We know that the fear of the Lord is the ‘beginning of wisdom’. But what it looks like to fear the Lord can seem a bit ambiguous sometimes. Solomon clears it up.
Proverbs 8:13:
The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil,
Pride and arrogance and the way of evil.
Seems pretty cut and dry to me. Now, if I can only stop getting in the way of this sanctification thing…
A few days ago I posted the lyrics to a song I’ve been stuck on. It’s called The Underdog, by a group known as ‘Spoon’. In the song, the chorus lyric is repeated several times:
You got no time for the messenger,
got no regard for the thing that you don’t understand,
you got no fear of the underdog,
that’s why you will not survive!
I was thinking of it earlier as I read in Proverbs 30, about the four exceedingly wise, yet very small things. It goes like this. Proverbs 30:24-28:
Four things on earth are small,
but they are exceedingly wise:
the ants are a people not strong,
yet they provide their food in the summer;
the rock badgers are a people not mighty,
yet they make their homes in the cliffs;
the locusts have no king,
yet all of them march in rank;
the lizard you can take in your hands,
yet it is in kings’ palaces.
It reminded me of how easy it is for us to look down on people of different circumstances from our own. As Americans, it seems bred into us that we’re the pinnacle of what good society looks and acts like. But this isn’t necessarily true.
Ants store up food, rock badgers can live in treacherous terrain, locust march in rank and lizards get to live in the palace of a king.
Indeed, Christians in China have it more difficult than we do here. But they are seeing disciples made and the church spread. Christians in Africa struggle to find clean water, but they’re not weighed down by materialism.
The verse in Proverbs (and the song by Spoon, also I suppose), calls us to be humble. We have to realize that while there are some aspects of our society that are excellent, it has it’s own detrimental shortcomings too, and exporting our way of life will only export our problems, as well.
I usually don’t like it when God teaches me a lesson. I think I’m one of those people who doesn’t usually get it the ‘easy way’. Or at least that’s not been the trend in my walk with the Lord. I don’t know, maybe it’s my personality or maybe when I’m on my death bed looking back at my life I’ll see it as one big grand lesson truly proving my point.
Regardless, reading in Proverbs yesterday, I came across this verse which shed some light on my tendency.
Proverbs 29:19:
“By mere words a servant is not disciplined,
for though he understands, he will not respond.”
When the Lord is leading me through something especially difficult, at some point I usually think to myself, “why can’t he just say it? why’s it have to be this big complicated scheme.
Well, I suppose he has. And I don’t usually listen. Hence the verse in Proverbs. Good thing someone’s looking out for us!
Since I became a Christian, one verse has always stuck out to me as strange and even somewhat comical. The verse in mind is Proverbs 26:13:
The sluggard says, “There is a lion in the road!
There is a lion in the streets!”
Like much of Proverbs, this is just one in a long line of punchy, biblical one-liners of wisdom. So the context doesn’t do much to explain this verses meaning. So, when you read all on its own, it sounds, well, a little nuts.
But, recently I’ve come to find this has quite a lot of meaning to me.
I often make excuses not to do the difficult things I want to do, or should do, or need to do. Instead, inaction is vindicated by pointing out all the dangers along the path ahead of me. Of course, the actions are not truly vindicated—I’m left as a ‘sluggard’ for my inaction.
I think it’s interesting that this verse doesn’t make any commands. It only points out that making excuses makes us something we don’t want to be. And what’s worse, really?
People love drama. I mean, it’s really the essence of pretty much all entertainment, not to mention the driving force behind gossip. Something about it just feels so exciting—when things somehow seem larger than life. Taking a tid-bit of information and speculating about it left and right with all kinds of people.
Most of us do or have or will do this. Maybe it’s just our culture. But it’s something we all suffer with at some point or another—either on the fun end or the not-so-fun end.
Proverbs 25:7-10:
“What your eyes have seen
do not hastily bring into court,
for what will you do in the end,
when your neighbor puts you to shame?
Argue your case with your neighbor himself,
and do not reveal another’s secret,
lest he who hears you bring shame upon you,
and your ill repute have no end.”
It’s interesting that the simplest, most obvious things in scripture seem to be the most challenging for us to keep a handle on.
I came upon this today as I read in Proverbs. I absolutely love the ESV’s wording. Proverbs 23:17-18:
Let not your heart envy sinners,
but continue in the fear of the LORD all the day.
Surely there is a future,
and your hope will not be cut off.
Why would we envy sinners unless we feared we didn’t have a much better reward waiting for us? Our future in Christ is absolutely sure and it will not be cut off.
That’s very encouraging.
Proverbs 22:28:
Do not move the ancient landmark
that your fathers have set.
One of the strangest proverbs. It comes in a string of commands that doesn’t lend well to understanding this specific verse. Over its interpretation, people are divided. The classic writer John Gill overviews the disagreement.
Some apply this, in a political sense, to laws of long standing, and customs of long prescription; and others interpret it, in a theological sense, of doctrines and practices settled by the fathers of the church; which, if understood of Christ and his apostles only, will be allowed;
I suppose in circumstances like these, it’s hard to really pinpoint the authors truly intended meaning. Although it’s probably not really built into this verse, something I glean from it is a looking foreword to Christ’s place in the Church.
The specific reference in Proverbs is almost definitely to Deuteronomy 19:14, which commands God’s people not to move the geographical boundaries that had already been set. Something that was apparently taken very seriously in early times.
It makes me think of the system that the early church fathers put in place; with Christ as the centerpiece—the non-negotiable element of our faith. Although Christ in himself sets us free, in the church he is also something of a boundary we’re forbidden to remove.
Ironically, in its attempt to grow in number and influence and relevance, a huge portion of the church also gradually removes that Landmark set up by the early church fathers.
