Proverbs 1:1-7

Discussion Questions

1.  When you think of fearing the Lord, do you think of trembling in terror or regarding with awe and wonder? Or both? Why?
2. In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis states that the proud take a posture of looking down on others. How can pride keep us from God’s wisdom?
3.  James 1:5 encourages us to ask God for wisdom and He will give generously. Where else are we tempted to look for wisdom? Why?
4. Pastor Jim references a Bible teacher who said that if you have stood before God and never trembled, “it may not be the Lord you’re standing before.” What does this mean? Do you agree? How might God’s wisdom help us view Him more accurately?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. And we begin today a new six-week series that will take in Proverbs. I’m very excited about this. Most of us would acknowledge that growing in wisdom is desirable, but just what is it, really important question. How does wisdom differ from knowledge, for instance? Where does wisdom come from, and how can we get more of it?

Anybody need a copy? By the way, I forgot to say that. Anybody need a copy? Raise your hand up real high. We’ll be in the first chapter of Proverbs. It’s sort of in the middle of your Bible, if you just want to open up there. If you prefer to be online and check out the notes and the quotes and all that sort of thing, there’s a QR code up on the screen, and you are welcome to take advantage of that.

For those of you who are joining us from online, welcome. We’re so glad that you have joined us for worship and for this study of Proverbs. We’re calling it the Wisdom and the Ways of God and, today in particular, going to focus in on the fear of the Lord. This is a phrase that repeats over and over. Before we get started though, a little anecdote. Probably, I think the best guess is 40 million books have been sold in the For Dummies series. How many of you have a For Dummies book of any kind, whatsoever? Yeah, a few of you do. Good. Yeah, it’s [inaudible 00:01:25]. I have some of those as well.

There are over 300 titles, Quantum Physics for Dummies, Computer Repair for Dummies, Low-Carb Dieting for Dummies, I like that, yeah. Computer Repair for Dummies, Digital Photography for Dummies, Dating for Dummies. Anybody try that? Yeah. Okay. And Depression for Dummies, for the people that tried the first one didn’t work. Drones, I like this, Drones for Dummies. That sounds awesome to me. Astrology for Dummies, and I kind of thought that was always for dummies.

What has a big rock, millions and millions and millions of miles away, got to do with your personality? Nothing. Save you the money on that one, okay? And I hope I won’t offend anybody, in a way, the Book of Proverbs, it’s wisdom for dummies because the Lord has put on the bottom shelf so easily accessible to people who previously have been rebels, previously before Christ, before recognizing God in their lives at all, had gone their own way, thought they knew what was best.

And the Bible really talks about a couple of different kinds of wisdom. And when we turn to the book of Proverbs, we’ll be looking for the wisdom of God. We got three goals today, and we’re going to do all this in one day, believe it or not. We want to introduce the book of Proverbs. We want to identify the central theme of Proverbs, and we’re going to show how the wisdom of God finds its ultimate expression in the person and work of Jesus, all of that in 30 minutes’ time. So please listen fast. Okay.

By way of introducing the book itself, the genres, wisdom literature, ancient wisdom literature’s one of my faves, I mean, in terms of a category. And you find several of the books, especially in the Old Testament, offer us this category of literature. But we expect from wisdom literature, it’s very simple, wisdom. Okay. That’s clear. So that’s what we’re going for here. 31 chapters, 915 verses, about 15,043 words in most English translations. And some English translations are a little bit different from others, so that might vary. If you go and count them, please do not send me an email saying that there were 15,053 in your translation. That’s just my translation right there. Authorship and date mostly, but not exclusively. Solomon, King David’s son, Solomon, 1 Kings 4:32 tells us Solomon spoke 3,000 proverbs. That’s a lot.

Also tells us that he may have written a thousand songs. So all you songwriters in the room, a thousand songs. That’s brilliant. He probably did all of this during the time he was actually king, 966 to 921 BC. His great wisdom was well known during his day.

In 1 Kings 3, we read how Solomon asked God for wisdom, and it was granted. In 1 Kings 10, “Now, all the earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.” So that wisdom was magnetic. It was charismatic. It drew people in.

Other authors are also credited in Proverbs such as Agur, Proverbs chapter 30, King Lemuel, Proverbs chapter 31. And chapters 25 through 29 were sort of a collected, edited group by Hezekiah who reigned as king 715 to 686 BC. We can surmise there may indeed have been others. But for some reason, they weren’t credited by their individual names.

