In the sermon 'Well Dressed Victors' by Peter Allison, the speaker explores the biblical principle that 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,' emphasizing its foundational role in acquiring wisdom and instruction. The sermon compares ancient civilizations like the Mayans, Babylonians, and Romans, which despite their advanced knowledge, ultimately collapsed due to a lack of reverence for God. The speaker draws parallels to contemporary society, highlighting how modern deviations from biblical commandments reflect a similar disregard for divine wisdom. Allison underscores the role of parents in nurturing wisdom through instruction and correction, drawing from Proverbs to illustrate the importance of respecting earthly authority figures. He emphasizes that this respect is crucial for learning obedience to God. The sermon concludes by extolling the beauty and honor that come from adhering to parental guidance, advocating for an inward delight in God's law as a path to true wisdom.

Please turn in your Bible to Proverbs chapter 1. I'd like to read verses 7-9. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. 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." The grass withers and the flower fades. The word of our God endures forever.

Almighty Heavenly Father, please open our hearts, our minds, our eyes, and our ears, that we may see, that we may hear, that we may understand, and that we may love your precepts. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. We likened that last week to the alphabet, the letters that are the beginning of language, or numbers that are the beginning of mathematics. And noted that without letters you can't have language, and Without numbers you can't have mathematics.

So without the fear of the Lord there is no wisdom, no knowledge. Maybe you thought, Maybe it came to your mind, the great and learned thinkers of the world, who did not fear the Lord, or the great civilizations of the ancient world, or the modern world, that did not fear the Lord. And he said, well, how can they have such wisdom. Take the Mayan civilization, what at one time was in Chiapas, Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, that area of the world. There was a great, magnificent kingdom.

They were very learned. They were very knowledgeable people. They had a very advanced civilization. They had the concept of zero long before the Europeans did. There is a codex, a Dresden codex that was discovered that contains a record of solar eclipses for 23 years.

And they were able, they were great astronomers and great engineers. Their buildings and structures are great engineering feats, even for us today. They were able to compute the synodic period of Venus. When does this planet get back into the exact same orientation that it is right now? How long does it take?

You know, the Earth, the Sun, the planet Venus, there is a certain orientation. How long does it take for them to get back to that same orientation because you know the Earth and the Sun are all They're all moving in different orbits At least Venus is They were able to compute these things very, very, very accurately. Probably something that most of us, not all of us, would be hard put to do. Have you ever computed these things? Yet here's a civilization that's very advanced.

It's able to do these things. Did they have the fear of the Lord? Absolutely not. They didn't. How weren't they a great nation?

Doesn't that seem to belie the statement that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom? Well what's left of that nation today? In the last century, actually not even in the 1900s, There was a people that was discovered, the Lackadon people, that lived in this area, who were so primitive, who were so backward, that it's not even proper in polite company to even describe the way they live. Their sanitary conditions, their medical practices, their food preparation practices. We would consider them abominable.

We would consider them so backward, so degraded, that we'd have a hard time talking about it. These people, whom the evolutionists of our day called primitives, are the cultural fruit that is left from the great Mayan civilization. That's it. That and a few buildings in ruins. This was a people who had an insatiable appetite for human sacrifice.

These were people who mutilated themselves, Bodily mutilation, tattoos, to the point of making themselves look horrendously disfigured, disgusting. And they collapsed, they utterly collapsed. Yes, they lived for a long time, for centuries, their empire existed. But it's gone. And remember, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years.

That's the right application of that verse. To understand that, yes, they may exist for centuries, but it's but a day in God's timing. And they are gone. And You can think of every other great civilization. The Babylonian Empire was a great and mighty empire.

The Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, they were all mighty empires in various ways. They conquered great parts of the world. They possessed great learning. And they're gone. They're destroyed.

There isn't anything left of them. It's the haunt of jackals where Babylon existed. It's a desert, the howling Wasteland. Because these people did not have the fear of the Lord. And without the fear of the Lord, there can be no wisdom, No knowledge, no understanding.

Oh yes, you can have something for a moment, for a while, a short while, but it won't last. You could build a treehouse and defy all the laws of proper construction. And it might last for a few days, right? Until one day you're in it and it just falls down. Until the wind blows one day and it collapses.

And that's the idea. These empires have been built Apart from the fear of the Lord, they last a little while and they're gone. There's nothing left of them. But those who fear the Lord have wisdom and knowledge and understanding. And knowledge and understanding.

I think it's very interesting to compare some of these ancient civilizations with our civilization. What do we see today? An insatiable appetite for human sacrifice. 56 million innocent people have been murdered in our country in my lifetime. And As you walk around, I remember living in a college town in Columbus, Ohio.

