Spot the Difference

Introduction

Thank pastor Tom and Ev

We are going through a Wisdom series - I have been given the book of Proverbs to select my message from.

Here’s the thing that nobody asks: How do you know wisdom is actually wisdom?

In a world filled with so many voices coming from all sorts of directions we have to ask this question: How do we know what is ACTUALLY wisdom?

For example, this phrase that I’m sure many of us have been given as advice before: “Trust your heart” or “Trust your gut” when you’ve been in a time of tough decision making. And that SOUNDS like wisdom doesn’t it?

But Jeremiah 17:9 “9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

How do we tell what is wisdom from what is foolishness? How do we spot the difference? - that’s what I want to talk about today.

Let’s pray.

Folly is an imitation of Wisdom

Proverbs 9 ESV

1 Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars. 2 She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table. 3 She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town, 4 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” To him who lacks sense she says, 5 “Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. 6 Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.” 7 Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. 8 Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you. 9 Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning. 10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. 11 For by me your days will be multiplied, and years will be added to your life. 12 If you are wise, you are wise for yourself; if you scoff, you alone will bear it. 13 The woman Folly is loud; she is seductive and knows nothing. 14 She sits at the door of her house; she takes a seat on the highest places of the town, 15 calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way, 16 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” And to him who lacks sense she says, 17 “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.” 18 But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

This passage is about the call of Wisdom AND the call of Folly (foolishness) and I love how they are laid out next to each other because we get to perceive the major differences between the two.

And here’s where I want to start - because I want to highlight the distinct LACK of differences here.

Sometimes when we think of foolishness we think it’s just obvious - like Wisdom will be the much clearer option: Don’t jump off the bridge and Folly will be like: Definitely jump off the bridge.

But this passage shows us something that we as Christians must be aware of - Folly and Wisdom bear significant similarities.

In fact, we can go so far as to say that: Folly is an imitator of Wisdom.

Take a look at the similarities:

Both have the same appearance (as a woman)

both issue an invitation (exactly the same invitation at that)

both target the same audience (the simple)

both are seated in high places

both offer a meal

The lure of folly is that it imitates Wisdom

If Folly were just abject stupidity, then who would fall for it? The very reason so many people choose to walk that path is because they are DECEIVED into walking it.

We see this in what Folly offers - it is stolen water, and secret bread.

It is water and bread, just like what Wisdom offers. But the difference is that Wisdom has created these things on her own, Folly has simply stolen them.

Folly doesn’t create - it corrupts. It takes from Wisdom and corrupts it for its own purpose.

The Examples

One example that’s quite prevalent in our world today is the issue of Abortion. Abortion is, for all intents and purposes, against biblical principle of many levels. The bible says children are a gift from the Lord, and then of course is the issue of a life on any level is wrong.

But in the USA, Abortion is referred to as “Planned Parenthood”. And the reasons given to girls who would like to have abortions are manifold:

It’s looking after and securing your future so you can have a child at the right time.

It’s better to abort than to bring a child into the world when you’re not ready for it.

It’s my body, so it’s my choice.

Do you see how deceptive it can be and the way that we disguise it as wisdom. It’s wise to “look after your future”, it’s wise to “bring a child in to the world only when you’re ready.” it’s wise to “be empowered and to have ownership of your body.”

These statements in and of themselves are not incorrect, in fact one might say that they are quite wise - but look at the way wisdom is skewed to justify folly.

How about one for the younger people. Pre-marital sex. It’s about “trying before you buy in”, “It’s better to be sure about your compatability rather than find out when you’re married and it’s too late.”

You know we’ve even managed to sneak wisdom into assisted dying. “It is better to have dignity in death and to choose when you can go.” “we’re all going to die eventually, this just gives us control over when.”

Now, many of these are heavy issues that are far more complex than I could ever cover in a single sermon - but the point I’m trying to make is that Folly, foolishness can often seem like wisdom to one who isn’t paying attention.

