The hates and loves of the fool

by Dan Phillips

The book of Proverbs uses a number of different words which are all translated "fool" in most English versions. The word k^esîl [k'SEEL] occurs 49X in Proverbs. Its relation to cognates meaning "plump" or "fat" tempts one to translate it "fathead," but I take the translation "stupid" offered by many lexicons. It features in the pivotal verse signalling Solomon's shift from long-form to short-form proverbs:

Proverbs of Solomon.
A wise son rejoices a father,
but a stupid son¹ is the grief of his mother. (Proverbs 10:1 [DJP])
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¹Literally “a son, a stupid one.”

In this verse, Solomon crafted the perfect transition from Proverbs' introductory chapters to the sentence-proverbs that dominate the rest of the book. When I preached it, I developed that relationship at length; here my point is a bit different.

Here's a summary of most of the uses of k^esîl in Proverbs:

The כְּסִיל [k^esîl] hates knowledge (1:22), is complacent to his own destruction (1:32), exalts dishonor (3:35), slanders (10:18), thinks it's fun or a joke to do scheming evil (10:23), proclaims (12:23) and spreads (13:16) and spouts (15:2) denseness, is repelled by the thought of turning from evil (13:19), brings his friends to harm (13:20), is reckless and heedless (14:16), pastures on folly (15:14), disdains his mother (15:20), can't even have wisdom beaten into him (17:10), clings to his denseness fiercely (17:12), brings grief to his father (17:21), doesn't focus (17:24), brings bitterness to his mother (17:25), delights not in insig
ht but in sharing his opinions (18:2), is quarrelsome (18:6-7), gets deserved beatings (19:29; 26:3), is wasteful and unproductive (21:20), doesn't recognize or value wisdom when he hears it (23:9), requires special handling (26:4-5), should not have honor (26:1, 8), makes a horrid messenger (26:6) and proverb-teller (vv. 7, 9[?]), is a destructive employee (26:10), repeats his folly (26:11), is what you are when you trust your own heart (28:26), lets loose his temper (29:11).

Let's single out just one pair of those, in both of which "Fool(s)" translates a form of k^esîl:

Doing wrong is like a joke to a fool, but wisdom is pleasure to a man of understanding. (10:23)

A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul, but to turn away from evil is an abomination to fools. (13:19)

The second verse uses the strong word "abomination," which means something abhorrent and appalling. This is the word Yahweh uses for how He feels about homosexuality (Lev. 18:22; 20:13), idols (Deut. 7:25-26; 12:31), and other repulsive things. It's a shocking, negative term. At the opposite end of the semantic spectrum is 10:23's "a joke," which translates a word meaning laughter, or what brings laughter. It's a pleasant, happy word. Jarring juxtaposition, eh?

But wait. It gets worse.

What both verses have in common is the stupid person. Where they both disconnect is right here: what brings the stupid man pleasure is what disgusts Yahweh; what disgusts the stupid man is what pleases Yahweh. Yahweh is pleased when sinners turn to Him from sin, and that is the very thing that repels the stupid man. He loves what God hates, and hates what God loves.

As an example, this may help us see why homosexual-agenda advocates and enablers become so enraged and incensed over certain notions. You'll have noticed that they often fly into a fury, not merely at ministries and programs that try to help those in the grips of same-sex attraction, but especially at individuals who claim to have found such freedom. Why are they not happy for them? Morally unanchored, why do they care who tries to help who do what?

Because turning away from evil is an abomination to the stupid.

It fairly boggles the mind, does it not? That degree of messed-up involves not just thoughts and conclusions and decisions, but affections — loves, likes, admirations. It puts him at loggerheads with God inside and out.

Good thing he's got free will though, eh? One day, he'll just decide to change! Oh, sorry; vented my inner Pelagian there. I'm better now.

But the k^esîl isn't. Left to himself, he loves what God hates, hates what God loves — and his complacency, his refusal to be alarmed and brought to repentance, is precisely what will destroy him (Pro. 1:32, using this same word).

Apart from an act of sovereign grace.

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Decisions, decisions: choosing to serve the Lord

by Dan Phillips

I've remarked before (notably here, and in all these posts) that I think some highly-caffeinated Reformed types don't help The Cause much when they pick apart just about every word that comes out of most Christians' mouths.

Another example is the use made of Joshua 24:15 — "And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

Popularly, two clauses are singled out from this verse: "choose this day whom you will serve," and "as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." The popular use is to call people to decision, to call them to decide for Christ, to choose to serve Him.

