Proverbs on Speech
Part 10: Everything Else

Baxter T. Exum (#1780)
Four Lakes Church of Christ
Madison, Wisconsin
April 20, 2025

Good morning and welcome! We are glad to have you with us this morning, and if you are visiting with us today (either here in person or online or on the phone), 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.

Concerning our ongoing efforts at outreach, I’d like to pass along an invitation to connect with us on TikTok. We had an interesting contact on TikTok a few months ago, and then at the Freed-Hardeman University Bible lectures last month, I learned that TikTok is the number one social media platform for those between the ages of 18-34. So, we thought we’d give it a try. I’m calling it “The View from the Back Pew,” and early on Sunday morning I’m giving a summary of the sermon in one minute or less. This does not mean that you can stay home and do church in one minute instead of attending in person, but it may be another way of reaching out. As with our other social media accounts, we are using the name “fourlakeschurch,” which matches our website, and we invite you to connect with us in this way if it may be useful in some way. You may notice that the first two videos have just over a hundred views apiece already, and we are curious as to how this may progress over the next few weeks. And if you have any suggestions, please let us know.

We have come together this morning to celebrate the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. This is the good news, and we obey this good news by believing it, by turning away from sin, by confessing Jesus as the Son of God, and by calling out to God for a good conscience in the act of baptism, an immersion in water for the forgiveness of our sins. At this point, we are born into God’s family, and we are raised up to live a new life from that point forward. And as our custom has been, we are sharing a few brief examples of what this actually looks like. We are starting today with an update from the Itafaaji congregation in Apata Ibadan, Nigeria. They posted a few days ago, and they say, “Praises and glory be unto our God of salvation who has added these nine beautiful souls into His marvelous kingdom of Christ this day the 13th of April 2025.”

This next one comes to us from the Roeser Road congregation over in Phoenix, Arizona. They say that “The angels in heaven are rejoicing! (Luke 15:10). Today, we witnessed the power of the Gospel and the grace of God in full display. A soul responded to the call of Christ, obeyed the Gospel, confessed her faith in Jesus as the Son of God, and was baptized for the forgiveness of her sins (Mark 16:16; Acts 2:38). The Lord added Sis. Jaryn to His church and saved her, just as He promised (Acts 2:47). We celebrate with heaven and welcome our new sister in Christ into the family of God! Let us continue to encourage her, love her, and walk with her as she grows in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). To God be the glory! Don’t miss the signs!” Amen to that!

This update comes to us from Chernivtsi, Ukraine. They say that, “Baptism by faith is the moment of death and new birth. In him man is united with Christ in his death and resurrection, and himself dies to sin, but resurrects to eternal life. Happy to witness the Covenant with Christ Vladimir, Love and Victoria. Praise God for his inexpressible gift!”

There are others, but I’ll close with this one from the Sullivan Village congregation down in Lawton, Oklahoma. They posted a few day ago, and they say, “We praise God for adding another soul to His glorious kingdom today. We welcomed Barbara Perkins into the family of God this afternoon. After studying with a couple of our ladies, she made the decision to submit her life to Jesus and obeyed the gospel. Believing in Jesus as God’s Son, she repented of her past sins, confessed Jesus as Lord and was immediately baptized for the forgiveness of her sins, and the Lord added her to His church. Praise God for Barbara’s humble heart and the power of the gospel to save! (Romans 1:16)! Please keep Barbara in your prayers! Thank you to Barbara Wallace and Sylvia Monroe for your evangelistic efforts, and to Dominic Ottenwalder for the photos. To God be the glory!” As always, if you are ready to respond to God’s love as we have been instructed in scripture, and if we can help with that in any way, we invite you to get in touch. You can send a message to info@fourlakeschurch.org, you can give me a call or send a text to 608-224-0274, or you can simply pull me aside after worship this morning, and we would love to help in any way possible.

This morning we are wrapping up our study of SPEECH in the book of Proverbs, with our tenth and final lesson in this series within a series. And since we’ll be stepping away from Proverbs for a bit after today’s lesson, I’ve decided to actually include what we plan on covering today in our big picture chart up here. After today’s lesson, we will have studied 502 of the 915 Proverbs, or right at 55%. We started in early February by looking at the GOOD use of words, we’ve looked at King Solomon’s advice to STOP TALKING, we’ve looked at the danger of HYPOCRISY, we’ve looked at the danger of GOSSIP, over the past two weeks we’ve looked at Solomon’s warnings concerning words that lead to CONFLICT. And today, we come to EVERYTHING ELSE! Today we come to the last eight of these, and these are those that simply do not fit under any of the categories we’ve had up to this point. As always, though, Solomon will have some wisdom for us this morning. Years ago, I saw a meme that said that if you come upon an old guy with a beard who’s cutting an apple with a pocketknife, and if he offers you some advice as he hands you a slice of that apple on the knife, it’s probably a good idea to take both the apple and the advice. Well, in that picture, Solomon is the old guy offering us a slice of apple on a pocketknife.

