Proverbs 4:4 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

Navigator

Proverbs 4:4

Comments

These first four verses breathe the unchangeable nature of wisdom, and this is very important to us. The truth of God is to be valued. ‘My son, do not be drawn’, says Solomon, ‘into doing something else.’ You are going to inherit this smallholding, this farm. You are going to inherit this trade in the village, and the goodwill that goes with it. Do not be drawn into something else. Do not suddenly say, well I think I will sell up and speculate, or do something different. There was a great deal of speculation in those days. We read from the experts that there was quite a trade in storage and barns, so that if farmers did not have enough accommodation for their bumper crop one year, there would be those people who traded in nothing but storage, and they would buy it off them at fairly low prices, and store it against the lean year, and then they would make their money. Those people were speculators, and sometimes they would do very well, and sometimes they would do disastrously. But there were all kinds of things into which you could be side-tracked. Keep, retain my words, keep my commandments, and live, do not be side-tracked, do not be drawn into anything else.

Application

And that applies to us, and to salvation also. The tendency of the rebellious human heart is to try anything else, but the seeking and finding of the living God. Do we know ourselves, do we understand ourselves? If we grew up in a Christian home, we tend to think, ‘Oh those Christian people, and my parents, that is their way, but I am different, I am more imaginative. I am interested in other things.’ This is what happens with the inner rebellion of every human heart as we grow up. We flatter ourselves, but we do not know ourselves. The truth is that the human heart is naturally fickle, and changeable, it is proud, and it is restless. We have got to understand we are driven by forces much cheaper and smaller than those that we imagine. It is not my great originality that makes me want to explore everywhere, but it is my fickleness and rebellious tendency. It is my pride. A son in the smallholding in ancient times, he did not want to prosper by doing what his father had told him, because his pride said, ‘Why don’t I do something entirely different, and then it will be obvious that I did this, I accomplished this, I achieved this?’ Human pride! All kinds of things drive us away from the salvation of God, and the standards of the word.

Questions

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Proverbs 4:4 Commentary and Bible Study