All of these are Seemingly wise concepts that are skewed to lead us down the path of Folly - away from God.

Proverbs 14:12 “12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”

ILLUSTRATION: Fake Durian

One time I was preaching in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. When one of my spiritual fathers - a pastor by the name of Philip Lyn, took me out to eat a fruit called Durian. Who here knows what a Durian is? Do any of you guys not like Durian? Fake asians. Anyway there is a specific strain of Durian called Musang King - which is by far the best variety of Durian available out there. So Pastor Philip takes me to eat Durian at one of the night markets.

So I see a durian stand and I go to approach the vendor who greets me with a smile! In case some people here don’t know, I’m pretty much a flat out Aussie - so I’m like Gday mate, looking for some durian. And I swear the moment he hears my accent his smile grows bigger. “Eyyy! Come sir, musang king just for you!” and he takes these two durians which look a little bit small but hey, the price was good. Aussie dollar is 3x the ringgit so I’m like yup.

Just then pastor Philip literally pushes me aside - and in malay says to the guy basically don’t sell me that crap, give me the real stuff. And immediately the vendor’s smile disappears and he goes to the truck and brings out two durians easily 3x the size of the one I was about to buy. I was about to be tourist scammed in my OWN COUNTRY.

What’s my point? To the undiscerning, to the one who doesn’t know better - Folly can pass as wisdom all too easily. And in this day and age this is becoming more and more common.

The key is in the result

See even though Folly PRESENTS itself similar to wisdom - that is about where the similarities end. Once you have committed to the path, that is where we notice the differences.

Wisdom leads us to the path of Insight (literally the path of discernment and correct understanding), Folly leads us to the depths of Sheol (literally the place of the death).

Folly may be able to imitate Wisdom’s DESIGN but it can’t imitate it’s DESTINATION

No matter how similar it may be - Folly will always lead us to a place of death. It will always lead us to a place that is away from God, it will always act for the enemy.

When we are walking the path of folly - we will most easily observe this in the DIRECTION that we seem to be walking.

Is this path taking us away from the church? Isolating us from the church community? Is it stunting our prayer and devotional life? Is it distracting us? Is it causing us guilt and shame that separate us from God? Is it causing us pride that pushes God away?

Folly will only lead us AWAY from the Lord

ILLUSTRATION: Fake Fireman

I was watching the news about the recent fires in the Los Angeles Palisades that happened earlier this year when this particular story stuck out to me: When officials saw Dustin Nehl pull up to one of the burned-out areas from the Los Angeles Palisades fire, they were tempted to wave him through. Nehl was driving a full-size red fire truck with California plates and American flag decals, and was wearing bright yellow fire gear.

But a firefighter at the checkpoint noticed something amiss, and urged one of the sheriff deputies to check his identification. A background check quickly revealed Nehl’s criminal history, which included a five-year stint in prison for arson. A check of his truck revealed tools that could potentially be used in a burglary. And according to a source within the department, the truck had since been decommissioned from service from a Northern California fire department 30 years prior.

Nehl, along with his wife Jennifer, were arrested on suspicion of impersonating firefighters and unauthorized entry of an evacuation zone. Nehl was not alone in his attempt to impersonate emergency personnel. The week prior, police arrested a man wearing a yellow firefighter’s outfit and carrying a radio. Prosecutors later announced charges for receiving stolen property, impersonating a firefighter, unlawful use of a badge, and unauthorized entry of a closed disaster area.

And I find this is so similar to how folly works in our lives - the presentation may be eerily similar but the moment we let it into our lives, we quickly realise that it is only there to take FROM us.

The Simple

I want to point us to a detail that many people overlook in this passage but is actually a potent theme that runs through the book of Proverbs - and that is that Wisdom and Folly both call to the “Simple”.

The Simple are people who have not yet fully embraced either path, they are open-minded, gullible, naive people. And we notice in this passage that BOTH Wisdom and Folly call out to them.

But do you notice that only Wisdom actively asks the Simple to leave the path that they are walking? Folly does not.

