CRITICAL NOTES.—
Proverbs 8:17. Early, i.e., “earnestly” (see on ch. Proverbs 1:28).
Proverbs 8:18. Durable. Zöckler thinks this rather signifies “growing.”
Proverbs 8:21. Inherit substance, “abundance.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Proverbs 8:17-21
THE REWARD OF EARNEST SEEKERS
I. The mutual love which exists between Wisdom and her children. There is always a mutual love between a true teacher and a diligent, receptive pupil, and the love on each side has a reflex influence on both master and pupil, and renders it more pleasant to teach, and more easy to learn. When a child loves his parent, and the parent is teaching the child, love oils the wheels of the intellectual powers, and furnishes a motive power to conquer the lesson. And when the parent feels that he is loved by his child and pupil, the love is a present reward. There is such a love between Christ and His disciples. Peter appealed to Christ’s consciousness of being loved by him when he said, “Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee” (John 21:17). And Christ loves His pupils. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9; John 15:13). This mutual love imparts patience on the one side and perseverance on the other. It was Christ’s “first love to us” that gave Him patience to “endure the cross and despise the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). And it is the responsive love of the disciple that enables Him to endure unto the end. It is the love that is born of the consciousness of being loved that stirs up to the diligent seeking of the latter clause of the verse, which expresses—
II. A certain success to the seekers of wisdom. In Holy Scripture earnest seeking and finding are complements of each other. The one does not exist without the other. Seeking ensures finding. Finding implies seeking. “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not” (James 1:5). God’s promise is absolute. It can only fail on one of three suppositions.
1. That when God made the promise He had no intention of keeping it, or—
2. That unforseen circumstances have since arisen which render Him unable to fulfil His word, or—
3. That the conditions have not been fulfilled on the part of the seeker. We know that God’s holiness and omnipotence render the first two impossible, and therefore, whenever there is no finding, we are certain that there has been no real, earnest seeking. For the promise is limited by the condition, “they that seek me early, or earnestly.” If a traveller has a long journey to perform and many difficulties to overcome in the way, he shows his determination to arrive safely at his destination by setting out at early dawn. Those who are anxious to make a name, or a fortune, show their anxiety by rising early and sitting up late. There are degress of earnestness in seekers after Divine wisdom as in all other seekers. But those whose seeking is the most earnest will receive the most abundant reward. The Syro-Phœnician woman who besought Christ to heal her daughter was a type of earnest seekers. She redoubled her efforts as the apparent difficulties increased. She asked, she sought, she knocked. And she received not only what she sought, but a commendation from the Lord for her earnest seeking (Matthew 25:28).
III. What those find who find God. The reward promised to those who seek God is God Himself. In finding Him they find
(1.) The lasting riches of righteousness (Proverbs 8:18-19). This a wealth which will last. However great the satisfaction, however many the blessings which may flow from the riches of earth, “passing away” is written upon all. Yea, long before the end of life the riches may “make themselves wings” (chap. Proverbs 23:5). Among many other qualities that make moral wealth incomparably superior to material wealth, not the least is its durability. (See on Proverbs 8:11-12; also chap. Proverbs 3:15-16).
2. Guidance, Proverbs 8:20. (See on chap. Proverbs 3:6, etc.)
3. Reality in opposition to shadow, Proverbs 8:21. The hungry man who dreams that he is feasting experiences a kind of pleasure. But the feast is only in vision. There is no power in it to appease his hunger, or nourish his frame. But, if on awaking, he finds a table really spread with food, he then has the substance of that of which in his dream he had only the shadow. Worldly men walk, the Psalmist tells us, in a “vain show,” i.e., in an “image,” an “unreality” (Psalms 39:6). “They walk,” says Spurgeon on this verse, “as if the mocking images were substantial, like travellers in a mirage, soon to be filled with disappointment and despair.” There are many who dream that they are being satisfied while they are morally asleep. But by and by they awake and find that they have been feeding on visions of the night, that they have been spending their money for “that which was not bread, and their labour for that which satisfieth not” (Isaiah 55:2). To all who are conscious of this soul-hunger, eternal wisdom here offers substantial heart satisfaction, “a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
Proverbs 8:17. The philosopher could say, that if moral virtue could be seen with mortal eyes, she would stir up wonderful loves of herself in the hearts of the beholders. How much more, then, would “the wisdom of God in a mystery!” (1 Corinthians 2:7,) that essential wisdom of God especially, the Lord Jesus, who is “altogether lovely,” “the desire of all nations.” “My love was crucified,” said Ignatius, who “loved not His life unto the death” (Revelation 12:11). Neither was there any love lost, or can be, for “I love them that love me.” Men do not always reciprocate, or return love for love. David lost his love upon Absalom; Paul upon the Corinthians; but here is no such danger.—Trapp.
The characters whom Christ loves. Christ loves those who love Him.
(1) Because He has done and suffered so much for their salvation. We naturally prize any object in proportion to the labour and expense which it cost us to obtain it. How highly, then, must Christ prize, how ineffably must He love His people. For this, among other reasons, His love for them must be greater in degree, and of a different kind from that which He entertains for the angels of light.
(2) Because they are united to Him by strong and indissoluble ties. The expressions used to describe this union are the strongest that language can afford. The people of Christ are not only His brethren, His sisters, His bride, but His members, His body, and He consequently loves them as we love our members, as our souls love our bodies.
