MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Proverbs 2:1-5
HUMAN UNDERSTANDING AND DIVINE KNOWLEDGE
I. Divine knowledge is within the reach of the human understanding. When a physician has created an appetite in his patient, he sees that he is provided with food that will satisfy his hunger. As God has given the eye, so He has given light to meet its needs. God has created man with a need, and with capabilities of knowing Him, and has therefore placed such knowledge within his reach. “The Word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart, etc.” (Romans 10:8).
II. The conditions of its attainment.
1. Attention. In all departments of knowledge we must begin by doing the easiest thing. The first thing we have to do is to listen to what the teacher has to say. Everybody can do that. This is the first thing to be done in order to attain a knowledge of God. We can listen to His message. We can “receive” His words, “incline our ear.” “Faith cometh by hearing.”
2. Retention. The simple attention of the soul is not the reclaiming power. The hearing will not bless us if we do not hold the truth in our memory. “And some seed fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up” (Matthew 13:4). But the ploughed earth receives the seed, and holds it, and hides it, and by retention comes seed to the sower and bread to the eater. We must not only “receive” but “hide” the words of God.
3. Reflection. This prevents forgetfulness; this is indispensable to retention. The rules of grammar, or of arithmetic, must not only be received into the memory, but meditated upon. We must “apply” our minds to them in order to understand them. The soul which receives and holds Divine truth must apply itself to the understanding of it.
4. Supplication. If the learner has not only the book, but the author of the book at hand, he can turn to him and ask him to unfold the meaning of the difficult passages, or to show him how to apply the rules. We have not only the Divine Word of God, but we have the Divine Spirit; not only the Book of Wisdom, but the Author of the Book, the source of wisdom. And He has promised to give wisdom for the asking. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him (James 1:5). There must be an asking in order to receive. “If thou criest after knowledge, etc.”
5. Perseverance. Those who find a few diamonds upon the surface of the ground do not then bring their labours to a conclusion. They dig down beneath, and toil on for months and years if the mine yields. They do not cease while they think there is more to be gained. The Divine wisdom is a mine which yields a little on the surface, but we must not stop there: we must dig down deep, we must continue to hear, to remember, to meditate, to cry for enlightenment,—we must ask, and seek, and knock, and never cease to “search” for the hidden and exhaustless treasures of wisdom.
III. The certainty of success if the conditions are fulfilled. Then shalt thou understand, etc. The mariner puts out to sea, and fulfils all the conditions known to him for reaching the country to which he is bound, but he may find a grave midway between his starting-point and his goal. The husbandman sows the seed, and fulfils all the conditions upon which a good harvest depends. But his crop may fail notwithstanding: he may not reap the golden grain. But no such disappointment ever befals the earnest seeker after the knowledge of God.
ILLLUSTRATION OF Proverbs 2:4
“There are frequent allusions to hid treasure in the Bible. Even in Job we read that the bitter in soul dig for death more earnestly than for hid treasure. There is not another comparison within the whole compass of human action so vivid as this. I have heard of diggers actually fainting when they have come even upon a single coin. They become positively frantic, dig all night with a desperate earnestness, and continue to work until utterly exhausted. There are, at this hour, hundreds of persons engaged in it all over the country. Not a few spend their last farthing upon these ruinous efforts.… It is not difficult to account for this hid treasure. The country has always been subject to revolutions, invasions, and calamities of different kinds.… Warriors and conquerors from every part of the world sweep over the land, carrying everything away that falls into their hand. Then, again, this country has ever been subject to earthquakes, which bury everything beneath her ruined cities.”—Thomson’s “Land and the Book.”
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 2:1-2. The sinner is here told how he may become serious. In any conceivable path if thou wilt do that lowest conceivable thing—just listen; and, that thy listening may not be a mere passing flash, if thou wilt pause upon it, and attend. If a man just takes a chair and thinks for a moment of death and judgment and eternity, his heart begins to feel, and it will go on feeling to any length. It requires the Spirit, no doubt; but what is the Spirit but the Spirit of the God of Nature? He will come in the track of thought just as surely as a star is dragged after Him in the track of gravitation.—Miller.
The word of God is a vital seed, but it will not germinate unless it be hidden in a softened, receptive heart. It is here that Providence so often strikes in with effect as an instrument in the work of the Spirit. The place and use of providential visitations in the Divine administration of Christ’s kingdom is to break up the way of the word through the incrustations of worldliness and vanity that encase a human heart, and keep the word lying hard and dry upon the surface.—Arnot.
Angels, who are so much our superiors, apply themselves to the learning of it: they are already supplied with the stores of truth, and yet they desire to pry deeper into the mystery of it. Surely, then, the wisest of us ought to apply our whole hearts.—Lawson.
