SERMON: Don't Trust Your Eyes

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Mourn's Day Sermon. And we pray that as we declare the Word of God, that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and you would catch a greater vision of who Christ is.

May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you. Well, last week we began our little mini series on Christian wisdom, because after nine chapters of expositional preaching through the opening chapters of the Book of Proverbs, we divided the remaining chapters into the great categories that Solomon repeatedly addresses.

Things like worship and education, communication, work, appetite, household government, civil government, and wisdom itself. Well, last week we began this mini series on wisdom by beginning the work of gathering every passage in Proverbs that directly addresses it.

And we didn't cover all of them last week when we began that work. And throughout this series, we will be working with one sort of governing definition of what wisdom is. Christian wisdom, this is too long to write, so you can get it later from me.

Christian wisdom is the Spirit-wrought ability to know the truth and to live according to the truth in every area of life. It is seeing God, ourselves, and His world as they truly are, and then living consistently with that high and holy vision.

Wisdom is granted by God through the fear of the Lord, and it causes man to faithfully walk before God once his eyes are open. That means that every wise phrase in Proverbs is simply the fear of the Lord taking visible shape in every facet of ordinary life.

It's the fear of the Lord walking itself out in the mind, in the mouth, in the appetite, in the marriage, the household, the workplace, the church, the marketplace, and the nation. It is the reverence for God becoming thought, becoming speech, becoming habits of discipline, obedience and courage and justice and faithful dominion.

And as we've already seen, wisdom finds its fullest expression in Jesus Christ, who is the wisdom of God, who perfectly knew the Father, perfectly loved the Father, perfectly obeyed the Father, never misjudged any circumstance, never misunderstood anything, never spoke a foolish word, never entertained a disordered appetite, never took a single step outside the Father's will.

He is wisdom incarnate. And He is, as Scripture says, the wisdom of God, the eternal wisdom through which the entire creation was made, the high and exalted wisdom who gives wisdom to His people through His Holy Spirit.

And last week, we saw how Christ begins that work by bringing the fear of the Lord into the human heart and how when the fear of the Lord comes into the heart, it begins the process of bringing wisdom.

And when wisdom comes into our life, it opens up our eyes so that we can love and cherish and obey the things of God. That's the three-part process. Christ brings the fear of God into our heart. The fear of God produces wisdom and wisdom opens the eyes.

Now, we saw last week how all of us were born dead in our trespasses and sins and that dead men do not perform self-resurrections, at least not anyone but one. We were born spiritually blind and all of that blindness cannot be cured with prescription glasses.

If you don't believe me, you can ask Arushna, that people who are born blind don't fix their eyes themselves. And the carnal man certainly cannot perform the soul-level spiritual surgery upon himself that is needed to awaken dead eyes, which means that all of us born dead, born in our trespasses, born blind, are waiting for a miracle to happen outside of ourself in order to give us the eyes to see the things of God.

And as such, all of us exist, move, have our being and are dependent upon a miraculous event called a resurrection that happens outside of us, done to us by the resurrected Christ. So by the Spirit, He brings the fear of God into our affections and into our mind, into our fingertips.

And with those new affections, that fear begins to make us wise and with growing wisdom, our eyes begin to open so that we see, love, and cherish what God would have us see, love, and cherish. We begin to see the beauty of God, which is an astounding thing, right?

God no longer becomes a stale or sanitary concept that we believe somehow externally or somehow something that exists in the theology books. When the wisdom of God begins coming into your life and opening your eyes, you begin to behold God as beautiful, as glorious, as wonderful, as something that causes every cell in your body to come alive.

And here's the thing, we don't always live there, but maybe, and I pray that you've had moments where you've been there, where God was beautiful to you. And then imagine taking that moment and distilling it down so that every moment was like that, but 10 times better, a million times better, and that is what heaven is when your eyes and the scales that keep them from seeing and beholding His beauty, see Him truly forever.

With those new eyes, we also begin to see the ugliness of sin. We begin to love what God loves, we begin to hate what God hates, and we begin to long to walk according to His precepts and what He has commanded in His Word.

That's what we saw last week. But this week, we need to look at the opposite side of the equation. Last week, I was going to include this week's material and last week's sermon, and I did what I always do, and I made it too much, so we have to do a part two of part one.

