Episode Transcript
We're in Job chapter 5 this morning.
Since we finished chapter 4 last week.
Job chapter 5.
And while you're turning there, We got to spend a few days in the hill country last week, and We drove along the Guadalupe River and passed by the place that used to be Camp Mystic, where last summer, all those little children were drowned in the floodwaters.
And it was amazing to me the amount of debris that's been cleaned up.
But I remember that river before it flooded like that.
And it's just a shell of its former self.
Over half of the tall trees that were down there along the banks are gone.
Houses are gone.
New roads have been built.
And I thought, of course, my 1st thought is, why would you build anything in a riverbed?
That's a terrible thing to do, but my thought was, even after such a catastrophic flood, man has the ability to build things back and we can't make it pretty like it was, only God can do that.
But you know, there's going to come a day when the earth is judged, not by water, but by fire, and there won't be any rebuilding.
From that.
God's going to redeem his creation.
And that's an encouraging thing to me that he's going to totally redeem his creation.
He's not going to leave it to man to try to rebuild something to its former glory because we can't do that.
So with that being said, we're in Job chapter 5 today.
And last week.
Although Elafaz spoke, while wrongly assuming that Job had committed some earthly sin, we still learned a lot about God and man.
Those were some powerful truths that Elofaz spoke.
And now we pick up in verse one of chapter 5, and I'm glad you're here with us and I'm glad you've tuned in this morning.
Verse one.
Where Elafiles continues by saying, call now, if there be any that will answer thee.
So Ela Faz challenged Job to call upon any other man besides himself to see if that man may respond to Job.
And the assumption here is that Job wouldn't be able to find any other man who would take his side in this whole matter.
In all of what we've read so far, De La Faz is based his words, his sayings, even these powerful Bible truths, upon a false assumption that God is punishing Job, and that Job has no right to require God to trust in Job's judgment about any of these matters.
And so in the text here.
It says if there be any, in the any, upon whom Job was challenged to call was the entire human race.
So the implication here is that not one member of Adam's race would answer Job.
He could call to all members of Adam's race.
And none would answer him.
At least this is what Elifaz is say.
Now that's a lonely feeling, isn't it?
Have you ever been in a bad situation?
And perhaps you thought to yourself, nobody understands what I'm going through.
I remember pouting as a young boy in thinking that about my parents.
They just don't understand.
They understood it better than I did.
I have.
I've been there.
And perhaps you have as well, and you couldn't think of a single person to whom you could turn.
My grandmother on my dad's side was the best listener I ever knew.
And I could tell her almost anything, and she would understand.
But there were some things I didn't feel like I could tell even her.
Now that was pretty bad if I couldn't tell my grandmother.
And I was wrong.
And now that I'm a grandpa, I realized their situations that I found myself in that really were nothing uncommon.
They were very common.
And in his challenge to Job to call now and to see if there would be any to answer him.
Ela Faz, didn't think Job could even turn to his own wife or his closest friends.
Remember, there were other friends sitting with them near the ash heap.
And narrowing down the list of possible confidants from the whole of Adam's race, Elofaz continues, it says, and to which of the saints wilt thou turn?
Now all of the saints are of Adam's race, but not all of Adam's race are saints.
So it's not just mankind at large that Elafaz challenges Job to call out to.
He said, Forgetting all the other of Adam's race.
How about just the saints?
Which of them will you turn to?
And for those, this is a good place to teach this, for those of you who may be confused about the word saint, let me show you what it means and tell you what it does not mean.
In the Old Testament, the word saint means holy.
And it's normally translated as the word holy, in fact, if you ask the average man on the streets, what is a saint?
He's probably going to give you a list of attributes that are impossible for any of us to meet.
Or he may say, he may think of someone who's lived a righteous life in his opinion.
You may say Mother Teresa was a saint.
And from the Encyclopedia Britannica, and that used to be the only source of knowledge when I was a kid before the internet, and it's still not a bad one.
But I'll read this statement.
It says many Roman Catholics regarded Mother Teresa as a living saint.
Now she died in 1997, and it wasn't until almost, well, it was 2016, almost 20 years later. that the Pope, Pope Francis, recognized her as a saint and said, she is now Saint Teresa of Calcutta, she spent a large portion of her life in that city in India.
So that means the pope, a mortal man.
Decided.
All those years after her death that she was a saint.
Now, nowhere in the Bible is a pope or any other member of Adam's race qualified or authorized to declare somebody a saint.
