Proverbs 2

My son, if you receive my words, And treasure my commands within you, So that you incline your ear to wisdom, [And] apply your heart to understanding; yes, if you cry out for discernment, [And] lift up your voice for understanding, If you seek her as silver, And search for her as [for] hidden treasures; Then you will understand the fear of the LORD, And find the knowledge of God. (Proverbs 2:1-5, NKJV)

It may have been said that "if" is the grammatical giant of two letter-words. And if it hasn't been said, I'm saying it now. It's kind of like a pebble-sized boulder. When we see the word "if" we can pretty well ascertain that there are conditions being stipulated (i.e. If my people, who are called by name will humble themselves...II Chronicles 7:14). You get the picture; there is God's end of the bargain and then there is ours.

The above passage from Proverbs 2 contains some strong ifs.

"...if you receive my words..." (v.1)

"...if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding,..." (v.3)

"If you seek her as silver..." (v.4)

After these ifs (our end of the bargain) we naturally would like to know, "Alright, Lord. If I do these things then what do I receive in return?" Well there's tons we receive! We become recipients of the understanding of the fear of the Lord (remember, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7)) and, therefore, we find the knowledge of God. Wow! Can you imagine getting to know the secrets of the most brilliant scientist or physicist- if we could even understand what in the world they were talking about! We might well be blown away by their genius. Well, the Creator of the universe offers to share His knowledge with us. As a result of Him knocking our socks off, we cultivate a reverance for Him, for His Majesty, for His Holiness, for His Otherness, for who He is.

This speaks to me because there is a tendency to reduce YHWH down to a sort of friend Whom we can chat with anytime about anything. While this is true, I don't want to lose sight of His utter awesomeness and supremacy over all beings and things. May it be our passion to receive His words, cry out for discernment, to lift up our voices for understanding and to seek it as it were precious silver, and discovering veins of silver was what put bread and butter on our tables. Solomon writes here that if we do these things, then we will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Those are two pretty incredible possessions to have if you ask me.