The word proverb itself comes from a Hebrew word, mashal, and it refers to a statement of sagacity, insight, wisdom similar to a parable in that a mashal carries with it the idea of comparison. The words wisdom or wise, some kind of root word like that, used over 300 times throughout the scripture. And in Proverbs, just the book of Proverbs, a third of those can be found in the 31 chapters we have that we call Proverbs.

It will often teach us by comparing things, contrasting things like right and wrong, wisdom and folly, righteousness and wickedness, discipline and recklessness, better and best, which I think that’s very helpful in this day and age in which we live.

There are a lot of things that are good but may not be prudent. There are a lot of things that are better than some other things but may not be the best. So that’s good. Diligence, laziness, honesty and falsehood, humility and pride, confidence and fear, instruction and impulse, friends and foes. So I hope that has piqued your interest.

It certainly has piqued mine along the way. I find Proverbs helps us answer some questions or at least manage some questions, including what should we value in life? What kind of people turn out to be faithful friends? And what does it mean to be a good friend? What’s the wisest way to manage our resources like money, time, and other resources?

What’s the wisest way to discipline our children? What should we do with our anger, our hurt feelings? Boy, I just wish for that alone, our culture would read Proverbs. How do we manage our desires for things like food or sex or power? Again, very important timeless wisdom there.

What’s the wisest way to express ourselves when using words? We could spend six weeks on that, so I look forward to we’ll be studying that as one of our six weeks’ chapter or emphases, I guess. What does wisdom have to say about the more notorious sins, lying, drunkenness, greed, anger, and pride? It does have something to say about those things. God has something to say about those things, and I think it’s important for us to sit up straight and listen and see what God has to say.

Can wisdom help us avoid temptation, trials, conflict or calamity? Always, some of the time, most of the time? Would I be derelict if I ignored? No matter what that answer is, no matter how many times it helps me avoid it, would I be derelict in not taking the advice of Godly wisdom? That’s good.

And my favorite, can wisdom help me get a better night’s sleep? It’s one of my favorite proverbs. We’ll get there soon. About 500 years after the time that Proverbs was probably written, most of it was probably written, this guy named Socrates whom you’ve heard of, so he’s credited with this,

“All the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set sail when we leave this earth. If only there was a firmer foundation upon which to sail, perhaps some divine word.”
Socrates (469-399 B.C.)

I’ve posted that quote up here many times, and I keep going back to it myself. And I wish that Socrates had a copy of Proverbs. I guess the publishing company didn’t quite get it that far west when they were working on distributing the book of Proverbs.

What is wisdom? Why is it important? Where can we find it? These are really important questions, and I think even in the first seven verses here, we’re going to find some of the answers to some of those kinds of questions. We’ll see that Proverbs is more than a collection of pithy fortune cookie moralism, much deeper than the kind of thinking you’re going to find promoted on social media, in pop culture, or even from many institutions of so-called higher learning.

The book of Proverbs offers us divine wisdom from God, that firmer foundation, upon which we can set sail as we go through this life and head to the next life. As we come to this new study, our method will be a little bit different than you’re used to here.

We usually go verse by verse, chapter by chapter and through a whole book. But for these six weeks, we’ll be focusing in on just six primary topics or themes that we find running through. There are more than six. “Why did you choose those six,” you might ask. And if you did, we would just have to say, “Because it seemed good to us.” Those of us that are on this preaching team here and that meet every single week, we chose from quite a nice long list, these six topics that we’ll be looking at.

So I want to encourage you though along the way for the six weeks to be reading through Proverbs. I really recommend that you do that. Read the chapter of Proverbs every day that corresponds with the day of the month. So today is the 23rd. And since I’m just starting doing that again in my own discipline this morning, I read chapter 23, listen to what was in chapter 23. I’m not going to read the chapter. I’m just going to tell you it included God’s wisdom on how to think about politicians.

It included God’s wisdom on how to think about wealth, how to think about selfish people, how to think about foolish people, how to think about boundaries in life, how to think about the subject of discipline in my life, how to think about whether I’m envious of others, or how I feel about is there a future hope, all of that in one chapter. If you marinate on this for the whole six weeks that we’ll be going through proverb, if you read a chapter a day that corresponds with the date of the month, that is going to be a feast for all of us in wisdom.