In other words, to follow Wisdom is to leave the path of Simplicity. Because staying on the path of the simple, eventually turns into folly.

If we don’t CHOOSE wisdom, folly chooses us

Complacency and inaction/indifference LEAD to folly. The cultural current today always pulls us toward folly. Folly is - in many ways, the natural choice.

Wisdom is a path that the believer must CHOOSE to walk continuously - any other path, including indifference, is a path that leads to folly.

What does that mean for the Christian today?

It means that we CANNOT remain SPIRITUALLY PASSIVE, we cannot remain uncommitted to growing in the truth, in discernment, and in holiness.

So many Christians take a spiritually passive route today and think that it is harmless - but that is so far from the truth.

As we can see from this passage - not actively walking the path of Wisdom leads to a vacuum, which is easily filled with the world’s deception.

It comes down to the simple fact that the average Christian spends less than 15 minutes in the Word AND Prayer daily and the average Australian adult spends more than 6 HOURS exposed to different forms of media.

There is no secret as to why Christians fall away from faith and are so easily deceived - it’s that we STOP walking the path of Wisdom.

Verses 7-9 seem a little bit abstract until we apply this principle. The Scoffer and the Wicked man are given wisdom as an instruction but they reject it. They have stopped walking the path and stopped taking in Wisdom, but the wise man continues to take it in - the wise man continues to grow and “increase in learning”

We must never lose our spiritual alertness - our spiritual hunger to grow, to learn, to step MORE into the things of God.

ILLUSTRATION: Stop clapping - I’m talking about you

You know I remember a time I was preaching at my old youth group; and my leaders had specifically asked me to combat the rising problem of gossip that was prevalent in the youth group and causing a lot of cultural damage. And so I have no problem preaching a tough message - man I got up there and gave it to those suckers, I preached hard, about how God hates when we slander the body, it’s tantamount to bringing disunity into the body, like I went at it - I honestly thought kids would like cry and stuff.

But these guys started CLAPPING. and started cheering! Like they were amen-ing me and the whole lot. I was like what on earth is happening, it’s like the harder I went, the better they responded.

You know that halfway through my sermon after delivering a particularly viscious point about how gossip curses not just the person but God too - they clapped and amen-ed and I had to literally say, “STOP CLAPPING - I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU!” and the most awkward silence fell over the place as I finished that message; but praise God we had a great altar call that night.

My point is that we can be so woefully UN-alert in our Christian walk, so unaware that we are rejecting wisdom because of the lack of discernment in our lives. This is the product of spiritual passivity/spiritual indifference - we think we’re tracking well while walking straight down the path of Folly.

The Fear of the Lord

So naturally the question that we have to ask - ok how do we choose Wisdom over Folly? How do I CHOOSE to walk a path of Wisdom?

This is why v10 is so important. Many times when we read Proverbs 9:10 “10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” we use it in the context of reverence, we need to have more reverence for God, we need to act in a way that is more reverent to God - and that certainly isn’t wrong.

But when you read it in the context of obtaining wisdom, the implications of this powerful verse change ever so slightly.

The first thing is about the fear of the Lord being the beginning of Wisdom. We can’t walk in Wisdom if we don’t first bow in Reverence.

In this context - the fear of the Lord is an exercise of discernment.

It is about walking the path of life with CAUTION, with CARE, with “FEAR” - it’s about taking the time to pray and to discern which is Wisdom and which is Folly.

The opposite of walking in the fear of the Lord - is carelessness. It is living life without the concern for what is right and what is wrong, it is living life not worrying about whether we are making the right choices or not.

MeaningFULL

You know one of our church’s culture pillars is Meaning FULL - it’s about adding meaning back INTO things that society has stolen the meaning/weight from.

And whether we recognise this or not - one of those things that has lost its meaning is our decisions and the weight and impact of our decisions.

Think about the phrase “YOLO” that has come to characterise the way the next generation operate - You Only Live Once, sounds smart doesn’t it? Like since you only live once you better take every opportunity that comes your way and do whatever makes you happy.

