A good sermon usually begins with an introduction of some sort. It might be an ear-catching illustration designed to hook the attention of the audience for a while. It might be a reiteration of what has been recently taught, building on that earlier foundation. Or it might be a simple preface, outlining where the message hopes to go. Verses 1-6 make up Solomon’s preface for the rest of the Book of Proverbs. He says, “The following proverbs are presented that you might know wisdom and instruction. With that wisdom and instruction it is hoped that you will be able to understand justice, judgment and equity. I would like to give subtilty to the simple and discretion to the young person. But please understand even the aged wise man will hear and increase in learning and wise counsel.”
Solomon then takes a hammer, driving in the nail upon which the portrait of this book is to be hung. The nail is – “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” The wire which ties the portrait to that nail; which supports it; levels it, and hides behind it reads… “But fools despise wisdom and instruction. My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.”
“My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother.”
I often use to a 350 page book called “Spurgeon’s Proverbs and Sayings” quoting it in the bulletin. I guarantee that it was not prepared and printed during Spurgeon’s second year at the Tabernacle. Its first printing was in 1975, well over a 150 years after the man’s death. And similarly, this Book of Solomon’s Proverbs was edited and produced late in his life. It is safe to say that he had passed through several personal epochs.
Despite God’s gift of grace and wisdom, early in Solomon’s life there had been a lot of foolishness and outright stupidity. That isn’t my guess, because Solomon confesses to it in his book “The Preacher” – Ecclesiastes. By the time he was editing the Book of Proverbs, he probably regretted a great many things. Don’t you think that he would have tried to undo in his old age what his foolishness did in his youth? But of course 95% of what we do can never be undone. An example would be Solomon’s marriages and relationships to a thousand different women. What a horrible mess! Isn’t it true that if that man tried to join a good and proper Baptist church today, he would not be accepted? Would you accept him? Would Christ accept him? That’s material for a different message.
How many children were produced in Solomon’s thousand marriages? To which of those thousands of children did this father dedicate his collection of proverbs? I don’t think he was thinking any one in particular. He was speaking to sons, and daughters of fathers and mothers everywhere and in every age. WE need the wisdom to which he refers, as much or more than the children born in the year 1000 B.C. You and I need the Book of Proverbs, no matter how old or young we are. We are the children of our parents even when we are 60 and 70 years old. Solomon is thinking of himself as one of our parents.
And notice that under the Holy Spirit’s direction, Solomon makes father and mother equals before the children. This was an attitude which was rare in those ancient societies. But Solomon doesn’t represent an ordinary human society – he speaks for the Lord.
“My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother.” As much as parents in any given moment may deny the fact, children are rational creatures. They are sinful, even wicked – dead in trespasses and sins – but they have been given brains which God has ordained for them to use. “Think young man; listen to the instruction of thy father and the law of thy mother, and apply them.” What is the primary responsibility of parents? There is a debate question for you. Among other things, it is the parents’ duty to instruct. They need to convey and instruct the truth, and truth is usually logical. Our demands of subjection and obedience need to be based on logical principles. Children have a right to know why they can and cannot do what their parents demand. And one reason to learn those principles is….
For (those instructions) shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.”
I might be mistaken, but it seems almost instinctual for human beings to put ornaments on themselves. Little girls like to string things together and wear them around their necks or wrists. They like putting flowers in their hair or pinning them to their blouses. It seems like every other baseball pitcher has to tuck a gold chain or two into his jersey before each pitch. Today there are the earrings, nose rings, and lip piercings. And there is the former heathen practice of tattoos – which is still somewhat heathen.
But what would you think, if you saw a gold chain draped around the neck of a pig? Here comes a Tyrannosaurus Rex charging toward you with big diamond earrings and tennis bracelets on each of his little wrists. He might even have a diamond in his pierced belly-button – if he had a belly button. Ornaments are out of place on some people and in some situations. It’s not recommended that you have an MRI wearing a necklace and wrist watch.
Consider Joseph. “And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it upon Joseph’s hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put a gold chain about his neck.” It was probably required that Joseph wear the signs of Pharoah’s approval, whenever he went about his prime ministerial duties. But Joseph was never more beautifully adorned than when he bowed before his aged father in Gen. 48. The honor and respect which he showed to Jacob was far more beautiful than Pharaoh’s ring and gold chain. We could speak of Timothy and the graceful ornaments of his mother and grandmother which he wore around his heart. And there was Isaac in his youthful relationship to Abraham, and Samuel in his special relationship to his mother and to Eli. “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.”
