Please turn with me, if you would, to Proverbs Chapter 9. This chapter marks the end of the sort of introductory section, the prologue, if you will, to the book of Proverbs. The next chapter, Chapter 10, begins what we might call the body of the book, those wisdom statements that we associate with proverbial instruction. But here in Chapter 9, one last plea is given, a plea to heed the voice of wisdom and not the voice of folly.
Let's read it. Proverbs Chapter 9 will read verses 1 through 18, the chapter in its entirety. Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts. She has mixed her wine.
She has also set her table. She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town, whoever is simple, let him turn in here. To him who lacks sense, she says, come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Let your simple, leave your simple ways and live and walk in the way of insight. Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury.
Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser. Teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. For by me your days will be multiplied and years will be added to your life. If you are wise, you are wise for yourself.
If you scoff, you alone will bear it. If you live and knows nothing, she sits at the door of her house. She takes a seat on the highest places of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way. Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. And to him who lacks sense, she says, stolen water is sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.
But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol. Let's pray. Lord, what a gracious thing that you allow us to hear over and above the voice of folly, wisdom's invitation to righteousness. Now make us wise that we might be spared a life of self-indulgent misery that ends in death. And might instead know a life of fearing you and obeying you because we love you, a life that ends in life and life eternal. I pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen. One of the benefits of working our way sequentially through large portions of Scripture is that it enables us to notice structure and progression that would otherwise go unnoticed. We've carefully made our way through the opening chapters of the book of Proverbs and we've noticed that these chapters have almost a conversational character to them.
As parents address their children or as a metaphorical lady called Wisdom instructs and warns the wary, the unwary, or as a metaphorical seductress distracts and deceives the fool. These conversations culminate in chapter 9 as Wisdom and folly compete one last time for the attention and loyalty of whoever will listen. It's presented to us in the form of an allegorical story, a story in which first Wisdom and then folly each host a feast and invite as many guests as will come. We will discover that there are many similarities between these two feasts but there are also some drastic differences between the two. The question we're confronted with in this story is which feast will we attend?
Which feast will we attend? So the story begins with Wisdom's feast in verses 1 through 6 and notice the extent to which Wisdom has gone to ensure a wonderful feast. Verse 1, Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn her seven pillars. Wisdom has built an entire house for this feast and not just any house, it's a house with seven pillars.
This is a mansion. Furthermore, she has prepared the feast. Verse 2, she has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table. Everything's been made ready for a great feast. There's a house, there's a meal, there's wine, it's all been meticulously prepared, now it's time to feast. It's as if the first nine chapters of Proverbs have been Wisdom preparing everything, setting the stage, building the house, prepping the meal. What follows then in chapters 10 through 31 is the banquet. It's time now to eat what Wisdom is serving and she will serve up a tremendous feast of Wisdom that will last for the next 22 chapters. But what good is a feast without guests? And so in verse 3, Wisdom issues invitations to her great feast. She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town, whoever is simple, let him turn in here.
To him who lacks sense, she says, come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways and live and walk in the way of insight. Now we've met the simple-minded person already in these early chapters, but just by way of reminder, let me describe what we've learned about who the simpleton is. The simpleton is the uncommitted person who is loyal to neither Wisdom nor foolishness. He's just living life, making the next decision, reacting to the next circumstance, but not morally aware of his surroundings.
Simpletons may just be ignorantly naive, but that doesn't protect them from the compromising and vulnerable spot they're in. Now they haven't rejected Wisdom per se, but neither have they embraced it. It reminds me of the lukewarm church in Revelation 3. They were neither hot nor cold. They were just lukewarm.
It would have been better for them had they been hot or cold, but instead they're just bland, tepid, uncommitted. And so notice Wisdom's invitation in verse 4, whoever is simple, let him turn in here. He's calling the uncommitted to repent of their uncommittedness, to make up their mind, to choose this day whom you will serve, Wisdom or folly. According to Wisdom's invitation, the opposite of this uncommitted simplicity is a life of, verse 6, walking in the way of insight. Wisdom is calling upon the simple person to learn to think outside the box of self, to learn how to perceive things from a divine viewpoint, rather than just blindly relying on their own very limited and often misinformed perspective. Stop following your nose and start following something outside of yourself, says Lady Wisdom. Start walking in the way of insight.
And over the course of chapters 10 through 31, we're going to learn what that way of insight looks like. Well, Wisdom has made all the preparations for a great feast, and she has invited the simple ones who are just aimlessly wandering through life to stop being uncommitted and convictionless and come dine at her feast. But there's another party in town. There's another feast at another house, and it's the house of Lady Wisdom's antagonist.
