Tag: Proverbs – Go For the Life that Wins!

We now must take a closer look at the path of the wicked and those who travel it. The wicked have their path. It is very broad and very winding. It is popular today to reject negative virtue, but there can be no positive virtue without it. “Negative virtue is not good enough; we must do good” (William S. Plumer). How can the guilt-ridden love themselves unless and until they face the reasons for their anger and hate? Wisdom sounds a fervent warning here declaring that “virtue is the only true nobility”.

These verses reaffirm that the Path of Wisdom involves a Resignation of our Will to obey (hear, recite), a Role-model for our Guidance to follow (taught, led), and a Resolution in our deficiency to be instructed (take fast hold).

Again, we find two opposite paths presented in our verses today, the path of Wisdom and the path of wickedness. Jesus called them the Broad way to Destruction and the Narrow to Life. There can be no neutrality. The unregenerate man makes loud claims to know right, but Paul declares, in spite of all his claims and confidence, he will not accept the Bible’s teaching (1 Cor. 1:20-21; 2:11-14). We must be for the right, but it must be the right as defined by God, who alone can define it.

The rewards and benefits of Wisdom are not a matter of vain speculation as demonstrated in these verses. Those who possess this Wisdom will be forever enriched through its special benefits. Matthew Henry comments here, “A soul without true wisdom and grace is a dead soul. How poor, how contemptible and wretched are those, who, with all their wealth and power, die without getting understanding, without Christ, without hope, and without God.”

We need to be clear in our minds as to the meaning of Wisdom as over against knowledge, and why Solomon calls it the key or principle thing.

It seems almost all the “wise” of the earth have been pitted against the Bible, and only an obscure few for it. Yet is still stands! Testimonies to the value of the bible could be multiplied many times over. We will share just two from quite different sources.

How wonderful to realise that the Bible never grows old. As Vance Havner puts it, “The Word of God is either absolute or obsolete.” The generations come and go, but the Word of God shall stand forever. Kant (1724-1804) put it better than he knew, “The Bible is an inexhaustible fountain of all truths. [Its] existence is the greatest blessing which humanity ever experienced.” Yet, it was Kant’s teaching, perhaps more than any other man, that opened the door to the modern denial that man can really know God or His Word, and prepared the way for Neo-orthodoxy and existentialism! Consider the Bible’s teaching.

How practical is the book of Proverbs! This chapter deals with problems facing all ages. Anxiety, stress, anger, international strife, confront us within its pages. Proverbs is a good place to start reading the Bible! Someone said, “It is well fitted to create a market for the Gospel.” It provides a mirror in which to see ourselves and a treasury of Wisdom and Truth to live by. Parents, keep every before your children that “truth in faith works holiness in life.” The same applies to the evil workings of error!

To reveal what little reason saints have to envy sinners, the last four verses compare the respective condition of each. Verses 27-31 were God’s rules, and verses 32-35 give God’s reasons. The history of man is the epic of the violation of those rules! The negative rules are followed by positive reasons. God owes us no explanation for our obedience, yet sinful men wilfully scorn them.

The warnings run from vs. 25-31, and all begin Do not! Who says there should only be positive preaching? Here we are told how to do good negatively, and they all have their counterparts in the NT. Note that what not to do clearly suggests what we should do. Negatives merely serve to highlight the positives!