How To Spot A Fool

HOW TO SPOT A FOOL

INTRODUCTION: On April 1st, 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in an American newspaper announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" especially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper, but all the items were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The next day, Burger King issued a follow-up. The follow-up press release said that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others had requested their own 'right handed' version." Although being an April fool is relatively harmless, being a real fool isn’t. Let’s find out why?

1) How can we spot a fool?

• A fool is antagonistic toward God.

a. Psalm 14:1-3. Atheists are fools. There is no God. There is no one I’m answerable to; I can do what I want. Being this way, giving no thought to God results in living a corrupt life filled with foolish behavior. Prov. 10:23a, “A fool finds pleasure in evil conduct.”

b. Psalm 74:18, 22. Fools mock God. Revile means to insult, scorn, despise. These are people with hatred toward God. There are people today who basically say f*** God. People mock God because of their hatred for him. Others may mock God because of they don’t take God seriously. Tancredo Neves was running for President in Brazil. During the campaign, he said if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency. He did get the votes to win, but he got sick a day before being made President, and then he died. An unknown White Star Line employee at the time of Titanic's launch on May 31, 1911 said, "Not even God himself could sink this ship." “In Campinas, Brazil a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend. The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter holding her hand, who was already seated in the car: "My Daughter, go with God and may He protect you." She responded: "Only if He (God) travels in the trunk, ‘cause inside here....it's already full". Hours later, news came by that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died, the car could not be recognized what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the trunk was intact. The police said there was no way the trunk could have remained intact. To their surprise, inside the trunk was a crate of eggs, none of which were broken.” Gal. 6:7-8.

c. Prov. 19:3. Fools blame God. I screw my life up yet when the consequences of my actions come to fruition I blame God for not rescuing me. “Why did you allow this to happen to me?” We get upset at God for not getting us off the hook when we break the law. We get upset at God when we get cancer although we abused our bodies for years. Instead of taking responsibility for the ruining of our lives by our own foolish behaviors, our heart rages against the Lord and we pout the blame on Him.

• A fool is prideful.

a. Prov. 10:8- In my pride, I won’t accept commands. “You’re not going to tell me what to do”. A fool will not accept being told what to do. A fool will always reject authority. A fool despises structure and boundaries. In my pride I want to always do things my way. But I will continue to be frustrated because I will always be subject to some form of authority whether I like it or not. Therefore, to be resistant toward it will only lead to more trouble in my life.

b. Prov. 12:15-A fool thinks he’s always right. In my pride I will not be open to receiving advice because I already know everything. In being this way I close myself off to learning a better way of doing things. I close myself off to growing. In my foolish pride I will stay stuck.

c. Prov. 17:10-A fool will not accept a rebuke. In my pride I am not open to input and correction. I will not accept you calling me into account. I will not accept responsibility for my wrongdoing. Prov. 1:7. A fool rejects correction and discipline. Instead of being humble and accepting disciplinary action, I reject it, which is foolish because in my rejection of correction I just set the stage for repeat offenses which causes more consequences which sets the stage for more disciplinary action.

d. Prov. 26:11. A fool doesn’t learn from his mistakes. John Wayne is quoted as saying, “Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid.” Life is going to be harder when you don’t learn from your mistakes. Life will be harder when you’re prideful and don’t want to learn a better way. Life is going to be harder when you’re stubborn and you want to keep doing things a certain way and every time it ends in frustration. Def. of insanity. You “kick against the goads”. There’s a difference between acting foolish and being a fool. We all at times do something foolish. Hopefully we say, ‘well, that was dumb; I won’t do that again”. That’s learning from our mistakes. But a fool will persist in their folly; they will purposely return to vomit. Not learning from our mistakes will make our lives painfully hard.