As our custom has been, I’d like to simply look at these in canonical order, or the order in which they appear in scripture, simply to make it a little bit easier to follow along. We will have these on the wall up here (or on your screen at home), but I would encourage you to look these up on your own. Your translation may have a different wording that may help you to understand it in a way I might have missed.

    1. But let’s start with Proverbs 15:2, one of the clearest of these, where King Solomon says that, “The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable, but the mouth of fools spouts folly.”

First of all, let’s recognize here that sometimes people will reject the truth not because of the truth itself, but because of how it is presented. And I think that’s what King Solomon is acknowledging here. Sometimes, how we say something can be just as important as what we are saying. I can speak the truth in such an offensive way that people will reject the truth, not because of what I’ve said, but because of how I have said it. The tongue of the wise, however, “makes knowledge acceptable.” When we speak the truth, then, we have to think about how we are sharing it. If we step in with a holier-than-thou attitude, if we’re looking down our noses at people, if we are yelling or being unnecessarily abrasive, we may be creating a barrier to accepting the truth that God has not created. I’ve said before that one of my most common prayers before preaching is, “Dear Lord, help me not to be offensive, unless someone needs to be offended, and then let me do it in the kindest way possible.” My other prayer during that song before the sermon, by the way, is, “Father forgive me, for I know not what I am doing.” Years ago, a friend posted online, suggesting that the preacher can be compared to a server in a restaurant. His job is not to create the meal, but his job is to deliver it from the kitchen to the dining room without messing it up. The big lesson here, is that wisdom has a way of making knowledge acceptable. 

On the other hand, though, “the mouth of fools spouts folly.” And I would take this as a warning. Be hesitant to associate with fools, because stupid is contagious.

    2. We continue with Proverbs 20:25, where King Solomon says that, “It is a trap for a man to say rashly, ‘It is holy!’ And after the vows to make inquiry.”

So here we have a guy who makes a vow of some kind, but he makes it quickly, without thinking it through, and then later he starts having second thoughts. That’s what’s going on here. And in this case, he’s designating something as being “holy.” He’s making a promise that he will set aside something as being holy to the Lord. But maybe when the crisis passes or the emotion dies down, he has regrets, “Oh no, what have I done?” Well, King Solomon describes this as a “trap,” and the word he uses here is often used of “bait.” When you bait a trap, you cover up the danger with something that is attractive. I don’t go fishing these days, but when I was a kid, I remember using the worm to hide the hook. The worm was bait on the trap, so to speak. And fish will often make the mistake of going for that bait without stopping to think about what might be hiding under that bait.

Well, so also it’s very easy for us to make a promise to God very quickly, without really slowing down to consider the consequences of that promise. For a commentary on Solomon, we might think of a passage from Solomon himself in Ecclesiastes 5:4-7, where he says,

When you make a vow to God, do not be late in paying it; for He takes no delight in fools. Pay what you vow!  It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Do not let your speech cause you to sin and do not say in the presence of the messenger of God that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry on account of your voice and destroy the work of your hands? For in many dreams and in many words there is emptiness. Rather, fear God.

“Pay what you vow,” Solomon says. In the New Testament, Jesus speaks of “counting the cost” before becoming a disciple. Yes, it’s good to be a disciple, but it’s not good to promise to follow the Lord without understanding what that means. There’s a whole chapter in Leviticus 27 concerning the making of vows. Vows are voluntary, but once a person makes a vow to the Lord, a promise is a promise. We may forget, but God does not. Today, we think of a promise like marriage. When we promise to love this other person until one of us dies, we may forget, but God does not. Sometimes, I think about our pre-marital discussions as me trying to convince the couple not to get married. Not really, sometimes it feels that way. Yes, you think you’re in love, and that’s great, but have you thought about this, this, this, this, and this? Too often, we make a promise, and then we regret it. Solomon, though, is suggesting that the regret needs to come first. I remember hearing a guy talk to us in college, and he said that “the time to get a divorce is now.” That’s a shocking statement. God hates divorce, but the guy was saying to us (as unmarried college students) that the time to get a divorce is before you get married. And I think that’s what King Solomon is saying here: Instead of making a promise and then thinking about it, think about it and then make the promise. Otherwise, we have sinned with our words.

    3. Let’s continue with Proverbs 25:15, where King Solomon says that, “By forbearance a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue breaks the bone.”

