And in the book of Proverbs. So let's go ahead and let's pray. Dear gracious father, we thank you so much for your son. We thank you so much for your mercy that you've lavished upon us in him. And we just ask that as we look into your word this morning and we think about the things that are found here, that we would be encouraged to stand for Jesus, that we would be encouraged to stand against temptation, that we would stand against the schemes of Satan, and that we would act wise, wise according to your word, that we would act like your son, Jesus Christ, and that we wouldn't act foolish. So we just pray for this time that your spirit would be moving, that your spirit would be working in our hearts. We thank you and love you for everything you've given us. In your son's name, amen. Turn with me just quickly, we're gonna start off this morning in the book of Philippians, Philippians chapter three. I wanna point out something really important for us. As Paul discusses in the church of Philippi all these false teachers and some of the stuff they do, notice what he does to get the minds of the saints there in Philippi on Christ and some of the things that he says and some really important truths that we need to remember. So speaking of the false teachers and those who are now enemies of the cross, he says, their end is destruction, their God is their belly, and they glory in their shame. By the way, what a description of a group of people, right? Their end, where are they going? Destruction. Their God, who do they worship? Their belly, their appetites. What are they glory in? Their shame. That's what they glory in. But then notice what he says. He says, verse 20, but our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we wait. We await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. I've been reminded of this verse this past week and reminded of the fact that as a believer, I don't really belong here. This isn't my country. This isn't my place. This isn't my home. I'm a pilgrim, right? We don't belong here. Our citizenship is in heaven. That's what we're about. We're about Christ, right? We're about those truths that are found in him. I'm in him. That's my kingdom. That's my king. That's my country. However, as this verse suggests, and as we know, we live in a world that does not view Christ as their king. They don't view their country as a heavenly country because they don't know Christ. That's not where they're from. And so we're surrounded by people who are like the first part of the verse, in verse 19, who their end is destruction and their God is their belly, right? They're foolish and we're surrounded by fools. It's amazing to me how easily influenced we are by the fools around us. Those people and those dangers and those temptations and the things that they say and their intimidations, we easily start acting like them, opposed to acting like citizens of heaven. And so as we continue in our subject in the book of Proverbs, talking about this problematic world of the fool, there in Proverbs chapter 26, We've already seen a couple problems of this problematic world, right? We've already seen in the first part of chapter 26, that when we act like fools, fools act without self-control. They lack honor, and they lack sense. They lack discernment. They lack wisdom. They lack God's wisdom. And we saw what happens. What's a result of people that act so foolishly? And we see this uncontrollable slavery to one's passions. We saw this destruction and this delusion that happens. We talked about how the only way that we can combat that is through the power of the Spirit, through the Word, through Christ, knowing who we are in Christ and focusing on the things that are found here. Last week we talked about the problem of addressing a fool or correcting a fool, as we looked at verses 3 through 5. We talked about You can't really reason with a fool. You can't really change a fool's heart. They're like wild animals. They're like a wild donkey, like a wild horse. How do you deal with such a wild beast? Man, you have to whip him, right? You have to put bridles on him, and you have to put saddles on him, and you have to break him. You can't sit there and talk to a horse and try to reason with a horse. It's not going to listen. That's what a fool's like. And there are times when you respond to a fool by not addressing his folly. And then there's other times that you do address his folly, and there's discernment. This morning, we're going to look at the ultimate consequence of thinking through this world of a fool and the ultimate consequence of a fool. And it's going to end with this warning. And the warning should scare us. It should send chills down our back when we look at the warning this morning found in Proverbs chapter 26. So this morning, I want us to look at these three problems. I want us to identify these problems. I want us to avoid them by the power of the Spirit. And we're gonna see that there's some really bad things, really bad things happen when we trust a fool. In verses six through 10, we're