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Well, as we go through the Bible here on Sundays and Wednesdays, Wednesday nights, we are hitting a new book now together, First Chronicles. Here's a little background on the book for you notetakers. First and Second Chronicles appear as one book in the Hebrew Bible. It's combined. It's very similar how we talked about 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles. In our English Bibles they are separated as two books. But in a Hebrew Bible it's just the Book of Samuel, the Book of Kings, and now the Book of Chronicles. And in Hebrew it is dev meaning words of the days. It appears also in the Hebrew Bible as the last book in their Bible. Now what we have as our Old Testament is what the Jews have as their Hebrew Bible. And all the books we have in our Old Testament are the same books in a Hebrew Bible. But in a Hebrew Bible the books are arranged a little differently than what our English Bibles are. And so in a Hebrew Bible, Devrayi Hayemim appears as the very last book. Again, it's combined first and Second Chronicles combined into one book. It's the last book in their Bible. We don't know who the author is. It was likely written by Ezra, but we don't know for sure because no author name is mentioned. We do know it was a pro. It was written as a post exile letter, meaning this letter was written after the 70 years that the Jewish people spent in captivity in Babylon. Now that's where Second Kings ended. So if you've been with us on Wednesday nights at the end of 2 Kings, the Babylonians had come in. God allowed the Babylonians to come in because the people had been in idolatry. The people had been disobedient to God. God had been patient and so eventually his patience runs out and he allowed the Babylonians to come. There were three different campaigns the Babylonians exercised against Jerusalem until they eventually took it. It started in 606 BC. They eventually conquered Jerusalem in 586 BC. It took those 20 years. And when they conquered Jerusalem, they took Jews captive back to Babylon. And among those that they took captive were Daniel and his friends Daniel, Azariah, Mishael and Hananiah. They're otherwise known as Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Their names were changed when they got to Babylon. But Chronicles is written after those 70 years that the Jews spent in captivity in ancient Babylon. Now I'd like you to go. Even though we're starting in first chronicles in the first chapter, I'd like you to go to second chronicles and the last chapter. So it's two chronicles, chapter 36. There's a method to my madness. So just bear with me here, because at the end of two Chronicles we get a better idea of why this book was written. And there's a summary here to events that helps to orient us. So this is Second Chronicles to Chapter 36. It's the very last chapter of Second Chronicles. And I'm going to read the last several verses, verse 15, down through the end of the chapter. So this is 2nd Chronicles 36, starting at verse 15. It says, and the Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to them by his messengers. Now he's talking about to the Jewish people. He warned them in advance, rising up early and sending them because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, the prophets. They despised his words, they scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people till there was no remedy. And therefore he that's the Lord brought against them the king of the Chaldeans, also the Babylonians, known as Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, on the aged or the weak. He gave them all into his hand. And all the articles from the house of God, great and small, the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king and of his leaders. All these he took to Babylon. And then they burned the house of God. They broke down the wall of Jerusalem, they burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious possessions. And those who escaped from the sword, he carried away to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. And as long as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years. Okay, so the one who's writing Chronicles, and again, sometimes I might say Ezra, because that's the general assumption, but we don't know for sure. But the one who chronicled all this is now just kind of summarizing Jewish history up to this point. And he's saying, in effect, God disciplined us because of our disobedience, our idolatry. We didn't keep the Sabbath. So God is going to now take the people of Israel captive by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, deport them to Babylon. This is 900 miles. And they will be there for 70 years. But now look at verse 22. Now, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, the so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing, saying, thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth. The Lord God of heaven has given me, and he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is among you of all his people? May the Lord his God be with him and let him go up. So what we find, and this is historically true, consistent with what we're reading here in Second Chronicles, is that after Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar was replaced a couple of times, and then the Babylonian empire was conquered by the Medes of the Persians. When Daniel is taken captive