Subject: THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM
Scripture: Proverbs 3:1-7; 9:10.
Text: Proverbs 9:10: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding."
Has anyone ever called you stupid? Have you ever been called an ignoramus? Has anyone ever told you that you were foolish? Probably so! Most of us at one time or another have been called these things, perhaps even by our friends or by members of our own families. Very likely, however, we weren't disturbed too much by being called these things because we didn't think those who called us these things were really serious. In most cases, they were just irritated at us and were letting off steam and didn't really mean it - or we hope they didn't!
We like to look upon ourselves as being rather intelligent people who have a fair amount of wisdom. We like to think that we use at least an average amount of good judgment in making our decisions and in the living of our lives. And if those who know us were to look upon us as being really stupid and foolish, this might shake us up quite a bit. Certainly it would be disturbing and unpleasant to think about.
It might pay us, however, to take a good look at ourselves this morning and see if we are really wise and if we do exercise good judgment in the lives we live and in the things we do and say.
Wisdom is more than simple knowledge. A person can know a great deal and still not be a wise person. Wisdom involves not simply learning the facts of life but also taking those facts and applying them to one's living in such a way that one is benefited thereby. Wisdom involves not simply learning the laws of life, but also living in such harmony with those laws that one is helped, not hurt by them. Wisdom involves not simply learning the truths of life, but also living in harmony with the truth.
The Book of Proverbs has a great deal to say about wisdom. In fact, it is the voice of Wisdom that speaks to us through much of the book, and the Voice of Wisdom is saying to us in effect: "These are the laws of life; this is the way life was meant to be lived; this is the good way. Learn these laws and these truths and then walk in harmony with them along the way they point out and you will be blessed thereby and will experience the good life. Walk this way and you will avoid the pitfalls that multitudes of ignorant people and those who will not listen fall into." Wisdom is not simply learning the way of life: it is having the good judgment to walk in that way to the temporal and eternal welfare of one's body, soul, mind and spirit. Wisdom is not simply learning God's will and commandments: it is being farsighted enough to do His will and keep His commandments. Are we really wise in this sense?
The writer of Proverbs tells us that wisdom is the principal thing, and happy is the person who finds it. He tells us that the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof, than fine gold. He says that wisdom is better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it.
Wisdom is a precious thing. As we examine our own lives, some of us may realize that we have not been as wise as we should have been, and if so, perhaps we have good enough judgment to raise the question: "Where is wisdom to be found?" Our text this morning points us to the answer to this question: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding."
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom..." Are you afraid of the Lord this morning? Do you have the beginning of wisdom in your life today? To our modern world this may seem like a strange place to begin in acquiring wisdom. Who's afraid of God today? In a generation that lightly refers to God as the "man upstairs" or even as being dead; in a generation when tremendous emphasis is placed upon the love of God and little is said of His wrath; in a religious atmosphere so informal that unless one is careful one may be looking upon Jesus and talking to Him as a buddy rather than as the eternal Son of God and the Lord and Master of one's life - in such an atmosphere as this, who's afraid of God anymore?
Are you afraid of God? If you knew God were going to descend from Heaven this morning and appear to us here as He did to Isaiah yonder in the temple in the long ago, would you be afraid? Would you want to stay for His arrival, or would you want to slip out before He got here? If you were to leave this earthly life this morning and were to find yourself being admitted through the pearly gates into Heaven, would you run down the streets of gold shouting out, "Hey, God, where are You? I want to see you!" And if you rounded a corner and caught a glimpse of Him sitting on His throne, would you dash right up to Him crying out, "Hey, God, I made it" and start blabbering out a lot of junk about yourself that you wanted God to know without any hesitation whatsoever - or would you have a sense of awe and reverence that would cause you to join those who fall down before Him, and worship Him, and cast their crowns before Him, saying, "Thou art worthy, 0 Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created."
It is no light thing to come into the Presence of the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. It is no light thing to have a personal experience of the Presence of the Lord God Almighty in one's life. It is an awesome thing!
