January 18, 2015
Proverbs 26:4-5
Roper Houston, Matt Modzel, Lucas Kristofits and I teach the Youth Boys class on Wednesday nights. We’ve get between 7 and 15 boys each week for that class.
And each Wednesday, we have been memorizing a Proverb and talking about what it means for our lives today.
The Proverbs are jam-packed with wisdom for skillfully living in this world, and we’ve been having a great time talking about them on Wednesday nights. Ask any of our boys to quote a proverb and tell you what it means. They’re learning how to analyze a proverb and to apply it directly their lives.
Well, in Proverbs chapter 26, there is a lot there about fools.
Proverbs basically divides people up into two categories, the wise and the foolish. There are other fine ways to slice it, but those two categories carry a lot of weight in the Proverbs.
Wise and Foolish. The wise live by God’s word and make skillful, right choices in various situations–and because of that, they are blessed.
The foolish suffer from what some have called “Character Deficiency Syndrome.”
That is, being foolish doesn’t mean being “silly.” It means being morally dull.
Unwise. Picking the wrong things. Rejecting God’s truth as the guide for living.
The fool consistently makes wrong choices. Not just “mistakes” but bad choices. Our boys will tell you that a synonym for “foolish” is “wicked.” Not just dumb but wicked.
And the Proverbs, especially chapter 26, teach both (how to be wise) that is, how not be a fool and also how to relate to those who are unwise–how to relate to those who are foolish.
Verses 4 and 5 are two proverbs about how to relate to a fool.
And they seem, on the face of it, contradictory. In fact, someone who doesn’t believe the Bible might point to these verses as an example of how the Bible is supposedly full of errors.
But that’s foolish itself, because the compilers of the Proverbs were no dummies, and they put these two verses right beside each other!
These verses are right next to each other to be provocative and to get us to think.
And if we do, then we’ll be come wise in how to relate to those who are not.
Proverbs chapter 26, verses 4 and 5.
“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.”
So, should you or should you not answer a fool?
Let me give you a few fer’instances.
Kids, you are in the lunchroom at school this week, and a table-mate says to you, “I think you’re dumb for believing in Jesus. He was just a good teacher and not the Son of God. And he’s not still around now answering prayers!”
What are you going to do?
Guys, you’re at work and the discussion turns to “philosophy.” And a co-worker says, “I think there is no such thing as absolute truth. Truth is what you think it is. And I’m tired of other people telling me what to believe. I’ll believe what I want to believe. There are no absolute truths!”
What are you going to do?
Ladies, this is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. You have a friend or a family member who just found out that she’s pregnant. And her boyfriend is pressuring her to get an abortion. The boyfriend doesn’t want the responsibility of a baby. And somehow you’ve gotten dragged into the discussion.
You say that you think that abortion is wrong–all the time. And that she should keep the baby–anything else would be unthinkable.
And the boyfriend turns on you and says that you’re stupid. And that this is a free country. “Abortion is a woman’s right to choose. Abortion is a woman’s right to decide what happens to her body.”
What are you going to do?
In all three of these situations you are dealing with a fool.
How, if at all, are you going to answer them or any of the foolish things that you are going to actually encounter this week?
Proverbs gives us two pieces of wise counsel:
#1. DO NOT ANSWER A FOOL ACCORDING TO HIS FOLLY. V.4
“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.”
Proverbs says, “Don’t go there.”
In this verse, “according to his folly” must mean something like “playing by his rules.”
My wife’s take on it was “Don’t answer a fool in kind.”
Don’t start with his or her presuppositions.
Don’t mimic his or her attitudes.
If they come at you with foolishness, don’t answer back with more foolishness!
Because, if you do, you’ll become like them. You’ll become a fool.
Have you ever heard an argument between kids say 5 and under? It goes something like this:
Uh huh!
Nuh uh!
Uh huh!
Nuh uh!
Uh huh!
Nuh uh!
And it just gets louder?!
“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.”
It’s better sometimes to say absolutely nothing.
Remember how David made this mistake? We learned about it last year.
David, when he was on the run before he was king, and his men were providing some protection to some neighbors’ property and they asked their neighbor for some reward–financial and nutritional as a payback.
