THE eighth chapter of Proverbs gives us His person, the ninth His work, the eighth what He is, the ninth what He has done. You may ask, “Who do you mean?” I ask you in return, Who do you think I mean? of whom could the words be written, or spoken, that we find in Proverbs 8 save of One, who though He was rich yet for your sakes became poor, Him of whom the apostle also says, “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ”? Yes, my reader, it is Jesus, Jesus! We get the person of the Lord.
Jesus first then, in these chapters, His beauty; He speaks in a way that ravishes the heart that knows who, and what He is, and then when He has unfolded to us what He is, He tells us what He has done, and that is the Gospel.
If I bring you God’s Gospel, I bring you a person and a work, a person for the heart, and a work for the conscience. We have both a heart and a conscience, and, God be thanked, He has given us what meets the needs of both.
There is nothing in the world that fills or satisfies the heart, but when Christ is known you have everything, and will set your Amen to this 11th verse “Wisdom is better than rubies, and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.” Christian, what do you say, will you not put your Amen to that?
“All things that may be desired,” not attained even, but desired. Let your heart go out east, west, north, south, in all its vastness of desire. All you can desire is not to be compared with what I have! “And what have you?” do you ask. I have Christ, and I wish you had, for “Incomparable” is the word when we speak of Him!
There are two words that mark the world and the worldling, one we have in the end of the eighth chapter, and the other in the end of the ninth. The one is death, the other is hell. That is the end of the world and the worldling. Do you love the world? You will get death. Are you going to be the world’s guest? (the foolish woman is the world). Her guests are in the depths of hell!
I find two spread a feast, two have guests, and you are invited to both feasts; I can only say the one who accepts the invitation of the foolish woman is, like her, a fool. “Her guests are in the depths of hell.” There is the end of the world! What a solemn thing then is it to be of the world! Would you not rather belong to the Lord Jesus? Would you not rather accept His invitation? Listen to His words again. His voice is heard. It is the voice of the risen Son of God that speaks; wisdom enthroned at God’s right hand. “Unto you, oh men I call; and my voice is to the sons of man.” It is the voice of Jesus calling you. The Gospel comes to you, not from the feeble lips or pen of an evangelist, but as the voice of the living Lord Jesus at the right hand of God, speaking straight down from heaven to you.
“Oh! ye simple, understand wisdom.” A simple person is unconscious of the state he is in, but the Lord knows your state. Does anyone know it like Jesus? None! You have never been awakened to it, you have never trembled at judgment to come, never recoiled from the depths of an eternal hell, but God knows your state, God. knows your sin, God knows your danger. From the very heights of glory there comes down, the message again to you, “Oh! ye simple, understand wisdom.” “Do not slight me,” He says. “Do understand.”
What does He want? Your blessing! He wants you, not yours, but you. And why does He want you? Because of His love!
What is the prize the Saviour takes back to the glory with Him? A poor guilty sinner, whom He has snatched from the jaws of hell.
Grace brought Him down, and when He goes back, what is His prize? A sinner! Where is the illustration, you ask? Look at the thief on the cross.
Christ came to refute the devil’s lie, that God did not love us. “I will go down myself,” He says. Does that look as if He had no interest in us? He came down and became a man, and died that He might take such as you and I to be in the same place as Himself.
Do you believe it? If you do, you will bow down at His feet in adoring wonder, and say, “What love! and how I have slighted it!”
“Hear, for I will speak.” He loves to gain the sinner’s ear, because if He can get your ear He will get your heart next and your conscience.
Will you not listen to His voice? Hearken to what He has to give. “Riches and honor are with me, yea durable riches and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, yea than fine gold; and my revenue than choice silver.”
The Lord knows His own worth, knows naught but Himself can meet your case. He knows what will be the effect if you get Him.
“Riches and honor” are with Him. What honor will it be to make your bed in hell?
Where will your riches be then?
When death comes, what power can help? what strength stay? You are dragged with resistless force from this scene, friends cannot help you, physicians cannot keep you back from the cold grasp of death, and after death the judgment. You have been the world’s guest, and you go to the place of the world’s guests. “Her guests are in the depths of hell.” Who would be the world’s guest?
“Durable riches” are with Christ. Durable, i.e. they cannot fade away. You have struggle to fill your treasures and have never made it out. “I will fill their treasures,” He says, i.e. there shall be no room even for more. Oh! who would not have to do with Jesus?
Then He unfolds what He is. Of old He was the delight of God, and would not you like to have fellowship with God? What is that, do you ask? Why, to think with God about Christ. God’s great thought is not merely to meet you in your need, but He brings you into the circle of His own joys, of His own delights.
What a blessed thing to be brought into the circle of the joys of the Father’s house, to have fellowship with God about His Son!
“My delights were with the sons of men.”
Not merely was He sent by the Father, but from all eternity He had His eye upon us and His heart toward us, and therefore He comes into this scene in lowliness and grace and becomes a man. You would have thought if there were anything He would shrink from becoming, it would have been a man, for no creature has ever so dishonored God as man from the very beginning, commencing with the sin of Adam, and ending with the coldblooded murder of the Lord Jesus Christ. Man would not plume himself as he does if he remembered his history, the progeny of an outcast thief. The first man was a thief, and. the next man was a murderer! None has so dishonored. God. as man, and yet, marvel of marvels, the Lord Jesus becomes a man and was on this earth, that He might manifest what God is to man, and that He might manifest too, what man in dependence in God is.
“Hearken unto me, oh ye children... hear instruction and be wise.” Mark the graciousness of the call. If you have gone on without Jesus till now, an unsaved sinner, “hear instruction and be wise;” do not be a fool a moment longer. Practically an unsaved soul is a fool! A sinner on his road to hell, a moment more and he may drop into it, and God offering him salvation and he refusing it.