You remember when God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, that He said, "Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." And what was Moses feeling? The Scripture said that Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.
You remember the experience Isaiah had when he had an experience of the Presence of the Lord in the temple in the year that King Uzziah died. When he found himself in the Presence of the Lord, he cried out, "Woe is me: for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts."
You remember Job's experience and all of the afflictions that came upon him. He did not understand why he was suffering such afflictions, and he cried out of his suffering his desire to stand and plead his case before God. Finally God revealed Himself and spoke to Job. Do you remember what Job said then to God? He said, "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes."
There has been so much talk in recent years about the love and mercy and goodness of the Lord that we sometimes forget that right at the very foundation of a right relationship with the Lord is a proper fear of the Lord.
In Psalm 33:8 we read, "Let all the earth fear the Lord: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him." Psalm 89:7 says further, "God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of His saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about Him."
Moving over into the New Testament, in Luke 1:50 we read that "His mercy is on them that fear Him from generation to generation." And in Acts 10:35 we read that "in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him."
A. W. Tozer rightly points out that in olden days people of faith were said to "walk in the fear of God" and to "serve the Lord with fear."
In the 12 chapters of the Book of Ecclesiastes, the writer looks out upon life and tries to fathom its meaning and to give good advice as to how to live wisely. He concludes his observations with these words: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments..."
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom..." Are you afraid of God? Do you have enough of the fear of God in your heart so that you can begin to learn wisdom? One of the songs that we occasionally hear is the one, "What the world needs now is love, sweet love..." Of course the world needs love, but the truth of the matter is that the world already has love - the love of God, a love so great that He sent His only begotten Son into the world to show us how to live and to make atonement on the cross for our sins, and that love is not being responded to by multitudes of people in part because there is not enough of the fear of God in their hearts to make them feel their need for it.
Why is the fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom? I have but to look into my own life and experience to see something of why this is so. What was it that got me concerned about the Christian life? What was it that got me disturbed over the way I was living and led me to seek to know God's will and what I must do to become right with Him? What was it that got me started on the pathway of trying to know and keep God's commandments and that led me to respond to His love? What was it that brought me to the place where, if I know my heart, I now love the Lord and want to serve Him and glorify His holy Name?
It was fear, a fear of what would happen to me if I came to stand in the Presence of God on judgment day without first being reconciled unto Him through faith in Christ. Had I not been afraid of what would happen to me if I died unprepared to meet a holy and righteous God, I don't know that I would ever have gotten concerned enough about the Christian life to have learned about it and to have committed my life unto Christ in faith. When we have no fear of God, we tend to take His commandments lightly and to transgress His laws when they get in the way of our desires. When we have no fear of God, we are not likely to go to much trouble either to learn or to do His will. When we have no fear of God, we tend to follow our own wills and do as we please rather than seeking God's will and living to please and glorify Him. If the way of true wisdom is to learn and do God's will, then the fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom.
What is the fear of the Lord? I think one of the best definitions I have ever run across is one that Reverend George Brannon gave in a service at John Wesley Camp Meeting in High Point some years ago. He said: "The fear of God is an inner anxiety lest I grieve God, lest I miss His will for my life." And he went on to say that our fathers and mothers in the years gone by had great power with God because they were afraid not to mind God.
In a proper fear of God, there is a sense of awe, a feeling of deep reverence, and a genuine concern to bring one's life into harmony with His will. If we have a proper fear of God in the Biblical sense, we will show it in some very definite ways in our lives and actions.
We reveal our attitude towards God by the way we treat His Word. The way we treat a message reveals not only something of what we think of the message, but also something of our attitude towards the one who sent the message.
All of us are acquainted with what we refer to as "junk mail." When we go to the mailbox each day and get our mail, one of the first things most of us do is to sort it out and separate the important from the unimportant. Some of it we look upon as "junk mail", and we may leave it lying around without even reading it, or we may just pitch it into the trash can without even opening it. In so doing, we show not only what we think about it, but we also show something of our low regard and lack of esteem for the company or persons who sent it.
