So let us hear then God's word from 2 Samuel 2, beginning in verse 24. Joab and Abishai also pursued Abner. And the sun was going down when they came to the hill of Ammah, 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 top of the hill. Then Abner called to Joab and said, Shall the sword devour forever? Do you not know that 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, they were missing of David's servants, nineteen men, and Asahel. But the servants of David had struck down of Benjamin and Abner's men, three hundred and sixty men, who died. Then they took up Asahel 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. May God add his blessing to the reading and hearing of his holy word. Amen. Well, thus far, we have seen God establish David as king in Hebron, fulfilling his promises to him. We've also seen Abner establish Ishbosheth as king in Mahanaim, refusing to obey God. So not surprisingly then, this led to civil war in Israel. They began the civil war, you might say civilly. They had this representative combat where there were 12 against 12. The idea, of course, is that the winner of this smaller battle would determine the winner of the whole war. But just like it didn't work very well with David and Goliath, it didn't work so well here either. There still was a large-scale warfare that followed. Regardless, David's side won because David was on God's side. No evil can ever overcome God's kingdom and the people who are a part of it. There may be momentary success, but certainly not ultimately. Well, we also saw excuse me, Asahel refusing to stop fighting and pursued Abner until Abner was forced to defend himself. And so he killed Asahel not with the pointed end of the spear, you might say in aggression on his part, but with the butt end of the spear in self-defense. And so the author is very, intent on trying to show to us that Abner was not to blame here in this situation. But we now continue the story and we have two more subsections here. Probably the best way of subdividing it here is verses 24 to 29 and then verse 30 through chapter 3 verse 1. But you might say that the edges of these divisions are rather blurred because verse 29 could go with what comes before or even what comes after and that's especially true of chapter 3 verse 1. I was just reading even this morning how there is clear evidence that the Jews subdivided the text over the years and the centuries and so on but it was about 700 years ago and then Christians put chapters and verses in and so forth. And so this is somewhat arbitrary, can you say, that they put the chapter vision where they did? And I'll say more about that when we get there. But as we recognize some transition and blurring of divisional lines here, this first one maybe we can call the pursuit and the truce. And so let's look at this here briefly here this evening. So verse 24 again reads, Joab and Abishai also pursued Abner. The sun was going down when they came to the hill of Ammah, which is before Gaia, by the road to the wilderness of Gibeon. And so, like Asahel pursued after Abner, so now Joab and Abishai do the same thing, and probably with extra zeal. It is likely the case that Joab and his brother now know that their brother Asahel is dead. Now, let me pause and just say this. They didn't have earpieces in communicating with headquarters. They didn't have walkie-talkies or any other forms of communication that we might be used to in military combat. It is possible that they didn't know yet that their brother was dead. I think it is more likely that they had heard that their brother had died, it is possible that Joab came up upon his dead brother and saw for himself that he was dead. And even though that is, in my view, a probable situation that they know that he has died, it is also quite probable that they didn't know how he died yet. Maybe they saw him lying there but didn't know. Maybe they presumed it was the front end of the spear and not the back end at this point. Maybe there were people nearby that saw what happened and communicated it. Maybe it's Abner himself that communicates what happened and the author hears about it at a later time or something to that effect. But though we are left with some questions specifically about what happened, clearly they pursue after Abner. And it says that the sun is setting. Now this could mean, like right now, it's getting close unto dark. It also could mean that it's just past noon, and so say it's one in the afternoon, and so it's just beginning to come down. Notice how it gives us a little bit of a realistic detail, and we'll have to see how it fits in with some of the later verses here in a moment. All right, so they pursue, and it's now after lunch or even beyond, and it says, they came to the hill of Ammah. Now the pronoun there is repeated. They, they came. So why the emphasis? Well, I think the suggestion is they came with energy and zeal, you might say. They're not stopping in their pursuit of Abner. They came. suggest to us because of what happened with Asahel. There's more animosity now. Again, they might not know how things went down, but it does seem to suggest that they know that their brother is dead. And so they come here to this hill of Ammah, and these other place names are given. So here's one of the times I want us to look at our maps here briefly tonight. Again, I'm going to use the land of the 12 tribes ones as I've used before. If you have another one in your Bibles or something like that, look for the tribe of Benjamin. And remember they were fighting at Gibeon, the pool there, and on this map you see that. Remember Gibeon was just a couple miles eastward where Saul had his capital. And we really don't know where these places are, not specifically. But what we can say is they're heading eastward. They're heading toward the Jordan River. They're going to