All right, good morning. Come on in and get settled here. So in case you don't remember, this is week two of our look at the Proverbs. And last week, if you don't remember also, we took a good look at Solomon, whose picture is there. And you'll remember we had high hopes when we started looking at how the Lord used Solomon and how Solomon followed the Lord. heard the Lord's promises to David, that there would always be a king from David on the throne of Israel, and that the Lord would be treating him as a son, rebuking him as necessary, blessing him when appropriate, but he would never leave, the Lord said. And even though David was the one who wanted to build the Lord a house, the Lord said that Solomon would be the one who would build a house for the Lord. And the hopes got even higher and stronger and more intense as we saw Solomon as a young man when the Lord offered him whatever he wanted, when Solomon chose wisdom to reign and rule over the people of Israel. And if it didn't get any better than that, or if you couldn't imagine it getting any better than that, We took a long look at when the temple was finished, and Solomon stood before the Lord and before the people of Israel, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. The presence of God was with Israel. We saw how in the beginning of Solomon's reign, Israel fulfilled the purpose that Moses described, being a nation that other nations will look upon and say, wow, look at how near their God is and how awesome is his glory. Of course, this is the point in Israel's history when they became the great nation that had been promised all the way back to Abraham. And then as glorious as was the rise, so disheartening was the fall. And we talked a little bit about Ecclesiastes where Solomon wrote down the wisdom of his pursuits outside of the Lord's pursuits. Both good things and worldly things that when pursued toward ultimate fulfillment and ultimate purpose and ultimate satisfaction, turned up as vanity, right? And so we read and we pondered for a bit here on the left how Solomon concluded his life of having everything knowing at certain points in his life where he had pursued what the Lord had put out in front of him rightly, and pursued what the Lord had put out in front of him wrongly, that this was the conclusion of the whole matter. And if you're not quite there yet with me on Ecclesiastes, it is very depressing the searches, especially as you read them and compare them to your own selves, how easy it is for us to go after so many of those similar things in vain. And then right at the end, Solomon knocks it out of the park with this statement that the whole matter is summed up with the statement, fear God and keep his commandments. This is all of man, this is man's all. Now, of course, here, as we take our first step into Proverbs, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge or wisdom. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. This is the purpose statement or the introductory statement right here in the seventh verse of Proverbs. And so we see here this theme of fearing God. And before we dive in and put all of the weight of our thinking on Proverbs, On top of this introductory statement, we're going to test it out a little bit today to make sure that it holds the weight that we're going to expect it to do in the next few weeks. So, of course, the Lord is worthy of fear in the sense of dread or terror or something that you do not want to approach, something that you want to hide from, something that you want to run away from. I know that I've spoken in this room about Exodus 19. When Israel had come out of Egypt, the Lord had brought them through the Red Sea, through the wilderness, defeated the pursuits of Pharaoh. And there in Exodus 19, we read, then it came to pass on the third day in the morning that there were thunderings and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain. And the sound of the trumpet was very loud. And so all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Sinai was completely in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. And when the blast of the trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by voice. Then the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain, and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. And the Lord said to Moses, Go down and warn the people, lest they break through to gaze of the Lord, and many of them perish. Also let the priests who come near the Lord consecrate themselves, lest the Lord break out against them. There is a certain, a right, a legitimate fear when the Creator draws near to His creation. We see further along in the next page here, Exodus chapter 20, Now all the people, this is after the Lord had spoken the Ten Commandments, now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, the mountain smoking, and when the people saw it again, they trembled and they stood afar off. They said to Moses, you speak with us and we will hear, but let not God speak with us lest we die. So again, the legitimate fear of the Lord in the sense of wanting to retract and draw back is real and certainly worthy of consideration here as we begin Proverbs. Now, I