Where to Begin | Proverbs 1:1–7

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

All right, well, welcome to the summer of 2026 sermon series. We're excited what we have in store over the course of the next uh several weeks. And uh we are gonna begin a new series uh through uh the different topics and a little bit of an approach in that way and kind of a uh an exposition of topics that are covered in the book of Proverbs. And so we're gonna walk in wisdom today, starting today and this uh this summer. We're calling the series walking in wisdom. And so grab your Bibles if you have them. Let's open to Proverbs chapter one. Proverbs one. Excited about the series because there's opportunities uh to learn some things and apply these truths uh from Proverbs to our lives. And gonna hear from several different voices throughout the summer and excited about that as well. And so uh we want you to lean in and uh engage in all of these. May Proverbs come to bear on your life in maybe a new and significant way uh throughout this summer. Many of you are in the habit of reading a Proverb today, and uh I want you to uh continue that. I think that's helpful. However, I don't want us to lose the awe of Proverbs or the help of Proverbs through familiarity. And so uh we're gonna try to focus in on a couple of the topics and expound upon them through uh this wisdom literature. Now, I uh there's an observation that uh I think Proverbs exposes, and that is that what we are seeing in our life and in our culture today, that there is a gap that is growing, that is destroying homes, destroying lives, breaking up families, unraveling businesses, leaving people in ruin. There's a gap. And the gap is not the gap between the rich and the poor. And the gap isn't really even between the educated and the uneducated. I think what we're seeing is a gap between knowledge and wisdom. Here's how we know that. We have never been more informed than we are today. A teenager with a phone has access to more raw data than the scholars of the Renaissance could ever dream of. We can Google the symptoms of any disease, we can stream lectures from the world's greatest minds in universities, we can follow the real-time commentary of experts in every field. We are inundated with podcasts and YouTube videos and reels that are informing us of things that we had to go to college to learn at one point. And by every metric of information access, we are the most resourced generation in human history. We have more knowledge at our fingertips than ever before, and yet debt is at historic highs, loneliness is at an epidemic level, divorce, addiction, anxiety, moral confusion seems to continue to accelerate. And this aren't true in just the dark corners of society. These truths are real in the homes of the educated, the so-called successful and well-resourced, knowledgeable people. People who know better because we have knowledge. We know the effects of these things through knowledge, and yet somehow we have this tendency to do worse. So you can see the gap just lived out before us in society. There's there's knowledge that's available, and yet there seems to be a big gap between the right use of that knowledge. The apostle Paul saw this pattern in his own day when he said that they in Romans 1.22 said they were claiming to be wise, but they became fools. Or 2 Timothy Paul said they were always learning, never able to arrive to knowledge of the truth. Seems like those are things that we could lay over the top of society. And uh that that this uh this ever learning but never really able to apply. There's a kind of relentless information gathering that seems to never produce a transformed life. Education is not the answer. More knowledge is not the answer, because if that were true, we would be the most moral, the most kind, the most not depressed, not addicted people, and that is not true. Paul treats this as a mark, this ever-learning, never coming to full wisdom as a mark of spiritual decay. And this is the exact issue that the wisdom of Proverbs was written to address. So this summer we're gonna walk through this uh this inspired book together under the banner of walking in wisdom. So as we begin here at the very front of Proverbs, uh we want to see what the author does. He does something, something brilliant before delivering a single proverb. In our text today, he's not gonna deliver a single proverb, but he tells us exactly why we need this book, who it is designed for, and where wisdom comes from. And so in chapter 1, verses 1 through 7, we get that the entire architect of wise living. So we're gonna walk through it carefully. We're looking at a book that's in the genre of wisdom literature. It includes Job, Ecclesiastes, some of the wisdom psalms, and the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs was different than the law and the prophets of the Old Testament. The law and the prophets of the Old Testament addressed Israel's covenant relationship with God, her national identity, her religion, her history of rebellion and redemption. But wisdom literature addresses the texture, if you will, of everyday life. Very practical, not national, but individual and practical. How to make good decisions, how to govern your tongue, how to build a marriage, raise children, handle money, navigate conflict. Wisdom literature is the Bible's practical theology for just ordinary life. It's not less theological than some of your more robust theological books like Isaiah or Romans. This wisdom literature draws all of ordinary life into something that is in a theological frame. Everything, work, relationships, words, money, sexuality, ambition, is evaluated in the light of God and what he requires. The author is Solomon Mosley. Solomon wrote most of it. It's the core, and he was he was very wise. He was uh uh uh uh uh uh blessed by God with wisdom. First Kings records that for us. That God he he asked, God said, Whatever you want, I'll give you. And he said, I want wisdom, and God was so well pleased with the request for wisdom that he might govern his people well, that