if you seek it like silver and search it out like hidden treasure, Sermons
I. CONDITIONS ON MAN'S SIDE. The enumeration is climactic, proceeding from the less strong to the stronger expressions. 1. Receptivity. The open mind and heart, ever ready to "adopt" true sentiments and appropriate them as one's own. The point is not to ask - Who says this? By what channel does it come to me? But - Is it sound? is it true? If so, it is for me, and shall be made my own. Truth is common property. 2. Attention, concentration, assimilation. "Keeping her commands with us." The thorough student finds it necessary to exercise his memory, and to help it by the use of notebooks, where he hides his knowledge. So must we hive and store, arrange and digest, our religious impressions, which otherwise "go in at one ear and out at the other." Short germ sayings may be thus kept in the memory; they will burst into fertility some day. 3. Active application. In figurative language "bending the ear" and "turning the heart" in the desired direction. The mind must not be passive in religion. It is no process of "cramming," but of personal, original, spiritual activity throughout. 4. Passionate craving and prayerfulness. "Calling Sense to one's side, and raising one's voice to Prudence" - to give another rendering to ver. 3. We must invoke the spirit of Wisdom for the needs of daily conduct; thus placing ourselves in living relation with what is our true nature. Fra Angelico prayed before his easel; Cromwell, in his tent on the eve of battle. So must the thinker in his study, the preacher in his pulpit, the merchant at his desk, if he would have the true clearness of vision and the only genuine success. True prayer is always for the universal, not the private, good. 5. Persevering and laborious exertion. illustrated by the miner's toil. The passage (Job 28.), of extraordinary picturesque power and interest, describing the miner's operations, may help us to appreciate the Illustration. The pursuit of what is ideal is still more arduous than that of the material, as silver and gold. It is often said that the perseverance of the unholy worker shames the sloth of the spiritual man. But let us not ignore the other side. The toil in the spiritual region is not obvious to the eye like the other, but is not the less really practised in silence by thousands of faithful souls. We should reflect on the immense travail of soul it has cost to produce the book which stirs us like a new force, though it may appear to flow with consummate ease from the pen. Such are the conditions of "understanding the fear of Jehovah," or, in modern language, of appropriating, making religion our own; "receiving the things of the Spirit of God," in the language of St. Paul (1 Corinthians 2:14). It is the highest human possession, because permanent, inalienable, and preservative amidst life's ills. II. CONDITIONS ON THE SIDE OF GOD. If religion be the union or identification of the soul with God, he must be related to us in such a way as makes this possible. 1. He is wisdom's Source and Giver. He not only contains in himself that knowledge which, reflected in us, becomes prudence, sense, wisdom, piety; he is an active Will and a self-communicating Spirit. The ancients had a glimpse of this when they said that the gods were not of so grudging or envious a nature as not to reveal their good to men. God is self-revealing; "freely gives of his things" to us, that we may know, and in knowing, possess them. 2. His wisdom is saving. "Sound wisdom" (ver. 7) may be better rendered soundness, or salvation, or health, or saving health. It seems to come from a root signifying the essential or actual. Nothing is essential but health for sensuous enjoyment; nothing but health, in the larger sense, for spiritual enjoyment. Let us think of God as himself absolute Health, and thus the Giver of all health and happiness to his creatures. 3. He is Protector of the faithful. The Hebrew imagination, informed by constant scenes of war, delights to represent him as the Buckler or Shield of his servants (Psalm 18:2; Psalm 33:20; Psalm 89:19). Those who "walk in innocence" seem to bear a charmed life. They "fear no evil," for he is with them. The vast sky is their tent roof. They may be slain, but cannot be hurt. To be snatched from this world is to be caught to his arms. 4. He is eternal Justice. Being this in himself, the "way of his saints," which is synonymous with human rectitude, cannot be indifferent to him. Right is the highest idea we can associate with God. It is exempt from the possible suspicion of weakness or misdirection which may cleave to the mere idea of goodness or kindness. It essentially includes might. Thus the soul finds shelter beneath this vast and majestic conception and faith of its God. These, then, are the conditions, Divine and human, of religion. That we may realize it in ourselves, "understand right, justice, and equity" - in a word, "every good way" of life and thought, uniting piety with morality - the conditions must be faithfully fulfilled. Perfect bodily health may not be attainable; some of its conditions lie without the sphere of freedom, and within that of necessary law. Spiritual health is attainable, for it lies within the sphere of freedom. Then God is realized; it is the ether of the soul, and the region of love and light and blessedness. - J.
