With that, let's get into the Word. Looking forward to what the Lord has for us tonight.

We're only going to do one chapter. I tried to do both chapter 20 and 21, but got halfway

through and didn't want to rush through what I think the Lord would have us to take the time tonight to study through.

On Thursday nights, we're going through the

Bible. We started in Genesis years ago now, and we worked our way through to where

we're at now, book by book and chapter by chapter and verse by verse. So First Chronicles

chapter 20. Why don't we pray we'll ask God's blessing on our time together in His Word.

Lord, we need for you at this time to enable us to focus our attention on you and your word

and not to be distracted by anything

that would keep us from your word tonight. Lord, we want to give you our undivided attention

so that you can speak into our lives and minister to us as we do. So Lord, will you do that? Will

you speak into our lives? Will you speak? We pray, your servants are listening. In Jesus' name,

amen. All right, let's jump in. Verse one. It happened in the spring of the year, at the time kings go out to battle,

that Joab led out the armed forces and ravaged the country of the people of Amon, and came and besieged Rabah.

But David stayed at Jerusalem, and Joab defeated Rabah and overthrew

it. Now if this verse sounds familiar, that's because it should. It wasn't that long ago. It was

when we were in Second Samuel that we studied this account.

But the chapter begins with what is really a very abbreviated version of what really happened

when David stayed in Jerusalem.

I mean really abbreviated, only one verse. And there's really nothing about all that

had taken place with David because he had done this. Now, the question is why. And I believe

it's for a couple of reasons, one of which is that the chronicles are written to a post-exilic

...