he gave them also riches and honor. First Kings chapter 4, verse 30 says that Solomon surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. It says he spoke three thousand proverbs and a thousand and five songs, that kings and queens came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom that God had given him, including the queen of Sheba, recorded in 1 Kings chapter 10. She arrived with hard questions, and it says she left breathless, just in awe. The book was most likely compiled over centuries. Again, the core of it is Solomon, but Proverbs 22 through 24 was attributed to the wise. Proverbs 25 through 29 was attributed to the men of Hezekiah. Proverbs 30 and 31 is attributed to Agar and Lemuel. So it's collected wisdom shaped over generations of faithful reflection and revelation under God. What is a proverb? Let's think about that just for a second, okay? Proverb is not a promise. It's important for you to know that distinction, it matters. The problem, the proverb, a proverb is an observation of pattern. A compressed, memorable statement of how things generally work in God's moral universe. Not necessarily a promise, but a statement of how things generally work, an observation of pattern. For instance, let me give you an example. Proverbs 22, 6, train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it. Do not take that as necessarily a promise. It's not a guarantee that every faithfully parented child will remain in the faith. It's a statement of general principle. How things tend to work in a world where character that is formed in youth shapes the rest of life. So it's a principle. Train them up. And what you form them as as a child, they will grow up and become. To read that as an ironclad promise sets yourself up for either pride or despair. Pride when your child turns out well, despair when they don't. So don't look at this as necessarily that's a promise I'm claiming. It's a proverb that we are to take as wisdom to live our lives by. The Hebrew word mashal, translated proverb, can refer to pithy sayings, but also to parables and riddles and discourses or a poem. The book of Proverbs is more like a collection of compressed wisdom poetry than a list of fortune cookie sayings. Don't think of it that way. So we read it slowly and we read it meditatively. We don't skim it for quick applicable tips. We're to respond to it by reading it and mowing over it and meditating on it. So that's our intro to it. We want to understand and close the gap, don't we? Between what we know and how to apply that knowledge. So let's close the gap and let's begin by reading Proverbs chapter 1, verses 1 through 7. Okay? We ready? Amen? All right, let's do this. It's gonna be fun. Proverbs chapter 1. The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. 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. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. What we're gonna see right here off the bat in Proverbs chapter one and unpack this morning is this big idea. I want you to think about it this way: a life that honors God. We see that. That's what Proverbs is. That's what the wisdom is trying to do through Proverbs, is trying to help us understand a life that honors God. And he tells us that a life that honors God begins with the pursuit of true wisdom. True wisdom. We want to live a life that honors God. That's what we have here. We have the moral guidance, the plan for what God desires of His and the truths that are to be present and applied to our lives. So if the pursuit of true wisdom builds a life that honors God, we've got to understand wisdom. Because this book is full of wisdom. So what does he say about wisdom right here at the beginning that we've got to get in order to kind of set a guide for the rest of the summer study through this book? So let's consider this wisdom that we need. Let's see what this text teaches us about wisdom, okay? And there's a couple of principles. I'm gonna just present these to you in principle form. There's five of them from the text that lets we let's seek to understand so that we can get all that we can from our study throughout the summer. Okay? There's five principles I want you to see. Principles of wisdom. Number one, I want you to see first from Proverbs 1 that wisdom has a purpose. Wisdom has a purpose. What he's describing for us then is a life that is shaped by God's design. Now notice the structure, these opening verses, verses one, two, and three, give an explicit purpose statement. It's not it's not unclear. The structure here is a cascade of infinitives. To know, to understand, and to receive instruction. So you can mark that if that's what you want. It's a purpose statement. To know, to understand, and to receive. The repetition creates some kind of momentum. It's as though though the author here is saying there is a lot to gain here, and it is all within reach and it is all connected. Each clause builds on the previous one, and notice that they are active verbs. They are built with these verbs. Wisdom doesn't passively seep into you through some sort of religious osmosis, but you pursue it. James echoes this in James chapter 1 when he says, if you let lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously, and let him ask in faith, verse 6 says. So even in asking, you must come with active, intentional, trusting engagement called faith. Now there's three key words here. Let's do a little fun study. If you don't like word studies, uh it won't be that bad, but if you like word studies, it'll be fun. It'll be fun in general. I'm just I'm trying to convince you this is gonna be fun. It's like it's like you're telling your kids, we're gonna get to get a shot and it's gonna be super fun, right? Let's get it. Let's consider these. The the first one he says is to know wisdom. That's a cool word. It's the word in Hebrew that really kind of is the central theme of the entire book. Wisdom in English can feel vague and spiritual, like something reserved for Gandalf or the white-bearded philosophers of old saints, right? Like, oh, that the wisdom is