The Folly of a Fool

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.

There are a lot of jobs a parent has that are hard. Anybody that’s raised kids knows that’s to be true. One of those hard jobs starts as soon as you find out you’re going to have a baby. That’s picking a name. Most of us can’t even make up our minds at a Baskin & Robbins 31 flavor store, let alone trying to pick just one name out of the tens of thousands or more possibilities. I went out, I did my research on this topic, I went out to a baby name website and I found that there are, was over 20,000 plus choices you had for your baby’s name. Expecting parents spend hours saying the potential name out loud over and over to hear how it sounds. They just kinda keep rattle the name out loud. How does it sound when it’s combined with our surname?

How does it sound or does it rhyme with anything bad? You wanna watch out for that. Does it remind them of someone that they don’t like? oh, I love that name, oh wait, that person in first grade, I really didn’t like them, so I can’t name them that. It’s amazing that they ever come up with a name given all that goes into the decision. In addition to how the name sounds, they labor over what the name means. We go through all the little baby name dictionaries, you know, what do those names mean? The meaning of the name seems to be especially important to Christians. They often turn to the Bible for inspiration when looking for names.

And there are a lot of wonderful names in the Bible to choose from with very rich meaning. But there’s also some pretty bad ones that you might want to stay away from. One of the best names in the Bible not to name your child is Nabal. In case you don’t know, Nabal means fool or foolish. He was the husband of Abigail and you can read about him in 1 Samuel 25. We’re not going to go into that story. Who would name their child Fool?

Now I know what some of you parents are thinking right now, but be careful, Matthew 5.22 warns against calling a brother, let alone a child, a fool. I was curious as to how many people might actually be named Navel today in the world. So I went to that one place that I could think of where I could search for a lot of names and that was Facebook. Facebook has over one billion active users. So I went in there and I started searching for Navel, and lo and behold, I found one Navel. But that Navel was a Muslim girl whose parents probably had no idea who Navel is and what the name meant.

It would seem that foolishness is on the rise today as our culture increasingly rejects the common sense wisdom that God has given to all men. It is tempting to agree with Mark Twain when he said, The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right. Think about that. Fools may not be lightning rods in the physical sense, but we’re going to see from Proverbs that they are very much our lightning rods in a spiritual sense. And the consequences of their foolishness have a real world implication for them. And so we’re going to be in Proverbs chapter 1, verses 20 through 33 tonight as we take a look at that.

The sermon is titled The Folly of the Fool because we’re gonna see a pattern here where wisdom is calling out and making herself available. But the fool rejects it and we see some consequences. Proverbs one in general has a lot to say about the fool but specifically in verses 20 through 33, wisdom makes an offer and gives a stern warning to those who don’t accept the offer. To the one who follows wisdom’s instruction, there is the promise that they will live securely. To the one who rejects wisdom’s call, there is the opposite promise of a life filled with pain and hardship. This passage describes the progression from simply being naive to becoming an outright fool and shows how ignoring the wisdom God provides leads to destruction.

All of us start out life as foolish individuals. Proverbs 22.15 says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child. So guess what, we all get to start life there. When we’re cooing over that newborn baby, we don’t usually think to ourselves, ah, what a cute little fool, or foolish, I should say. But that’s exactly how the Bible describes us at birth. Being born foolish is not our fault. It’s a result of the fall. But remaining foolish and becoming a certified fool as we grow up is our fault. The problem is not a lack of opportunity to become wise. The problem arises when we harden our heart to wisdom’s call and think that we know better.

And I’d like to, just for a moment, all of us can learn from this today because nobody is exempt no matter how old you are. But particularly for young people, I want you to really pay attention because that is a season of life when you really are gonna have some decisions to make, and you’re going to be confronted with lots of choices. Some of them foolish and some of them wise. And it’s for whatever reason, it’s an age in life when we tend to think we know more than we know, and we sometimes block up our ears and don’t want to listen to wisdom. So you guys take particular heed because you are still in the season of life where you can make the right choices and avoid yourself a lot of pain.

