Remain Teachable

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Well, I invite you to open your Bibles with me to Proverbs chapter 18 and As you know, we've been going sort of jumping from chapter to chapter in the book of Proverbs and What we have What we're doing tonight is we're going to look at four of the individual Proverbs in this chapter Because we don't have the time to look at the entire chapter and I do think that there is there is a lesson to be found That will take up all of our time in these four verses now Let me say this the title of tonight's lesson Is being a teachable man or a teachable person it's about being willing to hear The truth and have our minds moved by the truth Even if it causes us to have to readjust our opinions and That's the subject of tonight so we're going to look at verses 1 & 2 Then we're going to jump down to verse 13 and then we're going to jump down to verse 17 so those are the four passages we're going to read and I will read them now Chapter 18 verse 1 says this Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire.
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He breaks out against all sound judgment verse 2 a fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion verse 13 if One gives an answer before he hears it is his folly and shame and verse 17 The one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him So ends the reading of god's word and this is the word of the lord I brought my whiteboard up here tonight because i'm going to be talking through some ideas And I thought it might be easy if I wrote some of them down The first one I want to talk about tonight is called cognitive Dissonance cognitive dissonance Now that's probably not a phrase that many of us are familiar with but maybe you are The term cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that we feel When we are holding to two conflicting beliefs values or opinions so for instance A person who drinks too much alcohol Might know that it's bad for their health But they may continue to drink alcohol because they enjoy it by telling themselves one more won't hurt Right, and that's that's an example of cognitive dissonance.
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They know That alcohol is hurting them, but they're convincing themselves that one more Well, that's not going to hurt one more won't hurt it's like in a similar situation might be a person with diabetes a person with diabetes knows that they have to Regulate and and ingest only a certain amount of sugar and if they ingest too much it's going to hurt them But then that that one more donut Is very tempting right? And so this is an example of cognitive dissonance.
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We know one thing to be true We want something else to be true and we're struggling in our mind with that Dissonance or that back and forth bouncing between two polar opposites This also happens in regard to our beliefs We can hold a very strong opinion about something but then we are presented with new information which Contradicts our current opinion and we have three choices Anytime we hold a strong opinion and we are we are given new information We we have three choices as to what to do with that information.
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Number one.
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We can change our opinion It's the least likely thing But we can Change our opinion when we're confronted with new evidence or new information The second thing is we reject the new evidence as untrue That's just fake news That's right.
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That's the term right? We hear something it challenges us.
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We don't want to hear it.
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That's that's not real It can't be real because I I know what's real I I know the truth and you've confronted me with something new and I don't like that.
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So i'm gonna not listen and the third thing Is to live in a state of cognitive dissonance where we know This is true We want this to be true and we just live in this constant back and forth where our mind is never quite satisfied but It's how we live and that's where a lot of people do stop They just hold two conflicting ideas.
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They want one to be true They know the other one is true and they just live in that place.
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Well, the problem Is that many people if not most people? Do not want to have their opinions challenged If you can't amen that I understand but you should most people don't want to have their opinions challenged Thank you.
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Yeah, that's your People are so convinced of what they know That they deny any new information is having to be false and they're unwilling to consider that they may have been an error And people often insulate themselves by being surrounded by only people who agree with them Any dissenting opinion? It's got to go I can't have that I can't be around that and that leads me to another phrase You've probably heard this one.
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Maybe a little more common and that is what is known as the echo chamber the echo chamber Is an environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect And reinforce their already perceived ideas What we often find is that most people are not seeking the truth instead they're seeking to have their opinions validated They don't want to hear anything that would disagree with them.
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They simply want what they already believe to be affirmed Anything which would challenge their thinking again is seen as fake news And this is a problem and by the way, this is a problem on the left and the right so don't think i'm going to just Beat up on the liberals tonight.
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This is a problem on both sides both sides And here's how you can actually Here's a here's a nice little social experiment To prove what i'm saying is accurate If you do happen to be a facebook person your facebook Will reinforce whatever it is you believe because most of your friends are going to be people who agree with you and you will come election time get Advertisements and videos and things that will agree with you because the algorithm knows what you believe based on the things that you post But if you have a cousin or an aunt Or a or another relative who's willing to let you look at their facebook And they hold to differing political positions than you do.