So last side road before we dig in, I want to encourage you to think about how you’ll approach this read. These are some 3,000-year-old sayings. And some of you’re going to think, “Well, it never says anything about air conditioning or computers.” That’s true. It doesn’t.No. There’s not much there, although it does say something about whether or not you should wake someone up really with a loud voice or not.

That’s right.

Yeah. All the people that like to sleep in a little bit later, you can get real excited about the wisdom that’s going to come from that, the sort of balancing people out. We, morning people, tend to turn up the music just a little too loud as we sing and cook and do all the things we do as we’re getting ready.

But let’s pray, and then we’re going to read the first seven verses. And we’re going to make sure to try and hit our goal of all three of the things I mentioned earlier. Heavenly Father, Your word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Help us see with clarity where we are standing right now and in which direction we ought to be moving.

You are God, and we humble ourselves before You and before Your word. Lord Jesus Christ, in You are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Open our eyes that we may see the wisdom of Your word. Holy Spirit, give us grace that we may gain understanding. Open our hearts that we may receive instruction from You, and then give us the courage and the faith to choose to walk in Your ways of wisdom. This we pray in the name of Jesus, amen and amen.

So the fear of the Lord will be our first subject, verses 1 through 7 of chapter 1. Set your eyes on the page. It really helps. It’s a bit like the patchwork quilt. Often, there are some sections that hang together really well. And in that section, you’re thinking, “Oh, that was meant to be all read together.” And then there are other times where you’re going left, right, left, right. It’s like the short attention span wisdom book. It’s awesome for guys like me.

“The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel,” there is no mistaking who that is. There are three different ways you can triangulate this individual that wrote a lot of this book, and it’s just right off the get go. It’s telling us whom God inspired to write this.

Verse 2, “To know wisdom and instruction, to discern the sayings of understanding, to receive instruction in wise behavior, righteousness, justice, and equity, to give prudence to the naive, to the youth, knowledge and discretion. A wise man will hear and increase in learning. And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

That’s amazing. We’ll start right there. We have a good friend in town, another pastor, who also wrote a commentary on the book of Proverbs. His name is Ray Ortlund. Some of you know Ray. “The wisdom of God does not stand aloof,” he wrote, “as if she were too good for us. She graciously moves toward us into our real world where we live and struggle day by day. She offers us her very best if we will only listen. With the overwhelming flood of information and opinion in our times, much of it a mixture of spin, sound bites, trivialities. It is a relief to turn back to the Bible. It is a relief to slow down and pay close attention to deep insights that have stood the test of time.” Really well said, great introduction to the book of Proverbs.

I’m going to suggest that, right here in verse 7, we have a simple statement that I think many Bible commentators, if you read some of those on the book of Proverbs, they point to this verse. They say, “This is the thesis statement for the book of Proverbs.” Let’s read it aloud together. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

Yeah. You could rest right in there. The phrase, “The fear of the Lord,” occurs 25 times throughout scripture and is found in both Old Testament and New Testament. The similar phrase, “The fear of God,” appears another seven times throughout the Bible.

But here in Proverbs alone, there are 14 occurrences of the fear of the Lord. It is an important subject, and the appropriate one with which to begin seeking for the wisdom of God. What is the fear of the Lord? Fear, in Hebrew, is yirah, refers to a dread, a terror, a trembling, but it’s also a reverential fear, awe, and respect. It can refer to shrinking back in terror or of being drawn in by wonder and awe.

So it’s not merely being afraid. It’s actually if all you are is afraid of God, you are missing a whole lot of who God is. And I think a lot of people who don’t know the gospel, don’t believe the gospel, that’s their only concept of God. He’s the ogre in the sky who’s waiting to find them having a good time down here on the planet so that he can smash them and stop them from having a good time, and that’s all they think about when they think about God.

But the Bible, through the Bible’s pages, God reveals himself as way more than that. He’s beautiful. He’s majestic. He’s our creator. He wants us to call Him Father. Do you understand how way past mere trembling fear that is? It includes that because, yes, He’s all mighty God, but it’s more than that, and we can rest in that.

