1 Chronicles 1-2

“So all Israel was recorded by genealogies, and indeed, they were inscribed in the book of the kings of Israel.” (1 Chronicles 9:1, NKJV)

One of God’s greatest gifts to us is family. We are born into a natural family. We don’t get to choose our mother, father, brothers or sisters. But these are our first and formative relationships. We are linked to the past through our ancestors. We will be linked to the future through our children and grandchildren. Each of us is a link in a chain stretching back to Adam and forward to the last human being in our family tree who will be born the natural way. Each name represents a person made in the image of God. All our sinners, for they are born of corrupted and corruptible seed. There is only one human being who ever lived who was not a sinner, for He was the Son of God—born of a woman but conceived by the Holy Spirit. He was the promised Seed of Abraham through whom the world would be blessed.

In the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles we find the family records of various people. All can trace their origin back to Adam. But many of these genealogical lines end and are not picked up again in Scripture. There is only one linage with which the Bible is ultimately concerned: the generations from Adam to Christ. Most of these names are meaningless to us, but they prove that Jesus, the Son of Mary and adopted son of Joseph, had the pedigree to be the promised Messiah. There could be no Messiah today, because there would be no way to prove that he was of the tribe of Judah and a descendant of David.

We tend to skim or skip lists of meaningless names. But even though they are meaningless to us, they are not meaningless to God, just as you are not meaningless to God. Consider you own family tree. Each person in the past and in the future is special to God. He knows them all and is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance and salvation through Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:9). Yet He also chooses whom He will according to His foreknowledge (1 Peter 1:2). We cannot change the destiny of those who have already lived and died. But we can be part of the destiny of those who are alive and who are yet to be born. We can influence them by our example, our words, our works, and our prayers.

The most important family is the family of God. Have you been born into it by the Spirit of God through faith in Jesus Christ?