eventually get back to Mahanaim. So they're going in that direction. The fact that some Benjamites are going to join them, certainly it would indicate that they're going through the tribe of Benjamin. On my particular map, maybe they come to the A in Benjamin, the name, or something like that. Again, we don't know for sure where these places were, but they came to this hill heading eastward from the pool. Now, we'll look at this here again in a moment or so. So, let's look then at verse 25. Now, the children of Benjamin gathered together behind Abner and became a unit and took their stand on the top of a hill. All right, now, likely Abner is not leading a unified group in retreat. It is possible that Asahel was chasing down Abner and Abner had, whatever, 200 soldiers around him. But it does suggest to us that there was a more of an everyman-for-himself kind of retreat and maybe they were going to meet up at some general location and so forth. But we have an indication now that some Benjamites join up with Abner. Now in verse 15, we saw that too, right? Because it was the 12 Benjamites that fought with 12 of David's men. And now here they come to Abner and form a unit. It suggests to us that he probably received some reinforcements along the way back. as he escaped through Benjamin. So, though again there's some details that we can't say for sure, it does sound like the Abner's men here now join up with some Benjamites, some new Benjamites, and they establish themselves on the high ground on this hill. They're seeking an advantage against Joab and the men of David. So then verse 26, and Abner called to Joab and said, shall the sword devour forever? Do you not know that it will be bitter in the latter end? How long will it be then till you tell the people to return from pursuing their brethren? All right. Well, Joab obviously catches up to Abner. Is it just a few minutes delay? Is it an hour or two? We don't know. Since they're on the top of a hill, it is likely that Abner could see Joab and his men coming. And maybe he sees how many people are still with Joab and he's like, well, you know, we better stop this before we're totally annihilated. Joab may have seen the men of Abner forming on the top of this hill from a distance. But once they got close enough, here now Abner calls out, for Joab and the rest to hear. His words, though they're on high ground, and supposedly, right, you have the advantage of being on high ground, his words indicate that he does not expect to survive for very long. How long will you fight? This will not end well for either side. Call off your men. We are brothers, right? Fellow Israelites, you're not fighting Philistines or Amalekites or Moabites. These are your brethren. Abner does not want endless war. Live by the sword, die by the sword kind of idea. But I think it's probably safe to say that Abner, if he were on the winning side, would not have said this. The fact that he is on the losing side certainly contributes to his words. So he wants a truce. But his words are true, aren't they? They are brothers fighting, fellow Israelites. And it's not a good thing. So even though his words are probably conditioned by the circumstances, nevertheless, his words are true. The sword does devour forever. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. All right, verse 27, and Joab said, as God lives, unless you had spoken, surely then by morning all the people would have given up pursuing their brethren. All right, now that's the New King James. If you have another translation, it's probably worded a little bit differently, and that's because the Hebrew is somewhat awkward here. We're not quite sure exactly how to translate it, but most likely the idea is something like this. And I'm going to paraphrase here. We would have continued to pursue you all night until morning. So again, the Hebrew is challenging, but that seems to be the idea. The implication here is that Joab would have killed Abner and his army, possibly to every last man. if Abner had not called for this truth – truce, I should say. And so, here is Joab now swearing to God, I swear to God, truth be told, hey, let me be completely honest with you here as God lives, our plan was to annihilate you. So, verse 28. So Joab blew a trumpet, and all the people stood still and did not pursue Israel anymore, nor did they fight anymore. So Abner calls for the truce, Joab agrees, he call off the fight, and he blows the horn. Now, New King James uses the word trumpet here, and we think of a trumpet in a marching band or something like that. This is the shofar, this is the ram's horn that was used, and surely they would have had a particular call on the ram's horn that would give this direction. especially if Joab's men had started to spread out around the hill surrounding it or something like that, now they could hear the signal to stop fighting. And so they did. Not all they did, and it's quite possible, if not probable, that some of the men did not hear this conversation, but they certainly heard the ram's horn. All right, so then, verse 29. 