Hypercaffeinated Calvinists (imho) retort with a sneer that this is "decisional regeneration," or "decisionalism," or something like that. Forced to expand, they point out that Joshua is not saying "Choose whether or not you will serve Yahweh." Rather, he is saying, "If you will not serve Yahweh, then choose what false god you will serve."

Fair enough, as far as it goes. That is what the verse says. And anyone who's read the whole eighth chapter of TWTG, which is devoted to the Biblical doctrine of regeneration, knows that I don't see the Bible as teaching that new birth is caused by a human decision.

But don't humans make a decision? Is it helpful simply to dismiss the whole thought? I mean, dude, bro — what is repentance, if it doesn't involve a decision? What is faith? Don't we say that it has a volitional element? And what is the volition, if not the faculty that chooses? Don't we teach that we're all born heading south, and we have to do a 180? Isn't a reverse direction — though enabled by a work of sovereign grace — a decision?

Even putting all that aside, I don't even think the exegesis of this text stands up as a hypercaffeinated Calvinist critique.

Isn't context an important element of exegesis? Hypercaf critics do do a better job that popular Christians, in that they go back to verse 14, read all of 15, and note that the specific words are not a call to choose whether or not to serve Yahweh. Fair enough, as far as that goes.

But.

Keep reading. Read verses 16-27, and what do you see?

16 Then the people answered, "Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods, 17 for it is the LORD our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among all the peoples through whom we passed.  18 And the LORD drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God."

 19 But Joshua said to the people, "You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy God. He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.  20 If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good."

 21 And the people said to Joshua, "No, but we will serve the LORD."

 22 Then Joshua said to the people, "You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD, to serve him." And they said, "We are witnesses."

 23 He said, "Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD, the God of Israel."

 24 And the people said to Joshua, "The LORD our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey."

 25 So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and put in place statutes and rules for them at Shechem.  26 And Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. And he took a large stone and set it up there under the terebinth that was by the sanctuary of the LORD.  27 And Joshua said to all the people, "Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the LORD that he spoke to us. Therefore it shall be a witness against you, lest you deal falsely with your God."

The people retort that they will serve Yahweh. Joshua replies that they won't be able to, because of their fickleness. They insist that they will serve Him. So Joshua formalizes this declaration, indicating his approval — first saying "you have chosen the LORD, to serve him" (v. 22).

In other words, they did choose Yahweh, in response to Joshua's challenge. They did choose Yahweh.

And, in conversion, so do we.

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Regeneration and True Free Will

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson




The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "God's Law in Man's Heart," a sermon preached Sunday evening, 28 June 1885, at the Met Tab in London.



an has become so fallen that he cannot keep the law. Sooner might the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots, than he that is accustomed to do evil learn to do well (Jeremiah 13:23); but what man cannot do, by reason of the perversity of the flesh, God performs within him, working in him to will and to do of his good pleasure. Oh, what amazing grace is this, which while it forgives our want of will, also removes our want of power!

And, dear friends, is it not a wonderful proof of grace that God does this without destroying man in any degree whatever? Man is a creature with a will,—a "free will" as they sometimes call it,—a creature who is responsible for his actions; so God does not come and change our hearts by a physical process, as some seem to dream, but by a spiritual process in which he never mars our nature, but sets our nature right.

If a man becomes a child of God, he still has a will. God does not destroy the delicate machinery of our nature, but he puts it into proper gear. We become Christians with our own full assent and consent; and we keep the law of God not by any compulsion except the sweet compulsion of love. We do not keep it because we cannot do otherwise, but we keep it because we would not do otherwise, because we have come to delight therein, and this seems to me the greatest wonder of divine grace.

See, dear friends, how different is the Lord's way of working and ours. If you knock down a man who is living an evil life, and put him in chains, you can make him honest by force; or if you set him free, and hem him round with Acts of Parliament, you may make him sober if he cannot get anything to drink, you may make him wonderfully quiet if you put a gag in his mouth; but that is not God's way of acting.

He who put man in the Garden of Eden, and never put any palisades around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but left man a free agent, does just the same in the operations of his grace. He leaves his people to the influences that are within them, and yet they go right, because they are so changed and renewed by his grace that they delight to do that which once they loathed to do.

I admire the grace of God in acting thus. We should have taken the watch to pieces, and broken half the wheels, and made new ones, or something of the kind. But God knows how to leave the man just as much a man as he was before his conversion, and yet to make him so entirely a new man that old things have passed away, and all things have become new.

And this is very beautiful, too, that when God writes his law in his people's hearts, He makes this the way of their preservation. When God's law is written in a man's heart, that heart becomes divinely royal property, for the King's name is there, and the heart in which God has written his name can never perish.

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