I’m Back Here Again

Welcome to the New Life Ministries podcast. When does Lady Folly call on you to come and be foolish? Does she call everyone or does she have her eye on specific targets? Hint, it’s the latter. In today’s talk, we look at different ways of responding to life’s challenges and the call from both wisdom and folly as we make our decisions. Let’s join our service and learn together. Who would like a fidget toy to play with during the service? Okay,

I can’t throw things. So, this is a Mobius loop. There is a bag of Mobius loops on the screen. It is a continuous loop with one edge which means as a fidget toy you can keep pulling the center and keep pulling and the inside edge becomes the outside edge becomes the inside edge becomes the outside edge. It’s very silly. My sister makes these. Uh it’s very satisfying. Uh

uh Jessica’s got one. Uh she can pass it around. Um at my family at last family gathering we were like you know these are so simple and then we had an entire conversation about some other subject while we realized all of us were pulling at the center and pulling at the center. [sighs] Uh the mobius loop or this little toy. Uh to me I looked at and thought this is a good illustration for life. It just keeps going round and round and round. uh problems go away and then problems come back and life lessons that we don’t learn the first time will circle back and we get to learn them again. Do you know that experience where you you try you thought you learned something and then a couple years later you’re like oh going through that again. Um does that ever feel like you the bulbous loop? So do you still have it? Make sure it passes its way around. That one uh can go as a gift to someone. This one I’m keeping because of the because of the colors. [laughter] So I I used to think there are two ways of approaching living. One approach to life is that it’s cyclical. Nothing ever changes. It just keeps going over and over. And I see people who have that loop. And the other approach to life is to actively work at changing. You know, to get those problems figured out, to work on following Jesus and following what the spirit prompts to learn new ways of relating and living and get my problems worked out and move forward. But we know that even as we grow and we work on our problems, struggles and patterns come back again. And we never fully get away from some things. And my buddy says there are some issues we have that we will take to the grave with us. And every time we circle back, we get a little bit better. We improve a little bit more, but we’re never free of the loop. And I was pondering that maybe there’s a third option that as we grow through life and as life brings us back to our problems, there is a way also of just letting God’s blessing come down on us and out to others. Like I don’t have to have it all figured out first. I can be working on my problems and yet I can be at rest, follow Jesus, and just let my connection with him bring blessings to others. So, I thought that for me that was hopeful. It’s like I don’t have to have it all figured out. I can just rest and live. So, today we’re in Proverbs 9, which is the last of the big speeches at the start of this book. And today there are three sections to the chapter. Lady wisdom calls for a bunch of verses. And then there’s this middle section about the mocker and the wise person. And then Lady Folly calls. And we’re going to notice that in all of them there are ways of living um that is either this perpetual circle or it’s moving the story forward. Um and sometimes there’s this temptation to get pulled back in. So um so let’s look at uh Proverbs 9. Let me offer a prayer and then we’ll read this thing. Father, would you help us this morning to to learn to listen to focus? Help us to be attentive to what your spirit wants to draw us to notice about our own life and how we live and how we respond. Help us to grow um as your disciples through this. Amen. So, Proverbs chapter nine, wisdom has built a house. She’s carved its seven pillars. She’s prepared a great banquet, mixed the wines, and set the table. She has sent her servants to invite everyone to come. She calls out from the heights overlooking the city. Come in with me, she urges the simple. To those who lack good judgment, she says, “Come, eat my food and drink the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways behind and begin to live. Learn to use good judgment.” Anyone who rebukes a mocker will get an insult in return. Anyone who corrects the wicked will get hurt. So don’t bother correcting mockers. They will only hate you. But correct the wise and they will love you. Instruct the wise and they will be even wiser. Teach the righteous and they will learn even more. Fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the holy one results in good judgment. Wisdom will multiply your days and add years to your life. If you become wise, you will be the one to benefit. If you scorn in wisdom, you will be the one to suffer. The woman named Folly is brash. She is ignorant and doesn’t know it. She sits in her doorway on the heights overlooking the city. She calls out to men going by who are minding their own business. Come in with me, she urges the simple. To those who lack good judgment, she says, stolen water is refreshing. Food eaten in secret tastes the best. But little do they know the dead are there. Her guests are in the depths of the grave. So we have Lady Wisdom at one house calling to the simple or to those who are not committed to the Lord. We have Lady Folly yet another house calling to the same group of people. And in between is this comment on the mocker and the wise. And nobody’s calling to them. Nobody calls to the wise or to the mocker because their minds are made up. No one uh one is already committed to the Lord. That’s the wise. And the other one has decided not to be committed. And that