“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
-Proverbs 1:7
Proverbs 1:7 makes clear a theme that resounds throughout all these Proverbs. God-fearing worship leads to God-given wisdom. We all need wisdom, we are unwise. You think about it. We lack knowledge in different things, how many times do we say, “Oh, if I’d known that I would have done something different.” Like, we grow in wisdom when we have knowledge, when we have perspective, sometimes we make unwise decisions because we think, “Ah, I didn’t know how that would affect this person.” We didn’t perceive what would happen as a result of that. We lack perspective.
God-fearing worship leads to God-given wisdom.
Proverbs 1:7 Reminds Us to Grow in Wisdom
Oftentimes, we lack experience. Sometimes we lack wisdom because we’ve not been in a certain situation before and we think, “Oh, now that I’ve been through that, I’ll do something different next time.”
So, we grow in wisdom. We lack knowledge, perspective, experience and the reality is God has all knowledge, He has infinite perspective, infinite experience, so if we want wisdom then it starts with worship of Him. It starts with looking to him and Proverbs 1 says, “Fearing Him. Honoring Him. Revering Him. Loving Him. Trembling before Him. Realizing who we are in comparison to Him. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” So, we pray.
This Helps Us Fear the Lord
God help us to fear you, help us to grow in our fear of you. Our awe of you, our understanding of who you are. Help us to grow in our humility, in our own lives because we know we don’t have knowledge, we don’t have perspective, we don’t have experience. We need you to know and have perspective and walk through the things we walk through in life.
Lord, we need you and we shudder to think about walking through this life, making decisions, leading our lives, our families, doing what we do apart from you. We, with fear before you, we pray that you would give us wisdom and we trust, O God, that this is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of you. So, help us to grow, we pray, in our fear of you and in the process, help us to grow in wisdom from you in every facet of our lives. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
