Prayer.

Reading: Prov 2:1.

Meditation.

What do you do with treasure? As I write these words, I’m visiting a regional Australian city called Ballarat, staying in a mansion-come-resort previously owned by a gold-prospector who struck it rich. Around the back of the property is a solid blue-stone store house where he used to keep his gold (at least I think it’s bluestone). Anyway, it’s sold, thick stone! The point is, no one was going to be easily breaking in to that store-house, because that’s what you do with treasure. You lay it up as securely as you can. As Solomon instructs his son to receive his words, he uses this imagery of a treasury to describe how he should be treating the commandments that he receives. He ought to treasure them up, not in a blue-stone store-house, but in the bank-vault of his heart.

Imagine if you had a famous painting on the wall in your home, perhaps a Monet, a da Vinci – choose your favourite artist! If art isn’t your thing, try a very large diamond worth millions of dollars, or the treasure of your choice! Question: What would you do with it? That’s right, you’d make sure it was secure. You would take great pains to make sure it wasn’t lost to you. You would treasure it, marvel over it, and you would stare at it and study its every detail. You would check it often to make sure it’s still there. This is how we must treat God’s word if we would gain wisdom. We must treasure it up in the storehouse of our hearts. Don’t just leave the word lying around to be read every few weeks when the fancy takes you. Don’t just pull it out on a Sunday and forget about it the rest of the week. We must not be careless with the word of God, for it is a treasure beyond treasures. Treasuring God’s Word is an essential step toward gaining wisdom and making the leap into spiritual maturity.

Be ye doers of the word...

What do you treasure in your life? What are the things you spend your time enjoying? Do you treasure God’ word? To have wisdom, you must treasure the word up, store it up. Buy it and sell it not. In Ps 119:11 the psalmist says: “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” If we do not treasure God’s word, sin will increase in our hearts. As far as application here is concerned, a line has been drawn in the sand. Do you treat God’s word like a million-dollar diamond? Or like yesterday’s newspaper? Which side of the line are you standing on? Again – the good news is that if you’re on the wrong side, you can turn to God, ask for mercy, and step on over. But we do need more instruction on this, because how do we actually do this well? How do we treasure up God’s word in our heart? How does this work? We will learn more next time as we open up verse two. For now, ask the Lord to truly change the attitude of your heart towards his word, that you might treasure it, and begin to invest the best of your time and energy into the word. SDG.

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