The Fountain and the Swamp Text: Proverbs 15:7
Introduction: The War of Words
The book of Proverbs is intensely practical. It is God's inspired instruction manual on how to live skillfully in His world. It does not give us abstract platitudes for personal self-improvement. It gives us the divine blueprint for wisdom, which is nothing less than the fear of the Lord. And in this world, there are only two teams on the field: the wise and the foolish. There is no middle ground, no neutral territory. You are either building with God or you are scattering. You are either cultivating a garden or you are tending a swamp.
Our text today brings this conflict down to the level of our mouths. We live in an age drowning in words. We are bombarded by a constant stream of information, opinion, chatter, and noise from our phones, our televisions, and our public discourse. But most of it is folly. It is a torrent of instability, a river of mud. Our culture has rejected the foundational premise that words ought to correspond to reality, because it has rejected the God who is the author of both words and reality. The result is a society where speech is not a tool for building, but a weapon for deconstruction. Words are used to obscure, to manipulate, to redefine, and to destroy.
Into this chaos, Solomon speaks with the crisp, clean authority of divine wisdom. He shows us that the issue is never just about the words themselves. The words are merely the fruit. The real issue is the root. The problem is not a lip problem; it is a heart problem. And so we are presented with a stark contrast: the wise, whose words are like a sower broadcasting good seed, and the fool, whose heart is an unstable mess, incapable of producing anything of the kind.
The Text
"The lips of the wise disperse knowledge, But the hearts of fools are not so." (Proverbs 15:7 LSB)
The Lips of the Wise (v. 7a)
We begin with the first clause:
"The lips of the wise disperse knowledge..." (Proverbs 15:7a)
The word for "disperse" here carries the idea of scattering or broadcasting, like a farmer sowing seed. It is an active, intentional, and generous act. The wise man does not hoard knowledge. He does not keep wisdom to himself, like some Gnostic secret. He understands that knowledge is a gift to be stewarded and shared. His speech is productive. It builds up. It brings order. It cultivates.
But what is this "knowledge" that he disperses? In the biblical sense, knowledge is not a collection of disconnected facts. It is not about winning trivia night. The beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord (Prov. 1:7). Therefore, the knowledge that the wise disperse is a God-centered understanding of reality. It is the truth about God, about man, about sin, and about redemption. It is the application of God's Word to every area of life, from economics to child-rearing, from politics to personal piety. The wise man speaks in such a way that others are better equipped to live skillfully and faithfully in God's world.
This is a covenantal activity. The wise man understands he is part of a people, a community. His words are not just self-expression; they are contributions to the health of the body. He teaches his children. He counsels his friends. He exhorts his church. He engages the public square with truth. His lips are a fountain, not a drain. This is the verbal aspect of the Great Commission and the cultural mandate. We are to go into all the world and teach whatsoever Christ has commanded us. We are to disperse the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. This is a postmillennial activity. The wise man speaks with hope, because he knows that God's knowledge will triumph. The seed he scatters will bear fruit.
Notice that it says the "lips" of the wise. This points to the external action. This is what people hear. It is consistent, reliable, and life-giving. You know what you are going to get from the wise man, because his speech is governed by the fear of God. It is seasoned with salt. It is fit for the occasion. It brings grace to the hearers.
The Heart of the Fool (v. 7b)
The second clause provides the sharp and necessary contrast.
"...But the hearts of fools are not so." (Proverbs 15:7b LSB)
The contrast is precise and devastating. The text does not say, "but the lips of fools are not so." It goes deeper. It goes to the source, to the heart. The fool's problem is a heart problem. Jesus Himself tells us that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). The reason the fool's speech is worthless is because his heart is worthless. It is a polluted spring, and so the water that flows from it is polluted.
What does it mean that their hearts are "not so"? The Hebrew can be translated as "not right," "not stable," or "not upright." The heart of the fool is crooked. It is not aligned with reality because it is not aligned with God. The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God" (Psalm 14:1). This is the foundational lie that corrupts everything else. Because he has rejected the ultimate reference point for truth, his heart is unstable. It is a chaotic mess of shifting desires, resentments, pride, and self-deception.
Therefore, the fool is constitutionally incapable of dispersing knowledge. He can disperse opinions. He can disperse propaganda. He can disperse slander, gossip, and foolishness. But he cannot disperse knowledge because he does not possess it. His heart is not a well-ordered storehouse from which to draw. It is a swamp. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable. What he says on Monday may be contradicted by what he says on Tuesday, because his heart is governed by impulse and expediency, not by truth.
This is why you cannot reason with a fool in the ultimate sense. His problem is not a lack of information; it is a moral rebellion. His heart is not an empty vessel waiting to be filled with knowledge. It is a clenched fist, resisting the authority of God. So while his lips may be very active, his heart is "not so." It is not a source of stable, life-giving truth. It produces nothing of the kind. It is all heat and no light. It is all noise and no substance. The output of the fool's lips is just a reliable indicator of the chaos reigning in his heart.
Application: Cultivating a Wise Heart
This proverb forces a very practical question upon each of us. Are your lips a fountain or a swamp? When you speak, are you dispersing knowledge or just adding to the noise? Are you sowing seeds of truth, beauty, and goodness, or are you scattering weeds of discord, foolishness, and vanity?
But as we have seen, the path to wise lips runs straight through the heart. You cannot fix your speech by simply trying to say nicer things. You cannot put a filter on a polluted spring and expect clean water. The heart must be regenerated. The crooked must be made straight.
First, this requires repentance. We must recognize that our natural, fallen hearts are foolish. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9). We must stop trusting our hearts. The modern mantra to "follow your heart" is the essence of folly. It is telling a man with a broken compass to trust it implicitly. We must repent of our intellectual autonomy and submit our hearts and minds to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Second, we must fill our hearts with the Word of God. The Psalmist says, "I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you" (Psalm 119:11). If we want to disperse knowledge, we must first acquire it. This means a diligent, prayerful, and consistent diet of Scripture. The Bible is the treasury of wisdom. We must marinate in it. We must let it shape our thinking, correct our desires, and straighten our crooked ways. What you put into your heart in your study is what will come out of your mouth on the street.
Conclusion
The contrast in this verse is absolute. The wise man's lips are an instrument of cultivation. He is a sower, a builder, a life-giver. He participates in God's great project of filling the earth with the knowledge of His glory. The fool, on the other hand, has a heart that is fundamentally unstable. It is not rightly oriented to God, and therefore it cannot produce anything that is rightly oriented to reality. His words are, at best, a waste of breath and, at worst, a destructive force.
The gospel is the ultimate fulfillment of this proverb. God, in His wisdom, chose to disperse the knowledge of salvation to a world of fools. He did this not through abstract principles, but through the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Jesus is the wisdom of God, and His lips always dispersed knowledge. He spoke the truth, and He was the Truth.
And through His death and resurrection, He offers us a heart transplant. He takes our foolish, stony, unstable hearts and gives us new hearts, hearts of flesh that are able to fear Him and learn His ways (Ezekiel 36:26). By His grace, He transforms fools into wise men. He takes those whose hearts were "not so" and makes them fountains of His truth. And He commissions us, His people, to go into this foolish world and, with lips seasoned by grace and hearts transformed by His Spirit, to disperse the glorious knowledge of the King.