as a young man, he's about 16 years of age. When he's taken to Babylonia and he is placed in the court of the king, he will end up serving three different kings who will. The first one is Nebuchadnezzar, and then the last one he serves is Cyrus, who's king of Persia. And the Persians and the Medes have now conquered the Babylonians. And God puts it on the heart of this pagan Persian king by the name of Cyrus, to be favorably disposed to the Jewish people who have been captive in Babylonia for 70 years. And Cyrus makes this edict that the people can go back to their homeland. Now, Jeremiah had prophesied that God would raise up a king by the name of Cyrus 150 years before Cyrus is born. Jeremiah actually mentions the name of this king who's going to be used by God to deliver the people back to their homeland. So Cyrus, this pagan guy, is seen as a hero to the Jewish people because God puts it on his heart to issue this decree that people can go back to their homeland. Now, interesting thing, as you know, I just got back from Israel on Friday with a group from our church, and I'm staying at this hotel with our group in Jerusalem. And I look out my window, the balcony there in my hotel in Jerusalem at the. At the Leonardo Plaza Hotel. And I look out, and I see in a building about 300 yards away, a big banner. The big banner. Now, I had to take this picture I'm about to show you with my phone, okay? And I had to zoom in. So it's pretty distorted because it was like 300 yards away. And so it got a little distorted But I thought this was very interesting. Okay, so because President Trump has been a part of this ceasefire, which, by the way, is unraveling. But because he was a part of the ceasefire, he was very popular. He's very popular in Israel. So everywhere we'd go, people like, you're Americans. Yeah. Oh, we love Trump. We love Trump. Like everybody was loving Trump in Israel. Okay, so I'm on the balcony, my hotel in Jerusalem, and I see this banner on this building across the way. And so here, it's a little grainy, but. But here's the picture. And if you look in on the banner, if you look in the. Can you see the banner? I'll read it for you. If you can't see it, it's got the American flag and the Israeli flag, and there's a picture of Trump and it says, cyrus the Great is alive. Cyrus the Great. They're calling him Cyrus the Great in Israel. Why? Because of this Cyrus we're reading about here. They're like this. This pagan guy is a hero to the Jewish people. No reflection on wherever Trump's heart is with the Lord, by calling him a pagan guy. But I'm just saying they're making this comparison. They're making this comparison that Cyrus the Great allowed the Jewish people to go to their homeland and to enjoy peace. And they see Trump in the same light, like, this guy is like Cyrus the Great. He's helping us to reclaim our homeland, that there might be some peace, albeit somewhat temporary. Now, go back to chapter one of First Chronicles. First Chronicles, Chapter one. So Chronicles, first and second combined. Chronicles is basically an epilogue. It's an epilogue, and this is the reason why it's the last book in a Hebrew Bible. It's like the epilogue that summarizes Jewish history. And we're going to notice here that starting in chapter one. Excuse me. The chronicler writes the genealogical record from Adam down through the royal line of David in the first nine chapters. And if you remember, Second Kings ended by telling us, as we've been mentioning, that Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, comes besieges, Jerusalem, takes people captive, 70 years of captivity. And then first and second chronicles were written after the 70 years of captivity. Hear me on this. For the people who have been invited to go back to their homeland. Now, why is this important? Why is this like an epilogue? Why is this written this the way it's written? And there's a lot of detail in the first nine chapters. In fact, you will thank me later. We are not going to read it. Verse by verse, because there's a, all the details of the genealogy and the names that I'm going to mispronounce and all of this. But here's why this is so important. You have to imagine what life is like for the Jewish people. If you have been part of those who were taken captive. If you were young, let's say you were 10 years old when the Babylonians came and besieged Jerusalem, 70 years now has passed, you're 80 years old, okay? So in Babylon, you've either been born there in the last 70 years and you have no, you have no connection to the homeland whatsoever. You, you've been born during the captivity in Babylon, so you, you have no connection to your homeland, okay? And if you were at an age where you used to be in the homeland and you were taken captive by the Babylonians, say again, if you were 10 years old, you're now 80 years old. And so when the edict is given by Cyrus, you're free to go home, back to your homeland. The majority of the Jews stayed in Babylon because they had no connection to their, to their homeland. They had grown up there, the majority of them had grown up there during the 70 years. They got married, they had families, excuse me, their lives were wrapped up in Babylon. Now they had no interest in their homeland. They had never even been there. And if you had been there as a child and now you're like 80 years old, you really want to make a 900 mile journey back to your homeland? I