But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. – Proverbs 8:36
Proverbs 8, from beginning to end, gives many practical encouragements concerning wisdom. It describes as a person, some believe it is even a reference to Christ. If Christ be the Word, which He is, and the Word is wisdom then maybe in that sense it is true.
However today focus on two things in relation to this passage.
1. We Are Prone to Self-Destruct
The world, our flesh and the Devil and his demons want nothing more than our destruction. And normally it seems the easiest way to destroy a person is to let them indulge in their own desires and ideas. If the enemies of God cannot hinder a person from coming to Christ then He will certainly do his best to make us useless to God.
The obvious solution from this passage is wisdom. When we choose wisdom we choose God’s best. When we choose wisdom embrace the promises of God. When we choose wisdom we choose life, eternal life, a useful life in light of eternity.
2. The Rejection of God’s Word is the Rejection of Life
In 2 Peter 3:16 Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, verifies the writings of Paul and mentions something of those who reject wisdom, and therefore love death:
As also in all [his] epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as [they do] also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
The word wrest there means to put to the rack, to twist, to torture, put to the rack, to pervert, of one who wrests or tortures language in a false sense. How often have you heard a message, read a book or talked with a friend and they tortured the language of Scripture by twisting it and perverting it to their own means. So much could be said of this, but it is enough that we realise that when we wrest the Word we reject wisdom and we embrace suffering and death.
It is striking that in our day this verse has been proved so true. We live in a time when people have rejected wisdom, God’s wisdom, every-day commonsense, and at the same time we see a fascination with death, demons, vampires and evil. Rejecting God’s wisdom inevitably results in embracing death.
God help us to embrace the wisdom of Proverbs 8, to embrace the Word, to consequently embrace Christ and life.
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