Well, we're going to be continuing on in Proverbs, looking at a small slice from Proverbs chapter 30, but a very important principle. Proverbs 30 and then verses 7 through 9. Well, as we've been going through Proverbs, you know, we've switched from the primary author of Proverbs. Who wrote most of the Proverbs, kids? Yes. Solomon, Shlomo in the Hebrew, wrote the majority of the Proverbs, but now we are coming to Proverbs that were not written by Solomon. These are Proverbs in chapter 30, the ones we're looking at, were written by who knows? Ager, that's right. Yes, Ager wrote these. We don't know much, as I said last week, about Ager, but we know that he was a man who was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and he wrote down some words of great wisdom, as we'll see, for us to think about. But before we turn to these words that the Lord gave to Ager, let us turn to the Lord himself and ask for his blessing tonight. Please join me. Oh, Sovereign Lord, I do pray now that you would be here in our assembly, that you would help us to understand the Word. We're about to discuss a very important concept contentment in what we have, which is something, Lord, that most people don't have. And I pray, Lord, that you would bring this home to us and to our children, keep us alert and awake. Drive away the devil as he seeks to snatch away the seed as it's falling. Help me to divide your word. I do pray, Lord, that you would give me your inspiration and that you would give me liberty and unction as I'm preaching. May it be that your people hear your word and glorify you for it. May we O Lord, decrease and make Christ increase. We pray this in His name. Amen. Proverbs chapter 30 and verses 7 through 9, I do remind you, this is the word of the Lord. Two things I request of you. Deprive me not before I die. Remove falsehood and lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food allotted to me, lest I be full and deny you and say, who is the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steel and profane the name of my God. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Polls are sometimes interesting things because of the things that they tell us, because of the things that they don't tell us, and because of the way sometimes that people answer them. It's often the case that when you're asked a poll question, pollsters at least have found this, that the people who are asked them don't actually answer with the thing that they really believe because they know they're not supposed to say what they really believe. And so instead they give the answer that they think they're supposed to give. One of the questions that is asked from time to time by pollsters are questions about money, their feelings about money. How important is it to you, for instance, to be rich is a question that pollsters will sometimes ask. And the interesting thing is they find that only about 20% of Americans say that being wealthy or very wealthy is very important to them. They don't rate it very high. Younger people tend to be more willing to say, yes, being wealthy is very important to me than older people. But regardless, not many people will say that it's very important to them. But I think a more, shall we say, truthful test of the way people feel can actually be seen in lottery ticket sales within the United States. Obviously, if the idea of being wealthy wasn't important to people, then nobody would have been buying Mega Millions tickets over the weekend, because of course your objective in buying those tickets, even though your chances of winning are astronomically low, and I mean astronomically low, even though your chances are not very good of winning, your objective is not to lose. Somebody's got to win, everybody says, and it's their objective to score that billion dollars that was out there in the pot. For instance, in 2016, in terms of lottery sales, those were the most current statistics I could find, North Carolina alone sold around $3 billion worth of lottery tickets. And a more important number is that that was roughly $218 a year per person. in North Carolina. So we may say that being wealthy is not important to us, but we act in a way that isn't quite indicative of that. A much larger proportion of the population are buying lottery tickets and trying to get rich. Clearly, the desire to get rich is more pervasive, perhaps, than we are willing to admit. And I think Bunyan was probably right when he wrote, give me not riches is scarce the prayer of one in 10,000. And yet, that's one of the things that Agur says here. He asks, he says here, give me neither poverty nor riches. And perhaps we can understand, you know, from the heart, why anybody would pray, give me not poverty. Well, we understand that. Being poor is no fun. But give me not riches? Why would he say that? Well, we're going to examine that and find out why being poor and being rich is difficult, and perhaps being rich is even more difficult spiritually than being poor. Agur was well aware of these things, apparently. And he wanted his listeners to understand the dangers involved in poverty enriches the spiritual dangers. In particular, he had talked about, you remember when he opened up Proverbs 30, he had made this statement that he was more stupid than any man and that he had not learned wisdom himself as he begins to address the Lord. And yet, when we