Seekest her as silver. Even in Job, the oldest book in the world, we read that the bitter in soul dig for death more earnestly than for hid treasures (Job 3:21). There is not another comparison within the whole compass of human actions so vivid as this. I have heard of diggers actually fainting when they have come even upon a single coin. They become positively frantic, digging all night with desperate earnestness, and continue to work till utterly exhausted. There are, at this hour, hundreds of persons thus engaged all over the country. Not a few spend their last farthing in these ruinous efforts. I heard a respectable man in Sidon declare that if he had been one of those fortunate diggers in the garden he would have killed all the rest and fled with the treasure out of the country. These operations are carried on with the utmost secrecy, accompanied with charms and incantations against the jan and other spirits which are said to keep guard over hid treasures. The belief in the existence of these guards, and of their dangerous character, is just as prevalent now as in the time of the Thousand Nights. Intelligent and respectable people have assured me that they have come upon slabs of stone, closing up doors to secret chambers, which no power on earth could remove, because the proper password or charm is lost. Others soberly assert that they have been driven away by terrible men, who threatened them with instant death if they attempted to force the doors. The secret deposits are always found by accident.(W. M. Thomson, D.D.) Weekly Pulpit. Wisdom, or the intellectual adoption of good and pious principles, and the practical application of such principles to the ordering of life and conduct and relations, is personified. The writer has dealt with Wisdom's call to the young, and with her warning to the negligent; now he presents her instructions to those who show a disposition to give heed to her. She addresses those who take a serious view of life. Life is, for every man, full of sublime possibilities. There must be some great life-quest, something that we should live to seek, something that we may hope to win.I. WHAT DOES IT SEEM TO BE? It is called "knowledge," "understanding," "wisdom." The desire to know was never more absorbing. The pursuit of knowledge never seemed more encouraging. Facilities for the search never so abounded. Rewards for those who attain never were so rich. And yet the grave mysteries of life never so thickened and darkened round the human spirit as they do to-day. The pursuit of knowledge can never stop with things, it must concern itself with moral questions. Since the time of Bacon there has grown up an extravagant demand for the sense-verification of everything. Man's supreme question is: "Good, what is it? Where is it? How can it be attained?" Appeal: You would know as books can teach; as science-leaders can teach; as experience can teach. But none of them, nor all together, will ever satisfy you. You must know as God, and God alone, can teach you. II. WHAT DOES IT PROVE TO BE? The knowledge and fear of God. If a man's quest be sincere and thoroughly earnest, it leads to that; it cannot rest short of that. 1. A life-quest may not be carried far enough. It may stop at what only seems to be. 2. A life-quest may be turned aside. "Ye did run well, who did hinder you?" Young souls may be attracted aside by worldly pleasure; driven aside by worldly cares; or cast aside by false teachings. "Then shall ye know, if ye follow on to know the Lord." When you have found what is the chief good for the sons of men, follow it on, through riches, learning, pleasure, still unresting, ever unresting, until the soul is led to the feet of Jesus, and finds in Him the true knowledge and the true fear of God. (Weekly Pulpit.) I. "RECEIVE MY WORDS." Practical instruction begins here. The basis of all religion and morality is the Word of the Lord, taken into the understanding and the heart. The Word of God is a vital seed, but it will not germinate unless it be hidden in a softened, receptive heart. The place and use of providential visitation in the Divine administration of Christ's kingdom is to break up the way of the Word through the incrustations of worldliness and vanity that encase a human heart, and keep the Word lying hard and dry upon the surface. II. "INCLINE THINE EAR." The entrance of the Word has an immediate effect on the attitude of the mind and the source of the