Facts About Folly

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon draws a very distinct line between wisdom and folly. And even though wise people and foolish people have the same end, that is, both of them die, wise people die and foolish people die, the advantage still goes to wisdom, so much so that at the end of chapter 9, when we were in Ecclesiastes last a few weeks ago, At the end of chapter 9, we studied the story of a poor man who saved a city with his wisdom. Though they were outnumbered, it was a huge mismatch. A poor but wise man saved an entire city. That was chapter 9, verses 13 through 16. And then we saw in verses 17 and 18 how wisdom is more powerful than weapons of war.

Wisdom has great power. fact wisdom is potent. And as we move into chapter 10, the preacher parcels out a plethora of proverbs, not pinatas, but he’s got a plethora of proverbs for us. And the goal of these proverbs is to help make us wise. And he begins in verses 1 through 7, even though pretty much just verses 1 through 4 are the proverbs specifically, but he begins this first section with truth concerning fools or as the title of the message is facts about folly and we’re going to look at four facts about folly. The goal of this is so that you would see how stupid it is to live foolishly and how much of an impact folly making poor choices, poor decisions without using your mind for you to see how ugly folly is and for you to want to avoid that and then oppositely pursue wisdom. So in helping us get wisdom, he’s showing us the opposite of that in folly so that we’d want to avoid that. Four facts about folly. Number one, folly ruins a good reputation. Folly ruins a good reputation.

It only takes a little bit of foolishness to ruin what was otherwise a good, healthy, strong reputation and character. Look at verse 1. Dead flies make the perfumer’s ointment give off a stench.” What a fantastic picture that is. Or maybe aroma, we would say. But dead flies make the perfumers’ ointment give off a stench. So, in a similar way, likewise, a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. Now there’s no doubt that verse Verse 1 is connected with the last verse in chapter 9 where we saw, chapter 9 verse 18, wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good. And though it connects with the last verse in chapter 9, I think that for a couple reasons we should see it’s reasonable for the guys who divided the Bible into chapters and verses.

It’s reasonable for them to have started a new chapter here because the style changes from more prose to proverb in addition to that, in chapter 9 verse 18 it was one fool, one sinner and his impact on an entire group of people and now what we see in chapter 10 verse 1 is the problem of folly in the same person. So you got a group of people that we’re talking about in chapter 9 verse 18 and how one bad apple can spoil the whole bushel. But in chapter 10 verse 1, what you’ve got is the same person who’s got a great, a good reputation and just a little bit of folly comes in and ruins that. Like many proverbs, and you know you really should be reading proverbs on a regular basis. Proverbs are written to young people to help them grow in wisdom. That was one of the best choices, really really it was one of the best choices to follow the advice I got from people when I was in high school to read through Proverbs, read a chapter a day, 31 chapters in Proverbs, most months or a lot of months have the 31 days I’ve said it before but that was an

excellent exercise. I’m going back through the Proverbs on a daily basis now and a little bit taking shorter chunks but there’s just so much excellent stuff in Proverbs. If you’re familiar with Proverbs at all, you know that it’s pretty typical for a proverb to start with a mundane or with an earthly picture that everybody can imagine or that you’ve seen before, that it’s common to our experience. And it moves from that mundane picture illustration to the point, to the more abstract thing, and certainly that’s the case here in chapter verse 1, the point is made in the second half but the picture is made in the first half.

Dead flies make the perfumers ointment give off a stench. Now that illustration is pretty simple even I think junior hires can understand it. If they’re listening junior hires can understand it. Get into your mind you can visualize a perfumer, that really is a word by the way, a perfumer, somebody who produces or who markets perfume, smell good lotion and juice. Picture this perfumer who is blending a batch of his or her favorite fragrance when when a small insect falls into the mix. Now the formula is off and the dead bug turns the pleasant scent, which by the way is the point of perfume. Those of you who select the questionable fragrances, that’s not the point to lather yourself up in questionable lotion. The idea of perfume is to cover what is already a bad smell with a pleasant smell, not to cover a neutral smell with a unpleasant smell. So what we have here is the pleasant scent is turned into a stench. Now try to market that because we need to make sure we Because we need to make sure we are understanding how bad this picture is.

So you’re the perfumer, you’re making some perfume, your favorite fragrance. A dead fly or some dead flies fall in. It really starts stinking the place up. But you decide you don’t want to waste that batch. So you bottle it up and you sell it anyway. There you are on the street and here come these nice ladies and they’re spraying it on their neck. You know, they’re trying it out on their wrists. And basically what they’re doing is they’re spraying dead bug guts onto themselves and you know trying to smell it and see if that’s just lovely. I think rightly we would say that’s disgusting. There are plenty of other ways to get dead bug guts on you if you want it rather than to see that falling into perfume and then creating a stench.

