Bible Verse: Proverbs 1:7, 3:35, 9:8-9, 10:8, 10:14, 10:23, 12:15, 12:23, 13:16, 13:20, 14:7-8, 14:16, 15:2, 15:7, 17:16, 18:2, 26:4-5, 26:12, 28:26, 29:11
WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola:
What movie is that last clip from? The good, the bad, and the ugly. Yes. It’s a perfect movie for a Sunday afternoon. You’re just sitting on the couch watching a movie, you fall asleep, you wake up, you keep watching it. It’s awesome. Clint Eastwood movie, but it’s also a perfect way to spend your Sunday morning by being here with us. So, thank you guys for joining us this morning. My name is Chris Pavila. I’m the senior pastor here at St. Mark. And yeah, I am excited today because we are kicking off this brand-new series called Two Types of People, where we are going to be looking at ancient wisdom from an ancient book called Proverbs. And these are Proverbs for life.
TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE
ABOUT THIS SERIES
And I’m excited for this series because honestly, these proverbs that we’re going to look at, they have incredible power to help you, to benefit you, to improve the quality of your life, quality of your relationships, quality of your finances.
And maybe that sounds a little bit like hyperbole, a little bit of an exaggeration, something a preacher would say, but I believe it’s true because you consider the source. So if you were like, just imagine if you could, for whatever field that you work in, if you could sit down with somebody who’s the leading expert in your field and you had like 30 minutes to sit down with a person who is the best of the best in your particular industry that you work in, somebody that you idealize and idolize and just think they walk in water. If you could sit down with them for 30 minutes and just talk to them, ask them questions and process and just learn from them, that would be amazing. Or like if you’re an athlete, if you play basketball, if you could sit down for 30 minutes and talk to Michael Jordan or hockey, 30 minutes, where’d you go smart boys?
30 minutes, you could sit down with Wayne Gretzky and just talk to Gretzky or soccer players. You could talk to Messi for 30 minutes and you could sit down with the goat and just learn from them and ask questions. That would be amazing. Or like if you have a hobby, if you’re a master, if you barbecue and you could sit down for 30 minutes with the grand master champion barbecue guy, person, whatever. I don’t even know if that’s a real thing. Or if you’re a quilter, if you could sit down with the goat quilter, I don’t know if they have competitions for quilting, but the best quilter in the world. Imagine if you could sit down with somebody who’s the best crocheter in all the world, you would love to just ask them questions and learn from them. And you would just jump at the opportunity.
Somebody famously paid Warren Buffet $1 million to sit down with them for an hour and to just learn from Warren Buffet for an hour. Oprah Winfrey only costs $400,000 an hour. So there you go, if that’s a little bit more affordable. If you don’t have that kind of cheddar laying around, the Deloitte consulting firm is only $10,000 an hour to just sit down with you and your business and consult you about how you can improve and what you can do to improve. But the reason people spend all this kind of money on getting quality time with experts is because we know that if you can learn from them, that’s like a shortcut. It is a hack. And you can get further faster when you sit down with somebody who is an expert, who has all this knowledge and expertise that you want. And that if you could think like them and do what they do, then maybe you could be like they be.
That’s what we’re doing in this series. We’re going to sit down and spend time learning from the wisest man who ever lived.
29 God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore. 30 Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the people of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. 31 He was wiser than anyone else… .
1 Kings 4
And that’s at least how the Bible describes him. His name is Solomon. And when he begins, like when he comes onto the pages of history, it says that he is the wisest man who ever lives. God gave Solomon wisdom and a very great insight and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the shore. Solomon’s wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the people on earth. He’s the smartest man who ever lived. That’s how he’s described.
ABOUT PROVERBS
And Solomon, fortunately for us, sits down and writes what he knows. He writes his worldview. He writes just his advice and his outlook on life and just his moral code. He writes it all down, but it’s not like this big long dissertation or speech.