Some of us with gray hair, no hair, know lots of people that made very bad choices as young people and today still live with those consequences. So we would really like to be able to spare you that if at all possible. It’s really tragic and maddening watching someone who insists on rejecting wisdom rail against the inevitable consequences their foolishness yields. It’s like hearing a man curse the hammer he is hitting his own skull with. Just sitting there bashing himself and cursing the hammer as he hits himself in the head. It’s that crazy. Let’s take a look at Wisdom’s call. It starts off in verses 20 through 23.

Wisdom shouts in the streets. She lifts her voice in the square. At the head of the noisy streets, she cries out. At the entrance of the gates in the city, she utters her sayings. How long, oh naive ones, will you love simplicity? And scoffers delight themselves in scoffing, and fools hate knowledge. Turn to my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you. I will make my words known to you. So as we break that section down, we first see the cry, verses 20 through 21. The foolish person might have been excused had he never had the opportunity to learn wisdom. If you could say, I never knew better, well then maybe you have an excuse, but we don’t.

Wisdom has made herself available. She’s available in various forms in God’s providence. The reality is that wisdom has been revealed and can be found by those who really wish to find it. Creation itself reveals the wisdom of God. Proverbs 6, 6 tells us that we can learn from the ants the values of hard work and preparing for the future. Job tells us we can learn by watching the animal kingdom. He says, ask the beasts and they will teach you and the birds of the heaven and they will tell you. Psalm 19, 1 says, the heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanses declaring work of hands. We read those verses and we somehow think they’re just a nice poetry.

No there is a truth there that even nature itself can teach us something about the wisdom of God if we will take the time to observe and open our eyes and study. I’m afraid that we’ve become so dull, so fixated on our little electronic devices that we miss out on the message that God is broadcasting through His creation. Romans 1.20 says God’s invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” You’re not going to be able to stand before God and say, I didn’t know any better. He’s going to say, I broadcasted throughout all my creation. You have no excuse. In addition to natural revelation, we have direct revelation in the Bible. What more do we want from God? He is not stingy when when it comes to telling us how to be wise.

The Apostle James wrote, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, and he who gives generously to him without reproach, and it will be given to him. No one who is looking for wisdom will come up empty handed, that’s the point. It is readily available to the person who wants it. Wisdom itself speaks elsewhere in Proverbs, Proverbs 8, 17, and says, I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently, find me. Do you want wisdom? Ask for it, but don’t reject it if it isn’t giving you the answers that you want to hear. So continuing on, verse 22, we see the rebuke. After declaring her availability, wisdom rebukes those who turn a deaf ear to her call.

She identifies three stages of foolishness there. She talks about the naive, the scoffer, and then the full-on fool. There’s a clear progression that leads a person from being simply naive to becoming a hardened fool. Again, everyone starts our life in the naive classification, as I mentioned earlier. The progression to fool, a full-on fool, happens when we reject wisdom’s instructions to us. So the naive person is simply untaught in the ways of wisdom. Again, you can think of a very young child who just doesn’t know any better, doesn’t know, not supposed to put your hand up there on the hot stove. They’re just naive.

are unlearned. He is not stupid, but rather ignorant of the ways of wisdom. He is not like the fool who understands wisdom’s call but rejects it. His exposure to life and wisdom has been limited. All young children fall in this classification, but it’s not just limited to children. It’s a part of a parent’s job to train Niebode out of their children. When you encounter a fool in their adulthood, it is because they either were never trained in the ways of wisdom, or they were, but they rejected that training. Sadly there are a lot of secular approaches to parenting that help increase the odds of raising a fool today.

I’m not going to go into my parenting seminar now, but it drives me nuts when I read some of the stuff out there, and I think, wow, guaranteed formula for making a fool. As Christians, personal time, reading and obeying the Bible is a primary way that we we grow out of naivety and increase in wisdom. And so again, as parents training younger ones, you do want to instill in them a healthy habit of personal devotions, reading the word, memorizing it. Because again, that’s the primary avenue we have for learning wisdom. Well, moving on from the naive person, we then move to the next level of a fool, which is the scoffer.

