Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign Bolling. I'm part of the preaching team here and I'm back for week number two, which means the reviews I must have gotten on YouTube were positive.
[00:00:16] So thank you. For those of you that fill those out today, we are continuing to talk about proverbs and we're talking about the opposite of what we talked about last week, which was the way of the wise. We're talking about the way of the fool. This week, in order to introduce this to you, I wanted to show you a picture of somebody who took this ability to kind of think opposite and turn it into, at this point, financial gains. I'm going to put a picture up here, see if you recognize these two guys.
[00:00:52] Anybody?
[00:00:54] Okay, yeah, the guy on the left of me, that's Warren Buffett. You may have heard of him, the Oracle of Omaha, One of the greatest investors in American history, maybe world history. The other guy beside him though is less known, but he's important to Berkshire Hathaway. His name is Charlie Munger. And Charlie Munger was the long term business partner, the vice chairman. So he's a part of this whole mix. Everybody knows about Warren Buffett, we see Warren Buffett, but Charlie Munger was also important.
[00:01:27] And Charlie Munger had a very unique investment strategy.
[00:01:32] And it was this, he called it inversion thinking.
[00:01:36] He said when he looked at companies and investments, he wanted to ask two questions. Number one, what are the things that can go wrong with this investment?
[00:01:46] Like where will it fail?
[00:01:49] And then number two, what would guarantee that it fails?
[00:01:54] And he said, if you can look at and ask questions about investments from those two perspectives, then it's really easy do the opposite.
[00:02:03] And that was his whole theory.
[00:02:05] And it's amazing how accurate he was in a lot of ways. Let me give you one example. Coca Cola. You all have heard of it, right? Coca Cola. In 1980s, a lot of investors dismissed it as being very boring.
[00:02:20] It's not. It's not an interesting investment for them.
[00:02:24] What Charlie Munger said was, he said he disagreed, he thought opposite. He inverted the thinking and he said, well, probably people are going to continue to drink cola beverages forever, right? If you think about having a can of Coke and you go on and you look at how bad it is for you, but you drink it anyway. Let's be honest.
[00:02:44] Diet Coke, not much better. That's my vice, right? Not much better. People still drink it. So he goes, people are still going to be drinking it. He goes. And then when you look at Coca Cola as a company, it's global dominance, brand power, pricing strength. He said, I think we should do it. And so they spent about a period of about 10 years investing heavily in Coca Cola. Here's how it worked out for Berkshire Hathaway.
[00:03:09] Today, the stock that they hold is valued at over $25 billion.
[00:03:17] That breaks down to $776 million per year just from this one investment.
[00:03:24] That is 64 point, $64.67 million per month, $2.13 million per day.
[00:03:36] Think about that. Tonight. Warren Buffet just made $2.1 million on Coca Cola. Right.
[00:03:44] And so when you look at this, that's a pretty good investment strategy.
[00:03:49] Here's the issue.
[00:03:51] It's not original to Charlie Munger, this whole idea of thinking differently. Proverbs encourages us to think differently, to invert how we understand things.
[00:04:03] Proverbs teaches us an inverted way of thinking by forcing us to look at fools and foolishness. And it's going to say, look at what the fool does and then do the opposite.
[00:04:16] Matter of fact, I probably could have summarized last, you know, last week's sermon, gone through the exact same one, and just said, if you want to be foolish, do this opposite of what the wise do.
[00:04:25] And so this morning, when we look at the way of the fool, we're going to see if we do the opposite. It's really a second part of continuing to learn to walk the way of the wise.
[00:04:36] We're just going to look at it through a different lens. Now, a couple of caveats before we begin.
[00:04:42] Fools tend. If I. If I said to you, all right, what is foolish? Who is foolish? We would all maybe get a picture of somebody in our brains.
[00:04:51] Typically, they tend to be personified as young people, particularly young men.
[00:04:57] And there's reason for that. Having been a young man at one point, I could tell you stories. I won't, but I could. Right. However, Proverbs is going to teach us that foolish people and fools can be anyone.
[00:05:12] Male, female, old, young, educated, uneducated. It doesn't matter.
[00:05:16] And so a couple times in this sermon, there's tension points for us. Here's why.
[00:05:22] Because we are going to recognize patterns in ourselves that are foolish.
[00:05:27] We know we have them.
[00:05:30] We're also going to see people around us that are foolish.
[00:05:34] Some of these people we may care very much for, we may love, maybe be our homes. They may be in relationship with us, all of those things. And so Proverbs is going to paint a pretty stark, direct picture of the fool.
