Renamed by God: The Prayer of Jabez - Steve Wheeler

So many of us will be familiar with this, what we call the prayer of Jabez.

It's right there in chapter 4.

But a little bit of context is interesting because the book of Chronicles is a genealogy.

If you go to chapter 1, go and have a look in chapter 1 in verse 1, and the very first word there is Adam.

Seth, Kenan, Mahalelo, Jared.

And it starts right in the beginning of Genesis and it goes a genealogy through Abraham, through Moses, through right to David and then David's son.

First Chronicles deals with the rain up until David, his capturing of the ark of the covenant, God's glorious presence that they came to acknowledge and love.

And as it was there in the holiest of holies was the resting place, the dwelling place of God with man.

And with the story as it was taken by the Philistines and then David out of his passion as a man with a heart of the God went and captured it again.

And the story of Chronicles is the coming back into the kingdom that God intended under the greatest king, David.

And then 2 Chronicles outlines and chronicles David's succession to Solomon.

David got the vision to restore God's presence in the temple back to Israel.

Solomon built it.

And then came the split in the kingdoms.

Judah and Israel, and then the Assyrian captivity, and then the Babylonian captivity.

And this is written to those who've just come out of the Babylonian captivity.

So they've been 70, 80 years in captivity, living as slaves, pining for by the rivers of Babylon, how they longed toward Jerusalem to dwell back in their land.

And this is penned to them.

to encourage them that it doesn't matter where you are right now.

God's story hasn't finished.

He was faithful then.

He's going to be faithful now.

It's a callback to look at the covenant that God made with Israel and with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And he now says, this is the covenant I want you to put your hope in.

And it's written to them.