“The greatness of God,” said Tozer, “rouses fear within us, but His goodness encourages us not to be afraid of Him. To fear and not be afraid – that’s the paradox of faith.” I love this. Who is this Lord, the fear of the Lord in Hebrew? Most of your English translations will have it all capital letters, L-O-R-D, meaning it is the self-revealed name of God. It goes all the way back to the book of Exodus where the Lord reveals His name to Moses. They’re in Exodus chapter 3 verse 14, because Moses is being sent to deliver the children of Israel out of Egypt. And God tells him to go and pass along this amazing good news that they’re going to be delivered, and Moses thinks nobody will believe him.

He says, “Well, who shall I tell them sent me?” And here’s where God says, “You tell them I Am sent you.” And this is just amazing. It’s this Hebrew Yahweh, Jehovah if you were to put the vowels in, and it’s the self-revealed personal name of God. God is a title. Yahweh is his name, just like Christ is a title, Jesus is his name, difference there.

“In God,” Lewis said, “you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God at all. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Wow, I just had to sit in that for a few minutes, and that’s from a book I read every year. And every year, I need to keep hearing that and keep reminding myself, “I’m on the creature side of the big line.” I’m on the creation side. He’s the only one on the creator side.

And that perspective, oh, if we could just regain that perspective again in our world, so much would change about what’s broken in our world right now. The fear of the Lord is wrapped up, I think, in the significance, the source, and the secret of wisdom.

So today, I’ll take a look at some of that. I think wisdom is one of these kaleidoscope words in that it has a lot of colors and shapes when you look through the word wisdom. Here in the first seven verses, we see instruction, understanding, wise behavior, prudence, knowledge, discretion, increased learning is there, instruction. Wisdom is far from static. Wisdom will involve instruction from a higher authority, someone higher than us. Those of you who have raised children, you’ve heard your kids say it a million times, “What’s that? What’s that? What’s that?”

I remember one time when Kim and I were out on the road, and we were setting some stuff up on a stage, and there was one cute little kid that just kept following me around on the stage and, “What’s that? What’s that?” I mean he must have asked the same question like 58,000 times, it felt like to me. It wasn’t that many, but I mean it just felt like a lot. And inquiring minds want to know: what’s that?

Are we in a position where we understand we don’t know everything? And I think that, sadly, post-enlightenment and now post-everything, we do think we know everything. And what would be awesome is for us to get back to that place where we understand God knows way more than we know, and we could receive then some instruction, some understanding which is comprehension, the basic idea of discernment, of getting it.

Do you have trouble getting it sometimes? And sometimes, I have trouble understanding what God is saying as well, so it hits me in so many different ways. Wise behavior is a practical outworking of walking in the ways of God’s wisdom. Prudence is shrewdness in a good sense, realistic in management of practical matters and avoiding unnecessary risks in life. Knowledge and discretion, really, about good judgment and ability to put knowledge and experience into play, to formulate strategic plans, to achieve desired goals.

This is all important for us, but they’re all a part of what we might call wisdom. All of these terms really do help us understand the multifaceted meaning of this rich word, wisdom, in its biblical sense, far from the mere accumulation of data. It’s not just data storage. It’s not just your capacity to onboard stuff. It’s not just knowing facts, far from all of that. God’s wisdom influences all aspects of our life, our attitudes, our behavior, our relationships, our work ethic. And even the way we see ourselves, even the way we see our future, whether we trust God or not, it’s all there for us.

I love the way JI Packer summarizes wisdom. He says,

“Wisdom is the power to see and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.”
J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Who wouldn’t want that? I want some of that. I want more of that today than I had yesterday. But wait, there’s more. This is awesome. That’s the significance of wisdom. Look at the source of wisdom as well. We have that in this chapter as well.

Proverbs itself will say over and over again, connecting the dots between things like the fear of the Lord. In chapter 2 verse 6, it’s very clearly stated that the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth, come knowledge and understanding, God is indeed the source of wisdom.

James in the New Testament, James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to them.” Old Testament and New Testament agree, the source of wisdom is God. It’s just that simple. And if we desire God’s wisdom, we must turn to God, and to God’s word in humility, understanding that He’s God and we’re not, acknowledging His superior knowledge than ours, His insight, His sovereignty in all things and trusting Him all the way through.