[00:05:49] It doesn't mince many words here. And as we're going through that, I would Encourage us. I would ask of us to be open to what the Holy Spirit wants us to take from that.
[00:06:02] Because we're gonna hit up against it and see it in ourselves and in other people.
[00:06:08] So foolishness.
[00:06:11] One last thing to kind of differentiate here. Foolishness can be just. Just bad decisions, stupid decisions, mistakes, immaturity. Like children by nature are foolish, right? They just. They just do things that don't make any sense.
[00:06:26] And you gotta correct them.
[00:06:28] You get. You gotta set them on the right path. I was an educator for 22 years of high school students. They're foolish.
[00:06:35] And you'd ask them, why'd you do that? Sometimes they'd say, I don't know.
[00:06:40] And they didn't.
[00:06:41] Or they'd be like, everybody else was doing it. Remember the old adage, if everybody else jumped off a bridge, would you jump off, too? My dad would say that to me, and I'd say, yeah, everybody else is right. So there's foolishness. That doesn't mean they're fools, but there's foolishness.
[00:06:58] The fool we're gonna see is not just a behavioral issue. It's deep character flaws. These are patterns.
[00:07:07] These are things that get repeated over and over and over again that reveal the state of the heart. And so I want to make sure. It's tricky sometimes to determine, hey, is that just. Is that just being foolish or is that person a fool? You can be foolish and make a bad choice, and it can wreck your life, let's be honest. But we're going to see the fool has repeated patterns over and over.
[00:07:37] The big picture we're going to see is the fool is marked by a hard heart, a closed mind, and a loud mouth. And the result for them is ruin.
[00:07:47] Like last week, we're going to have several verses that are going to come up. We're going to be bouncing around proverbs. They'll be on the screen. Take a picture, jot them down. Here we go. Proverbs 12:15 is where we're going to start.
[00:07:59] And it says this. The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.
[00:08:06] Now notice there's a contrast to where we started last week, where we said wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord. Now we see foolishness begins in their own eyes, seeing themselves in the place of God, putting themselves at the center of their own life.
[00:08:28] That's the starting point.
[00:08:30] Three things that fools do. Number one, the fool rejects God.
[00:08:36] Again, like last week, we saw that the wise person fears God, which we talked about is revering. It's deep respect.
[00:08:45] It's worship. It's all of those things. The fool goes the opposite. Let's look at Proverbs, chapter 1, verses 29 to 32 says, because they which are fools, because fools hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of my counsel and despise all of my reproof.
[00:09:07] Therefore they the fools again shall eat the fruit of their way and have their fill of their own devices.
[00:09:15] For the simple are killed by their turning away.
[00:09:19] And the complacency of fools destroys them. Like we said, Proverbs does not mince words here.
[00:09:28] So as we dive into this section of Scripture, we got to understand when it says, my counsel, my reproof. This is personified wisdom. If you go through Proverbs chapter one, it presents wisdom as a female who is calling out to people saying, look, I'm wise, come find me, here I am.
[00:09:47] And when we get to this part of the passage, we see that the fool has rejected wisdom.
[00:09:54] Let's look at verse 29 says this. Fools hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.
[00:10:01] It's not that they just. It's not that they don't like it or they disagree with it. They hate it.
[00:10:09] They hate it. They hate the knowledge of God. They hate the reverence for God. So the first thing we see is the fool rejects wisdom and the fear of God.
[00:10:21] And if you, and if you start from there, then the end trajectory of your life is going to be very, very, very negative. Just like if we started at fearing the Lord, the trajectory of our life is going to be towards Christ likeness. Second thing is, fools despise correction, verse 30. They have none of my counsel. Despise all my reproof. See, fools refuse two key elements of wisdom, counsel and correction.
[00:10:50] The fool does not like to be around wise people.
[00:10:55] The fool does not like to be corrected. Again, read the words. They hate it.
[00:11:02] No one likes to be corrected, but the fool hates it.
[00:11:07] And I don't know about you, but typically when you hate something, you avoid it. And so we see the fool hates counsel.
[00:11:16] They don't want to go talk to wise people.
[00:11:19] They hate correction. They don't want to be told they're wrong. Why? Because they're in the center of their lives.
[00:11:24] 12, 15. The way of the fool is right in his own eyes. Who are you to tell me I'm wrong? Who are you to correct me I'm right?