look at his prayer here, we see There is a great wisdom. Prayer is perhaps the most accurate test of a man of God. It shows their heart's true conviction. You are who you are on your knees before God when you're alone. And here, Agur shows himself to have possessed actually deep wisdom and great spiritual understanding. He starts out by saying, remove falsehood and lies from me. Now, in the KJV version, and I don't often prefer the KJV to the New King James Version in its translation, I think the KJV hits it a little better here. It doesn't say falsehoods. Does anybody know what it says? No, it says... What? No, close though. It says vanity. Now, falsehood, we all know what falsehood is. Falsehood would be lies and things that aren't true. But vanity also carries this idea of emptiness. It appears to be something, but it's not. It isn't real. It doesn't bring what it advertises with it. And the King James Version, as I said, used the word vanity rather than falsehood. Vanity is the way of the world. It's not for nothing that John Bunyan, when he wrote his Pilgrim's Progress, when he has the pilgrims passing through the world, he has them passing through Vanity Fair. It's a place where all of the lies of the world are peddled. Vanity is the character of the world, and lies are the delusions that we tell to one another. We promise happiness. The world promises us happiness. But what does it do? It disappoints consistently. It puts us in a treadmill where we're constantly trying to grasp. I remember this cartoon many, many years ago. The cartoons of the 1930s had a slapstick and a charm of their own to them that I think is lost, and certainly in modern anime, especially because of all the weird facial features that you get in anime. Nobody actually, you know, is surprised in a way that you would, oh, you know, it's a lot. But in the 1930s, the cartoons were amazing in many ways. And I remember this one picture of a fellow who had devised a means of getting his washing machine working. There was no electricity in the house. So what he did was he erected a stick and he hung a cheeseburger from it by a string. And then he put his friend on the treadmill and his friend is grasping or trying to get to the cheeseburger and he's running on the treadmill. And the treadmill is powering the washing machine behind him. But unfortunately, there's a part of that that shows the way the world works. It puts the promise before us. And we spend our life, you know, on the treadmill trying to get to it, and we never get what's promised. We spend our time tiring ourselves out, attempting to get all of these things, all of these riches and wealth and honor and so on. And even if we come close to achieving the things that the world says will make us happy, we find at the end They don't make us happy. They make us disappointed. They make us restless and they make us weary. And all of these things that the world offers, they're all part of the spiritual game that the devil plays with us. The devil, as I've said often, is not wise. If he was wise, he would bow the knee before the Lord Jesus Christ and repent and believe. That is not going to happen. However, he is sly. And he knows that old adage that you get more flies with honey than vinegar. So he offers a lot of honey. He offers wealth. He offers pleasure. He offers honors. And he offers all of these things. But what is he trying to do? He's trying to turn our hearts away from heaven. to turn our hearts away from the consideration of the things that really count, the last fraternity, and to find all of our supposed pleasure and happiness in the things of this present world. He wants us constantly concentrating on the things of the earth, and He brings worldly goods before us so close that they eclipse Christ, that we can't see Him as a result. John reminds us in 1 John 2.16, speaking of this, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. And if we follow these things, we will not be able to follow Christ. We can't serve God and money. is one of the things that Jesus told us. And if we make getting the treasures of this world our aim, our ambition, if we make riches what we live for, whether or not we're rich or we're poor, we will turn away from spiritual things. Now, anyone who is wise will know this. The Proverbs have talked about the emptiness of riches, and when you're done with the Proverbs, spend some time looking at Ecclesiastes if you want to see really an extended treatise on the vanity, the emptiness of riches, and that wasn't written by somebody who had no experience. Solomon says, I tried this, I tried that, I tried everything that was offered to me, and at the end, he goes through this long list of things that are supposed to make people happy, And he concludes, vanity, vanity, all is vanity. It's empty. It ultimately, it didn't bring me the happiness that I wanted. It didn't bring me the contentment, the wisdom, or any of the good things. And Ager knew this as well. Ager says, remove far from me this vanity and these lies, all the peddling of these things before me. And he asks that the temptations to worldliness would be taken from him. Now, one of the things that you will see in the Bible is that great themes that we're supposed to pay attention to are repeated more than once. Agur isn't the only one who says, lead me not into temptation, right? Who else said