don't think so. You're like, you're drawing Social Security, you're like, I'm not going to go back to my homeland. I'm enjoying my life where it is. You're in the villages of Babylon, you're having a good time. So very few people went back. Comparatively speaking, very few people went back. But for those who were going to go back, most of them had never seen their homeland before. And the aged who went back, all of these people needed basically a handbook to understand their lineage, to understand what they didn't know. Because bear in mind, when the Babylonians came and took people captive, they removed you from your home, they removed you, they separated you from your family, they taught you a new language, as illustrated by Daniel and his friends, they changed your names, they indoctrinated you with the new ways of the Babylonians, they seduced you with the wonder of Babylon. Remember, the hanging gardens of Babylon were one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. And so people had no idea what life would be like in their ancient homeland. And so Ezra, whoever it was, writes an epilogue that condenses Jewish history to let people know, here's who you are, here's what your homeland means, here's your Jewish heritage, here's the lineage you came from, and here's just this epilogue of Jewish history so that you have it as a handbook. Now, when you go back to this homeland, for the most part that you've never even seen. You know how if you get a job at a new company, typically they'll give you, like an employee handbook. Cause it helps to orient you to what the company is all about. This is Chronicles. This is the handbook that orients them to understand everything about their homeland and their heritage that they didn't even know. So while a lot of Chronicles is somewhat tedious to us because it's details of genealogies and records and records of names and, And. And all of this to the Jewish people, this was the preservation of their identity and their heritage. And so this is an important book now because Chronicles repeats a lot of what we've already read in first and Second Kings. Over the next many Wednesday nights that we go through it, I'm going to highlight things rather than go verse by verse, because it'll be quite repetitive to what we've read in 1st and 2nd Kings. But there are many things in Chronicles that are not covered in first and Second Kings. And I'm going to try to extrapolate those things. And we're going to study through, rather lightly, the Book of Chronicles. But if you'll start now with me in chapter one, I am going to spend a little bit of time here in chapter one. Because no better place to start when you're given a handbook about your heritage than with Adam. That's chapter one, verse one. But he's going to move quickly from Adam to Noah, and then he's going to mention Noah's three sons. Because all of human history in terms of our heritage can be traced back to one of Noah's three sons. And so here we go. First Chronicles, chapter one, verse one. Adam, Seth, Enosh. This is. This is the family tree now. Canaan, Mahalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah. Okay, that Noah of the Great Flood. And here are his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. Shem, Ham and Japheth. Now, Japheth is actually the oldest of Noah's sons, and Ham is the youngest. But Shem is mentioned first because of significance. In fact, Shem in Hebrew just means. Are you ready for this? It just means name. Can you imagine like, you know, you're struggling to figure out what to name your child. And you know what? Let's just call him Name. We don't really have a good one for him, so we're just going to call him Name. That's Shem. But obviously Noah believed that Shem was going to be a significant name by itself because he's the lead here. And that's why he was given just that standard name Name, because your name is going to be great. And Shem's name would be great because from Shem will come the Jewish people, and from the Jewish people will come the Jewish Messiah for the salvation of the whole world. And so the name Shem is significant because of the heritage that we see through the line of Shem, down through David, down to the Messiah, Jesus. But when he starts to break down these three sons, he starts with Japheth, the oldest one. It is kind of interesting, you know, in verse 5, he starts with Japheth. Verse verse 8, he goes to Ham, the youngest, and then he ends with Shem. So he kind of does it in reverse order because he wants to highlight Shem at the end. But we're going to look at these names because it does help us to understand where the line of various peoples have come from because of these three sons of Noah. So we'll start here with Japheth in verse 5. The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javon, Tubal, Meshech, and Tyrus. The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, Diphtha, Diphoth and Togarmah. The sons of Javon were Elisha, Tarshishah, Katim, and Rodanim. All right, so I'm going to put this chart up to kind of help us through some of this. Here are the three sons of Noah. We're going to go in the order that they're mentioned here in the breakdown. And what we find here about Japheth and the sons that he has and the grandsons and the great grandsons is that Japheth ends up migrating to Europe. A lot of these names, and I've just highlighted a few of them, but a lot of these names