gonna see, man, the problems of trusting a fool. Trusting a fool with anything is gonna turn out bad. Verse 11, we're gonna see the problem of an unrepentant fool. We're gonna see how disgusting it is when somebody is unrepentant. And then we're gonna see the problem of arrogance in verse 12. Let's first look at this first problem and the consequence of trusting a fool. So notice what it said in verse six. It says, whoever sends a message by the hand of a fool cuts off his own feet and drinks violence. That doesn't sound good at all, right? In the ancient world, it was really, really important, the people that you entrusted messages with. If there was an important message, you would pay somebody to go. And they would go as quickly as they possibly could to deliver that message. And it was expected of them to have a certain skill in being able to present the message in the spirit that you gave the message. expected to have a knowledge of different customs so that when they would go to another place and relay a message they would know the customs so as not to offend the person receiving the message because that could be bad. You send somebody with an important message and they offend the person you're bringing the message to and then they don't listen to the message. They were expected to be able to navigate through difficult terrain, to bring the message pure, right? To bring the message without adding anything to it, without adding inflection. They were meant to give the message that was given to them. And here we see Solomon says, this is foolish. Man, if you send a message by the hand of a fool, someone who doesn't care about God, who doesn't have religious scruples, one who doesn't care about God's law, who's only concerned with themselves, unteachable, arrogant, hard-headed, always thinking they're right. You send a message with this person, it's like cutting off your feet. That's what it's like. It's like making yourself lame. That's really bad. And the sense isn't like by accident, it's like, no, yeah, I'm just gonna cut off my leg. I'm gonna take a saw, I'm just gonna hack off my leg with a saw. That's how foolish it is. If you saw somebody do that, you would say, that person is crazy. Yeah, it is crazy to relay a message through somebody who's not going to relay the message as you would want it relayed. And then he says it's like drinking violence, kind of an interesting term here to drink violence. It means that you're inviting violence. It means that you're inviting danger. The sense is that he is not going to deliver the message or he's not going to deliver the message correctly. And so what's going to happen is it's going to create problems and it's going to create fights and it's going to create broken relationships, that's what it's gonna create. It's gonna create a whole bunch of bad stuff. Now as we think about this in light of the fear of the Lord, and you would say, well how does this relate to the fear of the Lord? This seems just like a practical thing. Well we need to remember that every passage, every proverb, has the undertow of this concept of that the wisdom is the fear of the Lord. And so when I think about this, We have plenty of messages as Christians, don't we? Plenty of messages, plenty of messages from God's word. Who should we expect to deliver those messages? Anybody? No, no. What does Paul tell us in Timothy? No, we deliver the message to faithful people who are gonna be faithful to God's word that know Christ. I'm concerned about the purity of the message. The message is found in God's word. I'm concerned about that. And so to just hand that over to somebody? Here, here's the most important message known to man. Just do with it whatever you want. How dangerous is that? How dangerous is that to me? How dangerous is that to you? You need to be careful. You need to be careful how much we trust fools with messages, particularly the messages found in God's word, particularly the message of the gospel. I don't expect anyone to share the gospel except for believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now notice the next thing. Like a lame man's legs, which hang useless, which by the way is a really good definition of what lame legs look like. that is hang useless, is a proverb in the mouth of a fool. Now, once again, it's the same kind of idea. The only difference is you're not drinking violence and you're not cutting off your own arm or your own leg. But here it's just like it's so useless and it doesn't accomplish anything that you think it's going to accomplish. like a proverb in the mouth of a fool. Some commentators are trying to say that this would refer to any type of wisdom given by anybody. And when you educate a fool, this is really what happens. It's really bad to try to teach a fool. I think this goes a little bit deeper. To me, it's almost impossible to read the book of Proverbs, see the word proverb, and not think that this isn't talking about the things that are being said in this book. So think about how dangerous, how useless it is for a fool who