that? Jesus, when he was teaching us to pray. It should be our daily prayer that the temptations of the world, the temptations that will lead us into idolatry and all sorts of evil would be removed from us as far as they can be removed. Instead, what Eger asked for is relief from the two extremes. and to be content. He does not wish to be poor and he does not wish to be rich because he knows that both of these things can lead him in spiritually destructive directions. So what does he ask to be? He asks, make me content with what I need. Give me neither of these things. Give me, and I know Elder King loves this phrase, give me a competent portion. Give me as much as I truly need. Now, our tendency, if we're honest, is to want more than we need. It's the case with food. It's the case with money. It's the case with houses. How many times have you seen these pictures of these houses? You know, I'm sometimes boggled by this. We have a friend who's a very talented real estate photographer, and she takes these pictures of these grand mansions that in a million years I'd never be able to live in. And they have these ceilings you could fit, you know, a 747 in their foyer right there with no problems. And yet, how many people are living in this house? Two people, generally speaking. And they are these vast caverns that they build for themselves, and perhaps they can fill them with treasure, perhaps, you know, the mortgage payment makes that impossible, but you don't need that much house. And yet so many people think that they have to have it or they will not be content. We want more than we need all across the board. All we really need, as Thomas Watson reminds us, though, is a bit by the way, enough to bear my charges till I come to heaven, and it suffices. That's all we really need, enough to get us through day by day. And Jesus tells us that the Lord is concerned with our wants. No, that's not what He says. He says, the Lord knows what we need, and He will give us what we need. That's what He gives to His people when He gives to them. For instance, let's take the example of the manna in the wilderness. The Lord gave them bread, but He never gave them a surplus. In Exodus 16, people go out to gather. Some gather much, and some gather little. But we read in Exodus 16, 18, so when they measured it by omers, he who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack. every man had gathered according to each one's need. And so when the Lord is providing food for us directly, He gives us exactly what we need. Not so much that we're, you know, grumbling in the tummy and feeling, oh, I don't have enough, and not so much that we eat and eat and eat and get sick at the end of the day. It's bad, brothers and sisters, obviously, to have too much. It's not good for us. It's bad also to have too little. Too little tempts us to do what? to steal, to take what is ours. Or if we don't steal, then to covet and to say, it's not fair. Why is it that they have so much and I have so little? So many revolutions have been powered simply by simple envy. These people have a lot, I have a little, it's not fair. And what we do is we end up making the stuff, the material goods, our idol. We fix our eyes on these things and we begin to adore them, to worship them, to desire them. Oh, but riches, they are as much of a temptation as poverty towards sin. Jesus, of course, never condemned wealth in and of itself, but he was very aware of its dangers. What does wealth do? It makes people arrogant. It makes them self-centered. It can make them very cold-hearted. It can be a curse because we end up serving it, desiring it above all things. It was riches that caused that rich young ruler to turn away from following Christ. Christ addressed him about his heart problems. This was a man who thought that he'd kept the commandments, but the first commandment is what? You shall have no other gods before me." There should be nothing in our hearts that takes a place before God. We shouldn't love nothing more than God. And so Jesus confronts him. He says, go sell all that you have and then come follow me. But he won't do that because his heart is set on the riches, on the abundance of things. They've taken the place of God. He had here a chance to follow the Messiah and yet he squandered it for worldly wealth and titles. Jesus also, you remember in the parable of the sower, one of the situations was he spoke about the seed that was sown amongst the thorns and the thorns grew up and they choked out the seed. Now the seed was what? Seed is the gospel, right? And in Mark 4, 18, he explained to his disciples what that meant. He said, now these are the ones sown among thorns. They are the ones who hear the word And the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the Word, and it becomes unfruitful. Far too often, when somebody starts out in the Christian faith, they don't have much. But then often it's the case that their new lives, their newfound discipline, and so on, all of these things lead to prosperity. I read to you a while back what Cotton Mather had said, that religion gave birth to prosperity and the child killed the mother. Prosperity chokes out religion. Thomas Watson wrote this, he said, It must be a strong head that bears heady wine. He had need, have much wisdom and grace that knows how to bear a high condition. It's hard to carry a full cup without spilling