Proverbs 27:22,  Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.

The Bible tells us that correction exists that will drive foolishness from a child.

In Proverbs 22:15,  God tells us that: Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

So a child's foolishness can be driven to a far away place by the rod of correction.

Can this mean that even though a child may have foolishness in him, we should not consider that a child is a fool?

But what is being described in our Proverb is not the correction of a child.

This Proverb describes a most drastic and strict punishment and yet this does not bring success in driving foolishness away.

This is the foolishness of a fool!

This Proverb is about the fool that has said, "No God for me!"

This is the fool that is a confirmed fool.

This is not about a child.

God uses language in this proverb to describe an act that conveys to us a process that is used to crush a structure into another form whereby the original of that structure is not recognized any longer.

It has been turned into something else.

He asks us to picture a mortar and a pestle.

A mortar, as you may know, is an inverted bell shaped vessel in which substances are pounded or bruised with a pestle.

A pestle is an instrument for pounding and breaking substances in a mortar.

In the mortar we are to picture wheat that is there to be separated so that something useful to man will be produced by that separation.

God has given us grain in the wheat but it is contained in a husk.

We must work to get it out of the husk, the container of the grain.

The husk must be crushed harshly in order to recover the grain.

This process of separation yields a reward to man.

Now God wants us to picture a fool inserted in the mortar with the wheat.

The fool is to undergo the braying of the pestle along with the wheat.

To bray means to pound, beat or grind small.

This is the picture of an extremely harsh act of an attempted correction of a fool in an attempt to make the fool useful for God.

But are we to expect profit from this pounding, this beating and this grinding of the fool?

Are we to expect a transformation of the fool into another form like the transformation of the wheat into a useful grain?

This proverb is clear. A fool cannot be transformed into something useful for God by suffering him through such drastic

measures.

Did God cure the foolishness of man by bringing the flood.

No, he destroyed the race, but not the foolishness.

As the Pharaoh was brayed in the mortar did he depart from the foolishness that destroyed his firstborn?

What will be the result of the braying that God performs during the tribulation? Will this turn the fools around? Read the scripture!

Revelation 16:10,11,  And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds. Why not? Because they are fools!

This proverb convinces us that the deep affliction of those that say, "No God for me," only produces blasphemy and hardness of heart.

The belief in the necessity of affliction for our saving good is a delusion.

Never by itself will it bring one soul to God.

If a rock be broken the pieces that remain are rock.

A man may be crushed, but not humbled.

The blows in his life may appear to him as himself being brayed in a mortar but he will continue cling to his foolishness.

Jeremiah knew this as he asked in his prophesy  in Jeremiah 13:23,  Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? (If he can) then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.

No, a fool is a fool is a fool.

The harshest punishment that you can imagine, will not turn a man into something that he is not.

Only by the grace of God will a man be changed.

Only by the grace of God will a man's foolishness depart from him.

There has to take place something supernatural.

God must create a new man.

The old man is hopeless and therefore punishment as drastic as can be imagined is of no avail.

It is God's grace and God's grace alone that can do anything for man.