Her name is Woman Folly. Now, we're going to see what Woman Folly's house and feast are all about in verses 13 through 18. But interestingly, Solomon pauses here and inserts a chapter right in the middle of the story that seems out of place and maybe seems unrelated. Verses 7 through 12 are not about Wisdom's feast or Folly's party. They're not about the uncommitted simpletons who are being pulled in two different directions by Wisdom and Folly.
No, these verses are about the committed, those who have already made up their minds. They've already committed themselves to either Wisdom's feast or Folly's party. Solomon calls them the scoffers and the wise men. If the simpletons are the lukewarm folks, then the wise men and the scoffers are the hot and cold folks, respectively.
They've made their moral choice, and they are well entrenched in that choice. We might call them the uninvited. They're not invited to the feast because they're already at one of the feasts. In fact, they're helping to host the feast.
They're the ones doing the inviting, the hosting, the serving. First we meet the wicked scoffer in verses 7 and 8, the wicked scoffer. Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abused, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. The wicked scoffer is not invited to Wisdom's feast because he will not come.
He is, as one theologian put it, already beyond repentance. A commentary that I read last week suggested that verse 7 and following contained Lady Wisdom's instruction to her ladies-in-waiting, those young women in verse 3, who were inviting people to the feast. Wisdom is telling her servant girls to be discerning and wise in who they invite to the feast. And this implies that there are some people who are unworthy of even an invitation to Wisdom's feast. Verse 8, in fact, gives a strong caution against offering the perks and the benefits of wisdom to the wrong kind of person. Now I suspect that this might perhaps sound a bit harsh, maybe even judgmental or unloving to us. Shouldn't Wisdom welcome all people with open arms, without discrimination?
Well evidently no. Evidently there are those whose hardness to the truth is so consistent and so violent that they have squandered the benefit of even hearing the truth. They have forfeited, through repeated and hostile rejection, the privilege of being invited to Wisdom's feast. There's a New Testament parallel to Proverbs 9-8. It's found in Matthew 7, verse 6. In Matthew 7, verse 6, Jesus says, Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. Evidently there is a time and a place to extend the grace of truth and wisdom to a person, and there is a time and a place to withhold truth and wisdom from a person.
And how are we to know the difference? Well it requires wisdom to know when to speak and when to remain silent, when to rebuke and when to withhold rebuke, when to instruct and when to get out of the way so that the scoffer can self-destruct without bringing you down with him. This feast of wisdom that we are coming to in chapters 10-31 will, among other things, give us the discernment and the discretion to know when to speak and when to be silent. But then secondly, we meet the righteous wise man in the latter half of verse 8 and following. It says, Reprove a wise man and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser. Teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning. The fact that a wise man in verse 8 sometimes needs reproof indicates that a wise man is not a perfect man. His wisdom is not demonstrated by his perfection but rather by his response to his imperfections.
And that ought to give us all hope. The path that leads to righteousness and wisdom is not a path of instant perfection but rather of humble teachability. The wise man is wise not because he never messes up but because when he messes up he accepts correction and grows from it, learns from it. The scoffer is stagnant and even offended at the truth while the wise man is humble and teachable and always growing in the truth.
Now what makes the difference? What makes a scoffer so quickly offended by true things? What enables the wise man to not be offended but to actually love the one who reproves him? Is it that wise people are smarter than scoffers? Well no, I've known some very intelligent scoffers and some pretty intellectually modest wise people.
The difference is not intellectual. Is it that wise people come from a more privileged background? Maybe from a higher place on the social ladder than the scoffer?
No, again some of the most ardent scoffers are among the rich and famous. Some of the most dedicated wise people are folks who would never be included in a list of who's who. So the distinction is not a social or economic distinction.
What is the difference then? What makes one person wise and the next person a scoffer? Well verse 10 tells us, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. The character of a person has a starting point and it's never the character itself. A fool isn't a fool simply because he's a fool. No, something prior to his foolishness made him a fool. Nor is a wise person wise simply because he was born wise.
His character is rooted in something prior. Call it a belief system or a world view or a creed. For the wise person the starting point of their wisdom, according to verse 10, is the fear and knowledge of God. They know God and hence they fear God, therefore they make wise choices and do wise things. They submit to wisdom because they submit to God.
The opposite is also implied. The fool neither fears nor knows God, therefore he does not make wise choices or do wise things. So friends, we would do well to stop right here and just consider, more often than perhaps we do, what it means to fear God.
We would do well to think more frequently than we do about this Holy One of Proverbs 9-10. If fearing God is the difference between becoming a wise man or becoming a fool, then how does one learn to fear God? Where does this fear of the Lord come from?
