Episode Transcript
Proverbs 11, verse 14, the title of the message tonight is "Ships Without Sails."
When I grew up, we didn't hear too much about counseling.
I can't remember anybody talk about counseling when I grew up.
And now it seems like everybody is going to counseling for something.
And some of the things that go to counseling for it, seems like things that you would just normally be able to cope with.
But it seems like everybody is going to counseling, people pay for professional counseling all the time, yet the world isn't getting any wiser.
And tonight Solomon is going to talk about the importance of true counsel.
Counseling is great as long as it's biblical counseling.
So the Bible says here tonight, "Where no counsel is."
That's the first thing we're going to be looking at.
"Where no counsel is."
The Hebrew word translated "counsel" tonight means "steering."
Steering.
That kind of makes sense, doesn't it?
Someone guiding you, staring in the right direction.
I noticed, I listened to Brother Shepherd Sunday School this morning as I was exercising.
He talked about someone steering someone off the wrong direction.
He happened to mention that Sunday.
And Solomon is talking about a place where no steering is.
Anyone who's ever sailed a ship, ridden a horse, drove a car, or flew a plane knows the importance of steering.
Steering is guidance.
Steering is direction.
And the Hebrew root word from which our word tonight comes is describing a rope.
If you remember the ships, when you manipulated those cells, you would use ropes.
And that's literally what this Hebrew root word is talking about, is talking about a rope.
No matter how great a ship is, you can have the best built ship, the biggest ship, the tightest ship, and the greatest captain.
Without steering, it's a ship that's out of control.
The devil would argue, "Oh no, no, no, without cells on a ship, that ship is free.
It's free.
It's not encumbered by the cells with someone telling it where to go all the time.
That ship is free."
He would contend that putting cells on a ship would restrict its liberty and its ability to travel at will.
And you know, when you put it that way, it almost sounds reasonable.
I mean, we're all about freedom here in the United States.
It almost sounds like a cruel thing to do, putting cells on a ship.
Set that thing free to go where it wants.
And the devil will take that kind of flawed logic, and he'll tell people that any God-fearing leader that tries to impose godly standards on our community is a fascist and a threat to freedom and democracy.
That's how they would spin it.
And then in the name of advancing freedom, the world will then forbid your moral standards while imposing their immoral standards on you, all in the name of freedom.
The truth is, without cells, a ship isn't free at all.
Without cells, a ship is in bondage to the wind.
That's the truth.
Without cells, it can only go where the wind tells it to go in nowhere else.
And in the same way without counsel, people can only go the direction this fallen world takes them.
They're going to default to their fallen flesh.
As a ship needs cells, so people need counsel.
Here's a kingdom truth for you tonight.
Cells take a ship's control out of the storm's hands and put it in the captain's hands.
That's what cells do.
A cell in a ship, it takes the control of that ship out of a storm's hands and it puts it into the captain's hands.
This type of steering that Solomon is talking about tonight is not the kind that steers the cells of a ship.
It's the kind that steers the mind of a person, the minds of people.
Like the cells in a ship, godly counsel, it takes a nation's control out of the hands of the fallen world and it puts the control of that nation into the hands of the one who made it.
That's true freedom.
No matter how great a ship is, without steering that ship is out of control and in the same way no matter how great a nation is, without steering that nation is out of control.
Solomon said where no counsel is, the people fall.
You might want to underscore that word people.
The people fall.
You ever heard this?
We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.
That's the way this word people is used tonight.
In the Hebrew, it's speaking about people as a unit, as a collective group, not as an individual.
And that's important.
It doesn't say where no counsel is, a person falls.
It says where no counsel is, the people.
Not people, the people fall.
A collective group.
So we're talking about a city here, for example.
We're talking about a nation, for example.
Spiritually, we're talking about a church, a local church, for example.
Without counsel, these places fall in failure and defeat.
And because of this, Satan knows this.
So Satan attacks a nation.
He attacks a city.
He attacks a church by attacking its capability to steer.
Brother Shepherd knows, back when we were in the highway patrol, they came out with this really nifty device.
It was brand new at the time.
Up until this time, all we could use was a shotgun.
You blow the tires off a car.
But boy, one day, we got called over to the sergeant's office, and they had these really neat devices, and we got this training on this spike system.
And boy, when the cars come, you take these spikes.
You can sit them on that side of the road over there.
You run your cord across, and you go hide over here.
When that car comes, just drag the spikes across them.
It puts the air out of the tires.
Which tires do you want to get first, Brother Shepherd?
Front two.
You got the front two?
Why?
That's how you steer.
That's how you steer.
And we want to attack the person's capability to steer that vehicle.
And the devil attacks a nation, a church, and a city.
He attacks his capability to steer.
He cuts the ropes to a church's cells, to a nation's cells, by cutting off its counsel.