don't think it's just Israel's experience that led them to this fear. Of course, they had an experience that would corroborate this, right? They had seen what the Lord had done in Egypt, all of the plagues, and they had seen His power destroying what the Lord thought wicked and preserving what the Lord had out in store for them. But you'll remember also Nadab and Abihu who offered strange fire before the Lord, and the Lord, who is a consuming fire, sent out fire to consume them." Moses uses that term actually in a sense of as Israel is waiting to cross the Jordan, he says, fear not, the Lord will go ahead of you to battle your enemies. The Lord is a consuming fire. So, of course Israel was in a good spot to sense this, to feel this, to remember this because of what they had witnessed, but it's not just Israel. who has seen the Lord's power, who has seen the Lord's holiness, who has seen the Lord's perfection and knows that the Lord is a consuming fire. And of course, the Lord does not change. We look at Hebrews chapter 12 in the New Testament, of course. The author of the Hebrews points to the Lord in this way, right? He calls the Lord a consuming fire. If you want to turn over there with me, you may, or just look up on the screen. Hebrews 12. The author is talking about accepting the Lord's chastening or accepting the Lord's correction. He's talking about pursuing holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And then he says this, Hebrews 12.18, Speaking of, now that you have entered into the new covenant as opposed to the old covenant, for you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire and to blackness and darkness and tempest and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, of course he's referring to what we just read in Exodus 19 and 20, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore, for they could not endure what was commanded. If so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow. And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I am exceedingly afraid and trembling. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel. See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused him, who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, yet once more I shake, not only the earth, but also heaven. Now this, yet once more, indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, the things that which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire. So the Lord, who is a consuming fire and has not changed, has always, as he approached his people, prepared them. You'll remember, I didn't read it, but you'll remember in Exodus 19 and 20, Moses said, go make yourselves clean, go sanctify yourselves. It's been a while, but I think most of you were here when we went through the Sunday school of the difference between cleanness and holiness. There is a difference, but prepare yourselves for the coming of the Lord, Moses said. And so it is as if where the Lord will descend to meet His people, we are cleaning out the place where He will meet. We are making the ground holy. We are cleaning the area. And of course, with the preparations come the warnings. Don't come too close. Of course, the Lord's inviting in these instances for His people to come meet Him, to draw near to Him. But even so, there are warnings. Don't draw too close. Right? And you'll probably remember here 2 Samuel 6, just another example of the guy, remember Uzzah, who the ark was falling off of the rails and he went out to grab it. And he broke that boundary between close but too close. And of course he died there by the ark of God. So when the Lord comes to meet, when the Lord comes to draw near to his people, Not only is it fearful, not only is the creator meeting the creation, but he always seems to do it with these preparations and with these warnings. And these warnings and these preparations are meant to, and they indeed have throughout history, induced a right, legitimate sense of fear. Now, as we turn to Proverbs, and you'll remember this is the structure that I proposed, again provisionally, as we go through the book of Proverbs. The title there in verse one, and then the beginning of the introduction here where we see this main theme of the fear of the Lord. Again, we're about to put all of what we are going to learn in Proverbs on top of this idea of the fear of the Lord. So again, we want to make sure that it stands. It is the grounding. It is the foundation for everything which follows. And so the right question is, what is the author, what is the Lord doing with these words here as he opens the wisdom of Solomon. And so I'll just read it and you can follow along. The Proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. Here's the purpose in verse two through four there. To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, judgment, and equity. To give prudence to the simple, to the young man, knowledge and discretion. And here's the result, verse 5 and 6. A wise man, the one who accepts this wisdom, will hear and increase learning. And a man of understanding will attain wise counsel to understand a proverb and an enigma, the words of the wise and their riddles. And of course, the