Let me invite you to take up a copy of God’s Word and to turn with me to the book of Proverbs as we continue in our evening series. We’ve been diving into a short, thematic series entitled, “Life on the Way.” What does it look like for us as believers to live between now and that time where we see the Lord of glory in the fullness of Jesus’ face? How are we to live? And so we’ve been thinking about how God calls us to live and to live wisely and not as fools. How are we to live with the word-deed consistency rather than a measure of hypocrisy? How are we to live in spiritual light rather than in worldly darkness? And so this evening we come to Proverbs 30 and we’re going to be reading the first nine verses together. If you are following in your pew Bibles, you will find it on page 551.
Now please remember that the proverbs are written for the covenant community. They are expressions, wise expressions that embody the breadth and the depth and the richness of the wisdom of God, that wisdom that is ultimately displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. But here we have sayings, wise sayings that God has given to us so that we may know how we are to live in order and in a way that gives pleasure to Him. And so as we give our attention to the reading of God’s Word this evening, I want you to listen out for two things. I want you to listen to the wisdom and the humility that is expressed in what commentators have noted as the only prayer in the book of Proverbs. So it’s the wisdom and the humility of this solitary prayer that is given to us in the book of Proverbs. So before we read God’s Word, let’s bow our heads and ask God to help us. Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, this is Your Word and we pray, Lord, that You would wield it as a sword, and by the power of the Holy Spirit that You would apply it to our lives and to our hearts and to our minds, Lord, that we too may encounter the living Christ and once again be reminded of the promises of God to us, Lord, that we may be renewed, and Lord that we may go from this place re-energized so to speak, with a commitment to live to the glory of Your name. Father, we pray this in Jesus’ name and we ask this for His sake, amen.
Proverbs chapter 30, reading from verse 1 through to verse 9. This is the Word of God:
“The words of Agur son of Jakeh. 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.
Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”
The grass withers and the flowers fade but the Word of our God stands forever.
I wonder, when we were reading those nine verses, whether something struck you. One of the things that struck me when I was reading and rereading was just how refreshing, wonderfully refreshing these verses are, if not, dare I say, beautifully honest in the expression of Agur before God. Just a few verses we are given here, and we really are taught two fundamental things – what to pray and how to pray. What to pray and how to pray as we live “Life on the Way,” which is the series that we are looking at in the evenings in January.
Now it goes without saying that we need the Holy Spirit to teach us how to pray. He groans within us, as the apostle Paul tells us. The Spirit Himself “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” And you see, it’s the Spirit of God who not only teaches us and gives us a knowledge and an understanding of Scripture itself, but He is also the one who teaches us the application of God’s Word into the circumstances and situations that we face. And this doesn’t happen mystically, but it is as we read the Word of God, as we study the Word of God, as we meditate and reflect upon the Word of God, asking the Lord in the power of the Holy Spirit to let the Word seep into our bones, to inch into every fiber of our being that our hearts and our minds and our affections would be so impacted that truth literally overflows into every facet of life. That’s part of the work of the Spirit, is to take the truth, plant it deep within us so that we can live it out in our day to day existence.
And so we turn our attention to this prayer. It’s a prayer of a much lesser known figure in the whole of Scripture; a man by the name of Agur. And I want to read it again. Look at the text with me. Verse 7, and we’ll read to verse 9: “Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” Two points that I want us to reflect upon this evening and the first one is this. I want you to notice how Agur is praying that God would spiritually sustain him, that God would spiritually sustain him. And secondly, I want you to notice how he prays that God would be the one who would physically provide for him. Spiritually sustain him and physically provide for him.
Now before we get to those two points, verse 1 we notice that the man is named Agur. He is the son of Jakeh. He’s not mentioned anywhere else in the whole of Scripture, so the only little glimpse into this man, his existence, his character, is given to us in these few verses. Now we do know that in Hebrew, the man Agur, his name means, “a gatherer” or “a collector.” And this of course has caused commentators to deduce that he is a gatherer, he is a collector of wise sayings. He brings together wisdom literature. And this would place him in the realm, in our parlance says, “a scholar.” So he is a scholar who is also a contemporary with Solomon. Hence Solomon, upon getting word about these wise sayings, found it and incorporated it into the body of literature that we have in the book of Proverbs.
