Who Is Agur
This
chapter is attributed to a person who went by the name Agur. I’m going to be honest. We don’t have a clue who this is. It’s most likely not Solomon, though. So as we study this chapter we can honestly
speak of the author of Proverbs rather than of Solomon.
Limitations
The
opening set of verses is rather humbling.
In fact, I find them slightly sarcastic – but in a very helpful
way. The true man understands they get
tired. The true man understands in the
end just how little any one of us can actually understand about life. The true man is repentant and humble enough
to accept that they don’t actually have access to very much wisdom at all. The true man in the end is able to understand
that they really can’t go up to heaven on their own and they are completely and
totally dependent upon God for salvation.
The true man understands their work in the grand scheme of things.
Before I Die
The next
section – verses 7 through 9 – also gives a really helpful perspective. Look at what the author says about life. “Give me two things before I die.” Now, before I go too far forward, let me ask
you. How would you finish that
request? How would you have finished
that request when you were 20? How would
you have finished that request at 15? If
you could ask of any two things from God, for what would you ask?
Here’s how
the author of this chapter finishes that thought. First, remove falsehood and lying from my
life. Second, feed me with food that I
really need. Let me summarize a little
more generically. First, help me to be
righteous. Second, give me what I need,
not what I want. I find those thoughts
really helpful in setting a perspective on life. What should be our heart’s desire? Our heart should be set on God and God’s
ways. We should want righteousness. We should want whatever God deems that we
need.
The Psychology of Sin
I find the
psychology of Proverbs 30:20 very interesting.
The adulteress goes about life and thinks that she isn’t doing anything
wrong. Now, we can talk about this with
respect to adultery. But we can talk
about this psychology with just about any unrepentant sin. The danger of unrepentant sins is that the
more we do them the less we see the danger.
The more we do sin the more we can justify our actions. The more we accomplish sin, the easier it is
for us to go about life as though absolutely nothing is wrong. We become blind to our sin the more we
welcome unrepentant sin into our life.
I like how
this chapter ends. The author picks up
on this same general theme to which I have just been speaking. “If you’ve been fooling yourself,” the author
says, “listen up. If you’ve been
devising evil, pay attention.” The
author is talking to those people who aren’t really paying attention to what
they are doing.
What is it
that the author says about these circumstances?
Pressing this behavior will only bring about bad results. Just as you get curds when you press much of
the moisture out of milk, strife comes when you spent too much time dwelling in
anger. Sin comes when we spent too much
time in unchecked living. We need to
evaluate ourselves on a regular basis.
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