He gives the example of persuading a ruler, but the principle here applies to influencing anybody – our parents, a spouse, our children, an employer. Much of life involves convincing people of things. Well, the world often suggests that we demand our way, that we insist on our rights, that we lash out in anger, that we yell, and storm the capitol. Solomon, though, suggests that we influence in two ways: By “forbearance” and by use of a “soft tongue.” And remember: Solomon is thinking back to his years as a king, and I think he’s remembering: Those people who actually changed his mind on some things were 1.) Patient, and 2.) They spoke in a calm and gentle way – not demanding to be listened to, but patiently asking. We think of those who influenced kings in Bible times, and we look back on them now as heroes of the faith – Joseph, and Esther, and Daniel, and Jesus – and all of them spoke to kings with “forbearance” and with a “soft tongue,” and all of them changed the course of history. Too many today, though, think that you have to be a complete jerk to influence people. They see influence as making demands. And there may be a place for that (remember: this is a proverb), but to change the mind of a ruler, King Solomon suggests a softer approach actually has the power to “break the bone.” We think of Jesus’ parable of the persistent widow. In Luke 18, Jesus tells about a widow who kept coming to an unrighteous judge asking for legal protection. Ultimately, she got her way, and she got it through “forbearance” (asking patiently) and through a “soft tongue” (asking in a respectful way).

    4. This brings us to Proverbs 26:2 where King Solomon says that, “Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, so a curse without cause does not alight.”

This one was a little bit strange to me. Most of you know we just got back from New Orleans, and while we were there, I toured the oldest cemetery in town, which was right next door to our hotel, and one highlight was seeing the tomb of Marie Laveau, the famous voodoo queen from the mid-1800’s. People still sneak into that cemetery at night, because they think she has the power to curse and to bless. Long story short, she was actually a hairdresser. She knew stuff because women would gossip, and she knew so much that it seemed like she could predict the future. But that’s not the kind of cursing we’re talking about.

So I started thinking about people in Bible times who would actually pronounce curses without cause. We think, for example, of Goliath (in 1 Samuel 17) who cursed David by his gods. Goliath had no real “cause” for cursing David, so the curses did no good. So also, we think of Balak, the king of Moab, who tried to hire Balaam to curse God’s people. Well, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t do it, because the curses would have been without cause. We might also think of Shimei, the guy in 2 Samuel 16, who was cursing David on his way out of Jerusalem during Absalom’s coup. As I remember it, one of David’s men wanted to kill the guy, “This guy is a dog! Let me chop off his head!” [paraphrased], but David let it slide, because those curses were truly without cause.

And I think this is what Solomon is saying: When we curse somebody for no good reason, the curse never really lands (it doesn’t stick), but it bounces around from place to place like a small bird and does no harm. So, there’s a lesson for us here: Don’t go around cursing people for no reason. But also, if people are cursing us for no reason, don’t worry about it. We think of what Jesus said in Matthew 5:11-12, “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” A curse without cause does no harm.

    5. This brings us to Proverbs 26:7 where King Solomon says that, “Like the legs which are useless to the lame, so is a proverb in the mouth of fools.”

The Message (a paraphrase) has Solomon saying that, “A proverb quoted by fools is limp as a wet noodle.” But, it’s an interesting picture! The person who cannot walk may have legs, but those legs are useless. Well, so also with a foolish man who tries quoting a proverb: He may have the equipment, but he is incapable of using it! Just repeating the words of a wise man does not make someone wise.

In the New Testament, we might think of how Paul explains (in 1 Corinthians 1:18) that, “...the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” In other words, those who are lost can read the word of God, but to them it makes no sense; to them, it is useless. And this is why fools shouldn’t be teachers. They may be able to regurgitate sayings from the wise, but they have no real understanding. They have no sense of context. They can read the words, but they do not understand.  Fools, then, should not teach, but they need to be taught. It takes wisdom to apply the word of God appropriately. Early in our study of Proverbs, we noted Solomon’s words at the end of Ecclesiastes, where he says that, “In addition to being a wise man, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge; and he pondered, searched out and arranged many proverbs. The Preacher sought to find delightful words and to write words of truth correctly.” Even with the Proverbs, there is some skill involved in teaching those Proverbs, Solomon says. Without wisdom, quoting the proverbs is compared to a lame man with legs: He has the legs, but the legs do not work.

    6. This brings us to Proverbs 26:9, two verses later (which is very similar to verse 7) where King Solomon says that, “Like a thorn which falls into the hand of a drunkard, so is a proverb in the mouth of fools.”

So again, we have the picture of a fool using a proverb, and this time (instead of the lame), King Solomon compares it to a drunkard wielding a thorn. We have the picture, then, of a drunk guy flailing around and hitting people with a thorn. He has no ability to reason. In the same way, someone may be quoting scripture, but he has no sense of what it means; he’s not using the proverbs responsibly.