He kind of demonstrates his wisdom and giving us his wisdom in the form of something called a proverb. I mean, you kind of know what a proverb is, right? You have African proverbs or you open a fortune cookie and you get Chinese proverbs. But Solomon’s proverbs are. He writes like. And the reason he does it in a proverb is because there’s the surface level of what a proverb says, but then there’s kind of a deeper truth. There’s a British prime minister in the 1800s who said that a proverb is one man’s wit and every man’s wisdom. And that’s kind of a proverb in himself. And that’s what a proverb is. It’s like this short, irreducible, pithy kind of a statement that contains this truth that we can all learn from. And that’s what Solomon does, but he does something a little bit different. Solomon does this art form in his proverbs called parallelism.
It’s a big word for a Sunday morning, but what he does is he compares and he contrasts all the time. A or B. It’s like this or it’s like that.
And he most often does it with the types of people. And you compare and contrast in this parallelism. And the reason he does it is there’s a surface level truth, but then you can kind of go deeper. It’s almost like a riddle. There’s a deeper truth to uncover when you weigh the words and then you kind of flip them and you consider their antonyms. And you’ll see that in this series, there is a surface level truth and a deeper truth. And the most often type of comparing and contrasting he does is two types of people.
THE WISE AND THE FOOLISH: TWO WAYS THEY RESPOND
Hollywood does this, cliches abound as you saw. There are people who like Neil diamonds and people who don’t. There’re astronauts and astronomers. There’re people with guns and people who dig. That’s kind of the comparing and contrasting style. And that’s what Solomon does. And Solomon, as he does this compare-contrast style, he starts that the most common type of person, as he compares and contrasts, the heading of all subheadings that follow, well, it’s really, it’s two types of people.
THE WISE AND THE FOOLISH
There’s the wise and the foolish. And in the weeks to come, we’re going to unpack some of the behaviors of the wise and the foolish. And these are also types of people, but really week one needs to start with this conversation on wisdom from the wisest man who ever lived by talking about who he considers to be wise and who he considers to be foolish. And we know what a wise person is. We know what a fool is and what folly is, and we have an understanding of it. But according to Solomon, the difference between the wise and foolish comes down to one thing.
How do they respond to the truth? And that’s what distinguishes the wise from the foolish.
The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice
Proverbs 12:15
In his own words, Proverbs 12:15, “The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.” That’s the difference. The truth comes to everybody. And whether you’re wise or you’re foolish depends on how you respond to the truth. A wise person, they hear it and they consider it. They weigh it. In fact, they’ll hire a consultant. They want to seek it out and learn from it. They know that there’s still room for growth and they’ve never arrived and self-actualized. There’s still steps they can take and they pursue the truth even when the truth is inconvenient and difficult and it’s hard to hear. They’ll listen to it and be like, “That’s good. Okay.” And a wise person will be teachable. They’ll be flexible and fluid. They’ll submit to the authority of another. That’s what makes them wise.
Turn on a light and the wise person adjusts themself. But the foolish person, just the light. The foolish person, you show them the light, you show them the truth, the teaching, the command, whatever it is. And they see the light and they squint at it like you just threw a light on in the middle of a movie theater or something like that. They’re like, “Ah.” They don’t like it. And they’ll kind of have a fight, flight or freeze thing with the light. They’ll dismiss it. Oh, it’s not true. They’ll explain it away. They’ll ignore it. They’ll, “Oh, that’s good for you, but not for me.” Or they’ll dismiss it. They might even shoot the messenger and mock them because they don’t want the truth. The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.
Solomon, I chose this one as kind of like a summarizing verse, but he repeats this theme over and over trying to get it through our heads and several other Proverbs, take a look.
Do you see a wise person in their own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for them.
Proverbs 26:12
Do not rebuke mockers or they will hat you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Proverbs 9:8
Mockers resent correction, so they avoid the wise.
Proverbs 15:12
The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin.
Proverbs 10:8
Proverbs nine verse eight, “Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you, rebuke the wise and they’ll love you.” The proud mocker never loves the one who corrects him. He will not inquire the wise. And there, by the way, you start to see how the parallelism works. He switches out words that are different behaviors to demonstrate what wise people and foolish people and what their behaviors are. So foolish people are proud. They’re arrogant. They mock. So, if you hear someone, Jesus will later on say, “By their fruit, you will know them.” So, if you see someone who’s mocking, if you see someone who’s proud and refusing to receive instruction, you’re looking at somebody who’s a fool. And then “The wise in heart accept commands, but a chattering fool comes to ruin.” I’m not going to comment about an excessive amount of words and the talkative. That’s a conversation for another time.
