The Beginning of Wisdom

Sermon Transcript

I’m not particularly handy. I think and talk for a living, and while I’ll let you decide if I’m any good at that, I can tell you I’m not particularly good at fixing or making things. My wife is the handy one in our house, a fact I happily accepted early in our marriage. She studied sculpture in college and comes from a handy family. Every now and then, though, she or one of her brothers will enlist my services, and one time recently her brother had me on what I think, after a study of google image searches, is called a miter saw. When he set me up on it, though, he warned me: That saw is sharp, and you don’t want to lose a finger, so make sure you put your hand in a certain position and make sure the guard is down. He wanted me to have a healthy fear of the saw, not to keep me away from it, but so that I would adjust myself to it, use it in a way that accomplished the project goal, and didn’t take my hand off in the process.

 

Today we’re beginning a series of sermons through the book of Proverbs by looking at the first seven verses, and in both the entire book of Proverbs and these first seven verses something similar is going on to that conversation with my brother-in-law. The big theme of the book of Proverbs is wisdom, and wisdom is the art of perceiving reality and living in accordance with it. That’s my definition right up front that you’ll hear me come back to throughout the series: Wisdom is the art of perceiving reality and living in accordance with it. It recognizes that while we can do much to change the world around us, there is still a certain givenness to things, a certain way the world is, that comes from the reality of a God who simply is the way he is, and who has chosen to make and govern this world in a certain way, much as I recognized there was a certain givenness to the miter saw: It’s sharp, it spins fast, it’s powerful enough to sever my hand from my arm if it comes down on it. So rather than try to change the saw to accommodate what I wanted, wisdom dictated that I had to change to accommodate it: I had to hold my hand a certain way and use the guard. We all need wisdom like that for the countless situations we face for which there is not a simple Bible verse that tells us what to do. You may know what is sin or not, but do you know what is wise when you face a decision with multiple possible choices, none of which are overtly sinful? We need wisdom, and yet we aren’t born with that wisdom. We have to learn it, especially as a church whose median age is currently lower than the average church, and we’re going to see the good news in this passage today that if we are willing to learn, God is willing to instruct us. So live wisely by first learning wisdom.

 

The source of wisdom

 

Our passage today and the entire book of Proverbs begins as you might expect a book to begin, with a title and an author. We call the book of Proverbs the book of Proverbs because it is a book of…you guessed it…proverbs. We won’t really encounter these Proverbs until chapter 10; chapters 1-9 serve as a kind of prologue to the proverbs, and in these chapters the author argues from various angles that we should pay close attention to and work diligently to understand the proverbs that come beginning in chapter 10. So what is a proverb, then?

 

A proverb is a saying that captures wisdom in a short, memorable way. We have many of these in the English language beyond the book of Proverbs. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” and so on. One of my favorites is, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” I confess I don’t really know what it means down to the details, but that’s the beauty of a proverb: You don’t have to. I know its wisdom is that it’s generally better to accept what’s a guarantee than to hold out for something better and risk ending up with nothing at all. Sometimes I go to sporting events at the stadiums in south Philadelphia, and to get down there I will usually go to the Girard subway station. I go to Girard rather than Fairmount because at Girard you have a chance of catching the sports express. But 9/10 the local comes first. What should I do? Hold out for the express, or just take the local? Well, the express schedule is not entirely clear to me. In fact, I’m often at the station after the last express has already run. So I know there’s a chance if I wait for the express I’ll be waiting there a long time. But if I take the local, I at least know I’ll get to the stadiums eventually, and it’s not actually that much longer. Furthermore, there is a chance that if the express comes, I can switch over to it at one of the center city stops. So I take whichever train comes first.

 

Now that I’ve come to that conclusion, when I go to the subway station each time, I don’t evaluate the question afresh or go back through those multiple logical steps to reach the conclusion. Instead, the local comes, I think to myself, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, and I get on the local. That’s the beauty of a proverb. It distills accumulated wisdom down into a short, memorable saying that you can use in multiple situations. And, it enables you to pass on that wisdom to others. So once my son is old enough to know that there is an express and a local and I’m taking him to a game with me, when the local comes, I’ll explain to him, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. We always take whichever train comes first.”