Devil tells a generation of people, "Be free thinkers."
A lot of that started back in the '60s.
But be free thinkers.
He tells them to reject organized religion.
I hear so many people say that, and they say it.
They've heard people say it, so then they repeat it.
And they repeat it with confidence as if they're very knowledgeable when they say it.
I'm not into organized religion.
It's foolish.
It's just a foolish thing to say.
God is the most organized person there is.
The whole world is organized.
The church is organized.
The epistles give the organization and the structure.
God gives organization to our body physically.
He gives organization to his body spiritually, the church.
He gave it ahead.
He gave it members.
He gave the Holy Spirit to disseminate to everyone a particular measure of faith so that body can function as an organized organism.
But they say, "Well, we're not into organized religion as if the way to go is to have disorganized religion."
It's foolish.
He cuts off their counsel by telling people that there are no absolute rights and wrongs to go by.
That truth can be whatever you want it to be.
And once you convince a nation of these lies, the ropes are cut.
The ship is lost at steering.
And now that nation or that church is at the mercy of the chaotic wind.
The devil puts his own false preachers in the pulpit.
That's one of the ways he does it.
He puts his false preachers in the pulpit to steer them in the wrong direction, to discredit the Scripture.
A lot of times to discredit religion altogether.
Puts them up there, makes a fool out of them.
Then the whole world laughs at Christianity as if that was real Christianity and it wasn't.
He puts his own teachers in the classroom and uses them to discredit the Bible.
And by doing so, he is systematically cutting the ropes that steer our churches and our societies so he can cause them to fall, those organizations to fall.
Without godly counsel, the world is driven by the godless wind.
Not if you look back in your text, but in the multitude of counselors, there is safety.
In the multitude of counselors, there is safety.
Let me explain this to you the way I believe it's actually worded here in Scripture, the way that I believe the Holy Spirit means it to be understood.
And then I'll explain the way most people understand it.
Where it says in the multitude of counselors, there is safety.
In the multitude of people steering a group of people in the direction God wants them to go, there is safety.
In the multitude of people steering a group of people in the direction God wants them to go, there is safety.
Can you imagine having a world like we have now and having one pastor and one Sunday school teacher per county?
Could you imagine if there was only just a handful?
If there was only a—is that us?
Is that somebody's phone?
Okay, all right.
Well, if you don't mind, put them on silent, please.
Can you imagine if you only had a handful of solid Bible-teaching pastors in a particular geographic area?
Then most of the people who are going to church aren't going to be hearing the truth.
They're not going to be having their steering guided in the right direction.
And so then the nation's not got in the right direction.
The nation needs to have a sufficient number of godly men teaching the Scriptures every Sunday, Wednesday night, or whenever it is that they meet.
They need to be teaching the Scriptures.
When you have a lot of people doing this, there is safety in that multitude of counselors.
When the numbers dwindle down who are preaching the truth, it begins to get dangerous for a society.
And that's where we're at today, where the majority of people who are teaching the Scriptures have no business teaching the Scriptures.
The majority of people who are representing Christianity are misrepresenting Christianity.
And when that happens, you don't have counsel.
You have false teaching.
You have tires that have been flattened by the spikes the devil has put out.
And the people are going to fall.
The nation's going to fall.
That's why it's so important for us to fill our minds with solid, continual Bible teaching.
God's Word is the counsel this world needs.
I'm going to repeat that again.
God's Word is the counsel this world needs.
So when we're talking about counseling and counselors here in the Scriptures, we're not talking about someone who's received their counseling license from the state.
We're not talking about someone who is a professional counselor.
I had a man ask me this week if I knew of an organization that would provide counseling to a man's son because the dad can't get him to clean his room.
I thought on that, and I said, "Well, it seems like the dad would probably need counseling more than the son."
If you can't get your child to clean the room, it's not the child who needs counseling.
It's the parent.
Is there an organization that provides that type of counseling?
You bet if they're teaching God's Word.
The problem is the parent's not going to church.
The parent doesn't know the Word of God.
The parent doesn't have the counsel of God, and so the father and the son are both going off the road.
They're looking for an organization to do it for free.
If they'd be looking to the Lord, they'd get the counsel they need.
So when we see counseling here, I promise you when you see the word counseling in Scripture, it's not trying to get you to go away from the church to go to the world to receive some kind of secular counseling in lieu of getting the counsel of God's Word.
God's Word will never direct you away from God's Word.
God's Word is sufficient for all of our counseling needs.
When we submit ourselves to obeying the Scriptures, we take the steering wheel out of the world's hands and we put it into God's hands.
When we submit ourselves to obeying the Scriptures, we take the steering wheel out of the world's hands and we put it into God's hands.
In the multitude of counselors, there is safety.
