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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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?

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

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

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?

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.

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

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,

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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