Proverbs on Speech
Part 5: Stop Talking!

Baxter T. Exum (#1775)
Four Lakes Church of Christ
Madison, Wisconsin
March 2, 2025

Good morning and welcome to the Four Lakes congregation! And if you are visiting with us today (either here in person or online or on the phone), it is especially good to have you with us, and we’d like to ask that you fill out a visitor card – either online or on a card from the pew in front of you. And we also invite you to pass along any questions or prayer concerns in that way. In terms of our prayer concerns, we are thankful for good news in our family, that our daughter’s test results came back completely clear. She is doing much better, so thanks again for remembering our family in your prayers over the past two weeks.

Also, in terms of our ongoing prayer concerns, we should let you know that we have made some good progress in raising funds for a larger and more handicapped accessible facility. I don’t have the exact figures, but I do know that we are definitely up over $100,000, and there are more prospects out there on the horizon. And I would give the reminder: If you know anybody who is remotely concerned about the future of the church here in Madison, if you have friends or loved ones at other churches of Christ in far off places or in congregations where you have worshiped in the past, please share our situation. Back in 2001, we challenged ourselves, we got in touch with everybody we knew, and we worked together to pay off this building in 11 months. And I remember back then how some of our people said, “There’s no way we can afford a building. We need to keep renting.” But, God took care of it. Back in January, when I first shared these pictures, and when I mentioned the asking price of $1,019,000, I heard a few of you laugh. Afterwards, I thought of Sarah laughing to herself when she overheard those men tell Abraham that she would have a son within a year. I’m paraphrasing, but one of those men (now described as the Lord), asks Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh?” Sarah denies it saying, “I did not laugh.” And the Lord says, “No, but you did laugh.” I just love that exchange! Now, I’m not suggesting that our situation is anything like the arrival of Isaac, but I am suggesting that nothing is impossible for God, and that God works through us. We have extra packets in the top left cubbyhole, but I would also be willing to share that information again with any of you by email for you to pass along.

Before we get to our study of the Word today, we want to be sure we share the good news that God loves us. He gave his only Son who came to this world and died for us. He was buried and then raised up on the first day of the week, which is why we are here today. We obey the gospel by turning to God in faith, by turning away from sin, and by allowing ourselves to be buried with him in baptism. And, as usual, we do have several examples to share today, starting with an update from the Niceville congregation down in Florida. They posted a few days ago, and they just say that Aaron and Ann have obeyed the gospel. And I’m just sharing this one because we also have an Aaron and Ann!

There are others, but I’ll just share one more. This one comes to us from the Lord’s church down in Seymore, Tennessee. And they say, “Congratulations to Amanda on her baptism!” That’s all we know, but I thought it was a neat picture. Some churches have baptisteries with a window on the front. But, as always, we share these pictures as our invitation to you to obey the gospel just as these people have done. If we can help in any way, if you’d like to study together, please let us know. Pull me aside after worship, or give me a call or send a text to 608-224-0274.

This morning we are returning to our study of SPEECH in the book of Proverbs. In the big picture, we have now looked at 51% of the Proverbs, and over the next few weeks, we hope to continue looking at Solomon’s advice on the words that we speak. We’ve looked at the GOOD use of words over a period of three weeks, and last week we started looking at what I would summarize as King Solomon’s advice to STOP TALKING! There are times when we just need to not talk. And as was preparing these lessons, a friend posted a meme that says, “The ability to speak in several languages is an asset, but the ability to keep your mouth shut in any language is priceless.” I am sure that King Solomon would heartily agree with that!

Nevertheless, we looked at 10 of these proverbs last week, I was planning on looking at 8 of these today, but one more snuck its way in, so we will be looking at a total of 9 today. Some of these are similar, so we will be moving rather quickly with these. And we will continue with our tradition of looking at these in canonical order, in the order they appear in scripture, simply to make it easier for all of us to follow along in our own Bibles.

    1. Let’s continue this morning by looking at Proverbs 18:2, where King Solomon says that, “A fool does not delight in understanding, but only in revealing his own mind.”

