Wisdom's Way or the Fool's Folly part 2

If you close your Bible, go ahead and turn back to Proverbs chapter 10. Proverbs chapter 10, it should be a well marked place in your Bible, because we've just been plugging along, covering some chapters in one message and covering some chapters in two. But last week we were in Proverbs chapter 10. We really only covered three verses if you remember. Verse 1 and verse 8 and then verse 14. We only covered three verses, but really the material was very practical. I thought it was very deep. It was much needed. There was a lot that we could say out of three verses.

As a matter of fact, I did say a lot because it was a little longer message than I had planned. But it was much needed what we looked at. Now let me explain to you what I mean. I point out or call to your memory the question I ask you out of verse 8, which was, "Are you receiving? Are you rejecting?" You know, there's the one in verse 8 that's receiving God's instruction and there's the one that is rejecting God's instruction. And no matter if we are an adult or one of our teenagers, we should be receiving instruction. Because if we receive instruction, then we're wise. And if we reject it, well, then we play the part of the fool.

Isn't that right? And then if we're not careful, we become that babbling fool. Remember the babbling fool? We're going to talk about the babbling fool a little more tonight. But look, before we get into chapter 10, before we get back into chapter 10, I want to remind you really where we are in the book of Proverbs. And there's a purpose with this. I thought about an analogy that will help you. You know, when we're on a trip, when we're driving, maybe we're going on vacation, Thanksgiving, Brother Keith and his family are going on vacation. You know, every now and then we need to look up and see where we are.

Now, today we use GPS navigation, you know, that little voice that talks to us, whether it's a male or a female, you know, we have that little voice that pops up and tells us where we are. Well, I want to be that little voice for you. And I want to be that little voice for you to show you where we are. We've transitioned. You might not have known it, but chapters 1 to 9 was really an introduction to the book. We've transitioned from the introduction to the main part of the book, which is chapters 10 to 31. Now, if you go back and you look at chapter 9, you really get your mind around everything that's in chapters 1 to 8.

And it might do us all some good to go back. I don't know if you have the time. I don't know if you make the time for things like that. But it would be good for you to go back maybe and look at your notes from chapter 9. So as to get chapters 1 to 8 in your mind properly. Now, this is my plan. I'm going to get a little further away from those chapters because it's still fresh in my mind. I'm going to get a little further away from them. And I'll go back and I'll listen and I'll go back and look because I do want those chapters to be in my mind. Now, I also want to emphasize to you the reading or the study tilt that I propose to you.

I encourage you again, and I encourage you last week to study verse by verse and chapter by chapter. I was talking to Brother Keith this week, and he was telling me how he had been in chapter 10 this week. But I also want you to develop the habit, the discipline of studying subject by subject. Subject by subject. Now, when we get into chapters 10 to 31, I've said this once, I'll say it again. It's really full of one liners, sometimes two liners. It'll be one line on one subject and then Solomon changes.

But if we get into the chapter and the other chapters, and we're used to looking at the different subjects and noting them, if we're used to Solomon going from one subject to another subject, and then back to the... Then we can begin to identify what's there. We can see the subjects. We can note the teaching, and then we can study it. So this is really a helpful tip because we want to all be good students. Now, one thing that I encourage you to do is as you're developing your plan, as you're studying, as you're noting, pray. Pray over what you're learning. Pray that the spirit will really put it in your mind.

Now, in our verses tonight, we're going to look at two paths, two voices, and two choices. We talked about this last night, or excuse me, last week. We talked about the twos, but we will see the two young men. They are the main characters in the chapter. And listen, we will see instruction for the young man. Remember, this is Solomon writing to his son. And the way they receive this instruction, the way the young son receives it determines which young man he'll be.

He'll either be the wise son who's on the path of life, the path of the righteous, or he'll be the foolish son who will reject truth, and go the way of the babbling fool, and go the way that we have studied so much in chapters 1-9. Now, I'm going to repeat this, but I'm going to repeat this, aiming it at you. Let me explain what I mean. We, we here tonight will see instruction. And listen, the way we receive the instruction determines the kind of person we're going to be. It doesn't matter how old we are. We had a discussion about age earlier before we got started. It doesn't matter how old we are. We will make that determination tonight.