Of course the Lord Jesus is in a league all His own, but still we see the principles of this verse in Him. As a child, even though it might be argued that the angels were subject unto Him, He lived in subjection to Mary and Joseph. His honor and love toward them was as much an ornament of grace to Jesus, as anything else at the time.
No son or daughter will ever be truly beautiful, if he or she lives in disrespect or disobedience toward the wise counsel of their mother and Father. No beauty queen will ever be beautiful if she lives like a fool.
And no genius will even begin to be wise without the fear of the Lord.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Would it surprise you to know that the five words “the fear of the Lord” are found 27 times in the Bible? I didn’t even try to count the other ways that statement might be reworded – many dozens more I’m sure. Job was probably the first to ever say it – “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” David said it more poetically – “The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.” Solomon’s final summation in Ecclesiates was – “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.”
I have often defined “the fear of the Lord” – so often in fact, I worked hard to find a different way of describing it for you tonight. The fear of the Lord is the reverence – the reverential awe – to which He is due. It is something unique and which can ONLY be rendered to Jehovah; to anyone else it would be sin. It involves a heart which has been regenerated and properly activated toward the Lord, meaning that it is impossible for an unconverted person. Though the word is “fear,” it does not exclude a child-like confidence and conscious peace. It involves regenerated love toward God while maintaining a holy awe which is due to the infinite God. Those two things require a nearly miraculous balance – love and awe.
The other day, Judy and I were talking about the day in Joshua’s life, when the sun and moon stood still. Led of the Spirit, Joshua publically commanded time to stop. “Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.” There are questions about that event for which I have no answers, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe what Joshua 10 says. It’s just that I can’t explain it. Following that conversation with Judy, my mind returned several times to that miracle. It may have been one of the greatest of all post-creation miracles. But then again, it might have simply been that the Lord used some sort of prism to bend the light of the sun in such a way that it continued to shine down on the battlefield, even after it set. But that doesn’t explain how that the moon, on the opposite horizon stood still as well. Two prisms? Logically speaking, either the Lord caused the sun and moon to move in synchronized time with the rotating earth, or He ordered the earth to stop rotating for twenty-four hours. If that was true, then two of the natural laws which maintain life on earth would have been suspended. Ordinarily, the centrifical force which pushes us away from our spinning earth is matched perfectly by the gravitational pull of the earth. The combination of these two allow us to live and move and have our being upon this planet. They are a masterpiece of miraculous creation.
That miracle may be illustration of the two ingredients of the Biblical fear of God. I rarely use the words “awe” and “awesome” because they are over used and demeaned in our world today. But “the fear of the Lord” includes such a degree of awe towards Jehovah that even redeemed sinners should quake in fear before the very thought of his name. Christians should be as weak-kneed as Isaiah was before the throne of the Lord. We should be as John was when he saw the Lord in Revelation 1 – “I fell at his feet as dead.” On the other hand, counteracting the repelling differences between us, there is in this “fear of the Lord” such a love toward our Heavenly Father that His child can not possibly stay away.
Why is “The fear of the Lord … the beginning of knowledge?” There might be a dozen different ways, but I’ll leave you with one which I think is important. “The fear of the Lord” establishes a moral framework by which all other kinds of knowledge should be managed. Seventy-five years ago there were hundreds of people working on the science of splitting the atom. Many were saying that if the Allies – Britain, Canada and the United States – did not create the atom bomb, Germany would, and Germany would destroy civilization. Others, even while working on the science, were terribly fearful of the consequences of their discoveries. Nuclear energy is one area where mankind should see the need for moral constraints upon our scientific knowledge. Or to put it another way, we need to apply “The fear of the Lord” to that knowledge. We can probably think of dozens of others. How about various fields of medical science – genetic research and so on.
“The fear of the Lord” is the knowledge of God which puts all other kinds of knowledge into their proper place. What right has an unbelieving astronomer to despise a Christian laborer as an ignorant man? The astronomer may know the path of the planets and other objects in the sky, but the Christian knows the God who can tell those objects to stop where they are, and they must stop. The astronomer may know the way through the Milky Way, but the woman who fears the Lord knows the way into the throne room of God. The child who knows that sin hath reigned unto death, but that grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord possesses a deeper, more glorious knowledge than the PhD in Astrophysics.
As Solomon says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”