Presented to the Nipawin, (17 May 2009) Swift Current (27 May 2012) and Alberni Valley Corps of The Salvation Army (15 May 2022) by Captain Michael Ramsay
This is the 2022 version. To view the earlier version, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/05/proverbs-17-910-yirah-fear-of-lord.html
Today we are looking at Proverbs. A proverb is
a wise saying with instructions for living an effective life. Proverbs are
characterized by short, memorable statements that reflect the world as we know
it As I was considering our text today, I ran across a number of contemporary
proverbs about optimists and pessimists:
- –
In
the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better
time on the trip. ~Daniel L. Reardon
- –
Pessimist:
One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both. ~Oscar Wilde
- –
Both
optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the
airplane and the pessimist the parachute. ~Gil Stern
- –
An
optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up
to make sure the old year leaves. ~Bill Vaughan
- –
Always
borrow money from a pessimist, he doesn't expect to be paid back. ~ Unknown[1]
- –
An
Optimist is a word which here refers to a person…who thinks hopeful and
pleasant thoughts about nearly everything. If an optimist had his left arm
chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice,
"Well, this isn't too bad. I don't have my left arm anymore, but at least nobody
will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed," but most of us
would say something more along the lines of "Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!"
~Lemony Snicket[2]
Proverbs in the Bible often
contrasts the wisdom of following God to the folly of following our any counsel
that is not based in reverence for our Lord. Proverbs champions the truth, with
many different examples, that people have very real choices in life but they
all boil down to this: either we follow God and live an abundant life with God or
we follow ourselves or anyone or anything else and forego that life with God.
The theme of Proverbs
can be summed up in Proverbs 9:10 [9] and 1:7: ‘The fear of the LORD is the
beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.’ The beginning
of any understanding is a fear of God. Well, what does that mean? What does it
mean to have the fear of the LORD’?
Does it mean to panic?
Does it mean to be timid? No. It is different. To be timid is to cower. To be
timid is like…have you ever seen an abused animal who has been terrorized? She
pulls back as soon as you reach out your arm. The timid person is walking on
eggshells at all times. This concept shows up in the book of Timothy, where
Paul tells us that timidity (Greek: deilia) is not from God. Timidity is
not the beginning of wisdom. [11]
The timid person reminds
me of in the parable of the talents. Remember that parable, recorded in Matthew
25? The king gives three people talents (money). The third one is so afraid (Greek:
phobeo) that he does not even invest his talents. He is actually paralyzed
with fear. This fear creates what the Apostle Paul calls in Romans 8:15, ‘a
spirit of bondage’, a phobia. In Romans 8:15 (like Matt 25:35), the Greek word
Paul uses is actually ‘phobos’ – from which we derive the word ‘phobia’,
and this as we know refers to an irrational fear.[12] This kind of irrational
fear is not the beginning of wisdom. It is not from God: phobia. And the spirit
of timidity (deilia) Paul tells us about in 2 Timothy 1:7, is not from
God; God gives us power and love and a sound mind. Sometimes even we Christians
forget this.
Many –but not all-
Christians believe in the so-called ‘rapture’. The idea behind the rapture is
that at some point, God will snatch up either those He loves (the more popular
belief) or those He hates (a less popular belief) and leave the rest behind. We
had a professor at College who was raised in a phobia-producing kind of church
environment that focused on a terror of being left behind if you weren’t good
enough to be raptured and he told us that one night he heard a car horn or a
train whistle and he woke up in absolute terror. He was so frightened that that
sound was the trumpet of the Lord and that he had missed the rapture. He was
terrified that he might have been left behind. Phobias, timidity and this
panic: these are not representative of the fear of the Lord that Proverbs is
talking about. This is a terror some even well-meaning people can put into the
minds of innocent souls.