But in a way it also takes away the value of decisions by making everything about NEW experiences, or indulgence, or pleasure - it’s almost a cheap way to make any decision: Should I buy this? Should I go there? Should I do this? Ahhh YOLO!

It steals the sacredness out of decision making which is the opposite of what Proverbs 9:10 is trying to tell us.

Our decisions aren’t disposable, they’re divine - the sacred expression of the free will God has given us to walk the path of Wisdom.

Every decision that we make holds power, it holds weight - and that’s exactly the way that God intended it. We are meant to walk this life, not paralysed by fear, but with a HOLY CAUTION - are we treading the path of wisdom? Or are we walking carelessly into a trap of folly?

I think again of Proverbs 14:12 “12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” - how easily we can be deceived, and how desperately we need to exercise discernment in picking and walking the path of wisdom.

Knowledge of the Holy One

And the second part of that phrase “The knowledge of the Holy One is insight” - we always pay attention to the first part of the verse but this part is conveniently ignored because we sometimes don’t read it in this particular context.

What this phrase means is that knowledge of God - KNOWING God gives us insight - the original word is Bînâ: it literally means discernment.

The more we know God, the more we become familiar with His Word and His Way - the more we are able to quite literally discern what is Wisdom and can therefore choose to walk that path.

It is very much about reading the Word of God and familiarising ourself with the voice of the Shepherd. This is what allows us to see what is Wisdom and what is Folly

In other words Discernment isn’t a talent - it’s the result of life lived in close proximity to God.

And I don’t believe that means just by reading and comparing our choices literally - I believe that means the more that we spend time in proximity with God in prayer, in the Word, in worship; the more we are in tune with the Spirit in our walk.

The more we can be sensitive to the Spirit’s prompting in our lives, the more we can feel His gentle push in a specific direction, the more we can feel His tug back to the right path when we stray.

So how do we choose the path of Wisdom? This passage makes it quite clear - by familiarising ourselves with the voice of the Lord, and by choosing to walk the path with care and with discernment.

And this is not something we do as a once off - this is something that we must continue doing. As we grow in life - more voices appear, more options appear, more pathways appear. It gets harder and harder to walk the path of wisdom UNLESS we have learned how to discern what is the voice of God.

ILLUSTRATION: Ang

Just the other week at church - someone returned to church after not being back for such a long time. And I know that they had been clubbing and all that sort of stuff. Just the weekend prior I was planning to message them and get them to step down from all their ministry positions because of the lifestyle that they had been leading, and because of the fact that it had caused them to not come to church for 4 months straight.

I remember seeing them walk through the front door and praying for God to give me wisdom with what I was about to do.

And as I was praying - God did exactly the opposite; He softened my heart. I gave them a big hug instead, which was almost weird because it felt like a reflex - since it wasn’t something I was planning on doing.

After the message, they responded at the altar, and I remember God pointing them out to me so clearly and speaking to me - go and welcome them back home. And so all I did was kneel down next to them and hug them and after I prayed for them I said “welcome home. It’s so good to see you.” and immediately - they started crying and crying. And I let the Lord minister to them at the altar.

After the service, the next day, they messaged me and told me - thank you for everything you said to me. I was so scared that I would not be welcome back to church. But you said everything that I needed to hear. I’ll see you next week.

And just like that - the Lord changed my actions 180 degrees because He knows the heart, and He knows what we don’t. The Spirit guided my actions to yield a FAR better result than if I had just gone of my natural reflex.

What sounded like Wisdom to me - punishing someone for not attending for the sake of excellence, turned out to not be God’s plan. I’m convinced that if I had gone down that pathway that night, we would never have seen or heard from them again - and would have another Christian just burnt out and hurt by the church.

But by careful discernment, and hearing the voice of the Lord - I was able to tread a path of wisdom - which in this case kept someone in the house.

Altar Call

James 1:5 “5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”