Tonight we are finishing, or not finishing, but continuing on with our series in Proverbs, and we're gonna look at some things we've talked about in part in the last few weeks, but I wanted to spend a little bit more time tonight thinking about them in more detail, but it all revolves around what it means to delight in wisdom. Last week as we talked about Psalm 8, and there's that beautiful verse where Christ prefigured as wisdom, says, I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always. and even rejoicing in the world and delighting in the children of men. So the question that I just asked myself as I talked through that and as I thought about it this past week is what does it mean to delight in wisdom? How do we delight in wisdom? And do we delight in wisdom? Is that something we struggle with? So tonight I wanna look at a little bit more in depth of how we delight in wisdom. Before I do that, let me read for us from Proverbs chapter two. We'll be looking at some of these verses tonight I'm gonna start in verse nine, two verse nine. The first eight verses is Solomon entreating his son to listen to his words, and then we see the result of the son paying attention to the wisdom of his father. Solomon writes, then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path, for wisdom will come into your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will watch over you, understanding will guard you, delivering you from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech who forsake the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perverseness of evil, men whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways. "'So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, "'from the adulteress with her smooth words, "'who forsakes the companion of her youth "'and forgets the covenant of her God. "'For her house sinks down to death "'and her paths to the departed. "'None who go to her come back, "'nor do they regain the paths of life. "'So you will walk in the way of the good "'and keep to the paths of the righteous. "'For the upright will inhabit the land "'and those with integrity will remain in it. "'But the wicked will be cut off from the land "'and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. Amen, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you for your people here tonight. Father, we ask that you would guide our discussion, our thoughts, and our minds. And even as we just sung to you, immortal, invisible, God only wise, as we think about wisdom, would we have our hearts directed towards you? Lord, the one who is himself wisdom. And as we seek to study this book, would you grow us not only in vague wisdom, but in knowledge of you. What it means to love and to fear you as we walk in this path that you set before us. We ask this in Christ's mighty and matchless name. Amen. All right, so tonight, as we think about delight in wisdom, I wanna think about it in three different ways. Delight in wisdom comes from our delight in the fear of the Lord, our delight in deliverance from evil, and then lastly, our delight in walking with and in reality. So delight in the fear of the Lord, delight in deliverance from evil, and delight in walking in reality. And that first one, delight in the fear of the Lord, it's fairly obvious, right? Sean just kind of led us into our time tonight as he read Psalm, Proverb 9, 10. Fear of the Lord is a huge theme throughout the book of Proverbs. In fact, it's mentioned some 20 times throughout the book, and I haven't done the math, but I'm sure you'd be hard-pressed to find another subject that recurs as many times as the fear of the Lord in Proverbs. But it really starts all the way back in Proverbs 1.7, right? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And if you remember, I said the first week, this sort of sets the entire tenor of the whole book of what I call the epistemological foundations for wisdom. In order to really have wisdom, you have to have the fear of the Lord. And yet, the fear of the Lord is not unique to Proverbs, right? It really has its roots all the way back in the Pentateuch. And one of the first times we see the command to fear the Lord is given in Deuteronomy 6.13, that you may fear the Lord. That's why he's saved, he's brought them out of out of the house of slavery. But even earlier, right, the midwives of Israel who just can't seem to get to the Israelite women in time, right, they're said to fear the Lord. And even early on, Abraham is called a man who fears the Lord. And so the question, right, as we look across the scope of biblical testimony, is what is the fear of the Lord? And we could spend weeks talking about that subject. So I wanted to start us off with just this one quote from actually a former professor of mine from seminary. He says, the fear of the Lord refers primarily to a subjective response of humility, love, and trust in God so that a person is willing to submit his or her life to the ways of God. It is a God-centered