1. "The ANTS are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.”
The summer is the time when we have the opportunity to prepare our food for the winter that is fast coming upon us. The ants are exceeding wise because they take advantage of this opportunity and prepare their meat in the summer. Soon many will have to cry, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." "Exceeding wise" is the one who prepares his meat now, when he may do so.
In John 4:3535Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. (John 4:35), the Lord tells us: "Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest." The white harvest fields tell us that the time for the harvest is rapidly passing away.
“The harvest of the earth is dried.” (Margin.) The dried up harvest fields tell us it is too late for the harvest. In Jer. 8:2020The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. (Jeremiah 8:20), we hear the sad cry: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." And that means they are LOST, LOST forever.
2. "The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.”
Like the feeble, little ants, they are "exceeding wise." They find their refuge in the cleft rock. They know the truth of the words of Psa. 18:22The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. (Psalm 18:2): "The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.”
The ants teach us to prepare our food while we may: Christ, the bread of life.
The conies teach us to find our refuge in the rock, and that rock is Christ.
Having found food and refuge in Christ, the one who is wise, though perhaps weak and small, will now find Christ to be the One who gathers unto Himself. It may be that those "gathered together" unto Him are only "two or three," but we will find that Christ Himself is there in our midst. And the one who is thus gathered I together unto the Name of the Lord Jesus is, in God's sight, "exceeding wise.”
True, the world may not think so. The world would seek "a king," and the locusts "have no king," no visible, earthly leader or ruler, but they have the word of their Lord: "Where two or three are gathered together in [unto] My Name, there am I in the midst of them." And what more can we want?
4. "The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces.”
When Moses made the tabernacle, God commanded that every board in it should rest upon two silver sockets, and each socket should weigh a talent: "a talent for a socket." Ex. 38:2727And of the hundred talents of silver were cast the sockets of the sanctuary, and the sockets of the vail; an hundred sockets of the hundred talents, a talent for a socket. (Exodus 38:27). The weight was about 100 pounds. The silver for these sockets was provided by the "redemption money," and tells us of our redemption. Every board had two tenons, or, as the margin puts it, "two hands." And these "hands" took hold of the silver sockets "Two sockets under one board for his two tenons [or, hands,] and two sockets under another board for his two tenons [or, hands.]" Ex. 26:1919And thou shalt make forty sockets of silver under the twenty boards; two sockets under one board for his two tenons, and two sockets under another board for his two tenons. (Exodus 26:19).
I think those "hands" which took hold of the silver sockets, tell us of each believer taking hold, by faith, of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.
Thus we learn from Exodus of the faith of the spider in Proverbs that took hold with her hands and is in kings' palaces. Mr. Darby's translation gives us "lizard" instead of spider, and those who have lived in the tropics and watched the little lizards running about on the ceiling, by "taking hold with her hands," and there devouring the mosquitoes and other insects that so often inhabit a tropical house will better understand the force of "taking hold with her hands." Those little hands of the lizard are provided with what they need to take hold, in some unseen manner, of the ceiling of the kings' palaces, and there she makes her home.
It is true, as the locusts taught us, that we have no visible king, but the spider (or, lizard) tells us that by faith we look for the Father's house, a home, where "God is known in her palaces for a refuge." Psa. 48:33God is known in her palaces for a refuge. (Psalm 48:3). And of the One of whom it is said, "God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows," it is also said, "All Thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made Thee glad." Psa. 45:7, 87Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. 8All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad. (Psalm 45:7‑8).
Just one word more. Note that the ants and the conies and the locusts are all in the plural, but when we come to the one that takes hold with her hands, we find the singular only. Faith must be an individual thing, something for each one of us. I must take hold of those silver sockets of redemption for my very own self. May God help us to have the exceeding wisdom of these FOUR LITTLE THINGS.
G. C. Willis