I don't make brother Doug a saint anymore and I make that pew right there a saint.
Have no power or authority to do that.
So what does the Bible say about saints?
First Corinthians chapter one.
Verses one through two.
First Corinthians one verses one through two.
Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, through the will of God, and sosthenes our brother, unto the church of God, which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, both theirs and ours.
Now that gives you about as good a picture of what saints are as anything else.
You and the Lord's church, you call upon the name of the Lord.
In other words, you have invoked the name of the Lord.
And You're sanctified in Jesus Christ.
Every Christian is sanctified in Jesus Christ.
That's how you're, that's how you become a Christian.
You're made holy.
You're sanctified because in the old and the New Testament, in the Greek as well, a saint means one who is holy.
So you are sanctified or made saintly through the blood of Jesus Christ, through your faith in that finished work.
And so a saint is one who's holy. of us are holy in our flesh, but in Jesus Christ, we are.
He said, be ye holy, for I am holy.
And the only way to be holy is to be in Christ Jesus by faith.
So what does that mean?
The only way to be a saint is to be in Christ Jesus by faith.
Are you in Christ Jesus by faith?
Guess what?
You don't have to wait 20 years for the pope to say St.
Abigail.
Saint Doug.
You're a saint right now.
If you're in Jesus by faith in what he's done for you.
You're a saint.
Now, if Mother Teresa's faith was in Christ Jesus, finished work, then she was a saint.
And she was a saint when she believed in that finished work, not 20 years after her death, suddenly, not when some pope decided to grant her sainthood.
And the problem with the pope declaring anyone a saint is that he is going to base it on his evaluation of the merits of that person.
If he believes that man or woman served God enough or did enough good works, then that's how he qualifies them.
And all of that is nothing more than works-based salvation.
That's all that is.
And it's wrong.
And in our text, the saints upon whom Job was challenged to call upon and to turn to were those whose faith was in the coming Savior.
Remember, at that time, Jesus had not made, he had not been born of a virgin, and in that manger, it was still a coming event, but it was one prophesied all the way from Genesis forward in the Bible.
And that same savior who was coming was one in whom Job believed.
And Elophaz supposed that none of the saints would even hearken to Job. if we were to call upon them or turn to them.
He said, you have nobody.
And what would you do?
What would you say if your friend tried to make you feel like you had nobody to turn to in your trouble?
Well, let's see what the scripture says.
Jeremiah was just such a person.
Jeremiah chapter 33.
Verses one through 3.
Jeremiah 33, verses one through 3, says, moreover, the word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah the 2nd time, listen to this, while he was yet shut up in the court of the prison, saying, thus saith the Lord, the maker thereof, the Lord that formed it to establish it.
The Lord is his name.
And this is what God said.
Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.
Now, Jeremiah was God's prophet. to the nation of Judah.
And if you remember, he served under 5 kings.
Now let's look at some similarities between Job and Jeremiah.
Both Job and Jeremiah were in very dark times through no fault of their own.
Satan was afflicting both of them in different ways.
But what they also had in common is that in their afflictions, God was testing them.
And God preserved both of them.
And Jeremiah, In his day, had warned all the people, warned the kings, warned the prophets, or the false prophets, warned the priests and Levites, about the sin of Judah and about the judgment that was going to come.
So all of those people, in Jeremiah's day, were the any, A and Y.
To whom Elofaz would have challenged him to turn.
They're both the saved and the lost of Judah.
That's the any.
And none of them would hear Jeremiah, and they didn't.
He was shut up in the prison.
He called unto them.
He preached unto them, but they answered him in rebellion.
Nobody agreed with him.
To the priest, Jeremiah turned and And he admonished them.
He said, you're doing wrong.
But they wouldn't obey.
But God was not like the people of Judah.
He told Jeremiah, you call on me.
You may not be able to call on anybody in the nation of Judah.
You may not even be able to call on the priests.
But you call me.
And not only will I answer you, but I'll show you great and mighty things that you did not know.
And whether or not Job could call upon any person saved or lost was not as important.
Now, suppose for a moment that Job would have called on the average worldly person about his dilemma.
What might that person say?
It probably go something like this.
Now, Job, you're just having bad luck.
You're just having to run of bad luck here.
Things will turn around before you know it.
Just think positively.
That's easy to do when you're not the one who's lost everything and you don't have boils head to feet.
