Let us hear the word of our God, 2 Samuel 2, beginning of verse 12. Now Abner the son of Ner and the servants of Ish-vasheth the son of Saul went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon. And Joab the son of Zerariah and the servants of David went out and met them by the pool of Gibeon. So they sat down, one on one side of the pool and the other on the other side of the pool. Then Abner said to Joab, let the young men now arise and compete before us. And Joab said, let them arise. So they arose and went over by number, 12 from Benjamin, followers of Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, and 12 from the servants of David. And each one grasped his opponent by the head and thrust his sword in his opponent's side. So they fell down together. Therefore, place was called the Field of Sharp Swords, which is in Gibeon. So there was a very fierce battle that day, and Abner and the men of Israel were beaten before the servants of David. Now the three sons of Zeruiah were there, Joab and Abishai and Asahel. And Asahel was his fleet afoot as a wild gazelle. So Asahel pursued Abner, and in going he did not turn to the right hand or to the left from following Abner. Then Abner looked behind him and said, are you Asahel? He answered, I am. And Abner said to him, turn aside to your right hand or to your left and lay hold on one of the young men and take his armor for yourself. But Asahel would not turn aside from following him. So Abner said again to Asahel, turn aside from following me. Why should I strike you to the ground? How then could I face your brother Joab? However, he refused to turn aside. Therefore Abner struck him in the stomach with the blunt end of the spear, so that the spear came out of his back, and he fell down there and died on the spot. So it was that as many as came to the place where Asahel fell down and died, stood still. Joab and Amashai also pursued Abner, and the sun was going down when they came to the hill of Amah, which is before Gaia, by the road to the wilderness of Gibeon. Now the children of Benjamin gathered together behind Abner and became a unit and took their stand on the top of a hill. And Abner called to Joab and said, shall the sword devour forever? Do you not know that I will be bitter? It will be bitter in the latter end. How long will it be then until you tell the people to return from pursuing their brethren? And Joab said, as God lives, unless you had spoken surely then by morning all the people would have given up pursuing their brethren. So Joab blew a trumpet, and all the people stood still and did not pursue Israel anymore, nor did they fight anymore. Then Abner and his men went on all that night through the plain, crossed over the Jordan, and went through all Bithron, and they came to Mahanaim. So Joab returned from pursuing Abner, and when he had gathered all the people together, there were a missing of David's servants, 19 men, and Asahel. But the servants of David had struck down of Benjamin and Abner's men, 360 men who died. Then they took Abasahel and buried him in his father's tomb, which was in Bethlehem. And Joab and his men went all night, and they came to Hebron at daybreak. Now there was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David, but David grew stronger and stronger, and the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker." All right. God add his blessing to the reading and hearing. of his holy word. All right. Well, we come here now to this next part in the story. And we've seen so far in chapter two, David following God to Hebron. and then be anointed king 15 years after Samuel had done so initially. And so at 30 years of age, David now had received God's promises. They are now fulfilled in him in this way. But, of course, it has not been easy for David. The fulfillment of God's promises does not necessarily mean we don't have troubles. And we saw that especially in 1 Samuel, as David was running from Saul for possibly as many as 10 years of those 15. And now there are troubles on this end. of his anointing too. Now there is a rival king in the north, in the northern tribes, and so Ishmushef, Saul's son, is ruling. Now, as we saw last time, since the Philistines are likely exerting their influence in the central portions of Israel, this is why they established the throne of Ishmushef on the east side of the Jordan. Likely also due to the chaos from Saul's death, the Philistine power, even debates and squirmishes among themselves over who should be king, has probably contributed to why Ishmael only ruled for two years. Obviously the end of it certainly does, as we'll see. But even on the front end, and it's probable that he didn't become established as king until David had ruled as king in Hebron for a few years. Well, we return now to the, you might say, true leader of the northern tribes, and that is Abner. And you recall, of course, he is Saul's cousin, commanding the army. And as we see, he's going to lead them into battle against David's