Proverbs 23:22 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Proverbs 23:22

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This next subject Solomon addresses is the loosening of respect for teaching. The strategy of Satan is to cause us to fall by cutting us off from our greatest source of help. The trouble is we are so familiar with the Bible, and so familiar with preaching and teaching, that it breeds, not exactly contempt, but it does make us undervalue the teaching of the word of God and just take it for granted sometimes. We are human and we are foolish.‘Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.’ One’s parents may be old, and they may be failing, and one may have to do a great deal for them in their old age – things they always used to do for themselves, which they taught us to do. And so we may think: Dear old things, they are old and they are feeble, and their faculties and strength is slipping away. So we begin to underestimate them because now in many respects we exceed them and we are superior to them in the things we can accomplish. Be careful – by virtue of their age and experience they have still got pearls of wisdom and insight and instinct that we have not yet developed. Be careful when they get old and doddery, they may still have some counsel that you could not figure out for yourself. So we are really talking about the influence of the word of God ultimately, which may first comes to us through godly parents. Verse 23 has a sort of dynamite in it. Have you ever seen words like this? ‘Buy the truth, and sell it not.’ ‘Buy the truth.’ We are not accustomed to using words like that. Truth is so important that whatever it costs you, you should go after it. Actually, the picture behind it is that of getting a property or a plot for your freeholding, small holding, for which you have the deed. That is the picture behind the proverb. Do not go and buy something where there are no documents. Someone buys a second hand car and they do not see the documents, and they find later it is stolen. Do not buy a property and spend a lot of money in olden times and find it did not belong to the person who sold it to you. ‘Buy the truth,’ says Solomon. Make sure you have got the deeds, the real thing. And having got them, do not part with them.

Application

Do not look at your watch and say, I am tired this evening, I have got things to do and responsibilities, I am late, I shall skip Bible study. It is going to be too big an effort. ‘Buy the truth.’ Be ready to expend substance, travel, distance, time, energy. You and I need it, dear friends. Do not say to me, ‘It is alright for you, pastor.’ It takes me five or six times longer to prepare it than it does for you to listen to it. We all need the same truth.

‘Buy the truth, and sell it not.’ Do not do anything which would mean you easily part with the truth. Be careful where you pitch camp. If you have to have a new job and move away and you are too far from a church, you may say to yourself, ‘We have found the ideal place to live.’ But it is not the ideal place to live because you are going to be selling the truth. You can only get to church now once a week instead of regularly. And you need that truth.

I knew a young man who showed every possible kind of promise and he did much for the Lord. But then he got it into his head that he wanted yet another post-graduate degree so that he could soar really high and get far on in public life and so on. So he laid down all his duties and he pursued this. And he stopped listening to the word of God. He fell; he slipped away; he lost his firm convictions and hold. Now he is still worships, but he is in the most wishy-washy of places, achieving nothing, accomplishing nothing. He has been washed away. ‘Buy the truth, and sell it not.’

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Proverbs 23:22 Commentary and Bible Study