And in Austin, the university. And I went to Austin. And then about 15 years later, we were living in Columbus. And I had occasion to be down at the university. And I was struck that just in a short amount of time, The changes that had taken place in the student bodies and mind you these are two very similar types of colleges They're in state capitals.

They're large state universities. They have big athletic programs They're very similar demographically and yet. I was struck by all of the tattoos and body mutilation on the students as I walked on the campus on a regular basis. Folks, this is what the pagan empires did. This is what the Mayan civilization was like.

When we look at these people, they're not primitives, they're decadents. These are people who have fallen, these aren't people who are coming up, these are people who are going down. And what do we see around our culture today but the proliferation of body mutilation, of disfiguring, of marking, cuttings, tattoos. And we can simply look at the foundation of our culture. What was it founded on?

And I don't mean 1776. I mean the people who founded our culture that we live in today, who founded the governments that we live in today these people acknowledged the law of God they put the scriptures right into their civil laws And they made capital crimes what the Bible made capital crime The Massachusetts body of liberties was the law in Massachusetts colony for 40 years They put the date of creation on People Magazine and Us and the TV Guide. And they didn't just say July 27, 2015. It said, being the 1649th year since our Lord Jesus Christ and being 5000 some years since creation And they spelled that all out and they plastered it right on the front page Now they weren't making controversial statements. They were simply putting the date on the TV guide This wasn't it was it was what the culture accepted and believed that God was the Creator and Jesus Christ was the Son of God come in the flesh.

What do we see today? Well, of course, you know, everyone would acknowledge that our culture no longer upholds any of the first four commandments, and probably even the fifth, although it is still the law in Texas that Parents are responsible for the behavior of their children and are authorized to use Corporal means to compel their obedience So I think you can say there is some aspect of the fifth commandment there some modicum of it But certainly we would we would say all the all those first four are completely gone. It is not a crime to blaspheme God. It's not a crime to worship an idol. It used to be in our land, it used to be a crime to do those things.

It used to be a crime to swear, to curse God. Now it's just considered impolite to do it in front of women and children. Even that is fast fading. What about the Sixth Commandment, the Seventh Commandment, the Eighth Commandment, and the Ninth Commandment? Have these been overturned as well?

The Sixth Commandment deals with murder. Is it legal to murder in our land yes it is and we have killed probably more people than any other nation in the last 50 years. Innocent people. I'm not talking about the death row inmates that are executed. Innocent people have been killed, sacrificed for the convenience of their mother and the profit of their doctor.

What about the seventh commandment? I don't have to tell you that that is being overturned every day. In fact, Texas was the hallmark case for murder, the sixth commandment, and Texas was the Hallmark case for murder, the Sixth Commandment, and Texas was the Hallmark case for the Seventh Commandment, sodomy, Lawrence case, and the Roe v. Wade. Both of those were Texas cases.

But the Seventh Commandment was undermined by the wealth of the Rockefeller Foundation, who funded a man named Kinsey, who spent several decades Studying all manner of perversion and sexual immorality and deviance and Cataloging it and publishing it in a book in two books that were introduced with great fanfare and great marketing as the new sexuality. And all the things that the Bible condemns were, lo and behold, perfectly normal and done by most people in America. Kinsey's research was the basis on which Roe v. Wade was based. It was the science which has overturned the laws governing the seventh commandment in every state of the Union.

How that was done is another story, it's an interesting one. But for our purposes this morning, this man's research, this man's junk science, was used as the basis of overturning every law on the Seventh Commandment in every state and replacing it with something else. In fact, after the Berlin Wall came down, there was a Nazi who was uncovered and prosecuted. One of the things that came to light in this man's documentation was a letter from Kinsey to him encouraging him and urging him on in his paedophilia Because Kinsey needed it for his scientific research. And this is the basis of law in our country.

This isn't the fear of the Lord. This is fools despising wisdom and instruction, rejecting it. And as a result, women and children today suffer greatly. Just look at the rape and assault that has gone through the roof since Kinsey's work is published. And these laws, state laws have been overturned.

But what about the Eighth Commandment, that which deals with theft? Have we overturned that? We just have to pull out your wallet and look at the dollar bill there. The Federal Reserve is a system that is built entirely upon theft, the ability to steal our wealth. And theft is the foundation, the very foundation of the money that we use.

It's based on theft. It's based on getting something for nothing. And again, we don't have time this morning to go into the explanation of how that is the case. But you can take my word for it, or you can read it for yourself. That our money supply, in the Federal Reserve, something established just 102 years ago, has put our whole economy upon theft.

