Introduction to Proverbs

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

For those who wish to become wise Proverbs 4 7 says the beginning of wisdom is this Get wisdom Kind of sounds like jocko could have written that you want wisdom get some Proverbs 26 4 says answer not a fool according to his folly But the very next verse says, answer a fool according to his folly. What’s up with that?

Proverbs along with Psalms are probably the two most popular go-to books in the Old Testament for Christians, but if you don’t properly understand Proverbs and its purpose, you can get into trouble pretty fast by misusing it. The most common mistake is to treat the sayings found in it as if they were ironclad promises. If you do A, then B will happen. It’s an easy trap to fall into. An example of this is Proverbs 22 6 which says, train up a child in the way they should go, and when he becomes older he will not depart from it. There are many broken-hearted parents who clung to this verse as a promise in their parenting days only to have their children abandon the faith as adults. One particular group that regularly misuses Proverbs is the Prosperity Gospel Movement or I like to call it the Blabid and Grabid crowd. One other keen pens wrote a book on Proverbs titled The Power of Proverbs and in the marketing pitch for his book book, it says this, quote, remember, you’re planting seeds when you speak and at some

point you’re going to eat that fruit. So make sure you’re planting the right kind of seeds. You can’t speak defeat and expect victory. Instead, make bold declarations, declare healing, success and new levels of faith. When you meditate on the words of life, you’re going to reap a supernatural harvest of good things.” Sadly, many churches today subscribe to this name it and claim it mindset. It was popularized by the American pastor, Norman Vincent Peale, in the 1950s with the release of his book, The Power of Positive Thinking.

And then one of his disciples, Robert Shuler, took the theology to a whole new level with his weekly radio and TV broadcast called the Hour of Power. I remember my father-in-law for some reason was a fan of that show and so sometimes when I was there on a Sunday I had to watch it. I wonder what Schuller who died in 2011 would think about the fact that his crystal cathedral ended up being sold off to the Roman Catholic Church because they couldn’t afford to pay the bills so much for naming and claim it. Proverbs rightly understood should be seen as a a collection of poems and short pithy statements that describe how to live your life consistent with how God made it. Proverbs helps us understand what we can ordinarily expect if we follow the principles taught. It is a book that lays out for us what the path of wisdom looks like. There’s an order to God’s universe when he’s spoken into creation. He imbued it, if you will, with a plan, a way it works. A blessed life isn’t a luck of the draw or meted out according to some cosmic lottery system. Proverbs 9 10 tells

us where the path leads or where it begins. I should say where it begins. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. This makes sense because wisdom as one of God’s divine attributes originates with Him. If we want true wisdom we have to go back to the source, we have to go back to God. If we want to have a blessed life we have to live the way the world is designed and it’s again imbued with the wisdom of God. When When God created the universe and its workings, He did so in such a way that it continually manifests His wisdom. To walk wisely is to go with the flow or work with a grain of His creation.

And when we do so, we can ordinarily expect to reap goodness and blessing. C.S. Lewis latched on to the Chinese word, Tao, which means way of the universe, to point out that cultures across place and time have largely agreed on what makes up for wisdom, what is the basic truths of life, how one should live in this life.

There’s obviously some differences but there’s a phenomenal amount of commonality and he would attribute that to the fact that cultures even though they don’t know God have learned, have discovered through trial and error this wisdom that God has imbued into his creation. This is the wisdom of God as displayed in the universe that men have recognized even if they don’t recognize him as the source. Well if the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom that raises the question if an unbeliever could be considered wise. Obviously anyone who can follow, anyone can follow wise principles and reap the corresponding benefits. So in one sense you could say they’re being wise. However, the ultimate purpose in gaining wisdom is to know God and to enjoy him forever. Jesus himself asked the question, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? We conclude that person’s a fool. So to say that any pagan can walk wisely in this earth, you could maybe put a lowercase W on that wisdom, but ultimate wisdom, the kind that leads to

salvation, can only come from God and knowing God and embracing the fear of the Lord. What about those times when we are living according to wisdom and the results don’t seem to match what Proverbs says. We keep doing A, but we’re not getting B, we’re getting C, D, E. Proverbs is not a book of concrete promises or laws. It’s a book of principles that when followed generally lead to a long, happy, and fruitful life, as many Proverbs would indicate. So why only generally? Why not absolutely? Why can’t we say do A and get B? It’s part of the answer lies because we live in a fallen world where sin is present and in addition we know that God tests his people to examine the genuineness of their faith. The book of James tells us to consider it all joy when we encounter various trials. First Peter reminds us that God allows us to endure fiery ordeals to test our faith. Job is a classic example of a righteous man whose faith was severely tested. There are lots of examples of the righteous dying young or suffering greatly. A businessperson can follow all the

