Folly in Scripture

Use these prefiltered searches to craft sermons and prayers, offer pastoral care, or plan worship services around the theme of folly or foolishness. 

• Psalm 14:1, fools tell themselves there is no God
• Proverbs 10:23, doing wrong is like sport to a fool 
• Proverbs 15:5, fools reject wise teaching
• Proverbs 17:12, the danger of folly
• Matthew 23:37, Jerusalem's folly
• John 1:10–11, the folly of rejecting Jesus
• Romans 1:12, the folly of turning on God 
• 1 Corinthians 1:27, God using what is foolish to shame the wise 
• Philippians 3:18–19, the folly of opposing God
• James 4:2, folly and evil 

Sermon ideas about folly 

A sermon on folly can point out that the Bible's proverbs, with their parallel constructions, often pair folly with either wickedness or pride. In other respects as well, the proverbs' main examples of folly are behaviors that are both dumb and wrong—an unwillingness to listen (you can't tell a fool anything), an irritable attitude, a sharp tongue, a haughty spirit. 

Not all folly is sin. A lot of things human beings do are loopy, not sinful, and the apt response to them is a guffaw, not a rebuke. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether folly is culpable. Are parents who try to buy their children's love culpable for their poor judgment? 

What is it about sin that makes it so foolish? Sin is the wrong recipe for good health; it's the wrong fuel for the human motor; it's the wrong road to get home. In other words, sin is finally futile. To take a prime example, idolatry is not only treacherous but also stupid. Human beings fascinate themselves with the current idols of this world, but the idols can't deliver. If we try to fill ourselves with anything besides the God of the universe, we find that we are overfed but undernourished, and day by day we are thinning down to a mere silhouette of a human being. 

Another of sin's follies is that it is self-destructive. Sin grieves God and offends or deprives others, but it also corrodes us. Sin is a form of self-abuse. Promiscuous persons, for example, condemn themselves to social superficiality. They make sex merely recreational. Liars and cheats abort the possibility of fellowship; by betraying others' trust, they undermine relationships.  

Sermons about folly can also note that in the biblical examples above, folly is often tragic. Fools say there is no God, or they spurn God's Son, or they fail to honor and thank God. In other words, they unplug their own resuscitator. 

The self-destructiveness of sin may be national, as in the case of Israel. Hence the note of urgency, even of desperation, in many of the biblical prophecies. Israel depends for her very existence on God, her covenant partner. When Nathan confronts King David after his adultery, when Micah cries out against injustice or Hosea against idolatry, when Isaiah warns against national pride or Amos against phony worship, the complaint is never generic. The complaint is always particular, and the context always a crisis: the nation is acting like a jackass. It's carrying on like a fool and is therefore in grave danger of self-destruction. The prophet is a wise man who sees that in sin the stakes are higher, the reverberations wider, and the corruption deeper than people suspect. And he tells them so, often in disagreeable ways. 

The dicey state of the word sin 

Preachers who are aware of the dicey state of the word sin today—it's thought to be a judgmental word—may want to use the language of folly in sermons about sin. Sins are futile, unrealistic (as with pride), and self-destructive. They cause enmity, violence, depression, and sorrow. They are bad for business, bad for joy, and bad for keeping the peace. All this can be said without using the word sin.