The Un-Crucified Mind on a Cross of Gold Text: Proverbs 3:13-20
Introduction: The Great Appraisal
Every man is an appraiser. Every day, from the moment you wake up, you are making value judgments. You decide that getting out of bed is better than staying in it. You decide that this shirt is better than that one. You decide that a certain course of action at work is more profitable than another. Our lives are a constant stream of such appraisals. We are always weighing, measuring, and choosing what we believe to be of greater value. The problem is not that we fail to make such judgments, but that we are terrible at it. We are like jewelers who have lost their loupe, merchants who use crooked scales, and art critics who are colorblind.
Our fallen nature has corrupted our desires, and our corrupted desires have wrecked our ability to appraise things rightly. We are told by our culture to chase after silver, gold, and pearls, to pursue riches and glory, to seek long life and pleasant ways. And the book of Proverbs comes along and says, "Amen. You should want all those things. But you are looking for them in all the wrong places." The world offers you these treasures, but it is a bait and switch. It shows you the catalog, but delivers you the cheap imitation. It offers you a feast, but it is a feast of ashes.
The great orator William Jennings Bryan, in a famous speech, declared, "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." He was arguing about monetary policy, but he stumbled upon a profound spiritual truth. Mankind is indeed crucified, but not on a cross of gold. Mankind is crucified on a cross of folly. Men chase after gold, and in so doing, they impale themselves on their own foolish desires. They think they are pursuing life, but they are in love with death. They want the profit, but they don't understand the merchandise. This passage in Proverbs is God's great intervention in our faulty marketplace. He steps in, holds up true Wisdom, and says, "Here. This is what you were made for. This is what everything else is a shadow of. Stop trading diamonds for dust."
What we have here is a divine appraisal of true value. It is a comparison, a contrast between the currency of this world and the currency of the kingdom. And the conclusion is not that wisdom is just a little bit better. It is in an entirely different category. It is not a comparison of good and better, but of treasure and trash.
The Text
How blessed is the man who finds wisdom And the man who obtains discernment. For her profit is better than the profit of silver And her produce better than fine gold. She is more precious than pearls; And nothing you desire compares with her. Length of days is in her right hand; In her left hand are riches and glory. Her ways are pleasant ways And all her pathways are peace. She is a tree of life to those who seize her, And all those who hold her fast are blessed. Yahweh by wisdom founded the earth, By discernment He established the heavens. By His knowledge the deeps were split up And the skies drip with dew.
(Proverbs 3:13-20 LSB)
The Blessedness of Finding (v. 13)
The passage opens by declaring a state of beatitude, a state of true happiness and flourishing.
"How blessed is the man who finds wisdom And the man who obtains discernment." (Proverbs 3:13)
The word for "blessed" here carries the idea of being straight, right, and therefore prosperous in the truest sense. It is not a sentimental feeling, but an objective state of well being. And this state belongs to the one who "finds" wisdom. This implies a search. Wisdom is not something that you stumble over accidentally while you are looking for something else. You must seek it. But it is also a gift that is found. We seek, but God grants the discovery. It is a cooperative effort, but not a synergistic one. We are entirely dependent on His grace to open our eyes.
Notice the parallel here between "wisdom" and "discernment." Wisdom (chokmah) is the skill of godly living, the ability to navigate the complexities of life according to God's created order. Discernment (tebunah) is the understanding that undergirds it, the ability to distinguish, to separate, to see the connections and the differences between things. You cannot have one without the other. Wisdom is the house, and discernment is the foundation. A man who has one without the other is either a skilled fool or a paralyzed intellectual. The blessed man gets both.
The Divine Exchange Rate (v. 14-15)
Having stated the blessing, Solomon now gives the reason. He lays out the balance sheet, comparing wisdom's value to the most coveted treasures of the ancient world.
"For her profit is better than the profit of silver And her produce better than fine gold. She is more precious than pearls; And nothing you desire compares with her." (Proverbs 3:14-15 LSB)
This is a direct challenge to our natural way of thinking. God wants us to deliberately and carefully weigh the relative value of these things. He puts gold, silver, and pearls on one side of the scale, and wisdom on the other. The word "profit" is a mercantile term. It refers to the gain from trade. The "produce" refers to the harvest. Solomon is saying that the return on investment for wisdom is infinitely higher than for any business venture or agricultural enterprise. Silver and gold can be stolen. Markets can crash. Moths and rust can destroy. But the profit of wisdom is eternal.
He then makes the comparison absolute: "nothing you desire compares with her." Think about that. Take your strongest, most cherished desire, the thing you would trade almost anything for, a desire that keeps you up at night. Put that on the scale. Wisdom outweighs it. This is because every other desire, apart from wisdom, is a desire for a created thing. Wisdom is a desire for the Creator's mind. Every other desire is for a stream; wisdom is the desire for the fountainhead.
