Well, please turn with me this morning, if you would, to Proverbs chapter 14. We've been making our way slowly through this Old Testament book, and today we're going to be considering verses 8 through 15 of the 14th chapter of Proverbs. Eight verses that combine to make the point that life is not always as it seems. What we think we see or know or understand at face value is not always how things actually are.
There are paradoxes in this book. Let's see what wisdom then we can glean from God's Word this morning. Proverbs 14 verses 8 through 15.
The house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. Even in laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief. The backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways, and a good man will be filled with the fruit of his ways. The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.
Let's pray together. Father, the one who sees all and knows all, you have put us in this world. You've bestowed on us your image, yet we are often pathetically inept image bearers of you.
You are perfect. We are flawed. You judge justly. We misjudge. We prejudge. You act righteously.
We act unrighteously. Sometimes even thinking that our unrighteous deeds are pure and noble. Lord, without your instruction and intervention in our oftentimes upside down lives, we are lost and without hope. So grant us, we ask, the ability to see you as you are. To see as you see and understand as we ought to understand and align our values and our words and our choices and our priorities with what is true and good and beautiful, that your glory might be seen in us. And that your joy and peace might be experienced by us. Do what we ask for the sake of your son whose death has bought us and whose intercession keeps us. And it's in his name we pray.
Amen. Looks can be deceiving. Eve, for example, looked at forbidden fruit and saw what to her was a delight to her eyes, something that appeared to be good for food, something which she believed would make her wise. So she ate and ruined the world.
Looks can be deceiving. Lot thought the best place to relocate his family was in the Jordan Valley. Genesis 13 says, and Lot lifted up his eyes and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord. So he chose for himself all the Jordan Valley and journeyed east.
But then scripture adds in parentheses, this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. It seemed like a right decision, but appearances can be deceiving. The people of Troy thought that that giant horse sitting outside their gate would make a nice trophy. So they brought it into the city, ignoring the warning, beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
It seemed like the right thing, but looks can be deceiving. You know, every day people go about their business making decisions, setting trajectories, launching their plans, and thinking that they have a full grasp of the circumstances around them, but appearances can be deceiving and can lead to the loss of wars and fortunes and relationships and sometimes even souls. The verse before us this morning are Solomon's version of warning us that appearances can be deceiving and that if we are to not be destroyed by crafty serpents telling us to eat forbidden fruits or by green valleys beckoning us to move into the suburbs of Sodom or by Trojan horses that are too good to be true, we need the wisdom to see life's circumstances for what they are, not what they merely appear to be. We need prudence. Prudence refers to the character quality of being able to see and understand a situation, a person, a potential threat for what it is, and not blindly fall into an invisible trap. The prudent person is someone with exceptional discernment which enables them to understand aspects of life that most people fail to notice. Our text begins and ends with prudence.
We see it in verse 8, we see it in verse 15. And everything in between describes various arenas of life in which things are often not what they seem to be, arenas that require prudence. This text then is all about seeing things for what they are in order to avoid trouble. The prudent person can see through the appearance of things and get to the bottom of what's really going on and then use that perception to avoid evil and foolishness and get to the higher moral ground before judgment comes. Now here's the thing about prudence, everyone thinks of themselves as prudent, as having an extra measure of discernment. They don't want to be the gullible person in the crowd, that person who's easily manipulated. So we convince ourselves that we are the exception to the rule.
Everyone else is a dupe, but I am all perceiving, or at least perceptive enough to generally know what's going on. And so Solomon includes in his book of Proverbs a collection of sayings that help us see our lack of prudence. In this collection Solomon gives us seven common misperceptions that demonstrate our desperate need for prudence. Seven occasions in which we are easily fooled if we lack the character quality of prudence.
Now before Solomon begins listing these seven misperceptions he introduces the topic of prudence in verse 8. The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way. The way in verse 8 and in fact throughout the book of Proverbs refers to the moral choices we make and the conduct to which those choices lead. The prudent person has sufficient wisdom to discern or perceive that one path will lead to a destructive place while another path will lead to a healthy, happy place.
