The ebook of Proverbs is timeless. 1000’s of years after it was written, its sensible precepts are nonetheless related. Women and men proceed to face the perplexities of human existence, trapped between the obvious futility of life as we all know it and the promise of life as we lengthy to comprehend it. What we hope to be and what we really are is separated by a big chasm.
This lack of expertise, the Bible asserts, is among the nice issues of humankind (Rom. 1:21–22; Eph. 4:18). Human beings are by nature fools, it says—and our foolishness has dire penalties. But the Bible additionally gives an answer to the issue.
If we want to not succumb to the pitfalls of folly, it is going to be useful for us to know its traits, its penalties, and what God has performed about it.
Folly’s Traits
Proverbs 1 imagines knowledge as a lady standing on the head of a road, calling to all who stroll by,
“How lengthy, O easy ones, will you like being easy?
How lengthy will scoffers delight of their scoffing
and fools hate information?” (v. 22).
These three phrases, “easy ones,” “scoffers,” and “fools,” overlap of their that means. They indicate not solely aimlessness on the trail of life but additionally willful insurrection. Biblically talking, foolishness will not be psychological deficiency; it’s ethical perversity. It’s not fools’ mental capability however their religious angle that reveals their situation.
First, and mainly, the idiot rejects the Lord. God is the Creator, and He’s the ruler of every part. He due to this fact is aware of what is correct and good. To reject Him is to reject the ethical and rational reference level of the universe. Thus the Bible defines knowledge in relation to the concern (that’s, wholesome respect for the rightful authority) of God: “The concern of the LORD is the start of information” (v. 7), whereas fools “didn’t select the concern of the LORD” (v. 29). Fools will reject and deny God’s existence in order that they could reject His claims (Ps. 14:1; 53:1). They may settle for every kind of various notions, offering they needn’t think about their Creator.
The idiot, furthermore, refuses knowledge itself. “I’ve referred to as,” Knowledge says, “and also you refused to pay attention.” She provides, “You might have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof” (Prov. 1:24–25). Fools stroll by way of life with fingers caught of their ears. It’s not that they don’t perceive good counsel or loving reproof, whether or not or not it’s from father, mom, pastor, prophet, or whoever; they merely reject it. So central is that this high quality that it stands in parallel to the concern of God: Whereas “the concern of the LORD is the start of information,” we learn that “fools despise knowledge and instruction.”
Fools will reject and deny God’s existence in order that they could reject His claims.
Thirdly and at last, the idiot revels in wrongdoing: “Doing unsuitable is sort of a joke to a idiot” (Prov. 10:23). Because the NIV places it, he “finds pleasure in depraved schemes.” Fools rejoice in evil, they usually earn the title “scoffers” by mocking those that do good. They’ve an upside-down evaluation of proper and unsuitable, good and evil, they usually loudly make their error identified.
Folly’s Penalties
Folly’s qualities in an individual, as with all virtues and vices, result in penalties in the middle of life.
The idiot, we learn, is all the time stoking battle: “A idiot’s lips stroll right into a battle, and his mouth invitations a beating” (Prov. 18:6). Whereas “it’s an honor for a person to maintain aloof from strife, … each idiot might be quarreling” (Prov. 20:3). That is mirrored within the New Testomony within the ebook of James: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights amongst you? Is it not this, that your passions are at struggle inside you?” (4:1) James goes on to ask, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (v. 4). The godlessness and the enjoyment of evil that characterize the idiot all the time result in battle.
With the fights come failures. Relationships will fail, as a result of individuals, seeing fools for who they’re, will start to present them a large berth: “Depart the presence of a idiot, for there you don’t meet phrases of information” (Prov. 14:7). Those that keep might be those that need to share in folly and enhance it.
Finally, such foolishness results in futility and the superior finality of demise. Knowledge will flip the scoffing of scoffers again upon them:
As a result of you’ve gotten ignored all my counsel
and would have none of my reproof,
I additionally will snicker at your calamity;
I’ll mock when terror strikes you,
when terror strikes you want a storm
and your calamity comes like a whirlwind,
when misery and anguish come across you. (Prov. 1:25–27)
There’ll come a day when it’s too late for knowledge (v. 28). There’ll come a day when it’s too late to heed the voice of the Spirit of God within the coronary heart. The results of folly may have caught as much as the idiot.
Folly’s Remedy
The remedy for folly lies in accepting what the idiot rejects—that’s, “the concern of the LORD.” To concern the Lord is to acknowledge that He made us. To concern the Lord is to hearken to His instruction regarding life and regarding demise. To concern the Lord is, in the end, to acknowledge that in Christ, He has revealed Himself to us. It’s to return to the cross of Christ and to acknowledge that the crucified Savior is risen and is Lord of all. He’s the reply to our reckless, aimless, futile existence.
In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus describes a crucial level within the son’s life: “He got here to himself” (Luke 15:17). In different phrases, he appeared round himself on the mess of his life, on the waste of his assets, on the vacancy of his abdomen—at his folly—and he stated, “I’ve been a idiot! The one option to get out of those circumstances is to return to my father and search his mercy.”
All of us have at one time or one other resisted recommendation, refused reproof, rejected the concern of the Lord, and reveled in foolishness.
Women and men, of their sin, are fools. But God, like the daddy within the story, longs for them to return to Him and to His knowledge. The decision of the Gospel is: For Jesus’ sake, don’t be a idiot any longer! Come to Christ, come to forgiveness, and are available, due to this fact, to knowledge. Come to life, come to wholeness, and are available to every part that God supposed for you.
With God’s assist, we are able to acknowledge that each one of us have at one time or one other resisted recommendation, refused reproof, rejected the concern of the Lord, and reveled in foolishness. We are able to know in our hearts, unmistakably, that the consequence of a life lived with out God might be an eternity spent with out God. So allow us to see in our thoughts’s eye a rugged hillside and a person who died on the cross to takes all the results of folly upon Himself. He calls out to us within the phrases of Girl Knowledge,
In the event you flip at my reproof,
behold, I’ll pour out my spirit to you;
I’ll make my phrases identified to you. (Prov. 1:23)
Might we not refuse to pay attention!
This text was tailored from the sermon “Portrait of a Idiot” by Alistair Begg.