them. We're not wisdom people. But the Hebrew word is far more practical. The word describes the skill of an artisan. It was used in Exodus to describe the craftsmen who were the people who built the tabernacle and worked with the metal, the carved woods, and the beautiful things that made up the tabernacle and ultimately the temple. So wisdom in the Hebrew mind is not intellectual achievement through learning or experience, but it is the skill to take raw material and shape it into something excellent. Think about a woodworker. He looks at a piece of wood and sees a cabinet. Think about a musician. They hear a melody and know how to harmonize it and build a symphony or an orchestration. A wise person, then, according to this, looks at the raw materials of life. Things like relationships and decisions and words and resources and times, and they know how to shape it into something beautiful, ordered, and God-honoring. That's the wisdom we're talking about. Not this old guy sitting in a rocking chair because he's lived a long life, has a lot of cool things to say. But somebody who can consider the raw materials of life, the things that make up life, and organize it into something that honors the Lord. Wisdom is the skill of shaping this material. Somebody said wisdom is the skill in the art of godly living. Think about Michelangelo, who was recorded. Whether he said it or not, I can't verify, but said that how he makes a sculpture is he looks at everything in a block of marble and decides what shouldn't be there and takes it off. And what's left is the sculpture. That's this word. The wise person sees what God intends in the raw materials of their life and works skillfully to bring it into being. Then the next word is instruction. Notice it in verse 2 to know wisdom and instruction. This word is often translated discipline. It carries the idea of discipline and correction and training and character formation. It's the kind of training that involves being redirected when you're going the wrong way. That's why in chapter 3 he says, My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline. That's what we're trying to receive through this wisdom that is being given to us in this book. So the writer of Hebrews quotes this uh idea, same passage in Hebrews chapter 12, and he applies it to God's work in the suffering of believers. He says, Listen, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it produces the peaceful fruits of righteousness. So here, discipline is training and wisdom requires it. And this word, instruction, tells us that wisdom, again, is not just intellectual upgrade. It's not just downloading information, but it's character formation. It's a process that includes correction, rebuke, and being redirected. And the person then who can not receive correction or instruction or discipline will never become wise, no matter how much Bible that person reads. They can attend every service, they can be at every small group and go to every study, they can memorize the entire books of scripture and still be a fool if they have insulated themselves from Mussar or instruction and discipline that shapes their character. And then notice what he says. He calls this word insight in verse 2 to understand words of insight. This is a word that means understanding. If the word wisdom is the skill to build something excellent, this word is the discernment to distinguish between what looks good and what actually really is good. It's the ability to see beneath the surface. It's exactly this kind of discernment that the simple person in Proverbs lacks. The simple person can see attractive offers, but doesn't ask what's hidden inside of it. They hear a flattering word, but they don't wonder about the motive behind the flattering word. This word, insight, is the ability to see that, to ask the second question, to see the second layer, to perceive reality as God perceives it rather than as it presents itself to an undiscerning eye. Paul prayed this prayer for the Philippians in Philippians 1. He said, It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent. The word discernment is the Greek equivalent of this Hebrew word. It's moral perception, the trained capacity to see what is truly excellent. That's what he's talking about here. So the purpose statement is this that we would receive wisdom, skill, to take the raw materials of life and make something that honors the Lord, that we would receive instruction or discipline or correction, and that we would have insight to discern and approve things that are excellent. Now notice what he says in verse 3 to receive instruction in wise dealing, so to get wisdom in righteousness, justice, and equity. I want to highlight those three words for a second. This triad of words appears frequently throughout Hebrew scriptures, and it's a summary of what God requires in human conduct. Righteousness is conformity to God's standard, living in a way that matches God's character and his expectations. Justice is right treatment of others, especially those who are vulnerable. Throughout the Old Testament, this word is the standard by which rulers and judges and merchants are evaluated. And then equity, this is integrity or honesty in your dealings without hidden angles or double standards. So you see how it is. This tells us that the wisdom of Proverbs is hoping to build in us wisdom that is socially embodied, not spiritual achievement that's isolated and cut off from people. It shows up this wisdom and this instruction and this insight, it shows up in how you treat people and how you treat your employees and your neighbors, how you treat the vulnerable people in your community. Reminds us that a person can be theologically articulate, personally religious and pious, and still be unjust in their business dealings. And Proverbs would say that person does not yet understand what wisdom is. The wisdom that he's trying to download to us in this book and in this uh letter uh book of the Bible is that that wisdom that would lead us in how we live amongst the people that we engage throughout our