Proverbs 1:22 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Proverbs 1:22

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What does wisdom say? She addresses them honestly but not insultingly, with correction, to bring them to conviction with her opening words: ‘You simple ones’, you easily seduced ones, you naïve ones. She does not dress up what she has to say with flattery but speaks as one who is deeply concerned and yet has real and hard things to say to them. We may be very shrewd in other respects, but viewed spiritually from God’s perspective we are naïve, because we do not understand the most important things of all. These warnings are meant sympathetically. ‘How long will you love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?’ This is one of the great lines of derision found in Scripture. Your life is a mess and yet you get pleasure from going against God, from working up scorn against him, from listening to the tone of your own voice when you deride ‘religion’.

Application

How long will you get all your pleasure in being foolish? We don’t look at it like this. We seem to like being lied to about God, so that we are drawn in by the world and live for the here and now. In ordinary life, are people that gullible? No, but when it comes to spiritual matters, we behave like simpletons. We need to snap out of it; it has gone on too long. If we were waiting for a bus and nothing came after twenty minutes, we would begin to feel foolish, especially if we had not noticed that the buses had been diverted. But the simpleton is like someone who is still waiting there the next day.

Christians also need to think about these warnings. We seek the Lord and find him and rejoice in our salvation. But then we begin to be drawn aside and neglect Scripture and become prayerless. How long will we go on taking the same tumbles?

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Proverbs 1:22 Commentary and Bible Study