This is one of the only ones where we have insight into the motivation of an over-talker. It’s not an outright prohibition on speaking, so it’s not technically a “Do not talk” proverb, but it does label this “revealing of his own mind” as an act of foolishness. So, the lesson is: Don’t be a fool, and a symptom of that foolishness is always telling people what you think about something; or, as we call it today, “social media.” Everybody has an opinion, and now we have a way to share these opinions far and wide. There’s a value to connecting, but there’s also a danger in revealing our opinions on absolutely everything. According to Solomon, we do not need to share everything we know (or everything we think we know).

Many people, of course, do not delight in understanding. This is foolishness, Solomon says. And the “fool” here is not necessarily somebody who is not smart. A fool may be brilliant, but the fool “delights in revealing his own mind” and has no interest in listening. Wisdom, though, says that there is a value to learning, not just revealing. Those who are wise will take time to absorb information, not just share it. There is a value to education. There is a value to listening. There is a value to a preacher being in a Bible class at least once a week, not just teaching at every possible moment. When we first thought about moving to Madison, we met with the church in the Busse’s living room, and I remember somebody said, “When you move here, you can teach the Wednesday class and also the Sunday morning class!” I said, “What are you doing now on Sunday mornings?” You guys said, “The men of the church take turns.” And I said, “I’ll take Wednesday, but let’s continue that Sunday morning tradition.” There is wisdom in listening and learning and not always teaching. We don’t necessarily have to agree with everything we hear, but there is a value to hearing and trying to understand. Others might have something valuable to share.

Practically speaking, how do we do this? When we listen, we can really listen. And listening is hard work. So, when I listen, I can ask for clarification. I can say, “Tell me more about that.” I can ask, “What else?” Years ago, in one of my first counseling classes, we had to compile our notes from the semester and turn those in. As I was preparing that notebook, and as I was reviewing everything we learned throughout that semester, I created a cover page and labeled that notebook, “Tell Me About It: A Semester of Personal Counseling with Dr. James Tollerson.” To me, that phrase, “Tell me about it,” summarized pretty much everything we learned in that class. It was all about listening. The fool, though, refuses to listen and only delights in revealing his own mind.

    2. We continue with Proverbs 18:7, where King Solomon says that, “A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are the snare of his soul.”

We’ve already seen a variation of this in a previous passage, so we just have the reminder about the danger of talking too much. The “mouth” and the “lips” refer to a fool’s speech. So again, there’s not a command not to talk, but Solomon just notes that talking a lot can be dangerous. He uses the picture of “ruin” and a “snare.” Some translations refer to “destruction.” This is not just a temporary setback, but what we say can lead to our downfall, even our eternal downfall. And we saw this picture of a “snare” in one of those proverbs we looked at last week. I forgot to grab a snare on the way out the door last week, but I have one with me this morning. A snare is simple, but effective and causes irreversible damage. And this is the picture painted for us by King Solomon. The words of the foolish can be “the snare of his soul.” And in a time when words are not just spoken, but typed with our thumbs and sent out to millions, what Solomon says here is more true than it’s ever been. The ability of words to cause destruction has been multiplied many times over, and those words can cause permanent damage – separating friends and even causing people to be lost eternally.

    3. Our next one comes to us in Proverbs 18:13, where King Solomon says that, “He who gives an answer before he hears, it is folly and shame to him.”

