The Divine Fulcrum (Part 2 of 2)

When you're facing a tough decision, it's always good to get wise counsel.

As long as you're asking the right people for an opinion. Today on Truth for Life, we'll look at who King David's disloyal son Absalom turned to for counsel. And Alistair Begg shows us the one place we can always go to find security if our circumstances feel uncertain. We're looking at 2 Samuel chapter 17 today. The counsel of Ahithophel at the end of 16 was esteemed. It was esteemed both by Absalom and by David.

This Ahithophel fellow was quite remarkable. And the plan that he provides to Absalom is a plan which, as you read it, marked by brevity. It's succinct, it's clear, it's understandable. It's the kind of thing that many a person at work would like to be able to present before their boss, who asked for an outline of a strategy for something, and the boss said, Well, this is quite wonderful.

You've done a terrific job. Now, when we read it, we might imagine that it is motivated by a desire to protect David. Or it might actually have something of Ahithophel's desire to promote himself. Or it may actually be tied in a way that we have only given passing thought to to the very personal dimension that is contained in the fact that if Ahithophel is, as we have suggested, the grandfather of Bathsheba, what he's actually doing here in this plan is creating it in such a way that it will be possible for him to settle a matter of great personal significance—something that we've suggested has probably led to his defection, something that has eaten away at him day after day and year after year. We said, didn't we, a couple of weeks ago that Ahithophel is a kind of precursor to another dreadful traitor, namely Judas Iscariot? Remember, it was said of Judas that he went out, and it was night? There's a reason why people do things under the cover of darkness.

Let's do this, he said, and we'll do it tonight. What we're going to do is catch him while he's off guard, while he's weary and discouraged. And we know that they had been weary and discouraged. Because back in chapter 15, they had crossed the brook Kidron, and all the people had passed on toward the wilderness.

And in verse 30, he went up, weeping as he went, barefoot with his head covered, and all the people with him covered their heads, and they went weeping as they went. And Ahithophel says, That's the time to strike. Catch them while they're off guard. That way we'll be able to create panic, and if we create panic, it will cause the people to flee, and we will have the victory. Notice also, he's very clear, I will strike down only the king. I'm going to strike down only the king.

We will isolate him, and we'll take him out, and if we do that successfully, which he plans on doing, then that will give me the opportunity to bring all of his followers into your camp, and then finally, in seeking the life of only one man, then all the people will be at peace. It's quite tidy, isn't it? It's got a kind of—and we're all going to live happily ever after. That's the layout.

What's the reaction? You've given it in verse 4. And the advice seemed right in the eyes of Absalom and all the elders of Israel. Well, I think we're set, don't you? The advice has been given. The advice has been received.

Everybody thinks it's a jolly good idea. And I imagine that Ahithophel leaves at this point. If he stays on, he certainly doesn't have a speaking part in what follows. But I imagine that having done what he's been asked to do, he can plan on proceeding accordingly. And then you come to verse 5. Then Absalom said… Now, if you're reading this to your grandchildren or something and you put your hand over it, you say, What do you think Absalom said? Well, you say, Well, I think Absalom said. That was a terrific idea.

We're gonna get on it tonight, and we should be finished with this in no time at all. But no, that's not what he said. What did he say? He said, Call Hushai the Archite also, and let's hear what he has to say. I wonder if Absalom didn't even surprise himself when these words came out of his mouth. Well, let's see what he has to say.

It's always good to get a second opinion, that kind of notion. Now, remember that behind all of this, way back in verse 31 of 15, the prayer has been very, very clear. O LORD, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.

But it doesn't look like it's going to happen, does it? We know that Hushai was in Jerusalem at David's direction to defeat the counsel of Ahithophel. But here we have an opportunity for Hushai to step forward.

I don't think it's beyond the bounds of possibility. When you think about what motivates a person to respond in certain ways at certain times, what we know of Absalom so far, from the tip of his toes to the top of his head, without blemish. Nobody like him. A hairdo that makes that New Age piano player Yanny look like nothing.

A chariot that he likes to sit in and have people come and talk to him. And now his counselor has come with this thing that says, Let me choose the troops. I will go. I will do. I will strike.

Well, you've got a big ego. You might not just like that plan. You might like a plan that's got more of a starring role for you. A starring role for Absalom. And so, having sent for Hushai, Hushai shows up. And verse 6, when Hushai came to Absalom, Absalom said to him, Thus has Ahithophel spoken, shall we do as he says? Well, he just made Hushai's job a lot easier, didn't he?