are relative to countries in Europe. For example, Gomer is the ancient name for the area of Poland. And Magog to Bal and Meshech are ancient names for Russia. Togarma is an ancient name for Turkey. So the suns migrate into different areas, different regions of the Earth. Now, obviously, when we're going through this list, these are not clear delineations anymore because people have intermarried across countries and continents. So it's not as well defined anymore. But generally speaking, if you're of European descent, you are probably a descendant of Japheth. My family came over on a boat and my dad took that 23andMe DNA test years ago. And so we found out that. That we're, we're pretty much Irish, my side of the. My. The Hamrick side of the family anyway. And so, you know, somewhere there in, in. In our European blood, we probably were descendants of Japheth. Okay, when you move on to Ham, verse eight, I'm not going to read through all these names, but the sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan. Now, Cush is Ethiopia, Mizraim is Egypt. Put is Libya. So now you can get an idea of where Ham's descendants went. And when you look at the rest of the list. For example, down in verse nine, you see at the end of verse nine, Sheba and Dedan. Sheba and Dedan is Saudi Arabia. You go down further in verse 12, and you see Pathru Sim. And then this interesting group of people, Kim the Kle. And then the writer of Chronicles puts in parentheses, from whom came the Philistines? Well, we're familiar with them, right? The ancient Philistines. You also have mentioned in verse 15, the HiVite, the Archite, and the Sinaite, the Sinite are the Chinese people. And so when you look at the descendants of Ham. Ham. The descendants of Ham are basically Africans, Arabs, some Arabs, most Arabs, but not all of them. Also Egyptians, Chinese and Indians. Because you see these various names now, I put in very small type at the bottom because I don't have room for all of this on one slide. But you'll notice also in this list that we didn't read. But between verses 8 and 16, you have mentioned the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites. And we did talk briefly there about the Castlehites, which are the Philistines. So those are the perennial enemies of the Israelites. So when you see, often mentioned in the Bible, the Hittites came against the Israelites, and you see the Jebusites, and you see the Amorites, and all of these ITEs, you know, are generally from the line of Ham. So you're going to see cousins at war here because the, the, the children of Ham are going to be in constant conflict with the children of Shem, which is the next group. We come to verse 17, you have the sons of Shem. The sons of Shem were Elam. Now, Elam is the region of ancient Mesopotamia. Now, Mesopotamia means the land between the two rivers. You're talking between Tigris and Euphrates. What's the land between Tigris and Euphrates? Mostly Iraq. And then you get into Iran, also in this region. But you see, in addition to Elam, Ashur. Well, Ashur is an ancient reference to Assyria, which, not Syria, Assyria. The Assyrian empire was took. Took the area of what today in a map would be Iraq and Iran. And then you have there Arphaxad, Lud and Aram. Aram is Syria. And then down at verse 18, Arphaxad begot shelah. Sorry, dude, you're going to be called Shelah. That's a guy. And Shelah begot Aber. Now, Aber, the etymology of Hebrew comes from Eber. So now we're talking about the Jewish people through the line of Arphaxad. Arphaxad had Shelah, shelah begat Aber. This is now going to be the line that leads to Abraham. Okay, you also see mentioned in verse 19, Peleg. It says to Aber were born two sons. The name of one was Peleg. Peleg is mentioned in Genesis 10, verse 25. It tells us that in the days of Peleg, the earth was divided. So Pangea happened during the days of Peleg, when the continental divide happened, that was in the days of Peleg. And it goes on down in verse 24, and it gives us the list from Shem down to Abraham. Look at this in verse 24. Shem are faxad, shelah, Aber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah. And Terah was the father of Abram, who is Abraham. And the sons of Abraham were Isaac and Ishmael. So the line of Shem would include the Jewish people, would also include some Arab people. The Arab people are kind of mixed between the descendants of Ham and the descendants of Shem. You also see the Persians, because we're talking about Iran. Also, Iranians are not Arabs. And they will let you know that, by the way. And so they're a distinct people group. The Syrians. The Syrians identify with Arabs, many of them do, especially with the common language of Arabic. But the Syrian people are actually distinct from the general population of Arabs. But, but this is that. This is that line. That is the Semitic people. And through the line of Shem comes. Now we come to Abraham. And Abraham has two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Now, interestingly, there is a. And this really comes out of Muslim tradition. Not biblical evidence. The Arab people like to trace their line back to Ishmael. In fact, Muhammad said that he was related to Ishmael through Ishmael's son, Kedar. If you look down at verse 29, it mentions Ishmael's sons. It says these are their genealogies. The firstborn of Ishmael was Nebajorth, and then Kedar. And Muhammad always said that he was a descendant