Good Advice

Fools think they need no advice, but the wise listen to others. – Proverbs 12:15

Sam Levenson once said, “You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.” I’m not sure about that because Lord knows I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I’m only 41. God willing, I still have plenty of time to make many, many more mistakes.

There is certain validity to education via “school of hard knocks.” For those with the ability to learn from their mistakes, it’s a good education, but the fees are awfully high. It would be much better if we could simply learn from other’s mistakes without having to actually repeat them.

This is why the Old Testament is so valuable. It gives us case history to learn from. It reveals God’s saints in all their bright, or sin-dimmed glory. From David we learn “do not lay around when you should be out doing your work or you might fall into sin.” Moses’ lesson? “Do not let your temper make you lose out.” From Adam we learn by experience what Paul taught by theory, “be content!”

I love going to older folks and listening to their stories. It’s one thing to read about history in a book. It’s another to hear about it first hand. And some of them have tremendous common-sense life lessons of which we should carefully take note.

We should look around for wise saints to mentor us. Solomon told us why: “the godly give good advice to their friends; the wicked lead them astray.” (Proverbs 12:26). Oh, you could go down to the local pub and get plenty of advice – but I’m not sure how good it would be.

Better yet, think about the possibilities inherent in a God-breathed Book that lists case history and actually draws the conclusions for you! The oldest person in the world has nothing on the nearly 2,000 years of history recorded in the Bible. So many characters, both evil and good! So many lessons, both positive and negative! If we could carefully list all the major characters in Scripture and preach just one sermon a week on each person, there would not be enough Sundays in a preacher’s life to get to them all.

You see, we tend to think about the Bible as being man’s book about God. But a more accurate description is that the Bible is God’s book about man! He said that His Word “is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12).

When it comes to human problems, there is nothing new (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Trust me – regardless of the variations and complexities of your situation, there’s good advice to be found in the Word of God.