On the other hand, how many of us have, at some time or another, fallen in love and done at least part of our courting by mail? Have any of you ever written a "love letter"? Do you remember the first "love letter" you ever received? What did you do with it? How did you treat it? Did you leave it lying around unopened for awhile? Did you let it gather dust while you attended to more important matters? Did you perhaps even pitch it into the trash can without even reading it? You know better and so do I! No expensive book you ever bought at a bookstore got better and more careful and loving attention than that letter! It was read and re-read and treasured and studied until every word and every line of it were imprinted on your mind and heart. (I am speaking out of personal experience, of course.) And why was it received and dealt with in such a loving manner and with such appreciation and respect? Because of the way we felt towards the one who sent it.
Likewise, we reveal much about our attitude towards God by the way we handle and treat His holy Word.
We read in 2 Timothy 3 that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. We are warned in Revelation 22:18-19 against tampering with and altering the Word of God. In Luke 11:28 Jesus says, "Blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it."
When in the long ago Jehudi read God's Word to King Jehoiakim and Jehoiakim took a penknife and cut the pages and threw them into the fire, Jehoiakim was showing not only his contempt for the Word of God but also his disrespect and his lack of fear of God Himself.
Contrast that with the way King Josiah acted when Hilkiah the high priest found the book of the law in the temple when the temple was being repaired and Shaphan the scribe took it to King Josiah and read it to him. When King Josiah heard the words of the book and realized that the nation had been living in disobedience to the will of God, he became so disturbed that he rent his clothes, and humbled himself, and wept before the Lord. Then he gathered the people together, had the word of God read unto them, and led them in making a covenant that they would walk after the Lord and obey His commandments and testimonies and statutes with all their heart and soul. In the way he treated God's Word, he revealed his fear of God and his desire to live according to the will of God.
Likewise, you and I, by the way we treat God's Word, and by the concern we have to bring our lives into harmony with it, reveal our attitude towards God and show clearly whether or not we have a proper fear and reverence of Him.
Then we reveal our attitude towards God by the way we treat the church. A proper reverence for the Lord shows itself in a reverence for His house. Again and again in the Scriptures are we taught that the place where God meets with His people is a holy place and a place to be approached in a spirit of reverence.
You remember something of the feeling Jacob had that night in Bethel as he was on his way to his Uncle Laban's when he had the dream and saw the ladder set up that reached into heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending on it. When he awoke he said, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not." And we read that he was afraid.
You remember Moses' experience on the back side of the desert when he saw the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. He turned aside to see it, and God spoke to him out of the midst of the bush, saying, "Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."
Perhaps you remember, too, how sacred Mount Sinai was as God appeared to Moses there and how it was not to be approached lightly or by those who had not properly cleansed and sanctified themselves. The tabernacle, likewise, was a holy place, and so was the temple, and they were to be treated with reverence and respect.
There were those times during the Old Testament days when the Hebrew people backslid and went away from God and when the temple was permitted to fall into a state of disrepair and neglect, but whenever the people would turn back to God in repentance and obedience, there would likewise be a return to a concern for cleansing and repairing the temple and making it once again a place where people came in a spirit of reverence and worship.
The story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on that Sunday in the long ago when he found people in the temple buying and selling and changing money is one that we should never forget. He went into the temple and cast out all who sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and said unto them, "It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." Jesus had a proper reverence and concern for the place of worship, and He insisted that others should do the same.
How do we feel about God's house? When we enter the sanctuary, do we feel that we are on holy ground? When we gather about the altar in the sacrament of holy communion, do we sense not only the sacredness of the service but also the sacredness of the place? While we may not go through the ritualistic cleansing that the Jews in the long ago went through before entering the temple, do we prepare our hearts and minds for worship and seek, when we come into this holy place, to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness? Do we show the proper reverence and respect for God's house not only by keeping it clean and beautiful, but also by our reverent conduct and spirit while we are in it?
