Foolishness

There is an evil I have seen under the sun, like an error which proceeds from the ruler.

Folly is set in many exalted places, and in great dignity, while the rich sit in humble places.

I have seen slaves riding on horses, and princes walking like slaves on the ground.

He who digs a pit for others may fall into it, and a serpent may bite him who breaks through a stone wall.

That is to say, they come to us sinful.

Proverbs 22, verse 15 says, Folly is bound up in the heart of a child.

If you could take a spade and dig into a child's heart, you will not find within it wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and insight, like precious jewels hidden away, waiting to be discovered by an eager explorer.

That is not how our children come to us.

Rather, you will instead find, as Proverbs 22, verse 15 says, Folly.

Therefore, the job of the parent in discipline is not to find and discover goodness within the child that comes from Adam.

It is to root out folly and through the different means that God gives us and to impart that child what they do not natively have, things like wisdom, instruction, insight, and knowledge.

Question number three, how? How is this then to be done? Proverbs 22, verse 15 gives an answer.

We discussed the cast of the play of characters that runs through the first nine chapters in Proverbs.

There are three voices, Lady Wisdom, Lady Folly, and a father whom we assume is Solomon.

There is one listener, the son, and we are to put ourselves in his place.

All the voices are battling for the simple, and that is the one who has not yet chosen a path.

Do you see that? Proverbs 22, 15, a little ahead of where we're at in our series, says that children come into this world with a bent toward sin.

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child.

The rod of discipline will remove it far from him.

See, real love corrects waywardness at its earliest steps, because if you love your child, you want him or her to live, obviously.

Churchill.

Much are the precious hours of youth misspent In climbing learning's rugged, steep ascent: When to the top the bold adventurer's got, He reigns vain monarch of a barren spot; While in the vale of ignorance below Folly and vice to rank luxuriance grow, Honors and wealth pour in on every side, And proud preferment rolls her golden tide.

Churchill.

The lately departed minister of the borough; his soothing and supplicatory manners; his cool and timid affections; no praise due to such negative virtue; address to characters of this kind; the vicar's employments; his talents and moderate ambition; his dislike of innovation; his mild but ineffectual benevolence; a summary of his character; mode of paying the borough minister; the curate has no such resources; his learning and poverty; erroneous idea of his parent; his feelings as a husband and father; the dutiful regard of his numerous family; his pleasure as a writer; how interrupted; no resource in the press; vulgar insult; his account of a literary society, and a fund for the relief of indigent authors, and so forth.

For I should mourn the mischief I had done, If as the likeness all would fix on one.

Man's vice and crime I combat as I can, But to his God and conscience leave the man.

I search, a Quixote, all the land about, To find its giants and enchanters out; The giant Folly, the enchanter Vice, Whom doubtless I shall vanquish in a trice.

But is there man whom I would injure? No.

We have to be careful, all of us.

Verse 15, the Word of God reads, "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.

The rod of correction will drive it far from him." Oh, so here we go.

Corporal punishment is what this is speaking about.

Obviously, you have a problem.

But look here, though.

"Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child." Do we see this? Yes.

I wish it said wisdom- [laughs] Was bound up in the heart of a child.