The scoffer is the one who has heard wisdom, but disregards it and even derides it. They are becoming smug as their self-confidence grows. They haven’t given up all of the concerns what other people think, so they often do their mocking and sniping from darkened corners rather than in broad daylight. The scoffer shows up in various ways. The smirking student in the back of the classroom who won’t participate. The person who mutters under their breath, just enough so you can sort of hear their displeasure, but you can’t really make out what they say. They’re muttering against some authority. They’re too afraid to say out loud what they are thinking.

The person who hides behind their anonymity as they post online comments railing against this or that, you’ll often see that. Today, we’ve made a forum for lots of fools, and anonymous is always saying something silly and foolish out there. They scorn the ways of wisdom and those who abide by wisdom’s teachings. They mock a wise instruction and they view those who do follow counsel or instruction as weak or gullible. It’s part of being the scoffer is when you do see somebody who is following advice, following counsel, being obedient to the authorities, the scoffer will mock them and make fun of them, and oh goody two shoes, or look at you, you loser.

They will just pick apart because again, they don’t like the fact that their foolishness is being exposed. The scoffer seeks out others to affirm him in his foolishness. Together they view those who are calling them to wisdom with suspicion and or derision. Scoffers like company, they just gather other fools in the making around them to reinforce their view, their position, and they stand alone against all the rest of the world. Everybody else is crazy, us five, we know what we’re doing, we know what we’re talking about. Their foolishness is beginning to cloud their judgment to the point that they think they are the smart ones and everyone else are pawns under the oppressive hand of some authority.

Any teachers in here? You’ve never seen this exhibited ever before, right? Appeals to them are met with more soleness or surliness. They are caught in the snare of their own folly and don’t realize that they are well on the road to destruction. And that brings us to the third stage, the fool. The fool is an advanced scoffer. They are in stage four of scoffer cancer and without repentance they are in serious jeopardy. Symptoms of the stage are outright arrogance and near total rejection of any input from others that runs counter to their own thinking. They are much more vocal and open about their opposition. The scoffer tends to want to still hide in the corners, hide in the shadows, kind of snipe at you when you’re not looking.

The fool, a fool on fool, doesn’t care anymore. He’s out there in the street corners broadcasting his foolishness. They don’t perceive that they are opposed to wisdom. They don’t realize it. They think they’re the smart ones. They think they’re the ones that have the wisdom, when in fact everybody else is looking at them and embarrassed for them because of their foolishness. They think they’re wise. In their blindness, they think they’re wise and everyone else is the fool. They no longer care what others think and are out in the open and very public in expressing that foolishness. Examples of these kinds of fools are everywhere.

Some of the most popular personalities in the entertainment industry with last names ending in IAN or RUS put on profoundly ugly displays, you can think about that later, who those would be, you know, just think Ian or Russ on the end of the name, displays of foolishness and millions of adoring fools applaud them. How tragic it is that our media is saturated with people who are just flat out fools and we’ve got the cheering masses. Yay! Let me pay you $150 to go here. You’d be more of a fool. It’s like ludicrous and we reward our fools today in our society. NARAL. Does that stand for what National Association, NARAL, looked at?

You guys know who NARAL is, but they’re pro-abortion. They tweeted their foolishness this past week by accusing the maker of Doritos of humanizing fetuses in their Super Bowl commercial. I don’t know if you saw that commercial or not, but it’s a situation. They’re in a hospital room, husband and wife. The mom’s pregnant. They’re doing the ultrasound. They can see the baby on the screen and the baby. And the dad realizes all of a sudden that if he waves the Dorito like that, the baby’s going back and forth, trek in the Dorito. Then all of a sudden, the wife finally gets mad, and she rips the Dorito out of his head, and she throws it across the room, which causes the baby to basically be instantaneously born, chasing after the Dorito.

But Nairow, they didn’t see the humor in the commercial. They were outraged, and they accused Dorito of, get this, humanizing fetuses. How dare they imply that that’s actually a human being in the womb? Now we look at that and we know, what a foolish, ignorant, stupid statement to make, and yet they are so blinded in their foolishness, they’re willing to tweet it to the universe of how outraged they are that somebody would actually call a baby, a baby. Amazing. When pressed, the fool rages against wisdom and uses mockery as a defense mechanism. At some point, the fool has rejected wisdom for so long he has become dull and unable to even perceive wisdom.