Regardless of the appearance of the beginning of the path the prudent person can see what's at the end of the path and he's able to set a wise trajectory. So what are these seven pitfalls that foolish imprudent people fall into? Well first Solomon highlights our tendency to be fooled by the conscience, fooled by the conscience. Verse 9 says fools mock at the guilt offering but the upright enjoy acceptance. A person who lacks prudence lacks the ability to see his own guilt and so he laughs at the notion of personal guilt. The conscience of a person is that inward sense of right and wrong, right? The Bible teaches that everyone has a conscience however the conscience is not always guided by truth.
The conscience can be seared, it can be ignored, it can be hardened, it can be neglected and become inoperable due to lack of use. Paul exhorted young Timothy to hold on to a good conscience at all costs because many people ignore their consciences and become hardened to the truth and become scornful of moral purity and in the end Paul says make a shipwreck of their faith. There's a connection you see between what a person believes and how a person behaves and that connection is a two-way street.
What you believe shapes and influences how you behave but how you behave also shapes and influences what you believe. I've known people who have had radical shifts in their belief system and when pressed on why the sudden change in their beliefs they often acknowledge that some moral compromise or some sin habit had taken root in their actions that forced them to adjust their beliefs to fit their behavior. When we compromise our conscience and begin to excuse sin or explain away our guilt rather than repent of our guilt we are in serious danger of ruining our faith.
John Calvin said all the errors that have existed in the Christian church from the beginning proceeded from this source that in some person or another sin extinguished the true fear of God. A bad conscience is the mother of all heresies. In verse 9 the fool will not acknowledge his own guilt before the Lord or before other people because he doesn't see himself as guilty. He thinks he's innocent and so he laughs at accusation. He scorns the conviction of sin.
But then this proverb goes on to tell us something about the upright man. Unlike the fool who mocks at guilt the upright man acknowledges his guilt and because he acknowledges his guilt rather than mocking it he enjoys, look at it, acceptance. He is accepted and acceptance in this context refers to the acceptance that's brought about by the guilt offering. He's declared righteous and innocent because of his repentance and is therefore accepted by God.
If the upright person enjoys acceptance we can infer that the fool does not enjoy acceptance. Leviticus mocked the guilt offering which means he's still in his guilt. Leviticus 6 1-7 explains the Old Testament guilt offering. Leviticus 6 says the Lord spoke to Moses saying, If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the Lord in any of all the things that people do and sin thereby, if he has sinned and has realized his guilt he shall bring to the priest as his compensation to the Lord a ram without blemish out of the flock or its equivalent for a guilt offering and the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord and he shall be forgiven for any of the things that one may do and thereby become guilty. So the guilt offering was a recognition of guilt before the Lord and it involved a sacrifice of an animal as a symbol of God's forgiveness for the sin. Now with the coming of Christ the need for a symbol of forgiveness ceased because Christ himself became the guilt offering for the penitent sinner. Isaiah 53 describes this when it says the Lord has laid on him, on God's suffering servant, on Jesus Christ, the iniquity of us all. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth, his soul made an offering for guilt. Jesus is the guilt offering and this is what fools mock. They mock the gospel. The fool scorns the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
Why? Because he refuses to acknowledge his guilt. He has hardened his conscience and has fooled himself into believing in his own innocence despite the fact that he thinks he is at peace with God, he is not at peace with God.
He has not been accepted by God because he mocks the very means by which that acceptance is obtained. The prudent man, the one who sees reality as it really is, is accepted by God because he acknowledges his guilt and has run to God's only solution for that guilt. And I think it's very telling that this is the starting point for prudence. If a person cannot see himself as he truly is before God, he's not going to be able to see the rest of life as it truly is. So the warning is do not be fooled by a hardened conscience.