foundation here, the grounding, as we've already said, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. So, do you remember how those scared Israelites responded? What did they say after the Lord had met them and given them the commandments? Do you remember? They said, all that you have said, all that you have spoken, we will do. So, That fear is real, is right, it's legitimate. But if you think about it, if we think about a little bit what we talked about last week in Ecclesiastes, if you think about how the Proverbs go, at least what you know so far before we dive in in the next few weeks, the tone of the fear of the Lord in Proverbs is a little bit different, right? It's more of a do this so that you can be near. Do this because this will be good for you. The motivations for following the Lord's will in Ecclesiastes and in the book of Proverbs don't normally sound like do this or else. Solomon is not coming from a perspective of the Lord has drawn near so that he can hide behind a tree and wait until you mess up and then jump out and get you with his consuming fire. That's not how Solomon is viewing the wisdom that he's writing. And that's not how Solomon is viewing the fear of the Lord. That is not the fear of the Lord that Solomon experienced. And so We don't want to go too far. towards withdrawing from the Lord because of this fear. His purposes have been and are still to meet with us. And because this is the context. This is why we spent all last week thinking about Solomon, thinking about what he said in Ecclesiastes. Because Solomon's experience is that obeying the Lord's commandments, remember he tied those two together? Fearing the Lord and obeying His commandments. Those are inseparable in Solomon's mind. The fear of the Lord is to obey His commandments. This reverence, this awe, this humble submission to the Lord as creator and to us as creation. To the commandments of the Lord as being the means of blessing rather than the means of cursing. These are things that are in Solomon's mind and these are the things that are going to help us as we travel through Proverbs to make sure we don't take anything out of context. So again, we're going to continue to press on this idea of the fear of the Lord to make sure that it's going to hold the weight that we intend to put on it here in the next few weeks of Proverbs. It seems like I always get to running through the covenants in these classes. I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm sorry if it's gotten old for you. Now these four categories here are just categories that I made up. They're not formal categories or technical categories. Feel free to use different words if you'd like, but I think it expresses what I'm trying to get at here. We're going to take a look at the covenant with Abraham, the covenant with Moses, and the covenant with David. And we're going to think about these covenants of the Lord, what the Lord was doing in these four areas. The nearness or what kind of relationship the Lord was creating or establishing with his people. How the Lord was promising life or how the Lord intended to bless His people in the covenant, what the Lord's plan was, how the Lord was going to deal with the righteousness required for the Creator to meet His creation, and then what kind of expectation of obedience He had, the Lord had in each of these covenants. So I'm just going to kind of read these slides with you. You'll remember Abraham. The Lord reached out and grabbed Abraham out of Nowhereville, or in other words, the land of Ur. In Genesis 17, the Lord said, I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you and their generations, an everlasting covenant. And here's the nearness, here's the relationship to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. And just in case you miss it, I don't think you will, It should go with saying, the Lord is not obligated to meet with His creation. There is nothing about the Lord that demands anything upon Him. There's nothing outside of the Lord that demands anything upon Him to obligate Him to go meet His creation. And yet here we see in the very early chapters of the Lord's Word that He intends to go meet and make a people out of His creation. And then moving on to the promise and the life here, Genesis 17, actually the verse before, He said, I will make you exceedingly fruitful and I don't think that's an accident. That was the creation command, right? Be fruitful and multiply, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. Now, this is a tough one, but I think our congregation is good at this, and especially since we just got started in Romans chapter 4. We've been thinking about this for a few weeks, right? The Lord always had a plan to deal with righteousness. We see it very simply even before this covenantal language in Genesis 15, even before what we're about to talk about down here in Genesis chapter 22, the Lord counted righteousness to Abraham upon Abraham's faith. And this is where we get the language that we read in Romans 3 and 4 and 5. Righteousness for Abraham is not grounded in anything Abraham had or did or would do. Righteousness has always been and will always be grounded in the only