Proverbs 17, 10 says, a rebuke goes deeper into one who is understanding than a hundred blows into a fool. Think about that. A simple rebuke has more impact on a wise man than a hundred physical blows on a fool. Can you imagine that beating that fool 100 times and he still doesn’t get the point? I guess that means that you can’t really beat some sense into some people. If a fool hasn’t already been given a reprobate mind by God, they are certainly getting very close to it. A reprobate mind is where a person no longer has the ability to judge right from wrong. God has seared their conscience and leaves them totally vulnerable to sin’s destructive powers.

Well then moving on to verse 23, we see an offer. Wisdom makes an offer. Thankfully, because of God’s grace, even a certified fool is not beyond reach. Verse 23 tells us that a fool, if he will repent and humble himself, can become wise. Turn to my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit on you. I will make my words known to you. This verse reveals God’s tender mercies and the fact that it’s never too late to turn from our foolish ways. Dave was referring to Nebuchadnezzar this morning And again, I’ll refer you back to that passage. He’s an example of this. The book of Daniel records the story of how Nebuchadnezzar became such a fool that God caused him to go mad for seven periods of time, where he lived like an animal in the wilderness.

I mean, literally he’s living out in the fields like an animal, eating the grass, and nails are growing long, hair’s getting unruly. Basically he’s a beast at that point. He’s lost all human reasoning, ability. And then in Daniel 4.34, we see recorded what happens when finally he came to his senses. He says, the moment when his sanity was restored to him, he says, at the end of the days, the days of judgment, I Nebuchadnezzar lifted my eyes to heaven and my reason returned to me and I blessed the most high and praised and honored him who lives forever for his dominion is an everlasting dominion and his kingdom endures from generation to generation.

All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing and he does according to his will among the host of heavens and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand or say to him, what have you done? Sounds like a man who’s been humbled. But it started with him finally turning his eyes back to heaven and recognizing who God is and who he is. He had to humble himself. Verse 23 provides comfort to those who have a loved one who currently is walking the fool’s path. The fool may have long stopped listening to what we say, but they can’t escape the hound of heaven that Francis Thompson wrote about in his famous poem.

With God, there is always hope, and that should fuel our unending prayers for the repentance of our loved ones bound in their foolishness. And I know there are people even in this room today who still hearts ache, because they see loved ones who are trapped in their foolishness and refuse to see it, refuse to repent of it. And so I take courage from these passages I just read that don’t give up praying, don’t give up hope. It’s not too late, so continue to believe and trust and pray and see what God might do.

So what happens if a person persists in foolishness and becomes hardened? It’s not good. Most people in our culture and quite a few believers tend to emphasize the love of God and neglect to remember that he is also a God who executes judgment on the wicked and discipline on his children.

It is true that God is amazingly and undeservedly patient towards sinners, but he isn’t blind or indifferent. He’s just not the benevolent old guy in the sky who’s just going to give us all the bit of want and wink at our foolishness. God will judge, he will deal with that. There is a point in which the quote unquote chickens come home to roost, so to speak, or to put it in more biblical terms, there’s a time to reap what you’ve been sowing. Starting then in verse 24, we see just how callous a fool becomes even though wisdom is all but begging him to listen. Wisdom continues to make her plea to the fool, but there is a limit to wisdom’s patience.

Verse 24, because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention and you neglected all my counsel and did not want my reproof. In these verses we see wisdom continue to graciously extend herself to man. It starts with a simple call and then an outstretched hand and then a word of counsel and finally a strong reproof. Throughout this whole process, the fool continually rejects the wisdom’s call and develops a more and more calloused heart. We see four character traits of the fool revealed in these couple verses. How do you know you’re dealing with a fool? Look for these four traits. Starting in verse 24a, the fool is stubborn.

Wisdom calls out, but the fool refuses to listen. Wisdom calls out in many ways through God’s word, his providence, teachers, parents, other godly people. No matter how the call is made, The response is the same, stubborn resistance. Few things are as frustrating as when several counselors sit down with a fool and they’re all in agreement in their counsel, but the fool still refuses to listen, believing he is right and everybody else is wrong. It’s possible all the counselors are wrong, but that would be a pretty rare case. Proverbs tells us there’s a safety and a multitude of counselors. Folks, if you find yourself odd man out in most of the debates, and it’s not in defense of a biblical truth, it might be time to consider if you’re walking in foolishness.