principles and proverbs and still go bankrupt. This is where other books in the Bible then that make up the wisdom literature help us to get a fuller picture of God’s workings. Books like Job and Ecclesiastes and parts of the collections of other books often called the wisdom literature, looking at all of those in totality helps us to get a better understanding of God and how he deals with mankind. Proverbs is just one. Proverbs again gives us a pattern that we should follow, but when we say well that didn’t seem to go according to plan, we can then look to Job, we can look to Ecclesiastes and other places and say well what happens when God allows in his sovereignty, what then?

So in addition to Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, we can also include the Psalms and some would say the Son of Solomon. These show us that God is still good and all wise, even when His plans for us don’t follow the rosiest path. Life under the sun is complex and it cannot be reduced to a simple A then B proposition no matter what all the self-help gurus and TBN talking heads are trying to tell us. Now this does not mean that life then boils down to random chance. God has revealed the path of wisdom and His ultimate plan includes His glory and His children’s good. So then, Proverbs is extremely beneficial for showing us how the wise person orders his life for maximum blessing and fruitfulness, even though sin, or God’s providence, may cause pain and suffering at times.

Now the authorship of Proverbs is a source of much discussion among the scholars. Three of the sections in there explicitly claim Solomon to be the author. Verse 1-1 says the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, covering chapters 1-10. Then in 10-1 it says the Proverbs of Solomon which covers chapters 10-1-22-16. And then we jump and in chapter 25 verse 1 we’re told, these also are the Proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah, the king of Judah copied. And those covered chapters 25 through 29. But that leaves chapter 22 verse 17 through the end of chapter 24 without any declared author other than saying the words of the wise is that one section and then chapter 30 attributes it to agar and then a son I should say agar son of jakke and then chapter 31 is attributed to King Lemuel so there’s no doubt that Solomon wrote or accumulated the bulk of what is in the book of Proverbs in In 1 Kings 4 32 it tells us that he spoke 3,000 Proverbs and wrote 1005 songs.

Eat your heart out Taylor Swift. A few verses prior it says, and God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure and breath of mind like the sand of the seashore so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all of the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan, the Ezraite, and Heman, and Calcal, and Darda, the sons of Mahal, and his fame was in all the surrounding nations.” So he was one smart dude. But note this passage indicates that there were lots of other wisdom literature floating around at this time as well besides the Israelite tradition. Now only about 800 of Solomon’s 3,000 Proverbs are found in the sections of Proverbs that are attributed to him. We also know that he was a collector of wise sayings so he went around and he heard what was the wise guys were saying in his region because it says in Ecclesiastes 12.9, the preacher Solomon sought to find words of delight and to go out yet to go out and find words of delight and uprightly he wrote words of truth.

We know the Proverbs in chapter 25 through 29 were assembled by Hezekiah’s scribes and we know the prophets Isaiah and Micah ministered during that same time period so it’s possible they might have been involved also with the scribes in the compilation of Solomon’s sayings. The group of proverbs found in this passage 2217 through 2423 are again attributed simply as the words of the wise. These proverbs have remarkable similarity to some Egyptian document titled the wisdom of a mean mope written by an Egyptian person presumably summer between 1000 BC and 600 BC. Debates continue as to whether these proverbs originated in the Hebrew literature or if the wise men referred to lived before Solomon’s time and then Solomon gathered them into his collection of proverbs. The scholars go back and forth debating that. It was not uncommon for kings and sages to travel around and listen to the wise sayings of other cultures. Solomon undoubtedly took some of those sayings and then added them to his own collection. Either way, the Proverbs, as

we have them today, represent the eternal wisdom of God. Solomon, being recognized by the Hebrews as the wisest man to ever live, serves as both the literal and the figurative head of the collection of wise sayings. When Proverbs 1-1 says the Proverbs of Solomon, it should not be taken to mean that he originated every single proverb in there necessarily, although he certainly did the bulk of them. But again, he was responsible for the acquisition, the accumulation, and he probably rewrote some, and however he being the wise man that he was, we can trust that what he, God working through him to accumulate in the Hezekiah and his scribes, we can trust that what we have is what God wanted us to know when it comes to being wise. In Proverbs 30 and 31 we’re introduced to Agard and Lemuel. We don’t have any information on exactly who they were other than we’re told Lemuel was a king. The three main thoughts on who Lemuel was are are Solomon.