But the point is that Solomon is making a point about the difference between the wise and the fool. And it all has to do with how do they respond to the truth? And he’s like trying to drive the point home for us. So, he repeats it again and again. I saw this play out. I was reading these words and I thought of this example from several years ago.
A WISE AND FOOLISH MARRIAGE
I was counseling a couple on their marriage. And they decided things had gotten to a point where we’ll come and meet with you separately first, and then we’ll meet with you together. So the first step was let’s meet one-on-one, just me with each person in the marriage, and then we’ll come together for another meeting.
And so, the first meeting, I’m sitting down with one of them and I asked them, “Hey, describe what’s going on in the marriage. What’s wrong?” And they went on like a 20, 30 minute, just tirade ranting about how their spouse does this and they do that and this is what they did. And they couldn’t believe and this is all the horrible things their spouse had done. And after about 30 minutes, I stopped them and I said, “Hey, I’ve heard a lot about you telling me what they’ve done, but how might you have contributed to the problems in the marriage?” And they were aghast, appalled that I would even ask them.
The thought that they somehow contributed to the problem of the marriage. They didn’t even want the idea. They couldn’t even consider it. And they basically left the meeting. The meeting was over. A few days later, I meet with their spouse. Same thing. Hey, what’s going on in the marriage? And they start telling me all the problems, all the things that their spouse had done. And after about 15, 20, 30 minutes, I said, “Hey, I’ve heard a lot from you about what your spouse has done. How might you have contributed to some of the problems in the marriage?” And they were like, “Well, I guess I’ve done this. And I’ve done that a little bit. And I did that.
I don’t know. I guess I have some blind spots, pastor. What do you think?” And I shared some observations just from what I knew of them. And I’ll never forget this. They took out a notebook and a pen, clicked it and started taking notes, wisdom and foolishness. And it all had to do with how did they respond to the truth when the truth came to them? How did they respond?
THE WISE AND THE FOOLISH: TWO WAYS YOU RESPOND
And we all need people in our lives like this. We need people who speak truth in our lives. You need a buddy who can look at you and be like, “You know you were a jerk when you did that?
Stop doing that.” You need a spouse and a marriage where you can go and critique one another and say, “Hey, when you did that, you come across really selfish. You know that, right? I think you should do this instead.” And how you receive that is whether you’re a wise or a fool. Now, as I’m talking, you’re obviously supposed to. Solomon wants you to be able to recognize these people in your life, the wise and the foolish, because it determines the direction and quality of your own life. He wants you to be on guard for them. If you see this, if you see this, if you see this, that’s a wise person. That’s a foolish person. But then he gives his counsel, not just on the two types of people, but the two types of response. How should you respond to a wise person? How should you respond to a foolish person?
And to the wise person, well, it’s easy.
Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.
Proverbs 13:20
Get around them. Proverbs 13:20, I love this proverb. “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.” I think that’s a proverb. If you want to challenge for the next six weeks in this series to just memorize one of the proverbs we hear each week, your life will be better for it. So, let’s get a head start on that. Will you read that with me just because I want to imprint this as much as I can on your heart. Ready?:
Response: “Walk with the wise and become wise for a companion of fool suffers harm.”
Pastor Chris Paavola: One more time:
Response: “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fool suffers harm.”
Pastor Chris Paavola: What he’s getting to is just that the idea that you become the company you keep. You do. Social contagion is real. Study after study and psychology, anthropology, behavior sciences, you will eventually take on the qualities of the people in your life.
This is why mom and dad got so nervous when you started hanging out with the wrong crowd in high school.