There are some who do hear, or rather, seem to hear. They profess to be all attention; but it is mere pretence—the mere result of politeness and courtesy to the speaker. This is worse than not hearing at all, inasmuch as it is the reality of neglect, with the guilt of hypocrisy added to it.—Wardlaw.
Proverbs 2:2. Lie low at God’s feet and say,—“Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” His saints “sit down at His feet, every one to receive His word.”—Trapp.
Even as worldlings, when they hear of some good bargain, hearken very diligently; or as they who think that one speaketh of them put their ears near to him that speaketh.—Muffet.
Proverbs 2:3. Earthly wisdom is gained by study; heavenly wisdom by prayer. Study may form a biblical scholar; prayer puts the heart under a heavenly pupilage, and therefore forms the wise and spiritual Christian. But prayer must not stand in the stead of diligence. Let it rather give life and energy to it.—Bridges.
Knowledge is God’s gift, and must be sought at His hand, since He is the “Father of Lights,” and sells us “eye-salve” (Revelation 3:17).—Trapp.
It is not any longer a Nicodemus inclined towards Jesus, he cannot tell how, and silently stealing into His presence under cloud of night; it is the jailer of Philippi springing in and crying with a loud voice: “What must I do to be saved?”—Arnot.
Proverbs 2:4. The same image occurs in John 5:39: “Search the Scriptures.” Not merely scrape the surface and get a few superficial scraps of knowledge, but dig deep, and far, and wide. The “treasures” are “hidden” by God, not in order to keep them back from us, but to stimulate our faith and patient perseverance in seeking for them.—Fausset.
Men never prayed that way and were not answered. Men seek money—
(1) always;
(2) as a matter of course;
(3) against all discomfitures;
(4) under all uncertainties.—Miller.
Will not the far-reaching plans, and heroic sacrifices, and long-enduring toil of Californian and Australian golddiggers rise up and condemn us who have tasted and known the grace of God? Their zeal is the standard by which the Lord stimulates us now, and will measure us yet. Two things are required in our search—the right direction and the sufficient impulse. The Scriptures point out the right way, the avarice of mankind marks the quantum of forcefulness, wherewith the seeker must press on.—Arnot.
This intimates
(1) a loss or want of something. Else men seek not for it.
(2) A knowledge of this want or loss. Else men sit still.
(3) Some goodness indeed, or, in our own opinion, of the thing sought. Men are, or should be, content to lose what is evil.
(4) Some benefit to ourselves in it. Else few will seek it, though good in itself.
(5) An earnest desire to find it. Else men have no heart to seek it.
(6) A constant inquiry after it, wheresoever there is any hope to find it. Else we seek in vain. So in seeking wisdom—we must want it, and know that we want it, and see good in it, and that to ourselves, and seek it earnestly and constantly, if we would find it.—Francis Taylor.
Proverbs 2:5. That which impels men to the pursuit is also the prize which rewards them. If any distinction between God (Elohim, see “Critical Notes”) and the Lord (Jehovah) can be pressed here, it is that in the former the glory, in the latter the personality of the Divine nature is prominent.—Plumptre.
He understandeth the fear of the Lord, whose understanding feareth the Lord. The knowledge of God is found in all His creatures, but he findeth the knowledge of God who, being lost in his sins, is found by God in the acknowledgment of them … And as fear advanceth to the knowledge of God, so the knowledge of God bringeth us to the fear of Him.—Jermin.
This knowledge of God is the first lesson of heavenly wisdom. On the right apprehension of this lesson all the rest necessarily depends. Wrong views of God will vitiate every other department of your knowledge. Without right views of God you can have no right views of His law. Without right views of His law you can have no right views of sin, either in its guilt or in its amount. Without right views of sin you can have no right views of your own condition, and character, and prospects as sinners. Without right views of these you can have no right views of your need of a Saviour, or of the person, and righteousness, and atonement of that Saviour. Without right views of these you can have no right views of your obligations to Divine grace, etc.… The fear of the Lord, founded on the knowledge of Him, is something to the right understanding of which experience is indispensable. To a man who had never tasted anything sweet, you would attempt in vain to convey, by description, a right conception of the sensation of sweetness. And what is true of the sensations is true also of the emotions. To a creature that had never felt fear you would hardly convey, by description, an idea of its nature; and equally in vain would it be to make love intelligible to one that had never experienced that affection. It is thus to a depraved creature with regard to holy and spiritual affections. “The fear of the Lord”—a fear springing from love and proportioned to it—such a creature cannot understand but by being brought to experience it.—Wardlaw.
The knowledge of God regulates the fear and prevents it from sinking into terror, or degenerating into superstition, but guides it to express its power in checking and subduing every corrupt affection and animating the soul to every instance of obedience.—Lawson.