Proverbs 17:1 ESV
Better is a dry morsel with quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+17%3A1&version=ESV]
Modernity is prone to thinking in purely economic terms. We want top GDP, much money, high-up wealth, if you’ll pardon the grammar, and we have a deadly tendency to forget the costs. We want everybody to have enough to live very comfortably, and we don’t notice the side-effects of the steps we take to get there. This is quite prominent on a political level, where we’ll all familiar with governments that consider tax dollars more important than the wellness of the citizenry, but it shows up too in our personal lives. It’s easy, to a people steeped in a de-Christianizing culture, to set ‘money’ or ‘pleasure’ or some other worldly good above the peace of God.
See, ‘money’ and ‘economics’ aren’t the only benefits that can distract us from God’s peace. We can be distracted by fear of man (Matt. 10:26-28), by self-righteousness and the demand of earning salvation (Matt. 23:27-28), by having fun with the pleasures of the flesh (this proverb), even by the fun of intellectual pursuits. These things have good in them, of course. We should seek to understand our fellow men and anticipate their deeds. We should seek to obey His law and pursue holiness (Heb. 12:14). We should enjoy God’s world, both the sensual and the mental (Is. 65:18). The problem comes when we put them in a place they don’t belong.
When we make man the determiner of fate, whether in an individual relationship, whether as a leader of men, whether as a member of a conspiracy, whenever man usurps God in controlling the cosmos, we sin, and we destroy the peace which assurances such as Romans 8:28 should afford us. When we make ourselves the arbiters of our own salvation, the means and the cause of the necessary holiness to please God, which is impossible for us (James 2:17; 1 John 1:10), we sin. More, we destroy all the peace of His death on the cross. When we place as the greatest point in our lives the enjoyment of His good world and of fellowship with His image (Gen. 1:26), we sin. Further, as this proverb declares, by putting a smaller good above the greater, our joy in the creature above our joy in our Creator, then we destroy the peace He would give us and the joy we would get from either.
For only from God does true and abiding peace come to any man. Tranquility, perhaps, fallen man can find for a time, the peace of forgetfulness, oblivion, or distraction, but true peace is not so shallow or fleeting. True peace is the stability and surety of right relationship with Him, of harmony with God and in God with the fruit of eternity. Thus it is that Christ can declare He brings in Himself peace (John 16:33); thus it is that though in this world He brings a sword for the destruction of the wicked (Matt. 10:34), by that sword He establishes the kingdom wherein He reigns the “Prince of Peace,” so that “Of the increase… of peace there will be no end” (Is. 9:6-7).
It would be easy, for our worldly hearts, to seek this peace in a worldly way. We would argue that the final goal is peace, and so anything which increases peace now is sanctified, the right thing to do. On that ground we could compromise. On that ground we could call evil good and good evil, darkness light and light darkness, bitter sweet and sweet bitter (Is. 5:20). This is a path of death, however, another way to false peace. It is the same trap as before, in fact, the trap of preferring the lesser good, harmony between men, to the great good, harmony with God. Harmony between men, when it is harmony in sin, is in fact an actual evil, of which the psalmist says, “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, ‘As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill’” (Ps. 2:4-6).
True peace, the quiet which makes even a dry morsel better than all man’s feasting, that peace is reached only by Him and His righteousness (Ps. 4:8). Thus Psalm 85:10 declares, “Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.” Isaiah 32:17 puts it more explicitly: “And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.” We ourselves, of course, are wretched sinners, our greatest righteousness a seedbed for strife and not peace (Is. 64:6). Thus, it is by the righteousness of Christ imputed to us in His resurrection that we have the “peace which passes understanding” (Philippians 4:7). This is the peace which makes a dry morsel greater than all man’s crowns; this is the peace by which a man can sing to God’s glory as he burns; this is the peace of the New Jerusalem (Rev. 22:1-5).
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