That being said, the
word for fear here in Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10, yir'ah, is not totally
absent of the concept of a terror of sorts. Scholar Allen P. Ross tells us
that, “The term yir'ah can describe dread (Dt 1:29), being terrified (Jh
1:10), standing in awe (1 Ki 3:28), and/or having reverence (Lv 19:3). With the
Lord as the object, yir'ah captures both aspects of shrinking back in
fear and of drawing close in awe. It is not a trembling dread that paralyzes
action, but neither is it merely a polite reverence (Plaut, p. 32).”[15]
Strong’s dictionary and
concordance both define yir'ah as this ‘fear’ or ‘moral reverence’
acknowledging that yir'ah encompasses more than that – it can refer to a
sense of moral fearfulness.[16] What does this mean? What is the difference
between a reverent, moral fearfulness that leads to knowledge and wisdom and
the fearful, panic-stricken, timid phobia that leads to cowering? We are all
familiar with the word ‘deference’, right? Deference means respect. People
often have a certain amount of deference (respect) for our uniforms. I have had
many people -even strangers- alter their language and try not to swear in my
presence because of my uniform.
In many other countries
– more than here, students generally have a certain amount of deference for
their teachers. They respect their authority. They seem to be a little less
likely to speak out than children in our public school systems. I remember once
when I was working at an international school, there was this joke among the
staff. It went like this: ‘How do you get an international student to be
quiet?’ The answer: ‘You ask them to be quiet… please.’ This is respect.
I have witnessed
deference firsthand in courtrooms too. You would be surprised at how quickly a
person removes his hat or turns off her cell phone with just one sideways
glance from that judge. I have seen people talking big outside the courtroom
and then a moment later I have seen them inside bowing quickly to the authority
and power of the courts. I have seen even your most law-abiding citizens who
are not in the court on charges but simply there to assist someone else – I
have seen people who know the judge quite well – when they are addressed by the
judge, immediately defer to her position. This deference is not entirely
without fear. Our courtrooms are probably one of the best parallels to the
emotions that accompany yir'ah in contemporary western society.
Another example of that
same idea. We have a number of AA groups that meet here during the week. There
was a time when I drank – too much. I remember my late teens. I was at a party
at a friend’s apartment and I was drinking. It was late. Most of the people had
gone home but a few of us remained. Things went bad. A friend and her boyfriend
started fighting and when I say fighting, I don’t mean that they were just
yelling at each other. She was hitting him quite hard and repeatedly and then
he gave her a black eye. Other than them, I was the only one there who wasn’t
passed out. I pushed him out on the tenth storey balcony with me and I locked the
door behind us so that she would be separated from him. I did not want to be in
the middle of this. Well, I thought that I had locked the sliding balcony door
but next thing I know she comes through the door and attacks him and in the
ensuing scuffle, I am knocked off the tenth-floor balcony. Literally, I am
dangling by my fingertips. I am hanging there as they are fighting, trying to
kill each other. I have been a Christian since I was a child. I have had way
too much to drink and I am dangling from this balcony. I pray ‘God, please
don’t let me meet you like this’ – what I mean is ‘God, please don’t let my
last act at this time on earth be something so unglorifying to you.’ He
answered my prayer obviously and saved my life as I climbed back onto the balcony
and into the apartment with my friends and I sobered up and He used even me in
that time and place to minister to my friends.
In that moment when I was
dangling over the edge of the balcony and coming before the LORD in prayer, I
had the fear of the Lord. I had a moral fear of the LORD. I am not afraid that
He is going to punish me because I was bad. I am not afraid that I am going to
go to hell. I did have that moral, dreadful fear of the LORD though that I – in
this moment, in this state – am letting my saviour down. I am not living up to
my heavenly potential. I am not holy as I could have been holy. When the Lord
saves me, He lets me hold onto not only the memory of these events but also the
real memory of the moral, dreadful fear of the Lord. From that experience, I am
able to learn so much. I no longer find myself dangling from balconies or drinking
too much! Nor am I committing other such errors. I have grown in knowledge and
wisdom from this fear of the LORD.
Even more: When we love
someone, we don’t want to fail him or her. When we work for someone, we don’t
want to let him or her down. When we love and work for someone, we want to do
everything we can for them because we love them. It is this fear of the Lord
that keeps us holy. It is this fear of the Lord that causes us to follow the path
of wisdom put forth in the book of Proverbs. It is this love, this respect, and
this fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom for it is only from this
real love for and deference to the only real God, who loves us, that we can
possibly be wise enough to serve Him. If we want to be wise it must begin here.
