The Proverbs of Solomon
[Proverbs 1:1-7]
In the New Year 2011, I was thinking about what to meditate on at every Wednesday prayer meeting, and I chose “The Book of Proverbs”. The reason I chose this Book of Proverbs out of the 66 books of the Bible is because after I meditated on “The Book of Psalms” for about 4 and a half years and “The Book of Ecclesiastes” for about 1 years 2 months, I wanted to continue meditating on the rest of the Books of Wisdom. You may be asking why we should continue to meditate on “The Books of Wisdom”. I have at least two reasons: (1) The first reason is because I am a fool and I feel that I need wisdom. (2) Another reason is because I want all of our church members to be wise. I want all of our church members to become wise people and to become saints who know the time is evil and who know that we need to redeem time. Also, I want all of us to understand what the will of the Lord is and live according to His will (Eph. 5:15-17). So, today, I would like to start meditating on the words of Proverbs, the Book of Wisdom, with all of you in this New Year 2011 first Wednesday prayer meeting.
Before we meditate on the Book of Proverbs, there are two things to note about the Book of Proverbs. First, what are “Proverbs”. When I looked at a church website, I saw that someone wrote about “Proverbs”: The word “Proverbs” comes from the Hebrew word “mashal,” meaning “comparison”. Since the verb form of this word seems to have the meanings of ‘to rule’ and ‘to dominate’, Proverbs means to rule over and governs a person's actions. One thing to think about is the Hebrew word “marshal” translated as ‘箴言’. 箴 means “needle”, and in pure Korean translation, it can be called ‘poking words’. Proverbs are ‘poking words’ that give us not only ‘advice and reproof’, but also ‘wisdom and understanding’ (Internet). I think this is an interesting interpretation. But I think Pastor John MacArthur’s explanation is more appropriate than this: “The proverbs are short, pithy sayings which express timeless truth and wisdom. They arrest one’s thoughts, causing the reader to reflect on how one might apply divine principles to life situations (e.g., 2:12)” (MacArthur). Another thing we need to point out is the author of the Book of Proverbs. In Proverbs 1:1, the Bible says, “The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel.” In other words, the author of the Book of Proverbs is King Solomon. In 1 Kings 4:32, King Solomon said that he left 3,000 proverbs with the wisdom that God gave. But what we need to keep in mind here is that King Solomon didn’t write the entire Book of Proverbs. In other words, the Book of Proverbs has other authors besides King Solomon. For example, if we look at the beginning of Proverbs 24:23-34, the Bible says “These also are sayings of the wise.” Here the word “the wise” is a plural noun and refers to other wise people other than King Solomon. In other words, the partial words of Proverbs were written by other authors besides King Solomon (Yun-sun Park). It isn’t sure whether the wise ones are “Agur the son of Jakeh”, who wrote Proverbs 30:1-33 and “King Lemuel” who wrote 31:1-31, or they are two other others beside the wise ones who wrote the Book of Proverbs. Importantly, almost all of the proverbs were written by Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel, but some of them were written by other wise men. That is, we must keep in mind that one of the Books of Wisdom, Proverbs, was written by the wise men, whether by King Solomon or other authors. So why did they write the Book Proverbs? What was the purpose of King Solomon's writing of the Book of Proverbs? The answer to that question can be found in Proverbs 1:1-7, which is the prologue. If we look at Proverbs 1:1-7, which is the introduction to the Book of Proverbs, we can see the twofold purpose of Proverbs (vv. 2-6) and the theme verse that summarizes the whole Book of Proverbs (v. 7).
First, what is the dual purpose of the Book of Proverbs? Today's text, Proverbs 1:1-7, says in two ways:
First, the purpose of the Proverbs is to produce the skill of godly living by wisdom and instruction (MacArthur).
Look at Proverbs 1:2a – “for attaining wisdom and discipline”. Here, the Hebrew word “wisdom” etymologically means to be firm, which refers to knowledge that can be said to be an axiom about the existence and nature of things. And “discipline” means that the Proverbs lead us to acquire a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair” (v. 3). We must receive spiritual wisdom from God through the Proverbs. Then we can act righteously, justly, and fairly before God (Park). That is, we must learn not only the divine principles of living a godly life with the wisdom God-given through the Proverbs, but also the skills of living a godly life how to apply those divine principles in our lives. And because we obey the authority of God's word, our faith must be firmly established on the rock. Also, the Proverbs give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young (v. 4). What does it mean? It means that the Proverbs not only make the foolish to be prudent, but also give the young ones knowledge and discretion. Those who have no control and open mind are susceptible to foreign influences. That is why it is necessary to teach them the wisdom of God (Proverbs) so that they can immediately discern and stand firmly against disputes. And because young people have no experience, they are relatively not cautious and come at. Therefore, young people need to receive God's wisdom and stand firm (Park).
Second, the purpose of the Proverbs is to develop discernment (MacArthur).