I want to throw up on the screen this fear of the Lord in how many different times it does appear here, and it’s kind of what we might call the secret of wisdom, isn’t it? It begins like we have in verse 7 here of chapter 1, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” and knowledge and wisdom will overlap as words. But in verse 10 of chapter 9, it continues. And I want us to read aloud, if you will. Since there’s 14 of these verses, I’m going to go this side, this side, this side, this side. Okay? Each slide has two. So you’ll take the top verse, and you’ll take the bottom verse. And let’s see if you can hang with me through reading through seven of these slides. Ready?

“The fear of the lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7)

“Because They hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.” (Proverbs 1:29)

“Then you will discern the fear of the LORD and discover the knowledge of God.” (Proverbs 2:5)

“The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverted mouth, I hate.” (Proverbs 8:13)

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10)

“The fear of the LORD prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be shortened.” (Proverbs 10:27)

“In the fear of the LORD there is strong confidence. And his children will have refuge.” (Proverbs 14:26)

“The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, that one may avoid the snares of death. (Proverbs 14:27)

Better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and turmoil with it.” (Proverbs 15:16)

The fear of the LORD is the instruction for wisdom, and before honor comes humility. (Proverbs 15:33)

“By lovingkindness and truth iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the LORD one keeps away from evil.” (Proverbs 16:6)

“The fear of the LORD leads to life, so that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil.” (Proverbs 19:23) Oh, good one there.

“The reward of humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, honor, and life.” (Proverbs 22:4)

“Do not let your heart envy sinners, but live in the fear of the Lord always.” (Proverbs 23:17)

Sinking in, is it, the multifaceted aspects, but it begins with this acknowledgement of who God is, this respect, this awe and, yes, trembling. I have a friend who’s a Bible teacher, and he says, “When you stand before the Lord, if you’ve really stood before the Lord and you’ve never trembled, it may not be the Lord you’re standing before.”

I think there’s some truth to that. He is awesome. He’s almighty. He’s sovereign. But it doesn’t stop there. He’s beautiful in such a way that imagine yourself holding something so precious of such great value. You just know you don’t want to drop it. You don’t want to, in any way, stain it or mark it up or anything. And it’s that same beauty, that majesty that puts awe within us as we come before the Lord.

“The Lord gives wisdom,” Verse 6 of chapter 2 said, “It comes from Him.” And as we saw in James, if you lack wisdom, you go to the Lord. But here, we have the secret of wisdom as it was stated so clearly in Proverbs 9:10. It’s the beginning of wisdom, the fear of the Lord. The knowledge of the Holy One is what puts us in a place of understanding. It’s that simple and yet that beautiful.

If you’re here today and you’re hungry for more wisdom, I beg you to get into Proverbs for the next six weeks and begin to read these. Now, our third job this morning that I hoped to get to, and I’m going to get to it, I think I have enough time, is to connect this to the person and work of Jesus to show you that the wisdom of God finds its ultimate expression in Jesus. At the end of what we call the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 7, some of you are familiar with this kind of brief little parable that’s there where Jesus basically says,

“The wise man built his house upon the-

Rock.

… and the foolish man built his house upon the-

Sand.”

Yeah. And the rains came down, and the floods came up, and we sing the song, don’t we? We all know that. And probably, the song helps us remember the scripture so well. But the wise man is contrasted with the foolish man there.

And that’s Jesus saying the book of Proverbs is actually right. You need to build your house upon the rock, not upon the sand. There are very practical ways in which wisdom is deployed in your life. It’s also, in Matthew’s gospel, this time chapter 12, where it’s Jesus who says this. He’s got a little encounter going with some of the religious leaders, and they come, and their goal is always to try to stump Jesus or embarrass Jesus or discredit Jesus. And they’re the folded arms listeners, “Show me what you got, Jesus.”

They’re looking to take him down. I remember when Kim and I were in the music world, we used to play in the clubs here in town, and I just remember all the people used to come to our shows. A lot of them were doing this, “See what you got. I could do that. I could do that better.” On and on, it would go.

