Proverbs 26
McGeeCHAPTER 26This first section deals with the fool. The Bible, especially Proverbs, has a great deal to say about the fool. This does not refer to the person who is mentally deficient. God is not talking to the person who is simple-minded or who has some mental aberration. The fool that God is talking to is a man who may be brilliant. In fact he may have his Ph.D. degree. David wrote, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God …” (Psa_14:1). A fool is a man who, though he may be brilliant, is an atheist. The Hebrew word for fool means “insane.” The man who says there is no God is an insane man. Intermarriage within a family can sometimes produce very brilliant offspring but can also produce mental deficiency. In the early days of a church I pastored in Tennessee one of the pastors had married into the governor’s family where there had been much intermarrying. As a result, there was insanity in the family. The pastor had two daughters, and they were brilliant. They were old ladies when I was a young pastor there, living way out in the country, up in the hills of middle Tennessee. I was holding meetings in that area, and they wanted me to come by to see them.
I have never met two women who were more brilliant than those ladies. They knew all about me, about the church I was serving, about the Bible, literature, music, current events. It was amazing. But there was something odd there. The pastor who went with me had warned me not to be surprised at what I would see. When we went in, we had to shoo the chickens off the chairs so we could sit down.
Then we had to be rather careful where we sat. While I was sitting there talking to them, a cow stuck her head in from the kitchen door. There was a horse in the bedroom, and there were goats all aroundI didn’t see them, but I sure could tell they were there. The sisters had a mental aberration, you see. Now that is not the kind of thing the Lord means when he calls a person a fool. He means someone who has rejected Him. God calls that insanity.
Proverbs 26:1
One of the marks of a fool is that he doesn’t mind sacrificing his honor. Candidly, he has none.
Proverbs 26:2
Predictions that certain things will come to pass do not always happen. By the way, we have a lot of so-called prophets in our midst today. They keep telling us what is going to happen in the next few years. Some of it may come to pass, that’s true, but they are not getting their information from Godbecause sometimes they are wrong, and God’s prophet is never wrong (see Duet. Deu_18:20-22).
Proverbs 26:3
That is a good one. The horse and the ass can be trained. They will respond. The only thing a fool will respond to is real discipline.
Proverbs 26:4
When I was a boy, our town atheist enjoyed pointing out contradictions in the Bible. This was one that he used. My friend, there is no contradiction here at all. These two proverbs simply set before us two possible lines of conduct in response to a fool. I get many letters from many kinds of people. I answer some of the letters, and some of the letters I do not answer. I must make a decision about them. I conclude that some of the letters I get come from fools. If I were to answer such a letter according to its folly, I would make myself a fool. If you lay yourself wide open to a fool, you are a fool yourself. I had this experience recently. I received a letter from a brilliant man who had some impressions about me that were entirely wrong. I thought I should try to correct him and tell him the truth, so I responded according to verse Pro_26:5. I answered his letter. Then I received a letter back from him, and I have never seen such a foolish letter. It made me feel like a fool for having written to him in the first place. I do not intend to answer his second letter. I am using verse Pro_26:4 for my decision. So you see, there are two lines of conduct set before us, and we need to determine whether we should respond or should not respond.
Proverbs 26:6
You make a mistake if you send a message by the wrong individual!
Proverbs 26:7
I would like to extend this to the interpretation of parables. There are interpretations of parables in the Bible that are taught by some professors which tempt me to say, “So is a parable in the mouth of fools.”
Proverbs 26:8
Giving honor to a fool is simply giving him ammunition.
Proverbs 26:9
A thorny branch in the hand of a drunken man will probably wound him as well as others. The same is true of a fool who has the position of a teacher. He will hurt himself and those who listen.
Proverbs 26:10
We can be very sure of the ultimate outcome. God will take care of things and handle all these matters. Here is something rather frightful.
Proverbs 26:11
I know of nothing as harsh as that. It is repulsive and sickening even to think of this. This is the viewpoint that Peter presents to us concerning the hypocrite: “But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2Pe_2:22). Remember that when the prodigal son was in the pigpen, he knew that he was in the wrong place, and he returned to his home. Suppose when he returned home, he brought along with him one of the pigs from the pigpen. The little pig would not enjoy the father’s house. Eventually he would go to the pigpen. Eventually, all the hypocrites in the church will be revealed, and there are many who only pretend to be sons of Godthere is no question about that. A man told me that the reason he did not join the church was that the church was filled with hypocrites. I said, “No one knows that better than I do. But that is no reason why you shouldn’t be in the church. You can’t hide behind a hypocrite. You should be in there revealing what is genuine.” I have talked about hypocrisy in the church before, and I receive letters from folk who don’t like me to mention it. But the Bible teaches that there is a security for the believer, and also there is insecurity for the make-believer. It is to the hypocrite that the proverb refers.
Proverbs 26:12
There is something worse than a fool and that is an egomaniac, one who has a high opinion of himself.
Proverbs 26:20
Bitterness is repeatedly stirred up in certain groups because there are certain ones in there who keep putting a little wood on the fire. If no one were fueling it, the fire would go out; the strife would cease.
Proverbs 26:21
There are certain folks who cause strife as soon as they start attending a church or join a church. You will find them in the Lord’s work today. They seem to stir things up all the time. They are never really interested in the Word of God, although they may pretend to be.
Proverbs 26:22
A better translation is, “The words of a talebearer are as dainty morsels, and go down into the innermost parts of the belly.” People like to hear those choice little bits of gossip. They like to hear them, but they are hard to digest and will finally make them sick. A real child of God does not wish to hear things that are ugly. Now here we have one of the longest and strongest sections against hypocrisy, and it refers to hypocrisy among God’s people.
Proverbs 26:23
There are folk who make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ, but who are not really God’s children. We call them hypocrites because they are pretending to be what they are not. They are phonies. But they should not disturb those inside or outside the church for the very fact that a counterfeit necessitates a genuine and valuable original. No one counterfeits pennies or even one-dollar bills, as far as I know. They do counterfeit twenty-dollar bills. They only counterfeit that which is valuable. So we should not be surprised to see counterfeit Christians. This cluster of proverbs describes the phony and warns against him. He is the man who is two-faced. He will flatter you, yet in his heart he will hate you. It was Tacitus who made the statement, “It is common for men to hate those whom they have injured.” Dr. Ironside puts it like this: “Conscious of having wronged another, and being determined not to confess it, the dissembler will store his heart with hatred against the object of his wrongdoing. To hide his wretched feelings, such a one will flatter with his lips while all the time he is plotting the ruin of his victim.” An example of flattery and hypocrisy in the Bible is Haman. Remember how he flattered. This man plotted to destroy an entire people, including the queen upon the throne. He was an evil man. He flattered the king, and yet it was obvious that he was planning to overthrow the king. Hypocrisy is found in Christian circles, and we need to recognize it. There is no use covering over this. There is probably no place in the world where there is so much cover-up as in the church. We try to act as if there were no wrong there. We think that if we ignore it, it will go away. We feel defeated if anyone mentions the fact that there is hypocrisy. We feel that we in ourselves are defeated if we acknowledge that even in our hearts there is this root of bitterness sometimes. Christians need to face up to these sins, and the proverbs are good at making us face up to them.