Proverbial Wisdom: The Value of Wisdom

Read Proverbs 2


This chapter in Proverbs begins in a way that will continue throughout the book, “my son…”


The repetition of this phrase reminds us that this book is a record of a loving father's wise counsel to his family.  God has us address Him as Father for a reason.   God exemplifies what a father should be.  The Bible tells us that fathers are commanded to teach their children wisdom (Deut. 6:1-9).  If children are smart, they pay attention and obey.  If you are a parent, I’m sure that your heart is burdened to make sure your child does not grow up to make mistakes in their life.  God is the same way with us.  He does not want His children to make constant mistakes in our lives.  That is why He gave us the Bible.  It is our daily instruction and guide to live a wise and abundant life.


A common theme in chapters 2 through 4 is that they begin with an admonition to listen to God’s Word and take them to heart.  


In the first eight verses, God gives us four ways to handle His truth and become wise.


  1.  Listen to God’s words and treasure them.

  2. Tune our ears to concentrate to His voice

  3. Ask for understanding. (Make that a constant in your prayer life)

  4. Search and seek for understanding


If you notice the steps God gives us here, it is very much the same steps that an archaeologist or an explorer uses when making a great discovery.   We must be diligent when seeking God’s will for our life.  We need to listen and search.  We should not just be passive and expect it all to magically happen.


After God tells us how to obtain and set up a foundation of wisdom, He then gives us the stark warning of those we must avoid because of the temptation and distraction they can become in our life.  Take a look at the attributes of those that are mentioned in the chapter, the evil man and the immoral woman.  It’s not a blatant and forthright thing that they do.  They are very subtle and quit flattering in their words.  These type of people will come into our life making us feel like they are our friends and only want the best for our lives but will ultimately lead to our destruction.  Any relationship that takes you away from the ultimate relationship with God, is a wrong relationship.  Look at Job.  Job had a great number of friends.  When trouble hit however, what did they do?  They gave him bad advice and Job had to make a decision.  He had to decide if He was going to listen to the Lord, the creator of all things, or listen to his friends who only showed up at certain portions in his life.  We must make this hard decision every day in our life.  We must decide who will become a part of it and who will not.  Does this mean that we don’t love these people?  Absolutely not!  Does this mean that we cannot be social with them?  Absolutely not!  It does mean who we will hold close to ourselves and have us influence our life.  Anything that is a distraction in our life from God, needs to be removed and the hard reality of this is it may sometimes mean who we consider our friends.

In the closing verses of this chapter we have an awesome promise.  In summary, if we receive God’s words and obey them, then we will have wisdom to make wise decisions, and thus God will keep His promises and protect us from the evil man and immoral woman.  When we obey God, we have the privilege to “walk in the way of greatness” (vs. 20).  If we follow the Word of God, we will never lack for the right kind of friends and we will never lack the confidence and security of our living God.

 

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