Sermon Tone Analysis

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message.

The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

This week I came across this quote which was attributed to Gloria Vanderbilt back in 2004.

“Every American has the right to make a fool of himself if he wants to, but too many folks are abusing the privilege.”

In the nearly 20 years since those words were uttered, I’m pretty sure that is even more true now than it was back then.

Or maybe it just seems like that because social media has made that foolishness a lot more public.

Tension

As we continue our Fool Proof sermon series in the book of Proverbs this morning, we’re going to get some good insight into why foolishness seems to have proliferated in our culture today.

As most of you know I have officiated volleyball and basketball at various levels over the last 20 plus years.

And I always tell people that I’ve never officiated a perfect game or match.

I also tell them that if I ever do, which is impossible, I’m going to quit because I’ll have nowhere to go but down from there.

In fact, I’ve actually made some pretty big mistakes over the years.

In a few cases, it was because I didn’t understand the rules correctly and in other cases, it has just been a result of not being in the right place or even poor judgment.

But I learned from those mistakes and so I haven’t consistently made those same mistakes again.

But I’ve also worked with some officials who consistently make the same mistakes over and over.

They often refuse to listen to those who point out those errors or some of them just don’t care because they are just in it for the money and they don’t really want to learn from their past mistakes.

From my perspective, that is exactly what is going on in our culture today.

There are a lot of foolish people who never learn from their mistakes and so they repeat them over and over.

This morning we’re going to see that one of the keys to “fool proofing” our lives is to make sure that we respond appropriately when someone points out our mistakes - especially those mistakes that come from either being ignorant of God’s Word or just choosing not to follow the principles we find in the Bible.

This week I came across a quote that was attributed to someone named Steven Denn.

Even though I wasn’t able to even identify who this guy is for sure or verify that the quote originated with him, it accurately expresses the idea we’re going to develop more from our text this morning:

“You can never make the same mistake twice because the second time you make it, it's not a mistake, it's a choice.”

― Steven Denn

Truth

This morning, we’re going to finish up chapter 1 of the book of Proverbs.

Hopefully you’ll remember that two weeks ago we looked at the opening seven verses and focused our attention on verse 7, which is essentially the theme statement for the entire book.

We learned that the way to fool proof our lives is to live according to the truth that God is God and I am not.

We also defined a “fool” as anyone who rejects God’s ways.

Then last week we looked at the middle part of chapter 1 and developed some principles to help us deal with negative peer pressure.

Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Proverbs 1 and follow along as I begin in verse 20 and read through the end of the chapter.

This is the first of many places in Proverbs where we will see wisdom being “personified”.

Wisdom is pictured here as a person who is peaking to us.

While that might seem kind of weird, we actually do the same thing.

We might say something like, “He was overtaken by greed”, or “she was blinded by love”.

Like wisdom, greed and love are abstract concepts that can’t literally overtake or blind us, but we use personification as a literary device to express how those ideas work.

In Proverbs wisdom is personified as a woman and she is often contrasted with “woman folly”.

I think there are several reasons why wisdom and folly are personified as women in Proverbs:

In English, most nouns don’t have a gender, but in Hebrew and Greek, and many other languages like Spanish, nouns do have a gender.

For instance in Spanish the word for house is “casa”, which is feminine regardless of who lives there or how it is decorated.

And the word for dog is “perro”, which is masculine, and that same masculine noun is used regardless of whether the dog is male or female.

The Hebrew words for “wisdom” and “folly” are both feminine.

In much of the first part of Proverbs we see a father teach wisdom by warning his son not to go after the allurements of evil women.

Perhaps that is because men have a tendency to be much more tempted by the things they can see, like the physical beauty of a woman.

So Solomon uses the picture of a man pursuing a tempting woman as a way to picture how tempting folly is in our world.

In that case it would certainly make sense to personify wisdom as a woman.

Finally, we see here that wisdom raises her voice - so it has to be a woman, right?

Just kidding on this!

With that background in mind, here is the main idea we’re going to develop from this passage today:

I develop wisdom when I embrace the blessing of reproof

My guess is that a lot of you are already beginning to be a bit uncomfortable with this idea.

Even if you don’t completely understand the meaning of the word “reproof” you probably understand it enough that you know it involves something that is uncomfortable for most of us.

And the idea of embracing something that isn’t pleasant isn’t something most of us are going to rush out and do.

But you can’t read this passage without realizing that it revolves around the idea of reproof.

In fact, that word appears three times in this passage - in verses 23, 25, and 30.

And, along with the related verb, reprove, it continues to appear frequently throughout the entire book.

Since it is so central to this passage, let’s take a moment to define reproof.

The underlying Hebrew word described an ancient legal proceeding that took place at the gate of the city.

The elders would judge various claims and disputes and the elders would make a ruling that was intended to set things right.

The purpose was never to humiliate any of the parties involved, but to produce repentance and restoration.

With that background, here is my definition of reproof:

Reproof =

exposing sin for the purpose of maintaining God’s truth in a fallen world

This passage, as well as may others throughout the book of Proverbs, reveal that there are two possible reactions to reproof.

Those who embrace reproof are wise and find life;

those who despise reproof are fools and are careening toward disaster.

The wise man is humble and accepts reproof and seeks forgiveness and repents.

And that leads to life.

But the fool scoffs at repentance and refuses to do anything about the sin that is revealed.

Paul summarized these two paths in his second letter to the church in Corinth:

We could certainly spend a lot more time here, but I think we’ve established the fact that reproof, when responded to appropriately, is a blessing because it leads to life - physically, emotionally and spiritually.

So let’s spend the rest of our time making this really practical.

Embracing reproof requires that all of us who are disciples of Jesus pursue reproof from two different directions.

The obvious one is that we are to receive reproof and respond to it appropriately.

But we also see throughout the Bible, and especially in the New Testament, that we are responsible to provide reproof within the body of Christ, the church, when it is needed.

And frankly, for many of us, that is even harder than receiving reproof.

Application

HOW TO RECEIVE REPROOF

Listen

Wisdom is actually not as hard to find as we sometimes make it out to be.

We see here that wisdom is crying aloud in the streets, it raises its voice.

It is not hidden.

And yet, as we see in verse 24, the fool rejects reproof mainly because he fails to listen.

But there is good news later, in verse 33.

There we see that there is hope because those who do listen will “dwell secure”.

The verb translated “listen” here is the same verb that was translated “hear” back in verse 8. when we looked at that word last week, we said that it meant to listen carefully with the intent of obeying.

I’m convinced that one of the biggest reasons we don’t receive reproof like we should is that we really don’t listen like that.

We might hear, but in our minds we’re often already developing our defense.

We’re thinking about how we can excuse our behavior or explain it away.

And when we do that, we’re not likely to hear what we really need to hear.

As I’m going to talk about more in a moment, not everything that we hear is going to be true or accurate or relevant.

But we need to make sure that before we decide that is the case, we need to listen to what the other person is saying.

Long ago someone gave me a very wise piece of advice.

They told me that when someone criticizes me, I need to listen carefully to what they are saying because there is almost always some truth and I can learn even if not all the criticism being leveled is true.

One of the best ways to listen like this is to ask relevant questions.

“Let me make sure I understand what you’re saying here.

What do you mean when you say...” “Is that something you’ve noticed in my life for a while or did you just notice it recently?”

Once we’ve really listened, then we can take the next step.