Look at Proverbs 1:2b – “… To discern the sayings of understanding”. Here, “insight” refers to the discernment of good and evil (Park). The last days we live in are an era of the loss and absence of the ability to discern good and evil. We cannot discern what is good and what is bad. We have already learned during the last Sunday's New Year's Worship that in order for us to live a life of give thanks in everything, we must examine everything carefully and hold fast to that which is good and abstain from every form of evil (1 Thess. 5:21-22). The problem, however, is that sometimes we lose our ability to measure (discern) the good (good) and the bad, and sometimes we live a life of taking what is bad and throwing away what is good. This is the work of Satan. Satan makes us confused between good and evil. As a result, Satan forces us to abandon good and choose evil. Look at Genesis. When the serpent seduced the woman, he said that even if she would eat the fruit of good and evil, she would never die. On the contrary, the serpent said to her, “… in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4, 5). Satan, who makes us to be confused with good and evil and causes us to sin, is trying to make us commit evil by seducing us and disobeying God's commandments, just as he tempted Eve to commit sin. What is the problem? The problem is that we aren’t as prudent as Eve. Just as Eve wasn’t prudent and had no discernment about good and evil, and so she eventually fell into the serpent’s temptation and committed sin by disobeying the word of God, we are also sinning against God because we aren't prudent and can’t discern good from evil. That’s why we don’t choose good and do good, but choose evil and do evil. What should we do? How can we gain understanding so that we can discern good and evil, take good, and give up evil? Look at Proverbs 1:5 – “let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance.” We must listen to God's wise word. We must listen and added to our learning. Why must we do that? The reason is because it will guide us by making us wiser and more prudent. How can the learning that we gain through listening to God's word guide us? It's possible by sharpening our mind (MacArthur). Look at verse 6: “for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise.” The more we meditate on the Proverbs, the more we will become wise because our hearts become sharper as we understand the words of the Proverbs. Therefore, with spiritual discernment, we will be able to discern between good and evil, choose good and abandon evil.
The wise listens to God's word, but the foolish one rather despises His word. Because the fools hate to hear God's word, they turn their backs on the holy God who speaks. But the wise longs to listen to God's word, and goes further and hears and obeys His word. We must become wise and listen to His word and obey Him. Therefore, we must become wiser and more prudent, and have spiritual discernment to discern good and evil, so that we can choose good and abandon evil.
Finally, in Proverbs 1:7, King Solomon gives us the theme verse that summarizes the whole book of Proverbs: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
The key lesson of this theme verse is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (wisdom). King Solomon says to us in verse 5 to listen to God's word and add to our learning, and then in verse 7, he teaches us that “the beginning of knowledge,” that is, the premise of knowledge or knowledge is the forefront, or the basis of knowledge is the fear of the Lord. What does it really mean to fear God? Dr. Park defines this as: ‘To fear God refers to faith in God in the Old Testament times. This doesn’t just point to the fear of God, but means fearing with love for Him (Park). But for me, Pastor MacArthur’s definition comes more convincingly to my heart: “The fear of the Lord is a state of mind in which one’s own attitudes, will, feelings, deeds, and goals are exchanged for God’s (cf. Ps. 42:1)”(MacArthur). The reason this definition came more convincingly to my heart was because it is similar to the heart that God gave me through the last year two Sabbath months. At that time, the heart that God gave me was that He wants me to see what He sees, He wants me to hear what He hears, and He wants me to feel what He feels. I think that fearing God means that I only see the Lord. In other words, those who fear God, everything is Lord-centered, not self-centered at all. Those who fear God will never seek their own will, but only His will. They will embrace the heart of the Lord and live a life that fulfills His will by imitating the thoughts of the Lord, the feelings of the Lord, the attitude and will of the Lord, and the actions of the Lord. If we have this fear of God, we will never choose evil and get close to evil nor can we do so. Rather, we will keep away from evil and love and draw near to good. But the fools despise wisdom and admonition, so they keep away from good and get close to evil. What is the reason? The reason is because the mental state of the fools has no fear of God. In other words, they have no power to choose good because they don’t know God's attitude, will, feeling, conduct, and purpose. As a result, they have no choice but to pursue evil attitude, evil will, evil feeling, evil purpose, and evil conduct. In a word, the fools say that there is no God in their hearts (Ps. 14:1). And because they live under the premise that there is no God, they have no choice but to think of evil and do evil.
Today, the first Wednesday prayer meeting of the New Year 2011, we meditated on Proverbs 1:1-7, the introductory part of the Book of Proverbs. As we will keep on meditate on the Proverbs of Solomon at each weekly Wednesday prayer meeting in the future. What we need to remember is the dual purpose and the theme of the Book of Proverbs. The dual purpose of the Book of Proverbs is to develop discernment and to produce the skill of godly living by wisdom and instruction. And the theme verse of the Proverbs is Proverbs 1:7 – “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.” We must keep these two things in mind and continue to meditate on the words of Proverbs. May we, therefore, be able to fulfill the purpose of the Proverbs and be raised up as truly God-fearing, godly and spiritually discerning and wise Christians.