 

So as we think about the source of wisdom, proverbs are a valuable source. But the proverbs in this book of proverbs are unique, because these are the proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. And why should you care what Solomon thinks about anything? Because if you realize what the original readers would have realized when they read that these were the proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, you will realize that Solomon is known for his wisdom. Toward the beginning of Solomon’s reign God appeared to Solomon in a dream and told him he could ask God for anything, and of all things for which Solomon could have asked, he asked for wisdom. And God responded by saying, “Because this was in your heart, and you have not asked for possessions, wealth, honor, or the life of those who hate you, and have not even asked for long life, but have asked for wisdom and knowledge for yourself that you may govern my people over whom I have made you king, wisdom and knowledge are granted to you” (2 Chronicles 1:11-12a).

 

We could say, then, that Solomon is the source of wisdom in the book of Proverbs. But behind that introduction of himself lies this story, and the ultimate source of Solomon’s wisdom: Solomon’s God. Solomon is no longer on the throne of Israel, we aren’t his subjects, but we look to the proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel because Solomon’s God is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he is the ultimate source of both Solomon’s wisdom and ours. Like every book of the Bible, the words of the book of Proverbs are breathed out by God. When we read the Proverbs of Solomon, we are simultaneously reading the Proverbs of God.

 

Do you see the kindness of God, then, that he not only answered Solomon’s prayer to give him wisdom, but he also inspired Solomon to share that wisdom in this book? There were other books like this in the ancient world, but one thing that already sets Solomon’s work apart from them is not only that these Proverbs are the very words of God, but that he does not list an addressee. In other ancient books of wisdom the books were for the king’s successor, or for boys being brought up in the royal court, and we’ll see that those are both part of Solomon’s concern as well, but he doesn’t limit the book to them. If he did, it wouldn’t be in the Bible. The proverbs of Solomon are intended to share God’s wisdom with all God’s people through the use of these wise sayings we call Proverbs. God wants to share his wisdom with you through these Proverbs. Receive them like that.

 

Do you look to God, then, and especially to the words he’s given us in scripture, as your ultimate source of wisdom? If Jesus Christ, God incarnate, were bodily present in the room today and he spoke a Proverb to us like, “Hated stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses” (Prov 10:12), would you really say to him, “I don’t know Jesus; I read an article recently that suggests covering offenses can be detrimental to the person offended” or “I don’t know Jesus; that’s not what my professors said”? If you’re a Christian at least, wouldn’t you instead be hanging on every word and working hard to understand the wisdom in what Jesus is saying? That’s how you should treat the book of Proverbs. God himself is the source of our wisdom, God gave Solomon wisdom, and these are the proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel. Look to them as your source of wisdom. Let’s look next, then, at the nature of wisdom.

 

The nature of wisdom

 

In verse 2 Solomon reveals his purpose in writing this book: So that the readers might know wisdom and insight, 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. In other words, Solomon is writing this book to share his wisdom with God’s people so that we too can become wise through them.

 

Now I told you my definition of wisdom is the art of perceiving reality and living in accordance with it; Proverbs itself does not give us a tidy definition like that, though. What Solomon does do in these verses is help us understand what it is through the use of many words that are roughly synonymous with it. Wisdom is the broadest category, the summary term, but what is wisdom? It’s words of insight, it’s instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity, it’s prudence, it’s knowledge, it’s discretion, it’s learning, it’s guidance. All those things are different angles on wisdom. It is something you teach through instruction, but it is also something you use to understand instructions. Verse 2 begins by saying that you need to know instruction, but then says you also need to understand words of insight, and the book of Proverbs exists to give you both: The instructions themselves, and how to understand the instructions.

 

If you buy a piece of IKEA furniture, you get instructions on how to assemble it. And though sometimes you may feel like it would be nice to have an instruction manual on how to understand their instruction manuals, you don’t really need it. If you follow their instructions step by step, at the end you will end up with an assembled piece of furniture. That’s not how the book of Proverbs works. That’s now how wisdom works. It’s an art. Wisdom entails not only knowing the instructions, but knowing how to understand and use the instructions. Take my earlier biblical example, which I honestly chose at random while writing the sermon, Proverbs 10:12 – “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” Imagine you’re walking down the street and you see a man with a knife yelling violently. It would be foolish to say, “Well, love covers all offenses, so I should cover this offensive thing that man is doing and walk toward him as though it isn’t happening.” No, that’s a situation in which you need Proverbs 22:3 – “The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.” Solomon wrote these Proverbs not only so that you’d have the wise sayings, but so that you’d know how to understand and use the wise sayings.