righteous one, Christ himself. But the Lord counted Abraham righteousness based on Christ's righteousness because of Abraham's faith. And we see that way back in Genesis 15 when Abraham believed the Lord and the Lord counted it as righteousness. And in Genesis 22, The Lord has always in this covenant with Abraham expected his obedience and we see Abraham's faith that works out in obedience when the Lord tests Abraham and tells him to sacrifice his son and Abraham obeys. Now some of the terms have changed when we get to the Mosaic Covenant, but I think at least in these four areas you'll see continuity of the covenants that the Lord has with his people. He calls Israel as a nation his son. He calls them out of Egypt to be his people. Remember, they told, he said, Israel, go tell Pharaoh, you want to go out in the wilderness and worship your God. Of course, in Deuteronomy 28, when Moses is reiterating the story, there on the brink of the Jordan, and he says, if you obey, I will bless you. If you disobey, I will curse you. Of course, the obedience there is expected. but the obedience also is the promise of life. There's no distinction. And of course, as we see the whole of Revelation and we understand perhaps better, I would argue that we shouldn't jump there, but perhaps we understand it better that the law was never meant to obligate the Lord. The law was never meant to produce righteousness or to earn a righteousness. But I do think the Mosaic Covenant is pretty clear and I don't, I would not allow, I wouldn't go so far to say that Israel didn't know what was going on there. And of course we read later on in Hebrews chapter 10 how the Lord's plan for righteousness carried through the Mosaic Covenant. The writer says, for the law, having a shadow of the good things to come and not the very image of things, can never, with those same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then wouldn't they have ceased to be offered? For the worshippers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sin. But in those continual sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats can take away sins. And so as Moses lays out the covenantal stipulations that the Lord had given him, that the Lord meant to be tabernacled with the people in their land, that the Lord was coming to meet them and they were to clean themselves and sanctify themselves and obey And when they approached the Lord, who was meant to dwell with them, they would offer their clean sacrifices and offer their holiness sacrifices so that they could approach the Lord. The expectation of obedience, the promise of life and blessing, the plan for righteousness so that the people of the Lord could be near the Lord was very similar to the way the Lord has spoken it to Abraham. Now we get to what the Lord had promised to David, and we see similar things. You'll remember that the language, the Lord said, David, your son, I will be a father to him. He will be a son to me. I will correct him with the rod of discipline when necessary. I will bless him when he obeys. But I will never, my mercy will never depart from him. Now just think about that, because there's a lot there. This is not a relationship built on righteousness. The Lord did not say, when he fails, I will get rid of him, I will punish him, I will execute justice upon him, and the covenant will be broken. No. The righteousness is not connected to the obedience. Just as in the other covenants, the righteousness, and just as we know, the righteousness was always and will always be Christ's work. And the counting of righteousness will and always will be by faith. And so this relationship of blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience is the relationship of a father to a son. Just as when your son sins against you, you discipline him, but you do not cast him out always and forevermore, this is the relationship that the Lord is establishing with Israel. I will discipline him. I will chastise him. I will correct him. I will bless him when he obeys, but my mercy will never depart from him. This is the relationship the Lord is setting up, and he's continuing to set up, with Israel and her king. We see there, I will be his father. I already read this. My mercy shall not depart from him as I took it from Saul. Let me make sure I didn't miss one there. The word of the Lord came to Solomon saying, concerning this temple which you are building, if you walk in my statutes, you execute my judgments, you keep all my commandments, and you walk in them, then I will perform my word with you. Remember the warnings? of the Lord coming near in the Mosaic Covenant. Clean yourselves, be holy, get ready. I'm coming near and I want you to draw near to me. This is the same sort of language. Follow my commandments, walk in them. I will bless you as I have spoke to your father David and I will dwell among you, the children of Israel. I will not forsake you. Furthermore, another paragraph or two down, blessed be the Lord, this is Solomon speaking, who has given rest to his people according to all that he has promised. There has not failed one word of all his good promise which he promised through his servant Moses. Again, here we