view of life that includes a reverence for God. So fear of the Lord, it's sort of another way of saying reverence for God, but it really is almost, it's just an entire life posture where you're sitting before God as the only one to whom reverence and fear is due. I want to think about that tonight, especially as Proverbs unpacks that, what that means for our delight. How that actually brings us to delight, to walk in the fear of the Lord. And part of this, you've probably talked about the fear of the Lord in some respects, right? Part of it is due to our own inability with language. When we think of fear of somebody, our mind generally jumps to some sort of terror, right? You know, bad, bad Leroy Brown by Jim Croce, right? Baddest man in the whole dang town, right? You fear him. And yet, as we'll see, right, there's this joy that comes with the proper fear that is given to God. And the first thing I want to think about in the fear of the Lord, if you remember I said this week one, that the fear of the Lord is more than but nothing less than recognizing you're not the one in control. Fear of the Lord is certainly more than, but it's nothing less than recognizing you're not the one in control. And we looked at the second week, Proverbs 16, nine, the heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. So you can do all the right things in establishing your steps, or to plan your steps, but it's the Lord who actually establishes them, who makes things come to pass. Or even, and we didn't look at this one, but Proverbs 21, 31, The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord. So sort of rephrasing it in warfare imagery, you can get all your horses ready, all your chariots ready to go, your swords are sharpened, your soldiers well trained, and yet the victory, finally and fully, belongs to the Lord. And one thing, as we wrestle with the fear of the Lord, we have to recognize is that there is no amount of our understanding or our knowledge that could somehow give us control over our lives. There's nothing we can do that really gives us any amount of say over what happens. It's the Lord who does it from beginning to end. And when I worked with youth, I had a lot of athletes in my youth group, a lot of really good athletes. I mean, it was like, whoa. I don't remember kids being this athletic when I was in high school. And one thing I always talked with them, though, is they talked about how they're just wanting to work hard and make it to college, or some of them wanted to go pro and actually had a few guys go and play at D1 college. And yet the thing I always worked with them on is, man, you do wanna work hard, but you have to recognize every single moment of your life, you've been placed there by God. You just happen to have parents that gave you that work ethic. You just happen to be at a school that allowed you to do, you happen to be born in America that even lets you play high school football or whatever, right? All of these things, even the most gifted athletes in the world, right? You think of Michael Phelps or Kobe Bryant or whoever, right? They certainly worked their tails off, but every moment of that was really given to them by God, right? Given really outside of their control. And we see a remarkable foil to this, right? To not walk in the fear of the Lord, what it means to not fear the Lord and to desire this control. In a story in 2 Samuel 17, you don't have to turn there, I'll just sum it up, but there's, this is when Absalom rebels against his father David. David's on the run with his mighty men. And there's this really smart guy named Ahithophel that David knows is the wisest man in the kingdom. And he's turned side, he's turned coat, and he is now working for Absalom. And he knows that, hey, if Ahithophel's wisdom succeeds, I don't have a chance. Right? And so he sends this guy named Hushai, hey, go infiltrate Absalom's entourage and do everything you can to undermine Ahithophel's wisdom. Notice, he's not saying, he's not praying for God to make Ahithophel dumb. He's recognizing, hey, Ahithophel actually has real wisdom. but I need to pray that God subverts that wisdom somehow. So long story short, Ahithophel tells Absalom, hey, David's on the run. You've got to go after him now. Hit him hard while he's weak, and then you'll take him out. And Hushai, remember David's double agent, says, eh, I don't know. We should take our time. You know, David's a wild man. He's used to this terrain. We don't know it like he does. Let's take a step back. And Absalom decides, hey, Hushai is wiser than Hithophel in this situation. And does anyone know what Hithophel does? He hangs himself. Right, his wisdom is denied, so it says he gets his affairs in order, he takes his donkey home, and he hangs himself. Now there's lots of lessons we could learn in Hithophel's downfall. In fact, probably part of his suicide is knowing, hey, when David gets back in power, I'm done for, so I might as well just hang it up now, no pun intended. But