"Play the Fool or Follow His Guidance" Proverbs, Practical Kingdom Living #3

- In this third part of our series on Proverbs, we are going to take a look at playing the fool versus following God's guidance, as the title to this message suggests.

- Solomon spends a great deal of time comparing wisdom and folly, so we see that steady foolishness produces anguish, while steady wisdom produces joy.

- I want to quickly outline for us what I'm going to talk about today.

- I want to give us for key statements which drive home our take-home truth: When I trust God's wisdom, I'll follow his guidance.

- First, I play the fool when I ignore God's wisdom.

- Second, I play the fool when I think I have all the answers.

- Third, Following God's guidance, I can avoid life's pitfalls and examine every situation.

- Fourth, Following God's guidance, I can approach life from God's perspective.

- Let's get started.

- First, I play the fool when I ignore God's wisdom.

- Proverbs 13: 14 and 16: 22.

- 13:14, "The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, that one may turn away from the snares of death.

- 16:22, "Good sense is a fountain of life to him who has it, but the instruction of fools is folly."

- Imagine walking down the hot, dry, dusty road from Jericho to Jerusalem.

- All around you is desert, the sun blazes, the heat intense.

- Usually, in heat like this you'd be sweating, but the air is so dry you don't notice.

- The wind evaporates perspiration as fast as you produce it.

- Suddenly, you are thirsty, very thirsty.

- Dry and parched, your lips feel withered and your tongue clings to the roof of your mouth.

- Perhaps nothing could be more important in the dry climate of Israel than a fountain.

- The presence of clean, fresh water to travelers on the road is life-saving.

- The same may be said of the teaching of the wise. It can save your life and keep you from life's snares.

- While good sense has the same life-saving qualities as a fountain, fools lack sense and must live with the consequences of their foolish decisions.

- Proverbs 24:13-14, "My son, eat honey, for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste. Know that wisdom is such to your soul; if you find it, there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off."

- We recently had honeycomb for a treat.

- It smelled like summer in the Maritimes filling my mind with all the rich aromas of fruit blossoms and wildflowers and meadows.

- It's flavor brought to my imagination fields of clover and wild blueberries.

- I did manage to get some of its sticky goodness on my beard and fingers, so I had to wash up when I was finished.

- The proverb says, "Eat honey, for it is good." Amen!

- The sweetest taste known to folks of Old Testament times was honey.

- Solomon encouraged his son to eat honey and enjoy its sweetness, comparing it to wisdom because wisdom provides the sweetness of hope for the future.

- As good as honey is for the pallet, wisdom is for the soul.

- Solomon not only encouraged his son to get wisdom because it's what's right, but also because wisdom is the shortest track to experiencing joy in life.

- His encouragement also contained a warning; not pursuing wisdom could result in future hopes being cut off.

- I play the fool when I ignore God's wisdom. When I trust God's wisdom, I'll follow his guidance.

- Second, I play the fool when I think I have all the answers.

- Proverbs 27:22, "Crush a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, yet his folly will not depart from him."

- In order to crush grain in a mortar and pestle, it takes patience, and a lot of patience, because you have to lift the pestle and drive it onto the mortar again and again until you get the grain the consistency and texture you're looking for.

- Unlike grain, you can't grind a fool into a texture or consistency that you can work with.

- If you took a fool and set her in a mortar and ground her with a pestle you'd never be able to grind folly out of her.

- The fool is unteachable. He refuses to learn from his repeat mistakes and he refuses to learn from those who are wiser, more knowledgeable, or more experienced than he.

- You can't separate a fool from folly, they are inseparable. Even if punished again and again because folly is the essence of the fool.

- Proverbs 29:9, "If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet."

- We've all had arguments in our lives that once they get started we immediately regret either because of flared tempers or because of the inability to admit ignorance in a particular matter.

- Neither can you argue with a fool because a fool turns every argument into a raging, emotional brawl.

- Nor can you have a rational, calm discussion with a fool because he is never wrong.

- I play the fool when I think I have all the answers. When I trust God's wisdom, I'll follow his guidance.

- In our last two points, let's take a look at the positive side as we look at what happens when we follow God's guidance.

- Third, Following God's guidance, I can avoid life's pitfalls and examine every situation.

- Proverbs 15:21, "Folly is a joy to him who lacks sense, but a man of understanding walks straight ahead."

- If a person lacks sense or good judgment, then he or she takes pleasure from foolishness.

- We've all seen or know of people who take pleasure in doing dumb things.

- Some get a big kick out of and seem to really enjoy destroying other people's property, vandalism.

- Others seem to really enjoy bullying, taunting, teasing, provoking, or irritating others.

