Devotion by Tom Siderius (MI)
Agur son of Jakeh is not normally a familiar character in our English Bibles. Here we are reading right along with the chapters of Proverbs, mining every nugget of gold and truth from these verses and wondering how Solomon is so wise. And now along comes Agur who writes a whole chapter in the book and is a complete unknown to us.
His name “Agur” can be translated to mean “gatherer” and his father’s name Jakeh means “pious”. So from the name we gain some clues about who this man may have been. He could have been a scholar or writer of their time who wrote down or compiled wise sayings, maybe even from Solomon himself. It is a mystery for us, but we can see from his writing God’s familiar wisdom pattern. He compares the physical with the eternal, the earthly with the heavenly, and the corrupt with the pure.
Agur starts with some statements which are deeply humble in God’s sight and remind me of the later chapters of Job where the majesty of God is compared to our puny, small efforts of this earth.
Proverbs 30:1-4(NLT) The sayings of Agur son of Jakeh contain this message.
I am weary, O God;
I am weary and worn out, O God.
2 I am too stupid to be human,
and I lack common sense.
3 I have not mastered human wisdom,
nor do I know the Holy One.
4 Who but God goes up to heaven and comes back down?
Who holds the wind in his fists?
Who wraps up the oceans in his cloak?
Who has created the whole wide world?
What is his name—and his son’s name?
Tell me if you know!
Right when it seems that I have the wisdom of God for a situation figured out and internalized in my life then failure rears its ugly head. I am confronted with the reality that there is nothing I can do for God that would indebt Him to me for my goodness. Nor can I accomplish any great work that God could not do by lifting his little finger. When we begin to approach God by understanding that with Him we are everything, and without Him we are a complete nothing, then we start to gain wisdom. The only thing we can do for God is to love Him and believe His Word. This is Agur’s message in chapter 30 to us.
Proverbs 30:5-9(NLT) Every word of God proves true.
He is a shield to all who come to him for protection.
6 Do not add to his words,
or he may rebuke you and expose you as a liar.
7 O God, I beg two favors from you;
let me have them before I die.
8 First, help me never to tell a lie.
Second, give me neither poverty nor riches!
Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.
9 For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the LORD?”
And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.
Jesus prays in the Lord’s Prayer: “give us today the bread of our need”. Our prayers and our desires need to be grounded in what we truly need, and what God is so willing to give us. Our words and actions need to be true to His Word, and we need to stop telling lies to ourselves or to others to shade statements to give ourselves the credit.
I was a truck salesman for more than 40 years during my career. Shades of truth in statements about what was good for the customers are sources of scorn and humor about how salesman deal with people. My products and services weren’t always the best but those were the ones I had to sell to our customers. I always took the view that I would not lie about anything but also promise that my efforts, and that of our dealership, would support their purchases. Greed for riches would turn my lips to lies, acknowledging God’s sufficiency for myself and family made telling the truth an easy path.
What are the easy lies that come to your lips?
How do we guard against this?
Look at some more of these pure gold statements that are recorded for us to read by our teacher Agur..
Proverbs 30:18-19(NLT) There are three things that amaze me—
no, four things that I don’t understand:
19 how an eagle glides through the sky,
how a snake slithers on a rock,
how a ship navigates the ocean,
how a man loves a woman.
Just like our explaining to God how He should form, make and create the world and everything in it, we cannot explain from human knowledge exactly how these things work. We think we know and understand but true to humility towards God will show us the shallow nature of our understanding and knowledge. Only God’s wisdom is eternal and everlasting.
Reflection Questions
- See 2 questions above in bold.
- What can bring us to true humility?
- How can we turn these lights of understanding towards our hearts and lives?
Prayer
Abba Father, give us today the bread of our need and lead us in paths of righteousness following Your Son and our Savior. God, we have no words or explanations for Your greatness and Your love for us. Help us today to turn our hearts to hear, give us ears to hear Your voice. In the name of our Savior Jesus Christ we pray.
Seek Grow Love 