is the mocker. So let’s talk about these two. We know what it’s like to be mocked. What it feel I’m sure we all know what it’s like to be mocked. What it feels like when someone is mocking you. They’re making sport of you. They ridicule. They embarrass. If there’s a crowd, they work to get the crowd to either laugh at you or to hate you or to at least not side with you. Right? We all know this experience. If you’ve been through school at all, you know this experience. But in the Bible, they’re not just against you. They are also against the teachings of the Lord. The mocker is against the Lord. And that makes them troublemakers. So in Proverbs 21, chapter 21, it says, “Mockers are proud and hotty. They look down at other people. They act with boundless arrog arrogance. In chapter 22, it says, “Throw out throw out the mocker and fighting goes too. Quarrels and insults will disappear.” In chapter nine, it says, “Mocker can get the whole town agitated, but the wise will calm anger.” And in chapter 24, it says, “The schemes of the fool are sinful, and everyone detests a mocker.” like people can see who the mocker is. So behind the mocker is a heart that is not teachable that it’s a heart that says I know the right way and I don’t care what you know. I don’t care if you disagree with me. So in chapter 13 it says a wise child accepts a parent’s discipline. A mocker refuses to listen to correction. In chapter 15, it says, “Mockers hate to be corrected, so they stay away from the wise.” And in our passage in verse 7, it says, “Anyone who rebukes a mocker will get an insult in return. Anyone who corrects the wicked will get hurt. So don’t bother correcting the mockers. They will only hate you.” Which means for that person, their life is like a moious loop. They’re not interested in learning beyond what they already know. So, they’re going to hit the same problems over and over and over again. And the book of Proverbs doesn’t give a lot of advice on how to deal with the mocker because they’re unteable. Um, and it is unfortunate that sometimes we realize people we love deeply are not open to learning. like they’re just the door is closed. So, we pray for them. We share our anguish with the Lord like this is not what I want for that person. And we just have to rest that right now there’s nothing we can do. And if you are the mocker, if you realize, oh, that that sounds like me, the only one who can soften your spirit is you when it comes to walking with the Lord, being wise in your own eyes will work against you. There’s this great passage in that in chapter um 26 that says, “A proverb in the mouth of a fool is as useless as a paralyzed leg.” Honoring a fool is as foolish as tying a stone to its sling. The proverb in the mouth of a fool is like a thorny branch being brandished by a drunk. An employer who hires a fool or a bystander is like an archer who shoots at random. A dog returns to a vomit. So a fool returns to his foolishness. But there is more hope for a fool than for people who think they are right in their own eyes. O. Now, we need to pause and check our attitudes towards the mocker because if you think of people who’ve mocked you or people who currently mock you, um it’s very easy to want to wash your hands and to have hatred and disdain and really look down on the people who hurt you. And Jesus says, don’t do that. In Matthew five, Jesus says, “You’ve heard that our ancestors were told, you must not murder. Uh if you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.” But Jesus says, “Even if you are angry with someone, you are subject to judgment. If you call someone, you idiot or you fool, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you you are in danger of the fires of hell.” So deciding for yourself that they are utterly useless and hating them that’s not good. We need to know or we need to learn how to value somebody or give them value even if we recognize they are a mocker and not open to learn. It’s not our place to condemn. But we can make decisions on how we relate with them. Right? In Matthew 7, Jesus also says, “Don’t waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don’t throw your pearls to pigs. They will trample the pearls and then turn and attack you.” So that’s the mocker. Don’t be the mocker. The other person with their m mind made up in this middle section is the wise. They want to learn what it means to follow the Lord and how to live in his ways. and they are very teachable. So, Proverbs 15 says, “If you listen to constructive criticism, you will be home among the wise.” Like, if you listen to criticism that people give you, you belong to the crowd of the wise. You’ll feel at home there. If you reject discipline, you only harm yourself. But if you listen to correction, you will grow in understanding. So, the wise don’t have it all figured out. They don’t know what to do in every situation, but they want to learn. The wise are the people who say, “I’ve walked for years doing things my own way. That’s what got me stuck in this loop.” The wise say, “What I need are are skills I need to learn how to live different. How do I relate to people different? How do I make decisions different? What are different ways of thinking about people? Teach me.” That’s the wise And if you’ve spent a large part of your life not really walking with Jesus, there are all kinds of things he wants to teach you on how to live better. In in uh chapter 10 of Proverbs, it says, “The wise are glad to be instructed, but babbling fools fall flat on their faces.” Which is so well written. So many Fs there. Babbling fools fall flat on their faces, but the wise are glad to be instructed. So if your heart says,”I am committed to wanting to learn the Lord’s ways,” then Jesus is pleased, like you’re on the right path. You don’t have to know all the answers, but you want to learn. You’re going to be someone who helps people and blesses people.

