Wisdom is Found in Those Who Take Advice (Proverbs 13:10)

Some topics covered in Proverbs 13 include:

• teacheability (1),
• mouth/speech control (2,3),
• listening to/taking advice...again (10),
• being influenced (20),
• disciplining children (24).

13:20 Education by Friendship (Walk with the Wise--Become Wise). The simple lesson is that we become like those whose company we keep. This is the power of association to shape character, for regular companions inevitably influence each other, for good or ill. Thus, Christians are encouraged to "not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing" (Hebrews 10:25).

13:1 Are you teacheable? Teaching and instruction--beginning from a child's father at home--produces a wise child (1a). Refusing this or lacking this often results in a mocker or a scorner, who is a fool in the last stages of folly (26:12).

13:2,3 How hard it is for anyone to guard thier lips; how easy to speak rashly, bringing ruin (3; 10:14; 18:7). Thus, fools who ruin themselves abound, while one of the clearest marks of wisdom is the ability to control the tongue.

13:4 Unfulfilled craving, or full satisfaction? The difference between laziness and diligence.

13:7 Don't take a man at his own valuation. Things are not always as they seem.

13:10 In Proverbs, wisdom is repeatedly correlated with those who take advice (13:10), those who listens to advice (12:15), and those who have many advisors (11:14). The proud, lacking wisdom, produce quarrels, strive and divisions (10a). How proud is our hard heart that instinctively and spontaneously rejects advice, and become foolish!

13:13 The importance of respecting and revering words and commands.

13:24 When a child is lovingly disciplined (to drive out folly and rebellion), they grow up loving their parents. When a child is not disciplined for fear of hurting them, they "hate" their parents! By witholding discipline, we are inadvertently producing a generation of adults who routinely ship their aging parents off to nursing homes!