Ask Pastor Mike Fabarez

Speaker 1

Well, today on Focal Point, it's another edition of Ask Pastor Mike. Today's topic is the fool and his Words. Welcome to Focal Point. I'm your host, Dave Drewy. Glad to have you here for another exciting edition of Ask Pastor Mike.

And if you have a question that you'd like Pastor Mike to address, I'll explain how you can make that request at the end of today's program.

Well, I'm sure you're aware that tomorrow is April 1st, so today we're gonna hear a conversation that took place on a previous April Fool's Day between Pastor Mike and Focal Point's executive director Jay Worden. Let's hear what they had to say.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Dave. I am here with Pastor Mike and Pastor Mike, today is April Fool's Day, so happy April Fool's Day.

Speaker 3

Happy April Fool's Day.

Speaker 2

Do you know where that comes from?

Speaker 3

Well, I'm not sure there is a definitive history of April Fool's. I know that in the medieval church there was a date called the Feast of Fools in January, but I don't know that there is any definitive history.

And if there is, maybe one of our listeners will write in and tell us about it. But when I've looked at it, I can't find a definitive.

But I know that in our day, it's a time to trick people, which I do not recommend.

Speaker 2

It wouldn't be very nice.

Speaker 3

No, it's not very nice, but I.

Speaker 2

Thought it would be appropriate because we do have a listener question about Proverbs, and the listener asks. In Proverbs, it uses the word fool a number of times. Does fool have the same meaning that we have for it today?

Speaker 3

Well, you know, I guess I'd have to ask, what meaning do you have for it today? I mean, I suppose it's just used as a general insult. You've done something dumb or you're a dumb person. It's kind of, I suppose, how someone would use the word idiot.

But in the Bible, no, that's. I mean, it's not just a derogatory word, although it's not a nice word to have attributed to yourself in the Bible, of course. The idea, particularly in the wisdom literature, the Old Testament, the Book of Proverbs in particular, is that the whole point is to live wise lives. In other words, lives that put the truth that is revealed to us in God's word into practice.

It's the right application of biblical data. To say someone is a fool means they may be smart, they may be intellectual, but they're not able to apply the word of God in their lives. They do things that are ultimately sinful. They deny things that should be affirmed because they're revealed to us in Scripture.

So, in some ways, there's an overlap because to be a fool, to do something unbiblical or to not put God's truth into action in some area of your life, the Bible would say, well, that's foolish. Sometimes we look at that and say, that was a really dumb thing. There may be some circles of overlap there, but the idea in Scripture is a little bit different.

We need to be people who put God's truth into practice, take the precautions that the Bible says we should take, and live out the truth of God. In situations like refraining from speaking when we should be silent, that would be a wise thing to do. The fool, as it says in the Book of Proverbs, babbles on.

Now, there are a lot of words in the Old Testament and in the New Testament that translate into the English word fool, so there is a breadth of definition. But the basic idea of fool is the contrast to wisdom, and I think that's a good place for us to start in this discussion.

Speaker 2

But as you said, it does have some similarities to today's use of "fool." We might use it derogatorily just as somebody does an idiotic thing.

But if we see somebody doing something sinful, something that goes against biblical directives or biblical principles, and they get the just consequences for that, we're going to call that person a fool in the same manner, wouldn't we?

Speaker 3

Well, sure. You know, we'd say someone's foolish if they don't do something that they ought to do in society. It might be, you know, they didn't put on a shirt when before they left the house. What a fool.

But in the Bible, I mean, it could be you're not assembling yourself together as you should. In other words, someone could be really smart, not go to church. But that's a foolish thing that they're doing, is not assembling together as they should, because it is what God has asked us to do.

And if you're a Christian, what a foolish thing not to go to church. Because the Bible says that's where we spur one another on to love and good deeds. That's where we learn the word of God.

I mean, there's a good example how many smart people don't go to church. Well, the Bible says that we should all be assembling together, even non-Christians ought to come to hear the word of God taught so they can be given the truth of God and fall under conviction and get saved.

So, yeah, being smart and being wise, two different things.

Speaker 2

I want to jump back to something you mentioned earlier about our words. It certainly seems like those cause the most problems for us in our lives.

And even the Bible would say that that's the case.

How do we not be foolish in our words in our Christian life?

Speaker 3

Yeah, well, the most consistent principle in the Bible is that the wise man restrains his tongue. I mean, that's a good place to start. Even the foolish, the Bible says, are counted as prudent if they just don't talk.

And I already quoted briefly there that Proverbs 10 passage that talks about the babbling fool that comes to ruin. So the first step in being wise with our words is just to talk less.

