05 Six Disciplines to Understanding the Fear of the LORD (Proverbs 2:1-5)
Listen Here:
‘My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, 2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; 3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, 4 if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, 5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God’ (Proverbs 2:1-5).
6 Disciplines Needed to understand the fear of the Lord.
6 Disciplines Needed to find the knowledge of God.
6 Disciplines Needed for wisdom.
Let’s talk about it.
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Last week we finished going through chapter one of the book, and it was a doozy. ‘Turn or burn’, street preacher woman wisdom says. Turn or burn. Now this week we move on from that, from the call & voice of wisdom, to the value of wisdom in chapter two, which is what the whole chapter is about.
I love this chapter & I think one of the biggest reasons why I do is because it is very straightforward & easy to understand when you know the right things to look for, which is a good change of pace because sometimes Proverbs can be a little perplexing. So before we begin today I want to give you the skeleton of Proverbs 2, because I think that’ll help you follow much better & understand the chapter much easier.
Sound good? Okay….
The first 10 verses of this chapter can be summarized by three different words:
Condition
Result
Reason.
Verses 1-4 give us our condition, verse 5 gives us a result (if we are to follow that condition), and verses 6-8 give us a reason for the result & for following the condition.
Then verse 9, as we will see next week, restates the result found in verse 5 in a more practical way, and verse 10 restates the reason given in verses 6-8 in a more practical way.
Now the condition, result, and reason found in the first 10 verses that I’m referencing here can be distinctly marked by three words in the text, and those three words are:
‘IF’, ‘THEN’, and ‘FOR’.
That’s the pattern of chapter 2:
IF you do this, THEN this will happen as a result, FOR this is the reason why that will happen & why you should follow the condition.
That is ultimately what you need to know before we begin to unpack the chapter. That’s the pattern of Proverbs 2. IF you do this, THEN this will happen as a result, FOR this is the reason why that will happen & why you should follow the condition. Condition, result, reason. If, then, for.
To help you see what I’m talking about, I encourage you who have your Bible’s on you to just underline where you see the words ‘IF’ ‘THEN’ and ‘FOR’ in the first 10 verses. Now I know some translations look different, but for most of you if you do that (ESV & NIV), you’ll be able to see what I’m talking about with the structure of the chapter (the condition, result ,and reason) more clearly.
So that’s the structure of the first 10 verses, which we will discuss this week & next. After that, we will look at the two illustrations that follow in verses 11-19, which bring verses 1-10 to life. We’ll look at the illustration of the crooked man in verses 11-15, and then we’ll look at the illustration of the forbidden woman in verses 16-19. Then following our illustrations the chapter closes similar to chapter 1, with what is called an antithetical summary, just summarizing the two paths we will see presented throughout the chapter.
So there’s your itinerary for all Proverbs 2, and today we begin by hitting the first 5 verses, revealing to us the condition presented in the chapter & the result if we follow said condition.
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Picking up in verse 1, as I re-read our passage, I want you to listen for the condition/result, for the IF/THEN (if you do this, then this will happen)…okay? Solomon writes…
‘My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, 2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; 3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, 4 if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, 5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God’ (Proverbs 2:1-5).
Hopefully you can see through the re-reading of the passage the condition and result…IF we do what is written in verses 1-4, THEN we will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.
And that’s a big deal. Remember verse 7 of chapter 1 where it says the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge? Remember how we talked about how that phrase ‘fear of the LORD’ can be hard to understand? Well right here we’re given clear instructions (6 of them) on how to understand the fear of the LORD and how to find the knowledge of God.
So let’s walk through the condition given in verses 1-4, looking at the 6 disciplines that Solomon says is necessary to achieve the promised result in verse 5 of understanding the fear of the LORD and finding the knowledge of God.
The first discipline Solomon says we need to have in order to understand the fear of the LORD and to find the knowledge of God is the discipline of listening. Solomon says in verse 2 that we need to ‘make our ear attentive to wisdom’...
I love that Solomon starts here and chooses to list the discipline of listening first because one, we all struggle with it, and two, that’s where understanding the fear of the LORD starts. Like we talked about last week, wisdom is crying aloud in the street. Her voice is raised and she is not hiding from us. Everyone and their momma can hear her, but not everyone listens to her.
If you remember, woman wisdom spends eight verses talking about the destruction of those who, as she says in verse 24, ‘refused to listen,’ to her.
In order to understand the fear of the LORD & to find the knowledge of God, we have to firstly listen. As Samuel said ‘Speak, for your servant hears’. Those are four powerful words that I admittedly do not say enough.
‘Speak, for your servant hears’ (1 Samuel 3:10).
My grandfather sent me a devotional a few weeks ago by Oswald Chambers and in it Chambers says ‘Get into the habit of saying, “Speak, Lord,” and life will become a romance’. I love that. It’s so true. The more you get into the habit of saying ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears’, the more our hearts will grow in fondness, love, and desire for our Lord.
And speaking of hearts, that leads into the next discipline we see in the second part of verse 2…
Solomon says we should ‘make our ear attentive to wisdom and incline our hearts to understanding…’
To incline one’s heart is to desire. And that’s the second discipline. Desire. In order to understand the fear of the LORD & find the knowledge of God, you have to desire that. As we’ll see in verse 10 next week, wisdom is described as pleasant, which the word pleasant used there means very attractive and is the same word used to describe the bride in Song of Solomon 7:6.
So what does that mean for us here? Well it means that
Wisdom is as winsome and beautiful as it is useful & practical.
So we should not just be drawn to the usefulness of wisdom, but to the beauty of wisdom, which points back to last week, with Solomon choosing to personify wisdom as a beautiful woman. We have been made by God to be attracted to beauty, and wisdom is incredibly beautiful.