If you’re sitting down with five or six brothers or sisters in Christ and they’re all in agreement that something you’re doing is not wise, and you’re still fighting for your way, that’s at least a warning sign, that’s at least an idiot light on the dashboard. You might be right but you ought to really be taking a huge step back and considering if maybe not you haven’t become blind in some area. Continuing on we see the fool is indifferent, another trait 24b. Wisdom is persistent, she not only calls out but she reaches out. It’s as if wisdom is saying hey, over here, I’m trying to get your attention. Even still the fool, hears it all remains unmoved and indifferent to wisdom’s overtures.

In the early stages of becoming a fool, they are willing to engage in a debate. I’ve talked to some people before who are starting down the trail, and they will have conversations early on. But then they aren’t moved, but at least they’ll talk. As they advance in their foolishness, they become indifferent to wisdom’s call. Your voice becomes really faint and distant. Their response is a shrug of the shoulders and an attitude of whatever. If you do get them to sit down and listen, they just sit there like this and you just see it on their face like, you know, whatever, just yak while you want, I’m not going to change my mind.

Well, there’s a third stage then we see, a third trait of the person who’s becoming a fool and that is that they are negligent, 25A. The word used in the NAS for neglected here means to let alone or to avoid. To avoid something, you have to be aware of its presence. You can’t avoid something that you didn’t know was there. So the fool is aware of wisdom’s offer. They’re aware of what they’re hearing is the truth, but they choose to neglect it, choose to deny it. The fool is not unaware of wisdom. He simply chooses just to go his own way. Typically, when a person turns from their foolishness, they say something like, I knew better, but I just didn’t want to do it.

That’s very common is when you find somebody sees the light and they say I knew what you were saying was right I just didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to listen They don’t they don’t say I had no idea what I was doing was a bad idea How often have you seen a person knowing the wise thing to do deliberately turn his back and pursue the path of foolishness? This is the result of the blindness that foolishness creates and it’s another trait of of a fool. They just, it’s just, you just, you want to scream and reach out because you just see them go in the wrong direction and they, they won’t listen. They, you know, they, they stop and turn for a moment and then they turn and they just keep walking in the wrong direction. Well the fourth trait I see here is that the fool is not teachable 25b. When all else fails, wisdom escalates your response to reproof, hoping that at last the wayward person will come to their senses But even though she now shouts at him, it’s to no avail.

The fool is not teachable and continues hardening his heart until the cry from wisdom is just barely perceptible off in the distance. This is the stage where even 100 blows will not get through to the fool. It is at this point that the fool had better watch out. The seeds of foolishness have been sown and they’re about to bear fruit. Let’s take a look at that. I call this the resulting calamity. We just went through what I call the fool’s callousness. This is the resulting calamity. 26 through 32. Wisdom speaking here. I will even laugh at your calamity. I mean, wisdom, you understand, this is God speaking, right?

I mean, think about what he’s saying here. I will even laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your dread comes. When your dread comes like a storm and your calamity comes on like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come on you, then they will call on me, but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently, but they shall not find me, because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would not accept my counsel. They spurned all my reproof. So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way and be satisfied, satiated with their own devices. For the waverness of the naive shall kill them and the complacency of fools shall destroy them.”

When I first read that passage, it just kinda gripped me. It’s like, wow. God says, fool, when you start to reap the fruit, and then you cry out, I will laugh at you. I will mock you, you mocked me, I’ll mock you. That doesn’t quite fit the picture of the benevolent grandfather in the sky He’s just always there, and God’s all love, right? This is a different picture of who God is. Trouble will come, 26 through 27. The fool may think for a season that he’s getting away with rejecting wisdom’s call. In reality, he is wandering ever so closer to the brink of his own destruction. Proverbs 6, 27 asks the rhetorical question, can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?

