Sermons

Expository Sermon on Proverbs 1
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue Seventh-day Adventist Church 6/7/2025
©2025 by Maylan Schurch

(To watch this entire worship service, go to the link just below:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIUyB89RPHQ&t=4395s

Please open your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 1.

Most of you know that since January I’ve been encouraging you to read through the Bible using our chronological Bible reading plan. With this plan, we read the Bible through in the year, following the plan that you see listed week by week in our bulletin.

A plan like this not only gets you through the Bible from one end to the other, but it also helps you – sort of by osmosis – to understand more about who God is, and what His purposes are. And that’s something I don’t believe you can always do by reading a verse here and a verse there, letting other people choose the verses and their order for you.

What I’ve been doing, most Sabbaths, has been to prepare my Sabbath sermons based on some chapter or passage within that week’s list of readings, which you find in the bulletin.

I was interested as I read through this week’s readings, to discover that the chronological-reading compiler seems to have focused on the topic of wisdom. First you have First Chronicles chapter 1, in which Solomon is made king. Then you have a Psalm that was evidently written by Solomon. And finally, you have the first 15 chapters of Proverbs, which was mostly written by Solomon.

In the First Chronicles chapter, God asks the freshly-minted young king what he wants. Solomon asks for wisdom to lead the nation. God says, “Good choice.”

I’ve always loved the idea of wisdom. When I was a boy, I was a great reader of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and anybody who knows the Sherlock Holmes stories knows that logical reasoning helped that detective solve a lot of his crimes.

Of course, those were fictional stories – and the logic wasn’t always watertight or realistic — but I made it a habit of picking up other books on reasoning and logic and fallacies, and though I haven’t done this as much recently, I have quite a supply.

But one thing I’ve discovered (I and a whole lot of other people) is that you can’t really convince somebody of something, even though you use the most excellent reasoning, if that person doesn’t want to be convinced. It’s like the old saying, “A man convinced against his will is of the of the same opinion still.”

But when God asked Solomon what he wanted, Solomon asked for wisdom. And God approved. So wisdom, and wanting wisdom, must be a good thing.

For a while I thought that Proverbs must be a book on good reasoning. So every time I dived into it, I would say, “Maybe this time I’ll learn how to reason crisply and clearly.”

But Proverbs is not primarily a reasoning textbook. It’s pretty much a book of common sense, but it doesn’t get into reasoning patterns or syllogisms or anything like that.

And over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that wisdom isn’t so much a set of rules for careful thinking, as it is a stance.

What is a stance? A stance is the way someone stands, especially a posture someone uses to get ready for a certain kind of physical activity. In baseball, players use a batters stance. There is a tennis player’ stance. There’s a golfer’s stance. There’s a basketball free-throw shooter’s stance. There may even be a pickleball stance.

Right now, just for a couple of minutes, I’d like to show you another kind of stance. This is the stance you should be using if you want to play classical guitar. As you will see, there are several things you need to think about as you get into that stance.

I learned this stance, or position, during a brief guitar workshop taught by a professional flamenco guitarist, which I attended back when I was in college. In two hours, along with other things, I learned the stance of a good classical guitarist.

Let me demonstrate.

(If you’re reading this online, you might want to scroll back up to the top of this sermon and click on the YouTube link, and scroll along to where you see me sitting in a chair with a guitar.)

A good stance keeps you from building up bad habits you might develop if you don’t know about the stance.

A good wisdom stance is tremendously important. This past Monday night there was a very important school board meeting. There were people from both Kirkland SDA school and Puget Sound Adventist Academy in that meeting.

The subject of the meeting was replacing the school roof. A lot of wisdom was needed during that discussion, and fortunately we had it. We had people who knew what went into replacing roofs, we had people who had examined three bids from different roofers and recommended a certain roofer, and gave excellent reasons for that recommendation. And we came to a happy solution, which will be put in action over this coming summer.

And I think what made that meeting so successful was that we approached that subject with a good “wisdom stance.” We were willing to listen, willing to offer our suggestions, not willing to demand our own way, willing to take a deep breath and gather the courage to spend the money for this, and we were willing to consider where that money would come from, and how much we would have to fund-raise.

And if we need wisdom for board meetings, we need wisdom for spiritual matters as well. This morning, I’d like to show you, right here in Proverbs 1, four steps to help us to get into a “wisdom stance.”

I believe this stance helped us Monday night as some very Christian people talked about a challenging project. And I believe that Proverbs 1’s wisdom stance can be useful to you and me in the week ahead.
So let’s start right at the top, Proverbs 1, verse one.