A question or two to kind of get our minds going in the right direction. What type of instruction do we see here in chapter 10 with what we're looking at tonight, what is all of this like? There are two ways that you can see this instruction. This is all personal because Solomon is writing to his son. We've learned that Solomon was a loving father, and he loved his son, and he's writing to his son because he wants his son to go the way of God. But this is very practical. These are subjects that relate to everyday life, so it's really, really practical. Now, we're going to keep the same title that we had last week in our message.

Last week we looked at Wisdom's Way or the Fool's Folly. Tonight is just a part two. Wisdom's Way or the Fool's Folly. Now, last week I asked us three questions out of verse 1, verse 8, and verse 14. Tonight I'm going to ask us three questions, and the three questions come out of not the remainder of the chapter, a portion of the chapter. Now, as always, I do encourage you to take notes, but I'm going to leave a lot of verses for you. Believe it or not, you follow along, you take notes, and then you go and study on your own. And I'm going to talk a little more about that a little later.

I've got us a good illustration that will help you in your own study, in your own time. So let's look at our first question. Our first question is, how do you get it? That comes out of verses 2 to 5. How do you get it? Now, I'm not going to read the verses. I'll read them as we go. But here we do have several proverbs that are grouped together. What I mean by proverbs, several verses. Everything here centers around money. Everything in these verses centers around money and work. And Solomon is presenting a contrast between, guess what, two people. He presents contrasts all the time, and there are two people here.

Here we have two people, we have two choices, we have two voices. And see, this is all familiar because we've seen this so much. So the three ways I'm going to present this to you are three ways I'm going to break this down. All under this first question, how do you get it? So first, our first observation, I want us to look at what I'm calling unjust gain. Look at verse 2. Unjust gain. Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit. Now, here in verse 2, verse 2 can bring us, in my mind, to a question. What determines if something is gained by wickedness? Who is it that determines if something is gained by sin? Let me give you an example.

Stealing, for instance. Some might say that stealing is okay. Some might say, well, you know, if I steal from my family, it's okay. If I steal for food, it's okay. Well, we can rationalize it or talk about it in so many different ways, but we must see that God's Word determines if something is sinful or not. It's not what our parents say. It's not how we feel. It's God's Word that determines if something is sinful or not. God's Word is the standard. God's Word tells us how we should gain money. God's Word tells us how we should gain possessions and all the stuff in life. You know what I mean by stuff? Just the stuff in life.

Anything we gain through cheating or lying or stealing or really even slacking is dishonest or unjust. There's a lot of ways we can describe it. So simply Solomon is saying that money and possessions will not profit someone if it's gotten the wrong way. Now, as I was finishing up today, I thought about several examples that will help you see this. Now, quite a few years ago when I left full-time ministry, I went to work for a building contractor, and that meant when I showed up to work, I was on the clock. That meant that I could not just walk out to my truck. I couldn't leave. I was on the clock.

And at the end of the week, my boss would call. He would call all the guys that worked for him, and he would say, "How many hours did you have this week?" He didn't know if I left and went to the doctor. He didn't know if I came in to work late because I had a sick child. It was the honor system. And so I had to keep up with my time. And in that day, if I were to look at him and I were to fudge a little and say, "You know, boss, I worked 40 hours this week when really I knew I only worked 38." See, that's what this verse is speaking about. I remember I worked in those days with a guy who was bad about just stealing a few things.

I'll never forget one time we were working on the job, and we had all these sacks of quick concrete. And, you know, he would pick up one or two and put the leftovers in the back of his truck, and he would always just say, "You know, a rich man will never miss something like that." Well, the problem is it didn't belong to him. He was stealing it. You know, some of you guys know that I worked for myself for a while. One of the young men that was in the life of our church used to work for me. He was a high school-aged guy and a college guy, and he worked for me. And I was responsible for paying him.

And, you know, what if I turned it around and I didn't pay him the money that I owed him? You see what I mean? What does verse 2 say here? Go back to the verse. "Treasures gained by wickedness, it doesn't profit." So if we gain things, if we gain monies and possessions in the stuff of life, in an unjust way, a wicked way, a sinful way, it doesn't profit us. And that's what Solomon is saying. So the question, how did you get it? You see where I'm going with that? Now, the second thing, or the second observation I want us to see is laziness versus diligence. This is what I'm calling laziness versus diligence.

