Well, we come once again to the book of Proverbs this morning. We're going to be in the 30th chapter. We'll be considering the first six verses, Proverbs 30. Verses one through six. Hear now, the word of God.
The words of Agar, son of Jacob, the oracle. The man declares, I am weary, O God. I am weary, O God, and worn out. Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man.
I have not learned wisdom. nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment?
Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name? And what is his son's name? Surely you know. Every word of God proves true.
He is a shield. to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words lest he rebuke you and you be found A liar. Let's pray. God of heaven, Maker of all that is, we come to you as weak.
Fragile people. Who need wisdom? We come with nothing to offer. But we come at your invitation. You who said that if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask in faith.
You have invited us to ask you for that which we Lack. Lord, please give us wisdom. Give us the capacity to understand your works and ways. and to understand our place in your world. Lord, give us the humility to Forsake our pride.
Our self-confidence. And to put our hands over our mouths in humble recognition of the fact that we have nothing that you need. And you have everything that we need. I believe in the Holy Spirit. Who opens the eyes of man to behold wonderful things that are spiritually discerned.
Who gives us the mind of Christ? who convicts us of sin. And who comforts us with The only consolation that truly consoles, the consolation of having peace with God through Jesus Christ. And so I ask you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to give us eyes to see Hearts that want to see. And Minds and wills.
That remember what we see in your holy word today. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You know, every single one of us gets out of bed in the morning with a desire to be happy, to have purpose, to know that our lives count for something. We're born with an innate sense that we exist for some good and noble purpose, that there is real meaning and value in the choices we make, in the relationships we foster, in the words that we say, and in the actions that we engage in.
We see this human trait in the games that little children play as they invent worlds where they can have a superpower or scenarios in which they can be the hero. We see it in the tensions that surface when young adults are forced to choose between two mutually exclusive life paths: where to go to school, what vocation to pursue, who to marry. We see it in the introspection of the elderly as they contemplate the significance of a life already lived. We by nature long for purpose. We yearn for significance.
We run from meaninglessness. The general consensus in the world is that this innate fulfillment that I seek is found by following the impulses of my own desires. Forging my own path, making a name for myself, being whatever I want to be. In other words, fulfillment is found in giving self what it wants. The problem, however, is that self doesn't always know what it wants and often wants contradictory things.
And when self sometimes gets what it wants, it discovers that that does not bring the fulfillment that it promised. The child, caught up in his made-up world, eventually gets called to clean up for supper and has to quit pretending that he's somebody's hero. The young adult becomes a middle-aged adult. Who begins to realize that those choices he so carefully made in his youth have led to a very ordinary life? The old man in his recliner is forced to admit that no matter how much he analyzes his past, he cannot change what has been.
And this is the starting point of Proverbs 30. I am weary, O God. I am weary, O God, and worn out. When all my plans have failed, and the dreams that I thought would make me happy are shattered, and the relationships that were supposed to give me purpose and acceptance have dissolved into emptiness and hurt, what do I do? Where do I go?
To whom do I turn? As the sun begins to set here at the end of Proverbs. This penultimate chapter is all about man knowing his place in God's world. Everything has a place. Everything has a purpose.
Kings and servants, parents and children, husbands and wives, even verse 24 and following: ants, rock badgers, locusts, and lizards. They all have a role to play, a purpose to fulfill, a place where they belong. And when they do what they were created for, there's beauty and order. But when things do not fulfill their intended purpose, When creation gets upside down and backwards, Chaos ensues, and ugliness takes over. Man's place is that of image-bearer.
Man has been created to be God's image-bearer, and yet man, in his sinful state, lacks the wisdom to fulfill that purpose. God, on the other hand, possesses that wisdom and has even offered that wisdom to man. It's there for the taking. The question then is: how does man get it? How do we get the wisdom we so desperately need if we're to fulfill the reason for which we've been created?
Well, the six verses before us today answer that question. And they tell us that to fulfill our role, Our purpose in this world, we need to understand who we are. We need to understand who God is. We need to understand who Christ is. And we need to understand what God's word is.
