But it was at the end of his life that he became “gentle,” riding on a donkey rather than a warhorse (Matthew 21:5). He was like a lamb being led to the slaughter, yet he did not even open his mouth (Isaiah 53:7). He was stripped of everything; they cast lots for his garment. But because of his perfect, saving meekness, if we believe in him, we will inherit a new heaven and new earth (Romans 8:18–21).
Where have you seen an example of the quiet, kind, and meek person inheriting honor and power?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, you taught us that the way up is down, that the way to be rich is to give away. That seems stupid to the world, but I constantly see that it is the meek who in the end have the most power and influence. In my daily life I tend to grab for power rather than serving. Help me be meek, as you were. Amen.
December 30
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. (Matthew 5:6)
RIGHTEOUSNESS. Proverbs calls the wise to seek righteousness, of course. But no one knows how bad they are until they try very, very hard to be good. Anyone who thinks of themselves as righteous in themselves not only is deluded but also has no idea what it really is. But the call to thirst after righteousness remains. Is it hopeless? Not at all. Paul says we can be filled with a righteousness from God that comes, perfect but unmerited, through faith (Romans 3:21–22; Philippians 3:9).
And how can we be filled? It is only because on the cross Jesus said, “I am thirsty” (John 19:28). Jesus was treated as the unrighteous deserve so we can get the treatment that only the righteous deserve (2 Corinthians 5:21). When I realize that through Jesus I’m already accepted, that changes my motivation for righteous living. Now I don’t obey God merely because I have to, in order to get things from him. I obey also because I want to, to please, know, and resemble the one who gave me a free salvation.
Have you moved from obeying God solely out of duty toward obeying him out of desire and love?
Prayer: Lord, once I tried to serve you only out of duty. Later I lived to serve myself. Both were paths filled with thorns. Only now, in small ways, am I experiencing the unique motivation of serving you out of love and gratitude for a free salvation. It is an energy that does not exhaust me. Grow it in my heart! Amen.
December 31
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matthew 5:7–9)
EVERYTHING YOU NEED. Proverbs tells us to be merciful to our enemies (25:21). We can’t forgive someone if we feel superior to them, if we think we have no sin. But in the gospel our hearts are humbled out of our pride. Why will we be shown mercy from God? Only because Jesus in his death got none: not from Pilate, not from the crowd, not even from his Father. When we see that, we can be merciful to others.
Why will we someday be able to see God? Because he was perfectly pure in heart, without sin (Hebrews 4:15). We will someday see God face-to-face because on the cross Jesus lost the face of his Father. Why will we have peace? Only because the whole world, including his Father, warred against Jesus Christ, attacking him. There is no peace for the wicked (Isaiah 48:22), and on the cross Jesus got what we deserved so we could have the eternal peace that he earned for us. And that, of course, equips us to be peacemakers.
In Jesus we receive everything we need to live in wisdom. Do you know him? Do you desire to be wise?
Prayer: Lord, I have learned that wisdom is only a by-product of wanting something more than wisdom—to see God! Aim at knowing you, and you get wisdom thrown in. Aim just at wisdom—in order to be successful—and you get neither. At last I see it. It took me long enough. I praise you for your patience with me. Amen.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As usual we have many people to thank. First and foremost, we thank our patient editor at Viking, Brian Tart. After having completed a yearlong devotional on the Psalms, we thought that doing the same kind of book on Proverbs would take exactly the same amount of time and effort. It did not. Each proverb had to be analyzed, then categorized, then meditated on, and finally selected and arranged in a good order for reading and learning. When we finally faced the inescapable fact of how much time and energy it required, Brian rearranged schedules and made it work. Thanks for being long-suffering, Brian. (There’s a proverb about that.)
As always, many friends upheld us in the most practical ways as we wrote this devotional book. Again we worked while being hosted at The Fisherbeck by Ray and Gill Lane in Ambleside, Cumbria, UK. This time Jane and Brian McGreevy went above and beyond the call of duty to help us with our South Carolina writing and travel. And we spent two great weeks working on the manuscript at Janice Worth’s home in Florida. Thanks also to Lynn Land, Liz Santiago, Graham and Laurie Howell, and all the others who supported us in ways large and small.
Tim first learned to understand Proverbs through a little commentary by Derek Kidner, and his continued indebtedness to that volume is evident in the endnotes. Perhaps the two best and most substantial commentaries on Proverbs today are those by Tremper Longman and Bruce Waltke, great biblical scholars with whom Tim had the honor of serving on the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary in the 1980s.
