In his sermon 'Four People Prone to Fooling Themselves,' Peter Allison discusses Proverbs 20 and identifies four types of self-deceived individuals: the alcoholic, the provocateur of authority, the incessant debater, and the lazy person. He emphasizes that each is prone to self-deception by believing they are in control or justified in their actions. The sermon warns of the dangers of alcohol, using biblical examples like Noah and Lot to illustrate how even the righteous can be led astray. It also underscores the importance of respecting authority and discerning when to stand up against it, as in the cases of biblical figures who resisted unrighteous commands for the glory of God. Allison stresses the need for wisdom, which comes from the Holy Spirit, and contrasts it with the folly of self-indulgence and pride. The sermon concludes by encouraging believers to actively cultivate their spiritual lives through prayer, scripture study, and reliance on the Holy Spirit to overcome laziness and excuses.
Proverbs 20, as we move back to Proverbs for a bit. I'd like to read this morning the first four verses. I'd like to read the first four verses. Wine is a mockery, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise. The wrath of a king is like the roaring of a lion, whoever provokes him to anger sins against his own life.
It is honorable for a man to stop striving, since any fool can start a quarrel. The lazy man will not plow because of winter. He will beg during harvest and have nothing." Let us pray. Father, This is your word, this you have preserved, this is truth. And we ask that you would teach us, persuade us where we doubt, comfort us where we sorrow, instruct us where we are ignorant.
Father, I pray that you would sanctify these sinful lips And that you would speak through them your grace and your peace to us this morning. In Jesus' name, Amen. Well, this section of Proverbs begins to talk quite a bit about the civil magistrate. I think this chapter speaks about the king and refers to the king more than any other chapter in the book of Proverbs, or at least as many times as any other chapter. Times any other chapter.
But we have the outset of this. Four people, four fools. And they're fools because they fool themselves. People who are self-deceived. It opens up with Somebody who is a drunk, somebody who provokes the king, somebody who likes to debate, and somebody who has lots of excuses for why they can't get their work done.
All these things, these four different things that maybe at first glance seem to be random and unrelated, I think are connected in that they speak of four different types of people or four different situations where it is easy for us to deceive ourselves, thinking that we are doing well when we are not. Self-deception. When we think we are wise, we think we are strong, we think we are ruling over our own passions, and yet we are deceived, and we're not. The first example that's given here, the first fool, is the drunk, the alcoholic, or maybe somebody who is not drunk but just uses alcohol a lot. This is not by the way, this is the first time Proverbs gives us a warning on alcohol.
This is the 20th chapter and it's the first time that alcohol is We are warned about the improper use of alcohol now, but this is not the main Passage dealing with alcohol that will come later So we will save that message for that time. But this is, I think, a brief mention because it's somebody who has deceived himself. Wine is a mocker and strong drink, that's an alcoholic beverage. You might include under that anything that's not wine, like beer and so forth. It's easy to think that we are in control, that we are in control of our drinking, that we can use it, pass it by anytime we want, when in fact it might have a stronger grip than we are willing to acknowledge.
What might have been at one time a free choice has over time maybe become a constrained choice, a form of bondage, an addiction. Oh, not that anybody outside would think of us as drunks, But it's become an addiction, something that has a grip over us. We think we are in control. We think that we are drinking in moderation, and maybe it is in moderation, such that we aren't like the classic stereotype of a drunk who can't walk straight or talk straight or think at all. And yet, It's easy to deceive ourselves into what might have been, at one time, a proper and good use has become a habit that has a grip upon us.
There are many things that can have a habit and a grip upon us, like wine. But wine particularly is a mocker, and strong drink is a brawler. Wine breaks down inhibitions so that people do things under the influence of wine that they would never consider, under the influence of any alcohol, that they would never consider or conceive of doing without the alcohol. Wine makes an alcohol, I should say, make rational people, because that's what this is talking about, it's talking about all alcohol, wine, strong drink. Alcohol makes rational people into a laughing stock.
