I’m Not Able

And I spoke to you at that time, saying: "I alone am not able to bear you. The LORD your God has multiplied you, and here you are today, as the stars of heaven in multitude... How can I alone bear your problems and your burdens and your complaints? Choose wise, understanding, and knowledgeable men from among your tribes, and I will make them heads over you."... And I commanded your judges at that time, saying, "Hear the cases between your brethren, and judge righteously... You shall not be afraid in any man's presence; for the judgment is God's. The case that is too hard for you, bring to me, and I will hear it." — Deuteronomy 1:9-18

When you admit "I'm not able," you haven't shown weakness—you've shown wisdom.

When You Realize It's Too Much

Have you ever encountered a situation that was too much for you to handle? Most of us can think of a time when, in the middle of something, we realized it was more than we could manage. Maybe at the start you thought, I've got this—but as you moved through it, you began to recognize your own arrogance in thinking so.

That was my experience about eleven years ago. My wife and I needed a new mattress, so I found a California king memory foam mattress online for under five hundred dollars, delivered. This behemoth showed up on my doorstep one Monday morning—a giant California burrito, 84 inches tall, about 130 pounds. The only thing standing between me and a good night's sleep was getting it upstairs, and it was just me. I was 29, a martial artist. I've got this.

I fireman-carried it up the stairs, perfectly balanced—until the last few inches caught the lip of the first-floor ceiling and altered my balance. The wise move would have been to drop it; it's memory foam. But for some reason I hugged it tighter as it went backwards, and I felt a pop. It was a good thing I had a new mattress to lie on that night, because my back was in significant pain.

Many of us have a story like that. At the front end of a decision we say I've got this when it would have been better to say I'm not able, or even I need help. And we learn an important lesson: a little bit of humility may spare you a whole lot of pain.

Moses Says, "I Am Not Able"

That's exactly the story recounted in Deuteronomy 1. Moses says, "I am not able to bear you. The LORD your God has multiplied you, and here you are today as the stars of heaven in multitude." Why does he say it that way? Because it is the fulfillment of God's word spoken hundreds of years before to Abraham. When God called Abram in Genesis 12, Abram was 75 with no children, yet God promised to multiply his descendants like the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore. Now, generations later, God has made good on His promise, and Moses pronounces a blessing: "May the LORD God of your fathers make you a thousand times more numerous."

Deuteronomy is the second telling of God's law before Israel, forty years after the first. The book follows an ancient treaty format from about 3,400 years ago—an introduction followed by a historical statement. So from chapter 1 verse 6 through chapter 4, Moses rehearses Israel's history, reminding them of all that happened on their journey from Mount Sinai to the border of the Promised Land.

He does this because he is now 120 years old, and God has told him he will not enter the land. He knows his life is ending and that the people will go in without him. For 38 to 40 years, whenever they hit an obstacle, they simply went to Moses, who talked to God, and things were made right. Now that era is ending. They'll have Joshua and Caleb, but those men are in their 80s, and almost everyone else is 45 and under—the older generation died in the wilderness. A new generation must learn to govern themselves. So Moses reminds them: a little reminder of the past may help you walk wisely in the future.

Wisdom to Admit Your Deficits

Moses tells them, "Back when we were at Horeb"—Mount Sinai, where the law was given—"I told your parents, I can't do this on my own." A little humility spares a lot of pain.

In our cultural moment, we're often told that any acknowledgment of our inadequacies is weakness, so we feel we can't say, "I don't know that I can do this." But Scripture teaches that it's actually wisdom to recognize our limits. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as being of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God. (2 Corinthians 3:5-6)

He is the one who enables us. It is wisdom to step back and say, "I am not able"—to admit our deficits, because every one of us has them.

Jethro's Counsel in Exodus 18

Moses' summary in Deuteronomy is brief, so we should go back to where it happened: Exodus 18. There we meet Jethro, introduced as a priest—and almost certainly a pagan priest of the gods of Midian, in the modern Saudi Arabian desert. He is also Moses' father-in-law, the father of Moses' wife Zipporah.

Jethro heard of all God had done for Moses and Israel, that the LORD had brought them out of Egypt. He brought Zipporah and Moses' two sons—Gershom ("stranger") and Eliezer ("the Lord my God was my help")—to meet Moses at the mountain of God. Moses recounted to him all the LORD had done to Pharaoh and all the hardship along the way. Then Jethro, a pagan priest hearing this testimony, said something amazing:

Now I know that the LORD is greater than all the gods; for in the very thing in which they behaved proudly, He was above them. (Exodus 18:11)

Jethro offered a burnt offering, and they held a great feast before the Lord.

The next day, Moses sat to judge the people, and they stood before him from morning until evening. When Jethro saw it, he asked, "Why do you sit alone, and all the people stand before you from morning to evening?" Moses explained that the people came to inquire of God and to have their difficulties judged. Then Jethro said:

The thing that you do is not good. Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself. Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel, and God will be with you. (Exodus 18:17-19)

This brings us to the third point: a little bit of wise counsel may keep you from a whole lot of trouble.

Where Do We Get Wise Counsel?

This truth raises questions. Where do we get good counsel? And how do we know if the counsel we're receiving is wise? Some of you can pinpoint a moment when wise counsel spared you pain. Others remember the hurt and think, It would have been nice to have had some wise counsel.

First: it is not unreasonable to seek counsel from many sources. In fact, it may be very wise. Solomon, one of the wisest men who ever lived—though he did plenty of boneheaded things despite his wisdom—wrote the book of Proverbs. I'd encourage you to read a proverb a day for a month. He wrote:

Where there is no counsel, the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors there is safety. (Proverbs 11:14)

He repeats it: "By wise counsel you will wage your own war, and in a multitude of counselors there is safety" (Proverbs 24:6).