As the New Testament says, to be quick to hear and slow to speak. I mean, that's the basic ingredient of starting to be much more wise with our words.

Speaker 2

How do our emotions relate to our words?

Speaker 3

Well, even that the fool shows his annoyance at once. The proverbs say, in other words, there's so many things relating to our foolish words and our unchecked emotions. We have to learn to restrain ourselves, to not just say whatever comes out of our heart, that visceral reaction to whatever it might be.

The scripture says in the New Testament, the spirit of God in our lives is going to help us with that. The fruit of the Spirit in our lives is self-control. And I'll tell you, one of the easiest things not to control according to the book of James, is our words. If we just feel something and speak as we feel things, you're guaranteed to say some foolish things throughout the day that you'd want to take back.

And who hasn't been there?

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. I trust this has been an interesting discussion for our listeners and very helpful.

And we're going to continue this conversation with a message you gave called "Managing Your Emotions and Taming Your Tongue" from the Wisdom from Proverbs series.

Speaker 4

You know, it is said that we speak about 22,000 words per day. It's about 73 pages of transcribed text. If someone were to do that now in a given week, what that would mean is it would be the equivalent of you writing with your words a 500-page book. Now, just thinking about the voluminous amount of words that we speak, it should give us pause. Particularly because the Bible says that your words and mine have consequences on people both for good and for bad. And more than that, as Jesus often said, we will be held accountable for the words that we speak. It will be a day of reviewing the volumes in our library to see how we did with our words.

Now, there's not any question. If you're going to write a book about wisdom, you'd better spend a lot of those proverbs speaking about how we talk and what we say and what's appropriate and what's not. And that's what we find in the 31-chapter book called Proverbs. We find, and I counted these myself, 170 to 177 proverbs. Some are iffy on what the wisdom of God is about how you and I should speak. And it's really something that we see connected from time to time in the Scripture in a very obvious way: the fear of God and how we speak.

I'd like you to turn to Proverbs 10 and just start to think, okay, here are the kinds of things that are unclean in God's mind as it relates to our words. Take a look at this one. Drop down to verse number 18, Proverbs 10:18, and let's see how it's stated. Let's read it carefully, slowly, and thoughtfully and see if we can grab this and see if it has any applicability to our life, which I'm sure it does. Verse 18: The one who conceals hatred has lying lips. Let's just think about that for a second. Conceals hatred. You got all the people in your life that you interact with. There are people on that list that you don't like, right? Let's just admit it. You look all nice and holy like you like everybody. But I know the truth. There are people you don't like, people I don't like.

And what you don't do is you don't go and, with an authentic, transparent, ostentatious kind of way, make it clear. You don't wear shirts that say "I hate Jim" at your office because that wouldn't be appropriate. But there's another outlet for it. Look at the next phrase here that most of us fall into: Whoever utters slander is a fool. There's two ways we lie. One way is we don't come forthright with the person about how we feel. And the second way is that we lie in our hatred for people because we slander them behind their backs.

Now, slander, when I embellish with my words, when I enhance with my words, or when I speculate with my words about the bad in the life of the person that I don't like, can make us feel, if we think about the holiness of God, a bit of conviction. It's easy to do. It's easy for us to take the magnifying glass on the person that I'm upset with, mad at, and put it right there and enhance the bad in their life. It's lying. And we lie about the people we don't like. We lie to their face by acting like we don't hate them as much, and we lie behind their back by embellishing and expanding the things that are bad in their lives to other people.

And it needs to stop when we think about the things in our lives that need to be extracted, the things that need to be redacted in our 500 pages of speech this week. Well, the inverse of that, and I find it often, follows hard upon our slander. There's another word in the Scripture you need to see. It's found in Proverbs 27, which is something that helps our case, but it's got a different object. It's not about our enemies, but often it's in light of our enemies, the people that we don't like. We want to put them down by magnifying, embellishing, enhancing, speculating about their bad.

But then when we turn the conversation to ourselves, there's another kind of lying that takes place. As a matter of fact, you're so prone to lie about yourself when you talk in this particular category that Proverbs chapter 27 says, don't even start. Don't even start. As a matter of fact, when it comes to the good in your life, let's let someone else talk about it. Because when you talk about it, you will embellish. You will enhance the good in your own life. We all have that propensity.

