Matthew Sucky here from Verity Baptist Church Manila providing you an answer to
a common Bible contradiction, so called. And in Proverbs 26 verses 4 and 5 the Bible
reads, answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. And so
back-to-back verses you have one verse where it says don't answer a fool and
the next verse says you should answer a fool. And so people bring this up and say
it's a Bible contradiction. Now first off if somebody's writing and they're
writing back-to-back verses that would completely contradict themselves, one
verse says two plus two equals four, the next one two plus two equals five, that's
ridiculous. Obviously they would notice if they made a mistake and you say well
why is it not a contradiction? Why does it tell you to answer a fool? Why does it
tell you not to answer a fool? Well quite simply this, there is a time to answer a
fool and there's a time not to answer a fool, okay? So in verse four it says
answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. Look let's say
for example that somebody's standing outside of our church and they're just
like screaming and protesting or whatever. Look that's a time when you
don't answer a fool and I've been there before. I've been a part of a church where
people are protesting and the best thing to do in that situation is don't
answer that fool because if you answer him you're gonna be like unto him. You
have people that will try to argue with you and debate you at the door when
you're going soul winning. Look you know what you shouldn't just spend all your
time just just arguing with them for 25 minutes when they have no interest. You're
supposed to shake off the dust of your feet. There's definitely a time not to
answer a fool. You know people say foolish things about you in the media or
they mock you on Facebook. Look you don't have to spend two hours defending your
name on Facebook. You know there's definitely a time where you just don't
answer a fool and if you do answer them people are gonna look at you and you
look foolish as well for even answering them. Look if it's something so
ridiculous you just ignore that. But you know the Bible also says answer a fool
according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceit. And see there is
actually a time to answer a fool. You say well when would that time be? Well
throughout the book of John we see that Jesus would be arguing and debating so
called with you know various religious leaders and when you really look at
those chapters you can see that he has an end goal because there was people
paying attention. He had been preaching the gospel to groups of people and then
people come over and start to try to argue with him and then he basically
rebukes them and makes them look foolish. And the reason why is because of the fact
he wants to get these people saved over here. And so he does choose to answer
them because of the fact it's gonna prevent people from getting saved if he
doesn't answer them. There's an example where you've got foolish people acting
stupid but Jesus must respond to them in order to try to win these other people
to the Lord. And that's throughout the book of John. And so there's definitely
gonna be a time where you should answer a fool. Somebody you know makes up some
sort of you know false allegation or they say something foolish and it's
deceiving people. Hey you know sometimes you do have to answer. Sometimes maybe
you shouldn't put up a YouTube video to explain hey this is false this is what
the truth is. Sometimes you do have to answer but you know you you have to seek
for the balance there. You shouldn't always answer fools. If you spend all of
your time just answering everybody who's a fool that says stupid things okay
you're gonna spend your whole life doing that. You're gonna spend four hours
debating on YouTube and Facebook every day but at the same time you can't
always just let these fools just always say what they want.
There's definitely a time to answer that fool. There's definitely a time to rebuke
that fool. It's a matter of finding the balance. You say is this a contradiction?
No it's not a contradiction. There's just a time to answer a fool and there's a time
not to answer a fool. Remember the chapter in Ecclesiastes is a time to love and a
time to hate. And it goes through a list of things where there's a time to do one
and a time to do the other. Look there is a time to answer a fool. There's also a
time not to answer a fool. Thank you and God bless.