And that is how disgusting folly is to a good reputation. That’s how inappropriate foolishness is to wisdom and honor. It doesn’t take much to make a man’s reputation stink. That’s the point that Solomon makes in the second half of verse 1. So a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. Now when I first read that, I tended to think that it related to chapter 9 verse 18, like I mentioned earlier, that it was a person, a fool, coming into a group of wise and honorable people and messing up the group. But I don’t think that’s the case.

I think like I said, this is one individual, it’s the same person, who up to this point in their life has become known for their wisdom and honor. It’s someone with character, someone with a good reputation, and all it takes is a little folly to blow the whole thing. It takes just one bad choice to ruin what was otherwise a good reputation. The idea of reputation is clearly intended here in chapter 10 verse 1. Look back at Ecclesiastes 7 verse 1, a good name is better than precious ointment. It’s the idea that each one of us by how we live, what we say, how we say it, how we respond to people, the choices that we make. Each one of us by how we live, we are giving off an aroma. There is an aroma about you when you walk into a room. You are giving off some kind of smell, and I mean that metaphorically, figuratively, though some of you do give off a literal smell, but we all give off a smell, an aroma, a fragrance when we walk into a room, when we go home, when we come into 128. And a good reputation is likened to a pleasant fragrance. And in other words, a man’s reputation

is an aroma and one small mistake can make the whole thing smell. Smell poorly. Perhaps there are a couple more things we can say about this. I mean, why is that the case that just one small bad, folly decision can ruin a person’s entire reputation? Well, I think one thing is folly is worse when you expect wisdom. It would kind of be like going to the perfume counter, I suppose, getting the tester bottle and spraying it on your wrist and wafting the smell, what you expect at that point in time is that, you know, to have gotten to that point, somebody else had smelled it. And so it didn’t smell like Junior High Boys’ locker room by that point. It shouldn’t have gotten to that level. You expect something different. But when you expect wisdom and honor and what you get folly, it stands out even more. It’s a surprise. Vomit, for example, Vomit does not really stand out that much on 70s shag carpet. If you step in it, it’s unpleasant, but it’s not a big surprise.

On the other hand, Vomit would really stand out on a white tile floor. It doesn’t soak in. It’s just up there for everybody to see. All of its beautiful color and ray is there. So, it kind of depends on what you’re expecting. How much ketchup does it take to ruin a white dress shirt? In fact, you get just a little bit of ketchup on that white dress shirt, and that’s all people are going to see. Because what they expect is white, pristine, clean, it stands out. And so folly outweighs, it stands over, it makes a bigger impact than wisdom and honor because you expect something different. So again, I think part of the reason for this is because folly is worse when you expect or you’ve become accustomed to that person living with wisdom and honor. But a second thing is folly is pungent on its own.

you have lived wisely and nobly up to that point or not. Folly is pungent. Folly stands out all by itself. Like a fire burns, you just expect, when you have a fire that requires that it’s burning. It’s the nature of a fire to burn. So the nature of folly is to ruin. water makes things wet, folly soils a man’s character, and I say that to make the point, do not think it’s okay to be just a little stupid. Well, you know, generally I make good decisions. For the most part I try to think about what I’m doing before I do it or try to think about what I say before I say it. A little stupid decision isn’t going to to be that big of a deal. You don’t know that. A little folly, just a teeny amount, like a dead fly ruins a whole batch of perfume, so just one wrong word in response. One off-the-cuff remark. How much poison does it take to corrupt water? If you’ve got a bucket of water, how How much poison does it take to put in there before you’re not going to want to drink any of it?

You don’t have to make it a 50-50 deal. Ooh, well, as long as there’s not more poison than water, I’ll still drink it. Now, you know that a drop of poison has gone into a pool of water. You’re still going to be unlikely to drink it, and that’s the same kind of impact that that a little bit of folly can have on an otherwise good reputation. If you play with folly, your reputation is bound to get singed no matter how wise or noble you’ve lived up to this point. And a little dab of folly will do you in. It doesn’t take much thought to figure out how to illustrate this. Hans and Franz illustrate it. And they talk about Jimmy the Greek Snyder.

