Mensa Otabil - What Wisdom Hates

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Proverbs chapter 8, verse 13: The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride, and arrogance, the evil way, and the perverse mouth; I hate. Now, the passage is talking about what wisdom hates. Wisdom says that she hates pride and arrogance. She hates the evil way, and she hates the perverse mouth. These three enemies — we better watch out for them. Wisdom is always rooted in the fear of the Lord.

So, when we have wisdom, we respect God. We honor His word, and we honor His purposes. Anything that goes contrary to God’s way is generally an enemy of wisdom. But these three are set out. The first one is pride and arrogance. It is set out as the first enemy of wisdom, so it must be a very significant one. So, what is pride? Pride is having an excessively high opinion of yourself or ourselves. Arrogance is having an attitude of superiority over somebody else.

Now, there is a place for having healthy self-esteem, and it’s all right for us to be proud of our work, proud of our achievements, and proud of what our children are doing and what our parents have done. That’s healthy pride. But pride becomes a problem when you only see that value for yourself but don’t give it to anyone else. You think your child is smart, but everybody else’s child is not smart. You think your work is great, but everybody else’s work is not great. When that comes in, where you only have esteem for yourself and no esteem for others, that is pride; that is arrogance, and it is an enemy of wisdom. Simply put, it means you cannot have this attitude and be a wise person.

And why is that so? Why can a person not become wise when they are proud and arrogant? Because they cannot receive correction, and they cannot learn from anybody else. They can’t even learn from their mistakes because they never see their mistakes. They think that their mistake is the greatest thing that ever happened on the earth. You know, there are people who never see a mistake they’ve made. Now, when that is your attitude, wisdom will be very far away from you. Pride and arrogance are enemy number one.

Enemy number two is called the evil way. The evil way is a way that rebels against God’s way; a way that rebels against what is right or the righteous path. There are people who are always choosing a different way. They say things like, «I want to do things my own way. I have my own way of doing it.» There is a way in which self-expression is good. But when we are constantly choosing our own way and never consider any other way except our own, we are going to walk on the evil way. We’re going to make very wrong and bad choices, and we’re going to end up in a way that does not please God. The scripture says there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is the way of death. So, whilst we must be confident to make the right choices ourselves, we must not constantly be choosing our own way and not seeking to find guidance, help, advice, or counsel from other people. The evil way is an enemy of wisdom. Enemy number two.

The third enemy is the perverse mouth. The perverse mouth talks about a mouth or people who speak words that are perverse. When we say words are perverse, it means the words go against what is right. And so, what are perverse lips or perverse words? They are lies — falsehood, false witness, gossiping, spreading evil reports about people to destroy them. That is a perverse mouth. Speaking profanity is also a perverse mouth.

Unfortunately, these days, many people routinely speak profanity. Even Christians lace so much of what they say with profanity. We think it’s cute or smart to just speak profanity. That’s a perverse mouth. A perverse mouth is a display of a lack of wisdom because wisdom gives us self-control and is decorous. So, it’s important that while we are seeking wisdom, we put away from us arrogance, the evil way, and the perverse mouth.

Let’s pray. Say with me: Heavenly Father, teach me to hate what You hate and to love what You love. Take away pride and falsehood from me in Jesus' name. Amen. And Amen.