Proverbs 9
1. Wisdom preserves knowledge “in the pillars,” of her home.
Institutional Memory: a set of facts, concepts, and experiences that are possibly handed down from one generation to the next
“Scoffer Status”: Two ways diverge (vv. 7-12)
-You will fall on one side of the Scoffing Fence.
-Your heart will determine the direction.
2. Are you a scoffer?
Compliments can accomplish a lot—and they are important. However, they do not by nature reveal very much. Criticism, however, does have this power to reveal the inner heart by means of the man or woman’s response.
What instincts, what view of the world is necessary for the scoffer to reply the way he does?
“That doesn’t apply to me.”
“Nobody gets it.”
“What she is actually trying to do is. . .”
“He is just saying that because . . .”
3. Scoffers need saving.
Instead of answering, “change the topic” to salvation.
Dame Folly can appear very much like Lady Wisdom in the place where she can be found, in the urgency with which she calls out, and with the kind of audience she targets.
4. Taste, pleasantness, and preference make us love wrongly.
To get us to listen and follow, Dame Folly often must hide her outcomes.
What changes the scoffer’s heart? Our dear and bloody Savior on his cross bore our shame and scoffing and made us sons and daughters (Luke 22:36-43).