Proverbs 1:1 – 6 [NKJV]: The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel: 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— A wise man 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.

Those are the kind of words that make me tingle with excitement. Who wouldn’t want to gain the kind of wisdom that is described here?

In fact, if you’re taking down sermon points, here is what I would like to call Sermon Point One. What is Proverbs’ first step to help us get into the wisdom stance? Here it is:

Proverbs’ first step toward a wisdom stance is: Grasp wisdom’s importance.

The first step toward getting into the wisdom stance is to realize how important that stance is. A lot of people pick up the guitar, and get discouraged because they don’t know some basic principles. I used to teach a guitar classes at camp meeting, and we would have 20 or 30 people show up with their guitars, and by the time the week was over, they all had played several songs which they could later use for Sabbath school or youth groups or other gatherings. I even gave them a songsheet with chord symbols on it. It’s not that everybody was planning to become a classical guitarist, but once they learned some basic principles, they were off and running. The rest was up to them.

Step one is to grasp wisdom’s importance. Wouldn’t our news feed be totally different if everyone sought for true wisdom? God tells us that wisdom is important, and that should tell us that He will provide wisdom when we need it, if we are in that stance. As we’ll see, the wisdom stance is not something you should just learn and then forget about. This is something you will need to use again and again. Even sitting in a car’s driver seat is a stance. Both hands on the wheel, eyes flicking from rearview mirror to the side mirrors to the road ahead. That stance is important.

But let’s move on to the second step in getting into the wisdom stance.

Verse 7: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction.

What is the second step to getting into God’s wisdom stance?

Proverbs’ first step toward a wisdom stance is: Grasp wisdom’s importance. The second step is: Fill yourself with courageous God-fear.

Do you see where it says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge”? That Hebrew word is reshith, and it is exactly the same word that in Hebrew is the very first major word in the Bible. It’s the same word, and the same form of the word. Genesis 1:1 says “In reshith God created the heavens and the earth.” And here in Proverbs 1:7, it says that the fear of the Lord is the reshith of knowledge.
And maybe we would develop a more solid wisdom stance right from the start if we remembered that, back in the beginning, God was the Creator.

Fill yourself with courageous God-fear. Why fear?A couple of weeks ago I was in our local library and I noticed a young woman sitting at a table across from a young man. She was wearing a white hoodie, and in black letters on the back it said “Essentials: Fear of God.”

I never even saw this girl’s face, but she seems to be a Christian, and it seems as though she has been exposed to thoughtful biblical study.

Because the Bible does have quite a bit to say about the fear of God. And we have to be careful if we try to dismiss the word “fear” by calling it just “respect.” I believe that’s what it is – but I believe that this respect is ultimate, supreme, reverent respect. It’s a far deeper respect than what you would feel for a doctor, for example. Because the respect you feel for God should remind you that it is He who created you, and sustains life within you, and it is He who redeems you.

Fill yourself with courageous God-fear. Listen to the following verses. In Deuteronomy 10, fear and love are just a few words apart:

Deuteronomy 10:12 – 14: “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD and His statutes which I command you today for your good? Indeed heaven and the highest heavens belong to the LORD your God, also the earth with all that is in it.

And in Proverbs 14, the fear of God is spoken of as a comforting thing.

Proverbs 14:26 – 27: In the fear of the LORD there is strong confidence, And His children will have a place of refuge. The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, To turn one away from the snares of death.

And of course the first part of 1 John 4:18 says that the more that love for God grows, the more fear evaporates: There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

So what should I do, now that I know that the next step to getting into God’s wisdom stance is to fill myself with courageous God-fear?

One thing that has helped me in this is to keep an eye out for beautiful things in nature to prove how caring our Creator is. Yesterday Shelley and I were walking along the trail near our neighborhood, and a woman who has turned her backyard into a small wildlife refuge told us how she has been watching as a mother woodpecker has been bringing her children to this woman’s backyard, and teaching them to eat out of the feeders this woman has. Even thousands of years away from Eden, God still fills these birds with parental love.

And this reminder of God’s amazing love can give us courage that He loves and cares for us.

I think a third step to follow to get into God’s wisdom stance is a really interesting one. Look at verse eight.

Proverbs 1:8 – 9: My son, hear the instruction of your father, And do not forsake the law of your mother; For they will be a graceful ornament on your head, And chains about your neck.

