Read Proverbs 2:10–22
Questions from the Scripture text: What will enter where (Proverbs 2:10a)? What will the soul’s experience be (verse 10b)? What will discretion and understanding do (Proverbs 2:11)? From what will it deliver you (Proverbs 2:12a)? From whom (verse 12b)? What do they speak (verse 12b)? Where do they go (Proverbs 2:13)? In what do they rejoice and delight (Proverbs 2:14)? What are their paths like (Proverbs 2:15)? From whom else does wisdom deliver you (Proverbs 2:16a)? How does she speak (verse 16b)? Whom does she leave (Proverbs 2:17a)? What/Whom does she forget (verse 17b)? Where does here house lead (Proverbs 2:18a)? Where do her paths lead (verse 18b)? How many survive these (Proverbs 2:19a)? How many get back (Proverbs 2:19b)? In which way, therefore, must we walk instead (Proverbs 2:20a)? In what paths (verse 20b)? Who will dwell there (Proverbs 2:21a)? Who will remain where (verse 21b)? But who else will suffer what consequences (Proverbs 2:22)?
How does wisdom save? Proverbs 2:10–22 looks forward to the sermon in the midweek prayer meeting. In these thirteen verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that wisdom brings us into the perfect path and perfect pleasure: God Himself as our purpose and blessedness.
What wisdom is to us (Proverbs 2:10-12a). We have been warned about the enticement of sinners (cf. Proverbs 1:10–19) and apprised of wisdom’s competing offer (cf. Proverbs 1:20–33) and how we should respond to it (cf. Proverbs 2:1–9). Now we learn that wisdom’s offer is not only a competing offer but a counteracting offer. The right path (Proverbs 2:10a, Proverbs 2:20) keeps you from the wrong ones (Proverbs 2:12a, Proverbs 2:15, Proverbs 2:18-19). The right joy (Proverbs 2:10b) displaces the wrong ones (Proverbs 2:14). So, the fear of YHWH directs us, delights us, and defends us. Evil is wrong in and of itself, but all the more so because it diverts us from our Creator, our Redeemer, our Purpose, and our Blessedness. Wisdom, the fear of YHWH, is right and good in and of itself. And all the more so because it diverts us from every evil path and pleasure.
Delivering us from wicked men, generally (Proverbs 2:12-15). The wicked man doesn’t just leave the path of uprightness and walk in the way of darkness (Proverbs 2:13); he even delights in doing so (Proverbs 2:14). Even worse, the person of deviant path and deviant pleasure isn’t content to be alone. He speaks perversely (Proverbs 2:12b) to turn others from the straight path into his crooked one. These are they about whom we have been warned (cf. Proverbs 1:10–19).
Delivering us from the immoral woman, specifically (Proverbs 2:16-19). There is a special class of the immoral person: the immoral (literally strange/foreign) woman (Proverbs 2:16a). She is a stranger to you, because providence has not selected her for you as your wife. She “leaves the companion” of her own youth (Proverbs 2:17a). She is a stranger to God, because her deviant path departs from the covenant of her God (verse 17b): both the covenant of grace (in which we are His) and the covenant of marriage (in which it is He that has joined her to her husband).
But, like the wicked man generally, the “strange woman,” specifically, doesn’t go to death alone. Other victims in her house of death, are get stuck in the gravity well (“down,” Proverbs 2:18a) from which they cannot escape (Proverbs 2:19). There is nothing that promises such emotional or physical pleasure, but delivers such permanent and devastating pain, as “romance” apart from marriage. The strange woman isn’t the only way to Hell, but she is a sure way there. If we are truly to escape that path, we must have purpose and pleasure in God Himself.
To save our life (Proverbs 2:20-22). You can’t walk both paths—the strange woman’s path of death (Proverbs 2:18) and the way and path of life and goodness and righteousness (Proverbs 2:20). “The land” in Proverbs 2:21 is not merely a comparatively small parcel in the ancient near east, but a better and lasting country (cf. Hebrews 11:10, Hebrews 11:13–17). Indeed, the “homeland” of Proverbs 2:21 is not “merely” (!) the new heavens and the new earth, but the Lord Himself (cf. Psalm 90:1, Psalm 91:9; Revelation 21:3)! In that context, the cutting off from this land (Proverbs 2:22) is a cutting off from the blessedness of God; it is that Hell in which His presence and glory would express themselves upon us in fury forever (cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:7–10).
But God summons us by His Word, by His Son, by His Spirit—His wisdom offered to us by the instrument of preaching, by the life and power and virtue of the divine Persons. By bringing us into Himself, and by bringing Himself into us, and His Word into us (cf. John 15:7; 1 John 2:14; 3 John 3), He delivers us from wicked men generally, from the strange one specifically, and from our own guilt and sinfulness. What a gospel! Hallelujah!
How are you making use of God’s Word to actively determine the path of your life? What do you know and feel to be your purpose on day-by-day, hour-by-hour basis? What are your delights in life? What can you hardly wait to enjoy each day? In what do you find deepest contentment and satisfaction? How does your answer bode for whether you are coming into everlasting blessedness or everlasting agony?
Sample prayer: Lord, grant to us that fearing You would control our thoughts, feelings, and choices. Be the delight of our soul. And keep us from paths and pleasures that lead to incomprehensibly long and painful death, we ask through Christ, AMEN!
Suggested songs: ARP128 “How Blessed Are All Who Fear the LORD” or TPH128B “Blest the Man Who Fears Jehovah”
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