“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7
Years ago, when I was a senior in high school, I finally got serious about my faith. After a few years of basically pretending to be a Christian it was like suddenly a switch flipped, and the light went on. In God’s mercy I realized that I needed to read the Bible and do what it says. Not knowing where to begin at this early stage in my spiritual growth, I began in Proverbs. I’m sure there was a godly saint who guided me there, but I don’t remember.
I decided that I would read a chapter in Proverbs every day until I came across something that I could actually put into practice on that very day. There are 31 days in most months and 31 chapters in Proverbs so whatever the date was I just read that chapter until something made sense to me. We are doing a very similar thing in Kells Hall at our morning convocation time, so I thought I’d bring this same idea to the weekly meditation as well. So, for the next 12 weeks we are going to go through Proverbs one chapter at a time and focus on a verse or two that we can actually put into practice every day that week. The first one is Proverbs 1:7
Proverbs 1:7 serves as an introductory summary statement for the whole book of Proverbs. In all the wisdom that follows there will be two groups of people: those who fear the Lord and those who don’t; those who are wise and those who are fools.
In I Corinthians Paul pits the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of the God against one another. They are inversely related. The wisdom of God is foolishness to the world, but the reality is that the wisdom of the world is true foolishness. Proverbs says, to be wise we must begin with the fear of the Lord, and it will likely look like foolishness to the wisdom of man.
The wisdom in Proverbs is for Christians. Fearing the Lord means to obey His Word, and it also carries with it the recognition that God is the supreme authority, the source of all truth. His Word is wisdom and knowledge. Of course, the wise person is the opposite of the fool. The wise person loves the wisdom of God and submits to His instruction, the fool doesn’t.
So, a practical application of this verse this week would be that the wise person sees God’s Word as totally authoritative over every aspect of our lives. The wise person realizes that they are in need of instruction from God’s Word every day. The wise person commits to reading it, understanding it, and obeying it each day. This is the path to true wisdom and maturity. Another way to sum it up: be wise, don’t be a fool.
His mercy endures forever!
Pastor Flynn
Photo by Rod Long