The Promise (The Sapiential Era)

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. -Proverbs 9:10

The promise does not disappear in the wisdom writings, i.e., Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. The promise is actually strengthened by the wisdom of truth and life that are found in these books. God’s covenant of living in the promise as a sanctified people is not meant for walking blindly through this world. God gives instruction and insight for His people to obey.




 FEAR OF THE LORD

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom…” (Proverbs 9:10a)

“Wisdom cannot exist apart from the source of wisdom; accordingly, it cannot be known or applied from the fear of the Lord.” Fear, or respect, of the power of the Lord is the crux of living a godly life. The fear of the Lord keeps the believer in obedience, in love, and in service as God states in Deuteronomy 10:12. Utmost respect for the Lord means to be fearful not to break His commandments and fearful not to offend Him.

There was nobody like Job. “And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” (Job 1:8). Even before all the calamities that befell Job, he still feared God. It was the fear of the Lord that kept Job in service to God. The fear of the Lord is the reason Job hated evil and walked upright. Fear, in our negative connotation of today, has not the same implications as God desired His people to acquire. Our modern understanding of the word fear relates to abject terror, but this fear is the beginning of truth and wisdom.

Psalm 34 tells of an angel of the Lord that is around and able to deliver those who fear the Lord. In that same Psalm, David implores God’s people to fear the Lord “for there is no want to them that fear Him” (Psalm 34:9). David exhorts the people to reverence God and trust Him for He is able to protect and deliver.

The writer of Ecclesiastes states that in the business of life, all is vain. He declares that everything in life is meaningless. Wealth is meaningless. The sun rises and the sun sets. Seasons come and go. Wisdom is better than foolishness, but both the wise man and the fool will die. All of life is vanities! “But it would go well for those who feared God (Ecclesiastes 8:12), and they would come forth victorious having taken hold of true wisdom while rejecting evil (Ecclesiastes 7:18).” The fear of the Lord leads to wisdom, which in turn leads to the knowledge and understanding of God.



 KNOWLEDGE OF THE LORD

“…and the knowledge of the Holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10b).

Through obedience, love, and service, fear of the Lord in turn leads to the knowledge of the Lord. Knowledge is a great thing, but the Preacher in Ecclesiastes states that “he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” If one increases his knowledge of God’s ways, he increases his sorrows over seeing the wickedness of man. A man full of knowledge understands the result of sin. And when one understands the danger and destruction of sin, one sees the importance of the Genesis 3:15 promise and understands the dire need for a Savior.

The fear of the Lord led Job to his knowledge in the Lord. When Job expressed frustration on not being able to approach God in his troubles and trials, he said, “Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:33). Job understood that because he could not go to God that he needed a daysman. He understood that he needed someone to be a go-between, a mediator, an arbiter, an advocate to reach in to Heaven and touch down to earth and span the gap between man and God. Job understood the value of the Genesis 3:15 promise to mankind living in this sinful world. The knowledge of the Lord led him to understand God’s plan as he foresaw the need for the Christ.

The unified connections of God’s promise continue through the sapiential writings to show that God’s plan can be understood through wisdom in the fear and knowledge of the Lord. Within these writings, the pictures of Christ are apparent and correlate with the original promise of a seed to come that would destroy the serpent. In the midst of the troubles of Job, he said, “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth” (Job 19:25). The love story in the Song of Solomon between the Shulamite girl and the shepherd king is a picture of the love of Christ and the Church. The wisdom gleaned from the fear of the Lord sheds light to mortal man on the meaning and purpose of God’s promise in Genesis 3:15.