A Word To The Wise Series

The legend is told of a flock of crows who had an awful battle with a

farmer over a corn field. It came to the point when every time they

returned he shot at them. They assembled on the edge of the woods and

took council. One young an vigorous crow trust out his chest and said,

"As far as I can see there are more crows than men, and we fly, which men

cannot. So why not assemble and destroy these creatures who presume to

govern us and drive us from our food? Then we could get all the corn we

wanted, and there would be no one to stop us." An old crow on the edge of

the flock interrupted him and said, "That is all very well, but in my

lifetime I have observed one thing. Where there are no men, there are also

no corn fields."

Enthusiasm is good, but it cannot take the place of experience and

wisdom. The present generation can only truly make progress if they

learn from the experience of the past. We can learn both by the wisdom

and the follies of the past how to be more effective servants of God in the

present. Therefore, we are going back almost three thousand years to the

days of Solomon to see how relevant the wisdom of B.C. is to our A. D.

lives in the modern world.

Solomon was a man with a great deal of experience in both wisdom

and folly. He started well and did what was pleasing to God, and he

became one of the wisest men who ever lived as an answer to his prayer

that he be a wise ruler. He had riches, glory and honor, and he had wide

spread fame, but he yielded to the evil influence of his foreign wives and

became a fool as he departed from God's will. There are several lessons of

value in this fact alone. The first is to recognize that he who stands must

beware lest he fall. One must not be content wherever he is in his

relationship to God. He must persevere in drawing nearer to God at all

times, or he is in danger of being subtly led astray. One must put God first

above all other values or he leaves himself open to folly, even though he be

the wisest man alive.

The second thing we learn from Solomon as the author of this part of

God's Word is that it is an error to say if a man does not practice what he

preaches, it is of no value. This is not true, for God used Solomon to tell us

how to be wise and live wisely even though the one he used did not always

practice it. The truth is just as true when spoken by a sinner as by a saint.

Never dismiss a truth because of its source. A tin cup carries water as well

as a gold one, and you can be refreshed out of either vessel. Truth makes

us free from ignorance even if it comes through a person who has made

poor use of it. In spite of his failures God inspired Solomon to write three

of the books of the Old Testament for the guidance of men for all time.

William Arnot wrote, "The fatal facility with which men glide into the

worship of men may suggest another reason why some of the channels

chosen for conveying the mind of God were marred by glaring

deficiencies." To get a picture of what Solomon was before his folly let me

read for you I Kings 4:29-34, "God gave Solomon wisdom and very great

insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the

seashore. Solomon's wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men

of the East, and greater than all the wisdom of Egypt. He was wiser than

any other man, including Ethan the Ezrahite-wiser than Heman, Calcol

and Darda, the sons of Mahol. His fame spread to all the surrounding

nations. He spoke 3 thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a 1005.

He described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that

grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and

fish. Men of all nations came to listen to Solomon's wisdom, sent by all the

kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom."

We see that Solomon's wisdom covered a great deal of ground, and so

there is a great variety in the study of the proverbs. They are usually

short, weighty, authoritative sayings that are the wisdom of experience

compressed into few words for easy memorization. Tennyson described

them as,

Jewels five words long,

That on the stretch'd forefinger of all time