If I am to fulfill the purpose for which I exist, I need to know my place in God's world. And understanding my place in God's world requires that I understand myself. God, Christ, and Scripture.
So let's consider each of these for a few moments. First, we're confronted with our need to understand who we are. who we are apart. From God. We see this in the first three verses.
Now, I'm not going to say much about verse 1 because The Hebrew is very unclear. Translators tend to either treat the unclear Hebrew words as proper names, that's what the King James and the New American Standard have done, if you're reading in those translations, or they try to translate the unclear words by relying very heavily on the surrounding context to make an educated guess, and that's what the ESV and the NIV have done. The scholars I tend to trust the most argue for the latter approach, so I think the ESV is a wise and balanced translation of verse 1. But what is not ambiguous or unclear, however, is verse 2. Agar launches into some self-reflection in which he admits his own inherent ignorance of life.
He lacks the ability to live up to the essential qualities of even being a man. He lacks the understanding that a man should have. He lacks wisdom. He lacks knowledge of the one who created him. If self-awareness is a prerequisite to fulfilling his purpose in life, how can he ever hope to find fulfillment and meaning and happiness?
He's too stupid, he says in verse two, too animalistic to amount to anything remotely close to manhood with image-bearing status. But you see, that's just it. There are two kinds of stupid. There's a kind of stupid that thinks it's wise. And there's the kind of stupid that knows it's stupid.
Now, on a side note, kids, there is a right way and a wrong way to use the word stupid. I'm using it the way the Bible uses it.
So, talk to your parents about that this afternoon. But perhaps you'll recall That back in Proverbs 26, the recurring vice of the arrogant was that he was wise in his own eyes. The chief character trait of the proud person is that he thinks more highly of his intelligence and understanding than is true. Agur, on the other hand, makes the point that the prerequisite for true godly wisdom is recognition of my own ignorance. If I think I already know the answer, I'm not going to listen with teachable ears to someone else's answer.
I will not receive that which I do not perceive to be a lack in my life. It's counterintuitive, but it's true. If I want to learn what life is all about, I've got to start by admitting that I don't know what life is all about. If I think I already know everything that I need to know, I'll never grow in wisdom. I'll never put any effort into increasing my understanding.
But if I recognize just how ignorant I really am, I have ironically met the first prerequisite for growing in wisdom and discovering my place in this world. The fact of the matter is, I have nothing that has not been given to me from heaven. I don't have life. I don't have a brain. I don't have thoughts.
I don't have access to information. Not only that, even the information that has been given to me and the mind with which to process that information is skewed by my sin nature to reject what has been revealed. Romans 1 says that God has revealed all the truth man needs in order to know who God is, and yet man, left to himself, suppresses that truth. He doesn't want to know it because it would force him to have to acknowledge that God is God and man is not God. Church, left to ourselves, we, like Agar, are too stupid to even recognize the nature and dignity of our place in this world, much less to live up to the noble purposes that God has placed on our lives.
We are ignorant and willfully so. But at the same time, You're proud. and have convinced ourselves that we understand far more than we actually do. Without God, we are blind but think we can see. We're deaf but think we can hear.
We're dumb, but we think we can speak the truth. And until we acknowledge our lack of wisdom. And our utter dependence on something or someone outside of ourselves to gain wisdom, we will remain self-deceived and unfulfilled.
Well, that's someone who can give us the understanding we lack. is God. And so if I'm to fulfill the purpose for which I exist, I need to not only understand who I am, I need to also understand who God is. And in verse 4, Agar's attention shifts from himself to God. He begins to contemplate a being who can give him the understanding that he lacks, because this being possesses all understanding, all knowledge, all wisdom.
Now here's the implied premise of verse 4. If man lacks knowledge of everything, he cannot know anything with certainty. If man lacks knowledge of everything, then he cannot know anything with certainty. Have you ever thought you knew something, but then you discovered more information which proved what you thought you knew was incorrect? In the first two or three years of school, you learned the rules of the English language, only to spend the rest of your life discovering all the exceptions to those rules.
