Divine enrichment
There is no inconsistency in the teaching of the text with that of Proverbs 10:4. For God blesses us by means of our own efforts and energy; indeed, we are more truly and fully enriched of God when his blessing comes to us as the consequence of our faith and labour.
I. THE OBJECTS AT WHICH WE AIM. Those without which we are apt to consider ourselves poor. They are these:
1. Material substance, or (as we commonly put it to ourselves) money.
2. Honour. A good measure of regard, duly and clearly paid by our fellows.
3. Power. The holding of a position in which we are able to decide and to direct.
4. Learning, or unusual sagacity; that intellectual superiority which enables us to lead or to command.
II. THE CONDITION UNDER WHICH THESE MAY BE REGARDED AS THE BLESSING OF GOD. This is when we can truly say that there is "no sorrow," i.e. no real cause for regret that we have come to possess and to enjoy them. But when is this?
1. When they have been acquired without any mason for self-reproach—justly, purely, honourably.
2. When we have not lost as much as we have gained by their acquisition. We may lose so much in time, or in health and energy, or in wise and elevating friendship, or in the opportunity for worship and service, that the balance in the sight of heavenly wisdom may be against us.
3. When they do not become a heavy burden which we can ill bear. This they often do become. Frequently wealth becomes more of a burden than a blessing to its possessor. He would be a much lighter-hearted and less care-encumbered man if he had not so much substance to dispose of and to preserve. And so of power and influence.
4. When they do not become a snare to us, leading us into pride, or into a selfish separateness and unneighbourliness, or into a guilty self-indulgence, or into "an unenlightened and unchristian disdain of the common people," or into an overweening and fatal miscalculation of our own power and importance, or into a deadening and suicidal worldliness. These great evils may not mean present "sorrow,' as we ordinarily understand that term. But they are such evils as our Divine Father sees with Divine regret; they are such as our heavenly Friend would fain deliver us from; and when riches of any kind end in them, they cannot be said to be the result of his blessing. Moreover, they all lead on and down, sooner or later, to grievous ends,; those who yield to them are on their way to "pierce themselves through with many sorrows" (1 Timothy 6:10). Hence—
III. THE PROFOUND WISDOM OF MODERATION in all human and earthly ambitions. Who shall say how much of riches he can stand? Who can tell where that point is to be found, on the other side of which is spiritual peril and ultimate "sorrow" of the worst kind? "Give me neither poverty nor riches" is the wish and the prayer of the wise and reverent.—C.
Proverbs
Proverbs 10 - proverbs-10 - worlddic.com