Guys, most of you students won’t remember this, but Jimmy the Greek Snyder was a football commentator on CBS for the NFL. And one time he was just talking about how black men have bigger thighs than white men. And of course Hans and Franz took that and they’re like, that’s not true. That little Webster guy from TV, he could live inside of one of my thighs, was their point. And Michael Jackson, he could live in the other one. And they’d take your head and stick it in between their thighs and squeeze your brain out like a tube of toothpaste all over the bathroom sink. And three out of four dentists won’t recommend you for anything at that point.

But Hans and Franz made mention of that, because this football commentator, Jimmy the Greek That’s Jimmy, the Greek, was his nickname. He got fired. He had been a football commentator, I don’t know how long, 10, 15 years plus, I’m sure. One afternoon making comments simply saying black men have bigger thighs than white men got fired. His career was done. He didn’t ever, as far as I know, find another station that would take him in so that he could commentate on football games anymore. One off-the-cuff silly remark. There’s no reason to say it. It’s not necessarily bigoted. Jimmy the Greek was not black himself, so it’s not like he was criticizing black men for having bigger thighs.

He was, seems like praising them for having bigger thighs, even though Hans-Efranz disagreed. The point is that one small little remark ruined his reputation, cost him his career. It’s so dangerous for you guys because you think that one dumb choice isn’t going to change things. It’s like a perpetual reset button. That’s one of the things I guess I’ve observed about the video game culture is if you don’t like how you’re playing that game, you just hit the reset button and you start over again. You don’t get to do that with life. That’s part of the reason why the theme for this year is playing for keeps. Because what you do now impacts not just what happens later on today, but what happens next week and what happens 10, 15, 20, 30 years down the road.

Some of you, what you put on your Facebook, your MySpace, your folly that you demonstrate is maybe going to keep you from getting a job in the future. It’s going to keep you from getting into college, potentially. One little thing will do that. Because most colleges ask you now to say if you have a blog or a Facebook or a MySpace, they want to see what your character is like. And some of you are just displaying that folly for everybody to see, let alone the fact that just a little bit can do you in. Folly ruins what was otherwise a good reputation. How serious are you about avoiding folly? Is that even on your radar screen?

Are you serious about avoiding senseless, foolish, brainless activity? You should be. Your reputation depends on it. Here’s a second fact about folly. Folly originates from a central location. Folly originates from a central location, namely your heart. Your direction in life is determined by what is in your heart. Verse 2, a wise man’s heart inclines him to the right, but a fool’s heart to the left. Every decision that you make sprouts from the inside, from the heart. Your heart is like a spring or a reservoir out of which your life flows. Sounds familiar. Sounds like something we’ve heard about recently. What comes out in your life, the direction that you go, starts in a central location.

It starts in your heart. Verse 2 is an antithetical proverb. That is, it makes the point twice by showing it from the two contrasting or two opposing perspectives. there are two directions your heart can lean. You lean. Each one of you lean already without anybody pushing you from the outside. Your heart leans in one of two directions, to the right or to the left. And though I think Solomon’s primary point in verse two is to identify that the source or the origination of wisdom and folly comes from the heart. Still as As you look through scripture, right and left typically picture different things. For example, the right often symbolizes strength and prosperity and favor and honor, while going to the left generally pictured apathy and incompetence and loss and shame.

Sorry about that for you left-handers. Various groups and cultures of people have been concerned about left-handers. him my grandfather was convinced that something was wrong with my dad because he kept picking up everything with his left hand. At various points of time people have tried to correct left handers by every time they pick something up with their left hand, smack in their hand so that they’d start picking it up with their right. Because there is an idea, however it came about, that to the right there was prosperity and honor, and to the left there was incompetence, loss, and shame, and humiliation. I don’t think that about right and left handers. My wife is left hander. I love her. I think she’s awesome. But what I am saying is that right and left in Scripture generally picture these two different results and lifestyles, and what you get in your life is determined in your life is determined by what’s in your heart.

You can’t blame somebody else. When you’re in class and a group of people are talking and messing around and doing things that are inappropriate and you join in, that’s not because they made you do that. It’s not because you didn’t have any other choice. It’s because that’s how your heart was already leaning. You’re already leaning towards making those kinds of decisions, yeah? Different circumstances, different kinds of people can put temptations in your path, that is true, but ultimately you go the way that your heart is already leaning. It is a false claim to wisdom when you keep going to the left even though everybody who cares about you is pleading with you to go to the right. You can’t claim wisdom, you can’t claim that your intentions were really good. No, because how you go where you are directed to what you choose, that comes out of your heart. Folly sprouts internally from a central location from the heart. Number three, the third fact about folly. Not only Does folly ruin a good reputation and originate from a central location?