Alcohol is a mocker. It brings delusions of grandeur. It makes weaklings believe that they can beat up the strong man. It brings hallucinations, seeing and hearing things that aren't there. It can bring trouble, telling what is real and what is not.
See, inebriated people are easily led astray, they are easily manipulated. This world is full of all the jokes that people like to play on people who are drunk because they're easily made a fool of they're easily manipulated they're easily led into doing all manner of stupid and silly things wine alcohol is a mocker and whoever is led astray that in the King James that word is deceived, whoever is deceived by it is not wise. See the danger here is of this deception is that all the while the drunk is adamantly maintaining that they're not drunk, that they're in full control, that they've not been led astray. All the while they're believing other people may do all sorts of stupid things when they're drunk, but not me. I'm not under the dominion of this.
And so many people can become steadily and almost imperceptibly enslaved by alcohol, or anything else. Maybe even video games can have the same kind of effect that they have a grip upon us. Its greatest danger I think lies when we think we are wise concerning it, or whatever the addiction is. Paul told the Corinthians, he who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall. And there have been very godly people recorded in the scriptures who have fallen in this area, fallen into, become drunk.
Noah, Noah was a righteous man. Noah for 120 years was a preacher of righteousness. Noah believed God, that God would send a flood and he built a massive boat. Even by today's standards, it's a massive boat that he built. When as yet, it had never even rained on the earth.
He went a hundred years with people mocking him, building a boat when there had never even been rain on the earth, let alone any kind of flooding. He built the boat because he believed God. And yet, after this flood, After he watched God destroy the whole world and save he and his seven other members in his family he planted a vineyard and Drank the wine and became drunk and fell into sexual sin of some sort. If Noah could be deceived by alcohol, so can we. Or Lot.
Lot is described as a righteous man in the New Testament as well. We often think of him in the dispute with Abraham where he took the choice towards Sodom, but the New Testament, God's Word, describes lot as a righteous man. His righteous soul was vexed by the immorality of the city he lived in. And yet he too fell into sin, allowed himself to become drunk, and commit incest with his daughters. Wine is certainly not forbidden, it is a gift of God to make us glad, the psalm says.
Wine that makes the heart of man glad, oil to make his face shine, and bread which strengthens him. So there is a right use of it, but the warning here is don't be deceived by it or anything else. It's easy to be enslaved. And the Bible says those who are led astray, those who are deceived, deceived by this, by alcohol, are not wise. You're not wise.
We are not wise in these matters because we lack the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of wisdom. We are not wise because we lack the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom. Now we have received not the Spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches. A wisdom that the Holy Spirit teaches.
How do we know when we are being deceived? How do we know whether we are making a right use of the things that God has given to us, whatever those might be, whatever good gifts those might be, whether it's alcohol or any other things that God gives us? How do we know? It's because we've been taught by the Holy Spirit. Not which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches.
We have to be those who are led by the Holy Spirit, who are taught, whose minds are taught by the Holy Spirit. It's...instead of desiring to be filled with more and more wine, we are to be filled with more and more with the Holy Spirit. This contrast between wisdom and wine, wisdom and alcohol, is also in the New Testament as well in Ephesians. Paul told them, See that you walk circumspectly not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time because of days of evil. Therefore, Do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
And do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation." This pairing of being unwise with drinking wine, the pairing of not being filled with the Spirit, not being taught with the Spirit leads us to being dissipated. Dissipated is where your gifts, your abilities are spread out so they are not useful. Are spread out so they're not useful. When you leave the door of your house open in the wintertime all the heat goes out and it becomes dissipated. You don't heat the outside.
It's ineffective. That heat in your house, that amount of heat in your house when it's focused, When it's concentrated in that small area, it warms your house and makes it comfortable, it does something. If you open the door and let it out into the world, we say it's dissipated, it's lost, it does nothing, it doesn't heat the outside. That's dissipation. We are not to be those whose gifts, whose abilities, whose labor is dissipated.
