02 The Principle (Proverbs 1:7)
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I just want to draw your attention to the structure of Proverbs 1. If you have your Bible’s with you, you’ll notice how there’s a little extra space between verse 6 and 7. You’ll notice how it looks as though verses 1-6 are connected, then verse 7 is stand alone, and then verse 8 begins another section.
And there’s purpose to that, because verse 7 deserves to be stand alone.
Verse 7 is like the star player in the book of Proverbs. Verse 7 is like the Michael Jordan or Lebron James of Proverbs. In other words verse 7 is BIG TIME…okay?
It is a critical verse & thus it is critical that we understand this verse if we are to understand the rest of the book.
In fact if you’ll let me nerd out for a second this summer I was taught that many if not all passages of Scripture have what is called a ‘hinge verse’...and a hinge verse is a verse that is essential to the passage and its meaning. In other words, if the hinge verse were removed from said passage, that passage would change completely in meaning and purpose. And that’s what we have here in verse 7. Verse 7 is the ‘hinge verse’ for the whole book of Proverbs. Without what we’re about to read, Proverbs would completely change in meaning and very well could be described as a book of tips and tricks, BUT, because of verse 7, we know that not to be true.
Let’s elaborate.
Now if that hinge verse stuff doesn’t make any sense to you, just know that the verse I'm about to read is the MOST IMPORTANT verse in all of Proverbs. It is the most important.
So let’s lock in…okay you ready? Let’s go.
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Verse 7:
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.’
Now like I said earlier last week we answered the question ‘What is wisdom?’ when looking at the purpose of Proverbs in verses 1-6, and verse 7 here answers the question ‘How’. It answers:
‘How do we get wisdom?’
That’s where we see the connection between the purpose of Proverbs in verses 1-6 and the principle of Proverbs in verse 7, because as good as it is to know what wisdom is, we need to know how to possess it, and where to begin in our pursuit of it. And this verse is very straightforward on where to begin to pursue wisdom…it says the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of knowledge, is found in the fear of the Lord.
Now what does that mean?
What does it mean that this beginning of knowledge is found in the fear of the Lord?
Well on a simple level it means that wisdom comes only through a relationship with the Lord. If you hear nothing else on this podcast, hear that. If taking notes, write that down:
Wisdom comes only through a relationship with the Lord.
You can’t have wisdom without having fear of God.
You can’t have wisdom without revering Him and His Word.
You can’t have wisdom without knowing Him.
You just can’t.
Thinking that you can have wisdom without having God is like thinking you could take on hell with a squirt gun. You ain’t going anywhere with that thinking.
And that’s what I was alluding to last week when I said that wisdom is a person. That is exactly what this verse is telling us. That’s why it is the hinge verse, the most critical verse in the book of Proverbs. Because without it we wouldn’t see that wisdom is the person of Jesus, rather we would see it more as a moralistic practical guide to life.
I cannot emphasize enough that you can’t have wisdom without Jesus Christ. You can’t.
1 Corinthians 1:24 describes Jesus Christ as the ‘wisdom of God’. That means that Jesus is wisdom and wisdom is Jesus. They are a package deal. One and the same. They go together. And as we’ll come to see in a later episode, Proverbs 2:6 reveals that it is God who gives wisdom and that’s also why we’re told in the book of James to ask Him for it. And that’s how we know Proverbs is not a book of tips and tricks. Proverbs is about obtaining wisdom, and wisdom is not a set of strategies to succeed at life.
Wisdom is a Savior, in whom we find life and life abundantly.
Back to what I said last week, Proverbs is laying out how kingdom citizens should live and what the wise King (King Jesus) will produce in them. Connect that to what we’re talking about now, and you’ll see that through a relationship with the one true King, He will begin to produce in you the wisdom he lives out, which is the wisdom found in the rest of Proverbs.
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Now I want to talk for a second on the phrase ‘fear of the Lord’, because if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably heard that phrase before and I bet there’s a good chance many of you do not know what that means. Being real I really did not know what it meant for the longest time, because I thought the word fear there meant the same fear you have when you see a monster in a scary movie and the God we serve is not a monster, so it didn’t make any sense to me.
So if that’s you, man don’t sweat it. It can be a confusing phrase, but in that I hope to provide some clarity. I want to share with you a really good definition of the fear of the Lord that has helped me a lot, written by Charles Bridges:
He describes the fear of the Lord as ‘That affectionate reverence, by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his Father’s law. His wrath is so bitter and his love so sweet, there springs forth an earnest desire to please him, and - because of the consequence of sin, a holy fear- an anxious care and watchfulness over one’s ways, that he might not sin against Him (as the Psalmist writes in Psalm 119:11)’.
Man, I love that. Re-read that definition again…it is so good.
Fear of God is an affectionate reverence.
I think the best way to bring that to light is through the imagery of the family. For example, I have an affectionate reverence for my Dad. I love him so much and I have an earnest desire to please him, and, because of the consequences of my disobedience, I have a holy-like fear, an anxious care and watchfulness over my ways, so that I may not sin against him. And I’m assuming (barring some family issues) that you are similar.
And so if we have that affectionate reverence with our earthly fathers, man how much more should we have that with our heavenly Father!
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You see, to fear God is to hold Him in the highest esteem. To fear God is to put Him in His rightful place in our lives as LORD. As LORD. Over all our life. Not some of it, all of it. And when we do that, when God has His throne in our hearts, we no longer seek wisdom in ourselves but in Him, because we recognize that His ways and thoughts are better than ours. That’s the beginning of knowledge right there.
Now I haven't finished reading Bridges’ definition of the fear of the Lord. Bridges closes his remarks by saying that this fear of the Lord he described ‘enters into every exercise of the mind, into every object of life’.
And this is important to note because we have to recognize that there should be no sacred and secular divide in your life. One commentator says ‘We so often think that going to church and mission efforts and quiet times are the godly things we do in life. Other things like our work, our kids’ soccer teams, or how we spend our money are the secular or neutral parts of our lives’. But Solomon here crushes that line of thinking. He absolutely crushes it.
God is concerned with your whole life and your whole heart, not just some of it. Every nook and cranny of your life is to be governed by God.
And what we see here is that the wise have their fear of the Lord, their affectionate reverence of Him, enter into every single exercise of the mind and every single object of life.
There’s no sacred and secular divide. Every waking moment is sacred and spiritual when lived in the fear of the Lord, for His glory. The wise embrace wisdom, they embrace Christ, they hold Him fast to their heart, they seek to have fear of the Lord, whereas fools reject this wisdom. They reject it because the ‘fear of the Lord’ is not before their eyes. They do not revere Christ, they reject Him.
And that’s what we see in the second half of verse 7 where it says ‘fools despise wisdom and instruction’.
And why is it that fools despise wisdom and instruction?
Well it’s very simple. Proverbs 15:21 says “Folly is a joy to him who lacks sense’...
And that’s why fools despise the gospel. That’s why fools despise Jesus, why they reject Him and His wisdom - it’s because the gospel and the person of Jesus Christ proposes to save them from what they love!!!
Fools despise wisdom and instruction because it proposes to save them from what they love. They love sin and hate the one who can deliver them from it.
And that leads us into next week, because as Solomon continues, we see that we are given a choice as to what and who we love, what and who we listen to, and what path we choose to take.
I love you.
God bless.