Because he actually tells him what the Ahithophel plan is, thus giving Hushai the opportunity to bring, if you like, a countering view. Proverbs actually addresses this. The one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him. That's Proverbs 18. The first speech in a court case is always quite convincing until the cross-examination starts. And so Hushai is very quick on his feet. We can move through it with relative ease.

You can do this on your own at home. You can follow the text. He immediately goes on the offensive. Verse 7, Hushai said to Absalom, This time the counsel that Ahithophel has given is not good. Ahithophel is good. Nobody's going to deny the fact that he's good.

He's clearly good, but he wasn't good this time. Furthermore, let's think about what you know, verse 8. You know. Now, the inference here, of course, is you know in a way that Ahithophel doesn't necessarily know. It's always quite engaging, isn't it, to say, Well, we share and understand. You know. Well, you and I know.

You know. You know that your father and his men are mighty men. No, you shouldn't buy the idea of thinking them as weary and discouraged, able to be picked off in a moment, able to be set aside so that the king can be isolated and taken. No!

No, no, no, no, no. No, he says they are enraged, like a bear robbed for cubs in a field. See the use of language? Simile, metaphor?

Very, very good. Because that registers, doesn't it? It doesn't just say he's a bad axe. It's, oh, like a bear with her cubs. Ooh. Yeah.

You see Absalom going, Yeah. And don't kid yourself about the fact that your father is just going to be sitting somewhere and can be picked off. Because you know. You know that your father is an expert in war. He's not going to spend the night with his people, with a big flag up there, army of David, with him sitting there by a campfire, waiting for somebody to come along. Number one, don't think of him as weary and discouraged. Think of him as enraged.

And don't think of him as isolated. You actually should think in the reverse of what has been said. Verse 9, you should rather expect that he and his men will strike. Instead of you being able to go and get him, he will come and get you. And as soon as one or two people are taken down, then panic will spread, the word will go out, there's been a slaughter amongst the army, and he will win. So what he's really done is he's appealed to his ego. You know. He has also stirred in him an awareness of his father's prowess, of which he was absolutely clear. And so, on the strength of that, he gives his advice.

My counsel, verse 11, is that all Israel be gathered to you from Dan to birth Sheba as the sand by the sea for the multitude. And notice this, and that you go to battle in person. You do this. You're the man Absalom.

You go. And furthermore, whatever paltry group Ahithophel is planning on pulling together, whatever twelve thousand means, we're not gonna do twelve thousand. We're gonna do a wholesale deal. We're gonna gather the people from Dan to birth Sheba. It will be a vast company of people.

And once we put a vast company together, you will be leading the charge. You can just imagine Absalom's ego rising with enemies. We begin to see a picture of himself with his hair blowing out front and with this vast company coming behind him. And he's saying to himself, Oh, I wish it was possible to have my chariot here. It would be so good if I could only be in this chariot.

But of course, it would be of no use at all, given the terrain. But nevertheless, in his own mind, there he is. Now, just not forget the divine. Through the use of flowery language, through the use of flattery, through the use of stirring fear, through the very human interaction of hushai and Absalom, God is at work behind the scenes, in the scenes, beyond the scenes, and through the scenes will fall on him, verse 12, the way the dew falls on the morning grass.

You can't go out and get bits of grass that dew doesn't have on unless you left a blanket over it or something like that. It will be a comprehensive discovery. And furthermore, you will notice verse 12b will wipe out the whole company. Let's take the whole group out.

This idea of just going to get the king. Once we wipe out the whole group, there'll be nobody left to oppose you. And by the way, in case you're worried about the possibility that your father may retreat into a city, if he goes into a city, we'll take ropes, we'll attach them, we'll pull the walls down, there'll be nothing left.

There won't even be a pebble left. You see what he's doing? This is your time, Absalom.

This will go down in history as one of the great moments. He's used all of his powers of language. He has, as we now discover, bowled Absalom and the men of Israel over, because there you have it. Verse 14a, and Absalom and all the men of Israel said, The counsel of Ahushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel. Well, what has happened? Ahithophel's plan in verse 4, which he presented and which seemed right—verse 4—"was good counsel"—14b—"for the Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel."

What does that mean? Not that it was good in the moral sense, but it was good counsel in terms of its objective—the objective being to destroy David and his kingdom. But what we have to keep in mind—and I hope you have in your mind—is that God's plan—and we have to go all the way back to chapter 7—God's plan was to establish David's kingdom.

And remember what we said earlier. Your house, your kingdom, shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. That is 2 Samuel 7 verse 16. In other words, the Lord reigns. And he answers David's prayer through the manipulative speech by Hushai. Hushai did not make Ahithophel's advice foolish. He made it appear foolish to Absalom. God's plan was unfolding in this straightforward way—in and through the events, naturally, humanly, freely, the hidden hand of God is working his purpose out.

