The Chapter 30 Diner (8)

 

 

Three questions (Proverbs 30:4): "Who has gathered the wind in His fists? Who has wrapped the waters in His garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth?" This brings to mind questions that God Himself asks Job:

 

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Who set its measurements? Who enclosed the sea with doors? Have you ever in your life commanded the morning, and caused the dawn to know its place? Can you lead forth a constellation in its season?”

 

These are just a few of the many questions that Yahweh asks Job in Job chapters 38 – 41, questions coming one after another and overwhelming Job to the point where he says to God, “I repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). It is a good thing to see our Creator and to do so by not looking into a mirror, but to consider creation and know that there is indeed One who is greater than I am, than you are, than we are.

 

Agur had friends, Job had friends, but other than young Elihu who finally had enough of Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar; Job’s friends added to the confusion, they did not lend themselves to thoughtful and prayerful discourse and friendship. While Agur provides us with a picture of humility, “Surely I am more stupid than any man,” Job and three of his friends attempt to not only out posture one another, but they foolishly try to out posture God, they speak as if they are not in His Presence, as if He does not know what they are saying and what is in their hearts; they frankly talk too much and they talk as if they know the mysteries of life, including why Job is experiencing terrible loss and affliction.

 

However, when Yahweh began speaking they all shut up. All of a sudden these four wise men were dumb, for they could not answer God’s questions. They had talked and talked and talked for chapter after chapter, and all of a sudden they have nothing to say. They hear all of God’s questions, and yet they cannot answer even one of them, until Job gives the only answer that is appropriate, “Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to You? I lay my hand on my mouth….I repent in dust and ashes” (Job 40:4; 42:6).

 

This reminds me of a time when an employee of mine accidently called me on his cell phone and didn’t know he had done so. I overhead him talking to some of his staff about me and something I had talked to him about. As I listened I realized that he hadn’t really understood what I had told him; he especially didn’t understand my reasoning behind a decision I’d made. Job and three of his friends talked and talked about God, yet they didn’t know what they were talking about – and God was listening. God is always listening, we would do well to remember that, for Jesus says that we’ll account for every idle word we have spoken. I think that this is especially true of our presumptuous words, our pompous words, our posturing words.

 

Paul considered himself “the least among the apostles,” Agur thought himself stupid, the centurion whose servant was dying considered himself not worthy that Jesus should come to his home. Paul writes in Galatians 6:3, “For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” We know that pride comes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Paul also writes (1 Cor. 10:12), “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.”

 

Agur was not as stupid as he said he was, and yet he was and he knew it, and yet he wasn’t as is evidenced by what he shared with his friends Ithiel and Ucal. But what about Job and his three friends? What about them, these men who knew all the answers, answers to questions that perhaps no one was even asking?

 

(I do want to mention that when we are in deep pain and affliction, as Job was, that we can lose our equilibrium; during these times we need others to carry us, to wait with us, to be patient with us, we need friends who know how to just be quiet and “be” with us, reassuring us of God’s love and care for us. We need to give others in affliction room to say what they need to say, and we need not be the righteous theological police critiquing their words, we need to be friends and trust our friend to God.)

 

Well, what do you think? Who shall we have coffee with this morning? Who shall we learn from as positive and godly examples? Who shall we suggest others model themselves after? Shall it be Job and his three friends, or shall it be Agur and the boys?

The Chapter 30 Diner (5)

 

 

“For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross the sea for us, to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it?’ But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it.” Deuteronomy 30:11 – 14.

 

Might have Agur been thinking of this passage in Proverbs 30:4? Of course we don’t really know, but let’s take a look at it nevertheless because it is an element of the Biblical motif of ascending and descending, and of descending and ascending.

 

Consider the context of our Deuteronomy passage, Moses is speaking some of his last words to the people of Israel as he prepares to be taken by Yahweh. How have the people been accustomed to hearing the word of God? How did they hear it in Egypt? How did they hear it in the Wilderness? Where did Moses go to receive the Ten Commandments? Where was Moses when he received God’s commandments concerning the Tabernacle and Levitical system of worship?

 

Moses had served as a mediator between Yahweh and Israel. Moses brought the Word of Yahweh to the people of Israel in Egypt. Moses went up Mount Sinai to meet with God and to bring God’s Word back down the mountain to the people. Moses also communed with God outside the camp in “the tent of meeting” (Exodus 33:7); neither the mountain nor the tent was accessible to the people. The people of Israel were unaccustomed to having the Word of God accessible to them, they had to rely on a mediator.

 

But now, in giving his last words to Israel, Moses says to them, “But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it.” That which had been outside of them was now inside of them. That for which they depended on a mediator was now theirs to access, engage with, and to obey.

 

In the account of Moses, can we see a foreshadowing of Jesus in the Upper Room?

 

“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” (John 14:16 – 17).

 

“These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” (John 14:25 – 26).

 

What was Moses saying in Deuteronomy 30:11 – 14? At the very least, at its most basic, Moses was saying that there is a Way to live that is outside the Levitical Law, a Way that has always been accessible to men and women created in God’s image – the Way of faith, the Way of Abraham, the Way which is our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 4; Galatians 4).

 

We see this in Romans 10:6 - 8:

 

“But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: Do not say in your heart, Who will ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down), or Who will descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart – that is, the word of faith which we are preaching…”

 

We respond to this “word of faith” internally, by confessing Jesus as Lord with our mouth and believing in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, and thus are saved and made righteous in Jesus Christ (Romans 10:9 – 10).

 

And yet, is this our testimony? Is it our testimony in terms of the Way we live, and of the Way that lives in us? Going back to the above passages in John 14, are we living in communion with the Holy Spirit? Indeed, with the Holy Trinity? When many Christians speak of having a “testimony,” we often mean a testimony of initial salvation and we seem satisfied to leave it at that, as if signing on some unseen dotted line is the beginning and end of our faith, our experience, our testimony. But what are we to learn from the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13)? Can we not see that simply witnessing seed sprout is hardly soil for an enduring testimony?

 

How many of us speak of the Holy Spirit as a Friend? A Comforter? A Teacher? How does our relationship with the Holy Spirit compare with what Jesus portrays in John chapters 14 – 16? To reduce the Holy Spirit to promptings of conscience, or feelings, or certain thoughts, is hardly to speak in terms of an intimate relationship, of an ongoing and growing and maturing life in the Trinity. Yes, the Holy Spirit speaks to us through thoughts and feelings and conscience, but this is not a relationship, at best these are modes of communication.

 

To know the Holy Spirit is to worship the Holy Spirit. Are we worshipping Him, for He is God? To know the Holy Spirit is to obey the Holy Spirit, for He is God. To know the Holy Spirit is to have the Living Word dwelling in us, speaking to us, growing in us…as our Way of Life.

 

Are we living as if “the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may observe it”?

 

Am I?

 

Are you?

 

Are our congregations?