[00:11:33] What does this lead to? Verse 31. Fools eat the fruit of their way.
[00:11:40] They are filled with destructive choices.
[00:11:43] Another way to Say this is Fools bear the bitter consequences of their rebellion.
[00:11:49] Prior to teaching, I was a therapist for eight years and I can tell you, when I was meeting somebody in a counseling session, I never had one person over eight years.
[00:12:00] If I asked them, hey, what's going on in your life? Who said, you know what? I woke up this morning and just thought, I'm going to ruin everything in my life.
[00:12:09] Thought that was a good decision.
[00:12:12] What happens is exactly what Proverbs tells us, that they eat the fruit of their way. See, foolish people have been planting foolish seeds, or maybe we could say stupid seeds along the way. And at some point there is a harvest of those.
[00:12:31] And so when you see somebody's life who is foolish, they didn't just get that it didn't just happen.
[00:12:40] There's choices and decisions and things along the way that they're now having to deal with.
[00:12:47] And notice, it says too that they will be filled with their destructive choices. They're going to eat what they have sown.
[00:12:57] Which is why Galatians talks about this same concept and it says, if you sow righteousness, you will reap righteousness. It's an important metaphor that Proverbs is bringing. So they say, look, they are going. There's going to be a reckoning for them at some point.
[00:13:14] It could be immediate, but it's probably going to be a long term pattern that's going to take time to grow and show itself.
[00:13:23] Verse 32, the complacency of fools destroys them. Fools are both the cause and the agent of their own destruction.
[00:13:33] Now that's hard because I don't know about you, but I know for me, when I look at patterns in my life that are negative, I like to find excuses and rationalizations for why they're there.
[00:13:46] Anything besides my choices.
[00:13:50] If I go put on a shirt and it's a little tighter than I remember, clearly my wife has shrunk it in the laundry.
[00:13:59] That is the only explanation, right?
[00:14:03] Or if I'm late, clearly whoever designed these streets and stoplights didn't do it right?
[00:14:12] Those are simple examples. I could go much deeper, but I will not.
[00:14:17] The point I'm trying to make is we're pretty good at excusing ourselves and rationalizing things, but what we learned from Proverbs is that the fool is the agent and cause of their own destruction. I think there's a point where we take ownership of our own lives and we say, look, these are things. If we tie it back to the verse before there have been seeds that have been sown There have been patterns that have been established. There have been ways of thinking that we have engaged in that now lead us to the place we are.
[00:14:49] And there's really two paths for foolishness. Number one is just active rebellion, intentionally rejecting God.
[00:14:58] If you see somebody that is foolish and they're actively fighting against the things that God cares about, like, you can see it, you can notice it, and you can go, oh, there's clearly where they are at. But there's a second type that's a little more subtle, that's just as destructive, and it's just passive indifference.
[00:15:21] Being spiritually asleep, disengaged.
[00:15:24] Maybe it's not like out there, it's not necessarily visible to you. But again, it's patterns of the heart, it's patterns of the inner spirit. And so both of these things result in ruin. It's inevitable.
[00:15:39] At some point it's going to catch up.
[00:15:44] Maybe a long time, maybe a short time, but it's going to catch up. So the first thing we see is the fool rejects God. The second thing we see, if the fool rejects God, then the fool trust themselves the most.
[00:16:01] Now, this is hard because we live in a culture that wants us to trust ourselves, that wants us to say, the answer to what you're looking for is inside of you.
[00:16:13] You. You can do this. And there's a part of it where that's not completely wrong, but it's also not entirely right, if that makes sense, to say it that way.
[00:16:24] Because the problem is, is when we trust ourselves, we are not trusting God.
[00:16:31] And so let's look at three verses here. The fool despises his father's instruction.
[00:16:37] Proverbs 15:12. A scoffer does not like to be reproved. He will not go to the wise. Proverbs 18:2. A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. Boy, that sounds like our culture, doesn't it?
[00:16:53] Just wants to express opinions, wants to get it out there. See, the fool hates correction. No matter where it comes from, if it comes from a father or a parent, somebody close to them, somebody that you could assume has their best interest at heart, they will hate it.
[00:17:12] They will reject it.
[00:17:14] Wise people, we said this before. Foolish people don't like to be around wise people.
[00:17:20] Why? They don't want to be told what to do. They don't want to be corrected. So they'll avoid it.
[00:17:25] Even the pursuit of understanding itself.
[00:17:29] The fool lacks humility.
