The Fear of the Lord

Text: Proverbs 1:1–7 ESV

Merry Christmas everyone. We’re a couple days past now, but I hope your Christmas celebration was a sweet time for you, not just spending time with family, but spending time with the Lord.

Introduction 

We are starting something new today, even though we’re not quite into the new year, which traditionally is the starting line for new things. If you’ve been at Table Rock for any length of time, you’ve surely noticed there are several of us who routinely preach. Many, if not most, churches have one primary preaching pastor with an occasional sermon from a different pastor, elder, or guest. This system works well and is a perfectly valid way to glorify the Lord. Because one preacher is the norm, it is a bit distinctive that at Table Rock, we have a regular rhythm of several preachers. I personally have been blessed by it and hope you, too, enjoy hearing from multiple voices regularly. 

The difficulty for us has been providing continuity and coordination in our sermons. We have found that sometimes we step on the toes of the subsequent sermon, so to speak, or that we don’t quite hit the notes that best fit into the broader goals of the sermon series. So, we decided to try something new and see how it goes. This year, each of us that regularly preaches is going to essentially have our own series to preach through. Ryan is going to be preaching through a section of the gospel of Matthew for his series, Don is going to be preaching through Zephaniah, and Andrew and I are going to be preaching out of the book of Proverbs together. 

While this could potentially cause a bit of whiplash from week to week and seem to bring discontinuity, we’re actually hoping it does just the opposite and brings better continuity. It will allow each of us to craft the sermon to fit into the series more easily and hit the right emphases. As we move along, we’d love your feedback, but at this point, we’re very excited about it. 

And so today, I get to kick off Andrew’s and my series on the book of Proverbs. There are a couple of ways to preach through this book. The first is to pluck verses, or passages, or themes out and study them independently, much like you’re able to do with the book of Psalms. The second is to take the book as a whole and work through it. We are doing the former. We’re not going through all of the book, but taking passages and themes and focusing on them, largely independent from the broader context of the book. It is also worthwhile to do the latter as well, and Lord willing, we will someday get to that approach in a sermon series in our church. This year, however, Andrew and I will be doing more ‘one-off’ sermons that are looking at a particular piece of wisdom from Proverbs each time we preach.  

Background

As we begin our series in this book, I do want to provide some of the broader framework for Proverbs. Most of the book was written by Solomon, as we see at the start of our passage today. Verse one also notes that Solomon was the son of King David. You may be familiar with his story at the beginning of 1st Kings. The Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream and said, “Ask what I shall give you.” And Solomon, being a very young ruler, asks the Lord for wisdom. Presumably, Solomon could have asked for anything here, but his request was for wisdom. Not a long life, not riches, not the death of his enemies, not adventure, not notoriety, not infamy, not possessions, not power, but wisdom. And as an added bonus, because God was pleased with Solomon’s answer, he was also pleased to give him riches and honor. Solomon was universally regarded by people in his day as being wise. Now we all know wise people, but he was wise to the degree that it made him conspicuously wise to everybody. So it is out of this generous gifting from the Lord of wisdom in Solomon, through the moving of the Spirit of God, that we have the majority of the book of Proverbs. 

When we think of Proverbs, we usually think of the one liners. Those short, clever sayings that offer some kind of wisdom. This is for good reason—Proverbs has plenty of those. However, there is more going on in the book. The first nine chapters are set as speeches from a father to a son and feature wisdom personified as a woman, and she is woven into the fabric of God’s creation. These first chapters are a poetic way of explaining that the proverbs are not just good advice or pithy sayings, but it reveals that we live in a moral universe ruled by the wisdom of God. So, living according to the proverbs is living along the grain of the universe. 

The middle section of Proverbs, which contains nearly all of the clever sayings the book is most famous for, is a bit tricky, so we need to couch our sermon series in rightly understanding what the book of Proverbs is claiming and what it is not. The Proverbs that we find in the middle chapters, chapters 10-29, speak into every aspect of our lives. Marriage, generosity, debt, substance abuse, speech, character, and on and on. They’re meant to be easily memorizable and for us to return to for guidance time and time again. However, these are not meant to be viewed as absolutes. Proverbs should not be confused with Law, as in ‘though shall or though shalt not.” Nor should Proverbs be confused with prophesy, as in “thus says the Lord.” 