So there’s the mocker and the wise. But if you are not yet the wise and you’re not the mocker, there are two voices calling for you. One is the voice of Lady Wisdom. Lady Wisdom has made a beautiful house on top of the hill. It’s large. It’s lovely. She’s prepared a wonderful banquet to share with you. The table is set. The fine dinner wear is out. There’s a centerpiece with flowers. There’s a barbecue with meat that smells lovely. It is so enticing. And she says, “Come, eat my food. Drink the wine I’ve mixed. Leave your simple ways behind and begin to live. Learn to use good judgment.” She’s saying, “Let me teach you how to live.” Well, remember in scripture, the simple are are not stupid people. The simple are just not yet fully committed to the Lord. So now if you lived in Jerusalem at the time of Solomon who wrote the proverbs, the house at the top of the hill was the temple, the great, overwhelmingly beautiful temple of the Lord, the God of Israel. It was newly built. It was gleaming with gold. Lady wisdom, the voice of wisdom, is calling from the temple, and she’s saying, “Come here. Let me show you how to live well. So wisdom is not uh what you learn by observing nature. Wisdom is not what you learn by watching how people relate and how it naturally works its way out. Wisdom comes from the Lord and it’s his gift to us to make life work. So you could even think of the ten commandments as his gift to us. This is how life works. So living well means walking with the Lord. Living well means worshiping the Lord. And the result of walking with the Lord is life. It’s eternal life. It’s a life that is bound and tied up with the God who is eternal life himself. So if you’re a person who thinks, uh, Curtis, please stop talking about theology and just tell me what to do. What am I supposed to do? Well, that’s Proverbs. Put into practice the things that are written into Proverbs and you will please the Lord. Because Proverbs is God’s ways worked out in daytoday living, day-to-day situations. Here’s the gift. It’s in these pages. So, wisdom lives in the temple of God. And she’s calling you. Let my ways nourish you. Let my ways feed you. You’ll have a good life.

But then there’s this other voice that’s calling to you. The voice of Lady Folly. Verse 15, she calls out to men going by who are minding their own business. That’s not a good translation. A better translation is she is calling out to those who pass along the way to those who make their paths straight. Whoever is uncommitted, let them turn aside. here. She’s calling to people who otherwise are walking with the Lord. They’re following Jesus. They’re just not really fully committed to it. They’re kind of half-heartedly into it. And therefore, they’re very susceptible to being led astray, to being led to stumble. When you are not fully committed to your relationship with Jesus, she’s looking at you. She you are her target. Now Lady Folly also has a house. Verse 16 says sorry verse 14 says she sits in her doorway on the heights overlooking the city. So throughout scripture we learn about false gods being worshiped on high places. It is normal to build a temple or a shrine to a false god on a hill or on a mountaintop. So in Psalm 121 where it says I lift my eyes to the hills. where does my help come from? It’s not saying God is in the mountains. It’s instead saying, imagine you’re looking around from the from your city and there’s mountains and hills all around you and at the top of all of those high places are these altars and shrines to false gods. And you say, “Is that where my help comes from?” No, my help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. So in our passage, what Lady Folly is calling to you, what she’s calling is not that you would just have a little bit of fun. She’s actually calling you to worship another god. She’s calling you to turn aside from the ways of the Lord, to turn aside and enjoy the pleasures of the moment and to be unfaithful to your God. And she might not know that that’s what she’s doing because in verse 13 it says she’s ignorant about her own ways. So, she doesn’t even know the path she’s on. But in verse 17, she