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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 one and two, 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 one says this, whoever isolates himself, seeks his own desire. He breaks out against all sound judgment.
Verse two, 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, and that's an example of cognitive dissonance.
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 ingest only a certain amount of sugar, and if they ingest too much, it's going to hurt them. But then that one more donut is very tempting, right?
And so this is an example of cognitive dissonance. 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 given new information, we have three choices as to what to do with that information. Number one, 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. That's the term, right? We hear something. It challenges us. We don't want to hear it. That's not real. It can't be real because I know what's real.
I know the truth, and you've confronted me with something new, and I don't like that. So I'm going to 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.
They want one to be true. They know the other one is true, and they just live in that place. 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. That's your opinion. Thank you. That's your opinion. People are so convinced of what they know that they deny any new information as having to be false, and they're unwilling to consider that they may have been in 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, 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. 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.
This is a problem on both sides, both sides, and here's how you can actually, 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 another relative who's willing to let you look at their Facebook and they hold to differing political positions than you do, you would be surprised at what advertisements they see.
You would be surprised at what gets into their newsfeed that never makes it into your newsfeed because that's the way the algorithm works. 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.
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.
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 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. I entered seminary at 21, 22. It's kind of, I can't remember exactly how old I was, but it was around that time.
It was after 9 -11. I know that because that's when I preached my first sermon and felt the call to ministry. I went to seminary and was taught the whole time Calvinism is bad. Calvin man bad. And Calvinism kills churches.
I 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
This was before we had Ashley and Cody. No, it was, we, yeah, it was before we had Ashley and Cody. Because they didn't come to us until we went to San Mateo. Anyway, and I would shout to Jennifer, say, baby, doesn't this sound like Calvinism?
And I'd read her the text and she'd say, 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.
I know people say about me, 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, if you're an uncorrectable person, then you're not fit to teach.
And that's got to be understood. 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 in how these read.
The ESV says, 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. 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.
In fact, I don't think that that is right, 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 even in the King James, the word intermeddleth doesn't fit. The word intermeddleth there is the idea that he's barking against it, or he doesn't want the wisdom. And 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, none of these translations say this, but there is one translation where it says he quarrels against sound wisdom.
That's the way the New American Standard says it. It actually says, in the Hebrew, 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.
They'll be angry. 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. 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 unto 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. Amen? The Bible says, grieve not the Holy Spirit of God. 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.
So 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, 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. Why? Because he takes no pleasure in understanding only in sharing his opinion.
Now I want to ask this question 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. 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. 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. 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 amount of ignorance is immeasurable. I've told this story before.
There was a time I remember sitting across from a lady. I was at Pizza Hut. It was a family friend. She was sitting across from me. And the subject of the Bible came up, as it often does when I'm 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.
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.
The problem is we become convinced that all opinions are equally valid. Again, it's an American tradition. All opinions are equally valid, no matter how ridiculous. And that's not true. If your opinion is based upon ignorance, 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 going to 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 got to show you this one. This is a study that was done several years ago. And it's a graphic. So I'm going to give you this graphic. 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 the subject, 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 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. But this is the crazy...
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 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. It is what it is, guys. It's the unwillingness to learn. You learn five minutes of a subject, you're an automatic expert. It's 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.
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.
I've already made my judgment. I've already made my snap judgment. Let's give an example. Let's say 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 assume we'll 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 I've seen people get offended when we say, wait a minute. 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. 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, I'm serious. 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 whiff, 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.
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.
Many 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. 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 late 90s, early 2000s, everybody was a Tim LaHaye junkie. Everybody read Left Behind, and everybody was waiting for the rapture, and everybody was excited, because that was the position that everybody held.
It was the pre-tribulation, pre-millennial rapture. And this lady and I were doing a Bible study for the school, for the kids. It was an after school program. And she said to me, she said, yeah, well, you know, the rapture is going to happen, and Jesus is going to take everybody away, and the church away, and there's going to be seven years of tribulation.
And I said, well, I said, 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. 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.
She had never heard of the post-millennial position. She'd 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, 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. 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. 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.
I pray that we would always be those who are seeking after truth, and always be those who, as we say even in our own written documents, to ever be a biblically functioning church, knowing that your word is truth.
As Jesus said, sanctify them by the truth. Thy word is truth. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.