Join Pastor Tim as we begin a new series and start it out by talking about fools (Prov. 26:4-5)! It’s often a passage that has been cited to say the Bible contradicts itself, but it actually has a very straightforward and very applicable message for us.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Good evening and welcome to this week’s Steadfast. I’m so glad you are joining me tonight. We are beginning a brand new series, proverbially speaking, in which we are going to explore some of the more head-scratching proverbs that we find in the Book of Proverbs and see how God’s wisdom in them applies to us. I’m particularly excited. We’re going to start with one that has often been cited by people who want to say the Bible is filled with errors and contradictions, and they, in doing so, miss what it has to teach us and in fact isn’t a contradiction at all.
So let’s go ahead and pray and then we’ll dig right in. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word that we get to study. Thank you for the opportunity to study and become more truly wise in the only way we can through the power of your Holy Spirit and through your word. Lord, would you be with us tonight, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
So as I said, the passage tonight is one that has often been said to be proof that there’s contradictions, and you’re going to see why in a moment when I read it. It’s probably familiar to you, you’ve probably heard people refer to it for this very reason. And because we end up debating on that, we miss what it’s really there to tell us. So let’s go ahead and look at Proverbs chapter 26, verses 4 and 5.
We read these words: “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” Did you catch that? We shouldn’t answer a fool, but we should answer a fool. What are we supposed to do with that?
Well, it’s confusing at first because it feels like it’s saying that we should both do something and not do something, but what we see here is actually something a little different. And I was reminded of it this week, reflecting on a house down the street that was being painted. That house for years now has been a little on the gaudy side. Its color scheme wasn’t really all that nice looking. They took everything off the sides of the house and painted it this very nice, refined-looking darker gray color and a nice complimentary white trim. It looked good, maybe a little bit plain. Then they started adding some plants, adding shutters, adding all kinds of different things to decorate it, and it started to look better. And then it started to go downhill again because it went back to being gaudy. It has all kinds of stuff on the front of the house now, and instead of seeing that much nicer looking paint job, all you see is all the stuff.
We’ve probably all had that experience, whether it’s decorating our own house or apartment or room, maybe it’s a project you’re putting together, a presentation, and it goes from being really plain to looking nice to suddenly you have every PowerPoint bell and whistle going off. Whatever it might be, we probably all struggle with that balance where things get a little out of whack, and they’re either not enough or too much. And that’s what we see here too in addressing truth and helping people to understand the truth. Sometimes we’re inclined to just walk away because we don’t want to have a discussion. We read verse four and we think, oh yeah, this is giving me all the information I need. It’s saying don’t deal with fools. This is foolish. I don’t have to worry about it. Then we read verse five and it says, but you’re supposed to answer a fool so he doesn’t live in his folly. We say, oh, now what do we do?
Well, what we’re being called to here in scripture is balance. It’s not a contradiction, but rather it’s answering two separate fools that we have. One where we’re overly eager to debate and to argue, and the other where we aren’t helping someone who needs our help. The key thing is we aren’t supposed to engage in foolish arguing. So we need to ask, well, how do I know if I’m doing that? How do I know if I’m helping, I’m doing something helpful and I’m helping someone? Or how do I know that I am being foolish?
And the starting point of that is to ask, well, what is a fool biblically? Who is a fool? And the key thing, as one commentator said, is to look at the outlook of the person. When we think of foolishness in our current society, we typically think of things like how smart is someone? What is their IQ? Are they really bright? Are they not so bright? And we think, well, you know, the not so bright person, that person’s foolish, and the bright person, that person is really bright. But when we’re thinking biblically, when it really comes down to it, you can have someone who’s incredibly smart, who breaks the records on IQ and is incredibly foolish. And you can have someone who doesn’t light them up at all, who’s incredibly bright or rather incredibly wise in God’s eyes.