(3) Because they possess His spirit, and bear His image. Similarity of character tends to produce affection, and hence every being in the universe loves his own image when he discovers it. Especially does Christ love His own image in His creatures, because it essentially consists in holiness, which is of all things most pleasing to His Father and Himself.
(4) Because they rejoice in and return His affection. It is the natural tendency of love to produce and increase love. Even those whom we have long loved become incomparably more dear when they begin to prize our love and to return it. If Christ so loved His people before they existed, and even while they were His enemies, as to lay down His life for their redemption, how inexpressibly dear must they be to Him after they become His friends.—Payson.
Seeking wisdom early implies
(1) that it engages our first concern and endeavour, while matters of an inferior consideration are postponed.
2. The constant use of the proper means to obtain it. If we see one continually practising any art, we judge that it is his intention to be master of it.
3. The using them with spirit and vigour. The superficial and spiritless performance of duty is as faulty as the total omission.—Abernethy.
All fancy that they love God. But those who either do not seek God at all, or seek Him coldly, whilst they eagerly seek the vanities of the world, make it plain that they are led by the love of the world more than by the love of God.—Fausset.
It is His love to us that makes us to love Him; and, doubtless, He that loves us so as to make us to love Him, cannot but love us when we do love Him.—Jermin.
Seek early, as the Israelites went early in the morning to seek for manna (Exodus 16:21), and as students rise early in the morning and sit close to it to get knowledge. To seek the Lord early is to seek the Lord
(1) firstly;
(2) opportunely. There is a season wherein God may be found (Isaiah 55:6), and if you let this season slip, you may seek and miss Him.
(3) Affectionately, earnestly (Isaiah 26:9). That prayer that sets the whole man a-work will work wonders in Heaven, in the heart, and in the earth. Earnest prayer, like Saul’s sword and Jonathan’s bow, never returns empty.—Brooks.
Proverbs 8:18. Spiritual riches are durable.
1. Because they are gotten without wronging any man. Temporal riches are often gotten by fraud and violence, and, therefore, are not lasting. The parties wronged use all means to recover their own, and God punishes unjust persons. Spiritual riches no man can challenge from us.
2. They are everlasting riches, and therefore durable. That must needs last long which lasts ever. These are true, not transitory riches, which often change their masters. They will swim out of the sea of this world with us, out of the shipwreck of death. Neither fire nor sword can take them from us.—Francis Taylor.
In the matters of rank and riches, the two strong cords by which the ambitious are led, the two reciprocally supporting rails on which the train of ambition ever runs,—even in these matters, that seem the peculiar province of an earthly crown, the Prince of Peace comes forth with loud challenge and conspicuous rivalry. Titles of honour! their real glory depends on the height and purity of the fountain whence they flow. They have often been the gift of profligate princes, and the rewards of successful crime. At the best the fountain is low and muddy: the streams, if looked at in the light of day, are tinged and sluggish. Thus saith the Lord, “Honour is with me.” He who saith it is the King of Glory. To be adopted into the family of God,—to be the son or daughter of the Lord Almighty,—this is honour. High born! We are all low-born until we are born again, and then we are the children of a King.—Arnot.
Proverbs 8:20. Christ guides infallibly by—
1. His word. It is all truth.
2. His spirit. Men mistake and think they are guided by God’s spirit when they are guided by their own, or by a worse spirit. But certainly whom Christ’s spirit guides He guides aright.
3. His example. All other men have their failings, and must be followed no further than they follow Christ. He is the original copy; others are but blurred abstracts.—Francis Taylor.
“I lead in the way of righteousness,” which is to say, I got not my wealth by right and wrong, by wrench and wiles. My riches are not the riches of unrighteousness, the “mammon of iniquity” (Luke 16:9); but are honestly come by, and are therefore like to be “durable” (Proverbs 8:18). St. Jerome somewhere saith, that most rich men are either themselves bad men or are heirs of those that have been bad. It is reported of Nevessan, the lawyer, that he should say, “He that will not venture his body shall never be valiant; he that will not venture his soul never rich.” But Wisdom’s walk lies not any such way. God forbid, saith she, that I, or any of mine, should take of Satan, “from a thread even to a shoelatchet, lest he should say, I have made you rich” (Genesis 14:23).—Trapp.
Proverbs 8:21. The great “I AM” (Exodus 3:14) is the only substantial reality to satisfy the disciples of Wisdom.—Fausset.
The followers of Christ shall be no losers by Him. They shall not inherit the wind, nor possess for their portion those unsubstantial things, of which it is said, they are not (chap. Proverbs 23:5), because they are not the true riches. It is not for want of riches to bestow, nor for want of love to His people, that He does not bestow upon every one of them crowns of gold and mines of precious metals.—Lawson.
Here is no yawning vacuum, but a grand object to give interest to life, to fill up every vacancy in the heart—perfect happiness. All that we could add from the world would only make us poorer, by diminishing that enjoyment of God for the loss of which there is no compensation. There is one point—only one—in the universe where we can look up and cry with the saintly Martyn, “With Thee there is no disappointment.”—Bridges.
“I will fill their treasures.” This is a great promise. It is made in a kingly style. There is no limit. It will take much to fill these treasures, for the capacity of the human spirit is very large. God moulded man after His own image, and when the creature is empty, nothing short of His Maker will fill him again. Although a man should gain the whole world, his appetite would not be perceptibly diminished, The void would be as great and the craving as keen as ever. Handfuls are gotten on the ground, but a soulful is not to be had except in Christ. “In Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete (i.e., full) in Him.”—Arnot.