Proverbs 15:33 Commentary and Bible Study

The fear of the Lord is itself instruction which produces the fruit of wisdom. It is both the necessary attitude of heart that prepares a person to be taught and to benefit from the lessons which God brings into our lives, and it is itself a teacher. Whether those lessons come from reading Scripture, from listening to the preaching of the word, or from providences in our lives – the handling of trials, the acceptance of correction, submission to discipline – the fear of the Lord makes all these things profitable to us. Without it, there will be other dispositions in the heart which will prevent any advance in wisdom, for what will be uppermost in us will be resistant to God’s instruction. Pride will make us see ourselves as too wise to need significant instruction. We will have inadequate views of the majesty of the Lord that will appear to reduce the distance between ourselves and God, so that we do not receive his instruction with our mouths closed. Instead we are ready to excuse failures, adjust his teaching to us, and see his instruction as a mere supplement to what we already have. We will not be able to have that unquestioning acceptance of his lessons as those who have implicit trust in him to see our needs and to design lessons which fit our particular case perfectly. We will not fear sin and offence to God so much that we are able to accept the knife as it is applied to the natural branches that grow out of our hearts, but we will instead move to protect ourselves from God’s pruning. The fear of the Lord is then a vital preparation for the school of God, for it gives a warm welcome to every teacher God send to us who will instruct us in the wisdom that we lack. In a very natural way the fear of the Lord is linked by Solomon to humility, for the two things go together. As pride comes before a fall, so humility comes before honour. Both phrases from the book of Proverbs express a truth in a very powerful way. The expected way to express this would be to say, ‘After humility comes honour’, putting the cause first and then the result which follows, but Solomon reverses the normal order and, starting with the result, works back to the cause. Where there is honour, there must have been humility first, for nothing other than humility could have led to such an outcome. Do we wish for the honour that comes from God, the true honour which alone we should seek? Then there is no other road that leads to it than the road of humility. Let us take refuge in humility, purging pride from our hearts by constantly examining our hearts and our motives, doing nothing out of vain ambition but esteeming others better than ourselves. Pride is one of our most subtle enemies and is able to dart behind us out of sight just when we think we have hold of it. Nothing short of a life-long commitment to destroy it and to set aside the love of human praise will do it.