You see, the real problem is that the fool scorns God. That’s what we see in chapter one of Proverbs and defiantly rejects God. For example, Psalm 14:1 says that the fool says in his heart there is no God. Now maybe you’re listening tonight and you’re not sure if there’s a God. And I want to say just up front, this is not addressing you. If you’re listening and you’re sincerely wrestling with whether there’s a God and whether you should follow him, then you are on your way. And I’m praying that the Spirit’s going to help you to understand that truth even tonight.
What this is talking about is someone who has seen all the evidence, who has every reason to believe, and who isn’t interested in wrestling, who isn’t interested in understanding, but rather because he wants to do, or she wants to do, whatever she wants, or he wants, wants to just go whatever way that person wants to, without any restraint, without any care for whether there’s a God in the universe, and is defiantly almost thumbing his or her nose at God. That’s what we’re talking about here.
Some of those people actually do believe that there is a God but still say there is no God because life would be too restrictive if they actually had someone they had to answer to. They just want to be free from any constraints. Others simply say there is no God because they don’t care. So that is what it looks like to be a fool.
And those fools, all of us, are constantly confronted, we’re told in Romans 1, constantly confronted with evidence that there is a God, and so someone who does that over and over again, we’re told, is a fool because they return to their error over and over again. Just as it says in verse 11 of Proverbs 26, it says, “…like a dog that returns to his vomit, as a fool repeats his folly.” And as someone repeats that, as they keep going back to their folly and being more and more foolish, we get to something even more disturbing in verse 12. It says, “…do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.”
You see, a fool who is repeatedly returning to his folly actually advances even to a worse place than a fool, because all he’s really concerned with is being right in his own eyes. He’s not concerned with God’s truth, he’s not concerned with the truth, he’s concerned with what makes him happy and what makes him important. And at some point, the scriptures say, there’s no hope for him, because all he’s interested in, all that contents him, is himself. All he wants to be is right.
And when I really look in my heart, what do I want to be? I want to be right. I like being right. I enjoy debating, I’ve shared that before, I enjoy debating with people, and so it’s invigorating to be right. Just like if you play baseball, you want to win. If you enjoy debating, you want to be right. You want to be seen as right. That’s what really matters. Not so much even being right, but that people think that you’re right. And that’s an incredibly dangerous place to be.
Because as I allow myself to go there, as anyone allows themselves to go there, what do we find? We find that all we want to do is prove ourselves. And we forget that we’re really called to prove God, to testify to his glory, to whom he is. And the problem is, as we’re doing that, and as we’re engaging in these debates, and as we’re wrestling with people over all kinds of foolish things just to be right, the Bible tells us that when we engage a fool in his folly, what happens? That foolishness rubs off.
And when it rubs off on us, it rubs off onto the reputation of Jesus. People look at us and say, well, if he or she is so willing to engage in these foolish arguments about this and that and the other thing, then what is it that I should take it to mean when I hear that person talk about the gospel? Is it just more foolishness?
We live in a culture that is often fascinated with outrage. From the news networks we watch, to the social media that we share, and everything in between. The conversations we have at the water cooler. We love being upset, and we love being right. And we pick people to be around us. We watch and listen to things. We share things that affirm our opinions. So often, that’s not what we’re called to do as Christians. We’re not called to have our opinions affirmed. We’re called to have our opinions constantly corrected and reshaped by Scripture and by God’s Spirit in us.
I was having a conversation this week with someone on social media, and it was about something other than the gospel or any kind of core… it wasn’t really about Christianity at all, but it was a group of Christians talking. And this person was saying, well, we need to argue with people and convince them of this position that I hold. And the sad thing was, she was arguing that it was okay to offend people, no matter how much it hurt them, you just need to argue because she was convinced that she was right about this thing that had nothing to do with the gospel. It was just some political matter.
And I think we’ve probably… many of us have been there. We want people to see our way. We want them to understand it. But the thing that struck me is that she was willing to offend, and she thought she was offending for the sake of the truth. And whether she was right or not, though, she was willing to offend people, and it wasn’t pointing people to Jesus in any way, because it was something that wasn’t even really all that essential. It was just her political view.
