Proverbs 1:26

Wisdom laughs. Ha-ha! Wisdom mocks. You are not so tough now, fool! Wisdom laughs and ridicules men suffering calamities and terrorized with fear. There is no cruelty here, just the sound of divine justice making fun of fools and scorners who rejected instruction.

He who laughs last, laughs best. Lady Wisdom and the LORD Jehovah laugh last, and best. But this is no laughing matter for you, for these are some of the most sober words in the Bible. Men refusing to listen to instruction will be destroyed without mercy (Pr 1:20-32). In fact, Lady Wisdom declares that those who reject her must love death (Pr 8:36).

Fools and scorners laugh at those who try to teach, correct, and warn them. They hate them for trying to spoil their fun (Pr 9:7-8). When a horrible calamity lands on their heads and painful fear floods their hearts, it is only fitting that Lady Wisdom, who offered to save them, should be filled with laughter and ridicule as they are destroyed.

This view of wisdom, and the God of wisdom, is not popular in this effeminate and compromising age (II Tim 3:4-5; Heb 12:28-29). Laughter and ridicule at the horrible pain and morbid fear of fools and scorners are right. Do you know this God, reader? Or have you been taught fables about a make-believe sugar daddy in the sky as your God?

Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD?” and rejected Moses (Ex 5:2). After ten horrible plagues, including frogs, lice, and flies, and funerals for all the firstborn of Egypt, he was told Israel had left with much of the nation’s wealth. Driving furiously along the dry seabed of the Red Sea, the chariot wheels came off the best chariot Egypt could produce, and Pharaoh had a few moments to think about his disabled chariot in the midst of sea water looking more and more unstable! Surely heaven rang with God’s laughter joining in with Israel’s mocking song and dance over waterlogged Egyptian bodies (Ex 15:1-21)!

Space and time do not permit to tell the details of the flood, when those who laughed and mocked at Noah slipped under the waves with gopher wood under their fingernails and their mouths and nasal passages full of water. It was a calamity! It was fearful! But do not think God and Wisdom were wringing their hands in regret. These drowned wretches were intolerable, wicked haters of God and had been disobedient to Noah’s plain preaching for many years (Heb 11:7; I Pet 3:18-20). Now do you know this God, reader?

God laughs at the judgment of the wicked (Ps 37:13). He holds the heathen in derision (Ps 59:8), and He laughed derisively when destroying His Son’s enemies (Ps 2:4). It was so bad in that horrific calamity that men’s hearts failed them due to the fear (Luke 21:26).

He sent Elijah to mock the prophets of Baal (I Kgs 18:26-27) and Isaiah to ridicule the idiots who made statues of gods (Is 44:9-20). From the lead of their Heavenly Father, the righteous laugh and rejoice at the desolation of the wicked (Ps 52:5-7; 58:5). You can find the holy martyrs in heaven rejoicing at God’s vengeance (Re 6:9-11; 18:20; 19:1-4).

When Lady Wisdom, personifying God’s wisdom, offers you instruction and wisdom, you better take it. Irremediable judgment is coming, if you do not (Pr 29:1). You may think you are getting away with your carelessness, but God is about to tear you in pieces (Ps 50:21-22). Humble yourself before His Word and tremble lest you miss a single one!

What should you do? Jesus said it perfectly in several different ways, “Take heed therefore how ye hear” (Luke 8:18). And, “Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder” (Matt 21:44). And “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him” (Luke 12:4-5).

Follow this example. Cornelius gathered relatives and friends to meet Peter in Caesarea. He told Peter bluntly, “Thou hast well done that thou art come. Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God” (Ac 10:33).

When Saul of Tarsus met the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road, he had the only right response to the divine sovereignty of this glorious King. He said, and every sober reader should say it with him, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” (Acts 9:6). Amen.