Number three, folly broadcasts a clear signal. It may happen for a while, but ultimately it’s going to be impossible to hide folly. Verse three, even when the fool walks on the road, he lacks sense. He says to everyone that he is a fool. The fool walking on the road is probably a literal picture, meaning the fool, is actually walking down a real road. Meaning what we have here is a fool who is out for a stroll, out for a nice little walk. All he’s doing is walking down the road and what is observable about him is that he lacks sense. It doesn’t actually take a lot to walk down the road. But somehow in his bumbling down the road, it becomes obvious to everybody that he lacks sense. It’s interesting and some of your translations may even have it this way, but the phrase is actually lacks heart or his heart is lacking.

There’s a problem with his heart. It’s obvious by how he walks down the road that there’s a problem on the inside. What is inside comes out. You can’t hide it. You can disguise it for a while. You can try to cover it up, but ultimately it will be revealed for other people to see. He lacks sense, is probably better translated, his heart is lacking. There’s an issue in that central location. By his bumbling behavior and his silly speech, whether that’s implicitly from his example or explicitly by the words he actually uses, the fool broadcasts his folly in high definition. There is a clear signal. You can put it up, it’s like a big screen HD TV plasma screen, blah blah blah, whatever. What is in your heart comes out and is obvious for everybody to see. And isn’t it interesting that most fools hate that other Other people think that they’re a fool.

They hate that. They can’t stand that. They are offended when a peer or a parent or a teacher judges them. Well, you don’t know me. Well, yes we do. We do know you because we hear what you’ve said and we watch what you do and we see you respond to other people and we know the decisions, the kind of decisions that you make. Yes, we do know you because even when you walk down the road, you are broadcasting the signal of what is in your heart. And that’s either going to be wisdom or that’s going to be folly. It’s obvious either way. Folly speaks volumes. Look, if you don’t want other people to think that you’re a fool, stop acting like one. That’s really, really simple.

You don’t want other people to think that you act in foolishness and folly. Then act like a wise person. You can’t act like a fool and then be surprised, oh how did it happen that other people think I’m a fool? Well because even how you walk down the road, it doesn’t take much discernment or a lot of time to figure out because the signal is clear. It’s in high definition what is in your heart. Folly broadcasts a clear signal. That leads us to the fourth fact about folly. Last one, folly infiltrates in high places. It would be really nice to think that folly was reserved for people that we don’t have to interact with and certainly that people who are in positions of authority over us would not have folly.

But that’s not the case. infiltrates itself in high places. Look at verse 4, If the anger of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place, for calmness will lay great offenses to rest. Then read verses 5 through 7 as well. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, as it were, an error proceeding from the ruler, folly, is set in many high places, and the rich sit in a low place. I have seen slaves on horses and princes walking on the ground like slaves.” Now some people would say verse 4 has nothing to do with verses 1-3. They sometimes see connection between verse 4 and verses 5-7, but they kind of think these are isolated things.

I can’t see any reason why they would be isolated from each other. Though verse 4 doesn’t use the word folly explicitly, I think that we can make a connection here, namely that verse 4 is giving counsel on how to deal with a foolish authority. We just talked about how folly demonstrates itself. It broadcasts in a clear signal, and some of the people that we see folly in most clearly are those who have some position of authority, those who are in some ruling kind of office. More than likely, verse 4 and then verses five through seven are not referring to a king, but to some kind of official, some kind of superior, maybe a boss or a lower court judge, somebody who is in a position of authority, and it’s connected then telling us how to deal with them in their foolishness and in their folly.

There’s good reason, I think, to believe that verse four is connected with verses one through through three in this idea of folly, because where does anger come from? It obviously comes from the heart. But look back at chapter seven verse nine. In the wisdom literature, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes itself, as well as in the context of chapter ten, I think we should see that there is an explicit connection between anger and folly. Ecclesiastes 7 verse 9, Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of who? Fools. You know what kind of people get angry? Fools. I know. I’m one of them or am trying to be less of one of them.

Angry people are foolish people. Angry people are not using their mind. They’re not recognizing some very basic truths like, I’ll use myself as an example, if I were to get angry because somebody didn’t do something that I wanted them to do, then It’s foolish for me to act that way because I’m acting like I’m God. That’s foolish. Because I’m not. I might wish I was, I might like to be. But that’s foolish for me to think that. I’m not using my mind. I’m not God. They don’t have to serve me. It’s foolish because I’m forgetting about God’s sovereignty, that He’s in control of what’s happening and not me. It’s foolish because I’m not walking in the spirit and being full of his fruit, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, meekness, long suffering.