Some of the Jews, I think, would argue that he was Solomon. Hezekiah is another suggestion because Hezekiah, we’re told he and his scribes put together, compiled the Proverbs. Or it’s possible a third option is Lemuel is just some fictional person being used to teach a lesson in chapter 31. The Proverbs Solomon authored would have been written around 931 or before 931 BC and then it was 230 years later that Hezekiah scribes organized those Proverbs and others from Solomon’s collection. Again the ones I’ve mentioned in chapter 25 through 29. We aren’t sure but it seems likely Solomon wrote his Proverbs in his younger years to midlife years before then his personal life took a turn for the worse. We’re all familiar with the story and his foolishness later in life. Now on that point it’s worth noting that even though Solomon was the wisest person to ever live, he was still a man and just as susceptible to sin as anyone else. The warning found in 1 Corinthians 10-12 comes to mind, therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

I mean it’s astonishing to think what we just read about him and the wisest man throughout the land and then to think of the folly and the foolishness he fell into. The purpose of the book, let me get those popping peas on the mic here, the purpose of this book is stated for us at the outset. In verse 1, 2 through 6 we read, to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction and wise dealings 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 so from all that we can boil it down into two broad purpose statements for Proverbs one is to impart the moral principles that we need to lead a good life that be from one verse 2a and verses 3 through 5. And then secondly, to develop mental clarity and perception. I get that from chapter 2b and verse 6. It says it’s written to give prudence to the simple

and knowledge and discretion to the youth. And that doesn’t imply that the scope of its usefulness is to just those groups. The gaining of wisdom is something everybody should be pursuing. There’s no end to this quest, this side of heaven. Solomon himself is exhibit A. He should have been reading his own Proverbs later on. The purpose can be broken down further into the following objectives. To receive teaching in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity. To help the simple gain prudence and the youth to gain knowledge and discretion. To increase learning and to acquire skill and understanding, and then to understand proverbs, parables, and wise sayings and riddles.

Together, these skills make up what it means to be a wise person. One of Solomon’s Proverbs says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. This means that we’re not blank slates at birth. The need in this kind of training is to drive out the foolishness and instill wisdom.

shouldn’t be surprised when the naive and the simple do foolish things. That’s the default setting they have from birth. Now Solomon’s prologue shows that wisdom is not something that comes naturally. It must be acquired through training and discipline. Like any training program, there has to be a starting point and we find it in verse 9-10. I’ve mentioned it already. It says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. The fear of the Lord here should be taken primarily to mean the awe and the reverence of God, although a dread of displeasing him is certainly not unwarranted as well. It makes sense that this would be the starting point since he’s the author of all wisdom. Wisdom is an attribute of God and is baked into his creation and to get to it you must start with him. The principle is simple as Dave likes to always say, God is God and we are not. You do not get to define wisdom. All we can do is comprehend it, we can learn it, we can be taught it, but

we do not get to generate wisdom. Those who reject God and think they are wise are actually worse off than a fool. Proverbs 26 12 says, do you see a man who’s wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. Now we do see a reciprocal relationship between the fear of the Lord and the gaining of wisdom. Proverbs 9 10 tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but we also see in verse 2.5 that when we gain wisdom then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find in the knowledge of God. So the fear of the Lord leads to wisdom, wisdom leads to increased fear of the Lord and so it’s kind of a perpetual machine if you will. Another point that needs to be made about the kind of wisdom we’re talking about is that it isn’t simply head knowledge. You can memorize all of Proverbs and still not be considered a wise person. The Hebrew word for wisdom carries with it a moral sense but it also refers to having a skill. The same word is used elsewhere in the Old

Testament when they’re talked about the craftsmen who are going to build the temple and when it talked about their skill, find skilled individuals, that’s the same word for wisdom that’s being used here. And so obviously there’s a sense that it’s not what you just know but it’s does it come out your fingers and toes. That’s when you are a wise person. You show skill in these proverbs.