Finally, we want to thank our agent, David McCormick, who has now given us his wise and encouraging counsel for nearly a decade. Thanks for everything, David.
NOTES
1. Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “The Book of Proverbs,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 5 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1997), p. 27.
2. Derek Kidner, The Proverbs: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1972), p. 176.
3. Bruce Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), p. 117.
4. Ibid.
5. Bruce Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 15–31, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 532.
6. “There are details of character small enough to escape the mesh of the law . . . and [be] yet decisive in personal dealings.” Kidner, Proverbs, p. 13.
7. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. 2, Within a Budding Grove. C. K. S. Moncreiff and T. Kilmartin, trans. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1922), p. 513. Quoted in Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass.: Basic Books, 2006), p. 152.
8. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 37.
9. Ibid., p. 310.
10. See Kidner’s study of “The Scoffer,” in Proverbs at pp. 41–42, and Waltke’s study of “The Mocker,” in Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, p. 114.
11. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Collier Books, 1955), p. 81.
12. See Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, p. 528.
13. Winifred Gallagher, “How We Become What We Are,” The Atlantic, September 1994, available at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/09/how-we-become-what-we-are/303534/.
14. These could be summarized as the options of (a) retreat, (b) attack, or (c) win through diplomacy. Kagan’s argument is that each of us is born with a temperament that makes one of these instinctive and, therefore, we are prone to use it in situations where it is not practical and can even be destructive.
15. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 39.
16. J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), pp. 6–7.
17. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 60.
18. Ibid.
19. Albert Camus, “The Wind at Djemila,” in Albert Camus, ed. Harold Bloom, Bloom’s BioCritiques (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003), p. 59.
20. The first clause is Bruce Waltke’s translation. See Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, p. 467.
21. W. McKane, quoted in ibid., p. 114.
22. Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, p. 97.
23. Van Leeu
wen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 38.
24. This is my own free translation of this verse.
25. John Newton, The Works of the Rev. John Newton, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1985), p. 585.
26. Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 40.
27. Proverbs 3:10 observes that, in general, a generous spirit tends to lead to more prosperity. Some people see this as an absolute promise that the more you give away your money, the more money you will make. But that is to misunderstand the character of a proverb, which is an observation of how life generally goes in the world. Derek Kidner writes, “If it [verse 10] were more than a generalization (as Job’s comforters held), God would not be so much honored, but invested in, by our gifts.” But, as we will see tomorrow, adversity can bring “better prizes than prosperity.” Kidner, Proverbs, p. 64.
28. Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 50.
29. For an extended case for interpreting these verses in this way, see Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, pp. 266–67.
30. John T. McNeill, ed., Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics, vol. 22 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), p. 696.
31. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 77.
32. Quoted in Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, p. 401.
33. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 77.
34. Ibid.
35. This is why it could be said that any thriving civil order (verse 16) or economy (verse 18) deploys at least some of the elements of wisdom. It is “indispensable . . . for civil or social order.” Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 91.
36. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954; repr., New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), p. 468.
37. Thomas Cranmer, “Collect for the Fifth Sunday After Trinity” in Paul F. M. Zahl and C. Frederick Barbee, The Collects of Thomas Cranmer (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006), p. 78.
38. See Jonathan Edwards, “Beauty of the World” and “Images of Divine Things,” in A Jonathan Edwards Reader, ed. John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 14–21. Edwards’s theory of beauty is that beauty consists mainly in seeing relationships between things. This, he believed, was based on creation being done not by a unipersonal divine being but by a triune God who consists of intimate relationships. It is because there was more than one divine person involved in creation—in relationship as creation occurred—that we long for and delight in relationships. See also Belden C. Lane, “Jonathan Edwards on Beauty, Desire, and the Sensory World,” Theological Studies 65 (2004): 44–72.
39. Oliver O’Donovan writes: “Wisdom is the intellectual apprehension of the order of things which discloses how each being stands in relation to each other. . . . ‘Delight’ is the affective attention to something simply for what it is and for the fact that it is.” Quoted in Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 99.
40. Ibid., p. 104.
41. Isaac Watts, “The Hill of Zion” (hymn), 1707.
42. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 83.
43. Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 104.
44. Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011).
45. See Derek Kidner, “Subject Study: Life and Death,” in Proverbs, pp. 53–56.
46. John Murray points out, “The fear of God which is the soul of godliness does not consist . . . in the dread which is produced by the apprehension of God’s wrath. . . . The dread of judgment will never of itself generate within us the love of God or hatred of the sin. . . . Even the infliction of wrath will . . . [only] incite to greater love of sin and enmity against God. Punishment has of itself no regenerating or converting power. The fear of God in which godliness consists is the fear that constrains adoration and love. It is the fear which consists in awe, reverence, honor, and worship.” J. Murray, Principles of Conduct (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1957), pp. 236–37.