lives. This is what we're talking about today. Now, here's what I think we need to understand is that many of us have have potentially developed a kind of departmental spirituality. We have a Sunday self that that appears religious. We come to church, we learn, we study, we sing, but then we have a Monday self, a church self and a workplace self, a public self and then a private self. And Proverbs dismantles that compartmentalization. And from the very first paragraph, he's teaching us that wisdom is a whole life orientation. It's how we engage when we're in the marketplace, it's how we engage when we're at uh uh a boss or an employee. So so again, what wisdom is coming from Proverbs is not just am I doctrinally orthodox, but am I just in my dealings? Am I equitable in my treatment of others? Do I do my business practices and my financial decisions and my relational patterns reflect the righteousness of God? Does my marriage and my Parenting actually practically look like I'm learning and applying the truth of God. Not just do I know deep theological truths, but am I living a life that honors the Lord through the wisdom that He provides me with? That's where we start. Wisdom has a purpose. Amen? You see that? All right. Defined a couple words. That was a lot of fun for me. We got a couple more to define, but that's important because as we get into applying this wisdom to financial dealings and relationships and work and other areas, we've got to understand what are we trying to get here? We're trying to get practical wisdom, not just head knowledge, but knowledge and wisdom that applies to life. That's number one. Number two, wisdom is for everyone. Wisdom is for everyone. This is the reach of God's instruction. Notice verse four to give prudence to the simple and knowledge and discretion to the youth. So he has two specific groups in mind in verse four the simple and the youth. So let's understand those for a second. The simple is a cool word. I know, now I'll nerd out for a second. I'm not even going to try to give you the Hebrew word, just know what it means. It means to be open or to be wide. Interesting. And what it's doing is it's painting a picture of a door that hangs open and swings freely on its hinges with no discernment about what should enter and what should not. It's wide open. They're just simple. They're wide open. They're receiving everything. They're not stupid, they're just unformed. They're impressionable. They're easily swayed, susceptible to flattery and peer pressure and false promises and attractive sounding shortcuts. First part of Proverbs, that that person, the simple person, is morally neutral. They have not yet made the catastrophic decisions, but they are standing at this intersection where those decisions are made and without the capacity to read the signs and make the right decisions. For instance, in Proverbs 7, the adulteress preys on the simple, a young man who lacked heart, he was morally without judgment, and he wanders down her street like an ox going to the slaughter, not because he is wicked, but because he's unguarded. He's wide open, he's impressionable. What the simple person needs, according to verse 4, is prudence, which means shrewdness or strategic wisdom. He needs the capacity to see what is actually going on beneath the surface of a situation and respond with skill rather than impulse and desire. So to the simple. And then he says to the youth. The word new here, youth, refers to a young person, someone at the beginning of an adult life, when the pattern of lifetime is kind of being set. The teenage years, the early 20s, when habits of heart and character and decision making are being formed for good or for bad. That's why Proverb returns again and again to the image of the Father instructing his son. The shaping of youth, then, according to what we hear here, is not left to chance. It is a sacred priority. That's why we value samurama and summer camp and student ministry and kids' ministry, because we recognize and family involvement in those things, because this is a sacred priority, according to the wisdom of Proverbs. What the youth need, he says, is knowledge and discretion, deliberate thinking, the ability to lay out a course of action and pursue it with intentionality rather than just lurching from impulse to impulse, rather than just blindly, aimlessly wandering, wide open, receiving everything that comes their way. So here's what he says to us is that this is for initially the audience is to the simple, the wide open, simple, ignorant, unformed, and the youth who are being formed. Okay? Now here's what else I want you to think about. The promise that God's wisdom is available to the simple is not just good news for young people, it's good news for everyone who feels that they have a history of making foolish decisions. Maybe you're here today and you're like, I'm not really a young person anymore, but I've done a lot of dumb things. I've made a lot of mistakes. I've married impulsively, I've made financial decisions driven by greed and just poor stewardship. There's a pattern of dishonesty. There's a relationship that became addictions or whatever. And the weight of those decisions can produce a sense of I am someone who makes bad choices. Proverbs refuses the verdict. And the simple, the open-door ones can have prudence installed through understanding what is going on here. The unformed person can be formed, the rudderless person can receive navigation. This is what's going on. Not that there's no repercussions for decisions made, but wisdom is still available. That's what he's getting at. Think about this. Augustine of Hippo is a name that if you know church history, you might recognize. He is probably celebrated as one of the most uh recognized theologian in church history. And he lived 32 years of his life as the embodiment of the simple, wide open, unformed. He was brilliant, he was deeply impressionable, and he was completely unable to govern his own appetites. He was unfaithful, he chased philosophical fashions, he fathered a child outside of marriage. He