But this neighbor’s name was ... Nabal. Anybody know what Nabal’s name means in Hebrew?
His mother named him “Fool,” and he didn’t want to let her down!
Nabal insulted David and his men.
What should David have done?
I think, he probably should have walked away from that one.
“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.”
But David got hot-headed himself, saddled up his horses to go teach Nabal a lesson, and it took the wisdom of Abigail to diffuse the situation.
If she hadn’t intervened, by God’s grace, David would have become a Nabal himself.
“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.”
And some of us love that answer!
Why? Because we don’t want to talk with a fool.
It’s like mud wrestling with a pig. You both get really dirty, and the pig enjoys the whole thing!
But Proverbs 26 also gives us this:
Counsel #2. ANSWER A FOOL ACCORDING TO HIS FOLLY. V.5
“Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.”
Sometimes, often, we’ve got to say something!
V.5 says that if we don’t, then it looks like there is no answer for what the fool is saying.
The puritan Charles Bridges writes about this verse, “Silence may sometimes be mistaken for defeat. Unanswered words may be deemed unanswerable, and the fool become arrogant, more and more wise in his own eyes” (577-576).
So, sometimes, we have to say something to pop a fool’s bubble.
And we have to do it, “according to his folly.”
And here, I don’t think that means “playing by his rules” or “in kind.”
But something more like “showing how his folly works.”
Or pointing out “the folly in his folly.”
The Apostle Paul did this really well.
At one point in one of his letters, he says, “I’m talking like a fool!”
And what he’s doing there is using his opponents’ own line of reasoning and then showing how foolish their conclusions really are.
Sometimes, we have to take the battle to them and play on their own turf–even if we play by our own rules.
Does that make sense?
“Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.”
So, which is it?
Do we ANSWER or NOT ANSWER?
Most of us like to lean towards one or the other.
Some of us love to argue.
And we want to point out the problem with the other guy’s thinking.
Isn’t that one of the biggest problems on social media today?
Have you seen this comic?
Isn’t that how it is?
Lots of pointing out what’s wrong with someone else’s position.
And we’ve got to do it! We can’t let this go. We’ve to make our opinion known.
Well, sometimes, that is needed. But the problem is that we might become a fool ourselves.
Many of the rest of us, I imagine, are prone to not give an answer.
To just be quiet and walk away. Afraid of a fight instead of itching for one.
And sometimes that’s needed, to walk away. But the problem with that approach is that the foolishness can often go unchecked.
Imagine if every parent left their children to remain in their foolishness.
Some children grow up thinking that they know it all. Because their parents didn’t love them enough to answer their folly.
Commentator Donald Hubbard writes this about these two verses together:
“That situation poses a problem to the wise: how should one ‘answer’ the fool? The opposite bits of advice—‘do not answer’ and “do answer’—show that there is no automatic formula to be applied. Each situation calls for a response that the wise must have confidence to discern on the spot. In one case, to answer would lead to prolonged argument in which the wise might be trapped into babbling like a fool. Where there is a chance of that, silence is the prudent way…In another case, one prick of the fool’s balloon may bring him back to reality and burst the bubble of his conceit (‘wise in his own eyes’). To answer in that circumstance does a favor to everyone, including the fool…both proverbs are valid, each in its own setting,” D. Hubbard, Mastering the Old Testament: Proverbs (Word 1989), 398-99.
It calls for wisdom, which is a gift given through the Holy Spirit.
You know who was awesome at this?
The Lord Jesus.
Jesus encountered a lot of foolishness in His ministry. From Pharisees to Disciples to Kings.
And Jesus never made the mistake of playing the fool-game back to the fool.
He didn’t even give an answer to King Herod when he was asked a stupid question.
He asked questions sometimes to change the rules.
But He didn’t miss a chance to point out someone’s folly so that they couldn’t think that they had confounded Jesus in all of His wisdom.
Jesus was perfect at this. And we can learn a lot from His example.
Do not answer a fool according to his folly.
Answer a fool according to his folly.
Both, properly understood, are right and true.
Let’s think how that might play out in our 3 fer’instances.