So the series grew, unfortunately, well, fortunately. So this week, we're looking at the opposite side of the equation. Last week, we asked, how can blind men see? This week, we're gonna ask the question, why blind men are so convinced that they already see?

Last week, we looked at why blind men can't see. This week, we're talking about why blind men think they can. And we must examine the eyes of the natural man, the eyes of the soul that Christ has not yet given sight to, the carnal eyes, the eyes that are dead still in their trespasses, that cannot discern the things of God.

And we will see why those eyes are completely untrustworthy and why following eyes that are not illuminated by the Spirit of God will lead you to nothing but destruction and death. But here's the tricky part, because this warning is not only for unbelievers.

Even after Christ has opened up our eyes as Christians, He does not immediately, totally, and ultimately remove every remaining trace of pride and self-interest and fear and lust and indwelling sin. As Paul says, I do the things I don't wanna do, I don't do the things I should do.

So there is an aspect of us that is still addicted to death. So as I preach this message, it will be overwhelmingly pointed at the carnal man who is not regenerate, whose eyes lead him to death. But I want you to remember that in small ways, your eyes still do the same and still crave the same and still want the same.

In seasons of your life, even as a believer, your carnal flesh still wants to shipwreck your experience with God, to make you depressed, to make you discouraged, to make you dejected, to make you lacking in hope, to make you overwhelmed in fear.

And my prayer is that you would reject it in Jesus' name. The Christian has been given true sight. The Christian has not been given glorified sight. So we have to still maintain that warfare. Our mind is being renewed, our mind is not fully renewed.

Our senses are being trained, but they're not fully trained. Our wisdom is growing, but it's not in completion yet. And until glory, every believer must continue submitting everything you see, taste, and touch to the Word of God in order for your vision not to blur.

And with that, Solomon is not putting sight itself on trial as though grace that God has given us is not enough, it's not what he's doing, but he's most certainly exposing the insufficiency and the insanity of trusting yourself.

He's exposing the old sinful habit of appointing our own perceptions as the highest authority over reality and treating what seems right in our own eyes as though it therefore must be right before God.

The natural man does this absolutely because he has no spiritual sight at all, but immature Christians and Christians who fall into these patterns do it as well. And we must repent. So therefore, Solomon speaks to both the unbeliever and the believer by teaching us that human judgment, when it is independent of the Word of God, independent of the Spirit of God, leads nowhere but death.

It leads into disobedience instead of obedience. It leads into foolishness instead of wisdom. It leads to death instead of life. And what makes this condition so particularly dangerous is that spiritually blind men do not know that they are blind.

They don't know that they're blind. They don't experience blindness as darkness. They think that they have sight. They believe that everything is perfectly clearly visible to them, even more clear than you.

They feel confident in their own assessment. They trust the report that they see with their eyes. They assume that their motives are the ones that's clean. Their reasoning is the one that's sound. Their desires are the ones that's justified.

And their path is the one that's straight and narrow, and only the few of them can find it. The natural man does not ordinarily stumble through life saying, I'm blind, I'm foolish, I'm utterly incapable of discerning reality.

That humble reasoning is only available to the Christian who cries out to God, I am nothing, I need you. The natural man, on the other hand, says, I know it. I know what I saw. I know how I feel. I know what is right.

I've thought this through, made my decisions. And that is the great danger that Solomon is pointing us to. He takes the one star witness that you've trusted more than anything else, you, and he puts you on trial and says that you are actually not who you think you are, and you're not trustworthy at all.

He shows how our perception and our natural vision is most untrustworthy when it is deviating from the Word of God. He takes your eyes, your instincts, your motives, your conclusions, your internal feelings, your explanations, your confident judgments, and he brings them into the courtroom and he prosecutes them.

And this is entirely relevant for us today, is it not? The unexamined testimony of the human heart, the carnal vision of the spiritual eyes has become the highest standard of orthodoxy in our wayward society.

Our culture has coined some of the most ridiculous phrases if you think about it, live your truth. Trust your gut, you know what comes out of your guts? Trust that, be true to yourself. What does that even mean?

It feels right, do it, or if it makes you happy. Nobody says any longer with any objective standard over absolute truth or goodness what is right. Today, we ask whether marriage is worth preserving or whether it's worth preserving, or whether a job should be accepted, or whether a doctrine in the Bible should be redefined as cultural and no longer relevant, should this friendship be maintained, or should I indulge this desire or starve this appetite simply by how it makes me feel?