What do you guys think? take a burning log and hold it to my chest and expect my clothes to not burn. Pretty obvious, huh? Some might be thinking, now, wait a minute. I know a lot of people the Bible calls fools, but they seem to be thriving. They’re not experiencing any sort of trouble. Don’t let the lull before the storm deceive you. It’s kind of like the guy who jumps out of a skyscraper and halfway down, he says, well, so far, so good. Yeah, that’s the kind of thinking the fool does. Psalm 37, seven through 11 reminds us, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.

Cease from anger and forsake wrath, do not fret. It only leads to evildoing. For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land. Yet a little while and the wicked man will be no more, and you will look carefully for his place, and he will not be there. But the humble will inherit the land and will delight themselves in abundant prosperity. It will be bad enough when trouble comes to the fool, but on top of that, God says that he will laugh and mock the fool in their day of calamity. What a frightful thought. The only one who can deliver you is laughing in your face. This passage might make God look harsh, But in fact, it’s just the opposite.

We’ve already seen how he pursues the fool with great long suffering until at some point, the fool is crossed to point where wisdom’s invitation is withdrawn. When the storm of wisdom’s judgment comes, two realities will hit the fool in the face with full force. So they’ve been, the wisdom’s called out, they’ve been callous, the calamity has come, And they’re going to have to basically face the situation. And there’s two realities that are going to hit them full force in the face. Verses 28 through 30. First, we’re going to see there’s going to be no escape. The fool might be tempted to think he can ignore God’s wisdom until trouble comes and then expect God to bail him out.

But he’s sadly mistaken. When calamity strikes, it will be too late to cry out for help. The Epiconeser had to go through those seven periods of time eating grass and acting like a crazy man. The one who turned a deaf ear to wisdom will now themselves be on the receiving end of being ignored. The fool has no one to blame but themselves, and they too, and they will be all too aware of the fact they can cry and fume all they want, but it’s not going to do any good. The fool hated knowledge and refused to fear the Lord. The fool thought he could manage his own life, and so God leaves him to his own devices to solve his problems.

Again, for a season, God will often abandon the fool in his situation, even when the fool is supposedly calling out to God. Now, typically, what you see is that a fool will initially have lots of regret, not repentance. They won’t like the consequences of their decisions, but there’s not true repentance, and so they will call out to God, but their heart isn’t really where it needs to be. And the second reality, the second truth that’s gonna slap them in the face when this calamity hits them, is that you reap what you sow, verses 31 and 32. In life, there is a season of sowing and then there is a season of reaping.

The fool sows folly and he reaps destruction. You can’t expect to sow foolishness by rejecting wisdom and then reap God’s blessing. It doesn’t work that way. Galatians 6,7 puts it very succinctly, do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. Many people today foolishly live their life, never giving God a second thought. Then when tragedy or trial arises, they think they can call on the man upstairs. You know, we see that over and over and over again. They treat God like a genie in a bottle. The bottle sits on the shelf collecting dust. When calamity strikes, they grab the bottle and start rubbing it furiously, expecting the genie to pop out and deliver them from the consequences of foolishness.

But it’s not what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna just wear out the bottle, rubbing it, no genies popping out. The fool can call all he wants and even kid himself into believing that God is listening, but the reality is that he is totally on his own. The only thing God will listen to at this point is a sincere prayer of repentance. In essence, God has said, you reject me, I reject you. What utter despair the fool will feel when finally they realize just how foolish they’ve been and know that they have no one to blame but themselves. Again, just a tragic situation. The chickens have come home to roost, the consequences are weighing heavily on them and they realize, I was a fool.

All their arrogant boasts and slander against wisdom will come back to haunt them. In their hour of greatest need they will have no one but themselves to turn to. Can you imagine being in total desperation and the only one who can save you, mocks you and laughs at you. Typically when a fool is caught up in consequences of their foolishness, they call out for help. As I mentioned this a moment ago, often though this is only a case of regret and not true repentance, they aren’t sorry for the foolish choices. They are just regretting the consequences and they want someone to bail them out. As agents of God’s grace, we need wisdom ourselves to know when we’re dealing with with a regretful fool or a repentant fool.

We don’t want to be foolish ourselves by trying to fix the fix. In counseling, that is always something you have to discern. Is this person really repentant, or are they just regretful of their decisions? I foolishly spent my money on things that people warned me were a foolish expenditure, and now I don’t have money for food, and they want you to come help fill their pantries. That’s fixing the fix. No, you get to go hungry for a little while so that you can remember and learn from this lesson. I’m not talking about being incapacitate. It’s actually very compassionate to require a fool to sit in the mess they’ve made until such time as they are repentant.