But when you gather counsel from many sources, you may receive many different—even conflicting—ideas. You talk to four, five, six people and end up more confused than when you started. So how do you determine the most wise counsel? Counsel must be weighed, not counted. You may have talked to fifteen friends, but counting how many you spoke to is not the same as weighing whether their counsel is good. Often the people closest to you give bad counsel precisely because they're biased in your favor and will always side with you.

Drawing Wisdom from Deep Wells

So consider who is giving you counsel and what the probable outcomes will be. Some people are very liberal with their counsel—the "two-cent droppers" who hand you a 27-paragraph dissertation you never asked for. Others are slow to give their thoughts. Generally speaking, those who are slow to speak are more thoughtful in their counsel. Solomon observed:

Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. (Proverbs 20:5)

In Moses' day, water meant drawing from a deep well—hard work, but necessary for life. In some circumstances we need good and wise counsel, and it takes effort to draw it up. Look at America in 2020: we need wise, understanding, knowledgeable leaders—at the national, state, local, and even church level. A little bit of thoughtful patience may help you uncover deep stores of wisdom.

Two Marks of a Wise Person

But where do you find such people? Let me address two groups. Some of you are just getting started in life, and these truths are vital—it is not a given that everything works out, and many of our setbacks come from our own decisions. Others of you have lived longer and would say, "It would have helped to hear this twenty or thirty years ago." Life isn't over; it would honor God and serve you to make wiser decisions from here forward, because there are people who count on you.

First, wise people are slow to speak. Sometimes you must patiently sit with them and ask questions. Solomon wrote:

He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; when he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive. (Proverbs 17:27-28)

Better for people to think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. The counterpoint comes a verse later: "A fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart" (Proverbs 18:2). Jeremiah observed that the heart of man is desperately wicked—there's much in us we don't fully understand. When I first joined this church staff at 19 as an unpaid intern, I sat intimidated in the pastors' meeting, and a still, small voice said, Keep your mouth shut. I'm grateful I heeded it. The wise are slow to speak.

Second, outcomes are important. Jesus said in Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:35, "Wisdom is justified by her children." The wisdom of an idea is judged by what it produces. So beware of receiving counsel from people whose lives are a mess—often they're the very ones eager to give it. It's not wrong to evaluate how well a person has governed the affairs of their life. This is why it's wise to look for wells of wisdom among people further along than you.

In my early 20s I did exactly what Paul said in Philippians 3—"note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern"—and asked who in my life seemed to be doing it well. One person stood out: Mark Searle, still here, serving in our children's ministry this morning. Twenty years later, he's still on a consistent path moving forward in a straight line. Note those who have walked the path of life well, further than you. And though it's not politically correct in Western thinking, everyone's ideas are not equally valuable. Ideas must be stress-tested; an idea is merely a theory until it's proven true. I'll take a PhD from life experience over a master's in psychology any day.

Counsel Becomes Yours When You Act

So Moses' pagan father-in-law gave him counsel. Moses could have said, "Stop, pagan priest—I've got a burning bush, I just destroyed the greatest empire of the day. I don't need your input." But he didn't. Jethro continued:

You shall teach them the statutes and the laws, and show them the way in which they must walk and the work they must do. Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. (Exodus 18:20-21)

Here is a 3,400-year-old truth about a hierarchy of leadership. Our culture says all such hierarchies are false and wrong and must be torn down—but be careful before you move a wall or fence; you might want to figure out why it's there. Jethro said the great matters would still come to Moses, but small matters the leaders would judge themselves, so the burden would be shared, and Moses would be able to endure. And the text says:

So Moses heeded the voice of his father-in-law and did all that he had said. (Exodus 18:24)

Notice the word heeded. Moses chose able men and made them heads over the people, and they judged at all times, bringing only the hard cases to him. Then he sent his father-in-law on his way.

Now fast-forward forty years to Deuteronomy 1. Moses recounts this to the children who were too small or not yet born to remember it. And what's missing? Jethro. Moses never mentions his father-in-law. Was he dishonoring Jethro? I don't think so. A little bit of knowledge becomes your wisdom when you act upon it. When you act on it, it's yours—it doesn't matter where it came from. Whether or not you can give chapter and verse, when you act on it, it's yours.

Three Words That Determine a Lot

But it all has to do with acting on it. You can receive the best counsel possible and still render it useless if you don't heed it. Solomon wrote, "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise" (Proverbs 12:15). Far in the future we'll reach the book of Judges, where we read repeatedly, "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes"—and we'll see what that got them.

I've worked with people who proved their foolishness by sticking to their own path while disregarding the consistent wise counsel of many. If you're going to reject wise counsel, you'd better have a good reason. If you don't, you'll fall, and your folly will become apparent—but here's the danger: it only becomes apparent after you've led others down a path toward injury.

Three little words could determine much for your life: either "I've got this" or "I'm not able, I need help." It's wisdom to humbly recognize your insufficiency, to look around and ask, "Who is doing this right?" and then to sit with the wise. You will be better off for it in the end. I promise.

Closing Prayer

God, I thank You for the wisdom of Scripture. I thank You that these things were written for our instruction, that we would be trained by them—but it is only good for us if we heed it. The one who thinks he stands is so often the quickest to fall, so let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Would You drill these things into our hearts as we think about this passage, and about our church, our county, our state, our nation, this world. We need wise, understanding, knowledgeable people who have been proven in leadership. Whether we realize it or not, we are the future leaders of this church and this nation. So teach us to walk in wisdom, that we would experience the joy of walking in wisdom, that You would be honored and glorified by it, and that we would enter into the fullness of the blessing You desire for us. We pray this today in Jesus' name, and all those who agree said, Amen.