You can walk by and wag your head like they did to Jesus on the cross, shake your finger.
Or maybe one would say, you know what, Joe, let's go have a drink and forget about all your problems.
You know, you're going to have friends who would tell you something like that.
Why would you believe in a God who lets bad things happen to good people?
Jesus said there is none good, no not one.
Boy, what terrible advice that would all be.
But suppose Job turned to one of the saints.
Now I'm supposing Elifaz is a saint here as well.
Remember, the saints are mortal men, with the sin nature that we inherited from Adam, and even in our sincerest, uh, hope to help somebody.
We say foolish things from time to time.
I know you're more spiritual than I am.
You probably never done that, but I have.
And saints are at a disadvantage.
When we try to figure out why somebody is in a bad situation.
And what I mean by that is when a saint tries to discern what the spiritual deficiency is in that person who's going through that bad situation.
Example, When a person driving a vehicle has a wreck.
Because of my experience in training.
I can tell by looking at the evidence how the wreck happened.
And most of them are, the vehicle ran off the right side of the road, the driver overcorrected, slid to the other side of the road, causing the vehicle to slide broadside before it struck a tree or before it turned over before it hit another car in the other lane.
But it's the same set of circumstances.
I can tell by looking at the vehicle and the roadway evidence.
What happened without knowing anything about the driver.
I can tell you the physics of that crash.
Now, what I don't know is why the driver ran off the road in the 1st place.
I don't know if he was texting.
If you fell asleep.
If he was intoxicated, if he had a medical emergency of some type.
And imagine if I were to say, well, I know what these marks mean, and I know what this damage means.
That's one thing.
But if I were to make an assumption.
And then take action based upon that wrong assumption, That would result in some travesty of justice.
And this is what saints sometimes do when we're trying to help other saints figure out why we're having earthly trouble or why they're having earthly trouble.
And sometimes when we don't know the answer, we need to investigate, sometimes we just need to pray for them and not get off in their business.
That's just as good advice, by the way.
Sometimes we just need to leave the matter with the Lord and try to help ease the burden that fellow saint has, which is initially what Job's friends were doing, until Elifaz opened his mouth.
And good and bad came out.
The good was scriptural truth.
The bad was the assumptions he made about his friend Job.
But that's really all Job needed is a fellow saint to help ease his burden.
But Elophiles made it known, and no matter who Job called into, no matter whom he turned to, he didn't see that happening.
And if Job could not call upon anyone, and if he couldn't turn to the saints, who else was there to turn to?
Well, his hope was in the same one. in whom Jeremiah hoped.
And as God told Jeremiah to call upon him in that dungeon of a prison, So Job had the same access.
Psalm chapter 116 verses one through 5.
Psalm chapter 116 verses one through five.
This is one you can claim right here.
The psalmist said, I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my supplications, because he hath inclined his ear unto me.
Therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.
The sorrows of death, compassed me, and the pains of hell, got a hold upon me.
I found trouble and sorrow.
Boy, does this describe Job or not?
Then called I upon the name of the Lord, O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.
Gracious is the Lord and righteous.
Yea, our God is merciful.
It doesn't matter if you call upon the whole world.
And they don't answer you a word or they give you foolish answers.
It doesn't matter if you call upon the saints and the saints in their effort to try to help you to encourage you, say something foolish or say, well, you know the reason that's happening to you is probably because that time you sinned here a while back.
You remember that?
If you don't, I do.
We have a good memory for other people's sins, don't we?
Not much for our own.
But what does matter. is when you call on the Lord.
You have access to all the grace and mercy you'll ever need regardless of what man has done.
Now look back in your text.
In verse two.
Elafaz says, for wrath, killeth the foolish man.
Now we're looking at a verse, in fact, several verses that remind me a lot of what we've learned in the proverbs on Wednesday night.
And in these statements is the wisdom of God, even though this man is who's speaking this wisdom has the wrong idea about the man to whom he is applying them.
But let's put that issue aside for a little bit.
And learn about this saying, for wrath killeth the foolish man.
Wrath is vexation or anger.
And it's most often translated as the word grief, G-R-I-E-F.
So when we deal with this word, we're not always dealing, or at least not exclusively with what we might see is anger.
It is possible to grieve and to be angry at the same time.
Imagine a father whose son has been murdered.
In his loss, he's grieving, but he's also madder than a wet hen.
He's fit to be tied.
He wants revenge in many cases.