This was confusing for me when I first came to Proverbs and remained challenging until fairly recently. I would read something like Proverbs chapter 12, verse 13, where it says, 

“An evil man is ensnared by the transgression of his lips, but the righteous escapes from trouble.” (Proverbs 12:13 ESV)

The trouble for me was, I was able to easily find a multitude of counter-examples. I was left saying, “wait a minute…what’s going on here?” I’d read other proverbs that seemed to say that if you worked hard, you’d be rich and then read one later that would seem to say the opposite, that the poor work hard, but oppression takes it away. How are we to understand this? I was reading Proverbs as rules, as “if-then” statements that were bound to come true. 

Instead, I’ve learned that a better way is to think of them as probabilities. The Proverbs are meant to be read as how the world ordinarily works. You see, there are two truths that interact within the Proverbs and create this confusion I was experiencing. The first is that within creation, God included a created order, so in general these Proverbs are truths. But the parallel reality is that we live in a fallen, broken world. Sin has ruined this divine order, so sometimes you do everything right, and it still doesn’t work out. It’s a broken order. While everything is always within God’s sovereignty and plans, sin has corrupted the original perfect order so the proverbs are no longer absolutes, but they do remain probabilities. 

Proverbs was written for those who want to know God and explore how to live well in God’s world. One pastor defined the Proverbs this way, “competency with regard to the complexities of life.” So Proverbs aren’t promises; they aren’t guarantees. They provide wisdom in how to navigate life.

The last two chapters are poems from two men, one name Agur, and one named Lemuel. Agur admits he has no wisdom, but provides for us a model of how to apply the Scriptures to help us. Lemuel’s poem is passing on the wisdom from his mother. She takes God’s wisdom and practices it all in her life. 

So, everything I’ve said so far is all just set up and overview for this sermon series. We haven’t yet dove into our text for today! Andrew and I are both excited about getting into Proverbs more, and we hope you, too, find it helpful in your walk with the Lord.

Proverbs 1

This passage is the introduction to all of the book. Verse 1 is easy. It simply informs us that the author of this section is Solomon. But then, our passage takes on a slightly confusing structure that can throw off the reader a bit. Verses 2–6 border on being incomplete sentences in English, which makes them a bit hard to understand. While the structure is confusing, verses 2–7 accomplishes two things. First, it calls out who the book is for, and second, it provides the underlying foundation for the entire book of Proverbs. 

I want to first look at the structure and make sense of verses 2–6. The structure of the passage is similar to the form of these sentences: “To make a delicious cake, follow the recipe.” Or, “To hit a fastball out of the park, keep your eye on the ball.”  So verses 2–6 are that “to” piece. And verse 7 is the instructional, climactic solution in how to obtain the “to.” So let’s read verses 2–6 again, and then we’ll look closely at verse 7. 

Proverbs 1:2–6

“To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth—

Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles.”  (Proverbs 1:2-6 ESV)

If I were to try to capture verses 2–6 in a more modern way, here’s how I would put it. “If anyone wants to be wise and eager to learn, if you want to understand good insights, or receive instruction in how to wisely engage in business, or learn how to be righteous or just, or how to be equitable, if you are simple but want to be disciplined in the use of reason, if you’re young and want to gain knowledge and become more discerning, or if you’re already wise and want to increase in learning, and if you already understand much but want to obtain more guidance, if you desire to understand a proverb or clever sayings or follow when a wise person gives you a riddle, then listen carefully to what I say next.” 

See, verses 2–6 are just a set up for verse 7, and I think we’re meant to relate to many of these, to think to ourselves or exclaim, “yeah, I want that!” It’s like saying, “hey you, do you want to be wise?” Of course! Who answers no to that question? “Would you like instruction in how to handle what the world throws at you?” Of course! It’s a no-brainer. We all want that.  