I am glad that my parents brought me up with the feeling that God's house was a holy place, and that as a little boy I was not permitted to run up and down the church aisles, climb over the altar rail, play in the chancel, nor partake of the Lord's Supper without realizing that it was a sacred and serious matter. I am glad that I was taught that the sanctuary is a place to pray, not to play, and a place to worship, not a place to be entertained. I'm glad that I learned long years ago that the reason we dress properly and wear our best clothing to church is not to show off what we have, as some people so glibly say particularly around Easter, but is to show our respect for God.
I remember the head usher in a church I served some years ago who insisted that all of the ushers should wear a coat and tie no matter how warm the weather became. Why? "When you go to a wedding," he said, "you wear a coat and tie. When you go to a funeral, you do the same. Does not God also rate a coat and tie?"
It may seem a small thing, but even on weekdays when I may be working around the church or in some of the classrooms, no matter how cold the building may be and how little hair I have on my head to keep it warm, I always remove my cap or hat before walking through the sanctuary out of respect and reverence for God and His house.
We do not do our children a favor if we bring them up to think no more of God's house than of any other place, and fail to instill in them a proper reverence for it.
Sometime ago I was in a church meeting in one of the large churches of our conference on a Sunday evening. Before the meeting began, a group of us were standing at the back of the sanctuary when down the hall came some teenagers running and bouncing a basketball. Right on through the doorway into the sanctuary they started to come with their game until they saw us standing there, and they turned and went back the other way.
We are told that there is a time and place for all proper things, and certainly there is a time and place for us all to have our recreation and play, but we shortchange ourselves far more than we ever realize if we fail to remember that God's house is a holy place and if we let it become simply another building to use for anything we desire apart from the holy purposes for which it was erected.
We reveal our attitude towards God to a large degree by the way we treat the church. A proper reverence for the Lord shows itself also in a proper respect and reverence for His house.
Then we reveal our attitude towards God to some degree by the way that we observe the Lord's day. The fourth of the Ten Commandments was and still is, "Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy." The word "holy" means "set apart for God."
The observance of the sabbath day, even by those who profess to be God's people, has changed tremendously from the time when the children of Israel stoned a man to death for gathering sticks on the sabbath day. To vast numbers of people the Lord's day has, for all practical purposes, lost about all of its religious meaning. Even those of us who still look upon the Lord's day as a holy day are under almost constant pressure to mix more and more of the world in with it and to keep less and less of it holy unto the Lord.
Yet, the commandment is still there. God created the sabbath day for a special purpose. Jesus said that the sabbath was made for man, that is, to meet the needs of mankind. Every person has need of one day of rest out of seven. Every person has need for time for the worship of God each week and for the things of the Spirit. And, by the way we observe the Lord's day, we do still reveal something of our attitude towards the Lord Himself. In this way we still show something of our reverence for God or our lack of reverence for God.
There are some things that I am afraid not to do on Sunday, and there are some things that I am afraid to do on Sunday.
When the Lord's day comes, I am afraid not to spend some time with His Word. I am afraid not to go to Sunday School to study and learn and to help advance the work of His kingdom. I am afraid not to be found among those who are in the worship service. If I were not the pastor, I would still be afraid to leave after Sunday School without remaining for the worship of God in the worship service unless it was for a reason I felt God would accept as justifiable.
And, on the Lord's day, I am afraid to do some of the things that are considered as honest and needful work through the week. I am afraid to plow and hoe my garden on Sunday, to mow the grass, to overhaul the motor on my car, or other things of this nature. There are a lot of things that I am fearful of doing on Sunday that I think nothing of doing on other days of the week.
This is not because I am afraid you will stone me to death if you find me doing these things - though I have an idea some of you would probably have roast preacher and would take steps to see that I was no longer your pastor if you found me doing these things. Nor is it because I am afraid God would strike me dead if I lay back on Sunday morning without coming to Sunday School or slipped off before the church service or spent the day watching TV and reading the newspapers without opening the Bible.
It is that I am afraid of what would happen to my own soul and spiritual life and my relationship with God if I failed to remember that the sabbath day is a holy day and failed to keep it for the purposes for which God made it.
