O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the opening of my lips shall be right things. For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are in righteousness; there is nothing froward or perverse in them. They are all plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge. Receive my instruction, and not silver; and knowledge rather than choice gold. For wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.
Here we have both the glories of Christ, and the wretchedness of man strikingly represented. Jesus, well knowing how deaf and senseless our poor fallen nature is, and that unconscious of our own misery, and therefore unwilling to be prevailed upon to listen to what is proposed for our good, first declares to us our simplicity, and then the infinite importance of the things which he is going to declare to us, Excellent things they may well be called, for what can be equally excellent as the glories of his person, the riches of his grace, his suitableness to poor sinners, and the everlasting riches the possession of him must impart? And excellent things these are also in the view of the Father's appointment of them for poor sinners, and the Father's will and delight that they should be received by poor sinners, and made use of for his glory and the sinner's joy. Reader! are not these things excellent things; and right things, and coming from the lip of truth? And further, allow me to ask whether there be an apprehension of them as such in your soul? Hath the loud cry of Jesus reached your ear? Hath the voice of understanding been heard in the chambers of your heart? Do you from day today with the eye of faith behold Jesus standing in the top of high places; that is by way of ordinances in the gates of his word, in the ministry of his paths, and both at the entering in, and going out of his providences, in all that is going on in the world? Surely it is in all these, and by all these, Jesus cries and calls upon the sons of men. Neither is there a faculty of the mind, in the hearing ear, the seeing eye, and the understanding heart, but what hath daily appeals made to each and to all, to listen to the heavenly preacher, and to be made wise unto salvation through the faith that is in Christ Jesus.