All of our money. What about the Ninth Commandment? Do we reject that? Does our culture reject the ninth commandment? Are we fools despising wisdom?

Rejecting the law of God here? Well, it would seem so. Now, I should point out, we're not talking about the fact that murder happens, or the fact that adultery happens, or the fact that theft happens. These things have always happened. What we're talking about here is the undermining of the law.

We're talking about here is not that somebody steals, but that the very law on which our economy is based is an economy of theft. We're talking about, and so when we get to the ninth commandment, we're not talking about the fact that people lie. We're talking about the fact that the government, in its very laws, in its very official acts, is lying. And that's a very different thing. In our archives, I'll give you one example of how our government, our culture, is now built upon a foundation of lying.

In our archives is a document that was written in 1962, and it's signed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So this is not some staffer run amok who ran off and did something. This is a project that was authorized at the very highest levels of our government. It was a formal project. A formal report was issued.

It was formally signed and authorized and by the proper authorities. And the whole document is about how do we lie to the American people so that we can get them into a war, get them willing to accept the war. And so this Northwoods project, and you can go to the archives of the United States, which are online, and you can download this from your home computer. You don't even have to go to the archives in DC. And this is a document with page after page after page of ideas about how we can get the US into a war with Cuba and make it look like Cuba started it.

And it includes things like shooting a boat of refugees and claiming it's the Cubans that did it it includes includes things like Attacking Guantanamo Bay and claiming that it's the Cubans that did it we have a naval base there it includes firing on us people killing us citizens It includes very elaborate ruses to create a lie. Ruses that look very much like something that happened on September 11, 2001. Ruses that are very similar to what started the Vietnam War and the Gulf of Tonkin, which is now acknowledged to be a fraud, a lie, to create the desire to get the U.S. Into war. You see, our culture is a culture built upon lies We have rejected and the fear of the Lord And our culture will fall like the Mayan and the Incas and the Babylonians and the Romans and the Greeks and the Persians.

Because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Without the fear of the Lord, there is no wisdom. There is no instruction. No knowledge. Now what does the fear of this Lord bring?

The fear of the Lord brings a teachable spirit, a willingness to hear instruction. And remember this word, instruction, masar, includes the concept of Correction. This is, when it's verbal, it is teaching. We call it instruction, but it also includes correction. And so, the same word is often translated, discipline.

Discipline. My son, hear the instruction of your father. The fear of the Lord brings a willingness to hear instruction, a willingness to receive correction. It brings a teachable spirit. Hear the instruction of your father and do not forsake the law of your mother.

That word law is Torah. We think of law or Torah as sort of the fire and brimstone. But that's not what the Hebrew understanding of Torah is. It associates here Torah with mother. Do not forsake the Torah, Torah of your mother.

Now it's not saying that mothers have to become dictators, ruling with a rod of iron, threatening fire and brimstone. It's speaking here about instruction, specifically catechism, teaching. The Torah is a manual of religious instruction used to teach the young, used to teach children. Violations of this teaching brings correction, brings reproof. And so this is the instruction of a mother here who catechizes her children, who teaches them the Word of God, teaches them to fear the Lord, Who teaches them not just by voice, but by her deeds, by her example, by her wisdom in the government of the home.

She is bringing instruction to her children. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. They don't want to be corrected. They don't want reproof. They don't want to hear where they've been wrong.

They despise it. But Those who fear the Lord prize wisdom. They're grateful when someone takes the time to correct an error of their ways, particularly the father and mother. Blessed is the man you discipline, O Lord, the man that you teach from your law, your Torah. Blessed is the man who you instruct, discipline, the Saur.

To fear the Lord is to have a teachable spirit. Secondly, to fear the Lord is to have respect for God's earthly representatives. My son, hear the instruction of your Father, and do not forsake the law of your Mother." We learn to listen to God by learning to listen to our earthly parents. If we can't hear and obey the voice of our parents, who we can see, then we're never going to be able to obey the voice of God that we cannot see. That we cannot see.

Now who is meant here by father and mother? Well this son that Well, this son that is spoken of here is more than a biological son. The Hebrew understanding of son and father is a lot broader than merely the children that are adopted or born to us. Remember in Genesis 4, J-Ball, Jubal, and Tubal Cain were masters of music and musical instruments and masters of metalworking. And so they are called the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock, or the father of those who play the harp and the flute.

And 2Balkane is an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron. To be a father, you see, in the Hebrew understanding of the word, is to be someone who is an instructor in a craft, a skilled craftsman, a master craftsman, who is teaching one who has a journeyman or a novice is, in the Hebrew understanding of the word, a father. Adabord Jabel, he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. He instructed people how to be farmers. His brother instructed people in playing of musical instruments and composing music.