But don’t be folded arms when you come to the scripture. Don’t be folded arms like that kind of curmudgeonly approach to reading all of this. Here’s what Jesus says. It’s fascinating thing that He says to these religious leaders with their folded arms. He comes to them and He says… In spite of the fact that He performed all these thousands of miracles, even raised a couple people from the dead, people like Jairus’s daughter, people like the widow at Nain’s son, people like Lazarus, raised all these people from the dead, and done all these miracles, blind see, demons cast out, natural disasters, storms calmed, all that stuff. And they come to Him and demand another sign. See, that shows you if you have to keep asking that, “Prove to me, God, that You exist. Prove to me that You’re real. Prove to me that You care for me in light of what’s going on in this world or my world,” and I do that all the time. Maybe, you do it too.

Sometimes, I do it without malice. I get stuck in folded arm’s faith. We need to open our arms and lift up the empty hands of faith and receive from Him. He says to these religious leaders for their folded arms, and they demand another sign, and Jesus says… He takes them back to the Old Testament.

He says, “The queen of the South will rise up with this generation at the judgment.” Some of you know, Cleopatra went. She heard of the wisdom of Solomon. She made the trip from Egypt up into Jerusalem to find out if this was all true. So she comes, and is just blown away by his wisdom and all that sort of thing.

And Jesus says to these guys who should know about what happened with Solomon and the book of Proverbs quite well. He says, “The queen of the South will rise up with this generation of the judgment, and they’ll condemn it because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.” And here’s what Jesus said to these religious leaders, “And behold, something greater than Solomon is here.”

Now, if you’re an expert PhD piled higher and deeper in your education and you got it all figured out and somebody comes along and says, “I’m actually greater than all of the stuff you’ve studied at Yale and Harvard and MIT, and wherever else you went.” And Jesus says, “I’m wiser than Solomon.”

I mean do you understand if that isn’t true of Jesus, He’s the greatest megalomaniac, the most severe narcissist that ever existed. If it is true of Jesus that He’s greater than Solomon, I want to sit up straight. I want to pay attention, and I want to give back to him my life, the one He gave to me. I want to give that back to him in honor of who He is. The Apostle Paul knew that Jesus was the wisdom of God. He said, “But by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”

All of that is wrapped up in the person and work of Jesus. And the Apostle Paul knew it, and he wrote to the church at Corinth. He also wrote to the church at Colossae. And in verse 2 and verse 3, he says,

“That their hearts may be encouraged…”

he wants to encourage the folks,

“…having been knit together in love and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is Christ himself, in whom are hidden, all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
Colossians 2:2-3

You see, it is in Him and He Himself is the wisdom of God. And the cross is a great display of the wisdom of God. There, the intersection of God’s justice, God’s love, God’s mercy and God’s wisdom, which is more luminously displayed John Stott says,

“I don’t know. They’re just all brilliantly displayed there.”
John Stott, The Cross of Christ

But the wisdom of God in combining all of those things together is pretty amazing.

Karl Barth, in his book, Deliverance to the Captives, says this,

“When the right fear of the Lord takes possession of our hearts, we are both lost in amazement and struck by awe, even terror, for we discover that God, since the beginning of time, has not hated or threatened you and me, but has loved and chosen us.”
Karl Barth, Deliverance to the Captives

This is the wisdom of God in Christ Jesus for you, the cross of Christ, the love of God displayed in Christ, the justice of God displayed in Christ. If we think we get that wrong in our own day and time, and we want to know what justice looks like, look to Jesus.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what mercy looks like, look to Jesus. Should I be merciful in this moment? Should I be just? Is there some justice I need to enact here? Look to Jesus. He indeed is not only the son of God who came to redeem and save and rescue us, but He’s also the new way of being human, the way we should be, if things are set right the way we will be as we become more and more like Jesus. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Fools despise wisdom and instruction. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord leads to life so that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil. It’s so worth marinating in the book of Proverbs for the next six weeks. I hope you’ll take up that challenge and do that along with us.

Let’s pray. Lord, thank you for this sort of opening look into the book of Proverbs. I pray, God, that You will fill us with Your discernment and wisdom. Lord, our heart’s desire is to see what You see, see the way You see things, including our own understanding of who we are, our own attitude and disposition of heart toward others, especially toward those who are different than us.

Grant us Your eyes. Help us to weep over what You weep over, to delight in what You delight in. Help us to desire what You desire, to value what You value. As we go through the book of Proverbs, Lord, I pray that You would realign every bit of who we are, with every bit of who You are. Conform us to the image of Jesus, in whose name we pray, amen and amen.