Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Proverbs 22:15 | Date: August 2, 2020 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Today we’ll be looking at the subject of Proverbs on the Foolishness of the Heart. Proverbs on the Foolishness of the Heart. And we’re going to begin with a very, very familiar verse, Proverbs 22, verse 15: “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.”

Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, how we praise you for your word. What a wonderful gift and treasure this is to us. We ask today that you will give us a new understanding, a fresh appreciation of the value of your word, its reliability, how important it is for life, for us, and give us a heart to follow. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Proverbs 22:15: “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.” One indisputable fact of life is that children need parents. You may not remember this about yourself, but the same is true of you also. When you were a newborn, you needed your parents for absolutely everything. Utterly dependent upon them for everything. And for a very long time, you needed your mom and dad to micromanage every moment of your day just to keep you from hurting yourself. You would play with broken glass if you could. You would play with a sharp knife if you could. You would stick a metal object into an electrical outlet if you could. You would crawl headlong over the top of the stairs. You’d crawl out into traffic. Or if you’re like my brother, you’d reach behind the stove in the kitchen, pull out the ant poison and eat it. And then when dad sees it, say, “Num num, daddy, num num.”

It was a long time before you were safe. And that’s just the physical side of things. If it were only that simple—it’s not. For a very long time, you were likely to make decisions and make choices that were not at all in your best interests. And when you made those choices and those decisions that were not in your best interest, and it turned out to be unhappy, you still didn’t get the connection that stupid choices make for an unhappy life.

And as you grew, you began to shed some of that foolishness that was in your heart until finally you realized it was your parents that were stupid. And it wasn’t for a good many years after that until you happened to notice that your parents had gotten smarter. And all through your teen years and even beyond, it never occurred to you that your parents really were more concerned for your happiness and your well-being than you were. And it certainly didn’t occur to you that you needed your parents to give you direction. You really, really, really believed you knew better. And that is because foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child.

Foolishness in Proverbs, as we have seen, is not just an intellectual thing. Foolishness in Proverbs has a moral dimension to it. It entails not just making stupid choices for life in a general way that made no sense—it entails that—but it has a moral dimension to it that entails a propensity to sin. The fool in Proverbs is one who has an aversion to God. He’s the man who has an independent spirit. He thinks he’s an independent creature, that he’s got this. He can figure this out. He doesn’t need revealed wisdom from the outside, and he’s unconcerned for it. In fact, he will even mock righteousness at times, and he’ll make light of sin. That’s the fool in Proverbs.

And it’s called folly or foolishness in Proverbs, as we have seen, not just because it ends up bad in this life, but it ends up bad in the next as well. And not just because it has this intellectual dimension, because it has this moral dimension to it as well. And this foolishness is bound up in the heart. And so deeply is this foolishness bound up in the heart that a concerned parent must at times resort to some harsh measures. The rod of correction has to be used to drive the foolishness from him. I don’t understand this connection entirely, but there we have it, that somehow in God’s providence, the spanking becomes a means of grace. That somehow there’s a connection between that backside and the heart. And when the pain is inflicted, it gets attention, and it redirects, and it sets on a better path.

We have this here: “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child with a rod of correction, a rod of discipline drives it far from him.” Ultimately, God alone can change the heart, but the rod can be a means of grace that is used. And it’s needed because folly is bound up in the heart. In fact, so foolish is the human heart and so foolish was your heart that you actually thought that you would be better off without God. You thought you would be happier without the direction of God’s wisdom and the direction of God’s word. You thought you would be happier without those kinds of rules regulating your life. And you are so foolish in your heart that you really thought that temporal pleasures outweighed eternal. That’s the foolishness of the human heart.

It’s called foolishness because it’s not only morally wrong, but it’s contrary to your own best interests. That’s the folly in the book of Proverbs that we’ve seen. It’s not only morally wrong, but it’s contrary to your own best interests. And he’s called the fool not only because he’s wicked, but because he’s committed to wickedness. And that’s not going to turn out well. And when you choose sin, you’re not only doing what is wrong, you’re doing something that’s really foolish. It’s not in your own best interest. That’s the outlook of the book of Proverbs.