This introduction is somewhat like Solomon is standing outside of a house. And Solomon has furnished this house extravagantly with pearls and jewels, silver, gold; it is filled with awe and wonder. And in the introduction, Solomon is standing outside his house and inviting everyone passing by to come and explore all of the rooms. “Who wants wisdom? Come in and look around! You, young man—how would you like to become more mature in your understanding of how to live a good life? Come explore my house! You there, ma’am, how would you like to increase your righteousness? Come in, come in! And you there, you look a bit simple…want to become a bit more complex in your thinking? Enter! You, sir, you’ve surely become wise in your age, come on in and become wiser still!” 

This is basically what is going on here, but it is nuanced to be even stronger than a simple call to wisdom. It’s saying something more like, “If you want to be wise and understanding, if you want to handle what the world throws at you, it’s essential that you understand this first truth that I will share with you.” In other words, If you want what verses 2–6 are offering, the foundation for all of those is that you understand verse 7. We all want to be wise, we all want to be educated in how to deal with the world, to be prudent, discerning, righteous, and insightful. People who don’t follow the Lord still see value in many of the Proverbs of Solomon. However, for those who don’t understand and live in light of verse 7, the rest of the proverbs lack their full depth and beauty. So, let’s spend the rest of the time looking at verse 7. 

Proverbs 1:7

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:7 ESV)

The fear of the Lord is a common phrase throughout the book of Proverbs, and a nearly identical verse is found in chapter 9, verse 10. There, however, the word ‘knowledge’ is changed to wisdom. So, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (or wisdom), and fools despise wisdom and instruction. 

To get the most from this verse, I want to dig into the “beginning of knowledge.” In order to really understand the importance of the fear of the Lord and categorize it correctly in our minds, I think we have to pause for a minute and first understand the emphasis being placed on this being “the beginning”. 

The beginning means it’s not only the starting point, but it’s also the chief point. Without this key piece, all other knowledge is vain and useless. You see, what this verse is saying in calling it the beginning of knowledge is that without it, nothing else is going to make sense in the same way it will if you have it. It is essential. We have to get this right if we’re to rightly understand the knowledge and wisdom from God. 

So let’s return to to this house that Solomon is inviting us to explore. He’s cast the invitation, but, in order to get the most of our exploration of his rooms, we have to turn on the light. Unlike most houses, this house of Solomon’s has one light switch which will illuminate all the rooms. If you miss it, you can still explore the house a bit and it may still provide some help, but you will be exploring in the dark. If you want every room illuminated, if you want to truly be able to appreciate the full depth and beauty of the contents of the house, this light switch is oh so very helpful, and in fact essential. It’s the first step, and it’s also the essential step. With a missed beginning point, the entire experience is going to be affected. Should you miss the light switch, you’ll be stumbling around trying to feel your way through the house, turning over objects in your hands but not really seeing it in the same way, all because the starting point is flawed, it affects everything that comes after. The beginning point matters. It’s essential. 

What verse 7 is saying is the fear of the Lord is the beginning point and chief point if we want to understand the rest of the book of Proverbs; this and even more.  Understanding the fear of the Lord is essential if we want to understand God, ourselves, and the world. That’s the importance of the beginning. 

Now let’s look at what is meant by knowledge. The word here is not just knowledge as in a collection of facts, it’s knowledge applied. It’s not just smarts, it’s street smarts. Our word knowledge in English is lacking in ability to fully capture what is meant in this verse. We already took note that in chapter 9, knowledge is replaced with the word wisdom. So wisdom and knowledge are interchangeable here, but either way, we’re talking about what we need for the hard decisions in life. This type of knowledge and wisdom is meant for those decisions that we struggle with. You see, many decisions are driven by facts. You gather the data, and it provides a clear answer or conclusion. These are the easy if-then decisions we make. And there are other decisions which are driven by values. You know what is right, and you know what is wrong, and if you’re a person of character, you do what is right. But the hardest decisions are not fact driven or values driven, but take wisdom and discernment. Should I date this person? Should I break up with this person? Should I make a career move? Should I uproot myself or my family and move to a different house or city? Should I open my mouth and confront this person? What should I spend this extra chunk of money on? There may be many right decisions, but which one is wise? Not just morality and not just facts are needed in these instances. Wisdom is needed.  