Dr. Charles L. Goodell, great spiritual leader of the past generation, once said that the "Church and the Lord's Day are a vital necessity in the development of the religious life. Without these the whole community would soon become a pagan community, where all spiritual life would disappear and a godless materialism would triumph. Property and life would not be safe if the Lord's Day and the Church were blotted out."
Even a non-Christian Jew was quoted in the CHRISTIAN HERALD sometime ago as saying to a group of professing Christians, "If you sacrifice the Sunday you have been brought up to respect, you will lose something you will be sorry for the whole of your lives."
"Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy" is still God's commandment. We do show something of our attitude towards God by the way we observe the Lord's Day.
And we also show whether or not we have a proper reverence for God by the way we give to God's work.
We remember, of course, that in the Old Testament days, it was set forth clearly that not only was the tithe the Lord's, but also that the first fruits of the crops and the firstborn of the livestock were also the Lord's, and further that in the offering of sacrifices, only that which was good was to be offered unto the Lord: no stale bread was to be placed on His altar, no sick or lame or blind or blemished lambs or cattle were to be sacrificed unto Him.
Yet in the days of Malachi the people were offering polluted bread upon the altar, and were apparently using for sacrifice the blind, the lame and the sick of their livestock.
Why were they doing this? Simply because they no longer feared the Lord and had reverence for Him. They said, "The table of the Lord is contemptible." They said, "It is vain to serve God: and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinances and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts?"
Contrast their attitude with that of King David when he sought to purchase the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite for a place to build an altar to the Lord. When Araunah found out why David wanted his threshing floor, he offered not only to give him the threshingfloor but also his oxen for sacrifice and the threshing instruments and other equipment for wood for the fire.
David refused the offer saying, "Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing."
We show far more than we may realize our reverence or our lack of reverence for God by the way that we give to Him and support the work of His kingdom. Whether we bring our tithes and our offerings unto the Lord or not, whether we give unto God first or out of the leftovers or not, whether we offer unto God our best or only that which we don't care much about, whether we give to the work of His kingdom grudgingly or cheerfully, out of a sense of duty or out of a spirit of love: these things reveal our real attitude towards God far more than we even think or dream sometimes.
Supremely, we show our fear and reverence for God by the way we seek to find and do His will and keep His commandments. When the Psalmist saw the transgression of the laws and commandments of God by the wicked, he explained it by saying, "There is no fear of God before his eyes."
Where there is no fear of God, people transgress God's laws without hesitation. When the fear of God goes, the fear of the consequences of sin also departs.
When in days gone by people were said to "walk in the fear of God" and to "serve the Lord with fear," these expressions carried the thought of people whose reverence and fear of the Lord led them to seek to do His will and keep His commandments.
Some years ago Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., was one of the most outstanding preachers in America and was in great demand for city-wide revival services. In one of his sermons entitled "The Miracle Of Calvary", he said that there was only one thing that he was afraid of and that was sin or getting outside the will of God. He said that all of his life he had been afraid of sin, that no person knows where he or she will eventually wind up when he or she begins to play with sin.
"If you want people to think you are brave," he said, "go out in the mountains of the West, find a nest of rattlesnakes and take them up in your arms and play with them, or go down into an electric powerhouse and play with a few thousand volts of electricity, or climb up into the clouds, get into the dark pavilion of a storm, and play with forked lightning. But do not act the fool and play with sin!"
Sin is the only thing in the world that can separate us from God, destroy us spiritually, and leave us stranded in outer darkness and despair throughout eternity. And what is sin? It is the transgression of the law of God, disobedience to the will of God.
A child that will not obey its parents shows its lack of respect for them. And if we do not seek to obey God, we show thereby not only our lack of reverence for Him and our lack of fear of God: we also show our lack of wisdom and understanding and our disregard for our own spiritual welfare.
Do we really want to be wise? Do we really want to have understanding? Then let us have written on the tablets of heart for time and eternity the great truths that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding." And, having learned these great truths, let us show our fear of the Lord by our keeping His commandments and living for His glory. Let us pray...