This is why people pay tons of money to sit down with Warren Buffet because you become the company you keep. So be careful what kind of music you listen to. Be careful what kind of movies you watch. You are influenced far more than you know. And this is by the way, why I love small groups. We’re in September kicking off small groups and other seasons of small groups. And I know life is busy. It’s hard to get into a group and make that a part. But why I love small groups, one of the reasons is because you are walking with the wise to become wise. That’s what we do in a small group. We take truth, what we call God’s truth and his commands and his instructions and we respond to it. We try to apply it to our lives. That’s what we do. And that’s wisdom.
(17:59):
And I believe that when we do that together, we become wise. And that can only happen in community. So, walk with the wise, become wise for a companion of fool suffers harm.
Do not speak to fools, for they will scorn your prudent words.
Proverbs 23:9
And again, there’s the parallelism, by the way. You can flip those words around and take on the antithesis. So, walk with the fools and you’ll become foolish. For a companion of the wise will prosper. A lot of Solomon’s proverbs are self-fulfilling prophecies. So earlier we heard how wisdom is like a garland. It will protect you. You will prosper. You will be healthy. You’ll be wise. You’ll have better relationships. You’ll manage your home better. You’ll manage your business better because you’re wise and a fool. Well, they’ll have toxic relationships, chaos, poor health, more debt because truth came to them and they did or didn’t respond. And so, the beauty of the proverb is you can look at it, flip it and kind of weigh it and consider what it means beyond the surface.
Now I know there’s a tension in this one of like, wait a minute, shouldn’t Christians hang out with all people? This sounds a little judgy, Pastor Chris. I would point out there’s a difference between judgmental and good judgment. I’ve said that before. Good judgment is assessing a situation and making a proper decision. Judgemental is ascribing value or worth to someone and he’s not. He’s just saying, this is what will happen. If you are around people who accept the truth and look for the truth and seek it out, or if you’re around people who reject the truth and try to change the truth or ignore it, well, you’ll be like them eventually.
And so, I think when you’re weighing this of like, well, what about the people in my life? And shouldn’t I love all people? Yeah, you should love all people. You should hang out with all people. You should show Jesus to all people. You should be a light in the darkness, but just know two things. One, it shouldn’t come at the expense of your time with the wise and the godly and the righteous. And two, you need to know the difference between being an influenced and being influenced. And that’s a nuance you need to be able to recognize.
So that’s how you respond to the wise. Then the second type of response to this idea, this teaching from Solomon, the two types of people, the wise and the foolish is how do you respond to the fool? And Solomon is really blunt. Stop talking to him. “Do not speak to fools, for they will scorn your prudent words.” Proverbs 23: nine. Stop talking to them. They’re not listening to you. It is going in one ear and out the other. You’ve talked to them over and over and over about the thing and they refuse to listen. They keep on doing it. That’s the definition of insanity. It’s just keep repeating yourself. And eventually you need to recognize that you’re wasting your words, you’re wasting breath and it’s causing you more harm than good. So, stop talking to them.
And listen, I know this seems harsh, but sometimes the most loving thing you can do is to let somebody experience the consequences of their choices. Solomon says the fool will suffer harm. And if they refuse to listen, the most loving thing you can do is let them experience the consequence because then, maybe then they’ll be humble enough. They’ll lose that pride where they’ll be able to come under authority and ask for advice, ask for help. It’s the adage of like when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And if you’ve got someone with this hard, rebellious, refusing heart, after a while, you need to stop talking. And you got to take this general truth and apply it to the nuance of your situation. But there comes a point where you’re just wasting your time. And maybe one day they’ll come to you and say, “Hey, can you help?” Now, I do think when you’re talking to somebody over and over and over and repeating things and it’s just not getting through, maybe it’s an employee or it’s a friend or an extended family member and you keep talking and you’re saying the same thing over and over and over and over and they’re not listening.
You can change a conversation from the thing and just say, “Hey, every time I talk about this, I notice that it just goes in one ear and out the other.
What is it that makes you not want to listen to me? Is it something about me? Is there something in you that doesn’t want to hear or learn about this? What is it?” Now you’re having a different conversation. But if they shut down on that conversation, the advice remains the same. Stop talking to them. And eventually they’ll learn the consequence.
