WISDOM AND FOLLY (2)

WISDOM AND FOLLY (2)

The instruction which we get in Proverbs 9 as to the difference between wisdom and folly will help you much in coming to a decision about anything. If you are unskilled in the word of righteousness, you are a babe. As I know Christ, He is the wisdom of God to me, and as the word of God is my only light, I can distinguish both good and evil.

Mark the difference in the way wisdom and folly invite the same people. Folly seeks those who go right on their way. Wisdom offers you bread and wine, to refresh and invigorate you. If you be wise, you shall be wise for yourself; but this always with the strict and unswerving rule, “Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding” (verse 6). You cannot be guided by wisdom and keep up association with the foolish, for light cannot blend with darkness. If your eye be single, your whole body will be full of light. But folly, on the contrary, always offers something to gratify, nothing that marks full age, distinguishing between the good and the evil. It invites too. “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant” (verse 17). It is something you are selfishly to enjoy.

Now the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Having God before you, in the sense of what is due to Him, is the beginning. The knowledge of the holy, the separate path, is the perfect application of wisdom, and therefore “understanding”.