Wisdom Received and Retained
“When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy wul,
discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee.” — ii. 10, 11. My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments.” — ill 1.
jHRIST’S prayer for his disciples was not that they should be taken out of the world, but that they should be preserved from the evil that is in it. Life is a voyage on the deep :. there are perils which we must pass; how shall we pass them safely 1 The grand specific is the entrance of wisdom into the heart. As already explained, you may understand by Wisdom either the Salvation or the Saviour. The entrance of the word gives light, and chases away the darkness. If the truth as it is in Jesus come in through the understanding, and -make its home in the heart, it will be a purifier and preserver. “Sanctify them through the truth.” The word of God and the way of the wicked are like fire and water; they cannot be together in the same place. Either the flood of wickedness will extinguish the word, or the word will burn and dry up the wickedness.
If we understand the Word personally of Christ, the same holds good. Where He dwells the lusts of the flesh cannot reign. Evil cannot dwell with Him. When the Light of the world gets entrance into the heart, the foul spirits that swarmed in the darkness disappear. His coming shall be like the morning.
The other strand of the two-fold cord which keeps a voyager in safety amid all these perils is, “when knowledge is pleasant to thy soul.” The pleasantness of the knowledge that comes in, is a feature of essential importance. Even the truth entering the mind, and fastening on the conscience, has no effect in delivering from the power of evil, while it comes only as a terror: what the law could not do by all its fears, God did by sending his Son. The love of Christ constraineth us, when all other appliances have been tried in vain. The Spirit employs terror in his preparatory work; but it is only when the redemption of Christ begins to be felt sweeter than the pleasures of sin that the soul is allured, and yields, and follows on to know the Lord. It is pleasure that can compete with pleasure; it is “joy and peace in believing” that can overcome the pleasure of sin. Felix trembled under Paul’s preaching, yet offered to sell justice for money; and, to curry favour with the multitude, kept the innocent in bonds. Although the word of God ran through him like a sword in his bones, it left him wholly in the power of his lusts. A human soul, by its very constitution, cannot be frightened into holiness. It is made for being won; and won it will be, by the drawing on this side, or the drawing on that. The power on God’s side is greater than all on the side of sin. As long as that power is felt to be repelling, the sinner creeps still further and further from the consuming fire; but whenever the love of God in the face of Jesus becomes “pleasant” to his soul, that love keeps and carries him, as the central sun holds up a tributary world.
But after Wisdom has been received, it is also necessary that it should be retained. Wisdom accordingly continues to cry; and the cry now is, “My son, forget not.” Such pity as a father hath, like pity shows the Lord. Throughout his dispensations, the Eternal wears the aspect of a Father to his creature man. In the Bible, the parental regard is seen glancing through at every opening. When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, Father was the foremost word of the inspired liturgy. With this tender name is the arrow pointed that is expected to penetrate the heavens. Those who have skill to read the hieroglyphs of nature, will find many a parallel text in earth and sea. The world is full of his goodness: the fatherliness of the Creator is graven on all his works.
The matter thus tenderly commended to the pupil’s regard, is nothing less than “my law.” He who made us knows what is good for us. Submission to his will is the best condition for humanity. What shall be the guide of our life — our own depraved liking, or the holy will of God 1 Our own will leads to sin and misery: the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, and making wise the simple. The two rival rules are set before us: choose ye whom ye shall serve. His servants ye are tvhom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness.
“Forget not my law;” another evidence that the Inspirer of the word knows what is in man. Silently to forget God’s law is amongst us a much more common thing than blasphemously to reject it. To renounce God’s law because your reason condemns it, is the infidelity that slays its thousands: to forget God’s law because your heart does not like it, is the ungodliness that slays its ten thousands. The deceitfulness of the heart is a form of sin’s disease much more widely spread and much more fatal than the hostility of the understanding.
“Let thine heart keep my commandments;” another step in the same direction — another stage in the process of dissecting the spirit, in order to reach the seat of sin. What the heart cleaves to is not readily forgotten. As a general rule it may be safely laid down, that what you habitually forget you do not care for: so true is it that love is the fulfilling of the law. If you do not love it, so far from obeying it, you will not even remember that there is such a thing. It is often given as an excuse for evil doing, that it was done without thought — that the evil of it was not present to the mind; if you had observed at the time the real character of your action, you would have done otherwise. What is this but to tell that your heart does not keep God’s commandment? If that law had been at hand, in God’s name forbidding the word or the deed, you would have refrained. No thanks to you; that is as much as to say you would not of set purpose oppose the Almighty to his face. But you did what He complains of; you forgot Him and his law. You had extruded these from your heart as unwelcome visitors, and now you say, if they had been within, the mischief would not have happened. But why were they not within 1 Why was the word not dwelling richly in you? Why was your heart not its hidden home 1 The house was full of the company that you liked. The law of the Lord, weary waiting on outside, had slipt away unnoticed. It was not there — it was not in sight, with its holy frown, when the temptation pressed suddenly, and prevailed. If it had been there, the enemy would not have gained an advantage over you; end this is an excuse or palliation! What you put forward as an excuse, God marks as the very essence of the sin. The heart keeps what it loves; what it dislikes it lets go. The very soul of sin is here; “an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.”
One ever-ready excuse of those who live without God in the world is “a bad memory.” Where there is real imbecility in the nature, the excuse is good; but then it is never pleaded as an excuse. The skill which can plead a treacherous memory as an excuse for not knowing the truth, would have charged the memory with the truth if it had been so applied. Those who intend to plead a short memory at the judgment-seat of God, would need to see to it that other things should slip as quickly and as cleanly off from the mind as the word of Christ. When Saul averred to Samuel, “I have performed the commandment of the Lord, I have destroyed all that belonged to Amalek,” Samuel replied, “What meaneth, then, this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and this lowing of the oxen which I hear 1” The king was confounded when his pretence was laid bare. What confusion must cover those who pass through life with scarcely a conception of how a sinner may be saved, when they put in the plea, “We had a treacherous memory,” and are met by the question, “What mean, then, all those rules, and numbers, and events concerning the world, that crowded your memory through life, and clung there undefaced in your old age ]”
Let us not deceive ourselves. When there is a hungering for the truth, the mind takes it in; when the heart loves divine truth, the memory retains it. Turn the excuse into an aggravation, while yet there is time. Plead no more a feeble memory; begin to grieve over an evil heart.