You thought you had achieved a mastery of the language. when actually you had just seen the tip of the iceberg. The more we learn, the more we realize how much we don't know. If this is true of something as simple as the English language, how much more true is it of something as complex and profound as existence itself? and of purpose in life.
And of one's moral standing before an all-knowing God, and of God Himself. The only way to know anything with certainty is to know everything.
Now, postmodern man concludes that since man doesn't know everything, he cannot know anything. There's no absolute truth. Everything is relative.
So you believe what you want to believe, I'll believe what I'll believe, and we'll just leave it at that. And what a hopeless, meaningless foundation for life that is. The outlook of the Bible is quite different. The Bible's view of knowledge is that since there is a God who knows everything, we human beings can know things with certainty so long as they come from God. Since God sees the whole iceberg, we can trust that His explanation of the small tip of the iceberg that we see is an accurate explanation, a trustworthy explanation.
If we were to know anything with certainty, we need to be instructed by someone who is outside of time and space, someone who sits above all things, someone who transcends us.
Someone who, verse 4, has come down from heaven to communicate with us.
Someone who gathers the wind in his fists. And controls where it blows and when it blows and how strong it blows.
Someone who wraps up water in cloudy garments in the sky and dictates where and when that water falls back to the earth.
Someone who establishes where the land ends and the ocean begins, where Earth's orbit will run in relation to all other celestial bodies. If we are to know anything with certainty, we need to get our understanding from one who knows everything. The questions asked in verse four are rhetorical questions. that are intended to overwhelm our arrogance. and self-confidence and drive us, prod us.
to depend on a wisdom that's outside of ourselves. And this is not the only place where scripture asks these sorts of questions, is it? And the book of Job. And Isaiah. And Ecclesiastes pile on and ask very similar questions, all intended to bring us to the end of ourselves.
These questions are intended to make us acknowledge that it is God and not man who sets the rules of engagement. It is not our right as creatures to know whatever we want about anything. It is God's prerogative. As creator. to reveal whatever he desires to reveal.
And it's his right to conceal whatever he desires to conceal. Knowing our purpose in life begins with knowing our place. in the universe. And our place in the universe is one of subjection to and dependence on God, who is far greater and stronger and wiser than we are. If you think you're in a place to inform God of anything or demand of Him what you think you need to know or expect Him to do your bidding.
Friend, your world is upside down. You've got it backwards. God doesn't need us. We need Him. God doesn't owe us.
We owe him. God certainly does not depend on us. We depend on Him. Who has been His counselor? No one.
What can be given to him that he needs? Nothing. On the contrary, it is from him and through him and to him. that all things exist. Beloved, there is no meaning in life apart from God.
There is no purpose. In your vocation, in your marriage, in your parenting, in your friendships, in your intellectual pursuits, in your hobbies. In your getting up in the morning or going to bed at night, apart from the purpose that God ascribes. Life must be lived. With God, the all-wise Creator, as the frame of reference, or it has no purpose.
If it has no purpose, It offers no fulfillment. No meaning, no significance, no joy. If I'm to fulfill the purpose for which I exist, I must understand first who I am. I must understand who God is. But thirdly, I must understand.
Christ is. We come to the last question of verse 4, and it seems perhaps to be a bit of an odd question. All of the previous questions have had to do with God's transcendent power over creation. But then the last question just seems unrelated and out of place. What is his name and what is his son's name?
Well, we know that the only person who fits the profile of these questions is God. His name is God. Elohim. Yahweh. But then Agar adds, and what is his son's name?
As Christians who have the whole Bible, I suspect our minds go immediately to the name of God's Son, Jesus Christ, right? The Messiah, the Anointed One. And this is, of course, the ultimate answer to this question. I should quickly point out also that the only reason we know the answer to that question is because God has revealed it to us. Truly, we have no access to truth apart from God and the wisdom that He chooses to reveal.
But let's think for a moment about how the original readers of Proverbs would have understood this question. Jesus was not the obvious name that would have come to their minds when considering the name of the Son of God. Jesus had not yet been revealed or come in the flesh. If we limit ourselves then to the context of the book of Proverbs, what we observe is that the Son. Throughout this book, is always the one who's being instructed by the Father.