So, we get back to the importance of listening! It’s important to wait and listen before we jump in with an answer. There’s a danger in answering before we hear the question. Sometimes, though, we pretend to listen when we are actually too busy thinking about what we should say next, and so we listen on auto-pilot. We fake listen. Years ago, I was taking a graduate class on cross-cultural communication, and for the big project in that class, I did some in-depth research into “communicating with the elderly.” I chose “people from a different age bracket” as my cross-cultural communication research project. And over the course of that semester, I learned that the elderly can be really, really good at pretending that they understand what you are saying. And by the way, I found some of my best research material at the college of nursing over at Edgewood College here in Madison. Nurses have to do a whole lot of communicating with the elderly, and many volumes have been written on this. But if I could summarize: If I’m talking to an elderly person, they may smile and nod, and they may say, “Um-hum,” and they may really give the impression that they are following along, when they actually have no idea whatsoever what you have just said. It may be a cognitive challenge of some kind, or it may be a hearing deficiency. But they are responding to my facial expressions, they may give the impression that they understand, but they have no clue whatsoever what I have just said. Now, think about that in a medical setting, “You have this condition, you need to take this pill three times a day, and don’t lift anything over ten pounds,” and so on, and they are smiling and nodding, all while they have no idea what was just said. So also for spiritual discussions. Both can be disastrous. I want to suggest, though, that all of us can do this in any discussion! You may be talking to me, but I’m thinking about what to say next, and my non-verbals are on auto-pilot, “Mmmm, sure, yes, very interesting,” and so on, and I may give the impression that I’m listening when I am not really listening. And that may be part of what Solomon is warning about here: Truly hear, and then reply, but definitely do not give an answer before truly listening.

But instead, slow it down and get all of the information before pretending to give an intelligent answer or before taking action. We might think about the kings Xerxes and Darius. Both of these men approved some terrible decrees without first hearing all of the information. Xerxes agreed to exterminate an entire race of people without realizing that his wife was included, and Darius authorized the death penalty for prayer, without realizing that he would be condemning one of his most faithful advisors. Both kings issued decrees without hearing all of the information. We might think of the old saying, that “God gave us two ears and one mouth, so that we would listen twice as much as we speak.” When two people keep trying to talk over each other and interrupt each other, nothing really gets communicated, and we often end up with conflict. People talk to us every day. World peace may not be at stake for most of these conversations, but when we slow down and listen, we honor King Solomon’s warning here.

    4. Let’s continue with Proverbs 21:23, where King Solomon says that, “He who guards his mouth and his tongue, guards his soul from troubles.”

Let me ask the question: Do you need MORE trouble or LESS trouble in your life right now? I have enough trouble as it is! Solomon, then, says that the one who “guards his mouth and his tongue, guards his soul from troubles.” And the word translated here as “guard” is a word meaning, “to keep watch,” and it was sometimes used to refer to a bodyguard or to a doorkeeper or a gatekeeper. So, this isn’t a matter of just thinking a bit before we speak, but this is a case of standing guard over what we say and making sure we don’t say anything that will get us into trouble. Several weeks ago, we learned that “life and death are in the power of the tongue,” which makes me think about keeping a firearm locked up and out of reach of little children. It’s that important. James, of course, compares the tongue to a “fire.” So, we might think about the importance of protecting ourselves from fire. It’s that important. As King David sang in Psalm 141:3, “Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.” When we guard what we say, we protect ourselves from trouble.

    5. We continue with Proverbs 23:9, where King Solomon says, “Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words.”

King Solomon recognizes the truth that there are some people we probably shouldn’t talk to. This is one of those things that most of us learn in life; otherwise, we lose our minds. I really try not to use “crazy” as description of certain people; I hate to add to any of the stigma surrounding mental illness, but there are some situations where I have to tell myself, “I have enough crazy in my life right now.” And to argue with certain people will do no good for them and will only make my life miserable, because they don’t care what I have to say. And not only do they not care, but Solomon says that they will “despise the wisdom of your words.” They will hate you for it. This falls in the “not casting your pearls before swine” category we just barely touched on last week. Even Jesus understood that there are some people we really shouldn’t speak to. And there were people Jesus avoided. I find it interesting that Jesus never really got into any long, drawn-out arguments, even with the scribes and the Pharisees. He condemned them from time to time, he answered questions here and there, but Jesus turned most of his attention to those who would listen (and it wasn’t them). I think of Jesus being silent before King Herod. Nothing Jesus could have said would have mattered one bit to that man, and so the Lord was silent.

