which means "father of a multitude." This name change was a covenant promise. God was promising to take this one man and, through him, create a people as numerous as the stars, and through that people, to bring blessing to all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:3). The Chronicler is reminding the discouraged exiles that their entire identity is wrapped up in this covenant promise to Abraham. Their history did not begin with the exile, or with David, or even with Moses. It began with God's gracious, sovereign call to one man out of a world of idolatry.
Conclusion: You Are in the Story
So what are we to do with a chapter like this? First, we must marvel at the historicity of our faith. God did not save the world through a nice idea. He saved the world by inserting Himself into this very timeline. The genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew's gospel begins, "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1). Matthew is picking up right where the Chronicler leaves off. He is showing that Jesus is the true Son of Abraham, the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament story. Luke's gospel traces Jesus' lineage all the way back, son by son, to "Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God" (Luke 3:38). The whole Bible is one book, telling one story, about one Savior.
Second, we must be humbled by God's sovereign grace. Look at this list. From Adam to Abraham is roughly two thousand years. For two millennia, God's redemptive plan for the entire world rested on this one, fragile, often sinful, family line. He could have chosen anyone. He could have started over a thousand times. But He made a promise, and He kept it. He is a covenant-keeping God. Our salvation does not depend on our strength or our goodness, but on His sheer, stubborn faithfulness.
Finally, we must recognize that this story is not over, and we are in it. Through faith in Jesus Christ, who is the ultimate seed of Abraham, we who were Gentiles, scattered among the nations of Japheth and Ham, have been grafted into this family. "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise" (Galatians 3:29). This great genealogy, this river of redemptive history, flows out of the Old Testament, through the cross of Christ, and right into this room. You are not an accident. You are not a disconnected atom floating in a meaningless universe. If you are in Christ, your name has been written into the family history of God. You have been adopted into this line. And now, you have a part to play in carrying this story forward, in being a link in the chain of grace for the next generation, until the day when a great multitude from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, descended from Shem, Ham, and Japheth, will stand before the throne and before the Lamb, and cry out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!"