Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Walking in Wisdom Part I

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

So much of the Christian life boils down to making wise choices. But how do we live a life of wisdom? In this episode, Jonny Ardavanis walks through the Biblical starting point of wisdom. Namely, the fear of the Lord. Although the fear of the Lord is a pervasive topic throughout God’s Word, it is insufficiently addressed today and as a consequence, there is a deficiency of wisdom in the Church today.Do you want to be wise? You must grow in the fear of the Lord.  Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. I was recently having a conversation with my friend Harry Walls on the subject of wisdom. We were discussing the question, how can pastors, men, women, young adults, teenagers live a life of biblical wisdom? We're going to answer that question in this episode and in our next episode we are going to talk about the tangible fruit of wisdom in the believer's life. Let's dial in. As we consider and examine this subject of wisdom, we need to define what that word even means. In the Bible, wisdom is skilled living. It's far more than just biblical knowledge because you can have all of the information and knowledge in the world and still be a biblical fool. Wisdom is the ability

to take what you know from scripture and by God's grace and by God's spirit, apply that truth to your life. Wisdom is also invariably linked to discernment. And by discernment, I mean what Spurgeon once said when he stated that discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It's knowing the difference between right and almost right. That's discernment. So back to my original question, how can a believer walk in wisdom? How can they have discernment? Well, the scripture is very clear for us. Proverbs 1, 7 says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and fools despise wisdom in instruction. Fundamentally, if you want to grow in wisdom, then you need to grow in your fear of the Lord. At times we may unknowingly put the spiritual cart before the theological horse. What I mean by that is this,

let's say you want to grow in your love for the Lord. So spiritually speaking, you ask the question, how do I grow in my love for Jesus Christ? Well, you grow in your understanding of his love for you. First John 4, 19 says we love because he first loved says, So if you want a magnified love for God, you must ask the Holy Spirit to take the truths of his word and give you a magnified view of God's love for you. Our love for God is like the moon that reflects the sun of God's immeasurable and undeserved love for us. So there's this correlation there. In the same way, if we want to grow in the wisdom that comes from the Lord, we need to grow in our fear of the Lord. That's what Proverbs says. We just read in Proverbs 1-7 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And speaking of this verse, John Bunyan says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of

wisdom, and he that lacks the beginning has neither the middle nor the end. That is to say that the fear of the Lord is not one of many initial steps. It is the first rung of the ladder, apart from which you cannot continue. If you miss the fear of the Lord, you miss wisdom entirely. Fearing God is such a rampant theme throughout scripture, and yet the subject and theme seems to receive such little interest today. I've attended a conference on the grace of God, but I've never attended a conference or camp or event on the fear of God. Interestingly, the great hymn Amazing Grace includes this line, "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved."

Meaning that you cannot even begin to understand God's grace until you come to properly fear him in a biblical sense. The greatest malady in the church today is a lack of fear for God. And because there is no fear, there is an abundance of sin and a deficiency in the subject we are presently examining, that being wisdom. I want to read a few passages for you on the primacy and centrality of fearing God in the scripture. And then I want to read a few passages for you on the primacy and centrality of fearing God in the scripture. And then I want to define what that actually means because we can never apply that which we don't first understand. We've already looked at Proverbs 1, 7, which says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But Proverbs 3, 7 says, do not be wise in your own

eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. So we see this correlation between fearing God and rejecting sin. Proverbs 8, 13 says the fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Proverbs 9, 10 says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy one is understanding. In Proverbs 14, 26, it says the fear of the Lord in the fear of the Lord, there is a strong confidence. And then I love this one in Proverbs 15 verse 16. And I want you to listen to this closely. It says better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and turmoil without it. Did you catch that? You are better off having next to nothing. So long as you have a heart that is full of fear for God.

Psalm 211 says, serve the Lord with fear. Psalm 33 says, the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him. Psalm 145 says that God will fulfill the desire of the one who fears him. Psalm 147 says, the Lord favors the one who fears him. Psalm 103 says, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love towards those who, what? Fear him. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. But what does it mean to fear God? Of course, you may know the simple answers, and yet the simple answers are the hardest to implement into our lives. To fear God, which is the beginning of wisdom, to fear God is to be in

awe of God. It means to worship God. It is to be gripped and grabbed by his glory. Martin Luther distinguishes two different types of fear, that being servile fear and filial fear. Servile fear is the fear of a prisoner before his tortures, total dread and paranoia. In truth, there should be a great fear of God in the sense for those who are unsaved. Unbelievers are currently under the wrath of God. It says in John three, they will one day stand before him as judge. Their souls will be graded according to God's righteous standard. But that's not what the scripture normally speaks of when it talks about the fear of God. Burke Parsons says that the gospel is the difference between being afraid of God and fearing God. So there's that servile fear, but the Bible