Now the one detail that we have is at the time of writing, look at verse 1 the second part where he says, “The man declares, I am weary, O God; I am weary, O God, and worn out.” He is an older, he is a more mature sojourner. And essentially what he is doing here is he is penning these wise sayings, he’s reflecting upon his life, those things that he has learned, and he is writing it down. In some sense there is wisdom even in that because our longing is that the next generation that follows through would learn from those who have gone before us. And that’s what he is leaving. He is leaving this as an insight, a legacy to the generation that follows. But besides his age, we know nothing of Agur. And I think that is instructive of Scripture, isn’t it? Scripture, in and of itself, is not about making much of individuals. It’s not about the people that are left on the pages of holy Scripture. But what is important is that we see in these nine verses how we are given a window into the true love and the true passion that Agur has in his life. Here is a man who is after and searching after God’s own heart. His words express the wonder and the mystery of the grace of God that has come to him and has captured and taken a hold of his heart and continues to transform and is at work in him. It’s all because of his union and his communion with God in Christ Jesus.
Agur is a Humble Man
And so before we consider anything further, five things about the man Agur that we can bring out of the text. And I want you, as I mention these five aspects, I think it’s instructive on the way of life, it’s instructive and we need to be asking God, “Is this true of me?” Firstly, notice how in verses 2 and 3 that Agur is a humble man. He is a humble man. “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.” Notice how he doesn’t begin by drawing attention to his accomplishments or to his insights of wisdom. Quite the contrary. Agur is profoundly self-aware. He understands who he is before this infinite God of the universe. He has low thoughts of himself, you could say, and he’s utterly dependent upon God. Charles Bridges, one of the commentators on the book of Proverbs, writes this. He says, “The nearer our contemplation of God, the closer our communion with Him, the deeper will be our self-abasement before Him.” That’s exactly what Agur is expressing in these verses. He is low before God.
Agur is a Worshipful Man
But Agur is not just a humble man. He is also a man who worships. He is a worshipful man. Look at verse 4 of the text. “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!” What is he doing here? When I was reading this and I was pondering these statements, these questions that Agur is presenting, it is very similar to the way God answered Job when Job was questioning God. God responds to Job and says, “Where were you at the foundation? Where were you when I put the boundaries of the waters in place? Where were you when I did this and this and this?” It’s almost as if Agur is taking back the speech of God as an expression of reminding himself who this great Creator and this great God is. Question after question, he is stunned at who this God is and he is reminding himself afresh. John Calvin, he begins his Institutes with a rather well-known phrase. He says this. He says, “True and substantial wisdom” – let me say that again – “True and substantial wisdom principally consists of two parts – the knowledge of God,” which is what Agur is doing in verse 4, “and knowledge of ourselves,” verses 2 and 3. Agur is really, he’s giving us an example of exactly what Calvin was reiterating in his Institutes many years ago.
Agur is an Experimental Believer
Thirdly, we can say that Agur is an experimental believer. He is an experimental or an experiential believer. Look at verses 5 and 6. “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.” Here is a Christian who is not only interested in reading the Word of God for a theoretical understanding of the Scriptures, thinking that that’s going to be sufficient to save him. No, he reads God’s Word and he trusts the one whom the Word points to. He takes refuge in Him. There is an experiential application of the Scripture that takes and grips his heart so that he may live it out. And so he has experienced this personal God. Friends, even at this point, have you experienced, do you know this personal God intimately or are you just going through the motions? Notice he says as well, “Every word of God proves true.” And then he goes on, “Do not detract from it and do not add to it.” He trusted the God of the Word. Is that the God that you trust, brothers and sisters?
Agur is a Dying Man
Fourthly, Agur is a dying man. We see that in verse 7. He says, “Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die.” “Before I die.” Now this is taken in conjunction with verse 1 that seems to indicate that he is further on in his years. Agur understands that, like every man and woman, boy and girl, we will and we do face death. That’s just the stage of life that he is in. Obviously he is a little bit more aware of it, that it could be a little bit closer than it could have been maybe twenty, thirty years before that. And because of this, it sharpens his understanding of who he is as a creature before the Creator.
In the time of the Reformation, the reformers, a number of the reformers recovered and they retrieved a Latin phrase that had been missing from the church for about 200 years. It comes from the medieval church. And it was the Latin phrase, “ars moriendi.” And “ars moriendi” really can be translated as “the art of dying well.” And the reformers, the reason that they recovered it and incorporated it into the teaching of the church was that they believed and they understood very clearly that in order for a Christian to die well, they needed to know how to live well. In order to die well, you needed to live well. And so you have a statement from Petrus Van Mastricht, he’s one of the Dutch reformers, who would interpret “ars moriendi” as “the art of living for God through Christ.” In other words, from the moment that you are captured by the grace of God, your life is transformed and you live in a way and a manner that gives glory and honor to God and is pleasing in his sight. So that by the time you come to the day of your death you look back and you give praise and thanks to God for His faithfulness in sustaining you all your years.
