The message this father gives to his son is this: you scorn and you will be scorned.

Humble yourself and you will be given grace.

Be wise and inherit glory.

Be a fool and you will be promoted to a position of shame.

Those around you will say "What a shame" that so much promise ended up in such a condition!

What a shame!

Again we see this father directly compare those that are God's children to those who are not God's children.

We have seen in chapter three an exhortation to this proverbs son on the absolute necessity to trust in the Lord.

This father has instructed his son to forget not his law and commandments for the father's law and commandments are simply the primer school which is to prepare the son for God's law and God’s commandments.

Be a merciful son, be a son of the truth, he is told.

Flee for refuge to the Lord as he were a fortress. This is trust.

Don't lean to yourself for understanding but lean in all thy ways to God.

In this Son, I implore you to Know God!

This is what acknowledge means.

Depend on God to direct your paths for you are incapable of knowing the way without God for God is the way.

And your paths will be directed when you know God.

In this always honor the Lord with your substance, knowing that he is the one who gave you all your substance and he expects you to learn to give by giving back to him what he has given you.

Giving to God is to be the beginning of a pattern of giving.

God intends for his children to be givers on God's behalf.

Servants of God are here to give for God.

Also son, know that God chastens his own and that chastening is simply a reminder that you are God's child.

You are not to kick against his chastening, you are not to sever yourself from his chastening.

Those who sever themselves from God's chastening quench the Spirit's working in their life as he conforms God's children to the image of God's Son, Jesus Christ.

Devote yourself fully to the pursuit of wisdom and understanding instead of the profit of this world knowing that the value of wisdom and understanding cannot be compared to anything that this world offers.

By wisdom and understanding your heavenly father has founded the earth and established the heavens.

This is the safe way, this is the wise way.

This will bring life unto thy soul and it will bring peaceful sleep and all slavish fear will vanish.

Serve the Lord in justice by being just to your neighbor and to those who serve you.

Those who live in peace by you, you are not to disturb and bring turmoil into their life.

If you are going to be engaged in strife be sure it is founded upon a right cause.

Avoid the froward so that you will choose none of his ways for the froward man is detestable to the Lord and his curse rests upon him.

But our Lord blesses the living place of those who are just.

And the father ends this chapter in verses 34, 35.

Surely he scorneth the scorners: but he giveth grace unto the lowly. The wise shall inherit glory: but shame shall be the promotion of fools.

Son, understand that God is in charge.

There is nothing done that God does not take note of.

The father uses the word surely, meaning there is no doubt about it, it follows as naturally as the sun comes up every morning, or the moon circles the earth, or the snow falls in winter.

This word surely indicates that this is so basic that it almost need not be said.

God is ever just and if justice does not take place by man justice will be exercised by God.

Surely he scorneth the scorners.

The scorner is a mocker of that which is good, that which is right, that which comes from the authority that God endorses.

Son, I teach you today as I have taught you yesterday that anyone who mocks will be mocked.

This father has already told of the crying out of Wisdom in the market place, in the concourse and the highways and byways:

Proverbs 1:22-33,  How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.

God proclaims it loud and clear.

Scorn, my Son and you will be scorned.

Oh, how we live in the day of the scorner.

This is the day when the word of God is mocked.

This is the day when the word of God is decried as old fashioned when compared with modern thought.

Just look at the readiness to accept the perversions of today justified by science in spite of the clear teaching of the word of God.

Things that were unthinkable just 30 years ago are commonly accepted beliefs and practices and encouraged by so called right thinking progressive people.

The Bible is rejected as just another out of date book and science is enthroned.

But God be true, God scorneth the scorners.

Read Psalm 2 in this light:

Son you cannot get away with scorning, you cannot get away with mocking the word of God!

Look at Nebuchadnezzar, and Haman, and Herod, and the Pharisees.

Oh such proud men, their pride blinding their eyes to the fragility of their condition.

Isaiah 66:1,2, Thus saith the LORD, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest? For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.

Surely he scorneth the scorners: but he giveth grace unto the lowly.

The lowly, those who know what a fragile condition in which they live.

Those who know that every beat of their heart is simply by the grace of an Almighty God.

Those who know that if not by the hand of God they would be today in hell.

Those who know that the sin that enchains them can only be broken by the word of God.

Oh how the fragility of life is revealed when the hurricane is headed our way.

Oh how fragile we become when the forest turns into a conflagration and the flames lick at our possessions.

Oh how fragile we are when just for a few weeks we receive no rain for the parched earth.

Son, the man of a poor or humble and contrite spirit knows his condition and flees for refuge daily to the Lord for his protection.

That is how God giveth grace to the lowly but scorners will continue to be scorned by a Holy God.

And lastly son, God promises: The wise shall inherit glory: but shame shall be the promotion of fools.

Son, we are not to envy the wicked because only the wise will inherit glory.

Only the wise will have the fatness of God.

Only the wise will be with God to enjoy forever the glories that are set before us in Jesus Christ.

The inheritance of the wise is to behold the glory of Jesus Christ and to enjoy him for ever.

As John records in John 17:24,  Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

And not only to behold his glory but to be like him forever.

As John records in:

1 John 3:2,  Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

But son, the only inheritance of fools is shame.

Be a fool and you will be promoted to a position of shame.

Those around you will say "What a shame" that so much promise ended up in such a condition!

What a shame!

The multitude of fools will soon discover that the life that they invested in the love of the world and the world's doctrines were but vanity.

What a shame, what a shame when all the mighty, all the worldly wise, all those who made money their God, and the pursuit of happiness on earth their reason for being.

What is shame when all of these prove themselves absolutely vain and empty.

Daniel 12:2,  Many that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt.