Winning the lottery! The dream of many! Drop in a few bucks, walk away with several million. For others, getting into an easy work high reward pay is the goal. Imagine working for about two hours a day, sitting by the pool, in a high end neighborhood of some exotic location, surrounded by staff, cars, and boats. All yours if you just start with the initial fee of $59.99! These two things have one thing in common. Majority of the ones trapped by the image of the lifestyle promised by these two programs will spend their already short finances to no avail (how do we believe the lottery actually pays out? It is not because of the generosity of their heart). For those who picture an easy type work with high return, are led astray by the pictures, music, and high energy pitch man. What they do not see is the amount of work done behind the scenes by those who do eventually arrive to this place in life. Even more sinister, many of these pictures are faked and are meant to only bring an emotional response.

What if there is a way to gain wealth and not lose it. No, it is not always physical wealth, and no, it is not always immediately noticed. However, this wealth comes in due process and it is permanent. This kind of wealth is not locked into a vault and fretted over with the ups and downs of the stock market. Yes, this MIGHT bring about physical wealth but when it comes there is wisdom, knowledge, and understanding in how to use it. Wealth, in a greater sense, is, as the Bible says, more than our possessions (Luke 12:15). The verse condemns all that was focused on in the first paragraph. So how are these two paragraphs aligned?

Enter Proverbs 8:20-21.

When we look at wisdom, it says that it traverse the way of righteousness. Righteousness walks in the path of righteousness. The righteousness is that of Jesus’ righteousness. It leads to the Father and does not violate His nature and His Word of God, the Bible. Wisdom never turns away or aside from this path. Righteousness is an uprightness before God. How does this help us?

When we are in pursuit of this wisdom it shows us where we are able to get righteousness. It is given to us as being in Jesus Christ – Ephesians 4:24. It is only through Jesus we can have this righteousness. The standard by which we are judged by righteousness is found in the law. We cannot live the law perfectly and therefore we are unrighteous. Hence Jesus came, fulfilled the law, died in our place, fulfilling the demands of the law and provides for us, who have trusted in Jesus Christ as our Savior, His righteousness so we may stand before God. It is not our own (Philippians 3:9) but is Jesus’ Himself (Isaiah 61;10).

The question is whether we live in that righteousness or not. It is by living in righteousness we show we are part of Jesus’ righteousness (1 John 2:29). How does this manifest itself in our lives? We can find a good descriptive of this in Hebrews 1:9. How many Christians, sadly, say and claim they are covered in God’s righteousness, but then they vote for those who promote and support evil. They live a life that shows little to no growth. They act with a disconnect between their church life and their “secular” life. The point of the pietism is that there would be NO disconnect. Sad how many Christians fail this small test.

Then we see it is in the midst of the path of justice as well! When we talk about justice, the world has its form of justice. You will find this with social justice teachings that have done nothing but destroyed the church. As a side note, any church, pastor, leader, etc. reading this, run from social justice, intersectionality, and finally the teaching of systemic racism. Each one is a smoke screen to lead churches and movements away from the truth. So what justice is being mentioned here in this text? The answer is given to us through Scripture.

The meaning of justice is to have integrity of character. The example of this justice is found as a Righteous man (Genesis 6:9), an upright Gentile (Acts 10:22), and others. True justice is found in God’s nature (Deuteronomy 32:4), and refers to Jesus as the Messiah and as the Christ who was rejected (Zechariah 9:9; Acts 3:14). How then does justice come? First by the instructions from parents which has an important application to all who are parents (Genesis 18:19). Second, by having TRUE faith (which is in contrast to faith that is built on our own emotion and ideologies) Hebrews 10:38, but yet there is one more place. Third, TRUE WISDOM – Proverbs 8:15. This is the same true wisdom that walks in the paths of justice.

Wisdom brings both righteousness and justice but it is not the same as the world. To follow wisdom is to be led on the correct path. How do we know we are on the correct path? Psalm 119:105 would be a great start. How does worldly justice and righteousness compare to Biblical? It is not the same. One leads to death, hell, the grave. It destroys and mangles. Biblical justice and righteousness instead is based, again, on the love for this wisdom, and look what happens!

Proverbs 8:21 tells us exactly! For those who love wisdom, Godly wisdom, will be caused to inherit wealth. To inherit means to take possession, or to be given. This inheritance is what we would think about when we talk about inheritance. The best part of this is that we receive this inheritance without any loved ones passing away. But, what is this wealth?

In our first paragraph, we refer to physical wealth. The wealth we think of when we see the planes, cars, big houses, trips, boats, etc. But there is a wealth that goes further than this. The word here in Proverbs 8:21 does refer to physical wealth, but in other passages, even deal with substance, existence, etc. We have covered this wealth before in the last few weeks worth of blog posts, and it is encouraged to go back and look at that. Some cross references to help look at this would be Proverbs 8:18, Proverbs 1:13; Proverbs 6:31. Again, we draw to the New Testament Matthew 6:19-21, and see where our true treasures should be. It is a riches that goes beyond just the physical riches but Ephesians 3:19 really brings the truth of this riches. It is through God we are brought to a place of true pleasure, and it is on the path of life (Psalm 16:11).

It is not just getting this inheritance, it is a filling of the treasures. This filling is more than just a casual filling, but it is a true filling that is an over flowing, an over filling. Please understand this is not a support of our modern day teaching of the prosperity gospel. That is a lie from hell, but this is something more, deeper, grander. This is ONLY if we are in pursuit of wisdom. It is only true if we are in pursuit of Godly wisdom. Are we?

There are some who state they pursue after wisdom, but really are pursuing their own wisdom. The Bible warns us of this in Proverbs 3:5. If the wisdom we are pursuing leads us to our own place, or our own position but does not take into account the truth of the Bible, and the reality of the nature and holiness of God, that is not true Wisdom. We, as Christians, must have discernment to see the truth of wisdom and false wisdom. Failure will lead us away from God, but Christians should have the Word of God as the foundation and authoritative role in our life and faith.

Dear reader, do not walk on the wrong path. Pursue after wisdom on this way and path. This leads us to wisdom again which says that it traverses these paths. The other valuable meaning of traverse is to mean lead. Not only are we following wisdom, but wisdom also leads. Are we being led by wisdom or by our own self? We can only know by measuring ourselves against the standard of the Word of God.

Where does Wisdom find its roots? We cover that next week, Lord willing.