[00:17:33] They don't think they need to be corrected or guided. Why? Because they are the determiner of what's best from themselves. They know better than anybody else.
[00:17:44] And so when it takes humility to be corrected, it takes humility to receive counsel. It takes humility to admit that maybe we're not as good as we think we are or smart as we think we are, know as much as we think we know. That's a humble posture to take.
[00:18:01] The fool will not do it.
[00:18:03] The fool lives in essentially what we call today, echo chambers, where they elevate their own voice, share unexamined, unwise opinions, don't want to consider other points of view.
[00:18:16] It's amazing how, if you stop and think like, how do bad ideas spread?
[00:18:23] Well, they spread because people get together and they talk about it. And when they all agree, they generally don't reach different conclusions.
[00:18:35] And it's just part of how we're designed as people. So foolish people get together, they find other foolish people, they talk about all of these things, and they don't listen to anything else but what they want to hear in their own opinions.
[00:18:50] I think that's part of why evangelism is so important.
[00:18:55] Ultimately, it's to bring people into a relationship with Jesus Christ. Absolutely. That's the ultimate goal.
[00:19:02] But also, when you engage with people who think differently from you, who feel things differently from you, who understand things differently from you, what an opportunity for you to break through and tell them about Jesus Christ. It challenges you.
[00:19:20] What do you think about your faith? Why do you believe this about your faith? And so I think it's what you would look at as an ultimate win. But there's another win where it helps us to learn more about what we believe and why we believe it. But the fool hates it.
[00:19:37] They hate being challenged. It's an offense to them.
[00:19:44] The last thing we see is the fool lives in reckless endangerment.
[00:19:48] Proverbs 14:16. One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil. But a fool is reckless and careless. Foolish fools bring chaos.
[00:20:00] Wherever they are, whatever situation they happen to be in. It is chaotic. And Proverbs tells us it is reckless.
[00:20:09] Usually this. This reckless endangerment centers around money, illicit relationships, pursuit of power, like all of those types of things.
[00:20:21] But a fool just rushes in and doesn't consider the danger, the evil, the consequences. And in the process, they hurt themselves and they hurt other people because they're just rushing in. They're reckless, they're careless.
[00:20:38] Two ways that this is expressed. The mouth of a fool. How fools talk. Proverbs 10:14. The wise lay up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool brings ruin near.
[00:20:50] It's almost like it's causing it to happen.
[00:20:54] Proverbs 18:6 and 7. This might be my favorite proverb. I don't know. It says this. A fool's lips walk into a fight.
[00:21:03] His mouth invites a beating. Whoa, that is strong.
[00:21:10] A fool's mouth is his ruin. His lips are a snare to his soul. See, a fool when they even speak. It's not just careless. We've all said careless words.
[00:21:19] Well, we've all said things that we may have wanted to kind of get back.
[00:21:25] If you're somebody that has a sense of humor, I know you have, because you're trying to just be funny, right? And it doesn't land right, or you say the wrong thing, that's careless words. Again, we're talking about patterns, we're talking about character flaws, we're talking about deep rooted things. The fool brings danger to themselves and others by the way they speak.
[00:21:47] The other thing that we see with the fool in terms of their overall being ability to live in reckless endangerment, is their lack of emotional control.
[00:21:57] We talked about that last week, that wise people have emotional control.
[00:22:03] Proverbs 29:11. A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back. Just because you feel something doesn't mean you have to fully express it.
[00:22:17] Those of you who have raised little children, you've lived through this.
[00:22:21] They feel it. You get it.
[00:22:23] What we know is the fool gives full vent to his spirit. Look at 29:9. If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool rages and laughs and there is no quiet.
[00:22:37] See, the fool is resistant to self control.
[00:22:41] They let their unchecked emotions, particularly emotions of anger and rage, rule without distrait, without restraint.
[00:22:50] The result, ruin broken relationships, emotional, spiritual harm like this is. This is a bad thing for the fool to engage in because they're not taking care of themselves emotionally. And let's be honest, emotions are hard.
[00:23:06] Emotions can be difficult to regulate.
[00:23:10] But if we, if we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we have literally supernatural help to do that. The fool, though, gives full vent. Maybe the best way to sum up a fool is this. Proverbs 26:11. And this is kind of a vivid metaphor of disgust. But it says this like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.
[00:23:35] Again, Proverbs, very direct.
[00:23:38] It's saying, look, for someone who is foolish.
[00:23:43] It is as disgusting as going back to its own vomit, as a dog would do.