I mentioned earlier that a pastor named Tim Keller describes the knowledge and wisdom in Proverbs 1:7 as “competency with regard to the complexities of life.” Another way I heard wisdom described is, “the accumulated insight of God’s people through generations.” And so through the book of Proverbs, these human words about wisdom have been put together as God’s Word and Wisdom to his people. Wisdom is knowing how to live well in God’s world. 

And to have this knowledge and wisdom, this competency with regard to the complexities of life, we need to understand the fear of the Lord. This phrase doesn’t readily unlock itself, does it? The language restrictions of English make it difficult to fully capture what is meant by Biblical fear in just one word. Without careful study and effort, we may have an inadequate understanding of fear and thus miss out on the light switch to understand everything else in the book.  

It seems there are two kinds of fear. The first is what comes to mind most often and is a fear of something bad. We fear something that can hurt us. But there also exists the fear of something when it is unbelievably good. The fear this verse is talking about is not the fear of an abusive, domineering father who is seeking to harm you. Rather, this fear is rooted in a realization that God knows you: all of you, in your completeness and entirety. It’s a knowing that extends to the depths of you. God knows what makes you tick, what your heart motivations are, what your greatest hopes and fears are. It’s a knowledge that sees you as completely and utterly undressed before him. He knows every detail of your being, and here’s why it’s scary: you cannot run from him. You cannot hide from him. The only option is surrender—to run to him—and when you do, you find the embracing arms of a loving father. 

And beloved, this is the key to unlocking verse seven. The fear of the Lord is inextricably coupled with the love of the Lord. It’s being known to your core, and yet in that knowledge, being simultaneously loved in equal depth. Being fully known and fully loved creates a reverent fear. It is a reverence for God and works itself out in an obedience to God. The fear of the Lord is having a right perspective on who we are and who God is. If we want to understand the world around us, according to the Word of God in Proverbs, this fear is the foundation of all of our understanding of him. 

God is surely to be feared. We’re told in Matthew, 

“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:28 ESV)

God alone has the power of judgment, and that judgement and wrath for sin is coming.  But with one hand, he’s holding back his judgement and wrath and with the other, he’s extending to us his mercy and beckoning us to accept it before his wrath is released.

In Psalm 130, it says, 

“If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” (Psalm 130: 3-4 ESV)

There is forgiveness, that God may be feared? This only makes sense when the power to mark iniquities, to hold us accountable for who we are at our core—sinners—is coupled with a forgiving love. In the Bible, we are confronted over and over with an omnipotent God who at once terrifies us and yet draws us near in love. 

In The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, CS Lewis uses the character of Aslan, a mighty Lion, to depict Christ. In one scene in the book, Mr. Beaver is telling young Susan about Aslan. He says, “Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion,” to which Susan says “I’d thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” Mr Beaver responds, “Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”

You see, if fear of the Lord simply means fear of a punishing God, the outworking in our behavior is to manipulate and manage. It becomes a game of behavior management, a legalistic pursuit. This is ineffectual and misses what God is after; He wants our heart. We are fully known and yet fully loved, and that is fear inducing. Awe inducing. Reverence inducing. And in our awe and reverence, or fear, the response is one of eager obedience, not legalistic compulsion.

There is a counter-intuitive aspect to this fear as well. We are used to fleeing what we fear or fighting it. Yet, in this holy fear, we can instead rest in the goodness and love that is coupled with the power. Psalm 34 says, 

“The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him.” (Psalm 34:7a ESV)

The more you fear the Lord and see Him as high and lifted up, the more you actually get to experience Him in intimacy. Because who does he draw near to? It’s the one who fears Him, the one who recognizes Him for who He is. In humility, if we can rightly understand our own position in comparison to God’s position, He lifts us up and makes himself known to us. 