So here's the command in verse number two: Let another praise you, and not your own mouth, a stranger, and not your own lips. Don't even get in the habit of talking about your own victories because when you do, the natural tendency is to enhance them. And the word that we got introduced to in verse number one, which we haven't read yet, is the word you should circle. It's the third word in verse number one. And it is the thing that we should never do: Do not boast. See, that's the enhancement. It is the aggrandizement. It's the enlarging. It's putting the magnifying glass on the good in my life and making it sound just a little bit bigger and a little bit better than it actually is.

Now, we boast about, in verse number one, our future sometimes, and we just confidently say, well, here's what I'm going to do. And he says, don't even do that because you don't know what tomorrow may bring. But in the vein of boasting, now we get specific about the good in your life. Hey, don't praise yourself because when you start talking about your good, you're going to embellish it. That's what boasting is. It starts to say things that aren't true, that you couldn't possibly connect with reality because you have a propensity to enhance and augment those things.

So if embellishing, enhancing, and speculating about the bad in the rival is a tendency of human beings when we speak about our rival or our enemy, then when we talk about ourselves, our tendency is to speculate or enhance or embellish the things that are good in us. Okay, well, that's when I speak bad about someone I don't like and good about me. But there is a time, and it's equally as sinful, when I speak good about someone that I don't really sincerely have good words to say about. That's called flattery. It's in the last verse of chapter 26. It's right above where we're reading.

Look at that verse. It says this in Proverbs 26:28: A lying tongue hates its victims. Right? I don't tell the truth. There's something fueling that. It's not about them; it's a disregard for them. It's really about us. Here's the parallelism: A flattering mouth, circle that, works ruin. It's not about your good when I give you that insincere praise. It's about my good. So I got slander. That's when I embellish and enhance bad in the person I don't like. Then I've got boasting when I embellish and enhance the good in my life. And then there are times at work, you know, in circles, at church, in our neighborhood, where I'm going to enhance something in you insincerely for my advantage. That's what flattery is.

And so I'm going to tell you what you want to hear. And it'll make you like me. It may make you buy from me; it may make you promote me; it may make you think good of me. And I often try to give this to people who say, well, my whole industry is based on flattery or my whole, you know, my job is based on that. Listen, we all interact with companies and vendors and salespeople, and you need to trust that God can do more with diplomacy and the truth, right, truthful statements than you can do with a lie. I mean, let me shorten that: You need to trust that God can do more with the truth than you can do with a lie.

And if we look through our little imaginary record of your 500 pages from this week, I wonder how much would be slander, I wonder how much would be boasting, and I wonder how much would be flattery. And by the way, have you noticed they're all connected with this thing called lying? Because they're not true. Next to all of that, if you're taking notes, jot down chapter 12, verse 22, because here's the bottom line on that. And if you stood before God, I think you'd realize this. 12:22 says, lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. And that includes flattery, boasting, and slander.

Now, if any of that gives you a little twinge of conviction, confess it to God and forsake it. Tell God. Don't say, yeah, you're right, I feel bad about that. Don't just feel bad. Let bad feelings motivate repentance. And repentance is, "God, you're right, boy. I need to have less of that in next week's volume of words from me as it goes into the annual bookcase of things that I say. I want less flattery, I want less slander, and I want less boasting."

There's another kind of talk that Proverbs is really down on, and it's hard because it's so prevalent among us today. But would you turn to chapter 18 and just look at another area that we need to be sensitive to in our sanctification, our Christian growth in life? It's characterized by a word in Proverbs that is translated in the ESV very literally: a whisperer. A whisperer. And when you read "whisperer" in Proverbs, you need to know that what we're referring to is someone who is what we generally call a gossip. And you can tell when it's gossip because people's voice gets quieter. Did you hear about... Did you hear about Susie's husband? Let me tell you about that.

Now, I know we Christians, we don't gossip; we just share prayer requests, right? But when you think about your prayer request, I know the difference between a prayer request and gossip. And the difference is whether your volume goes down. And I love that about gossip in the ESV. Very literally translated, when your voice goes down. Take a look at it here in chapter 18, verse 8: The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels. When you share your juicy prayer request, I mean, when you gossip, people love it. They feed on it. It is an insatiable desire. As the old British poet put it, there is a lust in us that no charm can tame, of freely publishing our neighbor's shame.

Boy, if we could share the victories of our neighbor as frequently and ardently as we share the failures of our neighbor, we'd have a whole different kind of neighborhood and a whole different kind of church, and you'd have a whole different kind of office that you worked in. Let's be done with sticking our nose in business that we don't have any interest in. And you want a good picture of this? The whisper is described here in chapter 17, verse 9. 17:9: Whoever covers an offense, right? In other words, they're not interested in proclaiming it or talking about it. They cover it. When Jim is told to be such a rat and Susie's friend is telling you so you can pray, and you cover that, then you seek love. That's a loving thing to do.