of Kedar and he laid claim to being a descendant of Ishmael. But that is all more Islamic tradition than it is biblical evidence. In fact, Muhammad, though he was born in Mecca, he was of the tribe of Kuriash and Kurish. You trace the ancient roots of the tribe Kurish, it goes to Yemen. So it's not true that the Arab people are descendants of Ishmael. That's just Islamic tradition. And they hold Ishmael in high regard. And they believe that Ishmael was the sacred and special son of Abraham, not Isaac. And so thus you have this conflict. And we understand what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that the line to Messiah came through Isaac and that the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would lead to Messiah, nothing having to do with Ishmael. And yet when you read through the line of Abraham, it continues here. We'll just go a little bit further in chapter one, verse 32. Now, the sons born to Keturah, Abraham's concubine, by the way Keturah actually became his wife after Sarah died, were six more sons. Look at this. Zimran, Jokshan, Midan, Midian, Ishbak and Shua. So Abraham had eight sons. He had Ishmael through Hagar, which was not God's will. But, you know, there's a lot of things we do that are not God's will. And so Ishmael is born as a result of Abraham's surrogacy with Hagar. And then he has Isaac with Sarah, and then he has six more. Sarah dies and Abraham's still chugging along here he has six more sons. I mean, he's like, you know, what is he now at this point? He's like 145 or something. He's like, well, you know, things are working again, so I might as well have six more sons. And so he has six more sons with Keturah and then Abraham. And then it kind of goes backwards just to kind of remind us here, verse 34. And Abraham begot Isaac, and the sons of Isaac were Esau and Israel. Now note that Israel is the name that God gave to Jacob after Jacob wrestled with the Lord. And so the writer of Chronicles is choosing to use the updated name for Jacob, which is Israel. The whole nation of Israel was named after this guy here, Jacob, Abraham, Isaac. And Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, he. His name, Yaakov, his given name means. Literally means heel grasper, which. Which translates loosely, deceiver. You know, you grasp somebody's heel, you're like, tripping them up. And Jacob lived up to his name. If you know the story of Jacob, he was a deceiver. He deceived people. He lived up to his name. Until one day he literally wrestles with the Lord, and the Lord pops his hip out of socket, and the guy walks with the limp for the rest of his life. And God reminds him who is really in charge of his life. And when Jacob then surrenders to God in a new and a fresh way, God renames him. You will no longer be called Yaakov, but you will be called Israel. And. And Israel in Hebrew means governed by God. You're now going to be a man under my governance. And Jacob then surrendered more to him. He was a more surrendered and subdued man in the latter half of his life than he certainly was in the first half of his life. And he went from being deceiver to being governed by God. And so the writer of Chronicles is adopting that name. It becomes the national name. But this is the grandson of Abraham, and he will be the line through which Messiah comes. Esau was the oldest, but he traded his birthright for a bowl of soup. And so Esau's descendants are mentioned further down here in chapter one, starting at verse 43. We'll not go in through all that. But they are known as the Edomites, and Edom in Hebrew means red. And remember that Esau was also named Edom because he was ruddy. It was not only his appearance, but it had to do with the stew. He traded his birthright for a bowl of red lentil stew. And so he became known as Edom. His descendants are known as the Edomites. And so the Bible then records the descendants of Esau there in the rest of chapter one. Let's go just briefly to chapter two. We still have a little bit more time. But now it breaks down the line of Jacob or Israel in chapter two, where it says in verse one, these were the sons of Israel or Jacob. And here you have 12 sons. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dan, Joseph, Benjamin, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. And so whenever we speak of Israel, and we talk about the 12 tribes of Israel. That phrase is derived from the fact that Jacob, or Israel, has 12 sons. These 12 sons will have descendants that make up the nation of Israel, because from the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will come the Jewish people. And thus these 12 sons of Jacob, or the 12 sons of Abraham, Israel make up those 12 tribes. And what you read then in the next several chapters are the descendants of each of these 12 tribes. Again, to us, this seems. Well, this is a bit tedious to write all this down, but again, reminder. You have people going back to their homeland who are either aged or who have never been there. They don't know their heritage. They've been born into captivity, they've been born in. You try to imagine that. Try to imagine if your life had been completely uprooted and you were taken as a captive to another foreign country. You didn't speak the language, you didn't know anything about the culture. You're trying to be indoctrinated in the ways of a completely foreign nation. And then many years later, 70 years later, you're