Read Exodus 34, Ecclesiastes 10, and Proverbs 8:22-36.
This devotional is about Proverbs 8:22-36.
In our culture, calling someone “old” is usually intended to insult or dismiss them. “Who cares if he tells you to get off his lawn? He’s just a cranky old man,” is one example of what I mean. Youth and beauty are prized in our times so old men and old women are coldly disregarded as being unimportant.
Sadly, this is especially true for women. In our culture, a woman is judged by her appearance more than her character, intellect, personality, accomplishments, or the total of these and other traits. Therefore, the older a woman gets, the more invisible she becomes to some people.
Here in Proverbs 8:22-36, wisdom speaks as if she is a woman. Instead of hiding her age, the key fact that she stresses about herself is that she’s really old. Verse 23as says, “I was formed long ages ago….” She was the first thing God created (v. 22) so she is older than any material thing that exists. With great eloquence, reverence, and no negative judgment at all, Solomon painted a picture of how old wisdom is. Like gravity or the laws of physics or matter, wisdom is a foundational idea, an ancient principle that makes everything else possible. It is true that we humans have only recently discovered things like the laws of physics, but though the ideas are new to us, the principles are ancient because they are foundational.
So it is with wisdom. Except that, too often in our world, wisdom isn’t prized as a great discovery; it is despised as being old and out of date. That’s how our culture treats true wisdom–God’s wisdom–because people in our culture want to lead an immoral life and wisdom directs you to fear God and lead a moral life according to his commands. At the end of our passage today, however, verses 35-36 promise great benefits for wisdom and penalties for folly–wisdom’s opposite.
Wisdom is old but it is far from obsolete; it is crucial! It is foundational to a successful life. Remember that wisdom begins with fearing God, so building your life on a foundation of wisdom starts with welcoming God’s revelation and living obediently to what it says. As sinners we can’t do this naturally but the saving grace of Christ enables us to learn how to obey.
Are you resisting some command of God? Are you questioning some principle of his word or some tenet of the Christian faith? Do you wonder if the Bible isn’t obsolete because it is so old? Wisdom brags about being old because it is a foundational principle to all of life. So seek wisdom in your life by learning God’s word and–most importantly–obeying what you learn in God’s word. Wisdom won’t let you down, so build your life on it. It is a dependable foundation, the only one worth founding your life on.