Is not that the height of folly?
Do you say, “I hope to have long life”?
Yes, but will you get it? You may not live through this night. This very night you may pass into God’s presence with all your sins on your head, and with this added one, that the very last words on which your eyes rested, were words of entreaty to you to listen to His voice, and you refused the entreaty. You did not care to know Christ, you did not want His word. Oh! man, oh! woman, how terrible! In eternity, and no Christ, no Saviour!
“Whoso findeth me, findeth life, and shall obtain favor of the Lord.” It is a great thing when a man finds life. The world’s guests meet with death and damnation hereafter, but wisdom’s guests find life and God’s favor. God can say to the sinner who trusts Jesus, “Blessed, happy soul, you stand in the favor of God.” Let Satan charge you as he will, “Stop,” says God, “he trusts my Son.”
“But he has been such a guilty man.”
“My Son died for him, his guilt is gone.” The moment you trust in Jesus, God takes your side: your eye is turned from yourself to Christ, you find Jesus, and finding Him, have found Life. How beautiful to be able to say like Andrew, “We have found the Messias.”
The perishing sinner says, “I have found a Saviour,” and the Saviour says, “Rejoice with me for I have found my sheep which was lost.”
Heaven thrills with melody at the sight of Jesus and the sinner meeting.
It is finding Jesus, that is life, not “finding peace,” because the devil is as good a manufacturer of peace as possible, but he never helped any one yet to Christ. He will help people to peace through their feelings, or through their works, but never will he help them to find Christ, and you must have Christ, and life, or you must exist in the lake of fire as long as God lasts! This is God’s truth, and yet you do not care about your soul! Oh, be wise, be wise!
“What has He done for me?” do you ask.
“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” What are seven pillars? Seven is spiritual completeness. It is a finished work; the house is built. Christ prepares the place for us by stepping from earth to heaven, and now, all is ready. He has spread a feast, a feast suited to God, worthy of God, and now the word has gone out “all things are ready.” All God’s requirements are answered by the Lord Jesus Christ, the blood of atonement has been poured forth, the blood is on the mercy seat now, all is done, and God says, “Come and sit down by my Son, and feast on all that he has prepared.” God has sent out the glorious news that not only the House is ready, but He who bids you welcome has taken His seat there. Out go the messengers now and carry the invitation. Sinner, God wants you; anxious soul, God wants you; guilty deified one, God wants you; troubled heart, God wants you; “turn in hither,” turn in where Christ is. Oh, wanderer from the Father’s house, wanderer from God, wherever thou art, or whatever thou hast done, hear His word— “turn in hither.” It is not go and do something, it is “come eat of my bread.” God’s living bread is Jesus who died and rose again, who suffered to bring us to God.
Oh, starving soul, will you not eat? Oh, guilty wandering one, will you not pass within the portals of that seven-pillared house. There is none to keep you back, no repellant voice to daunt you, no Cerberus to guard the way. The only word is Come! come! come! Come in your need, come in your guilt, come as you are.
Why do you delay? “I will think about it,” you say. Yes, and drop into hell while you are thinking about it. “But give me time,” Time for what? Time to be damned? You want time to put it off. But you must either accept the invitation, or refuse it ere you lay down this paper: which shall it be? Christ accepted and Christ confessed; or, Christ rejected and damnation your portion? “Drink of the wine which I have mingled” He says. There was sorrow for Jesus that there might be joy for you; there was death for Jesus that there might be life for you; there was vinegar and gall for Jesus that there might be wine for you, “Come, drink of the wine that I have mingled.” The wine of the joy of the heart of God is mixed, the joy of His heart in having a sinner brought home to Himself.
Christ drained the last dark drop of the cup of judgment, and He has passed on to us the cup of salvation filled to the brim, and all we have to do is to drink it. Let Him have the joy of saving your soul just now. Your joy, if you and He were to meet at this moment, would not be a thousandth part as great as His joy, however great yours might be.
If you refuse Jesus, refuse to be wisdom’s guest, you must be the guest of the world.
The foolish woman has a house, she sends out her invitation, she can make a noise too, and she has things to attract. “She sitteth at the door of her house.” And a large house it is too, there is plenty of room in it, and she calls passengers. Listen to her invitation, note the mockery of the language, it is so like the gospel— “Whoso is simple let him turn in hither.” “Do not good people go here or there?” “Do not Christians go into this and that?” “There is no harm in it, of course it may not be quite right, but there is not so much harm.” “Stolen waters are sweet.”
Yes, sin is the sweetest thing under the sun, you must go above the sun to get what is sweeter Christ, Sin is doing what you like, and do not you do what you like? Sin is an awful thing, and sin God will judge in those who reject Christ; but men roll it as a sweet morsel under their tongues; scripture speaks of “the pleasures of sin.”
“Stolen waters.” The world has no wine to give, no real joy, yet the world has its charms and allurements and you choose these. “There is plenty of time” you say. Yes, Satan always promises plenty of time. “You do not need to be in such a hurry about this matter” he says to you, and you believe him, and drop into the depths of hell as the result. Oh, do not be the world’s guest, the world that murdered Jesus, do not listen to the devil’s gospel. Thousands of souls believe the devil’s gospel, “It is all quite true, but there’s time enough yet,” they believe this, they enter the world’s house, they become the world’s guests, and mark the terrible result, summed up in a few words by the divine pen “her guests are in the depths of hell.”
Make your choice, dear reader, this day. Shall it be the world? Or, shall it be Christ? Oh, be wise in time, let Jesus hear you reply at this very moment from the depths of your heart—
“My heart is fixed eternal God,
Fixed on Thee;
And my immortal choice is made
Christ for me.”
W. T. P. W.