also, right, this man who lived by his wisdom, when it was taken away from him, or when no one would listen to his wisdom, he couldn't handle it. The thing that he thought gave him control on life was stripped of him, by and large. You know, what good is a wise man if no one's gonna listen to you? And he goes and hangs himself. And yet a proper posture of the fear of the Lord recognizes that, hey, we seek to walk in wisdom, but whether it succeeds or fails is up to the Lord, right? And then second, right, so there's control, and I'm gonna tie this in with the second one, but the second one we talked about this also, but just to spend a little bit more time on it, fear of the Lord also means that we recognize that just like we don't have control, we don't have really any drop of understanding in the grand scheme of things. We've got our very, very tiny, very tiny perspective. You may know a lot of facts about butterflies or birds or engineering, but man, in the vast scope of knowledge, that's just a very little part, a very tiny little segment. And you could ask Dr. Jacobs, you could ask other people with terminal degrees, The more you know, the more you learn, the more you learn that you don't know anything at all, right? That, you know, people have written 300-page dissertations on two words in the Greek New Testament, right? And that could be done for every single word, every single verse in the Bible, probably has been done on every single verse in the Bible. But there's this pause we need to, not only do we not have control, but we don't even have understanding. And there's a verse that I love in Ecclesiastes 5-2, It says, be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God. Here it is, for God is in heaven, and you are on earth. So part of the posture of fear of the Lord is recognizing God alone sees all of this. And I'm just here, and especially in Ecclesiastes there, but even across Proverbs, is the simple fact that, hey, if you pretend you know stuff, you're dead set on being a fool. So this is Proverbs 26, 12. It says, do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. If you think you know stuff, you're actually worse than a fool. A fool has more hope than for the man who thinks he is wise in his own eyes. And so a proper fear of the Lord means that you, just like you understand that you don't have any control, you also understand that you don't understand. You can't look at the broad tapestry of history and be like, oh yeah, I see why God did that. As much as you want to think you can, you can't look at 2020 and say, oh, I know exactly why God sent COVID-19. It was to scorn the Democrats. We can't say that because we have no idea. We don't have this, just like we don't have control, we don't have this secret insider knowledge that everyone's just dying to get. And here's why this is important, especially as we think about actions, think about delight. Is there any freer thought than that you really don't control anything? Is there any freer understanding than knowing that you really don't understand anything at all? Because here's the thing, if you could understand anything, if you could control anything, guess what? It's all up to you, 100%, all up to you. So walking in the fear of the Lord brings that freedom of delight, of yes, I'm called to walk in wisdom, but it's the Lord who carries it through. And just a question. Right, to think about it, if we are walking in the fear of the Lord, and I know I fail all the tests, right, do you get angry when the things you have are threatened? When the good thing that you think you have is threatened, do you get angry? I don't mean like your child is being threatened by somebody, I mean like, I've got my dream job and I may lose it tomorrow. Like, does that actually like, not just make you sad, but like angry, like how dare they fire me? Or, right, when your favorite football team loses, right, do you have this irrational rage that probably is other things than just fear of the Lord, maybe a little bit of idolatry. or even understanding, right? When you start getting frustrated, when things are adding up, whoa, whoa, whoa, I disciplined my kid just like the Bible told me to. I took him to all the right schools. Heck, I didn't even send him to school, I homeschooled him. So why is he walking away from the Lord? It shows that, again, and these are not wrong things to be sad about, but if they are shaking who you are at the core, then it shows that you're really not walking in this fear of the Lord. Right? Or even, you know, who knows what happens in 2026, 2027, 2028. But, you know, let's just say the tax rate goes through the roof. There's a housing collapse across the entire country. Are you going to say, oh, I knew Trump was no good? Or are you going to say, it's all those policies that Biden passed. That's what did it. No, you have no idea. We can make grand sweeping claims, but at the end of the day, you have no idea. And so as we kind of finish this first