It goes to nothing. And that's something that happens with alcohol. It's something that can happen with many other things. Anything that can take our time and our energy and our talents and just scatter them so they don't accomplish anything productive or useful is dissipation. Do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation.
It's the dissipation that Paul is concerned with here. This loss of time. Notice it says we are to redeem the time. Notice how this is all fitting together. There is to be a redeeming of the time, a use of the time for something constructive and good, not a dissipation.
And how do we get there? Well, it's not by our own strength. Paul says it's by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit of wisdom, this Spirit that teaches us, is how we are able to redeem the time, how we are able to use our gifts that God has given to us in a way that is constructive to us, to our family, to the body of Christ, to the community around us. Being filled with the Spirit.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Those who fear the Lord are those who are filled with the Spirit. The second fool who is liable to deceive himself is the one who provokes kings. The wrath of the king is like the roaring of a lion, and whoever provokes him to anger sins against his own life. Kings possess a very real authority.
It's an authority from God. The king is God's agent of wrath, God's wrath. So the king's wrath is very real. And this person, this self-deceived person does not respect the wrath of the king. It doesn't recognize that, as Proverbs says, by me kings reign.
And so They provoke the wrath of the king to their own detriment. They provoke it unnecessarily. Shimei comes to mind. As David is fleeing, Absalom, he is humiliated. He is having to leave his own city, his own house, his family because his son has raised a revolt against him, turned the hearts of the people against him, and he's fleeing.
And this guy is running along, throwing dirt on him and cursing him. And David, he's doing, you couldn't do something more provoking to a person, but David in his condition is in no way able to do anything. He's chained. And he's unable to stop him. But David doesn't forget this incident.
When his servants wanted to go over and kill him, David said, no, this isn't the time. He recognized the hand of the Lord upon him and accepted this as, he said, maybe God has sent him. But when he made Solomon king, this incident, he passed on to Solomon. And David said, in your wisdom you will know what to do with him, but you deal with this. And Solomon in his wisdom did deal with it.
He told the guy, "'Do not leave the city. In the day that you leave the city, you will die.'" And that worked for a while until this Shimei's servants figured out that he couldn't leave the city and that if they could get out of the city They would be free and so his servant ran away and Shimei I thought well if I let him escape then I'll never be able to have any servants because they'll figure out that they can just get out of the city and I can't go after them. And so he went after them, left the city, and Solomon said, look, you agreed. The day that you leave the city you will die. And so Solomon executed him.
He did not respect the king's wrath. He did not respect that the king does not bear the sword in vain. And we have a duty, as Romans 13 says, to submit to the king for conscience sake. But there's also a wisdom in submitting to the king for wrath's sake. And Romans 13 speaks about that sort of submission as well.
Submitting to the king, even if it's an unwicked and ungodly ruler, for wrath's sake, because the king's wrath is real. It is the roaring of a lion. There are teeth behind it. There is strength and power in the wrath of the king. And so there is a wisdom in submitting to the king for wrath's sake.
Paul says don't submit just for wrath's sake, submit also for conscience sake. There is wisdom in submitting for wrath's sake. Now there are times when The truth requires that we say or do what might provoke a wicked king, or when we demur from following or obeying a wicked commandment. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, Daniel's three friends in Babylon, had a situation like this. Their peers went to the king and said, these people aren't worshipping the idol that you erected, the image that you erected.
And they didn't back down. And of course the king was very angry. He threw them into a fire to execute them. And God delivered them. But there are many times that we can quietly demur without waving a red flag and drawing undue attention to ourselves.
That is submitting for wrath's sake. There is wisdom in that. Whoever provokes a king to anger, sins against his own life. And so how do we know, again, when do we need to not provoke the king's wrath? When is it better to back down, to respect the king, even if it's a wicked king?
When do we need to stand like Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah? And Daniel did, later on. Well, we can ask ourselves a few questions. We can ask, is the glory of God at stake? Is the glory of God at stake?
