PROFITING FROM PROVERBS

“Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14 KJV).

“Where no counsel is,” like the United States “the people fall,” lives and marriages crumble, children are loosed unsupervised in the streets and raised by a godless society. They are turned out on their own long before they are able to handle it—and “people fall.” People fall into sin, they fall into dope, they fall into habits that they can never control and will control them the rest of their lives. It is so true that “where no counsel is, the people fall.”

“. . . but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety,” it doesn’t do well to just get one opinion or one counsel—go to two or three spiritual Christians—pastors, teachers, etc. The sad fact is, though, that most people that don’t want to know the truth will not go to the people that will tell them the truth. If a man wants to hear what he wants to hear, he will surely side with those people that will do just that. That isn’t going to do him a bit of good, he needs good, true, wise counsel.

The Bible will counsel you; the Holy Spirit will counsel you through the word. A faithful Christian will belong to a good Bible-preaching church and will allow the pastor to counsel him. When the Bible, and the Holy Spirit, and the preacher all give you the same basic advice—don’t go looking for somebody else to contradict their wisdom. Truth doesn’t always sit well with us, but it is still the truth. It is time to just take the truth and go do what it tells you to do. That is the best, and the wisest, thing to do.

“Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety.” In America, we have a lot of people, professional and otherwise, that call themselves counsellors, but there is very little counsel available. They don’t know how to “solve” a problem, so they say to “dissolve” the problem. Since they don’t know how to fix it, they just say it is incompatible. What God calls a sin problem in marriages, the world simply calls irreconcilable differences and marriages fall. The reason they say that is because they simply don’t know how to put it back together, but the Holy Spirit has lots of glue. And He’s got a lot of healing and He can put the thing back together if people are willing to do right.

“Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD. They say still unto them that despise me, The LORD hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you. For who hath stood in the counsel of the LORD, and hath perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it? Behold, a whirlwind of the LORD is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind: it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the LORD shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly. I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings. Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD, and not a God afar off?” (Jeremiah 23:16-23 KJV).

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