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You would be surprised at what advertisements they see You would be surprised that what gets into their News feed that never makes it into your news feed because that's the way the algorithm works.
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It feeds you what you want to eat And we produce these echo chambers We produce these social environments that reinforce what we think to make us think that everybody thinks Like us except for the fringe lunatic left Or the radical right, right? This is the way it is.
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This is the way the world works people like to be around people who agree with them Whether it's in colleges or churches And I want to say this there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to be around people who are like you.
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I mean, that's just natural But if we only seek out the opinions of those who agree with us And we reject ever listening to anyone who would disagree or challenge us Then we find ourselves believing things that may not be true And we're never challenged to actually look at the truth I I want to say something And i've said this before so some of you may have heard it This is a phrase It sounds uncomfortable But I want you to hear it We must never be willing to replace the truth for certainty See people want to be certain They want to be certain And they become so certain that they're not willing to ever be challenged with the truth So they've replaced truth with certainty Now it's not wrong to be confident in what we believe but we must remain teachable Especially if we discover that what we have believed may not be true And i'm going to give you the best example I can from my own life I became a christian at 19.
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I I entered Seminary at 21 22.
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It's kind of can't remember exactly how old I was, but it was around that time It was after 9 11.
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I know that because that's when I preached my first sermon and felt called to ministry Went to seminary and was taught the whole time Calvinism is bad Calvin man bad that was the And calvinism kills churches Was taught that from the podium of the seminary They did a class Called debating calvinism and the whole purpose of the class was to teach us not to be calvinists well one Year, I was invited to speak at a camp I went to the camp while I was at the camp the man who was running the camp challenged me On calvinism and I had never been challenged.
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I had only been told calvin man bad Well when I was challenged with the text of scripture and had to actually read What the bible said I had to then actually face that I had not really dealt with the truth I had just dealt with the certainty of those who were telling me calvinism bad And for a year I didn't want to believe it I bucked calvinism harder than anybody.
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I tried to find a middle road I even heard about a guy who called himself a reformed arminian, which is like that's a that's a that's an oxymoron His name is robert piccirilli He wrote the book grace faith and free will and I read that book and I will say to this day I still think it's one of the better defenses of arminianism But his logical conclusion is people can lose their salvation.
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That's where he ended You have to if you believe in arminianism You have to believe people can lose their salvation because you have to hold to the idol of free will So if you ever read his book, that's the conclusion But I do think it was a his he was he gave an argument that I said, okay If I were going to go down this road, that's the way i'd have to go But I can't follow that road because it's not where the scripture leads me But again, it was all about Searching for the truth, even though the truth was hard.
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It is hard to proclaim the doctrines of grace It is hard, especially 15 16 years ago At least now calvinism is sort of in some ways popular in some places.
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It was not And to proclaim the doctrines of grace was difficult and I remember sitting in my my Couch on we had a little house right across the street over here And I would sit in my living room and I would be reading the scriptures and I my wife would be in the kitchen It's before we had ashton.
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No, it was at we Yeah, it was before we had ashton cody because they didn't come to us till we went to samanthale anyway And I would shout to jennifer say baby Doesn't this sound like calvinism And i'd read her the text and she said uh-huh So we were dealing with being confronted with An opinion a truth that was different than our opinion and by god's grace I struggled through it and the lord led me to what I believe is the truth But it wasn't easy and the point i'm making through all of this is is We must be willing to be challenged and we must be willing to be corrected if the scripture is doing the correction And if we're not Then we have a problem And all of that was introduction to look at the text Because tonight's study is all about being willing to be challenged in fact It's about remaining a student And not feeling like we know it all.
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I know people say about me.
