Walking with the Wise #179: Which Inheritance Is Yours?

“The simple inherit folly,

but the prudent are crowned with knowledge.”
—Proverbs 14:18

How good of a student are you? I’m not talking about being a student in school; I am talking about being a student of life. To be good students we must recognize that God is our great Teacher and the textbook He desires us to read and apply is the one He wrote—the Bible. With God as our Teacher and the Bible as our guide, we learn how to live in this confusing world of shifting philosophies and alternative lifestyles.

The Bible teaches that the simple will inherit folly. Which is one way of saying that those who fail to learn from the choices they make will suffer the consequences of their choices. However, the prudent, who have given thought to how they’ve lived and have learned from their mistakes, are blessed with the knowledge that they have chosen wisely and are removed from the consequences that come from sinful choices.

The Bible doesn’t give us many ways on how to journey through life—rather it presents only two. Every other religion, philosophy, and choice is boiled down to foolishness or wisdom and is characterized by several other terms such as today where the “fool” is the simple and the “wise” are the prudent. And each time we are confronted with such a choice, we find ourselves at a crossroad, asking ourselves whether we are wise or foolish. If we are wise, then we know that we can continue to walk in wisdom, experiencing the blessed fruit of obedient, good, and wise choices. However, if we continue on in folly, we will experience pain, broken relationships, sorrow, sadness, and will be haunted by the knowledge that we could have lived rightly, but chose the foolish path. And we will look back upon the years at the end of life saying,

“How I hated discipline,
and my heart despised reproof!
I did not listen to the voice of my teachers
or incline my ear to my instructors.
I am at the brink of utter ruin
in the assembled congregation.”
—Proverbs 5:12-14.

May we embrace wisdom, and may we live a life that is truly wise, that our Lord Jesus showed us how to life, as He blazed the trail through the moral morass of life, effectively demonstrating for us what it means to live uprightly in this present evil age, for His glory and our joy. Amen.