So it is a fool who gets angry. And I think what we have here in verse 4, back in chapter 10, is the irate reaction of a ruler who’s a fool. infiltrates even high positions by inverse four causing irate reactions. If the anger the ruler rises against you do not leave your place for calmness will lay great offenses to rest. You know it’s possible that you could have done something genuinely to make the ruler angry. That’s possible. But remaining calm when you’ve done something that deserves punishment doesn’t necessarily guarantee to get you out of it. I mean, that’s fine for you to remain calm. If you’ve blown it, you’ve messed up, and the authority is irritated about it, you should remain calm and take your punishment and endure that.

That’s true, but I’m not sure that you can get out of the consequences just by remaining calm. is, if a ruler is, I think, foolishly angry with you, angry with you for no good reason, then perhaps it’s possible for you to persuade them to stop being angry with you by your calm, your cool, your collected response. Don’t add your foolishness, don’t add a foolish response on your part to an irate leader or authority or boss. The idea here is don’t walk off in a huff. Your boss comes in, blames you for something that you didn’t do, and you’re like, that’s it. I’m out of here. You can’t treat me like that. Not only have you lost your job now, you have lost reputation, you likely have lost any kind of recommendation.

So don’t react foolishly on your part to a leader or superior or a boss, a ruler, a judge, whoever might be who is irately foolish or foolishly irate with you. The wrong thing to do is storm off. Don’t leave your place. Be calm, be patient, be respectful, and perhaps that will persuade them to stop being so angry with you. But not only then in verse 4 does Folly infiltrate high positions by causing irate reactions, I think Folly also infiltrates high places by causing irrational decisions. And that’s the point in verses 5 through 7. This is a story of error. This This is a mistake. This is an oversight where some person in a authoritative position puts into position somebody else who doesn’t deserve to be there.

Now that never happens. The people who have authority always deserve that authority. Bosses are bosses because they have a tag on the back of their neck that says, Great Egg Qualified Boss. No, that’s obviously not true. We have government leaders who don’t deserve to be leading other people, teachers in various schools who don’t know anything, they shouldn’t teach. We have people who have been appointed to high places, wherever those high places of authority may be, who don’t deserve to be there. And whether that folly comes out because of just negligence or forgetfulness or by accident, they don’t deserve to be there and that is how folly can infiltrate even those who you don’t expect it or would prefer that they not have it.

And so men with resources, men who are rich men, who are princes, are treated like they don’t have any authority when they should have been, and fools and slaves get the job. Now that’s a reality. It’d be nice to think that that’s not how it went, but that’s a reality. If you haven’t experienced that yet, you will at some point in time in the future, but all that comes out of folly. The goal then is to avoid folly, because just a little bit of folly can ruin what up to this point may have been a great, a stellar reputation. It comes from the heart. If you want to not be someone whose life is characterized by foolishness and folly, you’ve got to go to the heart. That’s the central location that it all comes out of, and it’s going to be obvious. Whether you lean to the right or to the left, people are going to know that you are broadcasting for the world to see what is in your heart and ultimately you’re going to see that even in high places. So how serious are you about avoiding folly? People used to care about their reputation.

They used to care what other people thought about them in a good way. Do you even care about what other people think about your reputation? If you don’t care about your own name, if If you take the name Christian, you ought to at least care about what your life says about him and about his name. Do you even care about that? Are you aiming to avoid even a little bit of folly? How about this, does your heart lean to the right or to the left? Because it leans one way or the other. Which way does your heart lean and what does everybody else say? If we were to ask your parents which way your heart leans, what would they say?

by your responses, by your reactions. What about your friends? Just because you think your heart goes one way or the other, why do you say that? How do you know that? What would other people say? And then perhaps it would be good to think through what kind of problems can come when fools are in authority and how ought we to respond to fools in authority in a non-foolish way. We spent many weeks in chapter 8 talking about how to respond to authority, even unjust, hurtful authority, let alone just authority who doesn’t know anything, doesn’t know better, who are fools. There are problems that come with it. How should we, how do we deal with fools, even those who are in authority? Bottom line, There is a way to live that pleases God and that’s those who fear Him and forsake folly.

That’s the path of wisdom, that’s the path of joy, that’s the path of enjoying the process. The other path leads to shame and loss and humiliation. It ultimately leads to destruction. I pray that each one of you would avoid that path. Father, help us do that. you for this teaching on folly that we might avoid it. Help us now even in our small groups to discuss that, to help one another, to make sure our hearts are leaning in the right direction and that our walking demonstrates that we want to follow you more than anything else. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.