doesn't know God, who doesn't fear the Lord, doesn't care about their relationship with God, and then they what? Use this? They use the sayings here to do what? What are they doing? Doesn't do them any good. They don't care about what's said in this book. Doesn't do anybody else any good, because they don't believe it. It's dangerous. It's dangerous to trust a fool with proverbs. Even these things would seem hyper practical. Even in their mouth, it's useless. Serves no purpose. So what happens if I entrust a fool with a message? One, it's like cutting off my own legs. It's like inviting violence. What is it? It's useless. It's like legs that don't work, like limbs that don't work. That's what it's like. It doesn't do anything. And that's really dangerous, right? Now continue on, notice what Solomon says next. This one's kind of funny. Actually, this one's kind of funny. Reading it and picturing it probably wouldn't be funny if you did it. I wouldn't advise this. Just to let you know, you should not do what Solomon says here. He says, like one who binds a stone to a sling is the one who gives honor to a fool. Now, we have slingshots today that are a little bit different than the ancient slingshots, right? Our slingshots are the ones that you pull back and you let go. I think the image still follows even there. If you tie the thing you're shooting to the slingshot and then pull it back and let it go, guess what happens? It doesn't go. It stays on the sling because you tied it to the sling. And guess what could happen if you do that? I haven't tested it, just thinking here, just a mind exercise, because only an idiot would try this at home. I imagine if I would let go, and that weight would still be on the sling, that it would probably hurt myself. Now, in the ancient world, this is even crazier. Their slings, you would go around their heads, right? So it's a piece of leather. So imagine you had this piece of leather, you tied a rock to it, you swing it around your head, and then you go, and let it go. What would science tell us? Where's that rock coming back? It's coming back for your head. This is not smart. This is not smart. It's useless. It does the opposite of what you think it does. In fact, it does so much the opposite that you could hurt yourself, possibly kill yourself. So like a person who takes a weapon and ties the thing, ties the rock to the sling is like one who gives honor. We've already talked about this giving of honor to a fool. This is giving a, this is propping up a fool. This is suggesting that this particular fool is one worthy of respect and we need to respect this one. It's giving somebody power and prestige. We've already seen, if you give a fool a power and prestige, what is he going to do? He's going to turn into a tyrant. It's not going to turn out good. And you're going to hurt yourself. So be careful. Don't trust a fool. Don't entrust a fool with respectable offices. Notice the next one. Like a thorn that goes into the hand of a drunkard is like a proverb in the mouth of a fool. Now, we've already seen this phrase just a couple verses up about this proverb in the mouth of a fool. And this phrase, like a thorn in the hand of a drunkard, is really difficult to interpret, it's really difficult to get some sort of translation that makes sense. And so, You might read a commentary later and go, well, that sounds quite different from Caleb's take. That's true, because it either means, one, the person is so drunk that they put their hand on a thorn bush and they can't get out because they're so drunk and they're seeing double, some, Some think that it's like a weapon, that they take a thorn bush and like a drunk is so ready to fight and takes it and fights with a thorn bush. That's how I take it, that's how I understand this, that he's taking a thorn bush and he's using it like a weapon. And the fact that he's drunk means that he has no self-control, means that he's flying off the handle, it's not reasonable, and it's incredibly dangerous, right? Imagine getting hit with a thornbush that we have. That would hurt. The thornbushes they have in the Middle East, they really hurt. So imagine a drunk guy walking around a city, downtown, just hitting people with thornbushes. Not fun. That's painful. Thorns get stuck in your skin and cause infection. This causes all sorts of stuff. When a fool uses a proverb, one, it's useless to him because he doesn't listen, but then it can become dangerous. Think of this. It's dangerous. This is dangerous. Why? Because the fool is not using the proverb the right way. He's not understanding the proverb the right way. He's not applying it the right way. How is he applying it? He's applying it like a weapon. This is how fools use the scriptures, by the way. Regardless of the interpretation, this is true. Fools use the scriptures like a club. They don't use it in the proper way. They use it to hurt others. They use it to prop themselves up. They use it as a defense of themselves, and they don't interpret it correctly. They don't apply it correctly. They don't