THE WISE AND THE FOOLISH: TWO WAYS TO READ
Now, that’s one type of way to read a proverb from Solomon. It’s to read it, to recognize these types of people in your life, to know how you can respond to them. It’s an external reading, but then there’s an internal reading. And as I’ve been talking, you probably have experienced this. Not only have you recognized wisdom and foolishness in others, but you start to think about wisdom and foolishness in yourself. You turn it internal and you’re like, “Oh my goodness.
Yeah, I’ve done some wise things, but I’ve been a fool. I should have listened to dad when he told me about compound interest when I was 25, not 45. I wish I would have listened to the person who told me I needed to get control of this or stop doing this. And now, man, I’m in a tough place. I’ve been foolish. Or this thing that God keeps telling me, this command I keep, this habitual thing I can’t break. I wish I would have never started. I’ve been a fool. I’ve spurned correction. I’ve rejected truth. I’ve ignored commands. I’ve been foolish. That’s good news, my friends.
GOD, FORGIVE ME FOR MY FOOLISHNESS
Jesus died for fools like me and you. He did. And by his death on a cross and his resurrection from the tomb, there’s forgiveness. So that leads to then not just two ways to recognize the wise and the foolish, not just two ways to read about the wise and the foolish, but two types of prayer. One is to just ask for forgiveness. And so, I think a lot of times we’ll pray to God for forgiveness of my sins. And you’ve probably prayed some type of prayer for that. But today I want to come at it from a different angle and invite you to ask God for forgiveness for your foolishness as we’ve defined it here today, just this refusal and rejection of truth. And so, will you say these words with me?:
Response: God, forgive me for my foolishness.
Pastor Chris Paavola: And it’s my joy and honor as a pastor to tell you that Jesus died for your foolishness too. And, that your sins are forgiven. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There’s one other prayer then if you read this appropriately. It’s two types of prayer. And it’s a prayer instead of God’s mercy for your foolishness. It’s asking God to give you a gift appealing to his grace. Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived because he asked God for it. In one Kings four, before it talks about how he’s the wisest man ever lived. He’s anointed to be king and he’s charged with this task. And he asks the Lord, Lord, make me wise. Make me discerning so I can govern and lead these people. And God was so touched, so blessed by the prayer. He not only gave Solomon just this incredible wisdom, but he also gave him all these other things he didn’t even ask for. And one New Testament writer reflecting on this idea of wisdom notes that God is the God of all wisdom.
That’s one of the titles he has.
If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
James 1:5
And since he gave Solomon so much wisdom, well, we can ask for wisdom too. In James one: five, it says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault,. And it will be given to you.” That’s a big promise. That’s a bold promise. If you lack wisdom and you ask God for it, he will give it to you. And now you know that what that means, it’s this softness of heart to receive the command like soft soil receives rain.
It’s a readiness and a teachability. I don’t like this word, but a submissiveness to his authority.
GOD MAKE ME WISE
And so, with this nuanced understanding, I invite you to pray this prayer with me. God, make me wise. And I believe God who poured out wisdom in Solomon. If you prayed that prayer right now, that he will indeed make you wise. And in the weeks to come, we are going to talk about five behaviors of the wise and the foolish. Five kinds of descriptions or characteristics of the wise and the foolish. And I promise you over the next five weeks, he will do just that. And you will be better for it. Your marriages will be better for it. Your finances will be better for it. Your physical health will be better for it. Your emotional health will be better for it as you learn from the wisdom of Solomon. Let’s pray.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, I pray that you would do exactly what we asked in the service, that you would forgive us of our foolishness, but Lord, that you would make us wise. I pray that every person in this room, God, you would show them what it means to nuance this as they live it out and there’s certain circumstances and relationships and situations and how to apply this general concept of recognizing the wise and foolish, how to respond to the wise and foolish, and how to become the wise. And so Lord, make us wise. And we pray now that prayer your wise son taught us to pray as we close our time together saying:
Our father,
Who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven,
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us,
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For thine is the kingdom,
And the power,
And the glory,
Forever and ever,
Amen.