The kid at the lunch table. “I think you’re dumb for believing in Jesus. He was just a good teacher and not the Son of God. And he’s not still around now answering prayers!”
What do you say?
“I think you’re dumb for not believing in Jesus! He rose from the dead and He’s coming back to bring judgment on you, fool!”
How’s that sound?
In our family, my brother is famous for saying in frustration to an atheist teenager back when he was in high school, “Have fun in Hell!” We call that the “Andy Mitchell School of Evangelism.” You don’t want to go there.
But should you say nothing?
Maybe you could say, “Believing in Jesus is the best thing I’ve ever done. If He said that He was God in the flesh, and He wasn’t, how could He have been a good teacher like you say? I believe that He rose from the dead and is still alive today. And I’ll be praying for you that you believe it, too!”
Kids, could you say something like that?
The Lord will help you to.
Don’t Answer a Fool According to His Folly, But Answer a Fool According to His Folly!
I think that’s the theme of the movie we’re going to show here on Saturday night. “God’s NOT Dead.” It’s about a college student who runs up against a wildly atheistic professor and tries to give a winsome answer for the hope that is within him (1 Peter 3:15).
How about that second fer-instance?
The guys around the water-cooler at work.
“I think there is no such thing as absolute truth. Truth is what you think it is. And I’m tired of other people telling me what to believe. I’ll believe what I want to believe. There are no absolute truths!”
Do you answer them?
Maybe you just let that one go. There’ll be another time.
Just because someone says something foolish doesn’t mean that you have speak back, especially if you’ve got nothing good to say.
Or you might say, “Are you saying that there are absolutely no absolute truths?”
And you just let that sit there.
Or maybe you go personal. You say something like, “I’m sorry that you think that Christians think they know it all. Sometimes that’s how we act. But it’s not that we think we’re right about everything. We believe that God is right about everything. So, we believe what He says. And that means that some things are right and some things are wrong. Absolutely.”
Because if you don’t say anything, they might think they’ve got you.
Don’t Answer a Fool According to His Folly, But Answer a Fool According to His Folly!
Ladies, you’re caught in between the boyfriend who wants the abortion and the girlfriend who wants your opinion.
“You’re stupid. This is a free country. Abortion is a woman’s right to choose. Abortion is a woman’s right to decide what happens to her body. Roe vs. Wade.”
You don’t get bent out of shape. You don’t start ranting and raving or threatening to blow up an abortion clinic.
That would be becoming a fool yourself.
But you’ve got to say something!
What might you say?
Can I recommend a book for everyone to read?
If you don’t know what to say about pro-abortion arguments, I recommend Randy Alcorn’s book, ProLIFE Answers to ProCHOICE Arguments. Or this littler one that we have out there for free, Why Pro-Life?
Alcorn understands Proverbs 26:4&5!
And we can’t be silent on this issue in our culture.
It’s too important! It’s a matter of life or death!
Maybe you say to the boyfriend, “I don’t think you can be very objective in your position.”
Or maybe you say, “I believe that abortion is child-killing. Would you do the same thing to a 2 year old?”
“It’s not just a blob of tissue, it’s a human being. Shouldn’t this be a free-country for him or her, too?”
I know that it’s easier said than done.
I know that it’s a lot easier for me to throw out hypothetical foolish attacks and then give you crafted wise answers than it will be to answer fools in real life.
But God, through the Holy Spirit, will give us the grace to answer folly where we need to, if we trust Him.
Because God has supplied, in Jesus, the greatest answer to folly there ever could be!
Jesus died for our foolishness.
He paid the penalty in His body on the Cross for all of our rejecting God’s truth.
And then He came back to life to give us Himself and His wisdom.
The book of Colossians says that in Jesus are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
If we have come to trust in Christ alone, we have free access to all of the wisdom we will ever need–for all eternity!
Don’t Answer a Fool According to His Folly, But Answer a Fool According to His Folly–and Jesus will help you to do it.
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Long term readers of this blog will recognize that this message is based upon a sermon from January 2008. I'm grateful to be able to teach this material again but sad that the world needs it more than ever before.
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