We're still dealing with the first question. Verses 4 and 5. "A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps and harvests is a son who brings shame." Now, here we have a comparison. We have a comparison or a contrast. We have two choices, two paths, even two voices coming out of the story in the verses. We have the voice of laziness here, and then we have the voice of diligence. First, we have the comparison of hands. Do we not? Look at verse 4.

"The slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich." It is obvious that the hand here is referring to work or the lack of work. First, there is the hand that is slack or lazy. You can just call him lazy. He does not want to work, and that leads to poverty. Because he does not work, he does not earn a wage, and that leads to poverty. And then second, there is the hand of diligence. See the comparison? He does work, and because he does work, he has plenty. Because he is willing to work, he earns a wage, and he's not in poverty. See the contrast? And then second, we have a comparison of time.

I see this as a comparison of time. Verse 5, "He who gathers in summer is the prudent son or the smart son, but he who sleeps in harvest is the son that brings shame." I say that this is a comparison in time because Solomon is talking about summer or the time of harvest. Here Solomon says the diligent or the wise son gets to work during the harvest time. The diligent son gets to work when the crops are ready, but not the lazy son. He sleeps in. The lazy son takes a nap when he should be working. He hits the snooze button over and over and over and over. Now, we don't live in an agricultural society, so this does not really relate to us.

But has anybody here ever had a garden? You know, when we have a garden, when the crop comes in, you've got to pick it. We used to grow a garden when we lived in town. We moved in the country. Now we don't have a garden. I don't understand why. But I used to grow snap beans and peas, and when those snap beans came in, there was a window of time that you better pick them. And if you didn't pick them at the right time, they'd get too big and too hard, and they weren't worth eating. If the peas stayed on the vine too long, they'd get hard, and Ms.

Christie didn't like them when they got hard, and she'd fuss at me that I didn't pick them two or three days earlier. See, there was a time to harvest what had come in in the garden. Now, we don't live in an agricultural society, but we can relate to that. But what do we see? It's a comparison. Laziness versus diligence. Laziness of the slack hand versus the hardworking hand. But then third, faithfulness. This is all under the question, "How did you get it?" Faithfulness. Look at verse 3. "The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the cravings of the wicked." Now, I purposely left verse 3 for the last for two reasons.

First, this causes a problem for some. And then second, I wanted to finish up on a positive note. Now, a question here. What's the problem here? Some can mistake this proverb as a promise to never go hungry. Some can make this out to mean that the Christian should never suffer. But that leads me to another question. What about Christians who do suffer in hunger? I thought about a real life example. I went to India in 2014, and I went all over the country. I say not all over the country, just two or three places and various places in the country. But I went to the state of Bihar, which is the poorest state in the country.

While I was there, I had a chance to talk on the phone to my wife, and she said, "I looked up Bihar on the internet. It says it's the poorest state in the country." And I said, "I know I'm here." But I went into this small little village, and I met this pastor named Emmanuel Kisku. And Emmanuel was the nicest man. I mean, he had the biggest smile, and his wife was about four foot two. But I learned Emmanuel's story. He lived in a village, and he had a church. And I met his parents. His dad was a deacon in his church. But the back story was, when he was a little boy, his parents were so poor, they took him to an orphanage and left him.

They couldn't feed him. They took him to an orphanage miles from their home and said, "We cannot feed our son. You raise him." Now, that's poverty. Does that mean that they were non-Christian? No. That doesn't mean that. Look how God worked. Emmanuel came to know the Lord. He goes back to his home village. He pastors the church there. And his mom and his dad are active in the life of the church there. Just wonderful Christian people. So the verse doesn't mean that Christians never suffer. I mean, what about Christians today that we know that lose their jobs, they have financial problems, they go through trials and more?

Does this mean that God doesn't love them? No. That's not the case. The key to this proverb is understanding that we view this teaching in light of eternity. We can't view this in terms of the immediate. Here's a good way to understand this proverb. Just simply verse 3. "In a general sense, we can apply it to the immediate, but ultimately this will always be true of the believer. The dishonest and the sinful may have more now, and the true Christian may like now, but not in the end." Not in the end. It's not the immediate. We must see it in light of eternity. Let me go back to my friend Emmanuel. Emmanuel is still poor.

