CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 12:1. Instruction, “discipline” or “disciplinary instruction.”
Proverbs 12:2. Obtaineth, literally “draws out.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF Proverbs 12:1
THE LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE PROOF OF IT
True knowledge is to be loved—
I. For what it can do for him who loves it.
1. It refines a man. Gold when it is in its natural condition is valuable because it is gold, but when it has been purged from its impurities by the refining process it is more to be valued and is more beautiful. So a man may be sterling gold without much knowledge, but when the dross of ignorance is removed, he is worth more and is more attractive. If this be true of knowledge in the general, it is pre-eminently true of the knowledge which comes from above. If any knowledge exercises a refining influence upon the human mind, much more does the highest knowledge—the knowledge of God.
2. It will open up sources of enjoyment that would otherwise be hidden. The blind are deprived of many enjoyments by lack of sight. There is an abundance of beauty all around them, but their want of vision makes it useless to them. Intellectual ignorance is intellectual blindness; the ignorant man is a stranger to a thousand pleasures which are enjoyed by a well-informed man. Especially ignorance of Divine things shuts a man out from the highest, the only lasting unalloyed source of joy.
3. It makes a man less dependent on the outward and visible. A man who has stored up knowledge will be good company for himself. He can find refreshment by meditating on what he has within him, and need not be ever seeking it in external things. The contemplation of Divine and eternal truths especially, will ever be “within him a well of water” (John 4:14).
II. For what it will do for others. If a man makes money only to dig a grave and bury it, he sins against himself and all whom he might bless by its use. So there are men who seem to have no other end in getting knowledge than to bury it. Such a man is an intellectual miser, and a sinner against human kind. There ought to be a love of giving, as well as a love of getting. For a man who possesses any kind of knowledge can bless others by its use. And this being true of all useful knowledge, how much more true is it of the knowledge which makes “wise unto salvation?” Christ insists that no Christian make himself a grave in which to bury this knowledge, but a medium to communicate it (Matthew 5:16). And the influence of knowledge which has been acquired is not limited to the short life of a man upon the earth. How much are we indebted to the knowledge gained by earnest seekers in every department of knowledge long before we were born. One earnest seeker may gain a knowledge that will be a light to men as long as the world lasts. Especially those who have been earnest seekers after Divine truth leave a legacy of blessing behind them, the influence of which will outlive the world. For all these reasons men ought to love knowledge.
III. The proof of loving knowledge. He will seek instruction. This is the only way to knowledge. If a man loves the object of his pursuit, he will show his love by the use of means.
1. Seeking instruction is a confession of ignorance, and to be convinced that we are ignorant is the first step to becoming wise. Self-conceit is the fatal barrier to a man’s gaining knowledge.
2. It involves self-denying labour. Little that is worth having can be obtained without labour. The gold-digger has to labour long and painfully before he finds the precious nuggets. If men would drink of a springing well of pure water they must dig deep down for it. The student must plod over dry details if he wishes to taste the sweets of learning.
3. It generally involves correction by the instructor. If a man sets out to dig for gold or to dig for water, he will most likely make mistakes while he is a novice. If he is really in earnest about his work he will receive “reproof,” although it will not be altogether palatable. So with the scholar, he must suffer the reproof of the master. Doubtless the main reference here is to that knowledge which regenerates the character; and certainly the man who loves this highest knowledge will confess his ignorance, will not shrink from labouring to attain it, will accept that “reproof” which is an indispensable element in Divine instruction. If the man of God is to be “thoroughly furnished” or “perfected,” he must accept “reproof” and “correction,” as well as instruction (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
IV. The character of the man who does not love reproof. He is “brutish.” The great difference between a man and a brute is that the one can grow intellectually and morally and the other cannot. Many animals possess great sagacity, and to a certain extent that can be developed. They sometimes, too, possess admirable qualities, but they are not capable of soul-enlargement. But man is, and in order to attain it he must submit to the instruction and reproof of those who are wiser than himself. He must stoop before he can rise. If he will not do this, he will never attain to the high destiny for which he was created—ever to be rising higher and higher in the scale of being. His lower nature will rule his spirit, and he will be little better than the beast. He must submit to the correction and instruction of His God if he would not be classed with “the horse and the mule, which have no understanding” (Psalms 32:8-9). The man who will not take reproof will certainly have to submit to it, and this not only from those who are wiser than himself, but from his companions in ignorance, A terrible reproof will be administered by Divine Wisdom to those who refuse reproof (chap. Proverbs 1:24-31). And he will not escape upbraidings from those who are involved in the same sentence. Ungodly men are the first to upbraid their companions in ungodliness when they are all involved in the same penalty.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Here is shewed that adversity is the best university, saith an interpreter. Corrections of instructions are the way of life. Men commonly beat and bruise their links before they light them, to make them burn the brighter. God first humbles whom He means to illuminate; as Gideon took thorns of the wilderness and briars and with them he taught the men of Succoth (Judges 8:16). M. Ascham was a good schoolmaster to Queen Elizabeth, but affliction was a better, as one well observeth. He that hateth reproof, whether it be by the rebukes of men, or the rod of God, is fallen below the stirrup of reason, he is a brute in man’s shape; nothing is more irrational than irreligion.—Trapp.
The most we can attain to in this life is, not to know, but only to have a love of knowledge; we know in part, and a partial knowledge is not to know indeed. If we can love knowledge entirely, that is the entireness of knowledge in this life. Now as knowledge cometh from instruction, so the love of knowledge from the love of instruction. He that is servant to the one, will soon be a master to the other. A loving obedience in receiving doth even command love to keep what is received.… There is the reproof of an enemy and there is the reproof of a friend, the one seeketh reproach, the other amendment, but neither is to be hated, for howsoever reproof be used it is a profitable thing.—Jermin.