So look back at chapter 14. Proverbs chapter 14, verse 16: “One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool is reckless and careless.” Now here we have an antithetical parallel. The two lines stand in contrast to one another. But notice the symmetry of this contrast is not quite exact. Some of it’s just implied. We have on the one hand the one who is wise, and on the other hand we have the one who’s a fool. Then we have the wise is cautious, the fool is reckless and careless. But then we have the one who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil. The fool is reckless and careless, and it’s just implied he runs headlong into evil. He’s not careful about it at all. So he sins with confidence, and he assumes all the while, this’ll work out well. And he assures himself that it’ll all be fine, and just recklessly and carelessly he runs into sin, like the child running over the top of the stairs. This is going to be fun. The wise man, though, sees it, sizes it up for what it is, recognizes this is not going to turn out well, and he turns away. The foolish has this preference for sin, and that’s what makes him a fool, and he has this aversion to God, and it’s bound up in the heart, and that’s what makes him a fool.

Now, the problem with all of this is it’s not just children. The Proverbs recognizes this as well, that folly tends to remain in the heart. In fact, we have in Proverbs the warnings about the fool who’s all grown up. We have the son who has a wise father and he hears his father’s wise instruction, but he doesn’t heed his father’s wise instruction and he just grows up to be an old fool. And so, since we’re here in chapter 14, look at verse 12: “There’s a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” We have that same proverb given to us again in chapter 16, verse 25: “There’s a way that seems right, but its end is the way of death.”

So we have this metaphor of life as a journey, or this guy’s on a trip somewhere and he sets out his course, he follows the directions, and he doesn’t end up where he thought he was going to end up. And so also we have this man who doesn’t think he needs divine wisdom, doesn’t need God, he’s got this, and he’s gonna chart out his life, and it turns out that it didn’t work out as well as he thought. He’s a fool. It seemed so right, and he was wrong. He’s a fool.

Proverbs has another synonym for the fool. Fool is the typical word that’s used throughout Proverbs. There’s another one that’s used only three times in Proverbs. It’s used in chapter seven and twice in chapter nine, and that’s the man who lacks sense. The Hebrew is, “he lacks heart,” or lacks sense, lacks a mind. He’s foolish, he’s senseless. It’s not merely, and again, it’s not just an intellectual dimension, but it’s a moral dimension as well. He lacks moral sense. He foolishly listens, in context, chapter seven, chapter nine, he listens foolishly to the call of the forbidden woman, and he says, “This is going to work out well.” And he’s a fool. Folly is bound up in the heart. And this is how Proverbs describes everyone who has not heard and heeded and imbibed divine wisdom.

Total Depravity And Remaining Sin

Now we have a theological category for all of this. It’s called depravity. In fact, at Reformed Baptist Church, we’ve got an adjective to put in front of it. It’s total depravity. In the language of Romans chapter 6, it means that sin reigns. It’s like it’s this power, this dominion over us. It’s like there’s this reigning power over the individual without Christ and sin just reigns and it dictates and drives everything that he does. And so he has a bias towards sin.

It’s not that his brain doesn’t work. It’s not that there’s an intellectual malfunction in terms of the functioning of the brain. It’s not that at all. It’s just that the governing disposition of the brain, of the mind, has a preference for sin. That’s what Jesus said. They love darkness rather than light. Foolish as it is, they love darkness rather than light. Paul describes it as the natural mind that is at enmity with God. It’s not subject to the law of God. It can’t be. It’s caught up and bound in sin. That’s the foolishness of the heart in Proverbs.

And it affects the mind. Again, it’s not that the brain doesn’t work and the mind somehow doesn’t function correctly. It’s just that the governing disposition of our thinking was controlled by sin. We saw this, you’ll remember, last year. It came up a few times in our long Sunday School series. We learned the big phrase that they like to use in the seminary: the noetic effects of sin. It comes from the Greek word nous, which means the mind. Sin affects the thinking, it affects the mind, and the way we think, and it then determines our preferences, and so on. Proverbs speaks of it as foolishness bound in the heart. And so you show your friends the glory of Christ, and you present the gospel, and it is all so clear, and you’re mystified—they don’t see it. They don’t get it. Proverbs? Foolishness is bound in the heart. It seems so right. “I’ve got this.” And the end isn’t what they thought. Prophet Jeremiah says it famously in chapter 17: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” Well, that’s the man without Christ.