Well, next we see our tendency of being fooled by others. Verse 10, the heart knows its own bitterness and no stranger shares its joys. Have you ever thought that you knew someone and then some scandal breaks out in their life that just took you completely by surprise?
Have you ever experienced a sudden inexplicable disintegration of a relationship, a friendship, a marriage, a bond with someone that you thought was real and strong but it just dissolved before your very eyes with no real explanation? We think we know what's in the heart of another person, but at best, all we can see is the fruit, the consequence of what is in the heart of another person. Paul put it like this in 1 Corinthians 2, for who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him.
Now, we like to think of ourselves as being good at reading people or knowing how others tick, but verse 10 says that's not typically the case. Matters of the heart are hidden in the heart, and this works both ways. We think we know what another person is thinking and feeling. We also think that other people know what we are thinking and feeling, but the fact of the matter is outward appearances are difficult to read. A prudent person recognizes this and doesn't put undue stock in his ability to read other people. His trust is not in people whom he can never fully know and understand.
His trust is in a God who does know and understand the hearts of everyone. My mother used to say to me, Eugene, I know you better than you know yourself. It was uncanny how often that claim proved to be true.
I was young. I was discovering for the first time certain realities of life that my mom had been experiencing and navigating for years, and so in a sense she could say I know you better than you know yourself because she had come to understand aspects of human nature and matters of the heart that are only learned through experience. But even the knowledge of a mother or a father with regard to their children is a limited knowledge, isn't it? No one has omniscience except God. He alone knows the heart as it actually is. He knows your heart. He knows your spouse's heart. He knows your children's hearts.
He knows the hearts of your friends and your enemies. And I think this proverb is telling us first to not be overly confident in our assessment of other people. But more than that, I think it's calling us to look first to God for acceptance and understanding. We cannot fully know others, and others cannot fully know us, but God knows. God understands. Hebrews 4 says we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
God knows us better than we know ourselves, so we should run to Him for help and sympathy and rebuke and guidance. Don't be fooled by what you think you know about others or by what you expect others to know about you. Verse 11 highlights next our tendency to be fooled by success. We are so prone to judging a book by its cover, aren't we? So when the book lives in a mansion and drives a nice car, we assume that's a successful book.
That's a person who's living right and worthy of respect and imitation. Verse 11, however, warns us to not be fooled by success. It says the house of the wicked will be destroyed, but the tent of the upright will flourish. You know, a house is better than a tent. A house is more secure than a tent. A house is more permanent than a tent, and yet in this proverb, the tent of the upright is better and more secure and more permanent than the house of the wicked. As it turns out, it's not about the living quarters.
It's about the character of the person in the living quarters. A perfect example of this principle in action is found in the very first verse of chapter 14. Verse 1 says the wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down. You know, from the very beginning of the book of Proverbs, the simple-minded youth has been warned over and over about strange women, seductive, destructive women. Well, the youth who listens to that warning and chooses a wife wisely is shielded from all the ruin that comes with a godless wife. The youth, on the other hand, who ignores that warning and trusts his instinct or his lust or his impatience for getting a wife ends up marrying a woman who will destroy him and his household from the inside out. It's not about the house or the wealth or the wife or the appearance of success.
It's about the character of the family. Even if they live in a tent and have very little to show of this world's goods, if they are upright, they will flourish in all the ways that matter. Do you measure people by their status in the world, by their wealth, by their means, by the illustriousness of their job, by their power and influence, maybe by their physical appearance?
Do you measure yourself by those standards? Beloved, it's a trap. Worldly success is not an accurate measure of true prosperity because it's not an accurate measure of how God measures prosperity. Don't be fooled by the appearance of success. Verse 12 then brings us to a very well-known and often quoted proverb. It says, there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. And we could summarize this proverb as a warning not to be fooled by intuition.
It's that tendency that we all have to say, I'm going to just trust my gut on this one. Now, this is a little different from outright rebellion. This trap is the trap of thinking we're actually doing the right thing, the virtuous thing, but not stopping to consider whether we've put too much stock in our own discernment and ability to assess the situation at hand. It's not the pitfall of outright rebellion. It's the pitfall of pride. It's not an explicit dismissal of wisdom.