Our problem is that we don't believe this. We say we do in church, but our anxieties, our ambitions, and our checkbooks tell a different story. We act as though wisdom is a nice accessory, but gold is a necessity. God says it is the other way around. To prefer gold to wisdom is to prefer the menu to the meal.
The Two-Handed Reward (v. 16-18)
The blessings that flow from wisdom are then personified. Wisdom is Lady Wisdom, and she comes with her hands full of gifts.
"Length of days is in her right hand; In her left hand are riches and glory. Her ways are pleasant ways And all her pathways are peace. She is a tree of life to those who seize her, And all those who hold her fast are blessed." (Proverbs 3:16-18 LSB)
In the ancient world, the right hand was the hand of preeminence and power. In her right hand, wisdom holds "length of days." This is not an absolute guarantee that every wise person will live to be a hundred. The book of Proverbs gives general principles, not ironclad promises for every individual case. But it does mean that the path of wisdom is the path of life. Folly is suicidal. The fool burns the candle at both ends and in the middle. The wise man understands that his body is a temple and that his days are a stewardship. He avoids the kinds of behavior that naturally lead to a short and miserable life.
In her left hand are "riches and glory." This is where many modern, pietistic Christians get nervous. We have an unbiblical suspicion of wealth and honor. But God is not shy about it. He says that wisdom brings these things. Now, this is not the crass health and wealth gospel. The riches and glory that wisdom brings are "durable riches" (Proverbs 8:18). They are riches that are held with an open hand, honor that is received with humility. The fool seeks riches and glory directly, and so they corrupt and destroy him. The wise man seeks wisdom, and God throws in riches and glory as a bonus. Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.
Her ways are "pleasant" and her paths are "peace." This strikes at the root of the lie that holiness is dreary and sin is fun. The world markets sin as the path of pleasure and freedom. But it is a lie from the pit. The way of the transgressor is hard. The path of folly leads to anxiety, strife, bitterness, and chaos. The path of wisdom, the path of obedience to God's design, is the only path to true joy and deep, settled peace. It is not an easy path, but it is a pleasant one. It is not a path without conflict, but it is a path of peace.
Finally, she is a "tree of life." This image throws us all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Adam was created to eat from the tree of life and live forever in fellowship with God. But he chose the tree of folly, the tree of knowing good and evil on his own terms. He grasped for autonomous wisdom and found death. Here, we are told that true wisdom is the way back to the Garden. To "seize her" and "hold her fast" is to lay hold of Christ, who is the Wisdom of God and who is our Tree of Life. By clinging to Him in faith, we eat of the tree of life once more and are blessed.
The Cosmic Foundation (v. 19-20)
Lest we think this wisdom is merely a set of practical tips for a better life, Solomon concludes by grounding wisdom in the very fabric of creation. This is not just good advice; this is the operating system of the universe.
"Yahweh by wisdom founded the earth, By discernment He established the heavens. By His knowledge the deeps were split up And the skies drip with dew." (Proverbs 3:19-20 LSB)
The same wisdom that is offered to us is the wisdom by which God Himself created all things. When God laid the foundations of the earth and stretched out the heavens, wisdom was His master craftsman (Proverbs 8:30). The universe is not a random collection of particles; it is a testament to the intricate, glorious, and personal wisdom of God. It is shot through with His logic, His order, and His beauty.
This has massive implications. It means that to live wisely is to live in accordance with reality. To live foolishly is to wage war on the very structure of the cosmos. It is like trying to build a house with a warped level or sail a ship against a hurricane. You are fighting the grain of the universe. The fool thinks he is a clever rebel, but he is just a man sawing off the branch he is sitting on.
Because God created the world by wisdom, the world is intelligible. We can do science. We can discover the laws of physics. We can plant crops and expect a harvest. The dew drips from the skies in a predictable, ordered way because God's knowledge ordained it. All of this is a function of His divine wisdom. And the pinnacle of this wisdom is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3). He is the Logos through whom the world was made, and He is the Wisdom that holds it all together.
Conclusion: Finding the Pearl
So the choice before us is the same choice that has been before every man since the Garden. There are two trees, two paths, two women calling out to us: Lady Wisdom and Madam Folly. One offers life, peace, and durable riches. The other offers a thrill, a moment of stolen pleasure, and then death.
The world tells you to invest everything in silver and gold. It tells you to build your portfolio, secure your retirement, and chase your desires. God tells you that you are making a bad trade. He tells of a man who found a pearl of great price and went and sold everything he had to buy it. That pearl is wisdom. That pearl is Christ.
To find this wisdom is to be blessed. To obtain it is to find the organizing principle for your entire life. It is to learn how to appraise things rightly. It is to see that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, because it is the beginning of seeing God as He is, and everything else in relation to Him. When you get that right, everything else begins to fall into its proper place. The profit margins take care of themselves. The ways become pleasant, the paths become peace, and you find yourself standing before the Tree of Life, with an invitation to eat and live.