But our doctrine of depravity goes deeper than that, doesn’t it? Even after coming to Christ, we still have this doctrine of what we call remaining sin. Yes, it’s true. Again, in terms of Romans chapter 6, Christ’s work has come, and by the power of the Spirit, he’s broken the grip of sin so that that’s no longer the dominating influence, and now we’re free to live unto God, and the Spirit of God comes as a new controlling factor in our life, and he brings forth the fruit of the Spirit in us, and he begins to produce righteousness in all these various kinds of ways, but sin remains, and it becomes a struggle. Paul says in Galatians chapter 5, “the flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.” We become this walking and living civil war. We can’t do the things that we would. And that’s why when you are tempted to sin, you can think of all of those reasons why in this case it’s right. Remaining sin. Our emancipation from sin is not yet complete and sin remains and it remains a real struggle. Well, again, Proverbs puts it simply this way: foolishness is bound in the heart.

Well, now that is a cheery message for you to come in here on a summer Sunday morning, isn’t it? Spend the first 10 minutes of the message with the pastor insulting us. But if this is true about us, it’s important that we know it. And now that you know this about yourself, if you didn’t already, what difference should it make? Let me put it this way. What does this say about that wonderful American virtue of self-confidence? Can you trust your judgment? Can you trust your thinking?

The Unreliability Of The Human Heart

Look at Proverbs 28, verse 26. Proverbs 28, verse 26: “Whoever trusts his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” Again, we have an antithetical parallel. The two lines are contrasting with one another. On the one hand, we have this one who feels secure in his own heart. He feels self-confident with his own judgments, his own opinions and evaluations. The other one, on the other hand, he does not trust himself, and so he lives and makes choices according to revealed wisdom from God. On one hand, we have one who is self-confident. He’s very sure he knows what’s best. He doesn’t need outside counsel. “I’ve got this.” And then we’ve got the other man who does not trust his own understanding, but looks to divine wisdom.

And this one who walks in wisdom, as this verse calls it, this one who walks in wisdom—he looks to God for direction in life and it says because he walks in wisdom, looking to God for direction in life, he will be delivered. I suppose that means this is the one who will have life without regrets. He’s not going to do something and then, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that.” But this one lives without regrets precisely because he walks according to revealed wisdom. And the implication then is that the fool, he’s self-confident. He can do his own thing. And so he falls off into ruin, temporally and eternally.

So what we have here then is a caution about the unreliability of the human heart. The unreliability of the human heart. We tend, in other words, not to take our doctrine of sin seriously enough. We affirm total depravity. We affirm the noetic effects of sin, at least in Sunday school class. We affirm the doctrine of remaining sin. And yet we tend always to trust our own judgments and our own heart, and we’re slow to recognize that sin has affected our thinking. And according to this verse, 28:26, that’s the very essence of foolishness.

Reorient Your Heart To Divine Wisdom

Well, now what? If I can’t trust my heart, can’t trust my own judgments, what’s the alternative? What can I do? Well, the only alternative is to reorient your heart to the compass of divine wisdom. That’s what this verse says, Proverbs 28:26: “Whoever trusts his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” That is to say successful living, now and forever. Successful living comes only through a commitment to shape our lives through divine wisdom. “He who walks in wisdom will be delivered.”

Now that brings us back to the basic motto, the basic creed of Proverbs that we saw early on in our series. Let’s go back and see it again. Proverbs 1, verse 7. Proverbs 1, verse 7: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.” You might remember we saw this a couple of months ago. I told you about a literary device that we find in the scriptures, the biblical writers employed often. It’s called an inclusio. That is, they’ll state something up front. They’ll deal with it. And then at the end of the passage, they state it again, sort of a literary marker that everything in between is dealing with this. We find that with this: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” And then we have those introductory lectures, Proverbs 1 to 9, and in the last chapter, chapter 9, we have it again: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And if that’s not enough, at the end of the book, we have, you remember, it ends up with this wonderful praise of the virtuous woman: “A woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” And so we have it up front at the beginning, we have it at the end of the lectures, we have it at the end of the book, and we have it all in between just so you know the point that this must be the controlling perspective of life, the fear of God.