How do we decide when it’s right to engage and to argue? As I thought about this conversation and how when we’re willing to engage in foolish arguments and sling accusations back and forth, how it tarnishes or it dirties us, it reminded me of years ago when my grandparents’ house caught on fire. And I’m not sure if any of you have ever experienced a house fire or been with someone who has, but one of the striking things is after all the smoke and all the burnt material and then all the water used to extinguish the fire, you get this awful soot and ash over everything.
And every day we’d go in and we’d be trying to pull things out of that house, and no matter how careful you were, no matter how much you thought you weren’t trying to bump into things and rub this ash all over you, by the end of the day, you look down and your clothes were just filthy, covered by this awful stuff. And then you could close your eyes and know it was there, even though you hadn’t anticipated getting on you, because you could just smell the awful smell of everything that had burnt.
Maybe you haven’t experienced a house fire, and for that I’d be grateful for you that you hadn’t had to. I mean, it’s an awful experience. But maybe it’s even, you’ve just gone out and started a barbecue pit, and you know you start grabbing some of the charcoal and you’re not thinking, you just reach your hands in and you start putting it into the barbecue pit, and all of a sudden you realize your hands are just black. And it’s hard to get off, even when you wash it sometimes, it seems like it takes a lot of scrubbing to get it off, it’s a pain. And then you’re grilling and you think you’re staying nice and clean, but you go inside and for the rest of the day you can smell the smoke of the barbecue pit, it just is attached to you.
And you see, when we’re willing to needlessly offend, when we’re willing to stand up for whatever we think is the truth, even if it’s not really all that important, even if it doesn’t do anything to allow people to know who Jesus is, it’s like that smoke, or it’s like that ash from that house I was telling you about. It slowly accumulates, we don’t even realize how filthy we’re getting, how dirty our clothes and our hair and everything is, but then it’s there. People smell it. And they don’t smell the fragrant aroma of God’s love, they smell our foolishness.
Now why did we go into my grandparents’ house and get dirty like that? If we were going in and it was just a bunch of rubble, everything had been burnt and it’s just, you know, here’s a charred piece of wood and here’s a broken piece of glass, it would have been foolishness to go in there. And that’s what our arguments often are like, we’re just going in and pulling out rubble as if it were valuable. But why did we go into that house? We were collecting their memories that hadn’t been destroyed, whether it was photo albums or gifts that had been given to them, things that were salvageable that meant something to them, that were precious to them.
And when we’re confronted with the possibility of engaging with an argument that might seem foolish and there’s that risk, what we need to ask is, am I pulling out rubble or am I pulling out precious things? Am I helping people to see the gospel, to see Jesus and how he loves them? And that needs to be our big underlying question before we decide how we engage with a fool or not.
So we need to ask, am I showing Jesus’ love? Is that my motivation? Do I love that person and I want that person to know who God is and how Jesus loves that him or her? Or am I just wanting to be proven right?
Jesus gave us the perfect example of this, of course, and while we don’t have the same abilities he had, I mean, he could understand, he knew people’s thoughts, he knew their hearts. We can still often tell where people are. If you think about in Jesus’ ministry, he’d go up to the Pharisees and sometimes he’d refuse to answer them. Sometimes he would answer them in a parable that was more like a riddle because they didn’t deserve an answer. They were just trying to trap him. There was no sincerity there. He was dealing with foolish men who, though they knew the word of God, had no interest in seeing it fulfilled in front of their eyes because they just wanted to be proven right. And so he wouldn’t answer them.
But what do we see other times? There are times where he would engage with them and he would point them to the scriptures. Why? Because he could see the sincerity even if there was a mixed motivation in there. That’s what we need to do as well. We need to ask, is this person sincere? Are they just holding a foolish position? Are they a fool who just wants to be verified in his own eyes as right? And when we wrestle with that and we work through that, that guides us towards showing Jesus’s love rather than self-important love of ourselves.