Well, it comes from God. In Jeremiah 32, God is speaking to his covenant people and he says, They shall be my people and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me forever for their own good. And then listen to this, God says, I will put the fear of me in their hearts. If you are wise and not a fool, it is because you fear God. And if you fear God, it is because God has put that fear in you. In fact, any good, any virtue, any righteousness, any grace that exists in your life is in your life because God put it there. Now, does this mean that we just sit back and wait for God to ignite this fear of him that he has put into our souls?
Well, no. Having been recipients of God's grace, we have a responsibility to fan the flame of that grace. We can, for example, pray that God would increase our fear of him.
David prayed like this. He said in Psalm 86-11, Lord, give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name. We can also increase our fear of God by exposing ourselves to the word of God whenever possible. In Deuteronomy 4-10, God says, Let my people hear my words so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth. According to Psalm 130, contemplating the goodness and the grace that God has shown increases our fear of him.
Psalm 130 says, With you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. Jerry Bridges, in his magnificent book called The Joy of Fearing God, encourages us to think great thoughts about the majesty and the providence of God. Do you realize that every single detail of your life occurs by the sovereign hand and under the watchful eye of God? I imagine many of you could tell stories of how your life has been steered by a gracious hand of providence.
How often has your life been shaped by a seemingly random decision or a subtle circumstance which, if it had happened any other way, would have resulted in a radically different life, the wrong spouse, a bad career, the loss of this or that. But God in his providence has directed and protected and even at times violently snatched you away from trouble and pain and ruin in order to give you grace and goodness and peace. We don't deserve it, and yet God gives it over and over and over.
He gives good things to his children. We should contemplate that kind hand of providence and let it drive us to gratitude and reverence and fear of God. How can we displease or disregard our Lord who has been so overwhelmingly good to us? And so God implants the fear of himself in our hearts, and as we cultivate that fear through prayer and immerse ourselves in God's word and contemplate his grace and majesty, we are learning wisdom. We are gaining the knowledge that matters, the insight that leads to wisdom's feast. This is the life of the righteous, wise man, and it is quite the opposite from the scoffer. Well, this middle section closes with the final comparison between the wise and the scoffer, and it contains actually a point of similarity between the two. Verse 12 says, If you are wise, you are wise for yourself.
If you scoff, you alone will bear it. And this verse emphasizes the reality that every person bears personal responsibility for the choices he makes. Certainly our character is influenced and shaped by outside forces, but at the end of the day, we bear responsibility for the moral choices we make.
Derek Kidner said, Your character is the one thing you cannot borrow, lend, or escape, for it is you. There are those who have stubbornly insisted on having their own way, and they get their own way, but it is a way that leads to destruction and death. There are those to whom God graciously gives light, moral clarity, spiritual understanding, saving faith, and the recipients of this sovereign grace through no merit of their own are established on a path that leads to the feasting hall of wisdom, a feast that ends with satisfaction and contentment and delight. If you are wise, you are already at wisdom's banquet. Enjoy it and understand that you are there by the grace of God. If you are a fool, cry out to the only one who can alter the course of your life.
Cry out to God and ask for mercy. Ask Him to give you that righteous fear that drives you to abandon your scoffing and wickedness and ingratitude. If you don't and insist on forging your own path and your own strength and according to your own sense of what is right and wrong, not only are you cutting yourself off from all the benefits of wisdom, you're cutting yourself off from the very means by which you can reverse course and eventually find wisdom. You're wandering farther and farther into the darkness where wisdom's voice eventually becomes inaudible. Well, this brings us then to the final section of our text where we find a description of Folly's Feast in verses 13 through 18. And the first thing we are jolted into recognizing is how different Woman Folly is from Lady Wisdom. Where Lady Wisdom is industrious and hardworking, building a mansion and preparing a feast, Woman Folly is loud and lazy and self-promoting.
Look at verse 13. The Woman Folly is loud. She is seductive and knows nothing.
She sits at the door of her house. She takes a seat on the highest places of the town, calling to those who pass by who are going straight on their way. And that last statement of verse 15, those who are going straight on their way is describing the simple ones again, those naive wanderers who are ironically heading straight. That's good.
That's positive. Perhaps they're even heading toward Lady Wisdom's neighborhood, but these simpletons are not going straight because they're personally committed to Wisdom's ways. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. You see, just because you are currently in a good place on a straight path doesn't mean you're not susceptible to Folly's seduction. If you're not committed to truth and righteousness and the fear of the Lord, you're still in a place of vulnerability to Folly's voice. A person may pragmatically make some good choices from time to time, maybe choosing the right friends or attending a strong church or reading the right books or listening to the right counselors, but if you're doing these good things simply because they work or they seem to make life better and not because they are themselves good and right and true, then like the simple ones in Proverbs 9, you are vulnerable. You are no match for woman Folly's seductive invitation to follow your own lust, make your own way, do your own thing. The art of seduction lies in skillfully persuading someone away from God's absolute truths before they are fully committed to those absolute truths. What absolute truths are you committed to? What are your guiding principles?
