Proverbs 22:17

Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise; set your heart toward my knowledge.

The student is encouraged to approach the teacher’s instruction with a receptive attitude: “set your heart toward.”  One must be predisposed to wisdom in order to benefit from it.  -Tremper Longman III

What are you predisposed to today?

What have you set your heart toward this day?

Who have you determined to be today?

Proverbs 22:18

It will be good to keep these things in mind so that you are ready to repeat them.

It has been said that one learns most when teaching others. No doubt this is due, at least in part, to the preparation and assimilation that must take place in order to teach something well.  We may also say that one learns most from someone when truth is modeled.

Truth sinks into our innermost being thru its repetition, reminding, and memorization.  And thru the integration of it.

Again, we like Longman’s commentary here:

Verse 18 begins to give a motive for why students should be receptive to the teaching.  They will have good consequences if these sayings are internalized.  The term rendered “innermost being” in v.18 is literally “stomach.”  To guard them in your stomach is a picture of integrating them into the inmost part of a person’s being.  The integration of the teacher’s wisdom is prerequisite to its use in the student’s own life.  In other words, appropriation into students’ character is then followed by their own ability to express the wisdom: “Have them ready on your lips.”

This is what we do for each other daily.

Proverbs 22:19

So your trust will be in Yahweh, I will inform you, even you, today.

Verse 19 gives the theological motivation for the teaching of wisdom, the increase in trust in Yahweh.  This gives the teacher the urgency to impart instruction to the pupil.  It is not made explicit how the teaching will increase trust, and so we are left to speculate.  Perhaps the idea is that as the advice works in life, then it breeds confidence in its ultimate author.  Or perhaps it is calling on trust in Yahweh as the first step toward implementing the advice found here.  As one practices trust by following the advice, which may direct one in a not so obvious way (for instance, to be generous in order to grow more wealthy [11:24]), then one grows in trust as the unexpected consequences come.

-Tremper Longman III

Matthew 22:22,33,46

They were astonished.  No one was able to answer Him a word.

This chapter shows Jesus’ superior wisdom.  Listen to Him above all other humans.

These guys were playing “Stump the Messiah” and lost horribly.

Jesus was perfectly in tune with the Father while He walked the earth.  No one else was or is.  So listen first and foremost to Him via the Holy Spirit.

Only He has the words of life.