section, delight in the fear of the Lord, right? The freedom that that brings, total subjection to God and the fear of the Lord, recognizing we do not control anything. We do not really understand anything. But then, lastly, it should bring us delight in what is often referred to as walking in the fear of the Lord. So in Nehemiah chapter five, Nehemiah, he's rebuilt the wall, and he suddenly learns that, hey, all the poor of Jerusalem have just been oppressed, hardcore, by all the rich people of Israel. All the richest people, the richest families of Jerusalem have suddenly decided, hey, I'll loan out Money, no problem, but it's gonna cost you 30%. And usury is the word that is used. And Nehemiah chastises them and says in Nehemiah 5.9, why are you not walking in the fear of the Lord? So understanding that you're not in control, that you don't have this understanding demands that you walk a certain way in life. That you walk according to the things that he has revealed to us. So he says in Proverbs 22.4, the reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor in life. So there's a proper set of actions, namely here humility and righteousness, that is the outflow of this fear of the Lord. And in order to live as God has called us, Right, fear of the Lord, I know I'm using that phrase a lot, so forgive me, but fear of the Lord is a, is kind of the first principle, right? Think about all the things we're commanded to do, even in the New Testament, right, forgiving someone. The only way you can really forgive someone is if you have a proper fear of the Lord in your heart, right? Because think about it, if God really, if you didn't really fear God, you say, I don't care what God's told me to do, this guy wronged me. Who cares what God said? But if you're walking and not understanding who God is, then hey, there's no amount of wrong that this person could do to me that would upturn God's command to forgive others. Or loving our enemy. Walking in obedience requires this certain posture of the fear of the Lord, this godly reverence. And so, kind of just as we close this first section, right, the delight and the fear of the Lord turns out to be this filial delight, this childlike delight in proper reverence and obedience to your Father. It's proper delight, right? You know, as I was this morning, really it's nonstop with Poppy. She always wants a snack, right? Just 100% all the time wants a snack. And we've got these little teethers. You parents may know these, right? They're basically cardboard that they've like lofted through a banana or something. And she always wants one of those. And you know, sometimes she's just fussy, She knows good things come from my Father. Good things come from my Father. Now, she's a little whiny about it sometimes. But, and for some reason, right, as we grow older, when we hit about eight, 10, or 12, we suddenly start thinking, no, no, no, good things come from me. I'm the one who gives me good things. And it's much the same, right, this filial fear that we've lost somewhere because of the fall as we grow up, that it's God, our Father, who gives us these good things, even wisdom. Secondly, right, so there's this delight in the fear of the Lord, but there's also the delight that wisdom brings in deliverance. And if you were paying attention when we read earlier in Proverbs 2, you noticed it used that word deliverance Twice, right, so it says there in verse 12 that wisdom will deliver us from the way of evil, from men of perverted speech. And then again in verse 16, so you will be delivered from the forbidden woman, from the adulteress with her smooth words. And what's interesting about that word deliverance, it's not like this weird translation thing that the editors are trying to do or anything like that. It's really the same exact word when God talks about delivering his people from the land of Egypt. Bring them out of the house of slavery. That's that word, nesal. Wisdom, just like God delivered his people from Egypt, so wisdom delivers those who follow it from evil, from the forbidden woman. And all throughout the Psalms, think how many times the Psalms have something about God deliver me. Lord, you deliver me, over and over again. And what we see here in Proverbs, both in these verses, but also throughout the book, is that wisdom is one of the ways God delivers you. It is one of the many paths that God means by which God has delivered you from sin and from evil. Here's what I mean. It's very simple, very plain in scripture that bad things happen to good people all the time. Job, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, even Proverbs is not shy about that. But it's also not shy about saying, hey, there are problems and evils that can be avoided by and large if you walk according to wisdom, right? So for example, some things that happen in life that you can't avoid, right? If you're driving down the street and the tractor trailer coming the other way just happens at the last second to veer in your