But he who repeats a matter, oh, I got to tell you about... Did you hear about... Did you hear about Jim? Then you're going to separate close friends, starting probably with Susie and Jim. I mean, it doesn't help them recover. It doesn't help them rebuild. It doesn't help them reconstitute or reconcile when there are people around uncovering secrets. Is there time to pray? Absolutely. Time to seek help? Sure. But you know what I'm talking about. There's a line to be drawn between gossip and real Christian intervention in people's lives.

Now, again, as I said, we could spend all day talking about things that Proverbs points out that we need to deal with, but let me just pick one more. And I had to pick a few things that I thought, you know, would... If that's your stumbling block, gossip, maybe this one isn't. So I picked one that seemed on the other end of the spectrum. Turn with me to chapter 26. A lot of people thrive on gossip. They thrive on flattery, boasting, whatever. But there's a kind of person that when they talk, they're always trying to be funny. You know that person, right? Who, if you looked at his 500-page installment transcription of what he said this week, on every page you'd find some kind of joke, some kind of remark that's supposed to get a laugh.

The Bible's got a word for that person, at least an analogous word in verse 18, talking about the guy who's always going around joking. There's a kind of need in a jokester's repertoire that ends up making him, in the eyes of God, a madman. 26:18: He's like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death. That doesn't sound like a guy you want to hang out with right now. You do, kind of, because he's a funny guy. But the problem is in his joking. There's a lot of problems. There's a lot of deception.

See, think about it for a second. It's going to go on to say, I guess we should read it. Verse 19: So is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, "Ah, I was only joking." See, because at some point when the embellishment of a fact takes something that would make the corner of your mouth rise and make you smile, now the jokester wants to make... He wants to see your teeth, right? He wants to make you really smile. He'd like to hear you laugh. So he takes something, he embellishes it, he twists it, he turns it into a caricature of what it really is. He gets you to laugh. But in reality, what he said is really not true. And then when that deception ends up hurting someone, he has to say, and you'll see it in his weekly transcription, probably in every chapter, "Hey, I was just kidding. I was only joking."

The Bible says that's the kind of person doing a lot of damage with his words. Careless humor is something that does a lot of damage in any circle, any office, any home, any neighborhood, any church. And we've got to be careful to rein that all in. And if you've had the experience of really doing some damage with your humor, it's time for you to realize, yeah, we need to confess and forsake those things. Lying, flattery, boasting, slander, gossip, humor, careless humor.

Here's the great news. It's not just your words that can get you in trouble. Here's a great little twist: Your words can get you out of trouble. And I don't just mean that politically or socially. I mean that biblically and spiritually. Hosea 14:1-2, after a very depressing book in many ways about the sin of Israel, at the end of the book, in chapter 14, verses 1 and 2, God says, hey, through the prophet Hosea, turn to the Lord, turn to the Lord, says, and seek him. And then verse two says, and take your words with you and say to the Lord, "Forgive our iniquities and receive us graciously" is a good translation. That Hebrew phrase, "receive us back," embrace us, get reconciliation.

But that little phrase, "take your words with you," you know what God is looking for. When you and I look through our... we think back in our conscience through the words that we've said, it's time for us with those words to now take words to God and say, "God, forgive me, I repent. I want to forsake that kind of thing. I want next week's installment, the volume of words, to have a lot less slander, a lot less gossip, a lot less boasting." God is good to forgive us. That's the good news. There's cleansing, there's restoration. But it means that you take words to God. Don't just shrug your shoulders and assume, well, God's a loving God, he'll forgive me. He wants to hear your apology.

And that would be a great place for us to start if we want less sin in the 500-page tome that our words are creating every week.

Speaker 1

You're listening to Bible teacher Mike Fabarez on Focal Point. We're drawing wisdom from proverbs about managing your emotions and taming your tongue. At the beginning of this broadcast today, we had the privilege of sitting down with Pastor Mike to entertain a few questions about wisdom and foolishness. Perhaps it sparked a few questions of your own.

We'd love to hear what's on your mind. You can post a question by going to our website and following the instructions at focal.radio.org. It's our privilege to be a source of biblical answers and training for you and listeners like you all across the country. Because of your partnership, men and women are being trained every day in righteousness, learning how to walk in biblical wisdom and fear of the Lord.

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Well, I'm Dave Drouehe inviting you to join us next week as we get back to the classroom in Christ's School of Prayer. You won't want to miss Monday on Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.