Thank you. 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 Counts 17 today. The Council of Ahithafel at the end of 16 was esteemed.

It was esteemed both by Absalom and by David.

This Ahithel fellow was quite remarkable.

And the plan that he provides to Absalom is a plan, which is, 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 a Hithafel'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 Ahithafel 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

Athophel is a kind of precursor to another dreadful traitor, namely Judas Ascariot.

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,

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