Now the fear of the Lord, you might remember also, we saw is it’s not just reverence. Some translations are beginning to translate it that way. We’re afraid to say fear of the Lord today. But it’s more than just reverence. It’s certainly reverence. It’s certainly awe. But whatever it is, it still entails the psychology of fear, simply because God is God and we are not. So for example, when Moses is on the mountain, we find that he trembled with fear. Or we find in the Psalms, “serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.” Well, if you want more to do with that, you can go back to the earlier sermons and listen to that.

But this idea of fearing God is more than just reverence. A right fear of God, then, will show itself in how we respond to God’s word. It entails submission, it entails hearing in faith, learning, trusting, and obeying what God has said. And in fact, this expression, “the fear of the Lord” in the scriptures, becomes something of a reference to some objective content to it. So for example, in Psalm 19, you have this section in there about the word of God and the statutes of the Lord, the commandments of the Lord, the decrees of the Lord, the fear of the Lord, all of these referring to what God has revealed.

In fact, we have that implicit here in chapter one, verse seven as well. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” What does that mean? Well, if I’m going to know what to do, I have to listen to God submissively. And that’s the other half of the verse. It’s fools that despise wisdom and instruction. The wise one is the one who listens to God’s wisdom and instruction as a creature ought to listen to God. And he says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. That means not just the starting point, although it is that, but it’s more than that. It’s the beginning in the sense that it’s the foundation, the all-controlling factor. The guiding consideration in all of life must be this: fear God. That’s the starting point, that’s the all-controlling perspective of life.

If we fear God then, there’ll be no room for autonomous thinking. None of this imagining that you’re an independent creature, but you recognize that you live under God and you follow his direction. That was the whole problem with Eve, wasn’t it, and her temptation. “Who is he to tell you what will make you happy? Decide that for yourself.” This was the problem with the older modernist philosophy and the older modernist theology as well. Now it had something up on the newer postmodern theology and postmodern philosophy. In postmodernism, we don’t know anything. Everything’s relative and you then have your truth and I have my truth and we live happily ever after. And even if your truth contradicts my truth, your truth is true for you and my truth is true for me. And there’s no notion of objective truth and absolutes and it’s just gone. Well, modernist theology at least knew better than that. But its problem was it was so self-confident in knowing truth that it had no category for external authority and divine revelation. And when you read this book, you think, “Well, we’ll decide what’s true. We have the capacity for that. And if these things that are taught here don’t fit the modern mind, well, we know better.”

But the summary of Proverbs, the whole credo, the whole motto of the book is this: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.” That is to say, if you want to know how to live successfully, here’s how you go. You start with God the creator and you live all of life under his direction. In every situation, in every decision, the all-controlling factor is what has God said. And to do otherwise, that’s just foolish. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

We should look again at chapter 3, very famous passage, wonderful verses. Chapter 3, verses 5 and 6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.” The exhortation is to a reliance on revealed wisdom, the wisdom of God’s direction. Rely on that. Don’t lean on your own understanding. That is, renounce those feelings of self-confidence and self-reliance. Don’t lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him—that is, follow His direction of life and trust that He really does know better. Put another way, verse 7: “Don’t be wise in your own eyes.” Don’t think. Don’t imagine that you know better. You don’t. Recognize that you live under God and make your choices accordingly. All of that is chapter one and verse seven: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”

Now don’t misunderstand. He’s not saying you shouldn’t think. He’s not saying that you shouldn’t make calculations and judgments and plans. He’s not saying you shouldn’t research matters and make determinations and informed choices. He’s not saying any of that. What he is saying is that you must recognize your tendency to stray and check all of your decisions against the revealed wisdom of God. All the decisions and all the judgments that we make ought to be checked up against what God has said. And as we forget that and act contrary to divine wisdom, we will be wrong every time. And as we follow divine wisdom, we will be right every time and have a life without regrets.

The Complete Reliability Of Scripture

So what we have here then is not only a reminder and a caution of the unreliability of the human heart; what we’re given by contrast then is the complete reliability of scripture. In both doctrine and practice, all that it tells us we may be fully confident that this is guiding us in a way that’s right. And we can be very confident that as we follow what God has said, we will be right every time.