If we don't stand, will we be breaking the law of God and not just by commission doing something but by omission not doing something that God requires us to do. When the Jews showed up at Cory 10 Boom's father's house, it was against the law to take them in and shelter them. But they did, they took them in and they made elaborate preparations to be able to conceal them, hide them. Was that going to incur the wrath of the civil magistrate? Absolutely.
But they did it because to not do it would have been to sin by omission, to sin by not doing, not rescuing those who are perishing. Obadiah hid the prophets of the Lord from Ahab and fed them because he feared God. These were prophets whose life was in danger by a wicked queen who had threatened to kill all the prophets of God. And Obadiah hid them. Because to not have hidden them would have caused him to sin by omission.
He didn't do that for his own glory. He did it because he feared God. The midwives feared God. Rahab feared God. All of these people acted because they feared God.
Is the glory of God our motive? It's right to stand on a righteous principle for the wrong motive And so we have to ask ourselves We have to pray that the Lord gives us insight that we are not deceived are we? Stand are we Is our motive the glory of God? Or is our motive to be a hero? What is our posture as well?
Is this done in humility? Pride goes before a fall and there's no faster way to fall than to provoke the wrath of the king Like Haman Haman went from being number two in the kingdom to being dead within the hour out of pride. Is what we are doing done in humility? It might be right, There might be a right principle at stake. We might be doing outwardly what is right, but if we're doing it in pride, it's wrong.
It's wrong. Is it done in a spirit of wisdom? Have we sought for the Holy Spirit's guidance? Have we sought for Him to lead us, to crucify our pride, to give us humility in our endeavor. See, all of this goes very contrary to the rebellious spirit that would defy a tyrant.
That it is whoever provokes a king, It doesn't say just a good king, but whoever provokes any king to anger, sins against his own life. If that provocation is done out of pride, if it's done not in a spirit of humility, not by the leading of the Holy Spirit and in His wisdom. Now the third fool are the debaters. Are the debaters. People that think they are defending a gospel truth, but are simply starting a quarrel.
There are times when the truth demands that we defend it, but there are many times when it is completely unnecessary and foolish to start a debate. The honorable course of action is to avoid a debate, to pick our words to cover the point of difference when the time or occasion doesn't call for making an issue of something. See often times we get caught in a debate and we feel honor bound to continue. We need to defend ourselves. And Solomon is saying here, it's honorable, just the opposite.
It's honorable to stop the debate, to break off the debate. He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit is better than he who takes a city. He who rules his spirit is better than he who takes a city. It's stronger, it's a greater show of strength to break off the debate, to speak in a way that does not highlight and point out and outline the difference, but rather that covers. And so here the fruit of the Spirit is so very necessary.
As you see in each of these cases, it is the fruit of the Spirit that we need to know the difference. The fourth fool is the lazy man, the one who makes excuses. They are another self-deceived person. They have many excuses why they can't accomplish something. It's too hot, it's too cold, it's too wet, and so on.
And it says, the lazy man won't plow because of winter, but he will beg in the harvest and have nothing. Ultimately, all excuses are no different from that old standby, the dog ate my homework. That's the epitome of the silly, stupid excuse. Yet all excuses are no better than that. When you need an excuse, as someone said, anyone will do.
Solomon says here that need is often the result of laziness. Often the result of laziness. God has stored riches, untold riches in this world, but only the hand of the diligent can draw them out. That's a topic for the next week, Lord willing, in the next verse. But I, but you know our soul is a garden.
And like the self-deceived in this passage here, who doesn't plow because it's a little bit too cold, we are often self-deceived and have many excuses for not tending to the garden of our soul, don't we? For why we weren't able to pray this day yet, or to read the Word of God. There are lots of excuses, lots of seemingly valid excuses that we have, don't we? I know I do. And yet, is it not just laziness?
We sometimes pray as if we want God to just zap us. We want to be sanctified, but we don't want to do the diligent work of putting to death our sinful nature of crucifying our old man. That's hard. That's work. That's toil.