When I was at his house in 2014, his house was two rooms. I ate at his house. My friend that took me there said, "You have to eat. These people are poor. They probably killed the best chicken for you and to me." If we do not eat, it will insult them. I felt like I was taking money out of their pocket because I was eating their food. They had one little room that was a bedroom and one little room that was a kitchen. We sat there while all the people in their church watched us eat. He was poor. But you know what? In light of eternity, when he gets to eternity, he'll probably be richer than many Christians that we know. You see what I mean?

You view this text not in the immediate. So what are we seeing here? Faithfulness. God is faithful. God is faithful. So my question here in these verses, verses 2 to 5, in summary, what are we seeing here? Simply Solomon is condemning unjust gain. He is condemning laziness. And notice the end of both. Unjust gain and laziness always leads to loss and poverty. No profit. No quick profit, but it doesn't last. But we have a promise for those who are true Christians. God promises to bless the righteous, if not here in this life, most certainly in the life after. Now, in application, I want to point out the two paths.

I want to point out the two choices. The path of the honest, they work. Then the path of the dishonest and their dishonest gain. I want to point out the path of the diligent and the path of the lazy. See the different paths? But now I want to make application. Teenagers, where do you fit into this? See, this is your choice today. You're going to choose one path. You're going to make one choice. Are you going to be the hard worker or are you going to be the lazy one? Are you going to strive out for quick gain in a dishonest manner or are you going to be hardworking and diligent no matter what? Now let me apply. What about your schoolwork?

See, this applies to your schoolwork. Are you going to work hard and to earn those grades that you want to get? What about in sports? Are you going to work hard or are you going to be lazy? But what about any job that you may have? If it's cleaning the house for your parents, for your allowance, or if it's working for a neighbor? See, this applies to every area of our life. I didn't want to put this in some language of our day. One of the Bible commentators that I was reading said some things that really struck me and I've been meditating on them really since the beginning of the week. And I'm going to read these words so I'm quoting someone.

Listen to what the writer says here. In Proverbs, and I'm quoting, "Laziness refers to people who cannot see their assignments through to completion." Now, it gets real contemporary, puts it into our circumstances. And I'm quoting, "They might start a task and get to the middle of it, but they walk away before it's finished. It is the son who helped plant the crops, but it's not there during the harvest time to finish the task. In our day, the laziness of Proverbs looks like distractions that keep you from staying on task. You cannot complete your assignments because Facebook distracts you for 30 minutes.

You come back and you do five minutes of work, but then you're back on Twitter for 15 minutes." He goes on to another subject, and I'm quoting, "Laziness is seen in the extended adolescence of our culture where kids can't grow up and provide for themselves and keep coming back home to mom and dad's house." So what do we see? This is laziness. This is the slack hand. This is the one that won't work. This is the one who strikes out for dishonest gain. And so teenagers, you need to see, are you faithful to work hard and to stay on task in your schoolwork and in your sports and in any job, in anything that is before you?

And see, the temptation, the laziness and the slackness and even dishonest gain, it's everywhere. But what about adults? Where are we here? See, the kind of example that we set for our children affects our children. A good friend of mine years ago said this, and it's so true. What parents do in moderation, kids do in excess. And parents, adults, if we are lazy or if we cheat the system with dishonest gain, our children are watching us, and how we do it in moderation, they will do it in excess. So here's my question. How do you get it? Do you work hard for it? Do you cheat the system? Are you waiting on someone else to do it for you?

Laziness, slackness, never pays. So let's move on. Let's notice our second question. What do you say? This is what I'm calling what do you say? Now here we'll cover quite a few verses really, really quickly. Here's where we will see this subject kind of scattered around in the chapter. And I will gather the verses up together. It's really a big lesson. But Solomon is teaching, and he's teaching a lesson about speech, about the mouth, about the way someone is talking. So first, we're going to look at this in four ways. First, I want us to see words of violence. This comes out of verse six in the beginning of verse 11.

I'm seeing words of violence. Look at verse six with me. Blessings are on the head of the righteous, but here's the contrast. The mouth of the wicked conceals violence. And then look at verse 11 with me. The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. We'll look at that in a moment. But the mouth of the wicked conceals violence. Two times we see that Solomon speaks about speech and violence. He mentions talking, the tongue, and violence. Two times he makes that connection. Now there's some debate as to what this means. What needs to be seen is that speech and violence are connected. A couple of questions here.