men. So there are four sections in what I've just read. Verses 12 to 17 is the first of these and focuses around the events of the Pool of Gibeon. And then in verses 18 to 23, that section focuses on the pursuit of Abner by Asahel. And then in verses 24 to 29, the continuing fighting. And then in verse 30 to the end of the chapter, again, some want to include verse one here of chapter three. That's our final section. And basically, David's winning. And so let's look at the first of these and we may call this Abner's attack. So verse 12, now Abner the son of Ner, the servants of Isphoseth, the son of Saul, went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon. All right. Pretty straightforward idea here. Abner is leading the way. He's bringing various soldiers with him. And they leave Mahanaim. So if you take your map here just a moment again, as we did last week, and you recall that Mahanaim is most likely along the Jabbok River, east of the Jordan, roughly 15 miles. And it might have been a little north of that, but that's probably where it was. And so they then come down to Gibeon. Now, you may recall where Gibeon is. It is in the tribe of Benjamin and just a few miles west of Gibeah. And recall that Gibeah is where Saul had his home and his capital and so forth. They don't go to Saul's capital city, but they go nearby, just a few miles again to the west. Remember that the Gibeonites were those group of people that fooled Joshua. Remember they said they came from a long way away. In fact, they were Canaanites, and so Joshua entered into a covenant with them. And once they found out, Joshua kept his word. He didn't kill them, and they even became servants in the tabernacle. And so, remember that story. Remember also, as we saw a number of years ago now in Joshua chapter 21, in verse 17, we were told that Gibeon was a Levitical city, too. So it was prominent in that way. This is a place of Torah education, you could say. All right, so we see then that Abner takes his men to this place. Why here? We don't know. Why is he instigating with David and his men? We don't know other than there are two kings in Israel and these kinds of things happen, of course. So verse 13, and Joab the son of Zeruiah and the servants of David went out and met them by the pool of Gibeon. So they sat down, one on one side of the pool and the other on the other side of the pool. Again, pretty straightforward here in terms of what is communicating. We go from Abner, the commander of the army for Ishmael, now to Joab, the commander of the army for David. And it says he led some of David's servants. Now, we know a bit more. We know that he has 600 of them. Did all 600 come? Did maybe 100 stay behind with David and Hebron? There is no indication that David nor Ishbosheth were actually a part of this battle. And so presumably, they were not. But the emphasis, of course, is on these two men to set the stage for the next chapter. Whatever the case, We see that Joab comes out and he meets with Abner. Maybe they have the same amount of men. Maybe there's more on one side or the other. But why did they go here? It seems kind of bizarre, maybe because there were some of the priests there and the Levites, I don't know. Remember, Hebron's 25 miles from this place, and this is in Benjamin. David's not ruling over Benjamin. Was he afraid of, you know, some border dispute or something like that? We don't know. Maybe Abner called him out, but whatever the case, Job comes, and they meet here at this pool. Now, a little bit about the pool. It was well known at the time. It was used to store water for town. There was a spring that fed it. And they were known for making wine and exporting it. And of course, they used the spring water to make the wine and so on. We've actually discovered this archaeologically. It's a rather massive pool. believe that the dimensions were 37 feet in diameter and 82 feet deep and presumably they needed to dig that deep to get to the if you will purity of the spring, but this is a very sizable pool of course and So you're talking over 3,000 tons of rock and limestone for them to dig out in order to do this so We, you know, are like, what is this place? But for them, this probably wasn't an unusual place to go. But still, why go here? I'm not sure we can answer this question. Why not go somewhere else? But here's where they are. And so verse 14 then says, And Abner said to Joab, let the young man now arise and compete before us. And Joab said, let them arise. All right, there are some questions about that word compete. That's how the New King James translates it, and it's probably the best way of doing it, but there are questions surrounding it. Most likely what this is communicating to us is what we would call a representative combat. We saw that in 1 Samuel with David and Goliath. There, of course, it was one-on-one, and the idea is if David would have won, then Israel as a whole would have won, or if Goliath would have won, then the Philistines as a whole would