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I know it Keith thinks he knows it all I don't People say things people say ugly things No, I don't But thank you for enforcing my point No, but that you know There is something to be confident I mean it takes confidence to stand up and teach and preach And brother andy and brother mike and I we are confident in what we teach and believe but it doesn't mean we're not teachable We're not we if you're an if you're an uncorrectable person, then you're not fit to teach And that's that's got to be understood it So let's look at verse one and this does read differently in the king james and the Esv And I brought the new american standard with me just to give a balance Because there's a little difference here and how these read The the the esv says who's whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire He breaks out against all sound judgment Now the king james says through desire a man having separated himself seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom Intermeddleth is a little bit of a weird word, but it is the word that's used there And the new american standard bible says he who separates himself seeks his own desire.
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He quarrels against sound wisdom Now there's some disagreement on how to interpret this Some think that this is encouraging separation Because it's encouraging you to stay separated from the world and focus on the mission of god I don't interpret it that way.
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In fact, I don't think that that is right Uh, even even if you read it in the king james Where they get that from is when the king james says he seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom They think that means he's seeking after wisdom by isolating himself But that's even in the king james the word intermeddleth doesn't fit The word intermeddleth there is the idea that he's that he's barking against it or he's he's going he's he doesn't want the wisdom And that what this particular proverb is saying Is it is saying that it is not good to isolate ourselves from the wisdom of others It's not good to separate ourselves from those who would challenge us Again the echo chamber we get away from anyone who would challenge us This person is not interested in being in the company of others because others bring wisdom and judgment that they don't want The pulpit commentary says this the maxim is directed against the conceited Self-willed man who sets himself against public opinion delights in differing from received customs Takes no counsel from others thinks nothing of public interests, but in his mean Isolation attends only to his own private ends and fancies He's isolated himself because he does not want to be challenged on what he thinks He's satisfied with what he believes and he doesn't want to hear the opinions of others In fact the um, none of these translations Speak it say this but there is one translation where it says he he quarrels against sound wisdom That's the way the new american standard says it.
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It actually says that in the hebrew.
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It says he shows his teeth Like he growls against wisdom I don't know if you've ever had anybody growl at you But people who don't want to hear what you have to say will snarl.
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They'll be angry.
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They don't want to hear it And that's the problem Is that we're not willing to hear Anyone but ourselves We're not willing to consider the opinions of anyone but ourselves And I think about this for the church You know why so many people don't come to church who call themselves christians? Because they feel like they got it all figured out on their own They don't want any instruction or any challenge or anything and they'll say all I need is me and jesus All I need is me and my bible And here's the thing one thing they'll say I can study the bible all by myself And you know the answer to that if you did study it all by yourself, you'd realize that that's not true Because you're not called to live all by yourself.
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You're not called to isolate yourself You know who comes to the most fanciful and far out opinions about the word It's about the people who go off on their own and they're an island under themselves and they're never willing to be challenged They say well who are you to challenge me I have the holy spirit It is true every believer has the holy spirit But the bible also says that as iron sharpens iron so does one man sharpen another And we have the capacity within us to grieve the spirit.
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Amen The bible says grieve not the holy spirit of god.
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So what happens when a man goes off by himself? It's just him and his bible and he wants to be left alone So that he can come up with his own doctrines and his own interpretations Because he doesn't want to listen and yes He may have the holy spirit within him But he is not listening to the word of god because the word of god tells him he ought to be in a community where he is being challenged and encouraged and edified to whoever isolates himself Seeks his own desire and he breaks out against all sound judgment Now I do think verses one and two Have a relationship now i've often said in these individual proverbs.
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They're not always one-to-one But I do think one to two do go together because the very next thing helps me Think that I have number one interpreted correctly because number two notice what number two says A fool takes no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing his opinions So the first one you got the guy who isolates himself because he doesn't want to hear the judgment or the wisdom of others And then he is described as a fool.
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Why? Because he takes no pleasure in understanding only in sharing his opinion now I want to ask this question and and I hope this makes sense What is an opinion That's based on a lack of understanding What do we call it? Thank you, that's exactly I could show you my notes an opinion based upon a lack of understanding is ignorance And have you ever heard a truly ignorant person who wanted to give you their opinion about a subject? They know nothing about Isn't that fun? Marcus Aurelius was the roman emperor From 161 to 180.
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Have you ever seen the movie gladiator? He's depicted in that film And he was known for having Quotable quotes a lot of marcus aurelius quotes out there.
