Morning Devotion - Prov. 23

Read Proverbs 23

This chapter wonderfully expresses the longing of a godly father that His son will reject the pitfalls that accompany base pleasure-seeking (15-18).

He urges his son to love the knowledge of the Redeemer who brings words of instruction (12) more than the food of the rich (3), the wine of drunkards (20), and the sexual enticements of prostitutes and adulteresses (27).

The end of the worldly hedonist is not the highest pleasure at all, but addiction, confusion, and misery (29-35).

The end of the one who seeks the most true and lasting pleasures is a future and a hope that will not be cut off (18).

Only the man who lays hold of such wisdom in Jesus and particularly in his death and resurrection will be able to run the race that is set before him, a race that has as one of its stations the enduring of the cross on the pathway to higher and eternal pleasures.

Hebrews 12:1-2 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

We need to receive this great wisdom of Jesus and the fruits of it which are our salvation. We need to embrace this wisdom as the model of our own life and follow it. We also need to teach this wisdom to our children and see that they follow it beyond the foolishness of childhood and into the wisdom and maturity of adulthood.