look at it in the way that God has intended for us to look at it, and they use it in a way that hurts people. Go with me quickly to the book of 1 Timothy. First Timothy chapter one verse three. Notice what Paul says to Timothy. He says, as I urged you when I was going to Macedonia to remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to any myth and endless genealogies which promotes speculation rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that's issued from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussions, desiring to be teachers of the law, yet without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. You see what he's saying? There's certain people that use God's word in a wrong way. They don't understand it. They don't apply it correctly. And Paul's telling Timothy, I left you there to kind of correct some of these issues. And remember that the way that a believer views God's word and the way that we should interpret is from love, right? With sincerity. If we go over to Titus, Paul says something to Titus that's interesting and is similar. In Titus chapter one, verse 10, talking about the job of an elder and one of the jobs of the elder is to to rebuke those who come in with with false teaching notice what he says verse 10 he says for there are many who are insubordinate empty talkers and deceivers especially those of the circumcision party they must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach you see When a fool gets God's word, he does not use it correctly. He might use a lot of Bible passages, but his goals are not the goals that God has intended. For good, for faith, for edification, for evangelism. No, they're using it like a club to beat down people. They're using it as a way to scare people, to give them money. What are they doing? They're hurting families, disrupting whole families, upsetting the faith of people. So when we talk about this, spiritual terrorist here in Proverbs chapter 26. The image of a drunk swinging a stick in the middle of the city may seem funny at first, but this is actually a serious, serious thing. when fools use God's word, and we allow them to continue to use God's word. What did Paul say to Timothy and to Titus? Don't listen to them. In fact, there even needs to be a place where church leaders need to say to those people who are coming up with foolish things, stop it. Because why? Because it hurts everyone around. It destroys everyone around. This morning we were talking about spiritual warfare and the armor that's needed, and we talked about the shield of faith. And I made the comment that so many churches are trying to downplay this idea of sound doctrine and truth. Why would you do that? Well, because fools have caught into the pulpits. And when fools use God's word, it hurts everyone and disarms everyone from being able to stand against foolishness. Now notice the next thing I said. This is crazy. Verse 10, like an archer who wounds everyone, is one who hires a passing fool or a drunkard. By the way, this word for archer means an expert archer. And the idea of him harming everyone is like a mass murderer. That's the sense here. Somebody who is really good at shooting arrows and is wanting to shoot everybody. And he's able to hit anybody. So what is that? That's dangerous, right? That's dangerous to everyone. Well, guess what? Guess what? If you hire a passing fool, if you hire a fool or a drunkard, you're hurting everybody around you. You're hurting yourself. You're hurting them. You're hurting your family. You're hurting the community. Everyone gets hurt. Everyone gets hurt. Why? Because a fool doesn't care. A fool is selfish, self-absorbed, arrogant. We're surrounded by these people. Right, we're surrounded by fools. And I think the advice here for us is, let's be careful who we entrust things to, and let's not entrust fools with things, right? I think that's a good principle. Let's not entrust fools. Now, there's something else about fools, and I'm really sorry, especially considering the fact that there's gonna be a potluck right after this. This is really unfortunate. Verse 11. Like a dog returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly. Dogs do this, don't they? I don't get it, I don't understand it, but they do it, and it's gross. It is disgusting. There's lots of people that talk about why dogs do this, why they return to their vomit. It doesn't really matter, because they do it. By like instinct. And when you watch a dog do this, what is your response? I don't think anybody's like, oh, that looks good. I want to share in some of that. Nope. We all start to, we're all dry heaving. This is gross. It's disgusting. No one enjoys this. And Solomon picks this image on purpose because it is revolting, it is disgusting, and it's something that happens over and over again. And so what is the image that's being portrayed here? Like a dog does this, like a dog returns, so too does a fool when he repeats his folly. Unashamed. walks in and does that sin again. Unashamed, does it again. Unashamed, does it again. How