He's angry about his loss and he might even take action because of that anger and that sorrow, that combination.
What we don't see in our text, is whose wrath?
Whose anger is in view?
It just said, for wrath, killeth the foolish man doesn't say whose.
So let's look at a couple of possibilities.
There are probably more than two, but there are at least two.
The 1st possibility I'll mention, and the one I think actually applies here is the wrath of man.
Can a man's own wrath or grieving kill him?
It certainly could.
Strong emotions like this kind of anger, this wrath, have a detrimental effect on the body.
If you've known somebody who's just angry all the time, and I do, I know people like that.
And boy, they're on blood pressure medicine, and I mean, it's hard enough to stay off blood pressure medicine and all of that, isn't it?
Just through life.
Your genetics or your health, but when the cause of it is anger and stress, it really takes a toll on the body.
Brother, Fulton shared with you recently, how, and both of us remember this event, how a trooper was working, uh, highway incident with a fellow trooper and one of those troopers got run over and killed.
And the other trooper had a heart attack and died right there.
Saw his partner get killed.
So that is, that was an emotion. that Whatever those emotions were going through that trooper's mind, fear, stress, anxiety, all that that just came upon him like floodwaters.
And it caused him to die.
So this wrath of which Elifah speaks, remember, it can mean grieving too.
It could be the wrath of a man.
Now, the 2nd possibility is that it's God's wrath.
It says, for wrath killeth the foolish man.
And certainly God's wrath brings death.
There's no doubt about that.
Speaking of the unbelieving Israelites in the wilderness, The Psalmist wrote this in Psalm 7831.
Psalm 78, verse 31.
He said the wrath of God came upon them and slew the fattest of them and smote down the chosen men of Israel.
And in John chapter 3, verse 36.
John 3, verse 36.
He that believeth on the sun hath everlasting life.
But he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.
So you see that verse connects the wrath of God with the one who shall not see life.
The wrath of God will cause unbelievers not to see life.
And those unbelievers are the foolish men.
They're the foolish women.
And now let's look back in our text and see who this wrath kills.
And again, as I mentioned before, I believe that the application in our text is to the wrath of man.
It says it will kill the foolish man.
Or the perverse man.
Not long ago, we studied 2 verses in Proverbs chapter 10. that are echoed in our text here.
First one was Proverbs 1014. which said, wise men lay up knowledge, but the mouth of the foolish is near destruction.
So to be killed by foolishness is to be destroyed by foolishness.
And then Proverbs 1021 says the lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for want or lack of wisdom.
And a want of wisdom is a lack of wisdom, and it takes a certain amount of wisdom to make it to your next breath, doesn't it?
I mean, you don't have to be very wise.
Just know that to make it to your next breath.
God's already programmed your body to breathe on its own.
And so as long as you don't do something to impede that, you'll breathe your next breath.
It doesn't take much wisdom just a little bit.
Even a little baby in a crib knows, turn their head away from something that's keeping it from breathing after a certain age they're able to do that.
And even if you're standing on a curb, imagine this.
Now this is deep.
To wait until there are no cars coming, before you cross the street takes a certain amount of wisdom.
Just let that sink in.
That's a kingdom truth right there.
And only a foolish person would run in front of a car thinking everything would be all right.
Perhaps somebody might say, well, what about a small child?
How could you, how could you say that?
Would you call him foolish for darting out in front of a moving car?
And my answer is, yes.
I would, because the Bible does.
Proverbs 2215.
Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.
Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child.
Now, all you have to do for your child to be a foolish grown up is allow them to continue to be a foolish child.
Our children are foolish until we teach them and they learn not to be foolish.
That's the job of parents.
When we teach our children to obey safety rules.
We're teaching them wisdom.
When we teach them to obey moral laws, we're teaching them, wisdom, and when we teach them about the gospel and about Jesus, we're teaching them about the wisdom of God, we don't want them to be foolish.
And I've heard people excuse children's foolishness by saying, well, it's just a phase, they'll outgrow it.
No, they won't.
They'll grow all right.
They'll grow taller and bigger and stronger and older, but they don't automatically outgrow foolishness.
Ask me how I know.
How many prisons do we have in the state of Texas?
How many jails?
How many people do we have who are in trouble with the law?
You ought to go.
Well, no, I don't recommend doing this if you want to keep your wallet, but go to the Dallas County courthouse. loose Steret.
Absolute zoo.
