“Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare to her.” Proverbs 8:10-11
Living the Christian life is simple but not easy. It’s simple because the precepts that God gives us to live by are all rather obvious. It’s not easy, though, because sin pulls us away from what we know to be true. This verse is a great example.
When King Solomon began his reign over Israel the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Ask what you wish me to give you” (1 Kings 3:5). Solomon, of course, famously answered with a heartfelt request for wisdom so that he might rightly handle his responsibilities. Specifically, Solomon asked for divine guidance to determine between good and evil (1 Kings 3:9) for the purpose of carrying out his vocation as king. To this, God replied that He was most pleased with Solomon since the new king didn’t ask for earthly things – riches, selfish gain, or the life of his enemies. So, the Lord blessed Solomon with a great wisdom, to be unequaled before or after (1 Kings 3:12), and added to that both riches and honor.
In the book of James we read that if any of us lacks wisdom that we should ask the Lord and He will give to us generously, without reproach (James 1:5). We won’t hear, “What took you so long?” We won’t find that the Lord is a grumpy parent who resents us due to our hardheadedness. No…and thanks be to God for that!
The thing to note, though, is that to go to the Lord for wisdom, in the right mind, with a true and unwavering heart, is to see wisdom as the preeminent thing in life. The issue before us, as it was with Solomon and as it is with every man and woman ever born, is what will be our final standard. The man or woman who desires the silver and gold of life, the pride, the pleasures and the triumphs, more than the Lord himself will eventually lose all. Not only that, they will debase themselves in the pursuit of these things. The default setting of sinners is to see the world “through their own eyes” rather than through the infallible lens of the Bible.
Let’s consider that for a moment.
We know that Solomon was corrupted by his great treasures and wealth. All of his wisdom, absent the Lord, led him to sin, to emptiness, and depression. We read of this in Ecclesiastes and see unequivocally how “life under the sun” will never satisfy the heart of man. Only life “in the Son”, that is through faith in Christ, motivated and compelled by the love of Christ, will bring us the peace and joy we desire through fellowship with God. To want the “things of God” (all the wonderful things of creation) without God, and/or on our own terms, not His, is to lose all. You see, Solomon wasn’t wise on his own. He was given the gift of wisdom. And then this gift was obscured by disobedience. If it was that way with Solomon, it will be that way with us too if we put things over God.
This is why the book of Proverbs is so special. It’s such a practical book – a veritable degree in philosophy in 31 chapters – because it hammers home the simple truth that it’s the fear of the Lord that’s the beginning of wisdom. But, alas, this isn’t easy because our hearts are often set on things rather than the Lord who created those things. Here’s the question to ask: am I more fixated on stuff, the things and pleasures of this age, than I am on knowing the Lord? If our prayers are more concerned with our circumstances than they are, as a general rule, our relationship with God, and knowledge of His word, than we violate this sweet and simple truth of Scripture. In short, are we lovers of God or lovers of sin?
Let’s watch our patterns of thought and behavior. Are we creative geniuses in how to get this or that, or of how to use our time for some thing or another and yet we don’t know the Scripture? Do we obsess about getting our way, finding our own way, rather than understanding God’s way? Indeed, if our life and witness are weak, if they’re feeble and low, it’s because we aren’t spiritually fed from His word, which is the source of His wisdom.
A person should be diligent in their work. They should strive for excellence in all that they do. But this striving and diligence should be rooted and founded in the Lord and for His glory rather than our own. The purpose of our life is the obedience of faith (Romans 1:5, 16:26) and not, repeat not, the accumulation of wealth, pleasure or self-glory. To this end, Proverbs is so very practical for daily living, it’s true and undefiled wisdom for ordering our every day affairs, indeed, our whole lives, precisely because it teaches us to set our minds upon Him.
To go about life in any other way is to take the task of being able to determine between good and evil on our own terms. This is what we mean when we say we aren’t to use ourselves as the final reference point. The pursuit of happiness, if that pursuit is played out on one’s own reasoning, with one’s life rather than God’s word as the standard of authority and truth, will lead to ruin. There is no way to do it. There’s no way to see your options and make sense of them unless you know who you are, what you’re doing on earth, and where you’re going. No worldly philosophies answer these fundamental questions. None. In the Bible alone we find the non-contradictory answers to these questions and their corollaries.
Who are we? We are the Lord’s. We’re His workmanship, created for fellowship with Him, through faith in Christ. What are you doing on earth? You were saved in Christ to do good works in His name through whatever vocation He has called you into. Obedient living that shows the love of God in you is the greatest triumph on earth, not a Super Bowl ring, a world championship, a gold medal, or anything else. Lastly, where are you going? It’s given to men once to die, then, invariably, unequivocally, there is the judgment. And at the judgement a man or woman has only two options: the righteousness of Christ, imputed through faith, to pay heaven’s high toll, or their own filthy rags. A man who goes to judgment on his own standard, who dares to stand before the Judge of all the earth, is like a man who tries to pay for admission into some great club with a handful of excrement.
This is the foundation upon which we build our lives and it’s why we rightly and logically realize how much more important the word of God is than anything else. Without it, we can’t possibly make sense of all the decisions we have to make because we’ve lost the context to the whole thing. A number of years ago I watched a few children playing with a football. They were young and no one knew the rules of the game, so they were running around aimlessly, everyone trying to do their own thing. Eventually small quarrels broke out due to the disorganization and competing standards of play. This is what life is like for us when we live on our own terms and it’s exactly why wisdom is most important.
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