says, “Stlen water is refreshing. Food eaten in secret tastes the best.” So, drinking water in Proverbs is a metaphor for sex. We’re back there again. So, stolen water means the one you want to have sex with, that sexuality rightfully belongs to somebody else. their sexuality, they that part of them belongs to somebody else. And she’s like, “Oh, yeah, but stole stolen water is refreshing.” And in verse 18, it says, “They do not know that the dead are there. Her guests are in the depths of the grave.” Food eaten in secret means what you want to do to nourish yourself is something that you want to hide. You’d be embarrassed or ashamed if it became public. Now you know what the issue is for yourself. The thing that you are tempted by, the thing where your mind goes, where your fantasies go, that thing that you secretly believe, if I could have this, there would be relief from hardship. There would be relief from the aloneeness of living, whatever that is, that’s the voice of Lady Folly calling to you. Don’t you want this? So, I was talking with my friend about about uh this passage and temptation, and I was saying how it’s so easy to break temptation into the categories of need and want. Um, you know, I don’t need what I uh am tempted by in order to survive. But to say it’s a want makes it sound too unnecessary. Oh, it’s just something I can want and I can throw it away. And my buddy said, ‘A actually scripture uses the word desire, not want. We went, ‘Oh, that’s the better word. Because desire is a strong word, right? It’s a strong wish, a craving. Desire captures the intensity of the feeling. Um, so it’s I need some stuff and I desire some stuff and Lady Folly can call. So desires are not bad. The problem is our desires often look to the wrong target. Like it’s they’re looking to the wrong goal. They that our desires lead us to how we want to get our needs met, but outside of how the Lord would bless it. And so Lady Folly calls, she makes this offer, come get your desires met, but she’s leading those who are uncommitted to the Lord to surrender their loyalty to the Lord. It’s really conniving. It’s sneaky. So perhaps when you’ve got a desire, when you want something, you’re pursuing something. One question might be, does this come out of my commitment to the Lord? Or is this lady folly calling me to be uncommitted to the Lord? And again, desires are not bad. We can bring our desires to the Lord and say, “This is what I really want.” In fact, we’re invited to share kind of what Charles was saying at the beginning to be honest with the Lord, but our desires tend to want a solution that doesn’t involve the Lord. And that’s Lady Folly calling for you. So, our passage gives us people who are living lives in very different ways. The mocker and the wise, two folks who’ve made their decisions. For the mocker, the heart of the problem is that they are wise in their own eyes. And they mock those who try to correct them. They insult, they hurt those who try to teach them. And they live in this loop, this mobious loop of constantly repeating the same pattern. For us, we’re mindful not to hate and not to condemn. That’s not how Jesus wants us to be. We bring our grievance to God. We pray and we wait for them to become teachable. The wise are committed to the Lord. He instructs. He teaches them and they are a blessing. They don’t know all the answers. That’s not the point. The point is they want to learn and that puts them in the company of the wise. They’re the ones who say, “I’ve lived long enough doing this loop of repetitive cycle. Teach me the new way. And if this is you, well done.” Proverbs is God’s wisdom worked out in everyday living. And then we have this third group, the uncommitted. They’re walking in the Lord’s ways, but they’re not really committed to it. Lady wisdom calls from her house on the hill, the temple. Come nourish yourself on my food. Taste and see that the Lord is good. But Lady Folly also calls, “Come and get your desires met. Stolen water, secret food.” You know what your desires are about, but Lady Folly is actually calling you to worship another god, to leave the Lord and be unfaithful.