Hence a wise person just doesn’t know a lot of useful things but he lives it out well in his life. Now when we look at the overall structure of the book of Proverbs, we have a serious disadvantage. We do not know Hebrew, and so we lose the structural beauty of the Book of Proverbs. The book begins with a series of lessons for life. It’s a father giving lessons to his son about life, and then it ends, the book ends with a mother instructing her son how to be a wise King. In chapters 1 through 9 we see 10 speeches or exhortations from a father to a son. Each one starts with the phrase, my son. The father calls his son to listen to wisdom and to cultivate the fear of the Lord. He shows him how the fear of the Lord will lead to things like virtue and integrity and generosity and success and peace. He warns his son about the dangers of folly and evil and how those things will lead to his ruin and shame.

He extols the beauty of wisdom, and then he presents it as Lady Wisdom, who is there to guide and instruct the Son in the way he should go. We then see four poems about Lady Wisdom. In chapters 1, 20 through 33, she cries aloud in the street, appealing to anyone who will listen to calm and learn from her. She warns the fool that she will laugh at their calamity when her folly catches up to them. In 13 through 20, another poem, we are told of the virtues of Lady Wisdom and that blessed is the person who finds her. The gain that comes from knowing her is better than precious metals and jewels. With her name comes peace, or with her comes peace and pleasantness of life.

She’s called a tree of life. The third poem is all chapter 8. It repeats some of the benefits of knowing Lady Wisdom and adds that she was with God from the very beginning, and it tells her role in the creation of the world. And as such, she holds the keys to understanding how the world works. She declares that the person who finds her finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. And then finally, in chapter 9, the fourth poem on Lady Wisdom, she describes in more detail the way of wisdom. She specifically calls to the simple and those who lacks sense to come and eat at the table that she has prepared. She warns against hanging with the scoffers because doing so will only bring harm.

She also introduces the woman named Folly and warns the simple not to fall for her seductive lies. Now let me go back and let me take it just a little bit of a rabbit trail just for a moment here. Our men-to-men talk got a little bit lively on Monday night when the question was asked about the appropriateness of us laughing like Lady Wisdom, of us laughing when calamity strikes the fool. Is it okay for, if it’s okay for Lady Wisdom to laugh, is it okay for us to laugh? What does this laugh look like? I mean after all our school motto is laughter is war, right? Now some men in the group thought laughing was totally appropriate and others weren’t not so sure. Now I’ll admit I was one of the ones that was a little more nervous with that concept. Although I one level I get it but another level I was nervous. I think Craig you and I were by ourselves arguing the other side of the corner. So I did a little more thinking about it. So just here’s some more thoughts about it just for whatever it’s worth. On the one hand we could go to a passage like Psalm 52 6 through 7

which says very explicitly, the righteous will see and fear and shall laugh at him saying, see the man who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and sought refuge in his own destruction. So that seems pretty clear. On the other hand, there’s Proverbs 24, 17 through 18, do not rejoice when your enemy falls and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles. Lest the Lord see it and be displeased and turn away his anger from him.” So what’s the right response? Laugh? Don’t rejoice? Are they mutually exclusive? Can you do both at the same time? Now I’m not going to claim to have the right answer and others in the room here may differ with what I’m about to say, but I think a key is found in the psalm that I read. It doesn’t just say the righteous laugh at the man who would not make God his refuge, it says they see, they fear, and they laugh. The fear here is not of man, but it’s the fear of God. I believe we can laugh in the sense that we recognize that we’re that were it not

for God, we would be like the fool. Our laughter is an acknowledgement of God’s right to judge sin and our gladness in him when he exercises his prerogative. Our laughter is not like the schoolyard boy laughing because someone got hurt and we thought it was funny. Our laughter is not rooted in us being the judge but in God’s righteous judgment. Our laughter is in God exercising his dominion over his creation. When we laugh at the fool we are really laughing because God is is being God, and that’s a delight to us when we see God, even when it’s him giving somebody else a spanking. OK, end of that rabbit trail. In the first nine chapters of Proverbs, the father’s speeches and the poems about Lady Wisdom are an invitation to learn what has been handed down from God to Solomon and the other wisdom writers.