Or I think about King David in our scripture reading this morning. In Psalm 101 (as Aaron read it for us), David was cleaning house, he was draining the swamp, as we might say today. He was purging from his immediate circle any and all who were foolish. Life is short, eternity is long, and we don’t need to be wasting words on those who are foolish. Or we think of Jesus’ instruction to his disciples to go out and preach (in Matthew 10). If people listen, great, but if they reject the message, reject them – shake the dust off your feet and move on. We would do well to do the same. Or we think about Jesus hiding his message in parables. He did that so the wise could understand while the message would glide right over the heads of those who were stubborn and foolish.

    6. Our next one comes in Proverbs 25:20, where King Solomon says that, “Like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar on soda, is he who sings songs to a troubled heart.”

All of us will have a “troubled heart” from time to time. Other translations might refer to a “heavy heart,” an “aching heart,” or a “sad heart.” So, we’re talking about grief here. Somebody has experienced a death in the family or maybe the death of a close friend. We can also experience this heaviness after a divorce, or a breakup, or the loss of a job.

And Solomon’s warning here is not to “sing songs” to somebody in that situation. Why? Because it’s okay to be sad in times like that. In fact, to dismiss somebody’s grief or to just tell them to cheer up or to get over it is cruel. King Solomon compares it to taking off someone’s garment on a cold day. He compares it to pouring vinegar on soda. In the comparison to the coat, that’s just a terrible thing to do. It’s cruel! And in the case of pouring vinegar on soda, there’s no real point to it. In fact, once those two are combined, there’s an eruption (and that’s pretty cool), but afterwards, there’s no real use for that. Once we’ve combined vinegar and soda, we no longer have vinegar, and we no longer have soda. We’ve ruined both the vinegar and the soda, and all for nothing. Well, so also with singing lighthearted songs to somebody with a heavy heart. It’s dismissive. It’s offensive. It’s cruel. And in this case, it’s much better to stop talking. It’s much better to simply say nothing at all. And the reason is: By singing lighthearted songs to a guy who’s grieving, we’re suggesting that his grief means nothing to us, that we don’t get it, that we really don’t care.

Instead, it’s often much better to simply listen. We think of Job’s friends. When Job lost everything, the best thing they did was to sit there quietly by his side for the first seven days. Once they opened their mouths, those guys got downright offensive, “What have you done to deserve this,” and so on. It would have been so much better if they had just continued sitting there in quietness.

One author said something that helped me here. She said, “We needn’t overthink our words, as if [our words] are the only hope for our friends. And we shouldn’t assume that our role is always to make them feel better in the moment.” I appreciate that. My friend getting through this does not depend on me having the perfect one-liner. Our job is simply to be there.

    7. Let’s continue with Proverbs 26:4, where King Solomon says, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will also be like him.”

And this is where I had to throw in the next one. Even though it’s not about not talking, verse 5 continues this thought as Solomon says, “Answer a fool as his folly deserves, that he not be wise in his own eyes.” Some have been concerned here: Oh no! We have a contradiction! Solomon is telling us NOT to answer a fool according to his folly, and then he’s telling us that we ARE to answer a fool according to his folly? Which is it? Well, let’s understand that we are dealing with proverbs here! And as with many proverbs, they may seem to contradict each other, when they really don’t. For example, on one hand, we may say that “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” and on the other hand, we may say, “Out of sight, out of mind.” At first glance, those two proverbs contradict each other, but context matters, doesn’t it? My wife has been out of town this week. Would it be better for me to say, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder?” or would it be better for me to say, “Out of sight, out of mind?” I like being married, and I love my wife, so I’m going with Option 1. On the other hand, if I’m talking about the sump pump in my basement, I might very well say, “Out of sight, out of mind.” And what I mean by that is: If I don’t see it, and if I don’t have a problem of some kind, I don’t think about my sump pump too often. And that may be good or bad. If it breaks because I haven’t maintained it properly, that’s bad, but if I’m not thinking about it because it is working so well, that’s good. On the other hand, I can’t think of any scenario where I would say concerning my sump pump that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I’m just saying that we have some common sayings in English that appear to be contradictory, until we consider the context.