lane, there's nothing you can do about that, right? There's nothing you can do about a congenital heart defect. Right? Those things happen because of the fall, because of brokenness. But what you can avoid, by and large, is not hitting others by not texting and driving. Right? You can avoid not getting charged with negligent homicide by not, you know, drinking 14 shots of whiskey and then hopping in your car to drive down to the next bar. You can avoid, there are problems and evils in this life that can be avoided if you walk according to the path that God has set before you. Now again, I'm not saying that you're gonna avoid 100% of evil, but there are evils that can be avoided. I think of 1 Corinthians, is it 1 Corinthians 9? John will correct me, but no temptation is uncommon to man. But in everything, God has provided a means of escape. And sometimes that means of escape is given years before you actually fall into that sin. How many times we've heard about the pastor having a moral failure, and the means of escape for that moral failure was given when he first decided to break that covenant with his eyes. Right, and so walking in wisdom means taking advantage of the things that God has given us. And really, right, again, if we think about delight, right, there's a joy in walking in wisdom because when you walk in wisdom, you are bound to the freedom that God has given us, given you, right? So when Paul says in Galatians 5, right, for freedom Christ has set you free, right, that there is something you need to be doing to actually be free. And Proverbs' way of answering that is, you're free to be wise. The wise man has 18,000 strictures set in place lest he fall, but he's happy because of it. Right? I think of, you know, I think of being a pastor, you often think about moral failures, but I think about the Billy Graham rule often, right? And if you want to start a discussion, just bring up the Billy Graham rule with somebody, because everyone's got a hot take on it. But you know, Billy Graham, he wouldn't, eat dinner with a woman alone by himself. He wouldn't be a room with, he wouldn't, you know, if he got to a hotel, he would have his concierge or whatever, rip out the TV jack from the wall, like just rip it out. So then he would pay to have it repaired, right? He set up all these things to fight against any sort of sexual sin that might come into him. And yet he had a wonderful, happy marriage for 60 years to his wife. So again, as we think about the Christian life, it is not suddenly you're free from all barriers and boundaries, but you have the right barriers and boundaries in place that allows you to live a free and happy life. Or another way to think about it, right, is if we think of freedom as doing whatever we want to do, and some of you have no addicts in your life, ask an addict if they're free. Ask an addict if they're free. Because in one sense, they're always doing exactly what they want to do. But that's the prison right there, right? They always have to do exactly what they want to do. So that's the delight of deliverance, right? That we have actually been delivered by wisdom to walk according to wisdom. And lastly, the delight of walking in reality. So the delight of walking in the fear of the Lord, the delight of walking in deliverance, and then the delight of walking in reality. And we talked about this a few weeks ago, about how because of who God is as creator and sustainer of this life, there is a reality out there to be understood. There's no question that this is right here. We could get into all sorts of philosophical debates about what is reality, but the simple description in Proverbs is that there is a real plan and rubric for all of life. There's a real, if you remember, I mentioned that one of my favorite proverbs, that a man who lusts with his eyes, or a man who falls into sexual morality, something, is like a man who plays with fire, expecting not to be burned, right? And, you know, the rule for things catching on fire, if it touches other fire, is the same rule of, hey, if you dabble in sexual morality, you're gonna get burned as well. But there's this reality that is objectively placed by God. One theologian described it as the grain of the universe. That there's an actual grain, there's an order and direction of the universe, and walking in wisdom is really just walking with that grain of reality. Walking according to the grain of the universe. As we think about walking in the fear of the Lord and walking in deliverance from evil, that means that you can actually walk as things were meant to be. If you walk in the fear of the Lord and you walk delivered from sin, you can actually walk as things were meant to be. You can think of walking in wisdom without the fear of the Lord, which according to Proverbs is an oxymoron, can't do that, sorry. You might think of trying to walk in wisdom without deliverance from sin, deliverance from evil, but that whole time you're just handcuffed to the sin and evil that