have won. Theoretically, this would mean the nations themselves would not fight. It would minimize the number of deaths. And it often was used by the weaker side because they would lose in just a regular battle. And so they would ask for these kinds of things. So I'm reminded of the Prince Caspian scenario in Narnia when they were fighting against I'm sorry, I forget the guy's name, but anyway. Who is that? Yeah, that's right, King Miras, that's right. So that kind of scenario seems to be what we're talking about. Well, as we know, the Philistines refused to abide by the rules, and here we see something similar, though there was a tie, as we will see. All right, so verse 15. So they arose and went over by number, 12 from Benjamin, followers of Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, and 12 from the servants of David. All right, so not one versus one, but 12 versus 12. Maybe they picked 12 because of the tribes, we don't know. But the Benjamites are the ones clearly that are fighting for Ish-bosheth. They are within the territory of Benjamin, so that would probably contribute to it. David obviously is from Judah, and so they're coming primarily from his own tribe, though we know that some of his 600 men came from a variety of places. Well, this contest, this duel, this representative battle was far more than just entertainment. It could theoretically have decided who would rule over Israel. There's a lot of details we are not given. What all they were thinking. But verse 16 tells us the outcome. And each one grasped his opponent by the head and thrust a sword in his opponent's side, so they fell down together. Therefore, that place was called the field of sharp swords, which is in Gibeon. Simply, this was another failure. Nobody won. It wasn't even 12 to 11. and 12. Each combatant grabbed the other and they used their short sword, is the idea here, and stabbed each other. Now these short swords were used for close combat. They were probably 16 inches or maybe a little less than that. But simply all 24 men died. There's no indication that we have in the scriptures that they tried to do it this way again. probably because of the failure. We know other cultures practice this, obviously with Philistia, but there's no indication Israel did, and maybe because of what happened here. But whatever the case, they give it a name. And the Hebrew name is Helkath Hatzarim. And we translate it here as the New King James does, the field of swords or the field of sharp swords, they say. And they say sharp swords here to indicate we're talking about this smaller dagger size sword, not the big long sword that would be used. All right, so then verse 17. So there is a very fierce battle that day and Abner and the men of Israel were beaten before the servants of David. So the representative combat didn't work. And so everybody got into it. Again, we don't know how many there were. Maybe it was 500 against 1,000 or whatever. We don't know. But David wins. Didn't win in the combat, but they won here in this broader battle. And so this brings us, you might say, to the end of the story. David wins. But of course, there's more to the story, as we see with Asahel and some more skirmishes and so on and so forth. But this is the concluding idea. David and his side wins. All right, well, the verses here are pretty straightforward, a few details to explain and bring out. So what's our point? Well, you recall what we talked about last week. that when we seek God's guidance, there are blessings. David did that. There are blessings even in battle for David here in this way. When we do not seek God and follow him and so forth, it leads to chaos. And we see that with the northern tribes and Ishbosheth and so on, and here too, they're losing. If we are going to follow after the Lord, he will bring blessing. He will bring success. Maybe we won't become millionaires. Maybe the enemy will still oppress us or even kill us. But in the end, of course, there is victory for the believer, for the person who is following after the Lord. Here it was shown, for the most part, right away. That doesn't always work out, of course, but the principle is the same. If we are going to follow after the Lord, there will be blessings. Ishmael and Abner, of course, were not doing that. They refused to obey God's choice as king. And as we'll go through into the next chapter, especially, we'll see very clearly they knew that God had chosen David, but they sought to do it their own way. And so the result is civil war. It has been long enough in our country to not remember a whole lot about the Civil War. When we lived in the South for a while, it was still rather forefront on a number of people's minds. The war between the states was the best description. Usually it was the war of northern aggression is the description we got. But we have, you know, now 150 plus years since those events. It does seem like we are coming close to another civil war in our culture. Certainly, it's being done verbally