Now today’s doctrine is just the opposite. You hear this all over the world today, and you even hear it in, I guess the best way to say it is, untaught Christian circles. When you don’t know what to do, look within. Follow your heart. As though somehow the heart is this infallible guide to live and all you got to do is listen to it. That is exactly wrong. It is exactly wrong. If we believe this doctrine of sin, we ought to remain very suspicious of our hearts. The very reason for revealed scripture, the very reason for revealed wisdom, the very reason for the book of Proverbs is to give us wisdom from above what we can’t come up with ourselves.

Now, young people, let me talk to you for just a minute, particularly those of you graduating from high school. Moving on, you’re at this exciting stage of life where you’re beginning to make your own decisions. You have to be very careful with this. You’re making your own choices. Life is exciting, and the temptation is to think, “I’ve got this.” And you think you have life by the tail. If you want to have life without regret, you must orient your minds always to the God who made you. Always. Don’t delude your thinking. Delude yourself into thinking that somehow you really do know better. You don’t. But go with the confidence that as I follow the direction of the God who made me and the God who imposed on this world a moral order reflecting his own righteousness, as I follow his direction, I can live without regret.

Look at chapter 12, verse 15. Chapter 12, verse 15: “The way of the fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to counsel.” The way of a fool is right in his own eyes. “I’ve got this. I can figure it out.” But the wise man listens to revealed wisdom. And so we have then not just a reminder of the reliability of scripture, but it’s a reminder of the value of scripture as an unparalleled resource for living wisely.

Now, brothers and sisters, the degree to which we believe this will be reflected in the time and the attention given to reading and learning and hearing and meditating on God’s word. Parents, teach your children the wisdom of God. Your number one priority is to lead them in the paths of wisdom. Saturate their minds with the word of God. I love how some of you are doing that, all of you to one extent or another. Some of you talk about it more than others. One of the ladies recently was talking about how she’s directing her children to think about, “Listen to what this church has said. What do you think about that?” and bringing judgments about it. I love to hear that, love to see it. That’s our objective with our children: saturate their minds with scripture so that they learn discernment and to live accordingly.

And parents, you too—this is not just for the kids—determine to be the wise man of Psalm 1, who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the ungodly, doesn’t stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of the scornful. He delights in the law of God day and night. If our studies in Proverbs have taught us anything, it has taught us that we must have a mind and a heart that is always subject to the word of God and eager to hear and receive direction from the God who made us. And so we need both a growing acquaintance with the scriptures and a growing commitment.

Now, of course, the supreme revelation of divine wisdom is in the incarnation of Jesus Christ as he’s revealed to us in the Gospels. God came to us in the person of Jesus. God came as man, the supreme self-disclosure, making himself known. And among so many other things, the Lord Jesus presents himself as the great sage who offers us wisdom for life and eternity. “Come to me. Take my yoke. Learn from me.” And history’s greatest display of human folly—they took him and crucified him. They wouldn’t have their king. And they crucified him.

And yet in his very defeat and death, Jesus established his universal kingship. He now is the accomplished savior and universal judge. He is the judge before whom every man and woman, even every fool that rejects him, will one day bow and acknowledge him as Lord. And God has said, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.” And he said, “I’ll take this message of Christ crucified that the world thinks so foolish, and it will be by that message and that message only that I’ll bring men and women into fellowship with me.”

And by that message, God has one by one transformed one life after another. He comes to us with powerful grace, one by one, breaks the power of that foolishness in our hearts. And he opens our eyes to see in Christ crucified our only hope for life and death. And with a new, renewed heart and energy, we’re eager to hear his word and take his yoke. And by the enabling of his spirit, we walk in wisdom. To his honor and to our own temporal and eternal joy, God, give us a heart to understand our own foolishness. Give us a heart to pursue the wisdom of God and to submit to him for both his honor and for our own good. Amen.

Let’s pray. Our Father, we confess our folly. It is humbling for us to see and be reminded of how prone we are to stray, and in doing so, not only dishonor you, but hurt ourselves. God, give us wisdom. Give us wisdom by your word. Give us the wisdom to pursue your word and to learn it so that we may live by it. For Christ’s sake we ask, amen.