It's an assumption that you are much wiser than you really are. One of the most convicting questions that I get asked from time to time by fellow Christians is, have you prayed about it? Have you prayed about it? How many times have I gotten way down the road in pursuit of some goal, some noble task that I just know is God's will for my life, and yet it hadn't even occurred to me to pray about it? You know how easy it is for us to convince ourselves that something we really want is God's will for us?
It's super easy. It's super subtle. And we're very good at doing the mental gymnastics necessary to justify what we want. We need to train ourselves to be self-critical enough that we don't exclude the counsel of God and His Word as we navigate the paths of life. Man is not omniscient.
We don't know it all. Man is not naturally bent towards righteous appetites. We need the wisdom of a holy and all-knowing God to navigate the way. In church, Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. In the black and white areas of salvation, yes, but also in the gray areas of life that require wisdom and nuance and qualification.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus alludes to this very principle. He says the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. There's a way that seems right to a man.
It's wide and easy. But where does this wide, easy path lead? Jesus says it leads to death. But the gate that leads to life is not obvious. In Christ's words, it's narrow, and the way is hard, and those who find it are few. So don't be fooled into blindly following your gut.
Follow the way in which God, through His Word and by His Spirit, leads. Well, this brings us to verse 13, which is a warning not to be fooled by emotions. Verse 13, even in laughter the heart may ache and the end of joy may be grief. We saw in verse 10 that we can never truly know the heart of another person. We can only at best see the fruit of a person's heart. Well, verse 13 makes the point that sometimes we aren't even able to assess the fruit of a person's heart all that well either. It's true that the state of a person's heart is going to come out in that person's speech and attitude and emotions. There are windows to the soul that allow outsiders to peer in, but those windows are limited.
And sometimes people are experts at sending wrong signals out of those windows. Solomon says that just because a person is laughing doesn't mean they're happy. Just because a person gives the signs of joy doesn't mean they aren't masking a deep grief behind their jollity. Perhaps verse 13 doesn't seem to have any immediate moral implications. I mean, what does my ability to read someone else's emotional state have to do with being wise or living uprightly? But I would suggest it has a lot to do with wisdom and righteousness. You see, misreading someone's emotional state can lead to wrong conclusions about their spiritual state, and misreading a person's spiritual state can lead to me giving them wrong counsel, bad counsel.
It can lead to me trusting someone, joining with someone whom I shouldn't trust or be unified with. I remember a young Christian woman years ago who was the kindest, most soft-spoken person you could ever meet. My sense, my gut was that she was a very mature Christian who possessed a stronger-than-average sensitivity to the Lord, but then something crossed her, and it was like a switch got flipped where there had been peace and calm and gentleness. There was suddenly a disproportionate amount of anger and hostility and bitterness.
All the usual signals that typically reveal a person's emotional state had been well concealed behind a façade of sweetness that had simply not been genuine. Trust was betrayed, friendships collapsed, and irreparable damage was done. Now does this mean that we ought to never trust anyone or open up in friendship to other people?
Well, no. Scripture calls us to show kindness and courtesy and even mutual submission to one another. I think the warning here is to not naively think that when it comes to emotions, what you see is always what you get. Sometimes emotions can be deceiving. Sometimes they can even become tools of manipulation that take advantage of the unsuspecting fool, of the impudent. Well, next, verse 14 highlights the danger of being fooled by the delay of consequences. The backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways, and a good man will be filled with the fruit of his ways. Now at face value, this proverb is just stating the obvious. You reap what you sow. What's the deception then?