Do you know what they are? Or do you just more or less improvise your way through life at the mercy of whatever thoughts or feelings or impressions seem to make the most sense at the moment? Woman Folly takes advantage of the low-hanging fruit of the uncommitted. And look at what she says to them. Verse 16, whoever is simple, let him turn in here. And to him who lacks sense, she says, stolen water is sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. If verse 10 is wisdom's motto, then verse 17 is Folly's motto. Wisdom heralds the fear of God as the foundation of a good life. Folly heralds personal pleasure gained by any means as the secret to a good life. And notice how Folly presents her seductive lie in the form of a proverb, just like Lady Wisdom did. It has a ring of truth about it.
It sounds like orthodoxy. God wants you to be happy. You've got to look out for yourself. In fact, God helps those who help themselves. If the measuring stick by which we evaluate the wisdom or morality of our decisions is personal experience or immediate pleasure, in other words, if our litmus test for whether we're doing the right thing boils down to how sweet and pleasant it is, then we will be easily deceived. If, on the other hand, we subject ourselves to the measuring stick of objective truth that is obtained and governed by the fear of the Lord, we are enabled to see past the seduction of immediate gratification and find true wisdom. Foolishness is pleasant to sinful taste buds, but only wisdom can truly satisfy. We need to acquire a taste for wisdom by holding fast to the fear of the Lord. And we need to recognize that woman Folly's proverb is incomplete. Verse 18 tells us the rest of the story by describing the company that Folly keeps. Look at verse 18, but the simple one does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.
There's a rhetorical device in which something is described in terms of what it, not what it currently is, but in terms of what it will inevitably become. And Solomon uses that device here when he ominously calls Folly's guests the dead. They're not dead yet, but as soon as they walk into Folly's house, they're as good as dead. They sold their souls to the devil, so to speak. They finally made a commitment, but they have committed to the wrong hostess. There are people in this world who have so entrenched themselves in evil that they are as good as dead.
They've forfeited family and friendship and purpose and joy all because they wanted the easy path that Folly promised. I read a chilling comment on verse 18 from a preacher of long ago. He said, many eat on earth what they digest in hell. The question we need to ask ourselves this morning, church, is this. Which feast will I attend?
Which feast will I attend? The answer really comes down to what kind of person I am. Am I the scoffer? Am I the wise person?
Am I the simpleton? It may be that by the grace of God, you are a God-fearing and righteous wise person. God has intervened in your life in such gracious ways that you are securely and contentedly seated at the feasting table of lady wisdom.
Give God thanks for that and enjoy the richly satisfying banquet that He spread before you and invite others to that banquet. Call your family, your children, your grandchildren to dine at this gracious table. Bring your friends.
Bring your enemies. Invite anyone who will listen to come and be satisfied at wisdom's rich table. It may be that there are those here this morning who are scoffing at every word I'm saying. Scoffing at the gracious invitation that God has extended to us in Proverbs 9. I don't know who among us, if any, has passed the point of no return, but I do know that there is a point of no return and that reality ought to terrify sinners into repentance. If there is even a chance that God's grace runs deep enough to snatch you from the path of destruction that you're on, and I can tell you God's grace indeed does run that deep, then you need to repent of your skepticism and mocking of your Creator and beg Him for mercy. And God promises that all who come to Him begging for mercy will be shown mercy. But really at the heart of this passage today is a warning for the simpleton, a warning for the uncommitted person.
By lacking a fear of God and a submission to God's absolutes, the simple are susceptible to any voice that sounds convincing, and that's a terribly vulnerable place to be. Now we can come away from Proverbs 9 frightened by that vulnerability, fearful that folly's seduction just might get the best of us and we'll be forever ruined, but that's not the reason why God included this allegorical story in Proverbs 9. When God extends an invitation of life and joy and grace, He intends us to accept the invitation, to embrace what He's giving and to benefit from it. The fact that this story is in the Bible and that you are here this morning to hear it is itself a gracious gift from God. God is offering to us all a chance to take Him at His word and feast at wisdom's table.
The right response then is not apathy, it's not regret. The right response is right there in verses 5 and 6. Come, eat of my bread, drink of the wine I have mixed, leave your simple, uncommitted ways and live. Let's pray. Lord, by your grace, may we avail ourselves of this sweet invitation to eat and drink at wisdom's table. May we leave the fruitless ways of simple-mindedness and submit ourselves wholly to listening to you and obeying you and loving you and fearing you. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