So also with Proverbs 26:4-5. On one hand, as it relates to today’s series of proverbs, there are situations where we are not to answer a fool according to his folly, because sometimes foolishness is contagious (that’s the way I would summarize this): Don’t get caught up in it. If you argue with a fool, you might end up foolish just like he is. On the other hand, there are times when we may need to rebuke a fool; otherwise, he might leave that conversation thinking he’s right. Sometimes, a rebuke may do some good. Generally speaking, though, it does no good to argue with a fool. If he needs rebuking, fine, but leave it at that. Beyond this, there is no point. Solomon would certainly agree with what Paul told the young preacher Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:24-25, when he said that, “The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.”

    8. Our last one this morning comes to us in Proverbs 29:20, where King Solomon says, “Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.”

We close today, then, with the reminder to slow it down. It’s not an outright prohibition on speaking, but it’s “don’t speak right now.” Pause, then speak. We have a saying in English, “Look before you leap.” Solomon would say, “Think before you speak.” Some of you know that I’ve been going through my dad’s files over the past year or so (six 5-drawer filing cabinets), and in the process, I’ve been going through my files as well (another six 5-drawer filing cabinets), and I’ve been doing some merging and some serious recycling. In the process, I’ve run across several letters I’ve written through the years, and some have a note on them in my handwriting that says, “Never sent.” There have been a few times when I have faced an issue, and I wrote a letter in response, but I thankfully paused for a few hours and never actually responded. There’s a value to not being hasty with our words. There’s a value to slowing down.

Years ago, we made reservations at a hotel up in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, just to get away for a few nights. And right after we made those reservations, we found out that David Lipe, one of our favorite college professors, would be speaking at the small church up there. We reconnected, and it turns out they picked him up from the airport and just left him at the hotel for the week with no way to get around. So, we adopted him that week. We were going on a tour of a bagel factory, and he came along with us, “Why in the world would you want to know how bagels are made?” Well, that’s me! As I remember it, we took him out to a diner up there, and when the server came to the table, this Wisconsin girl rattled off the specials and left the table. Dr. Lipe slowly turned to us and said, “What in the world did she just say? It was so fast! I didn’t understand a word she said!” At this point, Keola was taking classes at UW-Whitewater, and brother Lipe turned to Keola and said, “You need to do a study on this. Why do people talk so fast in the north? Is it the cold? Do they feel a need to communicate before they freeze or something?” Brother Lipe is from Mississippi and got his PhD from the University of Tennessee, and he needed a translator to bridge the culture gap. But I just think about that when Solomon warns us against being “hasty” in our words. We are to think before we speak.

We are not to be hasty in speech. We are not to be hasty to message. We are not to be hasty to post. We are not to be hasty to text. But instead, we are to be intentional when we communicate.
Conclusion:

This brings us to the end of today’s study, where we’ve learned from these nine Proverbs that there are many situations when it is much better to STOP TALKING! Yes, there are times when we need to speak up, but excessive talking is foolish and shameful, leading to ruin and destruction. We are to guard our lips, being careful not to argue with fools, being careful how we try to encourage the heavy-hearted, and we are to slow it down and think carefully before we speak.

Next week, we hope to continue with one particular category of very negative speech, a kind of speech we are to avoid. But, let’s close today’s study in prayer:

Our Father in Heaven,

We come to you again, asking for your help with the words that we speak. We pray for wisdom to speak up when we need to, but we also ask for your help as we hold back from speaking when we shouldn’t. We ask for a special dose of wisdom as we encounter those around us who are grieving. Use us to help in any way we can. Thank you, Father, for giving us your wisdom in Proverbs.

Today, we pray for Abe, and Jane, and Melissa. We are thankful for good news, and we are thankful for the healing that you have provided.

We ask all of this in Jesus’ name. AMEN.

To comment on this lesson: fourlakeschurch@gmail.com