Agur is a Praying Man
And then fifthly, he’s not just a humble man, he’s not just a worshipful man, experiential believer, a dying man, Agur is a man of prayer. And that brings us to the verses, verses 7 through 9, that I want us to focus on. Friends, even at this point, I do need to press home a couple of questions. Are these characteristics present in your own life? Has God humbled you and has He humbled me in such a way that we live a life of worship to Him? Do we experientially know that God has graciously brought the power of His Word to bear upon our lives, changing us and making us conscious that we too are dying and we are living in a dying world, and because we are living in a dying world, that that actually compels us to be a people of prayer? Maybe I can suggest to you if these elements are not there, maybe we need to ask the Lord to renew us and to revive us that the spiritual truth that is embedded in God’s Word would become real to us once again, that we wouldn’t just go through the motions. We live in a constant distraction of worldliness all around us. How we need this with each new day. These are basic marks of grace, friends, and they’re vital if we are going to pray the right way, so to speak.
Agur’s Prayer for Spiritual Protection
So, verse 7, Agur says, “Two things I ask of you” – And I know that many of you are stopping at that point and thinking, “Seriously, Agur, two things? You want to see my prayer list?” But I want you to see the wisdom of Agur’s all-encompassing petitions. His first petition is an expression of his spiritual need, and the second petition is an expression of his physical need before God. It’s very similar if you look at what he prays to what Jesus Christ taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer. In the Lord’s Prayer we have six petitions – three that are directed to God and three that are directed to ourselves as we live out our lives in reliance and in dependence upon God. These are model prayers. The ultimate model prayer is that of the Lord Jesus. And they really are model prayers because they encapsulate the totality of what it means to be a physical-spiritual being and to be in reliance upon God.
So let me ask you. Do you want to know how to pray to avoid worldliness and to pursue that which brings true joy? Well firstly, notice how Agur prays. He prays for his spiritual sustenance and protection and his vitality. Verse 8, “Remove far from me vanity and lying.” Now in the ESV you’ve got the word “falsehood.” A more punchy translation is that of “vanity.” It’s in the same semantic range. But he says, “Remove far from me vanity and lying.” It’s a little strange, don’t you think? And the reason I say that is, here is a man who is praying, “Lord, before I die,” and then he doesn’t turn to pray, “Lord, grow me in grace,” or “Give me deeper, more intimate communion with Christ.” He doesn’t pray, “Give me a glimpse of Your splendor and glory as You are seated in majesty.” That’s not what he’s praying. His prayer is, “Remove from me vanity and lies.”
What’s going on here? Why is he praying this? Well let us remember that vanity is emptiness, it’s meaninglessness, as Ecclesiastes teaches us. And vanity refers to something that is not real, it’s artificial, it’s false; hence the ESV translates it as “falsehood.” Vanity refers to something that is without substance from an eternal perspective. Essentially, vanity is idolatry. It is putting one’s reliance and trust in that which is absolutely meaningless. It cannot provide what we ultimately need. And so he prays, “Remove vanity and lies from me. Don’t allow me to think for a moment that meaning is to be found or true wisdom is to be found apart from You, O God. Keep me dependent upon You. Keep me mindful. I don’t want to live a meaningless life. I don’t want to succumb to the sinful desires of a stupid man who lacks understanding,” as he says in verse 2. “Let that not be true of me, and so keep me from the lusts of the eyes and the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life. Father, I want to live a meaningful life before You. Help me. I want a vibrant, intimate communion with You because of what You have accomplished for me on my behalf. And so remove everything in my life that is a distraction from that.”
And then he says, “Remove lying.” So what’s a lie? Of course there’s different ways of defining a lie, but you might consider this to be an option – that a lie is defined as “the twisting of truth until it becomes the opposite of the truth.” It’s the twisting of truth until it becomes the opposite of the truth. You know what it’s like. You tell a little white lie; it’s a slight deviation of what is absolutely true. And if it’s left to its ultimate course, its end is a complete deviation from where it should have been. And friends, if we tell lies, we have moved away from the truth and that makes us unreliable and untrustworthy. And if we are deadly honest, each and every one of us is guilty of that, perhaps even in the last week, perhaps even today in some shape or form. And so this prayer is really close to home that we too can be praying this, asking God to help us to repent and to turn back. And so again, Agur prays, “Lord, don’t let me play games with myself. Don’t let me be self-deceived into thinking that a lie doesn’t impact my communion with You or my fellowship with other human beings or the trajectory of my life. Keep me mindful that what I sow, so shall I reap. Please keep me from pursuing the world’s ways. Don’t let me set my heart and my mind on the world’s things. Don’t let me cozy up to those things, Lord. Keep me from vanity and lies and ultimately,” what can really be encapsulated here, “Keep me from worldliness.”