And his other brother instructed those who worked in metal, and they're called fathers. Elisha calls out to Elijah as he's being taken up into heaven in the chariot of fire. My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof. Elijah was his instructor, was his mentor.

And so he calls him My father. Interestingly, even Naaman's servants, when they wanted to appeal to him to not reject Elisha's instruction to go and bathe in the Jordan. Remember he was disgusted. He thought he had better pools to bathe in. His servants came to him and said, My father, My father, if he had commanded you to do something great, wouldn't you have done it?

How much more that he's commanded you to simply bathe in a pool? But they called him my father. He was their master. They were his servants. He was their master.

I doubt that Naaman was the biological father of all the servants that came with him to Israel. Paul called the Galatians, my little children. He called both Timothy and Titus, my son, my son in the faith. He called them his sons. That doesn't mean Paul was their biological father.

We know that Timothy had a Greek father. But Paul was their mentor. He was their teacher. He was their instructor. Kings in Isaiah 49 are called nurturing fathers, and queens are called nursing mothers.

And so this word, Father and Son, has a much broader connotation than the mere biological descendants. It refers to those who are over us in age. It refers to those who are over us in skill, in expertise, who are instructors in one way or another. It refers also to those who are over us in authority, by office, which starts with our father and our mother certainly, but it also extends to the elders of the church, to the presbytery that is over us, and to the civil magistrates who are God's ministers and who exercise an authority over us. And so this command then, my son, doesn't just come to everyone who is under 13 this morning, but it comes to every one of us who is younger, who is less experienced, who is in any area of expertise, those of us who are under the authority of elders, of civil magistrates, of masters, of employers, these are our fathers.

Employers. These are our fathers. And these are those whose instruction we need to heed. Even if they themselves are not Christians. Because those who would fear the Lord will give attention to God's earthly representatives.

Sennacherib was a wicked king, and yet God called him his servant. Sinakarib did God's will. He did what God raised him up to do, But he went no farther than what God called him to. And God says he describes bringing Snacker back as putting a hook in his nose. You can lead a bull, the greatest bull, If you have a hook in their nose, a child can lead a bull.

There's a hook in his nose. That's how the Amish still lead their bulls around. A hook in the nose. God says he put a hook in Snackrib's nose and drew him back from harming Hezekiah. See, he is God's servant.

And those who would fear the Lord will have a respect for God's earthly representatives, representatives even if they themselves do not fear God. My son, hear the instruction of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother." Notice that fathers and mothers here are on an equal footing in teaching. Both fathers and mothers are on an equal footing. Both fathers and mothers are called to teach their children. Now elsewhere in other places in Proverbs, it is the Father that speaks in the first person.

My Son, hear my instruction. And so the teaching of the Mother is in a sense identified with his teaching. But in terms of children viewing their parents, both mother and father equally, to instruct the children. I think this also brings a little bit of understanding to how we see these Proverbs. When they say that a wise son makes his father glad, What is in view, what is assumed, is an obedient son and a wise father.

And so when you look at the proverb that says a wise son makes his father glad. We say, what about the son of the Islam who turns to Christ? Does he make his father glad? No, but his father isn't a wise father. Take the command in the New Testament, Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.

Does that mean that a father should not command a rebellious son to do something he doesn't want to do? Because it will make him mad? Not at all. That command presupposes a wise son there. That's what it's speaking of.

It's not saying that a father who has a rebellious son who doesn't want to come to church shouldn't tell him to come to church for fear of making him angry. The command presupposes. We're talking about a wise son. It's the assumption. And we don't say, well, there's an exception to that command because a son may get angry when he receives a good command from his father.

So I use that as an example here, that these Proverbs are not simply true most of the time. We should look at these Proverbs just like we look at any other part of the Word of God, any other part of the Law of God. They are absolute statements. We have to understand them in the right context. We have to understand their scope and so forth.

But these should not be looked at as not true all the time, or not absolute, or not promises. These are promises from God. They are yea and amen in Jesus Christ. They are absolutely true as much as any part of the Word of God is true, and they are always true in the context in which they apply. That comes out in Proverbs 4, where it says, 4.3, it says, When I was my father's son, tender and the only one in the sight of my mother.

When I was my father's son. That wouldn't make any sense if it's strictly a biological relationship being talked about there. When I was my father's son? You're always your father's son if it's just a biological relationship. So some translations, actually the Septuagint, I think, has said, when I was my father's obedient son.