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. All right, so let's look at our map here again a moment and basically continue going eastward. Wherever they were specifically in Benjamin, now they're heading toward the Jordan River and they cross over. It talks about the plain here. It is possible that they crossed where Israel did near Jericho. many years before. Maybe they're moving further north. This reference to Bithyron is uncertain. We don't know exactly if that was a place name or should we translate it as a ravine. And if you have another translation, you may have something there, a footnote or whatever. The point is, whatever the details are, they're heading back to Ishtbesheth and Mahanaim. And they go after this truce. And it says they go all night. They do not delay. And they eventually arrive there. Because of the Philistines in the area, maybe they cross further south. We don't know. But if you look on your map, especially this map that I have for you, you can see where the Javak River flows into the Jordan. Some suggest this is where this ravine, this Bithrone was. But again, whatever the case, we get the overall point clearly. All right, now, as I said, this is kind of a blurred line here of division, and we can include it in verse 29, but let me pause here at this point and just remind us of maybe an obvious point to us, and that is, war is awful. It's just mind-boggling to me when you hear people talking about the glory of war. Or we talk about the heroes in war, and I don't want to diminish anything a person has done to fight against the enemy and save his comrades or any of those kinds of things, but war is awful. If you've been paying any attention or seen any of the videos or pictures or descriptions of what has been happening with Israel and Hamas, it's just awful. ran across an article that had interviewed Israelites in morgues and how they had to prepare bodies for a funeral. And as you probably know, the Israelites prepare the body in a very specific way. They don't do it like we tend to do with embalming and so forth. But the description is just horrific. horrendous. The description of what some of these women went through, raped so severely that some of their pelvises were broken. It's just awful stuff. And it's not just Hamas that does these kinds of things. We've seen descriptions in Ukraine, Russia, and certainly from previous wars. War is dreadful. It's not something for us to glory in. It is an effect of sin. And even if we can say that the war is just, it's just, it's a result of sin in general. We live in a sinful world. But you know, when we're talking about a civil war, it's even worse because now you have people fighting against their friends or even their family. Certainly, as Abner said, they were. They were family members fighting against each other. Now, extended family, but nevertheless, they were all related. As we think about the United States Civil War, there literally were brothers fighting against actual brothers in the North and the South, fellow Americans, surely. Today, some have said that we are in a Civil War, and others have said that bloodshed may come soon, but we have various kinds of wars. You might call them not a war or a lesser kind of war, but how many families were divided over whether or not to wear a mask here in the last few years or to get a shot? How many churches had wars, as it were, over whether or not we should have a shutdown or they were over the woke teaching in the church, the looming catastrophe in evangelicalism as we hear about. But there are wars in churches even over the color of the carpet and other meaningless things. Others have wars over sexual abuse or theological differences in the church. But we've also seen in our culture the Antifa groups, the BLM riots, and so forth. We've seen the staged event on January 6th. We still see and hear about shouts and shoving at pride events, or Christians being arrested for praying at abortion clinics. We have the law affair situation going on where the law is used especially against conservatives in our culture and even in other parts of the world. These are all versions of war. Maybe there's no bloodshed, maybe there are no guns or swords used, but people fight against each other. It's sin. Some of it may be necessary, some of it may be just, but it's sin. It's wrong, it's awful, and it happens when we don't obey. It happens when we do not follow God's guidance. David certainly was. When Joab followed David, he did pretty well. And as we're going to see, there were many times he didn't. Abner, of course, was not following God. And so we have all this mess. War is awful. And as we read about these events in Israel, It's easy for us to say, yay, go David. And in one sense you can understand that, on the other hand, it's just, it's terrible that this has to be the case. It's bad enough you have to fight against the Amalekites or the Philistines, but to fight against your own people? All right, well, with that briefly in mind then, let's come to our next section. And again, we've already transitioned a little bit here. Abner now is heading back. to Ishvosheth, and so verse 30, so Joab returned from pursuing Abner. And when he had gathered all the people together, they were missing of David's servants, 19 men, and Asahel. Now we'll see they're heading to Hebron here as well. All right, now. Joab, on his way back then, starts counting heads. Presumably, they do this before they actually leave this hill, or maybe they move to some location and then count heads. And we learn that 20 have died. 12, of course, died at this representative combat. Asahel died in pursuing Abner, and so there are seven, excuse me, additional men of David that have died. Maybe if they didn't have the representative combat, there would have been less than 20. But nevertheless, this is the count. That's 20 people, 20 Israelites who died at the hands of another Israelite. Now Asahel obviously is listed separately because this is Joab's brother. This is David's nephew. So you can understand why they list him separately. As I suggested to you before, it is likely the case that Joab already knew that his brother was killed. But it is possible that it's not now until they start counting heads at the end of all this that now he knows. They take the role, Asahel's not there, maybe now Joab hears the word. His quick agreement to stop the fight would make sense if he did not know that Abner had killed his brother. But, on the other hand, I would suspect that word would have spread quickly to Joe Abner regarding his brother. He probably already knew. And so therefore, if