The Sinews of Holy War Text: Proverbs 24:5-6
Introduction: The Folly of the Unarmed Man
We live in an age that despises true strength and mocks genuine wisdom. Our culture celebrates the loud, the brash, and the willfully ignorant. It mistakes raw, physical power for strength, and it mistakes the accumulation of trivia for knowledge. But the world's definitions are, as always, a cheap knockoff of the real thing. The world offers a papier-mache sword and calls you a warrior for holding it. It gives you a participation trophy and calls it a victory. But when the real conflict comes, when the spiritual war heats up, these trinkets melt away, and the man who trusted in them is left defenseless and ashamed.
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is not a collection of abstract platitudes for needlepoint pillows. It is a training manual for a life of godly conflict. It is about wisdom, but it is a wisdom that has calluses on its hands. It is about knowledge, but it is a knowledge that has been tested in the fires of real-world decisions. The Christian life is not a quiet retreat into a monastery of private thoughts; it is a battlefield. And on this battlefield, to be unarmed is to be a fool. To be unguided is to be a casualty.
These two verses in Proverbs 24 give us the divine calculus for strength and the divine strategy for war. They are inextricably linked. The first verse describes the character of the godly warrior, and the second describes the conduct of his warfare. One deals with internal fortitude, the other with external strategy. You cannot have one without the other. A strong man with no plan is just a battering ram waiting for a wall to run into. A man with a brilliant plan but no strength of character will fold at the first sign of resistance. The Scriptures demand both. God intends for His people to be both strong and shrewd, both powerful and prudent.
We are going to see that true strength is not a matter of muscle mass, but of a mind and heart saturated with the fear of the Lord. And we are going to see that true victory is not won by lone-wolf heroics, but by the humble submission to godly counsel. This is a message that cuts directly against the grain of our proud, individualistic age, and for that reason, we must pay all the closer attention.
The Text
A wise man is strong, And a man of knowledge strengthens his power. For by guidance you will make war, And in abundance of counselors there is salvation.
(Proverbs 24:5-6 LSB)
Wisdom's Might (v. 5)
Let us take the first part of this instruction. Verse 5 lays the foundation for everything that follows.
"A wise man is strong, And a man of knowledge strengthens his power." (Proverbs 24:5)
The first clause is a direct equation: "A wise man is strong." This is not saying that a wise man might also happen to be strong, as though they were two separate qualities. The Hebrew puts it more forcefully; wisdom itself is a form of strength. It is a power. The world thinks of strength in terms of physical prowess or political clout. But the Bible tells us that a man who can rule his own spirit is mightier than one who can take a city (Proverbs 16:32). A wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the stronghold in which they trust (Proverbs 21:22). Wisdom is the ultimate leverage.
What is this wisdom? It is not worldly cleverness or a high IQ. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 9:10). So, a wise man is strong because he is rightly oriented to reality. He knows who God is, who he is, and what time it is. He builds his house on the rock of God's Word, and so when the storms of life come crashing down, his house stands. The fool, who hears the same words and does not do them, builds on the sand. He may have the same size house, the same color paint, but his foundation is rotten, and his ruin is great. The wise man's strength is the strength of a solid foundation.
The second clause builds on the first: "And a man of knowledge strengthens his power." Knowledge here is the application and extension of wisdom. If wisdom is the foundational understanding of God's world, knowledge is the skill of navigating it. It is the data, the facts, the principles gathered and stored up from Scripture and experience. A man of knowledge is a man who pays attention. He learns. He grows. He doesn't make the same mistake twice.
Notice the verb: he "strengthens" his power. The word has the sense of reinforcing or making firm. Knowledge takes the raw potential of wisdom and makes it effective. A man might have the wisdom to know that he should provide for his family, but it is knowledge that helps him learn a trade, balance a budget, and make wise investments. A man might have the wisdom to fear God, but it is the knowledge of Scripture that equips him to fight temptation and answer the challenges of the unbeliever. Knowledge adds sinew and muscle to the bones of wisdom. This is why we are commanded to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). A stagnant Christian is a weak Christian.
The Strategy of Victory (v. 6)
Having established the source of true strength, the Proverb now turns to its application in the midst of conflict.
"For by guidance you will make war, And in abundance of counselors there is salvation." (Proverbs 24:6 LSB)
The "For" at the beginning connects this verse directly to the one before it. Because a wise and knowledgeable man is strong, this is how he will conduct his affairs, particularly the high-stakes affair of war. The word for "guidance" here is a nautical term. It refers to the steering of a ship, the skill of a pilot who knows how to read the winds and the currents to bring a vessel safely to harbor. A war is not fought by blind fury. It is fought by careful, skillful, strategic guidance.
This demolishes the romantic notion of the lone warrior, the maverick who follows his gut. That is the way of the fool. The wise man knows his limitations. He knows he has blind spots. He knows that his own heart is deceitful above all things. And so, he does not go to war by himself. He seeks guidance. This is true in all areas of life, whether it is the war against your own sin, the war to raise your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, or the war for the soul of our culture.
And where does this guidance come from? The second clause tells us: "And in abundance of counselors there is salvation." The word "salvation" here is yeshuah. It means deliverance, safety, victory. Victory is not found in isolation; it is found in community. It is found by surrounding yourself with a multitude of godly counselors. This is a repeated theme in Proverbs. "Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety" (Proverbs 11:14). "Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed" (Proverbs 15:22).
This principle is a direct assault on our pride. Pride wants to figure it all out on its own. Pride hates to ask for help. Pride despises accountability. But the wise man crucifies his pride. He seeks out older, wiser men. He listens to his pastor. He consults his elders. He treasures the friend who will wound him with the truth. He understands that God has not given all wisdom to one man, but has distributed it throughout the body of Christ. The man who isolates himself is cutting himself off from the very means of victory that God has provided. He is a soldier who has deserted his army to fight the enemy alone. His defeat is not a possibility; it is a certainty.
Conclusion: The Wise Warrior and His Counselors
So what does this mean for us, here and now? It means we must first reject the world's definitions of strength. True strength is not found in the gym or in the bank account or in a position of power. It is found on your knees before the God of the universe, fearing Him. It is found in His Word, studying it, memorizing it, living it. That is the source of all true power. A man who knows his Bible and fears his God is stronger than a whole battalion of secularists, because he is tapped into the ultimate source of reality.
And second, it means we must reject the world's love of autonomy. We must embrace the corporate nature of the Christian life. You were not saved to be a spiritual hermit. You were saved into a family, an army. Your sanctification, your safety, your victory is tied up with your brothers and sisters in the covenant community. You need the church. You need elders who can guide you. You need friends who can correct you. You need the accumulated wisdom of the saints who have gone before you.
The ultimate fulfillment of this Proverb is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the perfectly wise man, the one in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3). And He is the strong man who bound the strong man, Satan, and plundered his house (Mark 3:27). He waged war by the perfect guidance of His Father, doing only what the Father told Him to do. And in the ultimate council of the Trinity, the plan of salvation was established. He is our salvation, our yeshuah.
When we are in Christ, we are united to this perfect strength and this perfect wisdom. But the outworking of that union in our lives requires us to walk in the paths He has laid out. He has given us His Word to make us knowledgeable. He has given us His church to provide us with counselors. To neglect either is to attempt to go to war unarmed and alone. Let us therefore be wise men, strong in the Lord. And let us be humble men, who find our victory in the abundance of counselors He has graciously provided.