Does this person simply always talk of violence? Does this person commit violent acts and then speak about those actions? Or does this person commit violence and then use words to try to cover up his actions? Think about it. Let me read those questions again. Does this person simply talk about violence? Does this person commit violent acts and then talk about those actions? Does this person commit violent acts and then use words to try to cover up his actions? Really it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. What we see is violence and wicked speech that are connected together. No matter how you slice it, he is connecting them.

So we see words of violence. Then second, I want us to see the eyes of the babbling fool. We talked about him a little last week. Look at verse 8. "The wise of heart will receive commandments, but the babbling fool will come to ruin." Look at verse 10. "Whoever winks the eye, causes trouble, and a babbling fool will come to ruin." See two times the babbling fool is mentioned. Here we have the babbling fool striking again. I used that language last week. He strikes again. Now this time we don't see words, but we see expressions. We talked about this some last week. Facial expressions.

One of the Bible scholars that I read this week said, "The eye and the mouth shall be in agreement." That's what we have. The eye and the mouth are in agreement. I like that. It seems that Solomon is saying that the babbling fool uses his eyes and his expressions to communicate what his words are saying. This is nonverbal communication that goes along with stupid speech because that's what the text calls it. Now I'm going to mention some things that I talked about last week. Remember I talked about the babbling fool? How his actions go along with the words? The babbling fool has a bad attitude. The babbling fool uses facial expressions.

The babbling fool uses the silent treatment. What do we have here? We have facial expressions going along with foolish speech. Then we see here in verse 8 and 10, even the eyes are involved. Then third, the lips of life. What I'm calling the lips of life. Look at verse 11. "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life." Here we see the opposite of the babbling fool. Remember Solomon is always contrasting. The righteous, they have words and they have words of life. What comes out of his lips are the very words of God. Now what are these words? These are the words of God because this person knows God's word.

They've hidden God's word in their heart. They are speaking God's word. God's word is a source of blessing in life and that's what's coming out of their lips. And then fourth, we have what I'm calling two tongues. It's out of verses 18 to 21 and verses 31 to 32. Quite a bit of scriptures here. Here we have a contrast. We have the tongue of the righteous and the tongue of the unrighteous. I'm not going to read the verses. I'm going to refer to them. But notice what we have. First, the unrighteous. The unrighteous speaks lies and slander. But notice where it comes from. Look at verse 18.

"The one who conceals hatred has lying lips and whoever utters slander is a fool." It seems that this slander and this lying is even aimed at someone. There is hatred in the heart and it comes out in slander and lying. You can almost see that it is meant for a particular person. Now notice what Solomon says about this person. In verse 20, it says that their heart is of little value. And in verse 21, it says that they don't have any sense. Look at verse 20. The second part of verse 20. The second part of the wicked is of little worth. And then the second part of verse 21.

"But the fool, they die because of the lack of sense." So the unrighteous, the lips, the tongue of the unrighteous. Then second, the righteous. The lips, the tongue of the righteous. The righteous does not say much. We learned that last week. That's in verse 19 again. We saw that in verse 8, that the wise, he listens more than he talks. But when he does talk, his words are as valuable as silver. Look at verse 20. "The tongue of the righteous is of choice silver." His words benefit those who are around him, according to verse 21. What does verse 21 say? "The lips of the righteous feed many." His words are full of wisdom.

They're full of righteousness according to verse 30 and 31. And his words benefit other people. So you see what I mean by two tongues. The tongue of the righteous and the tongue of the unrighteous. Now in summary, what have we seen here? This is really a lot. I told you we'd cover a lot of verses. We have words of violence. We even see words of foolishness coming from the eyes of the babbling fool, the non-verbal communication. We see the tongue of the foolish, lies and slander and much babbling, but not the righteous.

The righteous, his words are words of wisdom, and they come out of a fountain, and that fountain is God's word that has been hidden in their heart. And this is all about speech. Solomon is going through all of these verses about speech. Again, the question, what do you say? So on application, this leads me to ask questions. Do you have words of violence? You might say, "Brother Chris, I don't talk about killing people. I don't even talk about beating people up." Do you have slanderous words? Do you attack people for the way they look? Do you attack people for who they are?