Paul demonstrated this as well in 2 Corinthians as he was writing to the church at Corinth. And if you look there, I’m going to pull that up in just a moment, but just to set the stage, the people of Corinth were starting to follow foolish teachers, teachers that were trying to say that Paul was the real fool and that the gospel that he had communicated to them wasn’t really worthwhile. And Paul says, I’m not going to be a fool, but let me show you what it would be like if I were.
2 Corinthians 11:22-23 he says, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they offspring of Abraham? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I’m a better one.” He’s talking like a madman with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings and often near death.
You see, Paul said, if you’re going to engage in foolishness where you’re just trying to inflate self-worth and prove that somehow you’re right without regards to the genuine truth of God, well, I can do that too. I could outdo them on that. But then he says, but I’m not going to.
Because you see, being driven by the gospel is the solution. We need to have our goal be that people would know who Jesus is, his love for them, the hope that we have when we follow our God, and in that our goal is that people would have more true wisdom, not that we would seem self-important.
So I have to constantly ask myself when I engage with someone, what is my motive? Do I want to be proven right in myself, or do I want to prove that God is right? Do I want people to see the truth of who God is? Do I want God’s glory to be revealed? That’s what we see as Paul goes on in 2 Corinthians 12:9. He said to me, so that’s Jesus saying to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
Here’s what we really need to do when we’re dealing with these Proverbs and we’re trying to decide, am I going to engage a fool in his folly so he doesn’t continue to do it, or do I need to walk away so that I don’t just become part of the folly myself? We need to ask if something is true, if something is important, and if something is gospel-focused.
Because going back to that person I mentioned a while ago that I was talking to on social media, what she was saying may very well have been true. But it wasn’t important, not in the grand scheme of the gospel, it wasn’t going to save anyone’s soul, and it certainly wasn’t gospel-focused. And all of us, I think, are going to fall into that trap. We want to insist there’s truth, that there’s absolute truth, that what God says is true, and so then we say, well, we need to stand up for truth. But there are times where we stand up for truth that we’re standing up for things that aren’t really important. They may be true, but we’re burning up all of our relationships with people over this thing that doesn’t really matter.
What Jesus calls us to focus on, and what Paul was focusing on there, and what this proverb is pointing us to, is to focus on engaging fools in their folly when their folly is preventing them from knowing the Lord. That’s when it matters.
I think we can often analyze this grid of questions, of whether it’s true, important, and gospel-focused, by asking, am I building people up and helping them to understand how they are valued members of the kingdom of God, that they were made in God’s image, and that they should recognize that God is calling them into his kingdom? Or am I tearing them down, so that they will look and say, wow, aren’t you smart, or aren’t you wise, or aren’t you right? Am I arguing about non-essential things, that if they never get it right, they could still have a perfectly healthy relationship with Jesus? Or am I arguing about the things that we find in Scripture that turn me either towards or away from God? Really, am I focused on making myself look good, or making Jesus look good? That’s the question.
Real foolishness is joining in a foolish argument. Joining a fool, going down into that ash, and just getting it all over us, for no particularly good reason, so we can come out and say, look, I have this burnt board, isn’t this nice? But what is real wisdom? Real wisdom is taking our time, and devoting our energy, that people would know the gospel. That God’s glory would shine forth, that people could enjoy the power, and the rest, the comfort, that they could grow in the wonder of a relationship with our God. That is real wisdom, when we focus on that.
When I refuse to just go join the fool and his folly down in some pit of dirt, but instead focus on helping people who don’t really want to be fools, who are wrestling and struggling and want to know the truth, and I engage with them, and I go through the arguments, even if they seem foolish, but it’s out of love and out of a desire that they would know who Jesus is. I’m no longer just making myself to be important, I’m no longer focusing on myself, but I’m being used by God to throw a life raft to them as they drown. And that’s what we’re called to hear.
That’s the wisdom we find in the Book of Proverbs. It’s not a contradiction because in life there’s times that we should answer and we shouldn’t. And the way that we do it is we constantly do everything to God’s glory. If we’re asking that question, am I showing God’s grace and his love, and am I glorifying him, that’s when I’m in the right place.