Back in the 1600s, one of the Puritans, William Greenhill, he wrote a treatise called, “Stop Loving the World,” and it was based on an exposition of 1 John chapter 2 which says, “Do not love the creatures of the world, the customs and the fashions of the world or the splendor, the pomp, the glory and the worship of the world.” And he went on then to go on and do a little bit of an exposition and the application was, “What does it mean to love the world?” Well great, we read that in Scripture but what does that look like in our lives? And he gave about 20 or 25 points – I’m not going to give you all 25 points, but I do want to put a couple of points before you just to consider. “To love the world”, Greenhill would go on to say, is “to hold it in high account, to give it priority above the call of Christ.” He goes on to say that, “to love the world is to have one’s thoughts fixed on the world because we know that as a person loves, they love where their thoughts are.” And what he was doing is, he’s saying, “Do you really love and treasure that which is promised to you in the Gospel or is your attention taken somewhere else?”
“To love the world is to have strong desires after the world and to set one’s heart and affections upon the world and to employ most of our strength in, on and about the things of the world with the purpose to accumulate the things of the world.” Do you see what he’s doing there? He’s taking what Jesus says – that you are to love the Lord with heart, soul, mind and strength – and he’s turning it around and saying, “Perhaps you are using your heart, soul, mind and strength to actually show and display a love for the things of this world, of this realm rather than that which is promised to you in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” “To love the world is to eagerly endure great hardships for the world while finding God’s ordinances burdensome.” And he uses the example of the Sabbath. Essentially what he’s saying is, to commit yourself to Sabbath Day worship is burdensome, but when there is a difficulty in the office or in the employment situation, you’ll use all your faculties to press on and apply yourself in order to press through that which is in front of you. He’s challenging our priorities. And the final one that I want to mention is he says that, “To love the world is to employ the tools and the traits of worldly gestures and speech and action.”
Now don’t think for a moment that Greenhill, once he’s done this analysis, is then actually suggesting that we need to be a people who are withdrawing from life itself and go and live in a monastery somewhere. Not at all. What Greenhill is actually driving home here is, because you have been set apart, because you are not your own, you need to cast off the world while you are living in the world. Keep the distinction. And so again, as Agur prays, “Remove vanity and lies from me.” Why is he praying this? I think there’s a couple of reasons why he is praying this, what’s driving this. The first one goes back to the opening verses. He knows his own heart. That’s why he’s praying for the Lord’s intervention and help here. He knows that if he is left to himself, he will pursue all the vain things that charm him most. And so he asks God, “Help me here.”
And secondly, I also think he is praying this because he genuinely wants this. Remember, he is born again. He is a believer and he longs for a deeper, more intimate communion with God. Isn’t that was every true believer longs for? We want more of Christ, never to be satisfied with what we have at this present moment, but we long for more and more and more of Him. Brothers and sisters, do you have a healthy fear of God? Are you aware of the treachery and the deceit, even in its seed form, that is located in your heart, in your soul? And do you long for and do you intentionally cultivate spiritual vitality, asking God to keep your perspective on that which is above? And if this is not true of you, if this is not true of you, perhaps you need to ask the Lord, “Lord, have I been spiritually lulled to sleep? Have I become a person who has taken on spiritual lethargy, that I have forgotten the priorities as I live out my life? Father, pour out Your grace,” we should pray. “Pour out Your grace and allow us to be newly captured by just who You are and who I am before You.”
Agur’s Prayer for Physical Provision
And that brings us to the second point, and that is to consider Agur’s prayer where he is praying for physical provision. Look at verse 8 once again where he says, “Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches.” When he speaks of poverty here it’s a reference to the necessities of life. And essentially what he’s doing, he’s praying, he’s asking God that in every season of life, “God will you just provide shelter and clothing and the food and the water, those things that are central to my existence as a human being.” One could say that Agur actually has a very healthy fear of being very poor. Why? Well if you look at verse 9 you’ll see why. He doesn’t want to be tempted. He doesn’t want to be drawn into a situation that might cause him to “profane the name of my God.” Do you hear the factor that is driving his plea and his prayer? It’s the honor and the glory of the name of God Himself and his witness to Him. Again, you have to marvel at Agur’s self-awareness. It’s refreshing. There’s an honesty here. He understands his heart and he understands where his heart will take him if left to his own devices. And so he prays, “Don’t give me poverty.”