So in Proverbs chapter 30, God is the Father who knows all things. Those then who are being instructed by God the Father are his sons. And this includes Agor and you and me. In fact, it includes anyone who reads Proverbs 30 with a teachable heart. But here's what I don't want us to miss.
In the context of all of Scripture, Jesus Christ is, of course. The answer to the rhetorical question at the end of verse 4. Jesus Christ is the quintessential Son of God, the eternal Son of God, without comparison, without rival, without equal. And as God's Son, Jesus Christ, Learned wisdom. From his heavenly father.
Scripture speaks of Jesus growing in stature and in favor with God and man. It speaks of Jesus learning obedience through the things that he suffered. Jesus, in his humanity, was a learner under the tutelage of his heavenly Father. But here's the thing. Anyone who is in Christ.
Anyone who belongs to Christ by faith receives all the blessings that come from Christ, including the blessing of sonship, adoption into the family of God. If we are sons of God, we are sons of God by virtue of our union with Christ. What God gives to Christ as His firstborn Son, He gives to us. Christ is our access then to all the understanding that we lack because Christ is our access to God. If we were to understand our place in this world, Our purpose in this life, we need to know Christ.
Because he is our access to this God who transcends all things.
Now, before we move on to the remaining verses, there's one more thing we should take note of with regard to verse 4. We need to take note of the fact that Agra's questions are not about how. These mysterious and incredible events take place: the blowing of the wind, the rain falling to earth, the setting of boundaries between ocean and dry land, between earth and sky, and so on. The question is not how are these things so? The question is who?
is making these things so. Knowing God And his Christ is not a matter. merely of having the right information. Agar's questions are not framed in intellectual terms. They're framed in relational terms.
Who is he? What is his son's name? You see, wisdom is not about what you know, it's about who you know. Our crisis of purpose and meaning and value is not at bottom an intellectual crisis. Nor is the resolution to this crisis intellectual.
Rather, it is a relational. crisis And the solution then is to get right with Yahweh. With God, the possessor of all wisdom and knowledge, and to get right with His Son. the one who gives us first peace with God. and then access to all the wisdom and knowledge that God has to give.
If we are to know our place in this world, We need to understand who we are. lest we become wise in our own eyes. We need to understand who God is. Lest we overlook God as the source of all meaning and purpose. We need to understand who Christ is.
Because he alone is the way, the truth. The life, no man comes to the Father but through him. But then finally, we need to understand the authority and sufficiency of God's word. Once again, it may seem that verses five and six don't follow logically from what has come before, but here's what I think Agar's train of thought is. Man, left to himself, is ignorant and incapable of figuring out the meaning and purpose of his life.
That's verses 1 through 3.
So, man needs an omniscient counselor to give him the understanding that he lacks. God is that omniscient counselor, but God is so transcendent, so out of reach, so out of man's league that there seems to be very little hope, if any, of ever hearing from God and gaining the understanding he lacks. That's verse 4. At this point, this is where verse 5 comes rushing in with hope and promise. God has spoken, and verse 5: every word of God proves true.
We might be tempted by our own frailty and limited understanding to head down a road of hopeless despair of ever finding God and meaning and purpose. But God can be known. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Notice that verse 5 introduces the concept not just of truth, but also of trust. And these two concepts are related.
You see, our ability to trust in God is tied to our acknowledgement of the truthfulness of His Word. God's word is perfectly true, therefore God is perfectly trustworthy. Verse 5 is telling us that God can be known because He has spoken, and what He has spoken is true, and because it's true, God can be trusted. Those then who orient their lives around what he has said and look to him for purpose and fulfillment and acceptance and safety, in other words, those who take refuge in him find him to be a perfectly reliable shield from the despair and the futility of a meaningless life. Look with me then at verse 6.
If God's word comes from omniscient transcendence, if everything He has said is trustworthy and true, And if we are innately lacking in knowledge and understanding of how the world works and of our place in it, then we are fools. if we think that we have anything of value to add to what God has said. Hence verse 6. Do not add to his words. lest he rebuke you and you be found.