that's the case, Joab's quick agreement may simply be because he wants to get home to family and mourn together. Whatever the case, Asahel's dead along with 19 others. So now verse 31. But the servants of David had struck down of Benjamin and Abder's men 360 men who died. All right, now in this description, it does seem to help answer some of the questions we had before about the Benjamites. It sounds like the Benjamites joined with Abner after Abner got there, or even as he's leaving in retreat in this final stand on the hill. But the key point, of course, is that David is successful. His men lost 20, but his men killed 360 of Abner's men. It was a rout. No wonder Abner wanted a truce. Unfortunately, we're not talking 360 Philistines, but fellow Israelites. So then verse 32, then they took up Asahel 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. All right, we've all been to funerals. Of course, the McCoys are there right now, I would assume. And yeah, this is hard. Hey, don't just skim over these words. Here is Joab taking his dead brother to their homestead. All right, they're in Hebron, yes, but they're from Bethlehem. And so he takes them there. David's hometown. Remember, this is David's nephew, so it's his sister's boy. And it says here about burying him in the family tomb, his father's tomb. Now, does this mean that the father had already died? Does this mean the Zeruiah was a widow? Possibly. Maybe father, in the Hebrews, sometimes father is referring to grandfather or great-grandfather or something like that, so maybe this is referring to Jesse's tomb. Or it could mean not Zeruiah's father, but the husband's father, so maybe a tomb on that side of the family. Whatever the case, they place Asahel here, probably in a cave, and they mourn him. They mourned him. It is, again, possible, we wish there were more details, but maybe they stayed in Bethlehem for a time to mourn Asahel. Maybe they spent a few days to do that. There's all this mourning, this time of, can you say, celebrating the dead as well as mourning the dead, remembering Asahel, and spending time together for a few days. Maybe that's what happened. But the fact that the verse just immediately goes on and says, they went all night and came to Hebron at daybreak, suggests that they didn't spend a lot of time doing this. In fact, as you put it all together, it suggests to us that Joab and his men left the hill in Benjamin, traveled the roughly 10 to 15 miles to Bethlehem, hastily buried Asahel and said their tearful highs and goodbyes, as it were, to the family, the extended family, and then traveled all night to Hebron, which is another 15 to 20 miles away. And it's likely that is the case, and thus likely that they were eager to return so that David's sister, presumably there in Hebron, would know about it. Now, maybe she is in Bethlehem. And then the rest of the families would want to know about their 19 sons, husbands, fathers, and their death too. And so the text suggests to us they didn't waste any time. Now let me pause here and have us reflect on this point. You know, it's easy for us to read these words. David won. It was a rout. This is great. Hey, 20 versus 360. You know, our tendency is to talk about the dead and the wounded in this rather abstract kind of victorious way. It's easy for us to say, last count I heard, is there are 1,400 who have died in Israel and there are several dozens more that have died from other countries at this music festival and so forth. And then there are thousands of wounded and so forth. It's easy for us to throw numbers around like this, or even if we talk about the lie, I'm sure you've heard about the attack on the hospital in Gaza, and supposedly 500 people died, and supposedly Israel did it, but actually there is plenty of evidence to say that the people of Hamas did it themselves, and maybe 50 died. And so, you know, we say, okay, well, it's only 50, it's not 500. But it's still 50. is still 20. We throw numbers around and act like it's no big deal sometimes. Every one of these people is an image bearer. Now, yes, it is true. Sin deserves death. And God is honored and glorified when a sinner dies and is judged for their sin. But let's not be calloused about it. The death of Iranians, of Palestinians, of Hamas, that's an evil, too. That's awful, too. Because many, if not all of them, are going to be in hell forever. This is an awful thing. Now, we don't know if the 360 men of Habner were all unbelievers. We don't know some of those things. The point I'm trying to make simply is this, war is terrible. And let's not get wrapped up in the hype of how wonderful it is that so and so won. I do not understand how any believer can be a war hawk. I don't see how any believer can say, well, all the Russians are bad and all the Ukrainians are good. I don't even see how a Christian can say, that abortion is justified for any reason. War, death, evil, all this is hell on earth, you could say. Mourn the dead, not just the loved ones who have died. And I tried to communicate this idea in our home in this way. There have been times where we've butchered our own chickens and other times we've had someone else do it for us. But when we have done it, I remember very distinctively talking to the children, especially Nathaniel and Anna in this particular situation I'm thinking of, and saying, but you know, all death is a sad thing. Because the comment was, I'm glad that chicken's dying because that chicken was mean. I didn't like that one. Okay, yeah, that was true, that chicken was rather mean, but my point was, look, all death is a result of sin. Let's not say, oh, I'm really glad that those BLM activists died in their raid. They're in hell now, probably. It's awful. So as we're reading these verses, let's not get caught up in the hype, you might say. As we're hearing about the numbers