As a brief example here, maybe you’ve heard somebody raising money for some big church project, and they quote Proverbs 29:18, where the Bible says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” And their thought is, “We need to envision the future here! We need to see the potential in this new building project (or whatever it is). We need to make big plans or we will perish as a congregation.” However, when we look at Proverbs 29:18 in context, Solomon actually says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish, but happy is he who keeps the law.” The “vision” in that verse is not “seeing the future,” but the “vision” is a reference to a revelation from God, and so the proper application of that verse is not “give to my building project,” but the real application is, “Pay attention to God’s revelation to us in his word, and keep the Law!” This is one of many ways a fool may twist the word of God, like a drunkard wielding a thorn.

    7. This brings us to Proverbs 27:14, (one of my favorites) where King Solomon says that, “He who blesses his friend with a loud voice early in the morning, it will be reckoned a curse to him.”

King Solomon recognizes here that not everybody is a morning person! And those who are morning people really need to be aware of those who are not and treat them with kindness, that is, quietness. I am slowly learning that when I get up to go to the pool at ten ‘till five in the morning, my wife does not appreciate me saying “Good morning” at that moment. Not everybody is ready to interact with the world at 4:50 in the morning. Some people need some peace and quiet in the morning. Some of you may remember Mike Black who was here for a time as the plant manager at the Schoep’s Ice Cream factory over off of Atwood Avenue. Well, Mike lived with us for a time as he looked for a place where his family could come up and join him. And I remember coming downstairs every morning to find Mike sitting in the La-z-Boy drinking coffee in total darkness. We laughed about it, “We’ve got a creepy guy living in our basement!” And I felt a little bad turning on the lights, but I couldn’t fix my own coffee and breakfast in total darkness like he was apparently able to do. Well, if I had come in yelling “Good morning!” I think King Solomon may have some words for me.

Really, I think the lesson here is what Jesus taught in Matthew 7:12 when he said, “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” And we find in Proverbs 27:14 that this definitely applies to the words that we speak.

    8. We have one more before we close, coming to us in Proverbs 29:5, where King Solomon says that, “A man who flatters his neighbor is spreading a net for his steps.”

Or, as The Message puts it, “A flattering neighbor is up to no good; he’s probably planning to take advantage of you.” I would take this as a warning: When somebody heaps praise on you, at least be aware that not all flattery is legit. We get back to the picture of a worm on a fishing hook. Sometimes flattery is the bait that hides the trap. Someone has said that flattery is “a compliment with an agenda.” The compliment might be a set-up. Those who are wise, I believe, will be able to graciously accept a compliment while not allowing that compliment to drop their guard. We hate to think like that, but King Solomon, with his years of experience, has seen some things. And so, he’s telling his sons (as the future kings), “When somebody comes into your palace praising you as the best king ever, don’t allow those words to cloud your judgment concerning what comes next.”

And we need to be aware of this in the church. Back in the 80’s, some of you may remember that a movement made its way through the church, growing exponentially. They’ve since left and are doing their own thing, and they are actually still active here in Madison. But I remember back in the 80’s hearing about their practice of “love bombing.” I was hesitant to even type those words into a search engine, but AI came to the rescue, “Love bombing refers to an initial stage of manipulation where someone showers a person with excessive attention, affection and compliments to build an emotional bond and gain control. It’s often a tactic used by those who want to control or exploit others, particularly in abusive relationships.” The Cleveland Clinic defines love bombing as “a form of psychological and emotional abuse [that] is often disguised as excessive flattery.” It’s interesting to me that we have a warning about this way back in scripture. In Romans 16:17-18, Paul says, “Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ but of their own appetites; and by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting.” Flattery, then, can be used to manipulate, to set a trap, to deceive. Jude also warns about those who are “...grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.” King Solomon warns his sons to be aware.

Conclusion:

Well, this brings us to the end of our series of ten lessons concerning the use of our words in the book of Proverbs. Thank you your kind attention over the past couple of months. On our way home last Sunday, we were talking about the service, and I asked my wife, “What did you appreciate about the lesson?” And you know what she said? She said, “I really liked the part where you said that next Sunday would be the last one in this series.” Some people! I don’t know, but I would just close with what we shared when we started this series back in February. In Matthew 12:36-37, Jesus said that, “...every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” What we say is important, and hopefully Solomon has given us some valuable encouragement over the past several weeks.

Next week we plan on paying special attention to the Lord’s Supper with a special lesson and some related songs that should help us focus our thoughts on the sacrifice of Jesus. For now, though, let’s close today’s study in prayer:

Our Father in Heaven,

We praise you this morning as a God who spoke this world into existence. Over the past few months, you have warned us and encouraged us about the power of words, and we pray that we would take these proverbs to heart. Help us to speak words of truth, help us to speak up at the right time, and help us to be silent at the right time as well.

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

To comment on this lesson: fourlakeschurch@gmail.com