life. The incoming of the Word makes the ear incline to wisdom; and the inclining of the ear to wisdom lets in and lays up greater treasures of the Word. Those who hide the Word in their hearts acquire a habitual bent of mind toward things spiritual. The great obstacle to the power and spread of the gospel lies in the averted attitude of human hearts. A man inclines his ear to those sounds which already his heart desires. To turn the ear to the word of wisdom by an exercise of will, is the very way to innoculate the heart with a love to that word passing the love of earthly things. The ear inclined to Divine wisdom will draw the heart; the heart drawn will incline the ear. III. "CRY AFTER KNOWLEDGE." This represents the bent heavenward of the heart at a more advanced stage. The longing for God's salvation, already begotten in the heart, bursts forth now into an irrepressible cry. Men may be offended with the fervour of an earnest soul, God never. Compression will only increase the strength of the emotion struggling within. IV. "SEEK HER AS SILVER." Another and a higher step. The last was the earnest cry; this is the persevering endeavour. Fervent prayer must be tested by persevering pains. "Strive to enter in." The search of wisdom is compared to another search with which we are more familiar. The zeal of mammon's worshippers rebukes the servants of the living God. We are invited to take a leaf from the book of the fortune-seeker. Will not the far-reaching plans, and heroic sacrifices, and long-enduring toil of Californian and Australian gold-diggers rise up and condemn us who have tasted and known the grace of God? Two things are required in our search — the right direction and the sufficient impulse. Those who seek thus shall not seek in vain. None fail who seek according to the prescription of the Word, and after the example of the world. (W. Arnot, D.D.) Solomon, speaking of knowledge and understanding, bids us to "search for her as for hidden treasure." You know jewels do not lie upon the surface of the ground, but they are hid in the receptacles of the earth; you must dig for them before you can enjoy them. Truth is in profundo, and our understandings are dark. He that rides post through a country is never able to make a full description of it; and he that takes but a transitory view of the truths of the gospel will never come to the full knowledge of them. 'Tis meditation makes them appear to our eye in their beauty and lustre.(H. G. Salter.) Some years ago the scientific world was startled by the announcement that far down in the abyss of waters, below the seeming limits of life and light, a new world of animal organisms had existence. Fish and mullusc, sponge and coral were there, though man had vainly imagined no living creature could be found. He had not dredged deep enough. A longer line brought new wonders to light. And so with the Scriptures. They can never be exhausted. It is we who fail to search, and searching, never find.(W. H. Groser.) People SolomonPlaces JerusalemTopics Hid, Hidden, Search, Searchest, Searching, Seek, Seekest, Silver, Stored-up, Treasure, Treasures, WealthOutline 1. wisdom promises godliness to her children10. and safety from evil company 20. and direction in good ways Dictionary of Bible Themes Proverbs 2:45028 knowledge, God source of human Library The Beginning and End of WisdomPROVERBS ii. 2, 3, 5. If thou incline thine ear to wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; yea, if thou criest after wisdom, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. We shall see something curious in the last of these verses, when we compare it with one in the chapter before. The chapter before says, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That if we wish to be wise at all, we must BEGIN by … Charles Kingsley—The Good News of God The Red Lamp. Notes on the Fourth Century Letter xxiv (Circa A. D. 1126) to Oger, Regular Canon Truth Hidden when not Sought After. Sundry Sharp Reproofs Sunday Before Lent The Knowledge of God "But Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness," &C. Proverbs Links Proverbs 2:4 NIVProverbs 2:4 NLT Proverbs 2:4 ESV Proverbs 2:4 NASB Proverbs 2:4 KJV Proverbs 2:4 Bible Apps Proverbs 2:4 Parallel Proverbs 2:4 Biblia Paralela Proverbs 2:4 Chinese Bible Proverbs 2:4 French Bible Proverbs 2:4 German Bible Proverbs 2:4 Commentaries Bible Hub |
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