WWUTT 1409 The Woman Folly is Loud (Proverbs 9:13-18)

The way of wisdom and the way of folly offers the same reward. The only difference between the two is that wisdom can actually give it to you, folly is deceiving you with lies when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the word.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our

Q &A on Friday. Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in the book of Proverbs today.

It is April Fool's Day, and so we're going to be talking about fools. We have one little section of Proverbs 9 to finish up, and it is describing the way of the fool or the way of folly.

As with the last couple of weeks we've been in Proverbs 9, I'm going to go ahead and read through the whole chapter.

We begin reading about wisdom, Proverbs 9 verse 1, Wisdom has built her house.

She has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts. She has mixed her wine.

She has also set her table. She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places of the town.

Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. To him who lacks sense, she says, come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine

I have mixed. Leave your simple ways and live and walk in the way of insight.

Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury.

Do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you. Reprove a wise man and he will love you.

Give instruction to a wise man and he will be wiser still. Teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the

Holy One is insight. For by me your days will be multiplied and years will be added to your life.

If you are wise, you are wise for yourself. If you scoff, you alone will bear it.

The woman folly is loud. She is seductive and knows nothing.

She sits at the door of her house. She takes a seat on the highest places of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way.

Whoever is simple, let him turn in here. And to him who lacks sense, she says, stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

There's a lot of good contrast going on here in Proverbs chapter 9, which is why I think it's valuable every time we've come to a study of this particular chapter that we read the whole thing.

Last week, we look at the section that goes from verses 7 through 12. And there in verse 10, it says, the fear of the

Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.

So think of what the contrast to that would be. We have the contrast here between wisdom and folly. That's the main contrast that's being put before us.

We don't really see a contrast here in verse 10, but what would be the opposite of it?

Okay, let me read it again. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the

Holy One is insight. So what would be contrary to that? That to not desire

God would be the beginning of foolishness, to deny God, to reject him.

As I said, we're talking about fools today. And one of the verses that most commonly goes along with April Fool's Day, at least

I see this every year on social media, somebody is always quoting Psalm 14, 1.

The fool says in his heart, there is no God. They are corrupt.

They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. The person who rejects

God or who does not think that he is there or that he will not judge, that he will not pour out his wrath on the ungodly, that there is no hell, that there are no ultimate consequences for the wicked things that we do, that is a person who in their heart has said there is no

God. They may acknowledge it with their lips, but what you see in their life is abominable deeds because they don't actually believe that God is going to do something about the wickedness that they pursue.

So they are corrupt, it says there in Psalm 14, 1. Now, as I mentioned, this verse

I hear a lot on April Fool's Day. It's most commonly attributed to atheists, but the reality is what's being talked about here is more the person who says with their mouth there is a

God, but says in their heart there is no God. An atheist reflects outwardly something that they most certainly believe inwardly.

They don't believe that there's a God either, that they can continue to do what they do and there's not going to be any judgment for their actions.

So they'll say with their mouth what they say with their heart, but then there are others that are deceived in a different way and they will speak with their mouth what is not in their heart.

And I see many who will profess to know God or be Christians or followers of Christ, even people that will go to church.

But you look at their lifestyle and they have no fear of God. In their heart, they have determined that there is no

God, at least not the God of the Bible, because my God is only loving.

He is merciful and gracious. He would never pour out his wrath on me.

He certainly would not send me to an eternal hell. What kind of a monstrous God would cast a person into eternal fire, right?

That's you've heard people say something like that before, haven't you? The kind of God they worship is not the

God of the Bible, and therefore they worship their own God. R .C. Sproul once said, the most brazen lie of all is the lie people tell themselves.

I have nothing to worry about from the wrath of God. My God is a

God of love. If that is your thought, your God is an idol, unquote.

The God of the Bible is a God of love, but that's not all he is.

He will also pour out his wrath on the ungodly. Those who rebel against God and go their own way, they cannot say they cannot.

They cannot rely on this belief. They have that God is never going to punish them for their wicked deeds.

If they do not repent and come to Christ and follow after their savior, then they most certainly will perish under the judgment of God.

The Lord said in Malachi 2, 17, you have wearied the Lord with your words, but you say, how have we wearied him by saying everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the

Lord and he delights in them or by asking, where is the

God of justice? My friends, God has revealed himself in his word and he is everything.

His word says he is from Genesis to Revelation, the person that doesn't like certain things about God that they find in the

Bible and instead they want to write their own God. They have said in their heart that there is no

God. There's not that God, certainly not the God of the Bible. There's this God that I've invented for myself, which is really no

God at all. So that's what the fool says in his heart. The fear of the

Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So therefore, to deny God is the height of foolishness.