I believe this verse is misunderstood by most church members.
I've heard this verse quoted so many times by people who believe that Solomon is saying it's good for individuals to get counsel from a multitude of different people before they make a decision on something.
Have you all ever heard it taught that way?
Well folks, I think it's just the opposite.
I don't see that at all here in Scripture.
Remember this isn't talking about individuals tonight.
The Hebrew is talking about a people in a collective sense.
So many people read this verse and come away thinking that before they can make a decision on something, they should first seek the advice of a multitude of counselors.
That they should go around asking a number of people, "What would you do in my situation?"
And I know people, I've known people who've done that.
And again, I don't believe that's what the Bible is telling us tonight.
In fact, I believe that can be a very bad idea.
First of all, you're going to have a hard time finding a multitude of people who can give you good, godly counsel from the Bible.
That's the first problem.
Second of all, if you find one person to give you good, godly counsel from God's Word, then that's all the counsel you need.
Because the Bible will never contradict itself.
Remember this is speaking about people in the sense of a collective group.
I believe the Bible is telling us that a multitude of counselors provide safety to a city, safety to a nation, safety to a church.
The safest place a person can possibly be is where wise men steer obedient people with the Word of God.
That's where I want to be.
Before an individual to seek advice from a multitude of people, again, it can be dangerous.
Can you imagine people thinking, I mean, I know people all the time who second-guess themselves, second-guessing themselves all the time during a nervous wreck.
Can you imagine people thinking that they need to listen to various opinions, that they need to seek a multitude of counselors about a particular topic before they make a decision?
That will most probably result in confusion and distress in that person's life.
One person will tell you to do one thing.
Well, that seems reasonable.
Multitude of counselors, I'll go ask Brother Neil now.
Or I'll go ask so-and-so at work now.
I'll go ask someone over here now.
And then another person will tell you to do something different.
Well, now what I would do?
Then you listen to that person.
And then the people listening to them become confused and overwhelmed by all the different advice they receive.
And now they don't know what to do.
Who's right?
Instead of steering someone in the direction they should go, that would leave a person not knowing what to do.
Listen, there is only one counselor.
There's only one counselor that people need to steer them.
And it's the Lord our God.
Only one counselor is the Lord our God.
And any counselor that is giving you true counsel, all they're doing is taking the scripture, explaining the scripture to you for what it really says, and applying that scripture to your situation.
There is the understanding of scripture, or there is the explanation of scripture, and then there's the application of scripture.
That sounds pretty good, doesn't it?
There's the explanation of scripture and then the application of scripture.
If you do that, I promise you, no matter what your situation is in life, it's going to go right.
It's going to go the direction God wants it to go.
There's only one counselor.
And so when someone counsels you, they're taking the counsel of the one true God, and they're just passing that counsel on to you.
We don't make counsel up.
We take counsel from God and we share it.
Psalm 73, Psalm 73, verse 24.
Psalm 73, verse 24.
The psalmist says, speaking to the Lord, "Thou shalt guide me," that's another way of saying, "steer me, isn't it?
Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel."
Now that scripture right there is all we need to rest assured that God is the one who steers the ship.
"Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory."
Do you know what that's saying?
That's saying in life and in death, God is all we need.
In life, as we're living, God guides us with his counsel, and when it comes for our time to die, the same God that guided us will be the same God that receives us into glory.
He's all the counsel we need, all the Savior we need, all the friend we need.
God's people are guided by God's counsel.
True Christian counseling is when God's word is rightly explained and rightly applied.
If it's rightly explained and rightly applied to your situation, that's all the counsel you'll ever need.
Anything outside of that is feel good, psycho babble, and it's not the counsel you need.
With that, we'll go ahead and close tonight, and Lord willing, start back up in the next verse.
Yes, sir.
"His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor."
That's exactly right.
I started to put that scripture in here.
I thought, "They've heard that scripture so many times.
I'm going to give them another one."
But yes, he is the wonderful counselor.
He's our counselor.
I thought you were going to have a really nifty poem for a minute there.
Okay.
All right, we'll go ahead and pray.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
Thank you, Father, for the scripture.
Brother Shepherd reminded us tonight of his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor.
The mighty God, the everlasting Father, you're the one, Father, who's all the counsel we need given to us through Christ and by your Spirit recorded in your Word, disseminated by the teachers thereof.
Oh Lord, I pray that your people will not seek, Father, God, the counsel of this world, but will hunger and thirst after the counsel of your Word.
And every day, hiding that word in their hearts, dear Lord God, they'll faithfully apply it.
And as they're obedient to your Word, you with the ropes of Holy Scripture guide their path until their end comes and you receive them into glory.
I pray that be the description of every one of our lives here tonight.
Guide us with your counsel.
Receive us into glory.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