Here comes Sermon Point Three:

Proverbs’ first step toward a wisdom stance is: Grasp wisdom’s importance. The second step is: Fill yourself with courageous God-fear. The third step is to learn from your parents.

Nobody has perfect parents, of course. I knew one young man who made a list of several things his own father did, and resolved to do the exact opposite when he raised his own children.

If Solomon was actually the one writing this particular part of Proverbs, he could look back on his own father. David loved God, and evidently transmitted enough of that love for God to Solomon, who had the sense to ask God for wisdom.

David wasn’t perfect, yet Solomon says to listen to your parents. Think back to the good principles your own parents taught you. Where would you be without these principles?

Because in most cases, and this is true of my own dad, for example, he did the best he could with what he had. Dad loved his kids, and therefore he became one of those famous workaholic fathers of that era, just to make sure we would have the basics of life. This meant that he didn’t spend as much time with his kids as other dads in better financial shape might have done.

But there are so many things my dad taught me, mostly by example, that have really helped stabilize me over the years. Dad was not a high-tempered hot-head and neither am I. Dad was not a spendthrift, and neither am I.

And part of listening to your parents is listening to their advice about people you hang around with. Let’s start with verse 10:

Verses 10 – 19: My son, if sinners entice you, Do not consent. If they say, “Come with us, Let us lie in wait to shed blood; Let us lurk secretly for the innocent without cause; Let us swallow them alive like Sheol, And whole, like those who go down to the Pit; We shall find all kinds of precious possessions, We shall fill our houses with spoil; Cast in your lot among us, Let us all have one purse”— My son, do not walk in the way with them, Keep your foot from their path; For their feet run to evil, And they make haste to shed blood. Surely, in vain the net is spread In the sight of any bird; But they lie in wait for their own blood, They lurk secretly for their own lives. So are the ways of everyone who is greedy for gain; It takes away the life of its owners.

Back when I was a kid, I would read those verses in great puzzlement. I never knew anybody like that. But I do listen to the news, and I hear echoes of these kinds of brutal, selfish attitudes out there.

And I think that one of the dangers of losing God’s wisdom stance is letting people’s attitudes rule your lives. I might not join a vicious, predatory group of people like the ones described in these verses, but my wisdom stance can be knocked off-kilter pretty quickly by getting into the negativity habit. If you’re in a workplace with negative people, as I’ve been when I was younger, your whole outlook on life can be warped. That’s why it’s so important to come to church, and attend a Sabbath school class, and stay for potlucks, and take advantage of other opportunities the church offers. We need to be re-programmed regularly back toward wisdom.

Years ago, Shelley and I were at home, and we got a phone call from someone Shelley knew from years before. That person said that the reason they called was, “I just wanted to talk with some happy people.”

I don’t know that Shelley and I are always uniformly happy. We don’t go skipping around the living room a lot. But this person perceived us as being basically happy, and they wanted to be in that atmosphere for a bit.

Let’s look at just one more Proverbs step which I think will help us get into the wisdom stance. Glance down at verse 20.

Verses 20 – 23: Wisdom calls aloud outside; She raises her voice in the open squares. She cries out in the chief concourses, At the openings of the gates in the city She speaks her words: “How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? For scorners delight in their scorning, And fools hate knowledge. Turn at my rebuke; Surely I will pour out my spirit on you; I will make my words known to you.

Proverbs’ first step toward a wisdom stance is: Grasp wisdom’s importance. The second step is: Fill yourself with courageous God-fear. The third step is to learn from your parents. And I think the fourth step toward getting into the wisdom stance is to start now, before it’s too late.

Why do I think there’s such an urgency to do this? Well, let’s keep reading. If we’re careless with God’s wisdom, and don’t embrace it, there comes a point when this wisdom can’t have its effect on us.

Verses 24 – 33: Because I have called and you refused, I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded, Because you disdained all my counsel, And would have none of my rebuke, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your terror comes, When your terror comes like a storm, And your destruction comes like a whirlwind, When distress and anguish come upon you. “Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me. Because they hated knowledge And did not choose the fear of the LORD, They would have none of my counsel And despised my every rebuke. Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way, And be filled to the full with their own fancies. For the turning away of the simple will slay them, And the complacency of fools will destroy them; But whoever listens to me will dwell safely, And will be secure, without fear of evil.”

And that’s what we’ve been doing this morning. We’ve been listening to wisdom, the wisdom in the first chapter of Proverbs. We’ve been hearing inspired words from the Holy Spirit. We’ve heard again how much God cares for us, and how powerfully He will sustain us if we turn our hearts and our attention toward Him.