Proverbs 9, 10, again, the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. So ignorance about God is therefore foolishness.

So we go from there to our contrast in the way of the fool in verses 13 through 18.

And it says here in verse 13, the woman folly is loud. So what's our contrast here?

We have wisdom, the woman wisdom. That's how we started. Proverbs 9, wisdom has built her house.

She has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beast. She has mixed her wine and she has set her table.

She's set forth a feast and anyone who would dine with her will eat on the riches of this beautiful meal and never come to the end of it.

You will keep eating. You will be satisfied and yet you will still want more. That's what it's like to have the wisdom of God, to have this fellowship with God and the wisdom that he grants to all who ask of him.

James 1, 5, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all without reproach.

So we have wisdom personified at the beginning of Proverbs 9 and then toward the end of the chapter, we have foolishness personified.

Likewise a woman, but this one a fool. The woman folly is loud.

She is seductive and she knows nothing. There are people out there that want to try to make

God into a woman because, and sometimes they'll use like the illustrations that are given in Proverbs to say that God can be a woman as much as God can be depicted as a male, right?

Or with those masculine pronouns. It's funny that they don't ever depict Satan that way, even though foolishness or folly is depicted as a woman at the end of Proverbs 9.

So Satan doesn't become a woman. It's just God. Anyway, we don't want women to look bad.

We want them to look good. The woman folly is loud. She is seductive and knows nothing.

She seduces. Yes, my friends, there are women who seduce men to sin.

I know we're talking about foolishness personified here, but we've talked about the adulteress going back to chapter 7, well, chapters 5, 6 and 7.

And then we talked about, we've been talking about the woman wisdom in chapters 8 and 9, but we have the adulteress who's been presented to us earlier in Proverbs, a woman who seduces a man into sin.

There are women who do such a thing, contrary to what our culture might want to tell you right now.

There seems to be this thing going on, and I've been reading it in secular journals and Christian journals as well.

This idea being put forth that a woman is not guilty in a sinful sexual encounter.

Now the secular culture doesn't really use the word sin, but there are certain things that the culture still determines to be wrong, even though they may not use that particular word.

So again, whether it's coming from secular sources or even those that are presenting themselves as Christian sources, there's this idea that women are not guilty in sexual encounters because the man is more powerful.

He is more influential. He has the physical strength. And so if there is a sinful sexual encounter, the fault is on the man.

It is not on the woman. But what did we read here in Proverbs? We read a father warning his son that there is a woman who is attempting to seduce you.

Do not go her way because her way is the way of death. We read that earlier in Proverbs.

It comes up again here in chapter nine, verse 18. He does not know that the dead are there and her guests are in the depths of Sheol to go after the seductress, the adulteress, the woman folly will lead to death.

So there are seducing women that are out there. Don't get full of yourself in this idea that a woman can't be held accountable for some sort of sinful encounter with a man, that it's all the guy's fault and it's not the woman's fault.

The guy is going to be held accountable for his actions, but so will the woman be. And so we have this woman that is enticing the fool to come to her here.

We read about the adulteress earlier. Now we have folly, but they're both seductresses. They're both seducing.

Back in chapter seven, verse 21, with much seductive speech, she persuades him with her smooth talk.

She compels him. That was the adulteress back in chapter seven. So here foolishness is defined as a woman who is seductive.

She is loud and knows nothing. It really is quite the depiction of modern feminism as well, is it not?

The woman folly is loud. She is seductive and knows nothing. Think of the lies that have been fed to women over the last decades.

Planned Parenthood, which has rebranded abortion as women's health care.

It isn't health care. It's the murder of unborn children by the thousands every day in America.

And yet these loud lies have gone forth and seduced so many women into prostituting themselves out with wicked men and believing that this is liberty.

This is freedom. This is empowering. This is having control over my body.

It's not. You're actually enslaving yourself to your own sexual sinful pleasures.

That's what's happening there. And this is the lie that goes out from the voice of the culture. She's loud.

She's seductive, seducing you into wicked sins. She does this to women as well as to men.

And she knows nothing. You think what you're gaining from listening to this foolish voice of the age, you think what you're gaining is knowledge, some sort of empowering knowledge.

But now she knows nothing. Her way is the way of death. Verse 14. She sits at the door of her house.

She takes a seat on the highest places of the town. We've read that already, haven't we?

Look back at verse three. Wisdom has sent out her young women to call from the highest places of the town.

Now, wisdom doesn't seat herself at the highest places of the town. She sends out her young women. Who are her young women?

Well, it's the qualities of wisdom that we've read about earlier. Prudence, knowledge, discretion, counsel, insight, strength.

I'm getting that from back in chapter eight. These are the maidens of wisdom that go out and proclaim wisdom from the highest places of the town.