And every one of those people going in and out of that building or one of 2 things, they're either in trouble or they're attorneys.
That's it.
And at all springs, from foolishness.
And either your children will learn by your teaching, or they'll learn by experience, and I'll tell you, experience is a cruel teacher whose lessons usually leave a painful scar and sometimes it's fatal.
Foolishness is fatal enough.
But the wrath that springs from foolishness kills the fool.
And Elofaz is absolutely correct here.
Just as Solomon was in the Proverbs.
But Job's not a fool.
And he's not a fool who's being killed by wrath or foolishness.
So this shouldn't apply to him.
It does apply to him, but in the instance he finds himself, in the circumstances he's under, that's not because he was foolish.
And Elifaz doesn't understand that.
Nevertheless, what he says is true across the board for all of us.
And he said, look back in the text, envy slayeth the silly one.
Envy slayeth, the silly one.
Now envy is jealousy.
And in fact, the words are used interchangeably in the Old Testament.
And the idea behind the word. of envy or jealousy.
We've got envy here, but if I say jealousy, it's the same thing.
The idea behind that word in our text is the state of being excited in a negative way over someone else's prosperity.
That's the idea behind this work.
When someone else prospers, we ought to be excited for them. not against them.
Why go to the trouble of getting your hackles up because someone else got rich?
or won a trophy, or prospered in some other way.
That's how this type of envy plays out.
When I was with the 1st law enforcement agency in the 1st part of my career, and with this one too, but particularly in that one, we had a lot of promotional opportunities.
Every week, somebody was going to a promotional oral board or testing for this position or that position.
So it's very common for somebody down the hall from you to be preparing for a promotional test.
And if you only have 2 or 3 positions and you have 20 or 30 applicants, most of them are going to get told no.
And I've been told no before and it doesn't feel good.
Have a competitive spirit, just like everyone else who wanted those positions.
But one of the things that I used to look for. is when when I was on the interview board, and we were interviewing applicants for promotion into our service, is I looked at how those people acted whenever they didn't make it.
I wanted to see, yes, I expected them to be disappointed, but when I heard that they went around the agency and badmouth the oral board and badmouth the person who did make it.
Badmouth, the one who won.
That's envy.
That other person prospered.
They didn't do anything to you.
They made the position.
And you're so envious, I would, you know, I would imagine these people being so envious, that they were willing to get their hackles up. and trash the person who made the position rather than going up and shaking their hands, say, hey, congratulations.
I'm happy for you.
That's what we ought to do.
Envy doesn't allow you to do that.
If I envy, I've allowed the emotions or allowed the prosperity of another person, to turn my emotions down a self-destructive path.
And we know this kind of envy is destructive because the next word tells us what it does.
It says envy slayeth.
It slayeth, it kills.
In our earthly lives, The most destructive any person or emotion or any other force can have is to kill a living creature.
That's the most you can destroy.
And envies ultimate destruction is the death of the one whom it affects.
So if I envy Brother Doug for something he has, It's not going to hurt Brother Doug, it's going to hurt me.
Now while we're talking about envy, let's see the difference between this destructive kind of envy and another kind of envy or jealousy, We've looked at the envy that is destructive, now I want to look at the envy that is protective.
You have destructive envy, you have protective envy or jealousy.
Second Corinthians 11 versus one through four.
2 Corinthians 11, verses one through four.
As Paul wrote to that church, would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly.
And indeed bear with me.
For I am jealous.
There we go.
I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy.
So did you know there's a godly jealousy?
A godly envy?
For I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguile Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, you might well bear with him.
Now, Paul uses the words espoused.
Husband and chaste and virgin.
And all these terms are employed to give the example of an earthly marriage between the husband and his virgin wife.
And the jealousy there is as a husband who has a virgin wife, but that virgin wife is threatened, her chastity is threatened by one to whom she does not belong.
And Paul applies this example in explaining how he was jealous over the Corinthian church.
And the threat to this chaste virgin bride was not another man, but another gospel.
And he asked the church to bear with him.
He said, this jealousy I have, this is a godly jealousy.
Because his manner and his actions were that of a jealous man.
I'll give you an example of how you may not have even realized it, but you've seen that godly jealousy in this church.
Brother Fulton and I do not let just anyone get up and preach in this church.
They have to be vetted to make sure they believe the Bible like we do.
Especially, most especially when it comes to the gospel.
