Proverbs 15:13
‘A scorner does not love one that reproves him; neither will he go to the wise. A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance…. He that is of a merry heart, has a continual feast!… A wise son, makes a glad father; but…folly is joy, to him that is destitute of Wisdom! However, a man of understanding — walks uprightly!’ Proverbs 15:12-21.
The basic problem of a scorner is, that he will not go to the wise. He won’t go to the wise who have been made wise after their encounter with Wisdom the Lord Jesus Christ!
Still less will the scorner go to the Wisdom, Who makes people wise. He stays as far away from God’s Wisdom the Lord Jesus Christ, as is humanly possible!
On the other hand, ‘a merry heart makes a cheerful countenance.’ For ‘he that is of a merry heart, has a continual feast!’
Such is the soul who has found Christ to be not only a Saviour, but indeed his daily life. He who casts all his cares upon God; he who had learned to give all of his cares over into His hand — shall always have a merry heart and a cheerful countenance! Whenever the heart is merry, all of the days are light — and the soul has a continual feast. That is holy joy, which arises when one leads everything back to God Who is the Origin of all!
As Robert Louis Stevenson once prayed: ‘Give us courage and gaiety, and a quiet mind! Give us to go blithely on our business, all this day! Give us to awake with smiles! Give us to labour, smiling! Renew in us the sense of joy!’
Only those are made merry thus, who have first become wise. Only when they have met and enthroned Wisdom the Lord Jesus Christ in their hearts, do they become wise!
Then, ‘a wise son makes a glad father.’ For every true father becomes glad, when he knows his son has become wise and continually serves the Lord Christ as his one and only Wisdom!
On the other hand, ‘folly is joy — to him that is destitute of Wisdom!’ As Paul later wrote in Ephesians 5:15: ‘See, then, that you walk circumspectly — not as fools, but as wise!’
For the truly wise have been given understanding by God’s Wisdom the Lord Jesus Christ. And ‘a man of understanding — walks uprightly!’ The man of a pure heart who submits himself to the fear of the Lord, walks uprightly.
He refuses to allow himself to be seduced by sinful tendencies. For he lives righteously, according to God’s righteous Son!
Indeed, a merry heart makes a countenance cheerful! Is your heart thus merry?