does God view this? It's disgusting. How does the people around them view it? Disgusting. How does the dog view it? This is great. This teaches us about sin, doesn't it? Teaches us about our own sin. To other people, they see our sin and they go, that's disgusting. How is our sin? It's like this, right? We think it's great. Nobody else does. That sin that Jesus died on the cross for, we do this, and it's even more disgusting when there's no repentance and confession of sin. As believers, we should always be reforming in the sense that we should always be trying to be more like Jesus Christ, being Christ-like, yielding to the power of the Spirit. And part of that means that we should always be repenting. Because do you know how often we sin? Do you know how often we sin knowing we're sinning? Do you know how often we sin not knowing we're sinning? We should always be in a state of, I'm sorry, Lord. I am so sorry. I am wrong for what I did. Will you forgive me? Let me just encourage you this way. If you've repented of a sin, You better believe that God has forgiven you of that sin and has cleansed you from all unrighteousness. Don't remain there going, well, I think I need to punish myself. No, that's already been taken care of by Jesus Christ on the cross. And we are familiar with 1 John 1, 9, that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins. It's forgiven. Now, if you don't think you're forgiven, Well, now you have a new sin. You don't believe God and his word because it says you are forgiven if you confess your sins. You need to believe that. Does that mean that you shouldn't have remorse for things you've done? That's not what I'm saying. There's a sense of regret for a lot of sins that I've done. I'm not saying that that regret is gone, but that sense of condemning myself, That sense of saying, I can't move forward with the Lord until this is dealt with, it's dealt with once it's repented. Believe it, move on, live for the Lord. So many of us are weighed down by those past sins and we can't get past them, because we don't believe God. We don't believe his word. Now this here, This is just a disgusting image. And this is used several times, this passage. One of the more notable times that this passage is used is a passage in Peter where Peter is talking about false teachers. and how false teachers are like dogs who return to their vomit. And he talks about pigs that return to their filth. This is what a false teacher is. They're unashamed of their shame and they promote their shame. And we look at people like this and we hold up our nose and we say, disgusting. And it is disgusting. Sin is disgusting. It is gross. We need to develop a sense of sin is not good. It's not right. It is disgusting. And we should see our own unrepentant sin as disgusting, as gross. I want this image to be burned into our minds when we think about our sin. This is gross. But as I read this description, my temptation is to start acting self-righteous. Well, I'm not a false teacher. I'm not like those guys on the TV, right? Send me in a whole bunch of money and watch how God's going to bless me with your money. I'm not like the one that promises health and wealth. I'm not that guy. And so I can sit there and go, you're pretty good. Look at me, I'm a great guy, great spiritually, right? I don't have some of the sins and some of the problems that those other guys do. Praise the Lord in my pharisaical attitude, right? And I should expect all of you to praise my pharisaical attitude as well. It is disgusting on repented sin, that's without doubt. But notice the next phrase. This should scare us. Verse 12, do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? Well, after we read this description of a fool, it's really easy to go, well, I'm glad I'm not that guy, right? So it's almost as if Solomon knows. It's almost as if he's playing chess, and he goes, after reading this description, I imagine somebody's going to walk away going, look how self-righteous I am. You see that guy who's arrogant? Notice what it says. Oh, man. There is more hope for a fool You know, the description we just read of the problem of the fool, there's more hope for that guy than what, than for him. Whoa, isn't that scary? I mean, isn't that petrifying? Like, we just read this awful description of like a mass, spiritual mass murderer who's willing to hurt anybody, who's willing to leave people lame on the side of the road, who's like a dog that returns to his vomit, and we go, I'm so much better than that guy. And then Solomon says, there's more hope for that guy than the guy who's self-righteous. Whoa, that is scary. That is incredibly scary. Because it's so easy for every single one of us to look at this description and go, I am not a fool. And guess what, there's more hope for the fool than the guy who doesn't think he's a fool. This past week I've been reading the book of Ephesians to get ready for tonight. Tonight we're gonna be doing a survey of the book of Ephesians. And one of the things that is very clear in the book of Ephesians is the