As Proverbs 3:15 says, ‘wisdom is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her.’ Nothing you desire can compare with her. Nothing you desire. Nothing. So if we cannot desire anything comparable to wisdom, well then we should certainly have a strong desire for wisdom. Certainly.
And by pairing desire with listening in verse 2 of our passage, Solomon is showing us that the ear and heart must unite and align in order to understand the fear of the LORD and to find the knowledge of God.
Now I know some of you reading are probably downcast at hearing this, because the qualities of listening and desiring are more a weakness for you than a strength. Maybe you struggle to sit and be still and listen to God, to say ‘Speak, Lord, your servant hears’...Maybe you struggle with the desire for God and for wisdom, and you really find it hard to open your Bible or begin to pray. If that’s you I get it because we’ve all been there; it is not easy to unite our ear and heart on the LORD, not at all. But, there’s a solution.
There is no better way to unite your ear and your heart than in prayer. No better way. Prayer is the remedy so to speak for those who are struggling to unite ear and heart, to listen and desire, the fear of the LORD and the wisdom of God.
Let the Word of God come first into your ears through the reading and hearing of it, then allow that to travel into your heart and back out through your mouth in prayer.
Prayer, simply, is how you unite ear and heart.
So those are our first two disciplines….listening and desire.
The third is found in verse 3 and is quite simple. We must exercise the discipline of asking. Solomon encourages us in the condition to ‘call out for insight’. As I’m sure many of you know, James touches on this quite a bit in his book of Scripture. James says we have not because we ask not (James 4:2), and he implores his readers in verse 5 of chapter 1, ‘If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.’
Ask for an understanding of the fear of the LORD.
Ask for growth in the knowledge of God.
Ask for wisdom.
To build off the other two disciplines, when we listen to the voice of wisdom, we begin to cultivate a desire for it, and that causes us to ask for it. It does. And as Solomon continues, it shouldn’t just cause us to ask, but to ask with urgency.
In the second part of verse 3 Solomon says we should ‘raise our voice for understanding’. Now think about it…haven’t we recently talked about someone who has raised their voice?
We have, last week with wisdom, who cries aloud in the street and raises her voice for all to hear. So what Solomon is doing here is he is exhorting us to call out to wisdom the same way she called out to us in the previous passage, which is fitting. He wants us to respond to wisdom the same way wisdom called out to us. He wants us to have a sense of urgency. So that means we shouldn’t just ask for understanding in the fear of the LORD, we shouldn’t just ask for wisdom, we should ask for it URGENTLY.
Now verse 4 gives us the last two disciplines needed in our condition to receive the result of verse 5, and those two are pursuit and focus.
Verse 4 says ‘if you seek it (it being wisdom) like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures…’.
Solomon reveals to us here in verse 4 that wisdom is not something one just falls into. Even though wisdom is not hiding from us and is calling out to us, we still must pursue. And we must pursue out of recognition of wisdom’s value. To seek wisdom like silver. Which, fun fact, as of Solomon’s writing in ancient Israel silver was so rare that it was valued more than gold!
Think about that in the context of his words in verse 4. Solomon is telling his son to seek wisdom like he would seek the most valuable and rarest of minerals, which is clear that it involves an intentional pursuit, as one would have in pursuing such things.
And in line with that, Solomon builds on that discipline of pursuit by saying in the second part of verse 4 we should ‘search for wisdom as for hidden treasures’.
That takes focus. It takes serious focus to find something that is hidden. Now obviously wisdom is not hidden, but Solomon wants his son and he wants us to have the focus as if it was. It reminds me of this winter break, when my Dad dropped a really really tiny screw trying to fix my sister’s phone, like I’m talking so tiny that you could barely see it when someone was holding it, like I’m saying an ant would look like Shaquille O’Neal next to this screw, that’s how tiny it was.
But this screw was needed to fix the phone so that left my Dad, sister, and I spending the next 15 minutes intently looking for it. And let me tell you we were focused. You had to be or else you were not seeing that tiny little screw. We were looking for one thing and would not stop until we found it. And that’s just what one does with hidden treasure. They are focused, looking for one thing and will not stop until they find it.
So in order to understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God, we need to have a focused pursuit of it.
And that leads us to v5, the result.
‘…Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
That verse, simply stated by one commentator, is that wisdom’s true suitor, one who meets the condition, will know what to do to please God and how to do it. That’s understanding the fear of the LORD and the knowledge of God.
You will know what to do to please Him and how to do it.
And what I love here is that we can be sure of that. If you meet the ‘if’ or the condition presented in v1-4, then you can plan and rest assured of the ‘then’ or the result. You can. Those who respond to wisdom she receives and helps. So let’s summarize all of that and bring it together in our text. Solomon says in Proverbs 2:1-5
‘If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, 2 making your ear attentive to wisdom (if you listen) and inclining your heart to understanding; (if you desire) 3 yes, if you call out for insight (if you ask) and raise your voice for understanding, (if you have urgency) 4 if you seek it like silver (if you pursue) and search for it as for hidden treasures, (if you focus) 5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.’
If you:
listen
desire
ask
have urgency
pursue
focus
IF you meet that condition in verse 4, THEN the result in verse 5 is that you will, you WILL understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.
You will know what to do to please God and how to do it. You will.
Listen, desire, ask, urgency, pursue, focus…
The 6 Disciplines Needed to understand the fear of the Lord.
The 6 Disciplines Needed to find the knowledge of God.
The 6 Disciplines Needed for wisdom.
Next week we’re going to look at the reason for desiring the result & for following the condition in verses 6-10, of which I am very excited for.
I love you all.
God bless.