If your heart tells you today, this is the way society thinks, if your heart tells you today to leave your wife, do it, because you have to be true to yourself. If your heart tells you to abandon your responsibilities, do it.

If your heart tells you to turn away from God, If your heart tells you to reject the clear teachings of Scripture, do it, because you can't be held to a standard of right and wrong, you are the standard of right and wrong.

You are the arbiter of truth. If your heart tells you that obedience is harmful, good for you. If restraint is oppressive, if repentance is unnecessary, if your desires form the basis of your identity, good,.

Sometimes it makes you feel a certain way. But here's the irony, because 3 ,000 years before our culture ever learned to say, follow your heart, Solomon was already saying, don't, because it's perhaps the dumbest thing you could ever do.

Jeremiah says your heart is increasingly sick. It's so bad, you can't even know it. Follow your heart. It's like running off the cliff's edge and thinking that somehow you're going to turn into a bird.

So today, I want to cross-examine our heart through the scripture, and I want to do this in a couple of different ways. First, I want us to see that the road that the carnal man is going on, he thinks it leads to life, it actually leads to death.

Second, I want to show that the mirror by which the carnal man looks at himself is polluted and he can't even see himself rightly. Third, I want us to see that rage or anger against God is actually the telltale heart that you are not in him.

And then finally, I want to stand at the foot of the cross and see the only man in history who ever followed the way that was right. It led him to death so that you could receive his life. So if you will, turn with me or not turn with me.

There's a lot of texts, so I'm going to read them to you, and then we will jump in. Proverbs 14, 12, there is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Proverbs 19, 3, the foolishness of man ruins his way and his heart rages against the Lord.

Proverbs 21, 16, a man who wanders from the way of understanding will rest in the assembly of the dead. Proverbs 26, 12, do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than him. Proverbs 27, 1, do not boast about tomorrow for you do not know what a day may bring forth.

Proverbs 27, 19, as in water face reflects face, the heart of man reflects man. Proverbs 27, 21, the crucible is for silver and the furnace for gold, and each is tested by the praise according him. Proverbs 28, 11, the rich man is wise in his own eyes, but the poor who has understanding sees through him.

And then Proverbs 28, 26, he who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but he who walks wisely will be delivered. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you that your word is so clear on what our natural carnal unregenerate vision is.

We may have 2020 or 2010, we may have the vision of an air force pilot, and yet we're the ones who always crash. And we always crash because our spiritual eyes do not see the things of God. Lord, help us as believers in this room to view these passages through the lens of thankfulness that these are not my reality, because in Christ we've been given vision, but Lord also help us to view them with humility, that we still wrestle with the flesh.

There are still ways in which our carnal man craves death. As Paul said in Romans 8, 13, that we must therefore put to death the deeds of the flesh so that we will live, which means if we don't put to death the misdeeds of the flesh, we die, not ultimately, not eternally, but experientially, spiritually even.

So Lord help us today to be thankful for where you've brought us, but also Lord to make war, to grab the hatchet and to hack, and to hack and hack and hack away at our flesh that desires that we go back into the death that you delivered us from.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Proverbs 14, 12 begins, there is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. So Solomon is saying that according to natural vision, according to the unaided perception of the soul of man, there's a way of doing life, a path that he could navigate through this life that appears perfectly reasonable to him, even totally good and right to him that will take him happily to the grave.

And the word that Solomon uses to communicate this concept is fascinating. The Hebrew word that he uses here is yashar, which translated in English means seems right, which is the same word that is used in the book of Psalms to communicate godliness, righteousness.

So there's a way that seems righteous to a man, but its way ends in death, which is a fascinating juxtaposition, is it not? Because we know that the road leads to death. We know that the road is not good.

We know that the road is not holy. It's not righteous. It's not godly. But in the same way that you and I look at God with eyes of affection and say that he is holy, holy, holy, is the same way that someone who is carnal looks at the path that leads to death and says, that is holy.

That is good. That is righteous, shows the depth of the depravity of man. And in that way, man, unaided by the spirit of God, is obsessed with death, fantasizes about death, cheers for death. And in his skewed moral calculus, which is perverted through the fall of man, tainted constantly by sin, the man ends up so perverting truth and goodness that life looks like death to him and death looks like life.

And this shouldn't surprise us at all, because the way that seems good to a man is what's ruling today's culture entirely. Because now we say that a man can become woman, that leads to death, sterility, brokenness.