and even in the media and financially and so on and so forth. This is a sad place, isn't it? Here's Israel. Even with David as king, there is civil war. And it's because some people refuse to follow the Lord. It's really that simple. They attacked God's anointed, or at least his men here in this situation. Then, of course, Saul had been doing that for many years. They're following in the footsteps of Saul. They tried to establish their own kingdom and oppose God's kingdom, but no power. No matter how powerful, no power, no human power, no spiritual power, nothing can ever fully succeed against God and his kingdom. Here, God's kingdom, of course, was the kingdom of David. But no power will ever succeed in the end. Isn't it interesting that the first point after Ishmael was established as king, as this rival king. The first point is they lose. David wins. There is no power in the heavens or on earth or under the earth or anywhere else we might want to say that can rival the kingdom of God. Now, these evil things may prosper for a time. Yisra'el does rule for two years, Saul chased David for possibly up to 10 years, but in the end, that's not very long. The gates of hell, we say, will not prevail, but they might be successful for a while. It might be very difficult for a while, but they will not win in the end. Israel, of course, had 70 years in exile, and yes, that was due to their sin, and God was punishing them. And yet, the enemies of God's kingdom were successful for a time. The persecution of believers that we've seen throughout the centuries, and even in our own day, same thing. It may happen for a while, but in the end, God's people will be vindicated. I mentioned about the 70 years of atheism in Soviet Russia this morning. and the desire for God's word by those after the fall of the Soviet Russia, of their government and so forth. But again, it's just for a period of time. The kingdom of man, the kingdom of wickedness is only successful for a short period of time. And so the corruption of truth we are facing in our own land and in the American churches that will only last for a time. There will be victory. There'll be blessing. There'll be truth in the end. All evil powers will be subdued. Any success they have is momentary in the grand scheme of things. And so this gives us confidence. This gives us encouragement. This gives us hope. And so again, notice the first section after Ishvosheth established his king is this message here. It's certainly an encouragement to David and to us today. All right, now let's look at the next section. Verses 18 to 23, we could call this Abner's self-defense or the defense of Abner. So verse 18, now the three sons of Zeruiah were there, Joab and Abishai and Asahel. And Asahel was his fleet of foot, as a wild gazelle. All right, now first of all, Zeruiah. When we see things like this, right, the sons of Zeruiah, and you list them and so on, you think, okay, well, that's the dad, right? Well, not here. This is their mother. This is very unusual, but you may remember Zeruiah is David's sister. And so Joab, Abishai, and Asahel were David's nephews. All right, let's turn a moment to 1 Chronicles 2. All right, 1 Chronicles 2, beginning in verse 3, we see the line of Judah. And if you come down to verse 12, we pick up with Boaz begetting Obed, and Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot the seven sons there. And then verse 16, now their sisters were Zeruiah and Abigail, and the sons of Zeruiah were Abishai, Joab, and Asahel three. Presumably, this means that Abishai was the firstborn of the three, and that Joab was the middle son, and then Asahel was the youngest. All right, now, as for Zeriah, her name is mentioned 26 times in the Old Testament. Again, very unusual for the scriptures to make mention of a woman this many times. But this is David's sister. And she's the mother of these three men. And in fact, in all but one occasion, her name is mentioned in association with at least one of her sons. And so that is the primary theme. We already saw it in verse 13 as you come back to our passage. And now we see it here again in verse 18. So just a very unusual description here. Again, most women aren't even named in the scriptures. But when they are, it's certainly significant, and we see that here. Now, as for Joab, he's mentioned roughly 145 times. Again, he's the commander of David's men. Abishai, then, he is mentioned 25 times. And the first time we saw him, you might remember back in 1 Samuel 26, this is when David stole into the camp of Saul and took His spear, remember, is sticking in the ground. He took his water pot. Well, Abishai went with him, his nephew. If you turn forward here to 2 Samuel 23, just a moment, in chapter 23, verses 8 and following, we see a description of the mighty men of David. And so some of these 600 men are listed by name with some of their accomplishments and so on. Now verse 18, it says, now Abishai, the brother of Joab, the son of Zeruiah, was chief of another