Once they’re repentant, you bet, dive in and help. But watch out. We can be very easily manipulated, especially certain types of personalities can really respond to the hurting person, But if they’re hurting is because of their foolishness and they’re not repentant, you’re not helping them by jumping and bailing them out. You don’t have to be mean, but also be wise and don’t fix the fix. We’ve already seen that with God, there is always the possibility of being renewed to a right mind, but that does not mean that a fool won’t be forced to experience the fruit of their folly for an extended period of time, nor that there won’t be long-lasting consequences of their foolishness, even if they do repent.

And again, young people, I want to stress, if your parents and your teachers are talking to you and saying you aren’t making wise choices, pay attention. Because there are people today who’ve had to live with consequences for 40, 50, 60 years, the rest of their life, because of foolishness. Spare yourself the pain and the grief. Listen up. It’s not just a path you want to go down. Well, verse 33 then gives us the correct response. What should the fool have been doing? But he who listens to me shall live securely and shall be at ease from the dread of evil. We have seen how wisdom cries out faithfully to the fool, longing for him to turn from his wicked ways.

We looked at the callousness of the fool and how he mocks wisdom and rejects God the counsel. And we have seen the calamity that ultimately strikes the fool in the midst of his arrogance. For those of us who would learn from this study on the folly of the fool, there’s a conclusion, or a point, that verse 33 brings home to us. The lesson to be learned is this. Listen to wisdom. Listen. It’s available. It’s there. It’s all around us. It’s in the trees. It’s in the sky. It’s in the revelation. It’s in God’s word. It’s in the mouths of your teachers and your parents. It’s all around you. available. How simple and yet how contrary to our human tendency, man wants to be self-legislating.

We don’t want to be dependent on anyone for anything. But if we will humble ourselves and truly listen to wisdom, which implies reading the Bible and obeying it, then instead of experiencing the calamity of the fool, we can enjoy the comfort of our God. Another Another point worth making is that it is only God’s right and prerogative to mock and laugh at the fool’s calamity, not ours. Nowhere in that passage did it say that we can mock the fool, that we can laugh at them. That is God’s right, God’s prerogative. It would be sin for us to respond this way to the consequences of another man’s foolishness. The right response for us is to pray for the fool’s repentance and to continue to to try and speak words of wisdom to them.

All of us are fallible humans prone to walk in foolishness to one degree or another. And guess what? We do. There’s an old saying, once a fool, always a fool. Thank God that isn’t necessarily true. If a fool will truly humble themselves and confess their sin of rebellion, God will once again make wisdom available to them and give them the grace to work through the consequences that their foolishness brought about. Like Nebuchadnezzar, the fool can lift his eyes up to heaven, which is a metaphor for being humble, and his reason will be returned to him. The choice before us is pretty simple. Walk in wisdom and live securely and free from the dread of evil, or walk in foolishness and wait for the calamity that’s sure to come.

Let’s pray. Well, Father, this is a very powerful passage that just kind of grabs us by the throat and punches us in the face a few times and insists that we pay attention. What more could you have done? You have made your wisdom abundantly available to us. It is there for the taking. And yet, all of us, to one degree or another, at different times, have certainly, at least started on the path of the foolish one. And sadly, some have gone down the trail a long way and are now experiencing the predicted and promised calamity. We do pray that you would give us here tonight ears to hear hearts that would seek after wisdom.

If any of us are already in the process of maybe we’re still naive or we’re in a scoffer phase, that we will wake up and consider what has been shared tonight and amend our ways. Father, protect us from the folly of the fool, and thank you that even for those that have become full on fools, that even for them if they will lift their eyes to heaven and repent, that you are so gracious that you will once again open up wisdom and make it available to even them. Father, how good you are, how gracious and long suffering and patient, even when you are disciplining us in ways like these. Again, there’s still always a way back home. Thank you for that. May you bless us as we go out this week and may we walk the path of wisdom in our decisions that we make. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.