Then having read, both the father’s appeal to his son and Lady Wisdom’s cry to the simple, chapters 10 through 29 then give us an abundance of short pithy sayings that instruct us for much of life. There are hundreds of Proverbs covering pretty much all of life. Work, business, neighbors, friendships, sex, marriage, parenting, money, anger, forgiveness, the proper use of food and alcohol, just to name a few. Again, these Proverbs give us the general rules for a good life under the sun and don’t address the exceptions that happen due to sin or God’s hard providences. Now tucked inside chapter 10 through 29, we then have those set of Proverbs described simply as the sayings of the wise, 2217 to 2422, and And then again, more sayings of the wise, 24-23 through 24.

I think that’s a little longer now, I may have the wrong address there, but through 24. The structure of the first group reverts back to the pattern of a father addressing a son seen in the first nine chapters of Proverbs. So once again, these sayings of the wise, that first block, there’s two blocks, sayings of the wise, more sayings of the wise, the first block is 30 sayings and it’s all written like a father speaking to a son. And in the set we’re given the 30 sayings that are an extended admonition followed by the motive or the reason for the admonition. An example of this pattern from that passage says, for example, make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.

That’s the reason. So that block follows that pattern. By the way, this is a great tip for parenting. Don’t just give your kids commands to obey. Give them the moral reason why you’re commanding them.

When you do this, they can then begin to build a moral framework from which to formulate right responses in situations that they have not even encountered yet. Your instruction in one area of life usually has application to a lot of other areas but if you’re training them to just simply say do this don’t do that then don’t be surprised if they face a new situation where the same principle applies but all they know is you just told me don’t do this here you didn’t say anything about this. So this pattern we see here in Proverbs is a good pattern for parenting to give them the instruction but then to also explain why the moral reason why so they can then begin to build that library of okay this situation is like that situation I probably should have a similar response this set of 30 sayings are the ones that have in this first block are the ones that are very noticeable and similar to a mean mope in addition to the 30 sayings of the wise then we have the more sayings and these appear to be just

additional proverbs that Solomon probably collected in his travels and perhaps adapted. Oregon I suppose would be scholars around that would say well no he wrote them and the Egyptians stole them. I didn’t get deep enough in it to make up my own mind but just so you know that that debate rages. Chapter 30 then we just left 10 through 29 moving into chapter 30 switches gear and gives a collection of poems by someone identified as Agar, son of Jaki. We are given no other information on who this person is. He does not appear anywhere else in the Bible. His words start out pretty depressed. He says, quote, The man declares, I am weary, O God, I am weary, O God, and worn out. Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom, nor have acknowledged the Holy One.” Sounds like a pretty depressed guy. Maybe he’s somebody who’s reflecting on their life and they’re thinking, wow, have I been a fool or what? Given that we do not know who he is, it’s possible that he’s not even a real person but rather an example

of a person who foolishly disregarded sound wisdom in their youth and then later comes to regret it and is now regrets not having sought the wisdom of God sooner. Having expressed his brokenness though then over his own stupidity, he points to the solution in verses 5 through 6. Says every word of God proves true. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you, and you be found a liar.” And then the rest of that chapter, if you read it, it sounds like some basically somebody who was stupid young in life now mocking the current stupid people and poking at them and telling them what they shouldn’t be doing. It’s like he’s talking to a mirror of his younger self. He jabs hard at the hypocrisy he sees in those who curse their father and do not bless their mother or those who are righteous in their own eyes or those who are just never satisfied and always want more talks about the leech in that passage. One of my parenting go-to verses is actually in this section. It’s verse 17. You guys know the verse. I would use this

verse on my kids when they got a little sassy. It says, the eye that mocks a father and scorns a mother to obey a mother will be as I will be picked out by the Ravens of the Valley and eaten by the vultures. And I still use that verse sometime on them today in jest when they usually are saying, they’re saying to me okay boomer because I’m ranting about something and they’re trying to tell me how old I am and ridiculous but then I’ll just say ah I see do I hear a raven? Well the last chapter chapter 31 contains two more poems. The author identifies himself as King Lemuel. Again, we do not know for sure who this person was or if they were even a real person. Jewish custom holds that it was none other than Solomon and the mother in this proverb is Bathsheba, but there’s no clear evidence to support that. Others suggest it might have been Hezekiah, which could make some sense again if his hymn and scribes were compiling the Proverbs, you know, maybe. And then some have suggested he was a king of a place

called Massa. And there’s some support for this because Agar in chapter 30, son of Jacob, that translation for his name could be translated as a man of Massa. So maybe in chapter 30 we got Agar, a son of Massa, chapter 31 we maybe have the king of Massa, you know, these are all just speculations, we don’t know for sure.

