Proverbs 1
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
For the next three weeks we are going to be on a little journey in proverbs.
I just want to tell you that this is not going to be exhaustive.
In fact we will not get very far at all…I actually had this idea that I am not sure will work out. But bear with me here
I hope to teach through all the proverbs in my life.
So I thought I would not do it in a single series but what I would do is in between series I would do a few proverbs…
Because I think the proverbs is one of those neglected books of the Bible by churches.
And its not that churches are out there trying to neglect books of the bible….Honestly, big sweeping narrative lends itself to good sermons more so than short pithy statements….
So proverbs isn’t a large story but rather short bits of wisdom that are designed to help you remember something essential about God.
What is a proverb?
A proverb is usually a short pithy statement or saying that gives you truth or advice
Why might this be impotrant in the time that the proverbs were written?
There were no pocket bibles.
If you wanted the word of God you would go to synagogue or temple and hear a reading
But if you had these proverbs, these are easy to memorize pithy statements…
Before we get to the text today:
We all have proverbs that we know right?
“The early bird catches the worm”
“A Penny Saved is a penny earned”
“Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”
On my notes on my phone I have a note called “Fiction and Fact from Dave’s Almanac”
My father in law’s name is Dave as well and he has a thousand one liners these are proverbs in a sort of way but not in Biblical wisdom..>I’d say it is more like street wisdom
I’ll read you a few of my favorite that are church appropriate
“ that’s about as funny as a fart in a space Suit”
“If your waiting on me your backing up”
“Why don’t you move out and get a job now while you still know everything”
“He’s tougher than a two dollar steak”
“Admit Nothing, Deny Everything, Demand Proof”
Quick Story about that one. Over thanksgiving my Nephew was over and my in-laws drove him up…My Nephew spends a ton of time at their house…They help raise him…
And the kids are all in the other room and we hear this huge commotion and there was a fight among the boys….
I didn’t see it, I wasn’t in the other room…but I heard it…And of course jake runs over and tells on him and So I am just trying to figure out what is happening and my nephew and I kind of get into it…I was just asking what happened and he was like nothing happened, I didn’t do a thing…And I am like everyone is saying you slapped jake in the face…He is flat out denying it and then he starts yelling at me…
If you think I did it…Show me the video…
Well as the uncle its not my job to be the heavy but I sent him to another room and told him not to come out…
and I walked out to my father in law and said…know what just happened?
he says no what?
I said …Patrick just slapped Jake in the face…He denied it…Then everyone said he did…and he denied it again…Then when we were getting close he demanded proof
I said “Dave…You have to stop saying, ”Deny everything, admit nothing, demand proof” That might be good advice for criminals but not kids…
Here is my point…The little proverbs bore into our brains and have an effect on our daily lives….
It is worth it to memorize the right proverbs!
But jesus had proverbial wisdom too.
In a few weeks I am going to talk about how Jesus is the embodiment of all wisdom but for now
I want to show you a few ways in which Jesus gave his own proverbs:
Matthew 7:2a
For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
See this? A proverb is memorable
Judge others and you will be judged
The same measure you use will be measured to you
It is this easy saying that will help you to remember a timeless truth
Look at this next one
“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.
Jesus is trying to teach a timeless truth
And this timeless truth has become a saying even in popular culture
if you live by the sword you will die by the sword!
It is this little statement that reminds us the reality of what Power in Jesus’ kingdom is like…Jesus’ kingdom doesn’t resort to violence.
Today I am just doing the first and most basic proverb for you and for me…
And I wanted to talk about this the first Sunday of the new year for two reasons
1. I feel like this is just timeless wisdom
2. I really hope to show you through this series that Jesus is the physical embodiment of all wisdom…But that will come later
So let’s get into it
The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:
for gaining wisdom and instruction;
for understanding words of insight;
for receiving instruction in prudent behavior,
doing what is right and just and fair;
for giving prudence to those who are simple,
knowledge and discretion to the young—
let the wise listen and add to their learning,
and let the discerning get guidance—
for understanding proverbs and parables,
the sayings and riddles of the wise.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
First let’s start here:
The proverbs of Solomon son of David, King of Israel
We’ll get to all the other stuff in a second…
And they were all written by king Solomon?
So let’s look at who Solomon is and why that matters
The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the Lord. Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.
The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.
“Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”
The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.”
So when Solomon is elevated to the throne he doesn’t have the foggiest idea of how to lead.
He even says to the Lord…I am a child! I do not know how to cary out my duties…
So Solomon asks the Lord for wisdom…
And what happens?
Because Solomon didn’t ask for riches or long life…But he asked for wisdom to serve his people…God gives him everything else
So the book of proverbs is largly Solomon’s wisdom…
There are other authors it is not all of it…But what we will look at the next couple of weeks will be Solomon’s wisdom…
But here is the impotrant thing that we should take from this story
Wisdom is something that we can ask God for
Wisdom is something that we can ask God for
If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
How do you know if you lack wisdom?