see the continuity in the covenants. This is not something new. This is not a new relationship the Lord is establishing with his people. This is something that he has been doing all along. One more here. Let me read it. 1 Kings 8. Again, this is Solomon speaking. He's praying to the Lord in front of the temple there as they are dedicating it. He says, speaking to the Lord, when they sin against you, for there is no one who does not sin, and you become angry with them and deliver them to the enemy, and they take them captive into the land of the enemy, far or near, yet when they come to themselves in the land where they were carried captive and repent, and make supplication to you in the land of those who took them captive, saying, We have sinned, we have done wrong, we have committed wickedness. And when they return to you with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies who led them away captive, and they pray to you toward their land which you gave to their fathers, the city which you have chosen, and the temple which I have built for your name, Then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause. Forgive your people who have sinned against you, and all their transgressions which they have transgressed against you. And grant them compassion before those who took them captive, that they may have compassion on them. For they are your people and your inheritance, whom you brought out of Egypt, out of the iron furnace. that your eyes may be opened to the supplication of your servant and the supplication of your people Israel to listen to them whenever they call you. For you separated them from among all peoples of the earth to be your inheritance as you spoke by your servant Moses when you brought our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God." We see the Lord is still in this covenant about bringing a people near to Himself, about intending to be near to His people. We see the promises of life and blessing and how that is clearly tied to obedience. Not obedience to earn a righteousness. The righteousness is always out in the future. It is always an expectation. How is the Lord going to make this right in the future? The Lord had set up the sacrificial system to show that the righteousness that they were performing to draw near was not a permanent, not a final, not a real righteousness. He had been telling people ever since Abraham that righteousness was counted by faith. And of course, this did not diminish the expectation of obedience. It only made it further and richer, like the relationship between a father and a son, rather than a judge and the criminal or the creator and the creation. So, just again, these aren't formal categories. But our covenantal God, the covenantal God, is transcendent, yet by no obligation he condescends to relate to his people. His people see, through all of these covenants, the Lord's intent to bless them, to make them fruitful and multiple, as He had given them commission to do from the very beginning. All of His covenants have demonstrated a supplied righteousness, not one by the means of the people, but a righteousness that is supplied and counted by faith. and obedience as a means of blessing rather than the instrument of justice. So, as we dive into Proverbs, this is the idea, this is the fear of the Lord that will hold the weight. I think one more here is going to help us out. This construct, this context of the fear of the Lord is going to help us read all of these Proverbs and do at least these things, maybe a little bit more. And as you read these, let's think of these as provisional. You'll notice I didn't make any citations here. I think a right understanding of the fear of the Lord is going to drive us to understand Proverbs in these ways, and we will see more of a connectedness than what we may have otherwise seen. Maybe for an example, this kind of context, this understanding of the fear of the Lord will help us distinguish proverbial wisdom from law. and help us distinguish it from a simple self-help maxim. This is what I mean. If we don't understand that obedience to the Lord in our covenantal connection to Him is like a father to a son, and we maintain that this is like a judge to a criminal, then we will tend to read Proverbs like laws. And we will tend to see the Lord hiding behind that tree waiting for us to mess it up and to consume us because He is a consuming fire. That would be too far in the one direction. On the other extreme, if the justice is gone and the fearful, dreadful, terriful, I want to stay away fear of the Lord is just forgotten, then this is where you get things like 10 business principles from the book of Proverbs, or 31 ways to make your wife the woman of Proverbs 31. Flippant. No fear. No reverence. No awe. But of course, both of these are true. The Father, sorry, the Creator, The perfect judge of all creation is the Father who has condescended to covenant with His people. Both are true. The Lord is a consuming fire, and yet He treats us as a son, and we ought to treat Him as a father. Both are true, and so understanding the fullness of this idea, the fear of the Lord, will help us not go too far in either of those directions. Secondly, it