The Woman Folly

Good morning, welcome to NHCC. Please open your Bibles to Proverbs 9.

Now the question must be asked- Why doesn’t everyone simply pursue wisdom? Why are we bent on pursuing foolishness at such a great cost and price?

Joseph Parker- “Who will sell his soul for momentary gratification? Who will leap after a bubble and fall into hell? Alas we see the right, and yet the wrong pursue. This is the tragedy of human life!”

Stated plainly, if wisdom is of such great value, why do we so easily ignore it?

Read Proverbs 9:13–18- “The woman Folly is loud; she is seductive and knows nothing. She sits at the door of her house; she takes a seat on the highest places of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way, “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” And to him who lacks sense she says, “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.”

Pray.

1. The description of folly.

Consider folly, or foolishness. Not just as some topic that was written about millennia ago, but as you see foolishness play itself out today.

With age typically comes some level of wisdom, both wisdom in life and wisdom in faith.

Expect a person with a fifty-year faith to be more spiritually wise than someone who just recently gave his life to Jesus.

In the same way, expect someone older to be wiser in living this life in a right way.

18 year old more wise than a two year old, but wiser still is a 40 year old, and wiser still is an 80 year old.

So consider what the author writes of folly, of foolishness, and see if you tend to agree.

Loud.

Lady folly is loud, noisy, always making noise.

Already, I don’t like her.

Must understand this clamor in the context of the rest of the book of Proverbs.

Proverbs makes great use of parallelism and uses it to make stark contrasts.

Proverbs 13:3- “Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.”

Proverbs 29:11- “A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”

In all of these examples, and throughout Proverbs, the wise is seen as the one who is generally silent, while the foolish is noisy.

If later in Proverbs the agents of foolishness are known for their clamor, we should expect the source of folly to also be known as loud.

Knows nothing.

To know- yada- more than merely an intellectual ascent- tying of oneself to something- used of marital intimacy. To truly know someone in ways that no one else is meant to know them.

To know nothing, as folly is here described, is to be committed to nothing.

If wisdom has been described as both knowledge and discipline, we can see how folly would be the opposite.

Folly is merely a passing or fading interest. Channel surfing.

Calls.

Not only is folly noisy, she is noisy with intention.

Folly likes to be joined.

Specifically, calls to those who are going straight, passing by.

Dangerous threat to those who are unaware of her existence.

Deceitful.

Reminds me of the garden of Eden and the serpent.

Seduction and deceit- The voice that claims to give something better than God, but ultimately does not deliver.

2. The deception of folly.

Folly is an imposter.

A number of similarities between wisdom and folly.

Both make a call.

Proverbs 9:3- “She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town”

We listen to one or the other.

Both call to the simple.

Notice that the language is the same in both v. 4 and 16.

Proverbs 9:4a- “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”

Interesting that both seek out those who are simple.

Not unintelligent, but instead, naive.

A beginner of sorts, the one who is just beginning to consider such things.

Both have something to offer.

Proverbs 9:5- “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.”

Prepare yourself- foolishness is not empty- it does have something to give.

While they are similar, there are important differences.

Folly offers an impoverished snack, wisdom offers a feast.

Proverbs 9:2- “She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table.”

We are meant to see the distinction between the two.

Folly keeps simple people simple, wisdom brings them into a new sort of life.

Notice the language- whoever is simple- she gives a simple challenge concerning stolen water and bread.

Wisdom calls the person out of simplicity, away from folly, and into real life.

Proverbs 9:6- “Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

Joseph Parker- “To leave folly is the first step towards wisdom. But there must be progress, the soul cannot live on negatives. Emancipation must be followed by education. When God calls souls away from the house of bondage he does not leave them houseless and homeless wanderers, to do the best they can for themselves.”

Wisdom invites us out of the house of foolishness, away from the life of simplicity, and into true life, a life of insight and knowledge and skill.

Reminded this morning that we can’t live simultaneously in both houses. Wisdom calls us entirely out of the house of folly.

But why is this so important, that we would leave behind the habits and household of foolishness? This is where the text takes us next.

3. The consequences of folly.

The final verse gives us the weight of the topic being discussed.

He does not know. He hasn’t properly considered the truth of folly’s residence.

Isn’t this accurate of us this morning? We seek after the measly snack of bread and water, forgoing the feast laid out for us, because we don’t take time to consider the source or consequences of both.

Ortlund- We die a sugarcoated death.

We eat our bread, we sip our water, not considering that a feast has been made ready for us.

Kids anytime we upgrade anything in our lives. Van upgrade.

C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory- “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Entering the house of folly is entering the house of death.

Bread and water won’t sustain our lives.

4. The answer to folly.

Stated just a bit differently, what must be done?

Isaiah 55:1–3- “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.”

It’s a command to come to the feast, to find true life, but to bring nothing with us.

Come for food, for drink, to be filled, to be delighted, to hear and live, but come without money, come with empty hands to receive what God gives.

In short, come with empty hands.

Charles Spurgeon- “The gate of mercy is opened, and over the door it is written, ‘This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’ Between the word ‘save’ and the next word ‘sinners’ there is no adjective. It does not say, ‘penitent sinners,’ ‘awakened sinners,’ ‘sensible sinners,’ ‘grieving sinners’ or ‘alarmed sinners.’ No, it only says ‘sinners.’”

Too often, we work so hard to clean ourselves up apart from Christ before we ever think ourselves ready to approach Christ.

Wisdom makes clear, as do the prophets, as does Jesus Himself, that we come to Him with nothing.

Joseph Parker- “All we have to do is to go; we take with us nothing but our hunger; the feast is Christ’s, the invitation is Christ’s, the house is Christ’s; the hunger alone is ours, and a blessed hunger it is if we feel that only Christ can satisfy it.”

Faith is reaching and end of ourselves, relying entirely on Christ, His wisdom, His provision, His love and grace, and His perfection.

It’s seeing the emptiness of everything else, and instead seeking only that which has true value.

It’s turning away from the house of folly and entering into the house of wisdom.

Matthew Henry- “Behold the wretched, empty, unsatisfying, deceitful, and stolen pleasure sin proposes; and may our souls be so desirous of the everlasting enjoyment of Christ, that on earth we may live to him, daily, by faith, and ere long be with him in glory.”