 

And he did so with an end in mind, as verse 3 shows us: so that you would know how to deal wisely, in righteousness, justice, and equity. C.S. Lewis once said that “education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” In other words, if you just give people wise sayings without also instructing them on what to use their wisdom to accomplish, they’re likely to use it to accomplish sinful, selfish ends, and so to become a more clever devil. The book of Proverbs is not going to do that. It’s going to instruct us in how to live righteously and justly. And we need wisdom to do that.

 

Pastor Timothy Keller has pointed out how noteworthy it is that Solomon prayed for wisdom, because of the reason for which he prayed for it. Here’s what Solomon said: “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil” (1 Kings 3:9). Keller asks, why would Solomon have to pray for that if he already had God’s law? God’s law clearly tells us what is good and what is evil in God’s sight, and yet Solomon still had to ask for wisdom to discern between good and evil; why? Because as king, and really for any of us as humans, every day we will face situations that no one biblical law directly addresses. It’s why the book of Proverbs doesn’t read like an IKEA instruction manual; this thing called life that we are all living is far too complicated, especially if you want to live that life righteously, justly, and equitably. It’s why wisdom is the art of perceiving reality and living in accordance with it. And look, there are some of us that frustrates. Some of us wish God would just give us a book that reads like an instruction manual, but life is so complex that you’d spend your whole life reading a book of that length, and then you’d never actually get around to living your life at all, let alone living it wisely! A set of rules won’t cut it; you and I need wisdom.

 

Finally, we can get at the nature of wisdom by seeing for whom Solomon’s instruction is intended. I said he had no specific addressee, but here we see he does have certain groups in mind: First the simple, then the wise. In verse 4 he says he’s writing these proverbs down to give prudence to the simple. Throughout Proverbs we will meet four basic categories of people: The wise, the simple, the fool, and the scoffer. The simple appear first and they are the typically younger people whose mind and character are still more like wet cement. The parallel word translated “youth” in verse 4 can refer to a newborn in the Bible or to someone as old as 30, though that would be on the old end of the word’s usage. The best way to think of it is someone still under tutelage, who isn’t a fool, but who also should not yet be entrusted with the responsibility of teaching others or taking on other responsibilities like marriage or child rearing. Solomon wants to get to them while the cement is still wet and deposit all this wisdom so that when the cement dries, it dries into wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity.

 

That way the simple do not have to learn reality the hard way. Wisdom is the art, first, of perceiving reality. “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.” What’s that giving me? It’s giving me insight into reality. Here’s how the world works: Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. You could go try to learn that by hating people and loving people and tracking the results, but here’s the beauty of proverbs: God already knows how the world works because he made it, so he gave wisdom to Solomon, and through him gives it to us. You can learn that way, instead of having to learn by hating people and experiencing strife. And then, equipped with that knowledge of reality, wisdom is living in accordance with it. When a friend offends you, the wise thing to do is not to hate them in response, which will only stir up strife, but to love them, and as you do, what do you know? You find over time it’s like the offense never happened. Love covered it up, as the LORD said it would. Proverbs exists so that the simple can learn wisdom that way.

 

But, it’s not as though the wise have nothing to learn from Proverbs, because in verse 5 he also calls on them to hear and increase in learning. This is the second type of person we meet in Proverbs: The wise. The wise are those who receive instruction and order their lives in accordance with it, and one piece of instruction they receive and order their lives in accordance with is their need for wisdom. So the wise tend not to think of themselves as particularly wise, and instead live with a real sense of their ongoing need for wisdom. The wiser you get, the more you realize how much you need more wisdom. So both the simple and the wise can benefit from this book.