described himself in his confessions as having pride, uh having prayed, Lord, make me chaste, but not yet. That was his way of living. He wasn't a stupid man, he was very knowledgeable. He was an unguarded man. He was not self-disciplined, and it wasn't self-discipline that rescued him, but it was an encounter, as he records, in with God in a garden in 386 AD. And it was an encounter that gave him uh just an understanding of a reordered heart, a fear of the Lord, and the beginning of wisdom. And he became one of the wisest shepherds the church has ever known, even after 32 years of being wide open and unguarded and unformed. The simple can become wise, and God delights to make it so. So here's the question you ready? Are you are you carrying the weight of past foolishness like Augustine of Hippo? Are there decisions in your history that make you feel beyond the reach of wisdom? Are you a young or simple person? Here in verse 4, God or the author personally addresses this. God's wisdom is offered to the give prudence to the simple. That's what he's talking about. So we need this, right? We need this. I need to just lean into these texts and say, I am simple. And every time I read through Proverbs, I'm like, man, I'm pretty simple in that area. I'm pretty wide open, unformed, and dumb in that area. I need this wisdom to really guide and inform my life so that I can live a life that honors the Lord. So to know wisdom, skill, to take the raw materials of life and build a life that honors God, instruction or discipline and correction, insight, which is the ability to know and ask the things, uh questions that need to be asked to get to that which is beautiful, to the simple and the youth. Now let me talk to you who thought you were off the hook because you're not simple or youth. Because principles of wisdom number three is that wisdom is ongoing. Look at verse five. Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance. That's interesting. It's an unexpected turn because here we are, all of us who are like 40 and above, we're like, whoo, okay, good. Talk to those graduates. They really need this. They're simple and they're youth. But now the purpose statement in verses two to four seems to be heading toward a clear destination, the simple and youth. But now he talks about wise and those who are understanding, people who have already obtained wisdom, people who've already lived a long life, people who already have more years behind them than they have in front of them. That's who he's talking about. And rather than saying you may find a few new tips in here, it issues an urgent imperative. Keep listening, keep learning, obtain more guidance. The Hebrew construction here is funny, it's worth noting. The word translated increase in verse 5, let the wise hear and increase, means to add something already existing or to accumulate or augment. So to not be satisfied with the wisdom that I have, but to add to it. Which means wisdom does not plateau, it is a compound interest proposition. The more wisdom you have, the more equipped you are to receive more wisdom. But that accumulation only continues if the wise person maintains the posture of a learner. It's a nautical metaphor. It's sailing and boating. The word translated guidance. Notice it there in verse 5. Let the wise increase in learning and let the one who understands obtain guidance. It has this idea of ropes, uh uh controlling a vessel, a sailing vessel. In the ancient world, before there were rudders based for uh steering, large ships were guided by long oars and ropes rigged to the stern. They would know how to guide them and they would use them to direct their ships. That's how they would do it, and that's the word here. It's it's used elsewhere for strategic guidance, the kind of wisdom that keeps a person on course through through complex, difficult, and and changing circumstances. Proverbs 11:4 is a good cross-reference here. Where there is no guidance, this word, people fall, but in an abundance of counsel there is safety. So, what is he doing here? He's trying to help us understand that those of you who think you've arrived, those of us who think that we have come to the place where we are veteran Christians, we have navigated enough crises to know how they end. We have enough theological framework to categorize most of what comes at you. You've accumulated enough spiritual track record that you feel unconsciously that you are now giving wisdom rather than receiving wisdom. And he says here, do not be proud, do not be arrogant, do not be wise in your own eyes. He who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall. That's how Paul says it. So Paul is writing to the Corinthians, or rather, rather in current Corinthians writing that. But here, Proverbs writer is writing to those who think that they have they have avoided the pitfalls. Think about this illustration for a second. Who wrote this is this guy named Solomon, right? Wisest guy to ever live. And I don't mean that in like the mafia wise guy kind of way. Like wise, like God infused wisdom given to him. And Solomon's life is a warning here. The man who wrote much of Proverbs and was renowned as the wisest king in the world, 1 Kings 11 tells us that his heart gradually turned away from the Lord because he accumulated foreign wives who led him into idolatry. The tragedy is not that Solomon lacked wisdom, it's that he stopped living by the wisdom he possessed, believing that he could make exceptions to God's commands. He drifted into compromise. He stopped using the guidance that God provided, and one exception led to another until the man who had warned others about falling was personally walking in that folly. His life reminds us that wisdom is never something we outgrow. The pursuit of wisdom is never something we are past needing. The moment we stop listening, the moment we stop learning, the moment we stop fearing the Lord, we begin to drift. And even the wisest person can fall when they stop pursuing wisdom. You see that? So, like, yes, young people, listen. Yes, simple people, listen. But