A liar. Verse 5 declares the inerrancy of God's word. Verse 6 declares the sufficiency. of God's word. If God's word is inerrant, That is without error.
then we had better trust it. If God's word is sufficient. then we had better not add anything to it. I love how the old Puritan Matthew Henry explained the implications of verses 5 and 6. He said, this forbids the advancing of anything, not only in contradiction to the word of God, but also in competition with it.
You see, Proverbs 30 is not just saying that everything God speaks is true, it's also saying that God has spoken enough. That everything we need To be thoroughly equipped to understand our place in this world and to fulfill the role for which we have been created is found in what God has said. I think the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture is sadly neglected in our day. We are quick to die on the hill of inerrancy, and that's good. But then we turn around and act at times as if.
God's revelation in His Word is not enough. to order our steps rightly. As if we need more information about why Providence does what Providence does. Or more information about how to navigate the gray areas or that unsure circumstance we face. But beloved, God has told us.
How to worship. How to marry, how to raise children, how to pray, how to manage our finances, how to rest and how to work. God's word is sufficient in telling us what our place in this world is and how to go about living meaningful, purposeful lives. If we lack that knowledge, it's not for lack of access to the information. Nor for the lack of a trustworthy God.
Rather, it is for lack of submitting to that God and His Word and His Christ. It is for lack of humbling ourselves. and confessing our ineptitude at living wisely on our own. Which is to say, it is for lack of fearing God that we don't know our purpose or place in this world. The fear of the Lord is, in fact, the beginning.
of wisdom. As we close this morning. We might ask of these six verses: why are they in the Bible? Why did God see fit to include Proverbs 31 through 6 in Scripture?
Well, evidently, we have a tendency to forget our place in the grand scheme of things. We have a propensity to put far too much confidence in our own wisdom. And our own ability to grasp the meaning and purpose of life without God's aid, without Christ's mediation. and without the inerrant and sufficient guidance of God's Word. Proverbs 30 concludes.
with a very stern admonition in verse thirty-two. If you have been foolish, exalting yourself, Or if you have been devising evil. Put your hand on your mouth. And this rebuke reminds us immediately, I think, of the ending of Job's story. After all that he went through, after all the questioning and the wondering and the worrying, after seeing God for who he truly is, and in that light seeing himself for who he truly is.
All Job could do was to put his hand on his mouth and submit himself quietly and wholly to the wise providence of an all-wise God. To put your hand on your mouth implies that self-exaltation involves boasting. talking too much and too highly about ourselves. The admonition then for the boaster who has forgotten his place in God's world is to stop boasting. And instead, humble himself before a far greater glory.
It's an admission that I am of small account in God's great story, and the surest path. To experiencing the purpose and fulfillment and acceptance for which we all yearn. is to yield myself to the one who gathers the wind in his fists. and says Peace be still. Put your hand on your mouth.
And admit that Where you are incapable, God is all-powerful. Where you are inadequate, Christ is enough. Where your understanding is littered with lies and self-deceit, God's word is true. and trustworthy and sufficient. This is why you exist.
To honor your Creator by being still. and knowing that he is God and that he will be exalted on the earth. Let's pray. Lord, you are great. Far greater than we know, far loftier than.
We can imagine But help us to know you, help us to see you. for who you are. And in seeing you to understand ourselves and our place in this world. Father, we weren't made to make much of ourselves. And when we do, we're miserable.
Or worse, we enjoy it and blind ourselves all the more to your glory.
So, Holy Spirit, we ask that you would take what we've seen and heard in your word today and use it to make us wise where we've played the fool, make us worshipers of you. Where we have failed to give you the glory due to your name. Make us sincere lovers of Christ. where we've loved ourselves instead. Make us trusting of your word.
And why is in our understanding of it, that we might fulfill the purpose for which we have been created. That we might bring you glory and enjoy you. Always. forever. I pray in Jesus' name.
Amen. Mm-hmm.
