Sermon: People of God, Lady Wisdom teaches us that how we use our bodies determine our future. She also teaches us that our actions and words affect much more than ourselves; it affects our community. It changes people for the good or the bad. This is precisely why as image-bearers of the Triune God our words are so important. Will we develop a culture of immaturity or maturity? This is determined largely by how we use our words. But as we mentioned last week, the wise one never needs to be afraid when he is walking obediently. The fool, on the other hand, thinks more highly of his wisdom and opinion than he does others.[1] The agenda and goal of Lady Wisdom is to bring our bodies into conformity to Jesus Christ, who is the wisdom made flesh.
Our passage this morning provides a chronology of evil and good. The righteous grow up in wisdom, while the fool grows up into evil schemes. They become artists of evil. They design everything with the intention of causing harm. Their words start fires around them. Even their very bodily gestures and movements communicate evil. We see this in verses 10: “Whoever winks the eye causes trouble, but a babbling fool will come to ruin.” He is a trouble-maker and everyone around him knows it. Fathers and mothers keep their kids away from him. The neighborhood knows that if they see a police car driving by, he is probably going to his house. What does he do? He winks his eye. He is not being cute or playful. Proverbs 6 speaks of this individual: “A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech, 13 winks with his eyes, signals with his feet, points with his finger, 14 with perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord…” He is a son of Belial; a son of evil. His father is the father of all lies. His uncle Screwtape is very proud of him. Literally, he is “compressing the eye.” That is, he is meditating upon his next evil scheme. He is a restless schemer.[2] When he gets home at night he indulges in evil. He doesn’t greet his wife or children; he rushes to his room to plot the next thing. He gives his approval to every societal and cultural evil. You would expect to see some contrast in verse 10 as we have seen earlier, but the writer simply compares the activity of the first line to the second. The author says that “Devious gestures are grievous, but not as ruinous as foolish talk. Both are to be avoided.”[3] The babbling fool; the one who lives to communicate foolishness; he will fall flat on his face; he will come to ruin. There is a corresponding backlash.[4] It boomerangs back to him; his end is destruction. Every evil word they have uttered will come back to them. In verse 11 we are back to the antithetical lines: “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.” In some third world countries you can see what a dried parched land is. You need a desert-like context to see the nature of this passage. Continue reading “Proverbs 10:10-16; Money, Morality, and the Mouth (series on Proverbs 10)”