“Fools Shout Down!” – FBC Morning Light (9/21/23)

Faith Baptist Church

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Well a good Thursday morning to you. Today in our Bible reading we're reading Isaiah 49 and 50, 2

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Thessalonians 2 and Proverbs 18. Today I want to do something I rarely do, and that's look at a passage in two of these different readings.

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First of all I just want to encourage you from a couple of verses in Isaiah 49. It's promised from the

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Lord. Listen to what the Lord says. Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me and my

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Lord has forgotten me. Do you ever feel like that? You ever feel like the Lord has forgotten you in your circumstances, whatever they are?

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Well listen to what he says in response. Can a woman forget her nursing child and not have compassion on the son of her womb?

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Surely they may forget, the Lord says, yet I will not forget you.

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See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. Listen, do you know

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Christ as your Savior? Are you a follower of Jesus? Have you turned from your sin and called upon Him to save you from your sin?

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Well, Jesus died on the cross for you, and the nails pierced his hands, and those nail piercings have your name inscribed in the palms of his hands.

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He said, your name is inscribed in the palms of my hands, and I will not forget you.

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I don't know what you're going through today. Maybe some real difficulty, maybe some hardship, maybe it's been going on for a long time, and maybe you're just really feeling a sense of despair and feeling like,

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I think maybe the Lord's just forgotten about me. He hasn't. You're his.

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He has not forgotten you. Let me just encourage you with that today. Then I also want to look at a verse in Proverbs 18, totally unrelated to what we just shared, that word of encouragement.

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This is more a verse that gives us some insight into the phenomenon in our culture.

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Are you getting a little weary of the shouting? I mean, it almost seems like you can't have a reasonable conversation with somebody who disagrees with you on the merits of an argument.

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You can't express a difference of opinion about...it could be just about anything, right?

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Just about anything, without the other person getting all bent out of shape and angry and all that kind of stuff.

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Have you seen the videos of...this usually happens with conservative speakers, but I've seen it in too many places, where a conservative speaker will, politically or theologically conservative, will go to a venue like a college campus, a secular college campus, and because of that speaker's conservative views, a bunch of hecklers show up to his speech, and they will not allow him to speak.

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They just shout and scream and make accusations and call him a racist or call him a homophobe or whatever else, just screaming these things at the speaker to the point where he just walks off the stage.

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Or, police officials, security people, if they're going to do it, some of these places they don't even have security personnel come and take the hecklers away.

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Sometimes they do, but the speaker can't get a word in edgewise.

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They don't allow him to give his speech. All right, what's behind that?

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Proverbs 18, verse 2. A fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart.

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What you're seeing when people are shouting down the opposition like that, you're seeing fools in living color.

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They're fools because they will not seek understanding. They won't try to understand, where's this person coming from?

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Where does he get his conclusions? How does he come to the place he comes to? No, not interested in that.

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All they want to do is express their own heart. They want to voice their own opinion.

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They don't want to allow the opinion of somebody else. The opinion that contradicts theirs, they feel unsafe, and so therefore they have to shout that person down.

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Such people are fools. Plain and simple. This is what it says.

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Again, a fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart.

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It's widespread behavior today of people shouting down those who try to reason with them.

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It's simply the behavior of fools. No pleasure in understanding. No, not at all.

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Only in voicing their own opinion. Let's be sure we're not like that, the opposite side of the spectrum.

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Our Father and our God, give us wisdom, we pray. We not be not like the fool who is not interested in understanding.

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Then, Father, I pray also for the person who today may be going through a really difficult period of life and time, and they may feel like that you've forgotten them.

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Encourage them today, those who are your children, with the truth that you will not forget your own, that you have engraved them in the palm of your hand.

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This we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. Alright, well listen, you have a great rest of your