- They think it's funny; they're looking for entertainment to ease their boring, purposeless lives.

- People of understanding will have a different focus. They won't allow themselves to be distracted by stupidity or foolishness.

- Instead, they take a long-term view by keeping in front of themselves their most important life's goals, always walking straight ahead, towards those goals.

- Proverbs 17:24, "The discerning sets his face toward wisdom, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth."

- The fool is so distracted by worldly temptations that it is impossible for him to absorb the truth.

- A foolish person sees a godly person as a killjoy, a stick in the mud, for their godly pursuit of wisdom (Proverbs 10:23).

- However, the discerning person keeps his or her sights set on wisdom because wisdom can be achieved through single-minded focus.

- Proverbs 20:5, "The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out."

- When I was a teenager, I trained to be a lifeguard.

- Part of that training was in doing underwater searches.

- I was young and inexperienced then, and I thought it didn't make sense to practice doing this, i.e., until I became a lifeguard at a lake.

- Lake water, as you know, is not crystal clear like pool water.

- You have to be on the bottom to see the bottom and the ability to search the murky lake bottom has the potential to either save someone's life or return a lost valuable to its owner.

- Just like deep water is able to hide things, so people are able to hide our real plans and intentions.

- But a person who gains the understanding which Proverbs offers is able to bring to the surface those hidden purposes.

- Following God's guidance, I can avoid life's pitfalls and examine every situation. When I trust God's wisdom, I'll follow his guidance.

- Fourth, Following God's guidance, I can approach life from God's perspective.

- Proverbs 23:12, "Apply your heart to instruction and your ear to words of knowledge."

- We've all heard it many times before, the direction or instruction of a parent or teacher, saying, "Apply yourself!"

- When I was a child, I hated hearing that.

- I didn't know it at the time, but I loved learning, it's just that I hated being in school most of the time because I found it boring and uninteresting.

- It took me until my second time around in grade 12 to learn to apply myself, to set to work and stick to it, then I was successful.

- Solomon directs his readers to set to work and stick to getting knowledge and instruction into our ears and down into our hearts.

- It's never too late to apply yourself, to set to work and stick to applying the heart and ears to instruction and knowledge.

- God wants his children to apply instruction and knowledge to their hearts, our hearts, so that our lives will be different, changed.

- Because knowledge is very important, Proverbs commands the reader to apply him or herself to the work of gaining knowledge.

- A real education, according to Proverbs, comes when we apply to our hearts what we hear and are changed.

- Proverbs 19:2, "Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way."

- It's easy to have a lot of passion, zest, and soul, but without knowledge this speedy drive can lead to rushed mistakes and swift blunders.

- I remember one time watching and helping my father-in-law as he was teaching me to hang a door, but he was in a hurry and he made a mistake at the beginning which he didn't pick up on until he had hung the door.

- We had to tear it all apart and start over again.

- Those of us who have a tendency rush to action also have a tendency to blame God for our mistakes.

- "Haste makes waste," the old saying goes, passion needs to be controlled, it's always better to take the time to do it right.

- Following God's guidance, I can approach life from God's perspective. When I trust God's wisdom, I'll follow his guidance.

- Choosing wisdom is entirely up to us, but choose we must.

- It is better to choose wisdom and grow only a little wiser than not.

- Perhaps through this message the Holy Spirit has confronted you with the truth that you either have acted or are acting foolishly.

- If so, repent and choose to act wisely.

- The story is told of the great Blondin, the famous tight rope walker, who in 1860 walked across Niagara Falls before a huge crowd which had gathered to watch. Blondin crossed the falls many times on a 1000 foot cable suspended 160 feet above the water. Not only did he walk across by himself, but he also pushed a wheelbarrow across.  After going across and back with the wheelbarrow, he asked a young boy who was watching him in amazement if he believed Blondin could take a person across in the wheelbarrow without falling. "Yes sir, I do," replied the boy. "Well, then, get in," shouted the great Blondin. The boy didn't get in.

- The true test of belief is action. When we truly believe, into the wheelbarrow we go.

- Doubts keep us on the sidelines; the same may be said of faith.

- If we read Proverbs and truly believe it's warnings against foolishness and encouragements toward wisdom, then we'll be committed to wisdom.

- When we truly believe something is in our best interests, we act.

- We say we believe God's word, but much of the time we only half believe.

- We believe the warnings and encouragements for other people, but we don't believe them for ourselves.

- Our tendency is to play fast and loose with God's word, and in so doing, we play the fool.

- May we instead, be like the disciples and come to Jesus and exclaim, "Lord, increase our faith!" (Luke 17:5)

- When I trust God's wisdom, I'll follow his guidance.