Episode Details

Prayer

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what am I that you are mindful of me, that you should care for me? O Lord, please give to me this day your mercy and forgiveness for my sins, and meet with me now in the reading of your word. Crown me anew with the glory and honour of your image renewed in Christ, that I may honour you in the exercise of dominion in all that you have appointed to me. Please help me to submit to and serve you, my Lord and my God. Unless you receive and answer this prayer, I will surely fail and fall. But with you is forgiveness. Have mercy on me, O Lord. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.

Reading

Proverbs 1:7-9.

“fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Hear, my son, your father's instruction,and forsake not your mother's teaching,for they are a graceful garland for your headand pendants for your neck.”

Meditation

Fools are unteachable. What then is the first step in the opposite direction? It is to come to the realisation that God gives wisdom. Verses eight and nine, as you will have noticed, are talking explicitly about the role of parents in instructing their children. Before we consider that, however, we need to see on a more basic level that the instruction of parents is based on an even more important and fundamental principle: that God gives wisdom. Now I say that, in the first place, because even this passage is itself is in the scriptures. Proverbs 1:7-9 literally comes to us from God, as does the book of Proverbs as a whole, which gives wisdom. It is a divinely inspired book. We’ve also seen it in Proverbs 1:7 – the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The Bible explicitly says that wisdom comes from God in James 1:5.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”

There can be no wise instruction from parents or teachers, unless there is first a receiving of wisdom from God. This is the underlying assumption in verses eight and nine: that God gives wisdom. However, we must also add that God uses means to give wisdom. It is not God’s normal manner to directly speak to us (and if you read passages like Exodus 19 and Isaiah 6, you’ll see that this is a good thing). When sinful people have a direct interaction with God – it’s described in scripture as an overwhelming and terrifying experience. To use the language of Isaiah, we are “undone” in the presence of God. In that sense, it is a mercy that he uses means to give things to us.

Let’s consider a few examples of how this works: God uses fathers and mothers to birth us; he uses food to strengthen us; he uses prophets, apostles, and scripture to speak to us; and… he uses proverbs to give us wisdom. God uses means! Now, zooming in one more step in our passage, what we see in our verses is that God uses the particular means of parents to give us wisdom and instruction. Put simply, one of the things taught by these verses is that God gives us wisdom by our parents.

Before we look more closely at the role of parents in our next few meditations, let me make just one more general observation here, because there is another broad principle at work in our verses. Yes, as we learn here, we should – especially as young people – honour our parents, looking to them for wisdom. But even as adults, God has appointed other people in our lives to whom we ought to submit, and through whom he gives us instruction. The Westminster Larger Catechism opens this up for us very clearly:

“Q. Who are meant by “father” and “mother” in the fifth commandment?

A. By father and mother, in the fifth commandment, are meant, not only natural parents, b