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Now, watch what Abner does, because David isn't being heavy-handed here. David just says, well, you know what, God, do you want me to come into Judah? God says yes, he comes into Judah, the people anoint him. He kind of puts out a feeler to the other tribes and says, hey, I've been anointed, king of Judah. He's not pushing it. But look what Abner does. Abner is the guy who has the power in the northern kingdom. Now that Saul's gone, the captain of the host Abner, basically the main general under King Saul, is the one with all the power. Because Saul's sons that are left are weak men. Saul's strong son was named what? Who was the strong leader amongst Saul's sons? Jonathan, and he's dead. A couple of Saul's other sons are dead. So now we just have this weak men left in the house of Saul. So Abner is the one with the real power. He'll kind of prop one up and prop somebody else up, but it's Abner that's the boss. It says in verse number 12, and Abner, the son of Ner, and the servants of Ishbashet, the son of Saul, went out from Manam to Gibeon. So he's coming aggressively toward the armies of Judah. So then the armies of Judah go out to meet him, it says in verse 13, and Joab, the son of Zeruiah, and the servants of David, went out and met together by the pool of Gibeon. And they sat down, the one on the one side of the pool and the other on the other side of the pool. And Abner said to Joab, let the young men now rise and play before us. And Joab said, let them arise. Then there arose and went over by number 12 of Benjamin, which pertained to Ishbashet, the son of Saul, and 12 of the servants of David. And they caught everyone his fellow by the head and thrust his sword in his fellow's side, so they fell down together. Therefore that place was called Hellkath Hazoram, which is in Gibeon. Now there are a few things about this story that should jump out at you right away. Okay, number one, kind of a strange choice of words in verse 14, when Abner said to Joab, yet the young men now arise and play before us. Now this is a game where you get killed. And in fact, in this particular game where they're playing, in fact, everybody gets killed. 12 men versus 12, and they all kill each other and die. You know, I don't think that anything in the Bible is incidental, coincidental, or accidental. And I believe that God is trying to show us something here. There's something to be learned from this story about warfare, I believe. Because what this shows me right away is that a lot of times the architects of warfare, to them it's just a game. They're not the one that's out there dying and being slaughtered and spilling their blood. And so to them it's playing. It's a game. It's like a video game to them. You know, where you move troops around, or maybe like a game of Risk, where you play and you take over and invade and you laugh and you roll the dice and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and you know what, all kinds of little pieces of plastic are being removed from the board and thrown away. And then, you know, you just pull another card and get the reinforcements in there. Just bring in some troops, you know, move them around, just get some more. And then when you run out of troops of one color, when you're playing Risk, what do you do? Does anybody here play Risk? Am I the only person who plays Risk? Put up your hand if you play Risk. What do you do when you run out of a color? You get another color, right? And you're like, oh, we're out of red? And I'm red? Well then, let's grab green. Let's grab blue. Let's use that. You know, mercenaries. You bring in the mercenaries, you know, you bring in another color and start using them. But you know what? They're just plastic. It's just a game. But you know what? Real life warfare is not a game. It's not playing. Real human beings, souls, people for whom Christ died are the ones who are bleeding and dying on the battlefield. And the Bible here is showing us a scenario that is a bad scenario because of the fact that first of all, somebody's not in the will of God in this story. Who did God say was going to be the king after Saul? I mean, God made it clear, didn't He? He said through Samuel the prophet over and over again, hey, there's a man that's going to be anointed king. He's better than thou. And even Saul knew it. That's why Saul even wanted to kill David in the first place, because he knew that David was the one that would be king. We know what the will of God is here, that David would be king. Abner wants to resist God's will, and he's just getting all these troops slaughtered in his fight against what God wants. And eventually himself, he's going to be killed also. But we see that somebody is doing wrong here for this warfare to exist. You see, in a perfect world, there wouldn't be any warfare, okay? There is not a good, wonderful, joyous thing that we should seek after.