At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“Through wisdom is an house builded; And by understanding it is established: And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches”
Proverbs 24:3-4
This is a proverb that provides an echo of David’s earlier testimony: “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; Yea, I have a goodly heritage” (Psalm 16:6).
God is good to us, all the time, which all Christians confess. But it is also true that God is frequently good to us in the physical realm. His goodness is not limited to the invisible spiritual realm.
Now we all recognize this, at least implicitly, when we say grace over our meals, and when we celebrate God’s goodness to us at Thanksgiving. But there is an odd kind of schizophrenia going on, in that many Christians do not want to acknowledge in theological discussions what they every day acknowledge around the dinner table. And that is, that God gives us cool stuff.
Sometimes this is because we don’t want to be mistaken for some crass health and wealth preacher, and that desire is good, so far as it goes. The “name it and claim it” approach really is simplistic, and the “blab it and grab it” approach is even more so. But let us be frank, you and I. The health and wealth guys do in fact have a lot of verses.
Our proverb is one of them. Wisdom builds the house. Understanding establishes the house. And knowledge fills up all the storerooms, and the basement, and the attic, with all kinds of pleasant things. All kinds of precious things. All kinds of riches.
This is not true in some sort of automatic vending machine way, of course not. But such passage mean something, do they not? If one man thanks God for his sandwich at lunch, then why cannot another man thank God for the house that wisdom built, the house that understanding established, and the chambers that were filled up with all his pleasant things? All of them are made out of molecules, and all of them were given by a good and generous God.
