Proverbs 8:24 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Proverbs 8:24

Comments

These verses are going to be crammed with illustrations to show the wonderful superiority and supremacy of spiritual wisdom. What did the ocean depths, what did the mighty oceans and the deep waters suggest to the minds of the people in those days? Can we know if we mentioned oceans by way of illustration, mighty seas, what would that suggest to their minds? Now we remember that the Israelites of old taught in a very graphic way. Well, the ocean depths, in the way in which the oceans are used by the psalmists, by Solomon elsewhere, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, invariably are used to illustrate imponderable things and mighty power. The heaving oceans, and the effect they have on the shoreline, and what they can do to shipping if their fury is aroused, and who can dive in them particularly in those days. The depths, the deep seas, the deep waters are almost invariably applied in the Scripture to deep and profound truths. God has made so many pictures for us in the physical world we live in. Divine wisdom existed long before the deepest earthly mysteries. So you may be a researcher, you may be into earthly mysteries. You may be a student of deep things, yes, the deepest mysteries in this earth, but wisdom’s own depths remain too deep to sound. Divine wisdom was before the world, and it can explain all things, and that wisdom is inviting us to come to it for instruction. ‘When there were no fountains abounding with water.’ The fountains of water are used in the Scripture to describe the source of life. In that hot part of the world, the fountains were precious; they gave rise to vegetation and could sustain life. But before those resources existed which many depend on and look to for life, there was another resource which brought them all into being, more wonderful than any of them. The meaning is that divine wisdom is ultimately the best source, because it is the oldest source, pre-dating all life, the oldest source of vibrant life.

Application

We can see this from the gospel. The gospel is imponderable. The gospel is immense. That God himself should come, that Christ should atone, that all the sin of God’s people can be cancelled out by the work of God, that the Creator should come and die, that the great Physician should come and suffer. These things, when you pause and you think about them, well, they are really beyond human grasp, but they are expressed in such a way in the gospel that we get a hand hold and some meaningful working understanding of things that are actually beyond us. Wisdom, the wisdom imparted by the Bible, gives us access into the mighty oceans of imponderable knowledge. That is the point, that is the illustration, and it is very rich.

What do you want in life? Do you want understanding, do you want vibrant experience? Well, before these things ever came about on the face of the earth, divine wisdom existed. That is the way to understand deep things, that is the way to have a vibrant experience of life.

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Proverbs 8:24 Commentary and Bible Study