Do you have slanderous words against your parents, against teachers, against authority figures, against so-called friends and even people that you don't like? You see what I mean? Do you make up lies about people? See, those are violent words, words of violence. We see that in verse 6 in the second part of verse 11. Are you like that babbling fool? Do you just ignore instruction? Do you ignore and reject those who are teaching you God's word? Do you ignore those authority figures? And do you say absurd things about them with your words and with your looks? Do you roll your eyes at authority figures?

When people are telling you the truth of God's word, do you just look the other way? See, your eyes and your actions and your nonverbal communication go along with your words whether you know it or not. And what about your lips? Do they speak forth the words of life? Are your lips a fountain of blessings for others because you are uttering the word of God? I thought about two examples that might help you here. When I go to my mother-in-law's house, this is one of my kids' favorite places to go. They love to go to Nanny's house. But you know, at my mother-in-law's house, she has these water jugs on her counter.

See, one of her brothers goes to an artesian well and gets that nice, cool, clean water right out of the ground. Y'all ever drink water like that? It has a different flavor because it doesn't have chemicals in it. I like to drink it. My mother-in-law drinks it every day. But that's good, clean, clear water. But in my mind, I go back to the days when I was a little kid at my grandfather's old farm. He'll have my grandfather's farm in the old camp house. And he built the camp where he built it because right down the hill from the camp was an old spring. And when I was a kid, he had that spring dug out and he had a pump house there.

There was a problem with that spring. It had iron in the water. That meant that water was red. Red. Everything it touched, it turned to red. The bathtub, it turned red. The old shower, it turned red. If you put it in a water jug, it turned red. You'd drink it. And so my question for you is this. The words that are coming out of your life, the words that are coming out of your mouth, are they cool and they're clean? Are they come from God's Word or are they tainted? Do you have violent words and slanderous and lying words?

Do you just have words that reject instruction and teaching and authority figures in your life and even does it spill over into your nonverbal communication? You see, what do you say? What is the question? What do you say? What do you say? And then third, let's finish up with number three. The third question, what are you leaving? This is an entirely different subject. What are you leaving? Go back to verse seven. This is one of the verses that really jumped out to me and I wanted to leave this for the end, really towards the end.

Verse seven, "The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot." But notice what we see. We have two lessons. One lesson on work and money, we've covered that. One lesson on speech, we've covered that. But here we have another lesson, a third lesson. This is a practical lesson, but this is a lesson on the legacy that you leave. What will you leave behind? Now none of this really relates, does it? We have a lesson on what we earn, money, and work. Then we have a lesson on speech, and now we have a lesson on what we leave behind. Now there are two ways I want us to look at this.

First, I want us to see a righteous memory. Look at verse seven. "The memory of the righteous is a blessing." Now this word memory can be understood as the word name. So I want to reread the verse using the word name as well. "The memory or the name of the righteous is a blessing." Simply the name of the righteous, the memory of the righteous, that memory, that name will be a blessing. In other words, the righteous, they will be remembered as a blessing. The righteous, they will be remembered by family, by friends, by co-workers, by neighbors, what? As a blessing. But then the contrast. Second, the rotting memory.

So we've seen the righteous memory, now the rotting memory. The second part of the verse. "But the name of the wicked will rot." See, we have the opposite. Now again, let me reread the verse. Again, this is not doing damage to the verse. "But the name or the memory of the wicked will rot." Now there's a key word here. The English standard that I'm using uses the word rot. This word literally means worm eaten and disgusting. Simply the memory or the name of the wicked will be disgusting. Their family, their friends, their neighbors, they will remember them as a rotten person. So in summary, this is very easy. Everybody leaves a legacy.

Everybody leaves a legacy. Everybody leaves a memory. Everyone leaves something. Now I'm not talking about material possessions. Now those are connected with it. But everybody leaves a memory or a legacy or something. Now I want to help you here by bringing you into some experiences in my life that will kind of illustrate this for you. The first experience is I wonder about somebody. I wonder about a young man that I have no clue about, but his name is David Hartley. David Hartley.