Elizabeth Elliot has a great analogy for the fear of the Lord. She wrote about visiting some friends in Wales who owned a sheep farm. While there, she witnessed an event that happened every year. In Wales, it seems, the sheep were vulnerable to being literally eaten alive by parasites and insects. So, once a year, they had to fill a huge pool with antiseptic and submerge the sheep in it. So John the farmer would direct them into the pool and submerge them. Of course the sheep would all be panicking and frantically trying to get out. If they tried to escape out one of the edges of the pool, Mack, the sheep dog, would snarl and snap at them to keep them in. If they tried to get out on the ramp where John was, he would pick them up, turn them around, and force them back under the water, “holding them ears, eyes, and nose submerged for a few seconds.” Those sheep had to wonder what was going on, and their fear was rightly held, because from their perspective, the shepherd was powerful and held their life in his hands. Yet the shepherd was loving toward the sheep, in fact saving their lives, through the very terror inducing action he was taking. 

Wisdom and The Fool

And now, quickly, let’s look at the very end of our passage. Here, Solomon gives us the first of many contrasts between the wise person and the fool. If wisdom and knowledge is found in fearing the Lord, the opposite approach is to despise wisdom and instruction. The fool tramples wisdom under foot, rejecting instruction. Essentially, the fool rejects any correction that someone would offer if it doesn’t align with their thinking. The fool despises anything that disagrees with his or her own will. At it’s root, there is a pride and arrogance in the fool, who doesn’t correctly recognize their place versus God’s place in the world. 

But here’s the thing, we are each of us capable of being wise or capable of being fools on any given day. We all, at times, are too quick to reject instruction and wisdom because we’re spun up and blinded by our own emotions and pride. It’s not that we can’t listen to wisdom and instruction, it’s that we won’t. It’s like not going to a doctor because you know what he’s going to say: you need to stop smoking, exercise more, lose weight, etc. It’s an unwillingness to engage wisdom because it differs from our will.

We need the Spirit of God to bring us back from this foolish pursuit and hardness of heart. We need the Word of God to speak into our lives. And we need brothers and sisters to help point us back to the Lord. So, who is teaching you to fear the Lord in your daily life? Are your conversations dominated by pleasant discussion, or a safe place to share your emotions, but lacking in truth? Are you challenged by your Christian friends to remember who God is and who you are? This is a gift from the Lord that we’ll return to in Proverbs: the gift of fellow followers of Christ to help us not be fools. And are you in God’s Word? Drinking in the wisdom from above to help you navigate the hard decisions in life? We need both of these—faithful friends pointing us to God and a regular intake of God’s Word. 

We have to drop our pride and humbly remember: the fear of the Lord is rooted in God’s love for us and goodness toward us. And in this fear, we necessarily have to operate in every other aspect of our lives. Solomon says it is only in understanding this that we can begin to rightly understand his proverbs and wisdom found in the rest of the book. It’s the light switch that will illuminate the rest of the house and allow us to see in the light what more the Lord has for us.

And, magnificently, it’s in the light of his wonderful grace that we get to celebrate communion together. In communion we are reminded of the fear of the Lord. We’re remembering what God has done for us in Jesus. Christ lived a flawless, sinless life, and then laid himself down as a sacrifice for our flawed, sinful life. We’re remembering we have been forgiven and our souls have been saved at a great cost. Instead of judging us for our sin, our God has extended mercy to all who would repent and come to Him, and has placed the burden and penalty of our sin upon himself. This is pure love. And yet, there is a reverent fear as well. We are warned in 1 Corinthians 11: 27-29, 

“Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgement on himself.” (1 Corinthians 11: 27-29 ESV)

There is much we could be frightened by in our world, and yet we are told to not be afraid of anything except for God. This is the right placement of fear, the fear of the Lord. And so, receive this benediction from Joshua 1:9: 

“Be strong and courageous, do not be frightened, do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9 ESV)

Thanks for worshipping with us this morning, have a very joyful New Year!