January 14

“Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.” (Proverbs 8:34)

“Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table. She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town, ‘Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!’ To him who lacks sense she says, ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight.’” (Proverbs 9:1-6)

In Proverbs, divine wisdom is pictured as a woman calling to those who are walking by, and here it is also described as a house. Wisdom has prepared a meal, set the table, and sent out “her women” to invite guests. What will we do? We will eat bread and drink wine that wisdom herself has mixed, to learn to “walk in the way of insight.”

Solomon, being the presumed writer of Proverbs 8-9 also wrote in Psalm 127, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” (v. 1) Who builds the house for wisdom, where righteous discernment and judgment live? It would appear that we do, on the foundation of Scriptural truth. “By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established.” (Proverbs 24:3)

Luke provides a New Testament directive for us that we often take for granted, but if we read Luke 7:47-49 carefully, we are reminded that our “house of wisdom” is built on Jesus’s words. “Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”

Will you go to God’s house this Lord’s day, a house that is built on the gospel of Jesus Christ, celebrating Him with His family? Is the table set with bread and wine for communion? Will you partake of it?