Proverbs Week 2 - Be Foolish Correctly
Notes
Transcript
Proverbs Series Recap
Proverbs Series Recap
Solomon - wanted wisdom - collected wise sayings, riddles, and poems into the book of proverbs
Wisdom - skillful living - they involve action
It is easy to know what the right thing is and a totally different thing to do the right thing
I know that if I wanted to live my healthiest best life I would just never eat Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream but saying that out loud and doing that are entirely different things
P. John said last week that Wisdom is using knowledge - knowledge is to say hey this thing is not good for me wisdom is to actually do what knowledge directs us to do
sifting through all of the different voices that come at us
Wisdom is more than behavioral - this is more than just good advice
Wisdom is about being in tune with God’s direction
living along the grain of the universe
Fear of the Lord
To be wise is to fear God and to be foolish is to reject the fear of God
Last week we prayed together Lord, help us to pursue your wisdom
Introduce Scripture
Introduce Scripture
This is a portion of poetry
Wisdom cries out in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.
At the busiest corner she cries out; at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?
Give heed to my reproof; I will pour out my thoughts to you; I will make my words known to you.
Because I have called and you refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded,
and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof,
I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when panic strikes you,
when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you.
Then they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but will not find me.
Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord,
would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof,
therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way and be sated with their own devices.
For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them;
but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.”
There is a correct way to be foolish
There is a correct way to be foolish
We all will be foolish at one time or another even the best of us
no body is all wise and nobody is all foolish either
We all have saint and sinner in our DNA strands
If it was as simple as saying don’t be foolish we would have just said that
Foolish people learn from their own mistakes, wise people learn from the mistakes of other
Fail Forward
That God might have wisdom to teach you and I in the very ways that we are sometimes foolish
Throughout Proverbs, wickedness and folly always lead to disaster
This statement is not always true because sometimes the “rebuke” we receive are not our fault, then.....
We might suffer because of someone else's foolishness
It is possible that the foolishness of our leaders might hurt us
It is possible that the calamity’s that we face might not be our fault, but they are nonetheless our problem
learn from someone else’s mistakes
For waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them;
Doing nothing makes things worse
Doing nothing makes things worse
If you are in a sinking boat doing nothing makes things worse
It doesn’t matter if the boat is sinking because you did something foolish or maybe someone else did something foolish
It doesn’t matter if the boat is sinking complacency will not work
God is involved in the human activity whereby people seek to discern the truth which life itself can teach them
Here are the people that wisdom rejects
fools - implying ignorance - don’t know
scoffers - who despise and reject truth - don’t care
Wisdom is about being in tune with God’s direction
About being active, and doing the behaviors that change us. We talked about many of those new habits in our new normal series and if you missed any of those you can still find them archived on the church website.
When people are hurting
If we are uneducated about why they are hurting, or simply just don’t care enough to do anything about it, we are being foolish
When there are people in our community who don’t have enough to eat, or those that are living with debilitating health conditions, or those who are afraid to go to school or to the grocery store because we are in a pandemic, we are fools and scoffers if we say that we don’t know or that we don’t care
It can be comfortable to not have to think about the complexities of our world
It can be comforting to adapt a don’t worry be happy mentality, but I think this passage is building up to something a little bit deeper than that.
Security
We think that doing nothing can keep us secure but really truly it can’t.
If we time and time again do the same things expecting different results that is insanity
The end of this passage builds up to conclude that those who listen to wisdom will be secure
but those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.”
Wisdom is always spoken to us, but not always heard
Wisdom is always spoken to us, but not always heard
to make it clear that the offer of wisdom is to the man in the street, and for the business of living, not to an élite for the pursuit of scholarship.
Lady wisdom is screaming in the streets
There is urgency to her call
Wisdom is looking for you
God is reaching out to you offering time and time again the opportunity to live wisely
That doesn’t mean we won’t fall
That doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences to our actions or that the things we do won’t hurt ourselves or others
It mean that God is always shouting wisdom
Sometimes from predictable places like scripture
sometimes from the wisdom of those that have gone before us
Sometimes it means being wise enough to listen to the right voices
To listen to the cries of those that are hurting in our community
To hear the voice of wisdom in the opportunities we have to turn from our own past whether that be from addiction, hurt relationships or something else
To hear the wisdom and the freedom that God gives us resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves to us
Wisdom is alway spoken to us, are you listening well enough to hear it.
Pray to close
Pray to close
O God make us more than listeners........
Help us to not just be listeners of your word but doers of your world.
transition to “follow you anywhere”