So, where do you find yourself in this? How do you respond? What catches your attention? One of the things that that I had noticed when Christina and I had started reading some of these at home, and we haven’t done that for two or three weeks now. It’s been a while. Um, but I saw it again today. There’s this theme of the godly, the wise living with transparency. There’s an openness and availability almost a community sense. Whereas with the wicked or with folly, things are hidden. Things are isolated. They’re by themsel. And we see that today. So with Lady Wisdom, right, she’s prepared a great banquet to sends her servants out to invite everyone to come. So there’s an invitation there to to everyone. Some other examples of this in chapter 10:9, people with integrity walk safely. So with integrity, it means that other people can compare your actions one with another or your words. So there’s an openness there, but those who follow crooked paths will be exposed. So there’s a hiddenness. I see that theme over and over again. So for today, Lady Folly is ignorant and doesn’t know it. So she doesn’t have that feedback. She doesn’t have that feedback from others. she calls out with people who are minding their own business kind of along the way, but uh stolen water, food eaten in secret. So, it’s hidden. It’s isolated. And it’s really interesting and and part of me was just wondering about this being written or us thinking about it as individuals versus us thinking about it as community. And so, that’s kind of a new thought for me this morning. And so how are we influencing uh each other? That’s one thing that seems to repeat over and over again if you take the time to look at it. So what does that mean for us? What does that mean for me? Well, I think it a little bit like I was talking at the beginning of the service of just being honest with ourselves and with each other and with God. We are people who are saved by grace. We’re not saved by things that we earn. So, we don’t have to worry about status. We don’t have to worry about pretending. We don’t have to worry about others thinking well of us. We’re all sinners. We all need the mercy of God. And so, it’s okay to be vulnerable. It’s okay to be open. Now, we do this with trustworthy people. And there’s some things that I might share openly here. There’s things that I might share more openly with Curtis. There’s things that I might share more openly or intimately with my spouse, and that’s appropriate. But even for our deepest secrets, it’s good to tell at least one other person because then we can share it. And so I I really I see that coming through in Proverbs. That’s I like that. I wasn’t expecting to see to to find that. Yeah. No, that’s great. It’s fantastic. First off, tell me that tie a stone to the sling didn’t spin you back to Star Wars. You remember the Ewok that starts whipping the stone around his head. Suddenly he’s got it around it. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, I didn’t make the Star Wars reference. Just [laughter] this time, what I got from this was Lord save me from the attitude of I don’t care. Oh, interesting. Cuz the opposite of love is not hate. It’s indifference. And that’s kind of where the I don’t care attitude starts to creep in and it becomes shame and we start to invite death into our lives.

That line, the foods eaten in secret is really good, right? Yeah. It’s done because of shame. It’s done because they’re eating food they shouldn’t be eating. God saved me from indifference. That’s great. Well done. I like it. I don’t know about Lady Folly or Lady Wisdom, but when I was a new kid in the reserve, there was this guy who was trying to bully me because I belonged in a rock band, the main singer. And he said that he wanted to fight, which at that time I welcome it and I was going to beat him up. But this old illiterate guy that has been living in the reserve for all his life, he came running up to me and says, “Don’t do that cuz if you beat him up, he’s going to hurt his father because of how beaten up he is.” So I didn’t understand that at that time. I just almost didn’t believe him. So instead, I just let go of that guy and say, “Okay, you can go.” But the wisdom of that guy that stopped me from beating up this guy, he was always in my mind and I thank the Lord for his wisdom. Although I didn’t really respect him that time. I became a better person because of him and people like him. He’s illiterate and he lives on the reserve yet he’s more wiser than me. And I thank the Lord that I was able to learn from people like him. Learning from uh people that just there because of their wisdom that they want to share is something that should be valued not just look upon as you don’t know what you’re talking about you’re illiterate because they learn not from books but through life or the Bible when they see something they’re not afraid to say their piece even though it doesn’t make sense to you until you realize how it feels when you see your own kids being beaten up like better. So, thanks a lot for people like him because I learned to better understand walking with the Lord. Yeah. Thanks, Kelly. Paul, you’re right on with saying indifference is the opposite of love. You got to care for somebody to hate them. Y I have a wall hanging at home hung where I’ll see it often. three panels and the first panel it says acceptance and the second panel says let it go and the third panel is trust God. Yeah. Yeah. I think there is a societal movement over that last few years about not being honest and we call it privacy that everything is