The bottom line is that no one knows with certainty, but in any case it doesn’t take away from the lessons to be learned from those poems. The first poem is contained in verses 1 through 9 and it describes, we could say, the noble king. In it, the king is passing the wisdom his mother gave him regarding of being a good king. And then the second poem is in verses 10 through 31 and that’s where one place where we really lose the beauty of the Hebrew it’s written as an acrostic where every line begins with the letter of the Hebrew alphabet and it describes as you know then the noble wife or noble woman or a wife. Scholars again debate whether this second poem was written by Lemuel because they look at the form of the first poem and they say wow the second poem is way different. And so they’re saying, I’m not sure this is the same person that wrote this, but then other scholars say, well yeah, but there’s other poems we have where we know who wrote those poems and those poems are very different, but we know it was the same guy, so it’s possible that Lemuel,

whoever he was, did write both poems. Now some think this poem is a template for being a godly woman over a course of a lifetime, the so-called Proverbs 31 woman. Others suggest this is Lady Wisdom again and the poem is describing what wisdom lived out looks like. We see again this beautiful symmetry to the overall book with the opening chapters being that father addressing his son and again the final chapters is the mother doing the same thing. So some final thoughts. Proverbs fits in the Old Testament as part of the wisdom literature. This literature along with the books of the law and the prophets makes up all of the Old Testament. God used in the Old Testament the roles of priest, prophet, and sage to communicate his truth to us. The priest gave the law, the prophets gave a word from the Lord, and the sage gave us why sayings. Proverbs is not the book to go to for law or prophecy. It shows us the general pattern in life that the righteous can expect to live longer and prosper while the unrighteous will experience the opposite. On the other

hand, it must be remembered that this general principle is balanced by the reality that the wicked sometimes prosper, Psalm 73, 3, and 12, though they will only prosper for a while, Psalm 73 again reminds us. So we do see the pattern of wisdom broken at times because of sin, because of God’s sovereign will for our life at that point in time. As we embark on this study in the book of Proverbs, we should use the life of Solomon as both an encouragement and as a warning. Solomon started his reign on the right foot by humbling himself before God and asking for the wisdom to lead people. And God, we know, granted that request in abundance and the people of Israel experienced one of the greatest times of prosperity in their history under Solomon’s wise leadership. But, as we know, it didn’t stay that way. Solomon disobeyed God, he took foreign wives who turned his heart away from God. And even though sullen may have come back to his senses by the end of his life, the damage was done. He did not successfully pass

wisdom onto his son Rehoboam. In just one generation, Israel went from perhaps its zenith as a nation to becoming a divided nation within a long history of pretty bad kings. They’re moving forward with a few good ones thrown in. Wisdom is there for the taking, but it can also be elusive to the one whose heart is not baked in the fear of the Lord. Without constantly cultivating the fear of the Lord, we are going to always be at risk for repeating the same trajectory of the wisest man who ever lived.

If we lose sight of the fear of the Lord, and if we start experiencing the blessings that Proverbs promises or offers to us, we can fall in the same trap and so we have to keep reminding ourselves the fear of the Lord, the fear of the Lord. When it comes to growing in wisdom and keeping it, it’s worth really remembering the saying, I’ve heard different people say this before, but the saying goes, the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing, which is the fear of the Lord. And if we do that and then as we study Proverbs and live our lives accordingly, we can ordinarily expect to see tremendous blessings in our life. Let’s pray. Well, Father, as we do dive into the book of Proverbs, I’m looking forward to it and I assume the rest are here as well. It is a book that we have all come to love. Help us to learn to approach it appropriately, not as a magic genie that we just rub it and it’ll pop out good things, but that at the same time it is full of your wisdom it is full of your truths and that if we do learn it and obey it and

apply it we can expect lives that are blessed that that will be the normal outcome and even in those situations where perhaps it doesn’t always work out that way may we be like a Job and we can say even if the Lord slay me still I will trust him either way father you get the glory we get ultimately whether in this life and a life to come, we get to experience all of your goodness that you have in store for us. So I just pray that as we spend the next year going through some proverbs that you will increase all of our wisdom and that as you examine our lives and how we’re walking, you’d be well pleased with what you see in our lives. We just pray this all now in your Son Jesus’ name. Amen.