But the woman folly seats herself there. She takes a seat at the highest places of the town.

Calling to those who pass by who are going straight on their way. See the picture here is the one who is walking was doing fine until he went the fool's way until he listened to foolishness.

If he had not listened to foolishness, he would have been walking straight. So she calls to those who are going straight on their way.

Whoever is simple. Let him turn in here. Now that was verse four, wasn't it? This is the women, the maidens of wisdom calling from the highest places of the town.

Whoever is simple. Let him turn in here to him who lacks sense. She says, come eat of my bread and drink of the wine that I have mixed.

And the simple will gain wisdom if they listen to wisdom and turn into her house.

But there are the simple who don't listen to wisdom and they go after folly. They see the the seductiveness of folly.

They like the whole approach of the adulterous instead. Want to go that way? Oh boy, look at those pleasures.

Look at what I can get from that. It's not something that lasts. It's not something eternal, which is what wisdom offers.

It's not something that's life giving. It is a momentary pleasure, but in the end will ultimately lead to death.

The one who goes after the way of folly. So folly is calling the same way that wisdom is.

Wisdom calls. Whoever is simple. Let him turn in here. Folly calls. Whoever is simple.

Let him turn in here. This is Satan speaking the same thing that God will say using the same words that God uses, but offering something else to the person who responds.

God will call with the word to follow him. Say come and follow me and you will receive life.

And God is speaking the truth. Satan will say, come and follow me and you'll receive life.

But he's speaking a lie because what he has to offer is contrary to everything that is of God.

Satan, the adversary is against God. And so what he has to offer people will only lead to death and destruction and judgment and wrath forevermore.

It will not lead to life. So Satan is lying when he says, follow me. Jesus is offering life when he says, follow me.

So here you have that difference between wisdom and folly. Folly saying the same words, whoever is simple, let him turn in here.

And to him who lacks sense, she says, stolen water is sweet. This was wisdom before as well.

In chapter nine, verse four to him who lacks sense, she says, come and eat of my bread and drink of the wine that I have mixed.

So what wisdom has to offer is honest. This really belonged to her. Remember, she slaughtered her beasts.

She mixed her wine. But where does foolishness get the stuff that she offers?

It's stolen. She took it from somewhere else. She robbed from God and twisted it and made it her own and offers a counterfeit.

Something that is actually rotten, poisonous, looks like food, but it is laced with strychnine.

You know, the culture will actually offer, I'm talking about the secular godless culture here, will actually offer some kind of a sense of morality.

It's not that the culture doesn't believe in morality at all. They just don't believe in God's morality.

God is the one who has defined what is good and what is bad. He is the one who says this is right and that is wrong.

The secular godless culture takes what God has called wrong and they say it's right.

They take what God has said is good and they say, no, that's bad. This is the imitation morality that the culture offers.

And so therefore what they really offer, what the secular godless culture offers is immorality.

They call it morality, but it's immorality. So they steal from God the concept of right and wrong, which

God has established, and they make it something else. So now it's stolen morality. It isn't real.

They will even say, this is what you need to live, to be on the right side of history, to get the most out of life, to enjoy yourself, to be accepted by us.

But there's no real acceptance there. There's certainly no life there. And the end is the way of death.

Jesus said in John 10, 10, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly. So whatever imitation somebody offers, though, they may say, this is what you need to get the most out of life.

It actually leads to death. What Christ offers is our only rescue.

It is the only thing that is going to give us life in the present and, of course, forever more.

But going after the way of folly, when the guy follows folly, it says in Proverbs 9, 18, he does not know that the dead are there at her house, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

She's welcoming you in. She's got some pretty enticing baubles to offer, some very seductive pleasures.

But once you go there, where you end up is death. And you go down to the grave.

Christ raises us from the grave, what we deserve for our sin and our rebellion against God is judgment.

We all deserve death. We all deserve wrath to perish in an eternal hell of fire.

Jesus talked about that. It is a teaching of Christ, the doctrine of hell. But it is in knowing that this is what we deserve, that we then recognize our need for a savior.

And Jesus is that savior. Whoever turns to Christ, he will forgive our sins.

He will correct our foolishness and give us his wisdom, cleansing us from all unrighteousness.

So turn from foolishness and whatever foolish thing you've done, confess before Christ, he will forgive you, grant you wisdom and lead you in paths of righteousness for his namesake, as it says in Psalm 23.

In Christ, there is life abundantly, everlasting life with him forever in glory.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would forgive us our sins, that we would not go after the way of folly and then continue in our simple ways, but we would go after the way of Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Help us to leave our simple ways and live and walk in the way of insight to the glory of your great name.

It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. This has been When We Understand the

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