We say abortion is healthcare, which leads to actual death. We say that children can be chemically castrated because that's what represents their authentic self that leads to death. Elderly people in Canada can be euthanized, leads to death.

They put harmful chemicals in our food supply, leading to death. They give us vaccines that cause all kinds of diseases and abnormalities, it leads to death. The way of carnal man, unaided by Holy Scripture, can only ever choose the path of death and not life.

Dead hearts only choose death. Only living hearts want life. And that's what makes this proverb actually so scary, because the road that leads to death doesn't come with a warning sign. It looks good.

It seems right. The only way that you know that it isn't is when you go barreling over the edge into death, which is what makes this proverb sound and actually be so much worse than it reads on the page at first.

Because the lie does not come dressed as a lie. It comes as yashar. It comes as righteous. It looks good. It looks holy. It appears like something that's good for me. It seems like wisdom the moment that you choose it.

And it only stops being wisdom the moment that you have to deal with its consequences. Solomon has a unique word for this moment when he says, but it's end is the way in death. The Hebrew word for end here is Aharit, which is another fascinating word because it's another word that's applied to good things.

Here, both passage, both words are applied to things that are good and righteous and holy because the wicked man's perception is so morally flawed that he thinks evil is good. And he thinks up is down and left is right.

He doesn't know his left hand from his right. Solomon uses this word exactly two times in his writing. This word Aharit. For instance, in Proverbs 24, 14, Solomon tells his son that if he, if he finds wisdom, there will be an Aharit for him.

There will be a future for him. There will be a hope for him. He's saying that there will be an end for you, but not end as in termination. There will be an end as in a destination, a good end, a holy end, a righteous end for you, a teleological end for you.

But in Proverbs 14, 12, the exact same word, same author, same book, Aharit means end as in a death sentence, not end as in a destination. It's not a good end. One is a good end. One is a good plan. One is a good purpose.

The other is a terrifying ruinous destruction event. And it's the exact same word used in both because both people think they're headed to the same destination. Both people think they're heading to whatever they define as paradise.

And yet when they get there, only one ends up where he thought he was going. The others plunged into ruin. And the point is fairly simple. Every road, every choice, every life is heading for an end. Every road has a destination in mind.

Some roads lead to life. Some roads lead to death. The only difference is do you have sight? That's the difference. Every decision, every relationship, every doctrine, every deal that you shook hands on has an cumulative outcome that is leading you to some end, waiting for you to get there.

And you will arrive based off of the choices that you have made. And the choices that you make will either be formed by heavenly vision, spirit guided wisdom, or by the carnal man, which calls good evil and evil good.

And here's the fascinating part about this one, because the one with wisdom with true sight can see where the path is heading beforehand. He doesn't have to wait till he gets there in order to understand that he's going on the path of life.

The one with wisdom can see the steps and know that he's on the right path. But the fool is the one who thinks he's on the right path and doesn't figure it out to the end. Which makes this verse pretty terrifying, especially if you are living in naivete and ignorance, setting your face towards the wrong end, believing that you're right, having assurance that you're right, being convinced that you are right.

But if you're on the path to death, the sobering reality is you don't discover your blunder until it's too late. Every sense, every perception you had failed you in the end, and you did not know until you got there.

Solomon repeats this phrase verbatim, verbatim, word for word, exactly the same in Proverbs 16, 25. There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. That's the exact same phrase in a different verse.

And it's not an unnecessary repetition. If you know anything about the Bible, when you go into God's holy throne room and the seraphim are chanting, holy, holy, holy, it's not like Isaiah fell asleep at the pen, woke up and wrote the same word, fell asleep at the pen, because he's an archaelectic apparently, and then wrote the same word.

And then, oops, sorry, I tripled it. No, when repetitions happen in the Bible, there is an escalation. There's an intensification that God is not just holy. He is eminently holy. He is universally and globally and cosmically holy.

When Jesus says, Martha, Martha, He's not stuttering. He's saying, I know you, I love you. So when we have repetition in the Bible, we have intensification. So the way that seems right to a man ends in death.

He's saying it twice because it is so sealed that it's not up for debate. It's irrevocable. If you follow the rightness of your own sight, you will end in death. Unmistakably, it's repeated twice. And this is where so many people will quibble.