Now, we need to stop. But we do not… When we study the Bible together, all these things happen, all of these bridges are attempted to be crossed. First of all, the person who's teaching the Bible has to read the Bible, has to study the Bible, has to pray for God's help in understanding the Bible.

Because now that person who has done his best to understand it has got to communicate it to a group of people who may have been doing their homework, but many of them will not have been doing. Therefore, you're starting almost from ground zero every time. How do you bridge that? Well, you can't bridge that. How can I know what you're thinking?

How can I know if you're even thinking? It is a great mystery. And only if anything has ever affected, it is affected by the Spirit of God. But all of us together do not study now engaged with one another in a vacuum. We've come out of our own world. We live in our own culture.

We have our own friends and our neighbors, our own business, our own stuff. Therefore, all of that is interspersed with it as well. We've got to understand what was going on seven hundred years or a thousand years before Jesus. And then we've got to come to all these two thousand years after Jesus, and then we've got to try and make sense of it all. It's fantastic!

I mean, it's a privilege beyond order. So let me just tell you how I was articulating this during the week. Not in a vacuum and not in a preoccupied way, but I'm fascinated by the fact that we're seven days away from the whole world turning its gaze on my hometown, Glasgow. Because within a week, the nations of the world are arriving in Glasgow. You know this, I think—you pay attention to the news—for the United Nations Climate Change Conference. And already the rhetoric is quite striking. Let me just show you two pictures.

Well, someone will show you two pictures. One is here by America's Climate Envoy, who says, The COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow is the last best hope for the world to get its act together. Now, I was born in Glasgow. Terry McCutcheon lives in Glasgow.

He sent me a text this week. He said, We are in deep trouble. If the best hope for the world is in Glasgow, we got a real problem on our hands.

That's like saying the best hope for the world is in… Well, let's just leave it in Glasgow. As I was absorbing that, I then came on a short video by none other than the prince. Okay? It is hard for me to miss the irony of this picture, as in this short video introduction to the climate conference, he literally holds the world in his hands. I looked at that, and I got my Bible, and I read, Do you not know?

Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a curtain, he spreads them like a tent to dwell in, he brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.

Now, whatever your view is on climate change, that's irrelevant to me at the moment. But the fact of the matter is that the security of our world is in the providence of God—the security of our big world and our little worlds—because it is his sovereignty that lies in and beyond and behind and through all of our conversations, all of our activities, all of the cries of our lives. You get back to Monday tomorrow, you and I only see the surface of it. We only see the everyday routines, the school runs, the grocery lines, the hellos, the goodbyes of friends and lovers, the missteps, the broken bits and pieces. And in it all, and through it all, God at work, judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace.

Behind a frowning providence he hides a smiling face. Forty-two Hebrew words from Ahithophel, one twenty-nine from Hushai, and fourteen from the narrator—by far the most important words of all. Do you believe this? Oh, I trust so! Let us pray. In heavenly love abiding, No change my heart shall fear, And safe as such confiding, For nothing changes here. The storm may roar about me, My heart may low be laid, But God is round about me.

And shall I be dismayed? Father, we entrust ourselves to you. In Jesus' name.

Amen. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life as he reminds us of God's sovereign control. A message like the one we've heard today reminds us that God is faithful.

His promises are good. Our mission at Truth for Life is to teach the Bible. We aim to do it in a way that will assure you of the reliability of Scripture. And we believe you'll find it easier to trust God if you spend consistent time studying his word. And the New Testament is a great place to start. If you are new to reading the Bible, if you've never read through the entire New Testament, let me recommend to you a book we're featuring today. It's titled The Daily Devotional New Testament. In this book over the course of a year, you'll be guided day by day through all four Gospels, all of the Epistles, and the book of Revelation.

It's an easy-to-follow book. It presents two daily readings from the New Testament along with a couple of verses from Psalms. Then there is a brief reflection after each excerpt to help you think through the teaching and apply it to your life. Each day's devotion ends with some thoughts for prayer. This Daily Devotional New Testament comes highly recommended from Alistair. In fact, he wrote the foreword, and this is a book he makes available to anyone who visits Parkside Church, his home church in Ohio. You can request The Daily Devotional New Testament when you donate today. You can give a one-time gift at truthforlife.org slash donate, or you can arrange to set up an automatic monthly donation when you visit truthforlife.org slash truthpartner. Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow we'll learn how God often fulfills his plans in unexpected ways using unexpected people. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.