When I go on a particular road towards Brookhaven High School and the cemetery, Rose Hill Cemetery is on the right, ever since I've been living in Brookhaven there's a tombstone there and I always see flowers there and there's a picture on it. The name on the tombstone is David Hartley and he was born in 1966. That's close to when I was born and he died in 1987. I graduated in 1987. He was young. And I wonder, I ride by that and just about every time I look at that tombstone, I look at the face, I look at the dates and I wonder who he was, I wonder how he lived, I wonder why he died so young and I just wonder what did he leave behind.

I'm not talking about material possessions. What kind of legacy did he leave? Was it a godly legacy or an ungodly legacy? You know, was it a rotten legacy? I don't know. But I also think about a funeral that I attended quite a few years ago. I knew this person well. But I'll never forget, I was at that funeral, they were very well known, they were respected, they had lots of money, came from the right family. And at that funeral with the casket there in front, I watched two ministers get up and they talked about this person, about how he was a great man and how he lived this way and this way and this way.

But the problem is everybody in there knew that everything the minister said was a lie. His ex-wife was sitting there, he never repented for leaving her. He had children there, he never repented for leaving them. He was a scoundrel, an adulterer. He was rotten. But I watched two ministers get up and talked about how he did favors for them and how wonderful, it didn't add up. It was as quiet as you could get and you could look around on people's faces and it was as if somebody was going to stand up any minute and say, "That's a lie, that's a lie.

He was a rotten, low-down, dirty scoundrel." I watched people that I'd known all my life stare up at those men and think, "No." Now what am I trying to show you? You leave a legacy. Go back to the verse. The memory, the name of the righteous is a blessing, but the name, the memory of the wicked, it's rotten. And so my question for you is this, what are you leaving? Now some of you who are young, you think, "I've got plenty of time in life." No, you're determining your legacy now. I'll tell you one more story and then we'll move to the conclusion. I've shared with you many times that I didn't come to faith in Christ until I was 20 years old.

Teenagers, when I was your age, I didn't live for Jesus. I was lost. And you know, I went to one of my high school reunions, my 10-year high school reunion for one purpose and one purpose only. Well, I take that back for two. I went first to tell people that I went to high school with that I'd gotten saved, God had changed my life. See, I'd left a legacy there. They were people that just couldn't believe that I was a Christian. And the second reason I win is those who said they were Christian when I went to high school with them, I ask them, "Why didn't they tell me about Jesus?" I did.

"Why didn't you tell me about Jesus when I desperately needed him?" See, I had left a legacy there. See, my question is, what legacy are you leaving? Now as a conclude, I want to move away from the message and I want to use an example here. Now, what have we looked at? See, this is Chapter 10, and Solomon is changing in the way he writes, and the subjects are all over the place. It would take us a long time to pull all of these verses together, and so I'm really beginning to leave you verses on your own. Chapters 1 to 9 have been a rehearsal to get you in the groove of studying on your own. And so I'm leaving you verses.

I'm pulling a few subjects together for us to study. But you know, this is kind of like a gun. You know, you got a rifle and you got a shotgun. I'm not talking about pistols, that is. But you know, I think most of us know the difference in a rifle and a shotgun. You know, a rifle is just one shot. You know, but a shotgun, it might shoot bird shot or buckshot. You know, bird shot just scatters everywhere, and buckshot does the same thing. And when we get in here, it's going to hit you somehow. Some of these verses might be a rifle shot dead in between your eyes. Some of this stuff might be bird shot and it just pepper all over you.

But some of this stuff might be buckshot. Two or three of these things really hit you. And what I'm encouraging you to do is to make application of all three that we've looked at. We've looked at working money, how do you earn it? We've looked at your speech, what's coming out of your mouth, and then we've looked at a legacy. And however it hits you, receive it. And then as you study, look for application. Use that analogy. Lord, I'm about to get into this chapter. If every verse needs to be a rifle shot between my eyes, hit me right between the eyes. If everything in here is just like buckshot, you need to just shoot me right in the heart.

If you're just going to pepper me with everything, because truthfully we all need to be hit somehow. So what are we looking at tonight? Wisdom's way of the fool's folly. Solomon is contrasting so much. Two paths, two voices, two ways. And again, I say it over and over and over. You're either on wisdom's way or you're on the path of the fool's folly. So with these subjects, where are you? Where are you? Where are you?