Yeah, I get it, but it sounds like he's talking to a reckless vigilante kind of person, the person who isn't as careful as I am, the person who doesn't anticipate the outcomes of the future like I do.

I'm in game theory mode right now. I know what's happening. I'm sure my life's heading in the right direction. That's exactly what the fool says. You're saying the same things the fool says, and he's going the wrong way too.

There is a way that seems right to him because he believes he's being careful. He believes that he's aimed at the right direction. And until he goes Thelma and Louise style over the cliffs of eternity and he realizes he was wrong.

Do you really believe that you can trust your own opinion? How do you know for sure that you aren't also one of the ones with compromised vision? Because the fool says he sees as well. And this is what makes this passage so terrifying.

And it's also what makes Proverbs 21 6 an appropriate addendum to it. A man who wonders from the way of understanding will rest in the assembly of the dead. The man who wonders. Solomon is not saying that people leap into death, at least not ordinarily.

He's not saying that men say, I hate knowledge. I hate understanding. I want to be stupid. He's not saying that. He's not saying that there are people who run around saying, I love insanity. Some people do, but it's pretty rare.

He's saying that they wander off of truth. He's saying that they by nature drift and they can't help but drift without even knowing what's happening, without any active thought, without any sort of mental connection to it.

They are drifting, drifting, drifting until they are too late to course correct. Here's an example from my childhood. There was this time that we were at the ocean at Holden Beach, North Carolina, which was a really small and podunky little beach, but I love it.

The little putt-putt has the worn places in the mat because it's good, not because they don't take care of their property anyway. I was swimming in the ocean because I loved swimming in the ocean. When I was three, this is not parenting advice.

My dad threw me in the ocean and I learned to swim, not parenting advice. Things are different now. That was the 80s. I loved a boogie board. I loved to get on my little boogie board and ride the waves.

And if I forgot it at home or if it was broken, I would body surf the waves. And I would love to do that because the waves would get really choppy at times. And I would love that. But there was this time where my mom looked at me and she said that, Kendall, your physical body has to be completely in alignment with my chair.

You have to stay lined up with my chair at all times so that whenever I look up from whatever I'm doing, I want to see you right in front of me. And I sort of ignorantly agreed. I said, okay, not knowing the powers of the forces that were at play, even underneath my own body.

So I went on in enthusiasm, playing in the water, not paying attention, not looking, not looking up to see if my mom and I were corresponding to the same plane. And in my foolhardy commitment to my own situation, forgetting to pay attention to my location, totally immersed in what I was doing, I ended up drifting 40 yards down the beach before my angry red-faced mother came and got me.

Without any thought whatsoever, I was dragged and drifted away from my destination. There was another time that this happened, because I don't learn my lesson apparently, where an undertow pulled me under and no one saw me.

And I was fighting for my life at like 10 years old. I thought I was going to die. I had drifted off course and I was yanked down to a place that I could not come back up from. This is what is happening to the carnal mind.

They think that they're in the right place. They're having a great time. They're enjoying their existence. And yet they're drifting, drifting, drifting until it's too late. That's what Solomon is saying.

The man who thinks his way is right will end up without any faculty of perception, not any red flag, no warning bell, no siren, no alarm, will inevitably wander off his path and his home will be in the assembly of the dead.

He's going to do so well-intentioned, but he's going to do so at his own peril. And that's what's terrifying to look up and see that the currents of death have pulled you so far off course that you can't get back and you're going to drown in the undertow.

That's what's terrifying. And for this reason, you don't have to be an Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin to end up in the assembly of the dead. You only need to have vision that is unaided by the spirit of God and to believe with all your being that you are doing it right until you realize that you aren't.

That point alone should make us skeptical of our own vision, but it gets even worse than that because our vision is what we do. Solomon is now going to turn and address who we are. The passages we've considered so far tell us the problem about the what, but not the who.

Now he's going to talk about the who. Solomon has three Proverbs, again, repetition. The first one says this, Proverbs 27, 19, as in water, face reflects face. So the heart of man reflects man. So maybe some of you will remember this verse in our mini series on education.

We talked about how parents can look into the little pool that is their children and can see the reflection of who they are so that they can begin teaching them who they are to become. That's true. And that's a wonderful application of that verse.

But there's also something that's much more devastating in this verse. Because when a man bends over a still pool of water and he uses his own vision, he can only see his face staring back at him. The water doesn't invent the face.