[00:23:49] But yet the fool is there again and again and again.
[00:23:54] And again they go back to it.
[00:23:57] It's harmful, it's revolting, yet the fool still embraces it and goes back.
[00:24:04] And like we said at the beginning, the fool is someone who is marked by a hard heart, a closed mind, a loud mouth which leads to ruin.
[00:24:14] So what do we do with this?
[00:24:16] Three things. Number one, I think we have to be honest, that we have to try to avoid being the hero because we can't save fools.
[00:24:27] I said at the outset, this could be tough for us because we may know people who are foolish and we want to try to save them. But the reality of it is fools hate correction and counsel.
[00:24:42] I don't care how winsome you are or how nuanced you are in your argument or how much you love them or how much you express care, like those things are important. But you cannot change the heart of a fool.
[00:24:56] Only God can change the heart.
[00:25:00] So what do we do if we are have a relationship with a foolish person? If we love a foolish person, Number one, we pray for them.
[00:25:11] Those are hard prayers. Those are hard seasons of prayers.
[00:25:14] Sometimes they're answered quickly, sometimes they take a long time, sometimes they're ongoing, but we pray for them. Number two, we set boundaries.
[00:25:23] We try to say, look, this is how far I'm going to go with this. And it's hard to tell you exactly what that looks like for each of your situations, but we set boundaries. We model wisdom and living in peace as far as it depends on you. Live at peace with everyone.
[00:25:41] We speak truth balanced by grace and love. And then maybe the last thing I would say is we offer help when they are open to correction.
[00:25:50] I'll be here.
[00:25:52] And I don't, I don't want to move off this point too quick because I think it's one where, if we're honest, it's hard because we can see if we're trying to live wisely, we can see where the fool is headed, where foolishness ends up, the end result.
[00:26:09] And we want to protect people from that.
[00:26:13] But only God can change the heart. Number number two, if the Holy Spirit is indicating that you have the marks of a fool, you need to repent.
[00:26:25] I know in going through this there were things as I studied and got ready, I was like, oh, man, I am not on the path of wisdom here.
[00:26:34] That's hard.
[00:26:36] It's uncomfortable.
[00:26:38] You gotta confess. Even Christians can sometimes be foolish. It happens.
[00:26:44] And we're not talking about making mistakes. We're not talking about perfection.
[00:26:48] What we're talking about is what's the trajectory of Your life.
[00:26:53] What's the pattern of your life? If it's about following Christ and being more like Christ, pursuing him, the personification of wisdom, then that's growth, that's sanctification. That's part of the process. It's not that you're going to get everything right all the time, but it's where are you headed? I would encourage you to do this. If the Holy Spirit has has nudged you today or shoved you today, or spoken to you, whatever he's done in your heart, I would encourage you to follow that leading.
[00:27:25] Because ultimately this is a spiritual issue between you and the Holy Spirit.
[00:27:32] I would encourage you to confess from what's been brought forward and move towards Jesus.
[00:27:37] The last thing for a so what is the single most foolish thing a person can do is reject Jesus.
[00:27:45] It's really it out of all the foolish decisions we looked at, mouth invites a beating returning to its all those things. The most foolish thing a person can do is to reject Jesus. Why?
[00:27:58] Because ultimately rejecting Jesus leads to a life of ruin in the here and the now.
[00:28:06] And so the single most important thing that someone can do is to repent and believe and to follow Jesus.
[00:28:15] And it's interesting because that's exactly how we closed out being wise.
[00:28:21] And when you look at this pattern of wise versus foolish, the end result is exactly the same thing.
[00:28:29] The Lord desires for us to live wisely.
[00:28:33] Lord desires for us to grow in our faith. The Lord desires for us to be more like Christ.
[00:28:40] And I don't know about you, but I am thankful that I have a Bible. I have a book of proverbs that can help me navigate the indwelling of the Holy Spirit prayer. All of those things that sometimes I think we can maybe take for granted that keep us on that path. Let's pray together.
[00:29:01] Heavenly Father, we thank you for today. Thank you for the truth of your word. Thank you for your word, Lord. I just pray for us, the places where we are foolish, we're living as fools. Lord, correct us.
[00:29:14] Make us open to you. Change our hearts, Lord. The places that we are living wisely, Lord. That's a gift. Thank you.
[00:29:23] Help us to continue that path. Lord. Thank you for your death on the cross, your resurrection, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Let us never take that for granted. We pray us in your name. Amen.