 

The fool and the scoffer, however, are not addressed. The fool shows up in verse 7, where we read his basic description: Fools despise wisdom and instruction. The simple are open to it but just haven’t received it yet. The wise have received it, submitted to it, and ordered their lives in accordance with it as they continue to seek more of it. The fool has received it in a sense, but upon receiving it, he rejects it and despises it. Proverbs won’t help the fool, because it will just give him more of what he hates: Wisdom. And the scoffer won’t be helped by it either, because as we’ll see later, the scoffer not only despises wisdom and instruction; he openly mocks it.

 

Now the good news is you don’t have to diagnose yourself as to which category you fall into. That will be revealed in your response to wisdom. Instead, focus on that response: Receive the instruction proverbs gives and order your life around it. You won’t be a fool or a scoffer if you do that. If you’re simple, you will, over time, become wise. And if you’re already wise, you’ll just become wiser. Do you really believe that’s possible for you? Some of you here today, if you’re honest, feel pretty clueless about how to navigate the daily realities you face. Others of you have a sense that you’ve already made a pretty big mess of your life, and you live with the consequences of past folly. Perhaps you are painfully aware of the lack of role models in your life, or the bad role models in your life. Perhaps you still feel so young. But do you see what Solomon is saying here? He’s saying through these words, through this book, you can actually grow in wisdom if you are simply willing to receive its instruction and order your life accordingly. You say, “I don’t know Mike; the Bible was written a long time ago and it’s complicated and I really don’t know much at all about it and I’m not really much of a reader anyway,” but guess what? Solomon says he’s writing this book for people like you! It’s for the simple! Listen to the passages we read aloud and the sermons we preach on it with that hope in front of you! If you are willing to be taught, you can grow in wisdom. I’d encourage you over the next few months to study this book on your own time with the hope that however simple you are, you can actually grow in your understanding of it, and grow in wisdom accordingly.

 

But, there is also an implied warning here. If you come to Proverbs or really to any book of the Bible assuming you already know what it’s going to say, or assuming you already know what’s true, and then you just kind of ignore or even actively despise it whenever it says something that contradicts your preconceived notions, that’s the way of the fool, and the fool will not grow in wisdom from Proverbs. It won’t do you any good. You must be willing to be taught before you can really learn. But God is willing to give his wisdom to any who are willing to learn. So to you who are, let’s look last at the foundation of wisdom, given in verse 7.

 

The foundation of wisdom

 

We read in verse 7 that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. When building a house, what’s the beginning? Laying the foundation. Once that’s laid, you can build on top of it. When educating a child, where do schools typically begin? Teach them to read. Why? Because that’s the foundation of the rest of their learning. Ok, so when it comes to this thing called wisdom, what’s the foundation? The source is ultimately God, though in the book of Proverbs it’s God speaking through Solomon, to whom he gave wisdom, and the nature of it is something like instruction and understanding how to use that instruction to live wisely, righteously, and justly, but what’s the foundation? Where do we begin?

 

The fear of the LORD is the beginning, the foundation, of wisdom. If you’re new with us you should just be aware that when you see the word Lord printed in all capital letters in your Bible it’s translating the name Yahweh, the distinctive name of the God of Israel. The foundation of wisdom is the fear of that particular, unique being. What does it mean to fear him? The most obvious connotation of the term is to fear displeasing him, because you recognize that he has both the power and the authority to execute judgment on those who do so. When you walk past someone playing a musical instrument on the street with a sign that says, “Please contribute,” most of us don’t do it. Why? We don’t fear that person. But when the federal government comes each year around April 15 and says, “please contribute”, most of us do. Why? Because we recognize they are more powerful than we are, they’re willing to use that power to punish us if we don’t contribute, and they have the right to do so by the authority God has given the state. We fear them.

 

So why is fearing God like that the beginning of wisdom? Because when God says, “hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses,” if you don’t fear him, you’ll treat that proverb like you treat the street musician’s “please contribute” sign. You’ll walk right past it, and change nothing in your life. But if you fear God, you will feel that to ignore that proverb and any proverb will have perilous consequences in your life, like ignoring the Federal Government’s summons to pay your taxes will likely have negative consequences in your life. Think about who the LORD is: The God of Israel is the one true God, the one through whom all things were made. He is so powerful that he spoke all that exists into creation, upholds it by his will, and directs it in such a way that his purposes always prevail. The power of the United States Federal Government compared to the LORD’s is like the power of a firecracker compared to an atomic bomb. You can sometimes slide things past the government, but Proverbs itself tells us that “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good” (Prov 15:3). He is the one to fear.