gray heads, yeah, you too. Long beards, Gandalfs, let's listen to. Let's lean in and say, you know what, we're about to study the wisdom of God located in this book. I need to continue to learn, I need to continue to grow. And what's hard about that is that the three-year-old believer still knows they have a lot to learn, but the 30-year believer can easily stop knowing that and recognizing that. So let's not do that. Okay? We good? Amen? First one wisdom has a purpose. Wisdom is for everyone. Simple, youth, old, and it's ongoing. It's a never-ending pursuit. Let me give you number four quickly because we got to get to number five, because that's the heart of it all. But number four is this wisdom requires engagement. Notice in verse six what he says. To understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. That's funny. Like I would easily just kind of quickly go over that in most of my readings of Proverbs. Remember, the first of every month, you end up reading Proverbs 1, right? And you read Proverbs 1 and you just kind of go past that stuff, but what does that mean? It deserves attention. In fact, I want you to zero in on the word riddles. It can mean a riddle, a puzzle, a dark saying. It was used when Samson, remember Samson, this big strong guy with long hair in Judges chapter 14, who killed everybody with the jawbone of a donkey. He was famous for giving riddles. Same word. In 1 Kings 10, it talks about how Queen Sheba came and asked hard questions. Same word is used. And the psalmist says in Psalm 78, I will utter dark sayings. That's the same word. So what this verse is acknowledging is that wisdom is not always just simple and immediately transparent. Some of what this book contains requires effort. It requires patience. It requires sustained reflection to understand and apply it. So for instance, later on we'll study that there's two verses that seem to contradict each other right by each other. One says, never answer a fool according to their folly. And the next one says, answer a fool according to their folly. And you need to have the wisdom and understanding to dive into what is being said there to pull out, because wisdom is not dispensed like a vending machine. It's drawn out like water from a deep well. And this drawing requires lowering the bucket intentionally, letting it down into the dark and bringing it up again. It has practical implications. Some Proverbs will immediately make sense. Others will seem to contradict each other. Others will require knowledge of the historical and cultural and agricultural context. And what this is here is it's an invitation to rigorous engagement with the text. That's what this is. Not to be intimidated by it, but challenged by it. And here's what Proverbs 25, 2 says. I'll say this and we'll move on. It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. So what are we doing in this study? What we're doing in this study is we are searching those things out. God has packaged these things in these proverbs of wisdom that at times may seem like riddles or dark sayings. But my encouragement for you and my challenge for you today is let's not stop pursuing and learning and asking and studying, whether you are young and simple or whether you are old and Gandalfy, let's continue to pursue and draw these things out because that is how God designed these things to be. There's a hiddenness here that we want to with patience and discernment pursue. So how do we do that? If wisdom has a purpose, it's to help you become Proverbs has a purpose in order to help you become wise and discerning and disciplined so that you will be a person of righteousness and justice and equity, that you who are simple and young will be a person of righteousness, justice and equity, that you who are old will continue to be people who are righteous and just and equitable. How do we get there? How do we pursue this? How do we start this journey? Where does it all begin? And that's what is the most important part of this whole text that I didn't leave enough time to expound, but I'm gonna do it anyways. Here it is. I'm sorry, verse seven. Look what it says. And that's this wisdom has a foundation. Verse 7. Where does this all begin? I won't be long here, but it is beginning with the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This is the thesis of the book. This is the gravitational center of this passage and of the entire Bible. The most important sentence in the chapter, the governing principle of the entire book. Every proverb that follows on money, on relationships, on speech, on work, on sexuality, on parenting, on friendship is an elaboration of this one sentence. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The same principle echoes throughout the wisdom literature. The fear of the Lord leads to life, Proverbs 19 says, where a life that is flourishing, a life that honors the Lord. Solomon at the end of Ecclesiastes said that the fear of God and keep his commandments is the whole duty of man. So, what does this mean? What does fear mean? It's a word that includes both terror and reverence. The tension between those is important to hold. At one end of the spectrum, the fear of the Lord includes a genuine awareness that God is holy, sovereign, and utterly unlike us. That to stand before him in our unrighteousness would be unbearable and terrifying. And that is the fear that caused Isaiah when he saw the Lord high and lifted up in Isaiah 6 to cry, Woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips. That is fear, an appropriate response to a fine of a finite fallen creature before an infinite holy God. On the other hand, of the side of the spectrum is the fear of the Lord as the loving reverence of a child before a father that they know and love. One who is both perfectly good, perfectly powerful, and whose approval is life and whose correction is grace. This is the spirit that the Spirit of God came to bring to us, where we, through adoption, cry, Abba Father. That the adopted child of God does not fear God as a slave fears a master, but they do fear God