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But one of his quotes I do think is rather truthful He says the opinion of 10 000 men Is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject Isn't that great the opinion of 10 000 men means nothing if they don't know anything I think about this quote every time we hold a vote Just think about it most people are not educated When they go to vote in fact Every time they do a vote they go out and survey the people being voted to find out what they know And most of them can't tell you who the president and vice president are most people think there's 52 states There's not but they think there are there's all kinds of things people don't know but their vote counts just the same as anybody else's Everyone is able to register and have their opinion put on record right? Because that's what it means to be an american But The opinion of 10 000 people means nothing if they don't know anything about the subject But people always want to stress their opinion They always want to give their opinion even if they don't know the subject and where this is most dangerous is in regard to god The amount of people who want to express their opinion is innumerable and yet the the amount of ignorance is immeasurable I've told this story before there was a time.
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I remember sitting across from a lady.
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I was at I was at pizza hut It was a family friend And she was sitting across from me and the subject of the bible came up as it often does when i'm in the in the group And she looked at me and she said You know what? I want Is I want a real bible Before king james came along and took out all the books I said I don't have time To explain the level of error That just came out of your face.
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I don't have there's so much That you just said that is not based in any reality at all But you're convinced That your opinion is just as valid as anyone else as ignorant as it is And that's the problem.
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The problem is we become convinced that all opinions are equally valid That's again.
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It's an american tradition.
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All opinions are equally valid no matter how ridiculous And that's not true.
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If your opinion is based upon ignorance.
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It isn't valid And it is invaluable Even though it belongs to you If we hold an ignorant opinion and we are shown that we are wrong we have a moral duty to change I'm gonna say that again if we hold a wrong idea and we are shown to be wrong It is a moral imperative that we change our mind A fool takes no pleasure in understanding But only in expressing his own opinion if all we do is share our opinion and we're never willing to be challenged Never willing to change you guys know what the dunning-kruger effect is Okay, I gotta show you this one This is a study That was done several years ago And it's uh, it's a graphic so i'm going to give you this graphic.
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It's it's it's a it's the comparison between confidence and competence Okay So confidence Is the vertical? And competence Is the horizontal and this is what the study found When a person begins to learn about a subject And they spend a little bit of time investigating this subject.
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They often consider themselves to be immediate experts If you don't believe me just again go on facebook spend a little time And so confidence level when they first start studying goes way up But their competence level is way down And they hit a plateau and they begin to realize they're not as smart and they don't they begin to realize they don't know what They didn't know And then this begins to drop And then later it'll come back up when they actually do begin to learn some things.
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But this is the crazy.
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This is every politician Because they know just that much about everything and they consider themselves experts now we call that mount stupid Because they they get this great amount of Knowledge, but it's not a great amount of knowledge You see what happens is this person right here this person right here actually knows more than this person, but he will lose the debate Because he has no confidence This person here we'll call him the professor He actually should win the debate But he doesn't because he knows enough about the whole subject that he could Tell this guy where he's wrong, but this guy won't listen and neither will his followers Mount stupid is the most dangerous place you can be Is what it is guys.
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It's the unwillingness to learn You learn five minutes of a subject.
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You're an automatic expert It's all all around it's all around your confidence should match your competence, but it doesn't always All right, so now let's jump to verse 13 Because I want to show you how all of these I believe fit together In verse 13, it says this If one gives an answer before he hears it is his folly and shame Now very quickly, I just want to show you verse 17 because I think these go together Verse 17 says the one who states his case first seems right until another comes and examines him.
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So let's compare Verse 13 is about a person who makes a judgment without all the information if one gives an answer before he hears It's folly to him, right? This is a person who's willing to make judgment without hearing all the facts Boy, isn't that? Very common We will hear just enough to make a knee-jerk opinion and we will run with our opinion And then if something comes along to challenge us, what do we do? I don't want to hear it.
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I've already made my judgment.
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I've already made my snap judgment Let's give an example.