They're giving the context there, they're trying to bring into English the sense, the connotation that's in the Hebrew. When I was my father's obedient son. So what is in view here of son is not just a biological relationship, but rather an obedient son, obedience. And a son who was not obedient was cut off, was disowned. He was no longer regarded as a son.

So the fear of the Lord brings a teachable spirit. The fear of the Lord brings a teachable spirit. The fear of the Lord brings respect for God's earthly representatives. So that we see this command to apply in all the varied relationships. Parents to children, wives to husbands, saints to elders, younger people to older people, younger men to older men, younger women to older women, journeymen and novices to master craftsmen, subjects, citizens, citizens, to rulers.

But thirdly, the fear of the Lord brings beauty and honor. Brings beauty and honor. Do not forsake the instruction, the discipline, the chasing of your father. Do not forsake the Torah, the teaching of your mother, for they will be a graceful garland, an ornament upon your head, and a necklace about your neck. This ornament, this garland is like a twisted wreath signifying victory, signifying vindication over one's enemies, triumph over evil, triumph over the wicked, both the wicked man and the wicked woman.

That is a theme that we will be seeing in the rest of this prologue. The wicked man, the wicked gang, and the wicked woman. The wicked gang bringing easy money, illegitimate money, and the wicked woman bringing illegitimate sex. It brings victory. The instruction of the Father and the law of the Mother are a graceful ornament, a garland.

And on the head, a beautiful garland. We pay a lot of attention to our dress today. We want to smell nice and look nice and be seen as nice. The Bible says, let not your adornment be merely external in these matters of the hair and garments. Let them not be merely external.

But there should be an inward adornment. There is an inward beauty. And all of this outward refinery just becomes so much ugliness apart from an inward beauty of the Spirit of God. The instruction here is that the instruction of the mother, the law of the father adorn us and make us beautiful. So if you want to be well dressed, and you want to have grace and beauty and honor, then you need to pay attention.

Have a teachable spirit to highly prize instruction and correction. It is what Jeremiah and Ezekiel speak about, the law being written on our heart. Jeremiah compares it to the Israelites that came out of Egypt who didn't have the law upon their heart. They didn't fear the Lord and their carcasses fell in the wilderness. Jeremiah says that the Lord will write His law upon our heart.

The fear of the Lord brings a desire and a delight in the law of God such that there is an inward desire to obey, not merely the external conformance to something that we have no delight in and don't want to follow. The fear of the Lord brings an inward delight in the Word of God, an inward desire to obey the Lord. And that is how we ought to live as Christians, how we ought to think about the instruction of our fathers and the law of our mothers. It's also how we ought to approach our children. We're not there simply to put them in an iron lung and require them to conform to some outward form of obedience.

There's no beauty in that. There's no grace on your head and ornament about your neck. That comes from the inward beauty of an inward desire to obey the command of our Father and the law of our Mother. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. It's fools, it's fools who despise wisdom and instruction.

And it's foolish to despise instruction of this father or mother because father or mother isn't perfect. And because father or mother, in that broader context, has made a mistake, committed a sin. Now certainly our obedience is always in the Lord, and certainly We ought to emulate and copy what is good and not what is wrong. But with that understanding, We need to understand that it's a fool that looks at somebody and says, because they made a mistake, because they sinned, in that instance, then I don't have to listen to them. I can ignore what they're saying.

The fear of the Lord brings a respect for God's earthly representatives, and there is no earthly representative of God's authority who is without sin, who is perfect. And it's foolish to reject their instruction in one area because somewhere else they have sinned. Now certainly what is true of the Son is also true of the Father and Mother. And that where there is a continued and ongoing disregard, then they need to be brought under instruction and reproof as well. Because after all, any human is still a human and they are under the law of God, whether that's citizens to a civil magistrate or any other relationship.

There needs to be instruction and reproof. And so I'm not saying That we need to obey everything, whether it's right or wrong, or that there is never a time when a father figure has so transgressed God's law that they need to be removed from office. This is talking about the regular and normal life that our fathers, our mothers, elders, civil magistrates will sin and do, And they need to repent of that but we we if we fear the Lord will not despise their instruction simply because They failed in one area one area it's fools that do that fools despise that Those who fear the Lord and heed the instruction of Father and Mother will have great beauty and honor conferred upon them. Let us pray. Almighty Father in heaven, thank you for your instruction to us.

Thank you for your patience with our weaknesses when we have been slow to learn and have needed to have our lessons retaught to us. Thank you for your patience in doing so. Give to us wisdom that we may heed your instruction as you bring it to us through many ministers, whom you have raised up to do your bidding, to bear your authority and your rule. We ask this through Jesus' sake. Amen.