So you've seen missionaries come in here, usually on Wednesday night.
They come in, may have their family or may be by themselves.
And in most churches where they go, when the pastor sees a missionary coming, they'll say, hey, brother, would you like to have our service tonight?
And the missionary will come up and that pastor has no idea what that missionary is going to say.
And that missionary may get up there and say some of the most doctrinally impure, wrong things.
And guess what the pastor has to do after that missionary leaves?
He's got to clean up the mess.
Well, we don't want to have to clean up the mess.
We don't want a mess.
Many of you, and I'm talking to people online and in here. of you came from a mess.
You got the mess cleaned up, not because of Brother Fulton or me or somebody else.
We were just instruments, but it was because God's truth settled in your hearts and you said, that makes sense, right?
Sheila, aha.
Yeah.
That's that was her realism.
Aha.
Got it.
And both of us have said before that we wouldn't allow President Trump to speak in this pulpit.
Even though we both voted for him.
Even though we appreciate many of the things that he's done for the country.
We can't send you on a spiritual date with him.
We're not going to do it.
We cannot send you on a spiritual date with the latest, greatest mega church pastor, and people like that are so charismatic.
They're so persuasive that a baby Christian, these that Paul was talking about, might well bear with them.
And so you may, and I don't think you all do, but some may think it's folly, it's foolishness for us to say things like that, but we also ask you to bear with us in our folly, just as Paul asked the Corinthians to do, because we're jealous over you with a godly jealousy.
Now returning to our text, We, I think, can now say more firmly that envy or jealousy that slays is not a godly jealousy, but an ungodly jealousy, an ungodly envy.
And the envy that slayeth, look back in the text, it slayeth the silly one.
Of course, we use the word silly quite differently than what the Hebrew word signifies here, which is why we study the original languages.
A silly one is one.
Now we're speaking of what the scripture says, a silly one is one who's been enticed or deceived.
In fact, the Hebrew word is normally translated as entice or deceived rather than silly.
Flatter is another word that's used, by the way.
And a silly one is one who's been flattered and believes the flattery.
He's been deceived by what someone else has told him, their words have enticed him away from the truth.
And there is a simple but really powerful example of what flattery, enticement, deception, silliness, what those attempt to do.
Here in Psalm chapter 78, Verses 34 through 37.
Psalm 78 verses 34 through 37.
Speaking of God dealing with rebellious Israel, the psalmist wrote, When he slew them, then they sought him, and they returned and inquired early after God.
And they remembered that God was their rock.
And the high God their redeemer, nevertheless, they did flatter him with their mouth.
And they lied unto him with their tongues.
For their heart was not right with him, neither were they steadfast in his covenant.
Now, how evil is man's heart?
To believe he cannot only flatter God, but to think that God is a silly one, that he would be deceived by it.
That means Israel thought God would believe their flatteries.
They tried to entice God.
They tried to deceive God, but they failed.
God heard their words, but God's not silly.
He knew their hearts.
And the reason it's easy to flatter silly men is that they don't realize they're being deceived.
They haven't sought the wisdom of God, so they're easily persuaded away from it.
Children are easily persuaded.
Remember we talked a moment ago about children being foolish.
Children are also silly.
And I don't mean funny.
They're silly.
They easily deceived.
And that's why they have parents.
That's why we have to protect them and teach them wisdom.
As much as I love my little grandchildren.
They're silly.
And so I don't just send them down the street and say, well, I'll tell you what, I know you're four, but I think you can walk all the way down to the highway and back and be just fine.
Oh man, I don't get more than 3 feet away from her.
I'm protecting her against dogs and strangers and cars and, you know, any other thing, a falling twig, anything that might hurt her precious little body.
Intellectually disabled people are usually persuaded.
So we also protect them.
And we try to teach them what they're able to learn.
But we still protect them for the rest of their lives because of their disabilities.
They don't have the ability in many cases to gain the wisdom they need to prevent the flatterers and the deceivers from taking advantage of them.
And we'll study this word just a little bit more before we get into verse five, but we'll have to do that next week because our time has run out.
Father, thank you for the time you've given us.
We don't take that for granted, Lord.
This is a precious 45 minutes that we have to study your word together, and thank you for every person who was interested in tuning in and showing up today for this lesson, and we ask you to teach us by your spirit and through your word, what you'd have us to learn.
And we ask that same grace for the next hour for our pastor as he teaches your word in Jesus' name.
Amen.