Reproof is not pleasant to nature. We may learn its value from its results, but it will never be sweet to our taste. At the best it is a bitter morsel. The difference between a wise man and a fool is not that one likes it and the other loathes it; both dislike it, but the fool casts away the precious because it is unpalatable, and the wise man accepts the unpalatable because it is precious.—Arnot.
The grand secret of life is to hear lessons, and not to teach them.—Haliburton.
It is the property of all true knowledge, especially spiritual, to enlarge the soul by filling it; to enlarge it without swelling it; to make it more capable, and more earnest to know, the more it knows.—Bishop Sprat.
Ignorance is the curse of God,
Knowledge the wing with which we fly to heaven.
Shakespeare.
This is a great text. We may expect great texts where there is a look of commonplace. The thought raises itself two stories at least in the respect of doctrine. He that, instead of fretting at that mysterious Providence of God that we call evil, enters into its deep experiences, and learns to value it as precious to his soul—that man loves light, or gospel “knowledge.” That is the first story. But, now, he who takes a much wider view, and looks at all the gains from evil to the universe—how impossible would be high forms of knowledge, how utterly unconceived by anyone not Infinite, without the foil of either observed or experienced misery—that man acquiesces in all the evils that are seen in the creation, loving discipline because he loves knowledge, and acquiescing even in hell itself, because he suspects its absolute necessity in the providential system. Mourning over our griefs, which seems to be the work often of a refined and delicate nature, is here asserted to be “brutish.” He is but a Hottentot in the ways of the Almighty who does not see that the crushing of his hopes has been one of the tenderest methods of his redemption.—Miller.
He, and he only, that loves the means, loves the end. The means of knowledge are “instruction” in what is right, and “reproof” for what is wrong. He who is an enemy to either of these means is an enemy to the end. A. Fuller.
Is there any man so like a beast as not to love knowledge? Solomon tells us, that those who hate reproof are brutish. Let us, therefore, examine ourselves by this mark.… He is surely not a rational creature who has swallowed poison, and will rather suffer it to take its course than admit the necessary relief of medicine, lest he should be obliged to confess his folly in exposing himself to the need of it.—Lawson.
It was when Asaph recovered from that strange temptation, under the power of which he seemed to forget the eternity of man’s being, and to confine his estimate to the present life, that he exclaimed, “So foolish was I, and ignorant; I was as a beast before Thee” (Psalms 73:22). And the same comparison is repeatedly used respecting the ungodly. They sink themselves even below the level of the brutes, for they fulfil the ends of their being, under the impulse of their respective instincts and appetites; but the man who forgets his immortality and his God, does not fulfil the end of his. There may also be comprehended in the expression, the absence of what every rational creature ought to have—spiritual discernment and taste; the destitution of all right sentiment and feeling in reference to God and Divine things. This is the character of him whom Paul denominates the “natural” or animal “man,” who receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him.—Wardlaw.
The subject of Proverbs 12:2 has been treated in previous Chapter s. See Homiletics on chap. Proverbs 3:4; Proverbs 11:21, etc.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 12:2. Or “hath what he will of God.” Thus it is written of Luther, that by his prayers he could prevail with God at his pleasure. When gifts were offered him, he refused them with this brave speech, “I solemnly protested to God that I would not be put off with these low things.” And on a time praying for the recovery of a godly useful man, among other passages, he let fall this transcendent rapture of a daring faith, “Let my will he done,” and then falls off sweetly; “My will, Lord, because Thy will.” Blessed is he that hath what he will and wills nothing but what he should. If an evil thought haunt his heart, it is the device of the man, he is not the man of such devices.—Trapp.
A man can no way be so happy as by being in God’s favour. If any other thing were better than this, it would here be named; for His purpose is to promise and perform the best. Good men do set their wits to work to find the way whereby they may best please Him, and He doth set His wisdom to work to frame a recompense that may best pleasure them. It is precious—
1. In regard of the rareness of it, it is a flower which groweth only in God’s own garden. It is a privilege and freedom peculiar to the children of God.
2. In regard to the continuance of it, it is not worn out by time, it vanisheth not away, it is never taken from them upon whom it is bestowed.
3. In regard to those good effects wherewith it is always accompanied—defence from enemies, safety from danger, gladness of heart, the love and favour of God it doth minister to everyone that partakes of it.—Dod.
Were the goodness of the godly such as it should be, it would from God’s goodness even deserve praise, not stand in need of remitting favour, it would carry favour with it, it would not be put by seeking to obtain it. But in the best, so little it is, that he must even fetch it out from the Lord with many prayers, earnest suit, and at last it is the great mercy of God that he doth obtain it. But yet, such is the mercy of God toward the good, that however He dealeth with the good man he still obtaineth favour from Him. St. Augustine saith, “Thou receivedst benefit both from His coming and His going; He cometh to the increase of thy comfort, He goeth to the increase of thy care. He goeth away sometimes lest continual presence should make Him despised, and that absence should make Him more desired.—Jermin”
A man of wicked devices may be artful enough to disguise his selfish plans under the mask of religion and benevolence, like the old Pharisees; but the eyes of the Judge of the world are like a flame of fire, they pierce into the secrets of every soul, and there is no dark design harboured which shall not be completely disclosed in the day of Christ.—Lawson.
Let blind reason condemn God. (see on Proverbs 12:1.) He who has gospel light will see Him as one out of whom he can draw favour. A man not only pure himself, but doing good to others, looks upon God as a fountain of blessing.—Miller.