Where is the pitfall, the paradox in this sort of principle of the harvest? Well, I think the pitfall, the danger of not seeing reality as it really is, lies in the fact that the moral consequences of an action, just like in the planting and harvesting of seed, oftentimes comes long after the action. I may tell a lie today and not experience the awful repercussions of that lie for years. I may do something genuinely virtuous today and not know the eternal implications of it until, well, until eternity. And if we're not careful and wise, we will conclude that there is a disconnect between my actions and the consequences of those actions. I might even conclude that since a particular vice made my life immediately better, then it must have been justifiable.
And since a particular virtue doesn't immediately make my life better, it must not be all that important. It's a trap. It's a deception. Don't be fooled by the delay of consequences.
It might just be God's long suffering giving you time to repent. Paul said it like this, don't grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. Well, there's one last warning in our text. The warning not to be fooled by the opinions of others.
And we see it there in verse 15. The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps. So the simple person believes everything he's told rather than giving thought to his actions, while the prudent person refuses to blindly accept everything other people are saying. Rather, he weighs what he hears.
He weighs what his next steps ought to be. And you know, it's easy, isn't it, to find someone who will corroborate your wishes, your plans, your intentions. We're very eager to get a second opinion, especially when the second opinion is the opinion we want. Just because the majority of people in my life tell me that something is true, or advise me to follow a particular course of action, or agree with what I think, it doesn't mean that they are right, or honest, or unbiased, or have my best interests in mind. The simple person believes everything that those around him are saying, but the prudent person gives thought to his steps. Do you rely on a Facebook consensus to determine what is true? Do you look to the affirmation of your friends to determine what is right?
Or do you stop and think, give thought to the steps you should take? We've mentioned before that these Proverbs do not paint the whole picture in and of themselves. They contain principles, generalities that only apply in certain situations, and it's possible that someone could read verse 15 and conclude that they should never listen to the opinions or counsel of other people. They should only ever do what is in their own heart to do, regardless of what others say. But that would be a very misguided conclusion to draw from this Proverb. There are times when we need the counsel and the input of others.
There are times when our own thought processes about what we should do are incorrect, and we need the help of those who love us the most to intervene, and redirect, and rebuke, or to affirm, and encourage, and cheer us on, stir us up to love and good deeds. This Proverb is warning us to not blindly follow the opinions of others, to not be foolishly gullible by believing everything everyone says. It's not telling us to ignore wise counsel. It's simply telling us that the opinion of the majority is not always wise counsel.
We need to be thoughtful as we evaluate and interact with the counsel of others. We need to be Berean Christians, testing everything against the infallible word of God. Well, we've seen in these verses that life is fraught with traps, pitfalls that give us a certain impression of how things are when they really aren't that way at all.
And we need the virtue of prudence to see these pitfalls and to avoid the evil that they lead to. Jesus was once tempted by the Pharisees to forsake prudence and fall prey to the trap of being swayed by appearances. We read about it in Matthew 22. The Pharisees cowardly sent their disciples to go and try to entangle Jesus in his words by saying to him, Teacher, we know that you're true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinions, for you are not swayed by appearances. Because then, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? And we all know Jesus' famous answer, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. But I wonder if we understand that in that response, Jesus was not making a statement about his political philosophy or merely sharing his economic opinion about taxation. He was commanding the image bearers of God to give themselves wholly and unreservedly to their Creator.
He was demanding that absolute allegiance be given not to a pathetic Caesar who stamped his image on coins and then threatened everyone with death if they didn't give him his share of those coins. Rather, Christ was demanding that absolute allegiance be given to the one who stamped his eternal image on the very soul of every human being. And by virtue of that, active ownership and grace deserves homage and reverence and worship and obedience from us all.
Jesus was not swayed by appearances because he cared more about keeping faith with God than with keeping up appearances before man. If we want the security that comes with prudence, we need to learn to see life the way God sees life. And the only way we'll see life as God sees it is if we will learn to fear God more than we fear man, to render to God the reverence and the trust and the obedience that we owe to our wise and gracious Creator. Let's pray. Lord, teach us prudence, we pray, that we might avoid the traps of this world, that we might walk uprightly before you. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