Many times we don’t want to admit it…But I would say probably all the time I am in a situation where I need God’s wisdom
often times we are in situations where we do not know how to handle the situation at hand…It doesn’t make you a dumb person. It just means you don’t know what to do next
Often times I am in these situations and my response is always…Let me pray about it
In other words…I need wisdom for this area that I do not have
Now because Wisdom is something that God gives…We still need to pursue knowledge…We still need to seek out information….
How many of you remember going to that math or science test in school..>Completely unprepared and you are like okay…I will just pray before hand and the God who gives generously will give me wisdom!
Well no wisdom is studying for the test….The wisdom you might get from that prayer is oh man I should have studied…because you still need the information!
So what I want us to get is that it is an impotrant thing to realize where we are lacking in wisdom…
The wisest thing you can do is to not pretend like we know everything and just admit…Lord I don’t know what to do here…I need your wisdom.
So the Proverbs are written by Solomon…Who asked for wisdom and it was given to him
Wisdom is something you can ask God for
Wisdom and knowledge are different!
In many ways wisdom is knowing what to do with knowledge!
But let’s get back to the proverbs here
The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:
for gaining wisdom and instruction;
for understanding words of insight;
for receiving instruction in prudent behavior,
doing what is right and just and fair;
for giving prudence to those who are simple,
knowledge and discretion to the young—
let the wise listen and add to their learning,
and let the discerning get guidance—
for understanding proverbs and parables,
the sayings and riddles of the wise.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
So Let me break this down…
The proverbs of Solomon…In otherwords….The little phrases of solomon
In these little phrases you will gain wisdom
You will gain insight
You will behave prudently
You will do what is right, just and fair
For giving prudence to those who are simple: The word used there for prudence is the word “clever or cunning” It is the Hebrew word “Arum”
Now I want to just pause here right now especially for those 20 of you who were in my Genesis class…
The word Arum is what the serpent in the garden was…He was more Arum than the other animals!
Now here is the point…You might read genesis 3 and think…Cleverness or cunning is an evil thing….
Not So! Cunningness is inherently A-moral….It is simply the ability to devise wise or clever stratagies to deal with something or someone… In may ways it is the ability to think ahead
See it is impotrant for to be cunning or prudent…>When you are you see the deception of the enemy a mile away!
See cunningness or cleverness will never be used for deception in the hands of someone who loves and honors Jesus!
In the hands of Satan it is used to trick humanity and deceive us…
But God wants us to be cunning, Clever Shrewd….Why?
So we can recognize the plans of the enemy and stand against them!
let’s keep going…
The proverbs are for knowledge for the young:
Guys…I read this line and instantly it is was like a bolt of lightning…I was like I wonder what proverbs my kids know…And Then it was like…Okay read the proverbs every night at dinner…
So thats what I started doing a few months ago…And We are not a Norman Rockwell family…My kids are in sports and activities so this might only happen a few nights a week but I read them and make my kids tell me what the proverb means…
These are designed for giving wisdom to the young and my kids are all going into their teenage years…They need prudence! they need wisdom! They need the proverbs
Then it says for understanding parables sayings and riddles…
Thees are proverbs right…These little sayings
and then Solomon gives us the anchor Proverb
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
See you read this and what I am telling you is this is a rhythmic phrase that is meat to be memorized!
So here is what we are going to do…
We are going to put it on the screen and we will all read it together
Ready:
The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction
See we are supposed to commit this to memory…
So what Solomon is telling us is that everything begins with the Fear of the Lord. It all starts there.
So first we should talk about this phrase the “Fear of the Lord”
So in one sense this can be confusing.
The most repeated command of Jesus is to “fear not” but on the other hand we are supposed to have fear of God
So what does this mean to fear God
Fear/Reverence of God is the beginning of wisdom (Pr 1:7)
Fear/Reverence of God is the beginning of wisdom (Pr 1:7)
The word reverence or to revere means to have a deep respect. This is what fear is…to have a sense of awe and to understand that God is holy and not common
That God is so much more powerful than me!
I like working around my house…I like being able to fix things…But I am a big weenie when it comes to electricity
One time years ago…I was at my former church and I was turning on the parking lot lights and they were 24hr timer boxes with a piece of rubber over the parts that had the hot power going to it…In the dark I reached my hand in to flip on the lights but what I didn’t now is that the rubber on one of these things had broken off and I reached in and touched bare wires…
I got the shock of my life…Not only did it shock me,…It shook me up!
…So therefore I have a deep reverence for it…I go to my breaker box and shut off power before I change out an outlet…Before this shock I got if I needed to change out an outlet I wouldnt turn the power off I would just be careful…But now that I have felt the power of this electricity….I am a lot more cautious
I know what it can do it me
There are a few pictures in the bible of deep reverence for the Lord…Isaiah is probably the one that comes to mind first!