exaltation of God's grace. And the description that Paul uses of our former life is pretty rough. And we look at who we were before Christ and we go, oh, there's nothing pretty there, right? It's like that really bad high school picture. We all have that one high school picture where we thought we looked cool, and now we look back at it and go, I should have listened to my friends who said, don't do that with your hair, right? And when we read the book of Ephesians, isn't there like that, like, don't, that's who we were. It's like looking back at that old picture. Oh, that's bad, that's bad. But the exaltation of God's grace is so incredible. And so as a believer, I shouldn't be arrogant in thinking that who I am right now is because of a product of my goodness, or the strength of my will, or the strength of my muscles, or my resolve. I stand before you as an object of God's grace, and you stand before everyone else in this room as an object of God's grace. You are a product of his work and his grace. There's no room for arrogance for us. This is why the Apostle Paul says, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. Why? Because that's the only reason that any one of us can be anything that looks like wise. And that's the only reason that any one of us in this room is not more foolish than we are right now. It's because of God's grace. It's because of his mercy. It's because of his love that he lavished upon us in Jesus Christ. It's because of the indwelling Holy Spirit that's working. It's because of that promise that he who began a good work in us is faithful to complete it. And so as we look at this verse 12, it should scare us. It should scare us of how easy it is for us to be arrogant, how easy it is for us to be narcissistic when we think of ourselves in light of our neighbors as we're surrounded by fools. but it should also remind us of God's grace and of his mercy, that he's lavish towards us, and that as we yield to the Spirit, producing the fruit of the Spirit, that we then can say no to this type of conceit. We can combat this type of narcissism and this type of arrogance because we realize who we are in God's grace and we realize who we are because of Christ. And so it is scary, but there's great hope that Christ is the one who's already won this victory for us. So we might be surrounded by fools. We might be surrounded by these types of people. We are. They're everywhere. We turn on the news and we see them, right? We hear them on the news. We hear them on TV. We hear them in the TV shows. They're playing football. They're playing basketball. They're playing baseball, right? They're all around us. We work with them, they're our bosses, they work underneath us. How do we function as a believer in the midst of this problem? I'd like to turn to one last verse. It's in another book written by Solomon. It's the book of Ecclesiastes. It's the very end of the book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon deals with the same thing in Ecclesiastes, just from a different perspective. He deals with the fear of the Lord. And the book of Proverbs starts with the fear of the Lord and says, this is what life with fear of the Lord, this is what it looks like. In the book of Ecclesiastes, he starts from nothing, and he says, what's life all about? And he goes through all of life, he goes, this is meaningless, this is meaningless, this is meaningless, and then he concludes that life can only have meaning, and this is his conclusion, that this is how life can have meaning, as it were. So notice what he says in chapter 12, verse 13. He says, the end of the matter, all that has been heard, So the entire book, the entirety of the book of Ecclesiastes, sums up in this. Fear God and keep his commandments. For this is the whole duty of man." This applies to every single person. And what is the thing that we need to have? The fear of the Lord. This awesome respect and love for Him. This awesome undying love and dedication and fidelity to Him. You want to fight that pride? You want to fight that foolishness around us? You don't want to succumb to that? learn the fear of the Lord, and have that as a staple in your heart. Because when you fear God, and you have this awesome respect for Him, all that other stuff, you can have it. I know the Lord. Do you know the Lord? And that's the type of attitude we have. So may the Lord give us both the will and the ability to all that we heard today. Let's go ahead and let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your love, for your mercy and your grace. We thank you that you've saved us based upon your goodness and upon your mercy. And we just pray that you would continually help us to live for you, to continually do the things which are consistent with walking by the power of your spirit and that we would say no to the flesh. We just thank you for this time in the word and we just ask that as we fellowship some more that you would be honored and glorified by every word, by every thought, and everything we do. We say this in your son's name. Amen.