 

But there are limitations to this sort of fear. Most people pay their taxes to the federal government, but how many do so because they love the federal government? That would be rare if it exists at all, and in a sense, the federal government doesn’t care. But the LORD cares. “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart” Proverbs 21:2 says, and a heart of love for God will not come if your fear of him only means you are afraid he’ll punish you if you disobey him. Furthermore, if that’s all your fear of the LORD is, you will still try to evade him, just like people try to evade their taxes if they think they can get away with it. And guess what that means? You won’t really receive his wisdom. You’ll read a proverb and say, “Ok, now I know I need to stick pretty close to this so I don’t get punished, but it seems kind of uncomfortable to me and I don’t really feel like doing it, so maybe I can twist the meaning to something else or kinda do the bare minimum to technically stick to it without having to really submit myself to it,” and you’ll never learn wisdom by treating the proverbs like that. You’ll never really submit to them and internalize them, and so you’ll never gain the wisdom from them they were written to give. Instead, your attitude toward them has to be something like, “Whoa; the God who made this world and rules over every square inch of it says this is how that world works and how he wants me to live in it. I love him so much that I really want to understand what he intended to say in this proverb, not just what I want it to say, and I want to conform my life to it entirely, even when that is very uncomfortable for me to do.” That’s what the fear of the LORD that is the foundation of wisdom looks like.

 

It looks like the kind of fear a young son has for his father in any healthy father/son relationship. The son looks at the father and sees someone much more powerful than he, who hopefully has proven that he is willing to use that power to lovingly discipline his son if his son starts heading down a foolish path. But over time, as the son sees how much his father loves him, he should also begin to love his father, and obey out of that love, and not just to avoid the negative consequences of disobedience. Do you see the problem we all have now? We do not, by nature, have a healthy father/son relationship with our heavenly Father, because from the moment we were born, we have treated him like the fool treats wisdom and instruction: We have despised him. So when he has told us what to do or how he wants us to live, we have despised it, either by actively rebelling against it, or by finding ways to twist and evade it like someone trying to evade their taxes. And just as the fool won’t be helped by all the proverbs in the world, neither will we unless something changes in our relationship with our heavenly Father that enables us to not only be afraid of him, but to love him with that awe-filled, reverential love of a son for his father.

 

God knew just sending proverbs from heaven wouldn’t do that, so one day he sent us his only-begotten Son, the one with whom he had a perfect, eternal father/son relationship, to take on our human flesh, so that we too could be restored to the position of sons of God. Jesus Christ accomplished that restoration when he died on the cross, taking upon himself the judgment our folly deserved, and rising from the dead, bringing our humanity back into the glory of a son of God, never to be separated from him, never to die again. We should be afraid of God as sinners because we know he has the power and right to punish us for our sins, but we should love God as his sons because we believe he took the punishment upon himself in such a way that though we still struggle against sin and sometimes give in to it, and though he will continue to discipline us as any loving father disciplines his son, he will never punish us eternally.

 

Have you come into this relationship with him yet? Do you fear him at all today? Is your fear of him merely a fear of punishment? Turn from your sins, turn from your attempts to evade him with a righteousness of your own, trust in his son Jesus Christ, and he will adopt you as his son, and pour into your heart the fear of him that is the beginning of knowledge. That’s the foundation you and I need if we are ever to truly grow in wisdom. When you know he’s not only powerful, when you know he doesn’t only have the right to punish you, but you know that he loves you, and that he’s for you, then you can finally stop trying to evade him and instead just happily submit to him and receive his wisdom as he gives it in the proverbs. You can finally just submit to reality and live in accordance with it, because you are happily submitting to the real God. That’s the fear of the LORD that is the foundation of wisdom. Without it, this whole book will be of no use to you. But with it, even the simplest among us can grow in wisdom, and even the wise among us can increase in learning.