“The foolishness of man”
[Proverbs 19:2-3, 5]
Have you ever met a fool? In Proverbs 17:12, the Bible tells us “Let a man meet a bear robbed of her cubs, Rather than a fool in his folly.” Who is the fool? When I look at an Internet website, it says: ‘An ignorant and foolish person makes people more difficult than a ferocious female bear. If he is ignorant and stubborn without knowing himself, the intellectuals are in trouble. Also, since he has selfish tendency to know only himself, he isn’t considerate of others. So the fool is more cruel and destructive, and is like dynamite. He doesn't know what to do when, and what he thought he would do. And once e insists that no one can stop him (Internet).
If we look at Proverbs 19:3, the Bible says, “The foolishness of man ruins his way, And his heart rages against the LORD.” Focusing on this verse, I would like to receive a lesson from God, thinking about the three sins of the fool under the heading “The foolishness of man”.
The first sin of the fool is to hurry his footsteps with zeal that is without knowledge.
Look at Proverbs 19:2 – “It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.” A translation of the original Hebrew word for this verse is as follows: ‘Also it is not good a soul without knowledge, and he who hurries his footsteps sins’ (Park). Here, the conjunction ‘Also\’" implies that the verse 2 is related to verse 1. In other words, the fool is not only perverse in speech (v. 1), but also has “zeal without knowledge” (v. 2). Here, the phrase “zeal without knowledge” means that there is no knowledge of the soul. And the phrase “to be hasty and miss the way” means that he who acts impatiently and rashly commits sin (Park). A representative example is the apostle Paul in the New Testament. That is, before meeting the resurrected Jesus, Paul (Saul) was zealous for God in the absence of knowledge of Christ (Acts 22:3) [“because I acted in ignorance and unbelief” (1 Tim. 1:13)]. That was why he persecuted the disciples of Jesus who followed His way [“as to zeal, a persecutor of the church” (Phil. 3:6)]. We can another example in Romans 10:2 – “For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.” Here, “they” refer to the Israelites (v. 1). When the apostle Paul thinks of his people, the Israelites, he says that the Israelites are zealous for God in ignorance of not knowing that Jesus is the Christ (Messiah). In other words, the Israelites didn’t want to be saved by believing in Jesus Christ (vv. 9-10, 13), but rather to be saved by keeping the law (v. 5). They didn’t know the righteousness of God and tried to establish their own righteousness (v. 2). How foolish they were.
It is dangerous for us to be zealous for the church without growing up in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. The reason is because zeal that isn’t based on the knowledge of Jesus Christ is only to establish our own righteousness. What does it mean to establish our own righteousness? That means we become proud. And when we become proud, we are bound to sin against God because we speak and act impatiently and rashly. One example is Saul, the first king of Israel in 1 Samuel 13. As he was proud, hasty and rash, he didn’t ask God for grace, and didn’t wait for Samuel, and offered a burnt offering to God in the thought that the Philistines would come down to Gilgal against him and Israel (v. 12). Charles Bridges, an evangelical preacher and theologian of the Anglican Church, pointed out the five misfortunes of souls without spiritual knowledge (Park): (1) A soul without spiritual knowledge doesn’t know the true guidelines of life. He doesn’t live for God, but for himself. (2) A soul without spiritual knowledge doesn’t know how to deal with sin. In other words, he doesn’t know the truth of Christ's atonement, faith, and repentance and etc.. (3) A soul without spiritual knowledge doesn’t know how to get help when he faces trouble. In other words, he doesn’t know about the fact that the trouble can be the love of God, makes man humble, and he will go through the process of sanctification and so on. (4) A soul without spiritual knowledge doesn’t know what the power of accountability is. He only knows his own strength. However, human strength is not really strength, but weakness. He doesn’t know that he becomes strong in the Lord. (5) A soul without spiritual knowledge doesn’t know the true hope. For him, everything is only uncertain. He is completely unaware of the faithfulness of God's promise.
The second sin of the fool is to blame God after he has done wrong.
Look at Proverbs 19:3 – “The foolishness of man ruins his way, And his heart rages against the LORD.” The original Hebrew word for this word is translated as follows: ‘The man's foolishness overthrows (overturns) his way, and his heart resents against the Lord’ (Park). Our sinful nature is to blame God for the painful consequences of our choice instead of being responsible for out wrong choice. This sinful instinct was passed on to us from Adam, the first human being in Genesis 3. That is, when Adam and Eve broke God's command and ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God called Adam (v. 9). At that time, Adam, who was hiding in fear (v. 10), said to God: “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.” Although Adam sinned, he said “The woman whom You gave to be with me ….”. This is blaming God for giving a wife to him. To blame God in this way is a terrifying sin of quarreling with the Almighty God (Isa. 45:9) (Park).
If we think about ‘blame’, we remember the Israelites at the time of the Exodus. Not only they grumbled at Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” (Exod. 15:24), they also grumbled against God (Num. 14:27). At that time, God said to them, “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against Me? I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they are making against Me” (v. 27). The Israelites who were blaming God in this way didn’t listen to God's voice (Ps. 106:25). That is, they disobeyed God's word. As a result, God was angry with them (Num. 11:1) and disciplined them (ch. 21). The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10:10 – “Nor grumble, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.” Why do we grumble? Why do we blame not only people, but even God? I looked for the answer in Jude 1:16 – “These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.” The reason we grumble is because we have discontent within us. And the reason we are dissatisfied is because we are distrusting God. As a result, we not only sin against God, but even disobey His commandments. We must obey God's commandments. In order to do that, we must trust God. And we must be content with God alone. Then we can obey God's commandments so that we can walk the right path the Lord wants. And when we walk the right path, we will not sin against God.
The third and last sin of the fool is to lie.
Look at Proverbs 19:5 – “A false witness will not go unpunished, And he who tells lies will not escape.” The original Hebrew word for this word is translated as follows: ‘The witness of lies will be punished, and the one who breathes lies will not be saved’ (Park). Here, ‘The witness of lies’ or ‘the one who breathes lies’ is a lie that shows no sign of repentance, but a brazenfaced. Such a person has missed the opportunity to repent for a long time (Rom. 2:4) and isn’t conscience-stricken for lying (Park). Therefore, the Bible says that he will not be saved, but rather will not escape punishment (vv. 5, 9). Furthermore, the Bible Proverbs 19:9 says “… he who tells lies will perish.” The Bible Proverbs 14:25 says “… but a false witness is deceitful.” Psalms 5:6 says that God abhors those who deceive people without even the pang of conscience. And in Proverbs 13:5, it says “A righteous man hates falsehood ….” Therefore, we should not lie to each other. Lying is an act of the old self. We must take off our old self (Col. 3:9).
We should not tell lies. Rather, we must be truthful witnesses (Prov. 14:25). We must be faithful witnesses and not lie (v. 5). Rather, we must save lives (14:25) by speaking the truth (12:17). We must keep in mind the words of Proverbs 12:19 – “Truthful lips will be established forever, But a lying tongue is only for a moment.”
Today we thought about the three sins of the fool. The sins of the fool are (1) to hurry his footsteps with zeal that is without knowledge, (2) to blame God after he has done wrong, and (3) to lie. I hope and pray that we all act carefully with knowledge and zeal with the wisdom of God, never blame God, and speak the truth as truthful witnesses of the Lord.