will help us distinguish discipline from punishment or judgment. I gave the example earlier of the father's discipline. I don't know if you all think of parenting like this, but this is the way I think about it. My children don't owe me anything. I do not appeal to them on terms of justice. They owe the Lord obedience. I deal with them as discipline, right? the covenantal god who is the judge of all creation deal with us in terms of justice and punishment but his plan for righteousness through all the covenants has been to deal with righteousness through christ and now the judge is satisfied with the righteousness and so he can deal with us as a father to a son. He can discipline us. He can bless us. He can look away from our sins. He can forgive us because righteousness has been satisfied. Another thing that this idea will help us do is to understand the urgency. Next week, we're going to go through the beginning all the way to chapter 10. Sorry, chapter 9. the lengthy introduction. And what you'll notice, and we'll point out, is that the writer is urging. This is not just ten ways to make your small business better. That is not his perspective. This is a matter of life and death. This is a matter, it is a matter of just going the right way versus going the wrong way, and of course, because we are faithful parents who want to do this with our children from the time they are little, it may, we may get this idea that this is like, all we're talking about is just going the right way, you know? Just go the right way, love, you know? Which is true, but this is not the perspective of the author. This is a matter of life or death. This is a matter of covenantal blessing versus covenantal cursing. This is a matter of grounding your life, your purpose, your mission, your satisfaction on the right thing, which is the fear of the Lord, and building on that obedience, which rightfully follows. This is a matter of ordering your life correctly. And if you order it incorrectly or you disorder it, the whole thing topples down in a variety of ways. This is a matter of life and death. You'll see that next week. But this understanding the fear of the Lord will make that make sense. Fourth, to erase obedience as something that obligates blessing. and changes that with something that brings about blessing. The Lord was not obligated to condescend to meet his people. We cannot obligate the Lord to respond to us in any certain way. the righteousness that all these covenants for or require beforehand none of what we do in obedience requires the lord to bless us and so we will see language like if you do this if you obey the lord will bless you and he certainly will he has promised to do so understanding this fear of the lord and not not being not being uh... encouraged to go too far one direction or the other, we'll see that this is not about I will obey and then the Lord owes me something, but rather I will obey because this is the way the Lord has intended to bless me. we will, it will be easier to see that the Lord's commands are the way that he intends to bless us. They are the chastening, correction, and guidance of a father rather than the thing which he intends to use as a curse against us. And then finally, and this one It's a little bit more fuzzy. We haven't talked a lot about it this morning, but it will come up frequently in the Proverbs. And Solomon talked about it in Ecclesiastes, right? All that the Lord gives us with which we ought to glorify him, with which we ought to bless others. You'll remember the covenant to Abraham explicitly says it, that you and your people will be a blessing to the other nations. And we heard Moses say it, that the blessing of Israel was going to be a missionary purpose. Everyone else was going to look and say, wow, look at that. Everything that the Lord, I mean, if you think completely in agricultural terms, which most of what we're talking about happened almost exclusively in agricultural terms. You know, the farmer does the work, but what does the farmer do? Actually create life in those plants? and those animals, like the Lord is the one who makes all of this provision. Whether that comes out of the ground and you sell it at the farmer's market or whether it comes out of the ground and you trade it for money and you, you know, harness or dig for minerals or rocks or whatever, however the provision gets to your hands, it is from the Lord clearly, and all of it is meant to do His purposes. And so, when we see Proverbs like going after, taking too much on your own, like going after riches, or going after fame, or going after power, or all of these things that the author, the wisdom of Solomon will tell us to avoid, These things are stewardship questions. The Lord has given each one of us a certain amount of stuff to steward for His glory. And a lot of the Proverbs will talk about how to use those for His glory rather than how to use those for further gain. And they'll specifically, frequently address the, I don't trust the Lord. to give me what he is going to give me in my timeline, or I'm not sure he's going to give me enough, or he's told me to go do this, but I'm not sure he's equipped me for it. So I'm