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Let's say there's somebody comes to me And says hey, there's a problem between two brothers in the church And I automatically assume that I know what the issues are moreover I automatically assume I know who is at fault because hey, he was at fault last time right And I begin to make judgments without knowing all the facts And I run into the meeting whatever the meeting is headstrong that I know everything And then whatever challenges me i'm not willing to listen Because i've already got my opinion made up and guess what? I am a fool Because i'm answering before i've heard the facts And this happens a lot People will bring information to the elders They they assume will automatically agree with them won't they brother andy they'll come in they'll tell us something They assume we're going to automatically agree And and i've seen people get offended when we say wait a minute.
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We need to hear the other side Well, why do you need to hear the other side? Don't you trust me? Well It's not about trust But in every situation We are always bound by perspective Every situation is bound by perspective.
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People are going to tell their side from their side And as the old saying goes there's your side my side and the truth, right? There's always going to be more to the story And if we are not willing to hear the whole thing And this is so dangerous when it comes to gossip guys.
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I'm serious I I hope you understand there's more to this than just being teachable It's also being loving towards one another because if you hear something about another member of the church and you get a little With and if maybe and you automatically begin to assume things about them without going and talking to them and learning about them and wanting To know more about them then you are being a fool and you're being unloving and ungracious at the same time You're making assumptions about people that may not be true And compare that to verse 17 verse 17 says the one who states his case first seems right Until the other comes and examines him I can't tell you how many times that's happened.
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Someone comes they lay out the situation as they see it Seems to make sense But then the second person comes in and they fill in the gaps that weren't even recognized before whole new bits of information come to light And we find out the truth Now you say how is this related to being teachable? Well, both of these are about having all the information before you make judgments The problem with most people is we want enough information to sure up our opinions And nothing more and if that's all that you want, you're not interested in the truth.
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You're interested in your opinion If all you want is something to defend your opinion and people do this By the way, you know, we have the academy here One of the things that I have tried to do in the academy is talk about how to do good research and research Actually involves reading things that may not agree with you When I study for a sermon sometimes I will read commentaries that I know are disagreeing with me So that I will be challenged enough to be able to defend what I believe And know what the opposing position is I remember one time I was working at the high school when I was in seminary And a lady was talking about the end times now back in the back in the late 90s early 2000s Everybody was a tim la hay junkie everybody read left behind and everybody was waiting for the rapture and everybody was excited because that was That was the position that everybody held was the pre-tribulation pre-millennial rapture And this lady and I were doing a bible study for the school for the kids.
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It was an after-school program And she said to me She said yeah, well, you know the rapture's going to happen and Jesus is going to take everybody away and The church away and there's gonna be seven years of tribulation and I said well I said, um That's one perspective on the end times And she looked at me And she said no That's the only one I said what do you mean? She goes There's no other position.
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That's the only one And I said are you saying that you've never heard of any other one Are you just taking your claim that that's the right one? She'd never heard a different one She had never heard Of the amillennial position.
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She had never heard of the post-millennial position She had never heard of anything other than what she had been taught and never been challenged to the point that when someone says There's other positions.
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She said no, there's not There's only what i've been taught For the christian, there's nothing more precious than the truth Jesus identified himself As the truth.
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He said I am the way the truth and the life Therefore as a christian you should never be afraid of the truth Because all truth is god's truth And if it's true, we don't have to be afraid of it That's the key to learning Is to know that we serve the god of truth And therefore we don't ever have to be afraid of the truth Because he is truth And by god's grace, I pray that we would always be willing to be transformed By the truth.
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What does romans 12 tell us? to have our minds Conformed And to be transformed By the truth i'm going to read it and this will be the last thing I do i'm going to read romans 12 verses 1 and 2 I appeal to you brothers by the mercies of god to present your bodies a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to god Which is your spiritual worship? Do not be conformed to this world But be transformed by the renewal of your mind How is your mind renewed by the truth To be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern What is the will of god what is good? What is acceptable and what is perfect? And might I just say not to add to the word of god what is true? We should be willing to be conformed to the truth Let's pray Father I thank you for your word And I do pray that we would have our minds set on the truth And that we would be willing to be conformed to the truth and lord in areas where we err I pray lord that you would correct us In areas where we need to adjust our thinking I pray lord that you would bring us ever more into line with your will And I pray lord for this church.