The water doesn't create the wrinkles. The water doesn't alter the features or manufacture the expression. It simply reveals what is already there. Solomon says that in the same way that when you look at a mirror and when you look in a still pool, it reveals who you really are in the same way your heart reveals exactly who you are.

Your heart reveals what you love, not your mouth. Your mouth can say all kinds of things. I love God. What's your heart say? Your heart's the one that leads your body, not your head. Your heart reveals what you love.

Your heart reveals what you fear. Your heart reveals what you worship. Your heart reveals what you crave when no one's watching you. Your heart reveals what you envy. Your heart reveals what you will excuse and make allowances for.

Your heart reveals what you are willing to destroy in order to get what you want. And in that way, the heart is not merely a cardiac organ in the center of your chest. It is not an innocent prisoner in your rib cage, dragged around by your actions.

In fact, it's the control center that controls your actions, which means that your foolish choices are not merely mistakes that happened outside of you. I don't know why I did that. I do because you loved it.

I was a mistake. I committed adultery. No mistake is tripping and falling into the street. Adultery is not a mistake. It is a passionate love affair with something ugly that led your body into something worse.

The words coming out of our mouth actually don't reveal who we are in the way that our heart does. The bitterness that you can tenuously rehearse reveals who you really are. The praise for other people that you can't bear without cringing reveals who you really are.

The correction that that person gives you that sends you into a fit of rage, that reveals who you are. That secret desire or that lust or that thing that you can't share with anyone else, that reveals who you are.

That path that you repeatedly go down reveals who you are. That's why the problem is deeper than physical and even spiritual side. It's deeper than that. It's deeper than just looking at a face in the water.

It's deeper because the heart underneath the vision is actually what is so polluted that perverts the vision. It's the center of the wrongness of man. And Jesus even said the same thing. He declared that evil thoughts and that murder and adultery and theft and false witness and slander proceed out of what?

The heart. He's saying that there's something up underneath our actions, up underneath our vision that's propelling them towards wickedness and evil. The mouth speaks what is already full in the heart.

The feet wander because the heart has already departed and left the harbor. We walk down crooked roads because we love them. This is humbling. When you admit to someone that you lied, have you ever said I lied because I loved it?

Or do you start immediately making excuses? I lied because I was scared or I lied because I needed to make sure that my appearances were, and I'm sorry. Okay, maybe, but you lied because you love it. You hated that person because you love it.

You musted because you love it. Being really, truly honest with ourselves, that is the mechanism by which you sin is a love for disordered pleasure. And that's scary, isn't it? Can you imagine saying to your wife, I'm sorry I sinned against you because I loved hurting you in that moment.

Like you don't write that on a Hallmark card. Sorry, honey, I loved it. This is exactly why Solomon adds a few verses later in Proverbs 26, 12. Do you see a man who's wise in his own eyes? There's more hope for a fool than him.

If you know anything about the book of Proverbs, the fool is the villain. He's the bottom rung of the hierarchy of Solomon's hatred, creatures that disobey God. And yet he's saying here, the man who's wise in his own eyes is worse off than him.

Solomon is not comparing a genuinely wise person with a fool. That's an easy comparison. He's comparing a fool with a man who thinks he's not a fool. He's comparing a man who is foolish with a man who thinks he is wise.

And between those two men, Solomon gives the advantage to the fool every time. And that's staggering because when you look at the surrounding verses, 11 verses surrounding that line, a fool cannot handle honor.

A fool sometimes require severe beatings that are used on animals. A fool mishandles Proverbs. A fool repeatedly and stupidly returns to his vomit like a dog. So Solomon's not softening the language on what the word fool actually means.

He's not portraying the fool as somehow reasonable or humble or easily correctable. He is dragging the fool's stupidity into the light and showcasing it from every possible angle. But even with that, he's saying that the man who thinks he's wise in his own eyes is worse than that.

Because the fool displays his foolishness openly without pretense. The self-wise man looks at his folly and calls it wisdom. He's more deluded than deluded. The problem is not merely that he's wrong.

The problem is that he believes wrong is right. The entire, it's an entirely deeper stage of depravity. Someone ignorantly bumbling down the road to destruction and someone whistling Dixie thinking that they're on the way to heaven.

This man is deliberately, intentionally, and pridefully ignoring correction, believing in his omniscient rightness. If you correct this man, you're the problem. If you rebuke him, he concludes that you're wrong.