IT has been often and truly said that coming events cast their shadows before themselves. Those very carefully tabulated and preserved family records retained their importance until the descent of the Messiah from Abraham (Matt. 1), and the full list of all the progenitors of the Son of Man in a direct line up to Adam (Luke 3), could each be duly registered. Even before, for our instruction, the Spirit employed the pen of Matthew to write the first, and that of Luke to transcribe the second. Connected with John the Baptist and his powerful ministry, we have a very marked foreshadowing of the fact that the old order was on the point of passing away, to be succeeded by that which was new and infinitely better.
John's father had occupied a position of some distinction in his service as a priest of the course of Abijah. His mother was of the daughters of Aaron. So that in this “man sent from God,” we have one qualified by birth and physical perfection to officiate as a priest, who neither dressed in priestly attire, nor performed priestly service in the temple, nor ate of the holy things in the holy place.
Crowds “went out to see” a man who was neither shaken by adverse circumstances, nor drawn aside by indulgence in luxuries, from the due performance of his great mission.
“Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Begin not to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham to our father:’ for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” Thus did he shatter at one blow all their preconceived notions as to the spiritual advantages of birth and parentage, upon which they had grown so accustomed to pride themselves.
The forerunner having leveled all such distinctions, it remained for Him Who came after him to draw the attention of “the seventy” to one infinitely higher, and subject to no such leveling process, by saying to them on their return, after having fulfilled their mission, “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”
To those who had been taught from their earliest infancy to consider it one of the direst of calamities for an Israelite to be cut off without posterity, how very comforting these words of our Lord Himself must have proved, when fierce persecutions raged! For James was slain by the sword, and Stephen stoned to death, and many otherwise suffered martyrdom.
That register, kept on high, of all those called with an heavenly calling, rendered it to such a matter of no importance to trouble further about preserving earthly family registers. In the Gospels we frequently find the father's name given, as in the case of Peter; but after Pentecost, even this was dropped. The surname Barnabas, given to Joses (Acts 4:36), was an evident departure from the rule almost invariably adopted in the case of Old Testament saints. As for Paul, he himself mentions quite incidentally that he was of the tribe of Benjamin; but we are no where told the name of his father. More than this, Paul by the Spirit, warned his beloved sons in the faith (1 Tim. 1:4; Titus 3:9) against giving heed to “endless genealogies.” For though a believer in Christ were in a position to prove his descent from David, or Aaron, this gave him no right to claim higher position in the church than that occupied by another member of the body, who happened to be descended from Ammon or Moab, or even the cursed Canaan. In the assembly therefore no distinctions of this character were to be observed, since all were one in Christ.
Our citizenship is in heaven; and none shall have the privilege of entering within the gates of the holy city, new Jerusalem, “but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life “; that heavenly register of saints, called with an holy calling, which is not subjected to periodical cancellations, as are those oftentimes faulty burgess-rolls of earthly citizens.
Yet there is another family record, as brief and concise in its wording, as it is full of pathos, while most exquisitely tender in the manner in which it clearly expresses the Lord's unwearied and unweakened personal affection for His earthly people. “I am the root and offspring of David” —saith He Who now sits exalted at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Surely this redounds to the praise of the glory of His grace; that, while occupying His present exalted position, He forgets not, nor is ashamed to acknowledge, those ties of relationship as existing between Himself, the Perfect Man, and the children of Israel; even though the natural branches of the olive tree have been long since broken off, and that nation has for many centuries past been experiencing the bitter consequences of the carrying out of the solemn prophetic sentence— “Not-My-people.”
They acknowledge Him not; still is He to Israel (who will yet mourn for Him, as a man mourneth for his only son) the pledge of the fulfillment of every promise made before unto the fathers by the prophets. Rich and abundant blessing is in store for Israel. “Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fullness!”
This brings us to the consideration of those family records, which once again in the future, as in the past, will have an importance which they do not now possess. “The lost ten tribes” has become a proverbial expression; no man living knows who they are or where definitely to be found.
But when the right moment for it arrives, the Lord God of Israel will call their representatives by their distinctive names; and we doubt not grace will enable each individual of those 144,000 sealed Israelites (Rev. 7:4-8) to attest the fact that he is actually descended from that particular son of Israel whose name he bears.
We have adequate scriptural authority for proceeding into minuter details, as we point out that the house of David will be known as such, and that the house of Nathan will be as clearly distinguished from the former, as each will be distinct from the house of Levi and of Shimei (Zech. 12:11-14).
One particular family of the sons of Aaron is expressly named as that which in the future shall have the exclusive privilege of coming near to minister unto the Lord. Every other representative of the priestly family must then of necessity take a subordinate place to that occupied by the sons of Zadok alone (1 Sam. 2:35, 36). So far as we have ourselves gathered, we will endeavor to show under what circumstances they won for themselves this high distinction.
In a former paper was pointed out the great contrast in matters of detail between 1 Chron. 20 and 32. We would now add that 2 Chron. 34 presents as great a contrast to both as those two chapters do to each other.
But first observe that the untimely death of the wicked king Amon was an event fraught with blessing to Judah; for the throne thus suddenly rendered vacant was now occupied by a child, whose name had been announced at Bethel, several hundred years before, by the man of God that spake against the altar of Jeroboam (1 Kings 13:2). The blessed results of the piety of Josiah early became apparent. Yet he that attentively reads the long catalog of the abominations which he destroyed and abolished (2 Kings 23:4-20), and also observes that it took him six years to purge the land and the house, cannot fail to form at least some faint idea of the awful magnitude of Judah's idolatry during the respective reigns of that king's two immediate predecessors (Jer. 2:28).
Hilkiah the priest having found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah, its contents were read before Josiah; and this brought that pious king deep exercise of soul: he rent his clothes and wept, for he clearly saw that the wrath of God had been aroused against His guilty people. Yet he did not, like Jehoshaphat, proclaim a fast; neither did he, like Hezekiah, enter into the temple, and there personally appeal to the God that dwelleth between the Cherubim. He sent the high priest and others to Huldah, that they might inquire of Jehovah for him. This may appear strange; but still more strange is the king's command to the Levites, recorded in the next chapter, to “put the holy ark in the house.” For such a command implies that it was at that moment outside of the house! Had those who wickedly set up an idol in that house, also removed it from its resting place with sacrilegious hands? Or had certain faithful priests, desirous of preserving it from sacrilege in those terrible days reverently borne it away to some place of safety (as those Levites intended to have done when Absalom threatened the peace of Jerusalem. 2 Sam. 15:24, 25)? To me it seems that this latter supposition is correct, and that Ezek. 44:15, 16; 48:11, refer to this pious action on the part of faithful sons of Zadok.