three. He lifted a spear against 300 men, killed them, and won a name among these three. Was he not the most honored of three? Therefore, he became their captain. However, he did not attain to the first three. So there are other people who were more accomplished, but Abishai was right up there with the best of them. Again, this is David's nephew. All right, now, if you also look down, then at verse 24 here, it says, Asahel, the brother of Joab, was one of the 30. Now, that's all it says here, and it's probably because of what happens in the passage we're looking at, but it doesn't say much about him. He is mentioned 15 times, though, and, of course, most of them right here in our passage, here in 2 Samuel. All right, this is the first time he is mentioned in the text. So as we look then at the end of verse 18, we are told he was very fast. Today we might say speedy Gonzales or something, you know, or we think of a deer, of course, in Western PA rather than a wild gazelle, but very fast. I saw a really nice buck the other day. Of course, you never see them at the right time, but at least eight points. But, you know, you watch these animals and they're just beautiful to watch, you know, not the farm raised ones, but the ones in the wild. They're so fast. That's the idea here of Asahel. All right, so verse 19. So Asahel pursued Abner, and in going, he did not turn to the right hand or to the left from following Abner. Pretty straightforward idea here. Apparently, Abner started running away or simply just retreating because, right, verse 17, it says they lost. And so he is leading his men in retreat at the very least. And Asahel says, we're not done yet. And so he pursues without wavering. So then verse 20, that Abner looked behind him and said, are you Asahel? He answered. I am." So Abner, presumably, begins to realize somebody's chasing him. You know, we don't know what's going on. You know, is there a mile in between them or something like that? And Ossiel gets closer and he finally recognizes, hey, there's somebody coming after me or, you know, whatever the scenario. But at some point, he either turns around and specifically asks the question or he looks over his shoulder or something to that effect. And he asks who he was. But notice he knows or suspects that it is Asahel. Maybe it's because he saw him at the pool. Maybe there was some connection at some other time. Maybe he had heard how fast Asahel was and didn't know him to look at him but by this description. But whatever the case, Abner recognizes Asahel and asks and says, yep, I'm coming. Now, let me pause here just a moment. This may seem a bit strange to us because we live in a technological age with pictures everywhere. Probably every one of us, even the children in here, could recognize some of the world leaders. And certainly us as adults, if you see a picture of Putin or Zelensky or President Xi or Kim Jong-un or any of the other major leaders in the country, we'd probably say, yep, I recognize that person. And that's just because we have pictures everywhere. But David, of course, did not have a webpage that listed all of his 600 men with all their pictures and accomplishments and families and so forth. They didn't have pictures. So again, either Abner had met him at the pool or had heard about how fast he was or something to that effect. So hence the question. Verse 21, and Abner said to him, turn aside to your right hand or to your left and lay hold on one of the young men and take his armor for yourself. But Asahel would not turn aside from following him. All right. There are actually three commands in this verse. Abner is being very direct and deliberate. He is warning Asahel. Basically, stop. Don't keep coming. Now, there are some different opinions on how to handle these words of Abner. Some people think he's just mean, he's trying to save his own skin and tells Asahel to go kill one of his own soldiers. Okay, possibly. I think it is more likely that this young man had already died and Abner is telling Asahel to take the spoil from that man and not keep coming. But there are questions here, we don't know Maybe he's just simply saying, go fight somebody else, don't fight me. Whatever the case, Asahel refuses. He does not abide by these commands. So verse 22, so Abner said again to Asahel, turn aside from following me. Why should I strike you to the ground? How then could I face your brother Joab? All right, now let me pause here just a moment. Remember, David's 30 years old. How old is his sister? Well, old enough to have three sons that can fight. How old is Asahel? Presumably, again from the list in 1 Chronicles, he's the youngest of the three. I mean, is he 20 years old? We don't know. But maybe this is in part why Abner is so confident that he's going to win. And he tells him to stop. And then he asks these two questions. And He says, basically, why should I kill you? And then, if I do, I'm going to have to face your brother, and I really don't want to do that. And of course, we