And then he says this. He prays, “Don’t give me riches.” I wonder when was the last time any of us prayed that? I think that Agur understands the inclinations of his own heart and he does not trust himself with the abundance of riches and worldly possessions. If he had too much, perhaps he would be distracted and he wouldn’t have that longing for more of God and enjoy the intimacy of that communion that he’s had for so long. Agur is simply not willing to lose the intimate fellowship with God. No gold in this world is worth what he has found as the pearl of great price as we heard this evening. “Therefore, give me not riches,” he prays.
Now I do need to add this – and it’s been mentioned many times from the pulpit but we do need to be reminded, that the Bible is clear that possessions and wealth and riches are not inherently bad in and of themselves. Wealthy believers in each generation have been used mightily for God and for the extension of the kingdom. But it all comes down to how we are stewarding that which God had entrusted to us. And I think that Agur has a healthy fear. Let me read verse 9. He says, “lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’” He doesn’t want to get to that point where he turns away.
Friends, both poverty and riches can be a snare. Here’s what J.C. Ryle wrote many years ago in a little treatise called, “Riches and Poverty.” He said, “Money is one of the most unsatisfying of possessions. It takes away some cares, no doubt, but it brings with it quite as many cares as it takes away. There is trouble in getting it. There is anxiety in keeping it. There are temptations in the use of it. There is guilt in the abuse of it. There is sorrow in the losing of it.” And I think that both J.C. Ryle and Agur from our text, they understand very well that whatever we have been entrusted with this side of glory is going to remain here when we are gone to be with our Savior. Whatever God entrusts to us here on Earth is to be stewarded, is to be used for the glory of God and for the extension of His kingdom. It is to build up treasure in heaven, so to speak. And this is the perspective that I think Agur longs for us to ponder, just to reflect upon. What is going on in the inner recesses of our own heart? What do we think about these things? How do we treat it? And so, “Keep me from poverty. Don’t give me riches. Just give me something in between.”
That’s very similar to what Jesus taught us to pray, “Give this day my daily bread.” In other words, “Provide so that I am taken care of so that I am ultimately, at the beginning of the day, I am dependent upon You. During the course of the day I am dependent upon You. At the end of the day I can give thanks to You because You have shown Yourself to be faithful and good and caring and so much more.” He’s reminding the believer that every good gift comes down to us from the Father of lights. It’s from our Father in heaven. And friends, more than that, everything that you have, everything that is in your possession, all of that, it ultimately all pales in comparison to the gift of righteousness that has come our way as a gift of the Father because of the work of Jesus Christ Himself. And so in Christ, if you are repenting and if you are believing on the Lord Jesus, everything we are, everything we have is blood bought through the atoning work of the Lamb of God and it is a gift of God to you. Steward it wisely, is what Agur is getting at.
Let me close with this. One writer put, he wrote this. He said, “Jesus had no pillow to lay His head and no place to call home. He was stripped of His clothes on the cross and had water and bread withheld so that all that we have is truly a gift of grace.” Just remember that you are nothing without God and His goodness to us, and yet you are everything, you are the apple of the Father’s eye because of the work of Jesus Christ. We need wisdom every day, don’t we? Doing that which is right is not always obvious to us. And quite honestly, if you go and read the whole of Proverbs 30 you’ll see that verses 7 through 9, prayer, it is the warp and the woof of the Christian’s desire to live wisely to the glory and the honor and the praise of God. And I guess my prayer this evening is that we would also consider praying along with Agur, “Give me neither riches nor poverty; keep me from vanity and lies.” But ultimately may we be a people who pray for the richness of God’s grace, that He would lavish that upon us not for that in and of itself, but that He may lavish it upon us so that we may be agents of grace to lavish His grace upon others as we proclaim these unsearchable riches. May God help us as we go from this place this evening. Let’s bow our heads in prayer. Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we give You thanks and we give You praise for Your Word that instructs us. It encourages us. It drives home the truth as to how you call us to live and yet how far we sometimes fall short. And so Father, even this evening we pray that You would forgive us for those areas that we are consciously aware of where we have fallen short. Father, help us to have a right perspective on how dependent we are upon You with all our spiritual needs and all our physical needs. And Father, we pray that as we become increasingly aware of it, Lord, that that would also change our lives in the way that we respond in worship and in thanksgiving and in praise. And so Father, receive our praise this evening we ask. Be at work in our lives and use us even in this coming week. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.