Proverbs 2:1-22
Moral Benefits of Wisdom
1 My son, if you accept my words
and store up my commands within you,
2 turning your ear to wisdom
and applying your heart to understanding—
3 indeed, if you call out for insight
and cry aloud for understanding,
4 and if you look for it as for silver
and search for it as for hidden treasure,
5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God.
6 For the LORD gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.
7 He holds success in store for the upright,
he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless,
8 for he guards the course of the just
and protects the way of his faithful ones.
9 Then you will understand what is right and just
and fair—every good path.
10 For wisdom will enter your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
11 Discretion will protect you,
and understanding will guard you.
12 Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men,
from men whose words are perverse,
13 who have left the straight paths
to walk in dark ways,
14 who delight in doing wrong
and rejoice in the perverseness of evil,
15 whose paths are crooked
and who are devious in their ways.
16 Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman,
from the wayward woman with her seductive words,
17 who has left the partner of her youth
and ignored the covenant she made before God.[a]
18 Surely her house leads down to death
and her paths to the spirits of the dead.
19 None who go to her return
or attain the paths of life.
20 Thus you will walk in the ways of the good
and keep to the paths of the righteous.
21 For the upright will live in the land,
and the blameless will remain in it;
22 but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the unfaithful will be torn from it.
The first few Proverbs tell us to seek wisdom...The author, King Solomon teaches us to store up commands, facts, and information that lead to God...The author teaches us to turn our ear to wisdom, and to look for understanding...The LORD gives wisdom, because out of His mouth comes understanding...God protects us and the eternal things...He protects justice, and the course of the just and His faithful ones...Wisdom will save us from evil and wicked men...We need to mature and gain wisdom, to understand what is right and just...When wisdom enters the heart, knowledge, especially knowledge of God, will be pleasant to our souls...
We need to seek wisdom, because it is one of the great joys of life and in discovering life...This is important, especially today...More than any time in our universe, we are bombarded with information...We have more data now than we have ever had...We have this data, this information, right at our fingertips...We have data available via the internet from our computers, our phones, and mobile tablet computers...The information is available at anytime for us, and as long as we have a smartphone we can get data and information, and in a sense some knowledge...With Google, Twitter, Facebook, and phone texting we are getting more and more data, information, and knowledge so quickly and easy...Information and data, knowledge, and facts everywhere...Wisdom gives us more of a long term thinking...Information bombardment seems to be more about short term and short period thinking...
We have to ask, is our world better for all the information we are gaining so quickly?...We can gather so many new facts from Google, Twitter, Facebook, and the internet everyday, if that is what we want...Is the world really better from a huge increase in number of facts that man has?...Do facts make us better and/or happier?...Do facts and information fulfill us?...The thing we most desire is that something that is always a little out of our reach...St. Augustine, tells us this is man's restless desire and he is always wanting it...And our heart will not rest until our heart rests within our LORD...Our heart will only be satisfied when it meets the One who created us...
King Solomon wrote many, if not most of the Proverbs...He was a wise man...He teaches us that facts are not enough...We need wisdom...Wisdom is higher than facts...Wisdom leads us to God...Wisdom leads us to facts about God...And God is long term...He is eternal...Wisdom and the understanding of wisdom gives us the insight about the desires we have...Wisdom gives us the knowledge that our desires are always something else and something next...We think then that this something else-something next will make us happy...But the only thing that can fulfill us long term is God...The next thing we get, or the next purchase we make, we think that will make us happy...But that lasts only for a short period, but not long term, and certainly not for an eternity...Only God can satisfy our eternal desire...Wisdom that leads to God, and understands that only He can fulfill this desire we have for this next thing...He is the Next Thing, that we want, and only wisdom that comes from knowledge that leads to Him, can satisfy that desire...Our Holy Spirit sings about this desire in our restless hearts, and longs for Him...