in Israel or Ukraine or anywhere else, let's not get caught up in all of this. It's death, it's terrible. So a few thoughts here in this way. Let's now look at chapter three, verse one. And again, as I said a few moments ago, there is this division here, not sure where to divide it. Let me read it again and notice there are two sentences here. Now, there was a long war between the house of Saul and the house of David. And then secondly, but David grew stronger and stronger and the house of Saul grew weaker and weaker. I'm inclined to think that the break is best between the sentences. Again, they added verse divisions and such many, many centuries after it was written. And so this first sentence seems to end chapter two, but then also transition us to the second sentence which leads us to more of what we see in chapter three. And so we're gonna see how Ish-bosheth grew weaker and David grew stronger in chapter three. But let's focus here on this first sentence tonight. This war between Joab and Abner, between the house of Saul and Ish-bosheth and the house of David was a long war, we are told. Now, how do we understand this? Ishvosheth only rules for two years. That's long enough to have a civil war. But is that what the author has in mind? If we go back to Saul, the first time he threw his spear at David, up to this time, you're probably talking 10 or 15 years. That's rather long. And things continue after this, even after Ishmael is dead and David is ruling in Jerusalem. We're going to see David reclaiming Michael in that situation. Even later, when David is driven out of Jerusalem, Mephibosheth is on David's side, but there are others who are not. And they talk about Saul and all this war and so forth. Even in chapter 21, when David brings justice for the Gibeonites, It is justice against Saul's house. There are people in Saul's house who are put to death because of all of this. So I'm inclined to say that this long war is not just this narrow scenario with Ish-bosheth, but began with Saul and will continue even into chapter 21. Now then, it raises another question. Should we understand the primary point of this continuing war between Abner and Joab's men for these two years, and that this, what we have just seen, is a key example of this long war, and that there are others that follow this? Or should we understand verse 28 to mean that this is the final one, that there were wars prior to this? And as verse 28 says, they did not fight anymore. Does this mean this is the last one? They were tired of fighting with their brothers. There are many questions. And as we go through the next verses, maybe we'll get some more clue as to how to understand this. But the key idea is that war is not a momentary act. A civil war is even more so. Israel was impacted for years by this, even after David became king over all Israel. And so the author, as we have seen many times, is going out of his way to defend David. In this case, he is saying, look, David's on the winning side. Not because he is heartless in regard to death of fellow Israelites, but he's trying to say David's the good guy, Saul's the bad guy, that's why there's all this mess. As we think again of our own civil war in our own country, the civil war still resonates today, doesn't it? In a sense, we still are in a civil war. When we lived in the South, we often heard about the War of Northern Aggression. It wasn't the Civil War. It was maybe the war between the states, but many times it was the War of Northern Aggression. Even today we hear about people calling for reparations, and the race card, of course, is used over and over again to divide us today. War has far ranging implications and consequences. And again, I think that's the primary emphasis here. Look at how terrible this is. But let us go back to where we started this chapter. If we seek after the Lord like David did, There are blessings even in the midst of these awful things. When we are on God's side, He does fight for us. There are gonna be oppositions. There are gonna be terrible things even because we live in a sinful world. But let's seek the Lord. Let us follow Him. And that includes even Joab should follow Him as we're gonna see. So anyway, a few thoughts here from these verses and stuff for us to ponder and consider. So, Lord willing, next time we will look at how David is growing stronger and Ish-bosheth grows weaker. Let's pray together. Our Father, our God, we thank you again for your word. And we are thankful, Lord, that You are one to which we can turn. You are one that we can follow and that will guide us to righteousness. But Lord of course you know far better than we do of our sin and our propensity to fight and to oppose and to insist on our way and whether we're talking about actual war or war of words or just insisting on doing it my way against somebody else in our families or at work or whatever. Lord, sin is terrible. The consequences, as we've seen in Romans 1, are so far reaching the social sins that are a result of our sins against you are certainly played out here in this passage. And so, Lord, we pray that we would have the right view, and not this view of glorying in war, but a view of sadness, of sorrow. Just pray, Lord, that you would help us to see these evils and not explain them away, but understand them for what they are. And may it cause us then to turn to you and away from sin. And so we thank you again for your word and the model of David in this way, following after you. And we pray that you would strengthen us to do the same, especially as we live in a world that is so filled with sin and the evils that result. So Lord, we pray for your mercies in this way and that we would have a heart that follows after you And that we would love the things that you love and hate the things that you hate. We pray all of this then in Jesus' name. Amen.