47. The quote is from John Calvin, who in Institutes 1.2.2. writes: “This mind restrains itself from sinning, not out of dread of punishment alone; but because it loves and reveres God as Father, it worships and adores him as Lord. Even if there were no hell, it would still shudder at offending him alone.” See J. T. McNeill, ed., Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics, vol. 20 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), p. 43.
48. The two aspects of the fear of the Lord can be seen in places where it is treated as a synonym. In Psalm 19 “the fear of the Lord” is a synonym for the law, statutes, precepts, commands, and decrees of the Lord (Psalm 19:7–9). So to fear God is to recognize God as an authoritative law giver; it is to say, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” In Deuteronomy the fear of God and the love of God are often used interchangeably to express the kind of motives that should empower our obedience (Deuteronomy 5:29, 6:2,5, 10:12). So the “fear of the Lord” is obedience out of love of God for who he is in himself; it is loving him for himself alone. See Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, pp. 100–101 on “The Fear of the Lord.”
49. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 110.
50. Walter C. Smith, “Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise,” 1876.
51. Tremper Longman, Proverbs: Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006), p. 328.
52. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 32.
53. Ibid., p. 146.
54. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), pp. 303–4.
55. What does “holy” mean? Many think of it as “moral,” but were the angels crying “Moral, moral, moral is the Lord!” in Isaiah 6? “At its core, holy is almost an adjective corresponding to the noun “God.” God is God. God is holy. He is unique; there is no other. Then, derivatively, that which belongs exclusively to him is . . . holy.” D. A. Carson, “April 8,” in For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word, vol. 1 (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1998), n.p.
56. Consider reading R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, 2nd rev. ed. (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 2000).
57. Derek Kidner, quoted in Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, pp. 407–8.
58. See Longman, Proverbs, pp. 82–86, for an excellent discussion of this subject. This day’s devotional is largely taken from it.
59. Lesslie Newbigin, Sin and Salvation (Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009), pp.11–15.
60. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 80.
61. Ibid.
62. “This better-than saying limits the status of wealthy by placing wisdom and righteousness above it.” Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 197.
63. Ibid., p. 114.
64. See Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom in The Goldsworthy Trilogy (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2001). This understanding of God’s order perceived (in Proverbs), confused and disrupted (in Ecclesiastes), and hidden (in Job) is laid out by Goldsworthy on pp. 409–58. These terms I employ are his. See also Longman, “Proverbs in Conversation with Job and Ecclesiastes,” in How to Read Proverbs (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), pp. 79–91.
65. Helen Wilcox, ed., The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 102.
66. Longman, Proverbs, p. 62.
67. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring, p. 146.
68. The opening words of each episode of the Cosmos television series, hosted by Carl Sagan, were “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”
69. Thomas Cranmer, “Collect for the Fourth Sunday After Easter,” in The Book of Common Prayer 1559, John E. Booty, ed. (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 1976), p. 63.
70. Mic
hael Eaton, Ecclesiastes: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1983), p. 63.
71. Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Pundit’s Folly: Chronicles of an Empty Life (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), p. 41.
72. Derek Kidner, A Time to Mourn, and a Time to Dance: Ecclesiastes and the Way of the World (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, p. 98.
73. Ibid., p. 99.
74. Goldsworthy, p. 432.
75. Anonymous, “How Firm a Foundation, Ye Saints of the Lord” (hymn), 1787.
76. Helen H. Lemmel, “O Soul, Are You Weary and Troubled?” (hymn), 1922.
77. Francis I. Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1975), p. 210.
78. Ibid., p. 73.
79. The original author of this well-known quote is uncertain.
80. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple: The Body in the Library (originally broadcast on BBC in 1984), available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=crds2h4a3rk (28: 00–29:20).
81. Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 226.
82. Ibid., p. 185.
83. This translation of Psalm 36:1 was used by C. S. Lewis in his preface to The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast (1961). There is no consensus about this rendering (see T. Longman, Psalms: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, vols. 15–16 (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2014), p. 175.
84. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 104.
85. Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 145.
86. Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 15–31, p. 181.
87. Longman, Proverbs, p. 257.
88. Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 229.
89. Elisabeth Elliot, “Epilogue II,” in Through the Gates of Splendor, 40th anniv. ed. (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale, 1996), p. 267.
90. Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (Philadelphia: Jonathan Pounder, 1810), p. 60.
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