as a child fears grieving a father whose love is their everything. Both dimensions must be held together here. Fear is a holy awe and terrifying response to the awesome sovereignty of God. And it is a love and awe for Him as our Father. And a Christianity that loses trembling becomes just sentimental, feel good, warm and fuzzies. Then God is reduced to this cosmic affirmer of our lives who thinks everything we do is wonderful. Good job. Great play, great hit, great life. We lose the fear and awe. But if Christianity loses the beloved child element, it becomes legalistic, and God is just kind of like just uh unpleasable judge who is constantly trying to be appeased. And both uh need to be held in biblical wisdom. In fact, look at it here in Philippians 2, real quick. Philippians 2 he says, Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. There I think we see in the New Testament both held together: the beloved and fear and trembling, both at once. So let's think about this real quick. What does this fear be me uh mean when he says uh fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom? It's the word that means not a uh not a uh one of many steps, but it's the starting point. It's the first principle. It's Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, the thing from which everything else derives. When Proverbs says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it does not merely mean that it is a step of many in a 10-step process after which you graduate beyond it. It means that the fear of the Lord is the bedrock, it is the foundation, it is the lens through which all of life must be interpreted. It is the orientation that never becomes optional, no matter how much wisdom you accumulate. It's the foundation of a building. There's never a point in the erecting of a skyscraper that the foundation becomes unimportant. It is always vital for everything else to be built upon. This is the fear of the Lord. This is what we're talking about when we talk about true wisdom. And wisdom without God and without this fear is important to reject. Because that's what Proverbs is rejecting. Because we live in a culture with robust alternatives, don't we? The contemporary world is not hostile to wisdom. There are entire industries built around this, like self-help, leadership development, life coaching, therapy, neuroscience, behavioral economics. And some of what these fields offer is genuinely useful, but the operating premise of what this secular wisdom is is the answers are inside you, accessible through the right methods, and God is an optional add on for those who. Find religious framework helpful. But Proverbs says it, this is backwards. It's not just incomplete, it is structurally backwards. You cannot get the right answers about how to live by starting with yourself because you are the problem. You cannot understand how to live a life that honors God by starting with this idea that you have something inside of you that makes you capable of understanding how to live. Your desires are disordered, your perceptions are distorted by self-interest, your heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Your long-term judgment is compromised by short-term desires and appetites. And this wisdom spoken from these guys was that human beings need something outside and above themselves to rightly order their lives. And that is the fear of God. It starts with the fear of God. The flight from God into distraction or into self-construction or into ambition. This is the feature of a fool. And he describes a fool here in verse 7. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. The fool is not primarily an intellectual category, it is a moral and spiritual category. The fool has said in his heart, There is no God. Psalm chapter 14, verse 1. It's not merely intellectual atheism, it's practical atheism. Living as though there's no God who sees, there's no God to whom I am accountable. There's no God whose order I must navigate. There's no God whose word has authority over my life. The fool may be intelligent, the fool may be financially successful, the fool may be charming, educated, and admired, but at the level of their operative assumptions, their invisible creed they actually live by is this I am self-sovereign, I am the measure, and I am the authority. And Proverb reveals the bitter consequences of that mindset. The whole book of Proverbs tells us the person who is a few fool who does not want to submit to the authority of God and the uh the sovereignty of God is a person who has shattered relationships, ruins financially, reputation collapses, their bitter old age, and they finally die in despair. The verb is that they despise wisdom and instruction. They despise it, they hold contempt for it. They claim to be wise, but they become fools because of their foolish hearts. They suppress truth about God. They reject truth about God. Real quickly, in his in his memoir, Surprised by C. S. uh, Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis wrote this. He described the years of his life when he was committed to atheism as during years during which he simultaneously was longing for something he could not name and refusing to acknowledge what that longing was pointing toward. He's longing for something. So C.S. Lewis was longing for something he couldn't name, but refused to acknowledge the thing that he was longing for. He described himself as the most reluctant convert in all of England. He says, knocked off his feet, not by blinding vision or an emotional crisis, but by the quiet, persistent logic of his own thinking leading him against his will to the reality of God. And he said this what strikes Lewis in retrospect is how the decision not to fear God, the maintenance of practical atheism, required a constant, low-level work of suppression, rationalization, and misdirection. He had to constantly maintain his denial of God. And that's what the fool does. They find no peace, so they distract themselves with busyness and openness and they run off into brokenness that Proverbs is trying to protect us