know what's going to happen here. And it was prophetic, you might say. So verse 23, however, He, right, Asahel, refused to turn aside. Therefore Abner struck him in the stomach with the blunt end of the spear so that the spear came out of his back. And he fell down there and died on the spot. So it was that as many as came to the place where Asahel fell down and died stood still. All right, well, first of all, Asahel obviously didn't listen, and he continued on. And so Abner defended himself. There's no indication here whatsoever that Abner did wrongly. He's defending himself, like anybody would in battle, or even not in battle. He's defending himself. Now, as for the spear, this has raised some questions. The emphasis here is on the blunt end, right? Not the pointed end, not the sharp end, but the other end. And this was the end that was used to kill Asahel. Now, some people have said or suggested a number of things here. Some people have said, well, you know, maybe Abner just turned around and, you know, jabbed at him with the back end of the spear and it was kind of a freak accident or something like that. Others have said, and I'm inclined to agree with this one, that the spear, especially of a prominent leader, typically had a sharp metal edge on the end of it, the butt end of it. So I mentioned about David and Abishai taking Saul's spear. It was stuck in the ground. They didn't dig a hole or something. They had this metal edge on it that they could just jam it into the ground. It would stand up, and everybody would know that was Saul's spear. The same idea, most likely, would have been the case here with Abner. And so this would make a bit more sense then. If Abner is running and running, right, and Asahel is catching up, and finally Abner stops and he jams back with his spear, and the spear and all the momentum of Asahel right into the stomach and comes right out the back and everything else. Again, we wish there were a few more details here to help explain what was going on, but something like that is probable, and obviously it's not very pleasant. But Abner, notice the emphasis of the author. Abner was defending himself. He does not use the pointed end of the spear. He uses the back end of the spear. And even though it may have had a metal edge to it, it's still the back end. He's defending himself. That's what the author is wanting us to focus on. And so Asahel, of course, dies immediately. And then when everybody else catches up and sees him dead, they just stood there in shock, probably in anger too. And that's where it ends, at least here in this verse. So what are we to learn in these verses? What is the author trying to communicate to us? Well, some might debate this first point I'm going to make, but it appears that the author is trying to communicate, verse 17, David won. Presumably, then Abner and his men are in retreat, but Asahel wouldn't let it lie. Remember, this is a civil war. This isn't just the Philistines. This is, right, fellow Israelites. But he keeps going. Possibly, if Asahel would have remained with the rest of them and not taken off after Abner and so forth, first of all, he wouldn't have died, at least at this point. And maybe others wouldn't have died either. Now we are going to see in verses 24 and following that there is some more skirmish, if you will, that takes place here. But would that have happened if Asahel hadn't run after him and Asahel would have been killed and so forth? If none of that happened, would the rest of it have happened? We're speculating. We don't know. We do see down in verse 30, that you had the 12 men of David die around the pool, Asahel dies, and then there are seven others altogether. And then in verse 31, we see 360 men of Abner, 12 around the pool, and then the rest here in this battle. How many of them would not have died if Asahel didn't go chasing after Abner and then be killed and so on and so forth? We don't know. Again, some people would say, you're reading too much into this. But I'm inclined to think that this is part of the purpose of the author, that Asahel, he created a problem not only for himself but for others. He didn't end when the battle ended. He wanted to take out Abner, maybe for pride, maybe for other reasons, but that this is a fellow Israelite too. Even if all of what I just said is not part of the story, that's not what the author is communicating. The author is still clearly communicating that Abner was not in the wrong in this scenario. Four times he specifically says to Asahel, stop. And then you have the two questions that add to all of that. We could maybe make the case that Asahel was doing justly, this is a war and so forth, and okay, maybe we can say all that, but still, Abner's defending himself. And he had a right to do that. So therefore, once we get to chapter three, and this blood feud with Joab and Abner, Joab's actions are clearly wrong. Now, if Abner would have unjustly killed Asahel, it would be different. That's clearly not what we are