That's sweat and tears. That's laboring on our knees. That's getting up when we don't feel like it. It's a lot easier to be lazy. So we pray as If we want God to just zap us, to just make us holy, without us having to do the work that God calls us to do, to tend the garden of our soul, We need to be willing to work.
We are called to be diligent in our sanctification. Yes, it is, that too is by the power of the Holy Spirit. But God doesn't just zap us and make us holy, any more than He just drops the food into our lap. The Lord is the one who provides our food for us, and we're to pray for it, and we thank Him when He gives it to us, and yet we also know that He uses means to provide, and so we have to go to work and get up and labor for it. And if we don't work for it, we can't pray for God to provide it, or he won't listen to that prayer.
It's the same with the garden of our soul. We can't simply pray for God to make us sanctified. We have to be willing to work. We have to be willing to pray, to be students of His Word, to meditate upon it. And that's a choice.
What are you going to think about? Are you going to think about the latest thing you read in the news, in the television? Or are you going to think about the Word of God? That's a choice we have to make. Our mind may want to go this way and think about these things, and there may not be anything wrong in thinking about those things.
But we have to be those who meditate on the Word of God as well. And we can't neglect that. We can't neglect that we need to pray, that we need to commit God's Word to memory, that we need to study it, study to show yourself approved under God, a workman that does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth. See, it's the Holy Spirit though that gives us the power to do these things. We can't do them in our own strength.
So I want more and more to have a Spirit-filled ministry and a Spirit-filled life where the Holy Spirit is giving to us the resources to equip us and enable us to do the work of mortifying our sin. You can pray for me in that, that I would have a spirit-filled life and do the work of ministry by the power of the Holy Spirit and not in the flesh. See, we are to take up our cross and follow Jesus. The cross, that isn't so much The trials that come to our way every day, the difficulties that God sends, taking up our cross is the cost that we pay for following Christ. That's something that we know what we're getting into.
We have calculated the cost. We know the cost. And we take up our cross. We bear that cost. We pay that cost because we want to follow Christ.
Follow Christ. These excuses are, Jesus talks about them in Matthew 25, when the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory and all the nations will be gathered before Him. And He will separate them one from another as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And he will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. And then the king will say to those on his right hand, Come you blessed of the Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me.
I was in prison, and you came to me." And the righteous are going to answer him and say, Lord, when did we see you hungry and Feed you or thirsty and give you a drink when did we see you a stranger and take we take you in when did we? See you naked and clothe you when did we see you in sick or in prison and come to you? And the king will answer and say inasmuch as you did it to the least of my brethren you did it to me But on those on the other side, he will say, depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty And you gave me no drink.
I was a stranger and you did not take me in naked and you did not clothe me sick and in prison And you did not visit me and then the excusers are gonna make excuses We never saw you Naked we never saw you hungry. We never saw you thirsty How could we why do you say we didn't do these things, we never saw you in this way?" And then Jesus will answer them, the King rather will answer them saying, Surely inasmuch as you did not do it to the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life. The lazy man will not plow because of winter, and he will beg, he will be in need during the harvest and have nothing. We don't want to be those who are making excuses for why we cannot do the work of ministry, for why we cannot do those spiritual disciplines to tend to the garden of our own soul.
This too is the work of the Holy Spirit. We have to pray for the Holy Spirit to rest upon us, for the Holy Spirit to fill us, to sanctify us, and then we have to be willing to go out and work. May God enable us to do so. Heavenly Father, We thank you for your Holy Spirit that does teach us, that does instruct us and make us wise. We thank you for Christ who has given to us every resource, every tool, has given to us all the riches that we need, all the resources to follow you, to take up our cross and to follow you.
And so Lord we ask for you to equip us, for you to empower us. We ask for diligence, that we might not be lazy, spiritually lazy, or lazy in any other way. But those who are filled with your Spirit, who redeemed the time. Father, we pray that You would fall upon us, that You would breathe upon us, and that You would equip and strengthen us through Jesus Christ. Amen.