Isaiah is all the sudden in the throne-room of God confronted with the fact that he is a sinful man standing before a holy God
And this is what he says:
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
This is a picture of the fear of God
Fear of God is a personal awareness of God’s holiness and majestic sovereignty (Isaiah 6:5)
Fear of God is a personal awareness of God’s holiness and majestic sovereignty (Isaiah 6:5)
See what does Isaiah say here: He basically says I am ruined I am so unholy and God is so holy
Guys fear of God is the beginning of everything
It is this amazing reminder that God is God and we are not.
That God is the Lord almighty
The creator of heaven and earth and we are mere mortals
See interestingly enough…Fear of God as a theme in the Bible doesn’t arrive until after the fall of man…Why? Because sin hi lights how holy God is and how messed up we are
So in the book of Proverbs I want to show you what it has to say about the fear of God there are 20 proverbs about the fear of God.
So just later in this chapter we have Proverbs 1:29
proverbs 1 is all about choosing the wisdom of God over the wisdom of the sinner or the mocker
So right in the beginning of proverbs
Fear of God is both avoiding sin and the sort of people who do not fear God (Prov 1:29)
Fear of God is both avoiding sin and the sort of people who do not fear God (Prov 1:29)
since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the Lord.
It also leads to something else
I want to show you something about the deep reverence and fear of the Lord
Knowledge with no fear of God = pride (Prov 16:18)
Knowledge with no fear of God = pride (Prov 16:18)
See the apostle Paul when he is talking about the gifts says that knowledge puffs up…It makes us arrogant…And it makes us confident in our own knowledge
There is probably no better time to remember that than right now..>Where not only do we have all knowledge at our finger tips but there is AI now that can compile it in really amazing ways
It is a reminder that knowledge devoid of God makes us arrogant
I really think that God wants us to have knowledge…He wants us to use the tools necessary but all of our knowledge needs to be filtered through the wisdom of the Lord.
Its almost like there is one thing that we could do every single day that helps us stay humble…Helps us grow in knowledge and avoid the trappings of pride
Its like we can do the very simple things of reading our bibles and praying…
That builds fear of God in our lives
and I am sure we all know this verse right?
Pride goes before destruction,
a haughty spirit before a fall.
See knowledge with no fear of God builds pride…arrogance…a sense of self sufficiency
But fear of God is a sense of dependance on God for everything!
Burt this same knowledge with a very simple twist: Fear of the Lord
Knowledge with fear of God = humility (Proverbs 15:33)
Knowledge with fear of God = humility (Proverbs 15:33)
See fear of God is the key
It makes us humble
Wisdom’s instruction is to fear the Lord,
and humility comes before honor.
See anyone can have knowledge…Anyone can know facts…But God takes these facts and make them into wisdom when we submit our own intelect to him
Living in awe and reverence toward the Lord helps me to avoid trouble
The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life,
turning a person from the snares of death.
I love this that living in the reverence of the lord is a fountain of life
See We all revere something or someone…What do we revere?
Our cultural elevates people or politics or more likely ourselves!
The proverbs tell is that honoring God protects someone from the snares of death
How does that happen?
Well I can tell you…There are many people I have heard say…I don’t really have a good testimony..>I grew up as a christian kid…Didn't have sex until I was married…Never did drugs…Never partied…
And I always say…You mean God saved you from Drug addition, STD’d?
God saved you from the snarles of death?
But you know what that’s not all.
The Bible tells us that fear of the lord now is actually something that will shape and form our families
The fear of the Lord is a protection from evil for the generations (Prov 16:6, 14:26)
The fear of the Lord is a protection from evil for the generations (Prov 16:6, 14:26)
Through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for;
through the fear of the Lord evil is avoided.
Whoever fears the Lord has a secure fortress,
and for their children it will be a refuge.
Did you see that? For your children The way you honor the lord will actually be a refuge!
When you Honor God as a pattern with your life it will actually have an effect on generations in your family…
The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction
Response:
Solomon gives us this anchor proverb:
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
That word beginning matters.
This is the starting line, not the finish line.
Before wisdom helps your marriage, your parenting, your decisions, or your future—
it all starts with who you revere.
Because every one of us is building our life around something.
Something we honor.
Something we fear losing.
Something that has the final word.
Proverbs says:
If it isn’t the Lord, wisdom never gets off the ground.
The fear of the Lord isn’t terror.
It’s reverence.
It’s living with the settled awareness that God is holy, weighty, and not common—
and my life is lived before Him.
And when that’s true, something changes.
We become humble instead of arrogant.
Dependent instead of self-sufficient.
Teachable instead of defensive.
Solomon says this kind of life becomes a fountain of life,
a protection from evil,
and even a refuge for our children.
So here’s the response question:
What voice has the most weight in your life right now?
Because wisdom doesn’t begin with knowing more.
It begins with bowing lower.
And that’s why Communion matters.
The wisdom of God took on flesh,
humbled Himself,
and went to the cross for us.
So as we come to the table today, this is a moment of reverence.
We remember Christ’s body and blood,
and we say again:
“Jesus, You are Lord.
I am not.
I need Your wisdom.”
Because the fear of the Lord
is where wisdom begins.