told. David specifically says that what Joab did was wrong, and we'll see that in chapter three. And it's wrong because Asahel is really to blame here, not Abner. And so, therefore, Joab is to blame, not Abner. And so, note the next step then. David's not to blame. He's not the bad guy. Ishrusheth is. And Abner is in that sense. But here in this scenario of Asahel, his nephew's death, and then the actions of Joab against Abner in the next chapter, hey, David is blameless in these things. And so once again, we want David as our king. Now he's king of Judah, but he's not king over all Israel yet. And so again, I'm inclined to think that these chapters were written before David was in Jerusalem and it was being circulated, right? David's a good guy. We want him to rule over us. And so this extra effort to defend Abner is ultimately for David's sake, but even for Abner's sake. All right, well, what are some thoughts for ourselves here? Well, on the one hand, we're not in war. We are sitting here, we are not part of the battle. Hey, Rebecca is part of the military and she's part of the war in that sense, yes. And yet on the other hand, all of us are in a war, we're in a spiritual battle. We are fighting against the world, the flesh, and the devil. As we've talked about in Sunday school, we've got the world trying to infiltrate the church. It is a battle and we must be fighting in that sense. And sometimes we are forced to defend ourselves. Sometimes by force, like Abner does. Sometimes maybe not. But you know, when we do this, when we're in these kinds of things, other people get hurt or even killed. And we can talk about intruders coming to our home and trying to break in and so forth. And we might be forced to defend ourselves and that person might be injured or killed. We can talk about the slanderer who comes against us or maybe even somebody else that we know and love. and the gossip and so forth, we can defend ourselves. There is a place for that. You know, even when our children or siblings are playing together and it gets a bit rough and so forth and the one does a bit too much and the other one pushes back and that then leads to a bump on the head or whatever, you know, I mean, these kinds of things happen, you know. I mean, when people defend themselves, sometimes others get hurt. You know, sin leads to all kinds of battles, whether you're talking about war or spiritual or just, if you will, everyday things. These kinds of wars, they're never pretty. Awful things happen. But again, in the end, the ultimate point that I think the author is wanting us to see here is that those who follow after God, seeking his guidance, seeking to follow his will, his word, will find blessing in the end. There may be hardships along the way, there may be hard things along the way like this, even we have a place to defend ourselves, but ultimately it is our job and responsibility to follow where the Lord leads us, to use his word, to seek his guidance and prayer and so forth. I'm not convinced Asahel did that here in this section. So anyway, we're going to stop right in the middle of things here and pick up with the next part of the story, Lord willing, next week. So let's pray together. Our Father in God, we thank you again for your word and the things that you teach us here. We are thankful for the story. It makes it easy for us to understand and follow. And yet, there are times certainly when discerning the broader spiritual point can be difficult. Lord, we ask that you would guide us in the right way there. We are thankful, Lord. that you are on our side, the side of truth and righteousness, that you have made us your children, you've not left us to be on our own, and it's certainly nothing that we deserve. And we are thankful, Lord, that we can trust in the fact that you are a king who will lead us, as we sang about before. But help us then Lord to follow your lead, to follow your guidance, to do the things that you call us to do and not take matters into our own hands like seemingly Asahel has done here and can create lots of problems even for the true believer. And so Lord, we pray for your mercies in this way that you would keep us not turning side to the right or the left and following after you ultimately and your truth and your word and righteousness and holiness. And we are thankful Lord that in the end, no evil, not even the evil of our own hearts will prevail for your people and that you will preserve us in the end and many times Temporally, certainly, ultimately, and eternally. And we are thankful that we have this promise. And so Lord, as John says in Revelation, help us then to overcome, to persevere to the end. No matter what enemies come, whether civil war in our land or other hardships that we may face from day to day, whatever it is, Lord, we pray that you would strengthen us to persevere and to follow after you in all things. And so we pray this, then, through the name of Christ, our great victorious King. And we pray in His name, then. Amen.