from. Listen, there is a purpose behind this wisdom. It is to teach us wisdom and instruction and discipline and insight. It's for the young and the simple and for the old gandoffs. It is for all of us. And it's an ongoing pursuit and an ongoing process, not to just go to the vending machine and plop in a couple of numbers, but to draw it out and study it out and dive in, dependent upon the spirit to understand these things. And it begins with the fear of the Lord, not something inside of you. It begins with understanding who he is in awe and terror for who he is. Covered a lot of ground in these seven verses. There's a lot there. And the density is a sign of what's ahead. But understand the Proverbs rewards us slow and carefully as we read through it. It rewards return visits and meditation and spending time in it. So as we launch this sermon series, let me uh finish with the truth to lives being three invitations. Can I? Three invitations. We say all of this to get to these three invitations that are our truth to life. Number one, can we come to this summer series as a learner? Come as a learner. Regardless of where you're starting. The whole spectrum is addressed here. There's no person in this room for whom wisdom is not available. There's no history of foolishness that puts you out of range. There's no level of existing wisdom that exempts you from the need for more. The only requisite to come to this book as a learner is humility. Not intelligence, not an education, not a great track record, just humility. The willingness to sit down, open the hand, and say, I need what only God can give me. To bring a notepad, to bring a Bible, and say, I'm gonna get what I need to get through the wisdom that God has laid down in these pages for me. Not proud, because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. That's invitation number one. Invitation number two is begin with the fear of the Lord. Every day, every decision, every step, a daily orientation of the heart before the living God. What would it look like? It might mean bringing beginning your morning not with your phone and not with your to-do list and not with the news, but with with maybe five minutes of stillness before God, acknowledging who he is, acknowledging your dependence on him, acknowledging who you are, and not living life as if inside of you is the wisdom you need for life, but it begins with understanding who he is and starting at that spot right there. Long enough there to ask, what do I want? What makes sense to me? That's the wrong questions. What does God say? What does his word show me? So that's number two. The fear of the Lord. Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn from evil. That's Proverbs 3:7. That's number two. Number three, let this book shape you, not just inform you. The purpose clauses in verses two and three are not about information transfer, they are about transformation. To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealings. These are languages of formation, character being shaped, habits being built, a life being oriented in a new direction. And if the end of this series you have simply accumulated more information about a book you already know something about, then that is a missed opportunity. The goal is not that you can explain what chakma is or what wisdom is, the goal is that you are walking in wisdom. So let this book shape you and how you live, not just inform you. Now, last thing, I said that already, I know. Forgive me. But here's the reality: is that fear of God is a right relationship with God. That's the foundation of everything that is a life that honors God. But the problem is that every one of us must realize honestly that we have all lived as fools. We have all at some level chosen self-sovereignty over the fear of God. We've all taken the raw materials of life and shaped it toward our own glory rather than his. That's not just a wisdom deficit, that is sin. And sin separates us from God. That's where we get this. The sin that separates us, though, is the re is what Christ came to redeem. And the pro uh Bible tells us that Christ is the wisdom of God, and in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So every proverb in this book, every insight about how life works under God finds its fulfillment and its source in Jesus Christ. You cannot walk in wisdom by trying harder to apply better principles. Wisdom is not a curriculum, it's a person. And that person went to a cross to deal with the foolishness that separates us from God. He bore the consequences of our self-sovereignty and our foolishness so that we could be brought back into a right relationship with the only one who is truly wise. So to fear the Lord is to begin with God, and to begin with God today means to begin with Christ, the wisdom of God in human flesh. So the wisdom that is available to us in Proverbs is available to us first by fearing the Lord and coming into a relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ. So instead of reading this book as a good self-help book, read this book as the result of knowing Christ and the wisdom that he provides for our life. Trust him as your Savior. That's where it starts. Amen? All right. A life that honors God begins with the pursuit of true wisdom. Let's pray. Father, help us here. Seven verses jan-packed full of truths that we've got to get, we've got to understand as we apply these to our lives over the summer series. Help us. We're desperate for your help here to know wisdom and instruction, to grow in our understanding and insight. That we would not just be people who learn more about what Proverbs is, but that we would be people who apply and are transformed by the truths of the book of Proverbs. That our relationships and our financial dealings and our purity and our words would be shaped by the wisdom that is provided here. And all of that we know is found in dependence upon who Jesus Christ is. So help us, please. We love you and are thankful that we have this time to spend together in your word. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.