And whether you’re wrestling right now and you want to get away from being foolish, you feel like maybe God is real, you’re just not sure, keep wrestling and wrestle with people that are willing to answer the questions and take you through scripture. And if you are someone who believes, do that for somebody else. We can devote all of our energy to that. We’d be showing God’s glory so much more than we often do.
So let’s make that our prayer this week. Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your goodness and your love. We thank you that you allow us to testify to your glory. Lord, I know that I all too often want to engage in folly, that I just want to argue with people. I just want to be proven right in my own eyes or have other people think that I’m right. Lord, would you not let me do that? Would you not let us do that? But instead, would you help us to constantly care completely and totally about whether we’re testifying to your truth? Lord, we thank you that you are helping people have life rafts of the gospel. Lord, would you speak through us with peace and grace and goodness and love, that through all these things, we might show the truth, but we would show it in a way that is the sweet fragrance of your love and not the horrid smell of everything burnt and awful. Lord, we pray these things in Jesus’ name, amen.
I thank you again for joining me tonight as we dug into the first of our Challenging Proverbs. We’re going to be back next week at 7 p.m., and I encourage you to tune in and invite others. We’re going to be looking at another set of challenging proverbs. This next week, we’re going to look at the ones that people often cite to say, well, if you just do what God tells you to do, you’ll be rich and healthy and everything will be great. We’ve heard people cite these proverbs, and we sort of scratch our heads because maybe we’re doing everything right, and we’re sick, and we’re poor, and we wonder, does that mean I don’t have enough faith?
Well, these proverbs have often been taken out of context, and if you’ve been struggling with that or you know someone who has, I hope that you’ll come back next week, that you’ll invite others as well as we get down to what God is really telling us in those so that we can continue to seek after God’s wisdom and not our own, not after worldly wisdom.
Speaking of seeking after God’s wisdom, we’re also having our men’s Bible study again at 7 p.m. this Thursday, and I would love to have you there. We’re going to be finishing off Isaiah chapter 53, looking at the very last verse, and then we’re going to go into Isaiah 54. It’s going to be a great time, and I hope that you’ll come, that you’ll invite other men. It’s been so wonderful watching how God has been bringing us together as a virtual men’s Bible study over this time that we can’t meet in person, and I really hope that you’ll take part in that with us this coming week.
Well, as I’ve shared many times, you can like us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can stay up to date that way of the things that we’re doing and take part. And I would encourage you, we post scriptural encouragement throughout the week, we post some different messages. If any of this stuff encourages you and you know will encourage your friends, please share it. One of the ways that we show people God’s wisdom is simply sharing his word, and in our time, our present time, one of the best ways we can do that is simply by using the tool he has given us in social media.
So if you join our, what we might call our social media team, and help get the word out as we try to show God’s love, you can be doing something, even when you’re just on Facebook, maybe you’re just going on to waste time, as so many of us, I think all of us end up being guilty of doing at some point, but you can turn it into an opportunity to show God’s truth and his wisdom and his love. I’d love it if you’d join us in trying to do that.
So one of the ways that we show his love is we pray for one another, and if I can be praying for you this week, whether I’ve met you in person before, maybe you’ve only known me through the screen here, I’d love to pray for you. It’s such a joy, it’s such an honor, such a gift when we can pray for each other, and my email address is on screen. It’s Tim at LittleHills.Church, that’s Tim at LittleHills.Church, and shoot me an email if you’d like everyone that’s been watching to pray. You can leave it in the comments as well, ask for a prayer, or if you email me, you can let me know and I’ll share it with the whole team if that’s okay, or I’ll keep it private, whatever you prefer. But I would love to be able to pray for you this week. It’s such an amazing thing that God does when he lets his people pray.
Well, once again, thank you for joining me tonight, and I hope to see you again next week, 7 p.m., as we dig into another proverb during Proverbially Speaking. I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week, and I hope to see you soon. God bless you.