Wisdom Is the Principal Thing

Solomon here claims our attention as a teacher of youth, on account of his own godly education by such a father. He was a tender child (1 Chronicles 22:5), well-beloved, as an only son. The more dearly he was loved, the more carefully was he taught. Thus we are brought into the family of “the man after God’s heart,” to hear him “commanding his child” in the fear and service of the Lord.

A special mercy is it to us if we can tell of an Abraham or a David, of a Lois or an Eunice, having taught and bound us to the ways of God! Parents! remember, a child untaught will be a living shame; “The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame” (Proverbs 29:15). Training discipline, not foolish indulgence, is the truest evidence of affection to our tender and beloved ones.

But let us examine this beautiful specimen of parental instruction. Observe the anxiety for his son’s heart-religion. “Let thine heart retain my words.” Often (and this is a comfort to a weak memory) words may be lost to the memory, yet practically retained in the heart. This heart-keeping is the path of life, without which all is dead.

Observe again the extreme earnestness of the exhortation. Many a parent, like Augustine’s father, insists, “Get wealth, worldly honor, or wisdom.” [Augustine recorded of his father, “This father of mine never troubled himself with any thought of: How I might improve myself towards Thee, so that I proved eloquent, though I were withal left undressed by Thy tillage.”] This godly parent inculcates “line upon line,” “Get heavenly Wisdom; get it with all thy getting, at any cost and pains, as the principal thing. And when thou hast got it, forget it not, decline not from it, forsake it not, love, embrace, exalt her. Such a keeping is she for thy soul, such a treasure for thy happiness, such a promoting honor even in this life, such an ornament of grace in the church, such a crown of glory in heaven!”

This is not the style of a cold pleader, enforcing with decent seriousness some unimportant truth. It is the father, feeling that his child’s soul is perishing, unless it be taught and led in wisdom’s ways.

Parents! do we know this stirring concern, anxiously looking out for the first dawn of light upon our child’s soul? Do we earnestly point out to him wisdom as the principal thing, to be gotten first? “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). Is it our own first choice, infinitely above this world’s glitter (Philippians 3:7-8); not only important, but allimportant? If it be anything, it will be everything. Earthly wisdom may be “a goodly pearl.” But this “wisdom from above is the pearl of great price”; worth getting indeed; but only to be got by “selling all that we have to buy it” (Matthew 13:45-46).

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