clings so closely. But when we're free from evil, when we walk in the fear of the Lord, we're actually able to walk in reality, walk as things were meant to be. And we see this at the very end of chapter two when he talks about the deliverance that wisdom brings, but then in verse 20, so you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous, for the upright will inhabit the land and those with integrity will remain in it, but the wicked will be cut off from the land and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. And really another, when you think about the good, Hebrew word tov, it's not just like when we think of good, Such a broad term, I can't even think of how we use good sometimes. Like, that's a good sandwich. Or, you know, it's good to tell the truth. But here, good could also mean the way the world was meant to be. Right, so Bruce Waltke, Old Testament commentator, he says that here, the ones who walk in the good, they serve the purpose of what God originally expected in human behavior. Right, so they're walking according to what God originally purposed for mankind. Or another way of thinking about it, right, you're walking in accord with the divine law that God has given. You're walking in accord with the rules that he has set before us. And there's a delight that comes from that, to walking as things were meant to be, right? You know, whenever I meet somebody or I have friends who are captured in very sinful lifestyles, foolish lifestyles, and I always wanna ask them, are you really happy? Like every time I see you, your eyes are sunken in. Your Instagram makes it seem like you're having a gay old time, but are you really happy? Are you really enjoying the things that you're doing? And the Proverbs show us that delight comes from walking as God has intended it to be. All right, Proverbs 23, 29 through 30 says, who has woe, who has sorrow, who has strife, who has complaining, who has wounds without cause, who has redness of eyes? The answer, those who tarry long over wine and those who go to try mixed wine. So, and this could be, you know, could use that for anything, not just drunkenness, but sorrow, Waking up with bruises that you have no idea how they got there. All these things come from the improper, disordered use of alcohol. And that shows one thing, there's a proper use for alcohol. And then the second thing is that, hey, to walk against how God has created something actually is the thing bringing strife, bringing disorder, bringing woe. And so, right, as we're thinking about this delight, that joy comes from walking in accord with God's reality, walking in accord with what God has made. And, you know, again, sociology is in some way starting to bear this out, right? The happiest kids are those raised with a mother and father. You know, just a kind of a frightening statistic. A child from a divorced home actually has more trauma than a child who loses a parent to death. When families are stripped apart, it actually does damage to people, surprisingly. And obviously, and to both parents, you know. But children from heterosexual monogamous families are surprisingly those that turn out the best. People who are religious are happier, shown to be happier. There's an order that try as we might, and the data continues to bear it out, there is an order that God has intended for us. There is a proper ordering as things are meant to be. So part of the delight of wisdom, part of the delight of the Christian faith is walking alongside of a God who we are to properly fear as the Lord and keeper of our lives. This delight is found in the deliverance that God offers us through the wisdom he reveals. And then lastly, this delight is found in walking according to God's intended purposes. There's an actual delight in doing those things. And through each of them, we see that walking with wisdom, being a wise person is hard. I'm not saying it's easy. As someone said, the fool has the easy job. They don't have to restrain themselves. They don't have to decide if what they're doing is bad, right? It takes strength and wisdom and fortitude to be a wise man, to be a wise woman. But at the end of the day, it is a great delight to walk in wisdom, a great delight. So I think, yes, there's a, and I guess here's the switch. If all you're walking in is this terror, then you're not truly a son. But a son can walk in this filial love that also has a right terror in the back. So even if terror, think about it this way, walking in terror all the time would be, You know, you're shaking as you're going to your dad to ask if you can ask a girl out or something, thinking like, is he going to hit me again or whatever. But, you know, a true son goes to his father in freedom, but also knows, hey, there are certain boundaries I don't cross here. There are certain levels that I don't cross. But good point, right, that I'm not trying to push aside, but the terror is real, but properly couched in a filial fear, I think it's still there as well.