largely speaks of the opposite type, which is filial fear. Filial fear is the awe that the little child has for their father, whom they respect and desire to honor. When I was growing up, the song by Rich Mullins, Awesome God, was soaring in popularity. But it's one thing to sing that song, and it's an entirely different thing to mean it when you say in your heart of hearts, God, you are so awesome to be awestruck by his glory and gripped by his holiness. And so you must ask yourself, have you ever said to God, oh Lord, you are wonderful and worthy of worship. I cannot help but desire to serve you. And I desire to run and flee from anything that would dishonor and grieve you. Thankfully, the Bible doesn't just tell us what fearing God is. It shows us what fearing God

actually looks like. Isaiah beholds the glory of God and he hears the seraphim exalting the holiness of God and his life was never the same. John has a vision of God in the book of Revelation and he says that he falls on his face like a dead man. Job said he was undone when he beheld the glory of God. And Job says, my ears have always heard, but now my eyes see. Meaning that for the first time, Job, who was the most blameless man on earth, had a magnified view of God. And consequently, he was in total awe of God. There is a uniform response in scripture of those who have behold or beheld the glory of God and have come to properly fear him.

That response being awe and humility. And in brief, that would be my definition for the fear of the Lord. It is a wonder filled awe and humility that propels us to worship God and dispels all thoughts and temptations to dishonor and displease God. This is a necessary step to wisdom because this is the fundamental priority for all of life. Solomon summarizes the book of Ecclesiastes by saying, when all is said and done, fear God and keep his commandments. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, the Romans, and the church of Ephesus, he instructed them to fear God. When Peter wrote to the churches throughout Asia Minor, he said, fear God. When the writer of Hebrews writes to his readers,

he urges them to fear God. And Jesus himself speaks more on fearing God than he does on heaven. So fearing God is the beginning of wisdom, but it's the beginning of the Christian life. To fear God means that you have a reverential awe of him. But you may be asking, what does the fear of the Lord produce? Well, the fear of the Lord is the fuel of sanctification. Wisdom and holiness are twins. And in scripture, we see that fearing God and loving God are one in the same. The more you stand in awe of God, the more you come to love him because the more stunned you are by his love for you. Listen to a few passages. It says in second Corinthians seven, one, 1 Peter 1, 17 says,

Colossians 3, 2, Chapter three, verse seven of Colossians, do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. I love this last one. It says in Psalm 130 verses three and four, the Psalm says, if you Lord kept a record of sin, then who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. Meaning that when you see all that God has done for you and all the sin that he has forgiven you of, that puts you in awe of God. It's not just God's power, justice, and holiness that produces the proper fear for a Christian. It's also God's love and goodness and forgiveness. It's the contemplation and confluence

of both God's holiness and love. The fear of God not only produces this fuel for the Christian life, it also produces gratitude as we consider the holiness of God and the sin in our life. And then we remember that we are exhorted to boldly approach the throne of God in prayer. Without this encouragement, our magnified view of God's glory would create a further chasm between us and God because we recognize our unworthiness to approach him.

But Hebrews 4 says that we can approach the throne of God boldly, not flippantly, not cavalierly, but boldly because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Can I ask you a question at this point? Do you fear God? This is a spiritual birthmark of all those who are new creations. That is fearing God. In Jeremiah 32, when God is speaking of the new covenant, he says, I will give them singleness of heart so that they will always fear me for their own good. I will inspire them to fear me so that they will never turn away from me. Anyone who is a genuine believer who has been born again by the spirit of God has at least the seed of biblical fear within their hearts. Maybe you are a born again believer. And yet in your life, you sense that you are backsliding. You are living in the sin that you thought you would never return

to. You find yourself caught up in the sin that grieves God and offends him. Then you need to come again to this fundamental first rung of the wisdom ladder, fearing God. You need to come to his word and behold his character and plead with God's spirit to pour out the love and fear of God into your heart. Ask him to forgive you of your sin so that as the psalmist says in Psalm 130, you may fear him even more because you are in awe of his forgiveness, grace, and mercy. Let's finally ask this question. How can I grow in my fear of the Lord? Well, we just said it in one way, and it's necessary to repeat. You must come to God's word and eat. You must hunger and thirst

for the righteousness of God that comes to those who hunger after his word. It says in Isaiah 66, verse two, these are the ones I look on with favor, those who are humble and contrite in spirit and who tremble at my word. That's the Lord saying that, but not only do you need to come to his word, you need to come to him in prayer. It says in Psalm 86 verse 11, God, give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name. Is that your prayer? God, give me an undivided single heart to fear your name. This means that you do not care if you displease the world so long as you please God. And when our heart and mind grows in fearing God, we will inevitably grow in the wisdom that comes from him alone. We're going to talk about what that wisdom looks like in our following episode. But for now, you can pray with me that you will grow in your fear of the Lord and that

you would drink deeply from the well of his word and that he would give you singleness of heart that stands in awe of him and desires to live for him alone. Do you want to be wise? Do you want to be discerning? Well, then listen again to Proverbs 1, 7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. If you miss this rung of the ladder, you are still on ground zero. But if you start here, then you are promised in scripture to live a life of wisdom.

Stay dialed in.