Deference and, Prov 9:10: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, …”
What is wisdom then? Wisdom
is this: It is how to survive in this world. It is an understanding of how the
world works. The Bible and Proverbs are not books of do’s and don’ts randomly
generated to organise a society or to earn our way into heaven. The
‘Scriptures… were given by inspiration of God, and…they only constitute the
Divine rule of Christian faith and practice.’[17] The Scriptures explain to us
the mystery of how and why the world works. The more we read them the more we know
about God, just like the more time we spend with God, praying and reading His
Word, the more we know Him.
I invite you to read
through Proverbs this week. It won’t take long and as you do, you will notice
that indeed each proverb is a brief glimpse into the reality that is our life.
These are words to live by (as is the whole of Scripture) that we can fully understand
when we really do love God when we honestly really have a healthy deference, yir'ah,
fear of the LORD, because the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.
Let us pray
---
[1] The Quote Garden!
Quotations about Optimism and Pessimism:
http://www.quotegarden.com/optimism.html Cited 03 May 2009.
[2] Lemony Snicket, A
Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill. (New York, NY: Scholastic,
2000), 26-27.
[3] Cf. DA Hubbard,
‘Wisdom Literature’, NDB, p. 1334
[4] Richard J.
Clifford, NIB V: Proverbs-Sirach, ‘Introduction to Wisdom Literature’
(Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1997), p. 9.
[5] Doctrine 2 of The
Salvation Army.
[6] Richard J.
Clifford, NIB V: Proverbs-Sirach, ‘Introduction to Wisdom Literature’
(Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1997), p.12.
[7] Raymond C. Van
Leeuwen, NIB V: Proverbs-Sirach, ‘The Book of Proverbs’, (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon
Press, 1997), p.34.
[8] Cf. also. Michael
Ramsay, ‘Paul and the Human Condition as reflected in Romans 1:18-32 and
2:1-16’. Presented to William and Catherine Booth College (Winter 2007).
Available on-line: http://www.sheepspeak.com/NT_Michael_Ramsay.htm#Paul%20and%20the%20Human%20Condition
[9] Derek Kidner. An
Introduction to Wisdom Literature: The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job &
Ecclesiastes, (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985), p. 17.
[10]Warren E. Berkley,
Expository Files 4.9 (September 1997), available on-line:
http://www.bible.ca/ef/expository-proverbs-1-7.htm: You must carefully consider
the context in order to assign the proper meaning to the word. It is one of
those words that is context sensitive. So, the "fear" we are
concerned with in Prov. 1:7 is not identical to the "fear" of Rom.
8:15 or 2 Tim. 1:7.
[11] Cf. The New
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. ‘1167: deilia’ (Nashville, Tenn.:
Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), p.20.
[12] Cf. The New
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. ‘5401: phobos’ (Nashville, Tenn.:
Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), p.96.
[13] Tim F. Lahaye and
Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind (Cambridge, UK: Tyndale House Publishing, 1996).
[14] But I will argue
against it here: Michael Ramsay, The Sheepspeak Commentary. Farewell to the
Rapture! March 19, 2009. Available on-line:
http://renewnetwork.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html#1407993155574202234
Cf. also N.T. Wright, Farewell to the Rapture! Bible Review, August 2001.
Available on-line at: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_BR_Farewell_Rapture.htm
[15] Allen P. Ross, The
Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Proverbs/Exposition of Proverbs/I.
Introduction to the Book of Proverbs (1:1-7)/C. Motto: The Fear of the Lord
(1:7), Book Version: 4.0.2
[16] Yirah, in The New
Strong’s Complete Dictionary of Bible Words. (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson
Publishing, 1966), p. 395. Cf. also Cf. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance
of the Bible. ‘5374: yir’ah’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing,
1995), p.59.
[17] Doctrine 1 of The
Salvation Army
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