told you can go back to your homeland. There's a lot you would forget. There's a lot you don't remember because you were too young when you were taken captive. Or again, you. You were born in this foreign country. You have no clue about your family, your heritage, your history, your homeland, your language. So Chronicles is written as a handbook to help all these people when they go back to the homeland to get resettled in this land, to know where did they come from, who is my family, what was my language? What was it like to worship in the temple that is no longer there? Cause that's one of the things they have to do as soon as they get back to the homeland and is rebuild the temple. The walls of the city have been completely destroyed. That's the story of Nehemiah, who will rebuild the walls. Ezra takes the second group of captives and goes back to the homeland about 485 B.C. and Ezra's gonna help to rebuild the temple. So all of this is a learning curve to the Jewish people. And for us, this is somewhat repetitive of a history of first and Second Kings in particular. But nevertheless, this is important. Now we'll just close with this section here. If you look here in chapter two, it talks about Judah, one of the sons of Jacob or Israel. And David comes from the line of Judah. So this is going to get us up to David if we look at this together. Verse 3, the sons of Judah were er. Onan and Shelah. And these three were born to him by the daughter of Shua. The Canaanitess. Er, the firstborn of Judah was wicked in the sight of the Lord, so he killed him. Wow. Don't mess with God. And Tamar, his daughter in law bore him Perez and Zara. All the sons of Judah were five. The sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamul. The sons of Zera were Zimri, Ethan. He man, what a great name that is for a dude, right? He man. You are he man. Chalcol and Dara, five of them in all. The son of Carmi was Achar, the troubler of Israel who transgressed in the accursed thing. The Bible doesn't give us an explanation about these things. The son of Ethan was Azariah. Also the sons of Hezron who were born to him were Jerahamiel, Ram and Chelabi. Ram begot Amminadab and Amminadab begot Nahshon, leader of the children of Judah. Nahshon begot Salma, and Salma begot Boaz. And here's, and here's. Now we pick it up here. Boaz begot Obed, that's the grandfather of David. Obed begot Jesse, that's the father of David. And Jesse begot Eliab, his firstborn, Abinadab the second, Shimea the third, Nathanael the fourth, Radi the fifth, Ozam the sixth, and David the seventh. And here is that David. Look, he's the only David mentioned in all of the Bible. And this is that David who will become king of Israel. He's mentioned here as the seventh son of Jesse. There are other places in the Bible where he's mentioned as the 8th. It's not a transcribed error. It is an indication to us that there was another son who was no longer living. And so David is seen sometimes as the seventh, sometimes as the eighth. It depends on where it is in, in the historical timeline. And it mentions that he had sisters. Now their sisters were Zeruiah and Abigail, and the sons of Zeruiah were Abishai, Joab and Asahel. 3 Abigail Bore Amasa, and the father Amasa was Jether the Ishmaelite. So we'll end there for tonight. And again we're not going to go verse by verse, but we will look at Christ Chronicles through the lens of, of the history of the Jewish people and, and how. This was their handbook for them. Again, this was helping to orient them as to where they came from. Who did they belong to? You know that's the ultimate issue for, for all of us is our identity. When you don't know who you are, when you don't know where you've come from. And there, there are, you know, some of you who have been adopted and you're trying to figure out your family tree because maybe all the information was not forthcoming to you. It can be challenging to wonder, where did I come from and what was my family like? And all these questions that you might have because you're not familiar with your family tree. These people who were held captive for 70 years and now you're told you can go back to your homeland. A lot of this was complete new information to them, and they were trying to sort through where they come from, who do they belong to, where are they going? This is all a handbook for them to understand. Here's where you came from, and God has kept record of it, and here's where you're going so that you know and understand your whole heritage. So we'll pick it up there next week, Lord willing. We'll do the baptisms and then we'll pick it up there the following week. Father, we thank you for this time in your word tonight. Just pray that you would continue to speak to us through the pages of your word. Lord, thank you that we can have our identity in you. We may not always understand everything about our own family tree, but Lord, help us to understand it's not nearly as important where we came from as where we're going. And that we belong to you and that our identity can be in you, to know you and to have our worth in you, to have the understanding of who we are in you, Lord. And so we thank you for that heritage we have in Christ. And just pray, Lord, your blessing as we leave, as we go home to our homes. Lord, be with us, bring us back together on Sunday. We just give you the praise and the glory in Jesus name. And everyone said amen.