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- What attributes of God’s character does this passage reveal?
- How does the passage point to Jesus?
- How should the truth of this passage change me?
- How do the events of today’s reading help you better understand the grand narrative of Scripture?
1 Chron. 23
Part of David’s preparations for building God’s Temple involved organizing the Levites for Temple service. The Levites were the ones who belonged to God. They had been redeemed for service to Him. This service was their life, their job, and their inheritance. David divided them into groups, each with a different job in the common task of Temple service. That all sounds just like Christ’s body of believers to me! God redeemed us; we are His. So we now live to serve Him. He is our life, our job, and our inheritance. And we all work together in different ways as various members of one body in the common task of knowing God and making Him known.
1 Chron. 24-25
I believe numbers in the Bible are important. The more I pay attention to them, the more fascinating they become. Though I don’t understand the implication or meaning of any of it, I see numbers at play here in the organization of the priests and Levites. They all seem to fall in multiples of 12, namely twelves and twenty-fours. In dividing the priests, it just so happened that Eleazar had 16 heads of ancestral families while Ithamar had 8, for a total of twenty-four. Likewise, the total number of Levites set apart as musicians was 288, which divided into 24 groups of 12. I’d say the number 12 has something to do with God’s chosen ones. After all, there were 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles of Jesus, and the book of Revelation even mentions 144,000 – a multiple of 12 – from the tribes of Israel sealed for God.
1 Chron. 26
The only thought coming to me with this chapter this morning ties back to what I said about the body of Christ from chapter 23, specifically about the different jobs for the common task. I notice that the divisions of Levites in this chapter all served outside the Temple. Some served at the entrances, courtyards, and storehouses. Others served throughout the entire land of Israel, even across the Jordan. When relating this to Christ’s body of believers, it reminds me that serving God does not always take the form of obvious ministry related jobs. Each one of us serves God wherever He sends us.