private now to the point where we’ve got a case in Winnipeg where an organization is refusing to give the police evidence in a case because they’re calling it private. it. I think we are afraid that people will use our honesty to hurt us. I think that kind of indicates that we don’t trust God. Yep. That, you know, the Bible says, “I have a plan for you. It’s good.” Yep. So, you know, what are you afraid of? Yeah. Yeah. Good. Nice. I think it’s it’s interesting. It seems like the wisdom is she’s offering food and drink, but she’s sort of saying come here, listen, sort of change your life. She’s she’s like there’s refreshments here, but she’s being like kind of like move in here and and learn this. Whereas Folly is saying like, hey, it’s just going to take a minute. You know, it’s no big deal. It’s it’s basically lightweight and it’s not change your life. It’s like, let’s just come and do this one little secret thing and it’ll be tasty. Um, and so it’s like it’s almost like it’s no big deal, so it shouldn’t matter. And it just really reminds me of this pattern. Um I remember years ago I heard somebody spell this out and I was so struck by how accurate it was and how often I’ve experienced it. It’s like oh there it is. Which is the first stage is well there’s this thing that has occurred to me or that I want or that I see that’s probably not a great idea, but it’s just really little. I’m, you know, it’s just a small thing and it’s hardly going to take any time and no one’s going to know and it’s just not gonna matter and so it’s not going to make any difference at all. So, I’m gonna do it. Whatever it is, whatever it is. And you can fill in the blank with your own three or four things that happen to be your thing. And then it was no big deal. And then when I did it immediately, my feeling is, well, you already did it once, so you you might as well just go ahead and you’re like, you’ve wrecked your whole life. You’re you’re just trash now because you already did that. So go ahead and just do it again. Just go and do it. And so it’s so I just I think that I’m pretty sure that that thing’s got Satan’s signature on it because it’s so effective. It’s like, hey, this is no big deal. Oh, now you’re trash. And it’s so fast. It can happen in four minutes. And I think that that’s part of what this part is talking about cuz she’s like, “Hey, just come and have a little granola bar with me. It’s no big deal at all. Won’t even wreck your supper.” And then he’s saying, but the people don’t realize there are dead people in her house. Like there are people that were like, “No big deal to death.” And that is the way that if we choose and don’t kind of play the movie like how is this actually going to play out? What are the actual long-term effects if I go down this road? If I don’t take the time to play that out, but I’m just I’m just going to do this one little thing. It’s be no big deal. We all have that ability to be like so blind. You know what I mean? Like I’m just going to do this thing because I really really want it. I really desire it. I’m just going to do it. It’s gonna be no big deal and nobody has to know and then it’ll be fine. Except your gut knows, your heart knows that you’re not fine and Satan’s go poke poke poke. See, you’re really not fine. Poke poke. Now you’re evil and bad and it’s wrecked so you might as well just go ahead and throw in the towel entirely. It’s so fast that flip flip. And so if you’ve ever experienced it or the next time you do experience it, go like, “Okay, that sucks and is super uncomfortable and awful, but also, oh, there it is. That’s also like a aftermarket warranty call to then be willing to go, okay, I made a mistake there. I’m going to turn around and head back for the house of wisdom because that is apparently a trap. So anyway, that’s great. I like that. Good. Let me offer a prayer. Oops. As I fall off my chair. [laughter] Father, uh, Father, you know me. You know every person in this room. You know our stories. And you know the city that we are in and the province and the country and all the ways our culture influences us, the way folks around us influence us. You know the world that we’re in. And in all of this, you know the way uh you know what is the right thing to do. You know what is the wise thing to do. and you know what it is to follow you, to be connected with you and to uh you know how to teach us. Um so I praise you that you know so much. I praise you that you are able to do whatever you want and you can help us in every situation. Lord, continue to call us to temple. Call us to yourself. Call us to be one with you. And Father, help us to see the voice of folly to hear and go, wait, that desire, that moment that is folly calling and death is there. Um so that as Christine said, we get ourselves on that path towards you that we um grow in that commitment of of being with you because you are life. Thank you for your goodness to us. Thank you for your love and your faithfulness to us and um just your patience and longsuffering. We are thankful. Amen. Thank you for listening to our podcast today. New Life Ministries is located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. You are invited to join our service in person or over Zoom. Please use the contact us link to send an email to the church office and request the address or zoom link. If you would like to use these podcasts as part of your home church or local church gathering, you are free to do so. We do request that you let us know. If there is any other way that we can help you in your ministry, please send us an email.