going to make this happen. I'm going to make sure I'm good to go. I'm going to gather as much as I can in the short term. rather than trusting that the Lord will continue to provide for his purposes. And so we'll see a lot of stewardship questions as we go through Proverbs. So a reverent submission. is a fear of the Lord. The Lord is a consuming fire. He always was and will always be. But his covenantal condescensions have all shown us that he intends to treat us as a father treats a son. And so the son should give reverent submission as fearing the Lord who has drawn near. We've got just a few minutes. This is the best part. I mean, I hope you thought the rest of it was good, too. We will turn to the New Covenant. This is our covenant. This is the way the Lord has drawn near to us. Of course, Christ is at the center. But taking a look at these four categories, and you can just take a look at those questions there as I read Jeremiah's explanation of the covenant in Jeremiah 31. Of course, the Lord is drawn near to us. Where is the temple? Anybody want to answer that? It's right here. We are the temple. The Lord is near. The Lord has drawn extremely near. And He has not diminished the cleansing and the sanctification, and the preparation, and the warnings. He has not diminished those things in this new covenant, but the Lord Christ has done the work. He has washed us with the word and regeneration. He has sanctified us and set us apart. He has accomplished a righteousness, as we have heard in Hebrews 11. Those faithful beforehand looked forward to the righteousness accomplished. But we have seen it accomplished. And we have seen it stamped with approval by the resurrection of Christ. So it's not that in the old covenant the Lord was mean and wicked and consuming fire, and in the new he's just daddy. Those two are met. The Lord is still a consuming fire. And the Lord has done the work to draw near, this kind of near, this kind of near in this covenant. And of course, the Lord has promised life and blessing. Not just forevermore, but even now. Not just in quantity, forevermore, but in quality, now. The life and the blessing. The Lord still says, go the right way. Don't go the wrong way. There is life here. There is death here. None of this has changed. The terms are a little different. But none of this has changed. The plan for righteousness, the justice of sinfulness, or the justice punishment for sins has not just been ignored. He turns his face away because justice has been satisfied. A righteous life has been applied. A sacrificial death has been applied. And we look, as we said, backwards. And of course, this does not denigrate obedience. This causes obedience. The Father has entered to be near to us. Why would we go the other way? The fear of the Lord that grounds all of the Proverbs is the fear of the Lord that says, I understand who the creator is. I understand who the creation is. I understand the work the Lord has done to draw near to his people. Why would I go my own way? The fear of the Lord, using the Proverbs as those, I mean, I've been throwing the business guys under the bus, the 10 principles for running a small business, taking out the fear of the Lord out from under the bottom, there's wisdom there. That might work. It might work better than the 10 principles you're using right now. But if it's not grounded on the fear of the Lord, it is not the right way. It is all tumbled in topsy and turvy. The fear of the Lord is the beginning. of wisdom. And that wisdom is life. And the other way is death. You see the urgency. It's not just me. It's the wisdom of Solomon also. The urgency is still there. How do we obey? The Lord has given us a new heart with new desires. Why do we obey? Why wouldn't we obey? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Let me just read this to you. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord, but this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law in their minds. I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God. they will be my people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. The Lord is near. He has promised life and blessing. He has purchased the righteousness, and He gives it to us as He always did, by faith in Christ. And of course, that brings about the obedience of faith, as James said. And of course, this is our purpose, just as Israel had a purpose to be God's people, and for other nations to look in and say, wow, look at how near their God is. Wow, look at how awesome God and his people are. We have a similar mission, right? Let's pray. Lord, thank you that you are. A holy. Creator God who condescends to meet with us. Lord, of course we thank you for Christ and his work. And we thank you for the work of your spirit who has brought our hearts to life, who has given us wisdom to obey and a desire to obey. And Lord, thank you for your inheritance that you have promised for that obedience. Or does we continue in the next few weeks through Proverbs? Help us to see Solomon's heart. Help us to see your heart. So that we will be encouraged to follow you as a father and we are the son to be encouraged to obey. For your glory and for your purposes, Amen.