and a full estate without sinning. And when that rising tide of economic prosperity raises our boats higher, the problem is many men's hearts tend to rise with the tide. They become proud. And the devil can use pride against us. And often he does. It was pride that was his downfall, you remember. The devil began at the pinnacle. He was, in terms of the created order, amongst the most powerful beings ever made. He was one of the angels. Not just an ordinary angel, though. One of the leading angels. And yet, that wasn't enough for him. He wanted more. He was so proud, he wanted to be like God, and it was his undoing. But then he used that to bring us down as well, that desire for more than we had. I mean, think about it. Adam and Eve had exactly everything that they needed in the garden. When the Lord provides for us in paradise, He doesn't give us too little. He doesn't give us too much. He gives us exactly as much as we need. And yet, that was not enough. There was only one thing in the garden that He said, this you may not have, and that was the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don't take from that and you will live. And yet, what did our first parents do? They took from the tree. They wanted more than they had. they were willing to sin in order to get it. So a lot of people, when they see this, they see the greed of mankind, they see the problem of excess riches and how it does damage to us, and they see the problem of poverty, they say, well, we'll come up with a fixed system whereby everybody has the same amount. Now, when Edgar, however, says how much he needs, he doesn't talk about a fixed amount where everybody has the same amount of things. He says, give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food allotted to me, lest I be full and deny you and say, who is the Lord? Lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my Lord. Feed me with the food allotted to me. Give me what I need. Now, this implies that he needs as much as he needs, but for everyone in their different callings, people have different needs. Eiger, for instance, if he is a father and he has a family, he needs more than a single man needs. If he's the governor, especially in the ancient world, a public person they would have called it, then he needs even more than that. Nonetheless, he says, don't give me more than I need. Give me exactly as much as I need that I might not suffer lack and that I might not have too many riches and thus become arrogant. He wants to be content in all things. Now, we can come up with all sorts of human systems to create that allotment, but ultimately, all of those human systems, those attempts at apportioning out, you get this much, you get this much, you get this much, and we're going to try to divide up the pie equally, all of them end up creating actually discontent. And the key, therefore, in this area is Christian contentment. And that's so hard to find, but the Lord can teach it to us. Paul, when he was speaking to the Philippians, he's writing to them from imprisonment. He's writing to them from jail, but he writes this, starting in Philippians 4.11. He says, Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned. Note that. He doesn't say, I always knew. He says, For I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound everywhere and in all things. I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things. through Christ who strengthens me." It's that golden mean, okay, where contentment is found between having too much and having too little. Our Lord taught us to pray for our daily bread, to pray for as much as we need, the food that's our competent portion, to ask the Lord for it, and that's what we should desire. Because, brothers and sisters, this is the important thing to remember. The riches of this world will never produce the happiness or the pleasure that we seek after. Having too much of anything and material in this world is not going to be the source or the key to our happiness. And the riches that we should be looking for are not the empty riches, the sandy riches of the world, the riches that flow through our hands that we can't hold on to. You can bury people in a pyramid with all their riches about them, but they won't do them one good in the afterlife. Ultimately, we come into this world naked, and we leave this world naked, as Job confessed. We leave with exactly as much as we came in with. But for the Christian, it's different, because we do have the ability to amass great treasure and to take it with us. How do we do that, though? And the answer is by storing up our treasure in heaven. as we work for the kingdom, as we, for instance, give charitably. As we do things for the Lord, what are we doing? We're amassing treasure in heaven, and that's treasure that can't be taken away from us. These are what Paul described. He speaks to the Ephesians, and he asks that the eyes of their understanding would be opened. He says this, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. And then in Romans 8, he talks about an inheritance incorruptible. Thieves can't steal our inheritance, Jesus tells us. They can't break in and take it. It doesn't rust. Moths can't eat it. It's something that remains for us. And we have that inheritance in Christ. That's the inheritance we should be striving to build up. And if we understand that, if we understand that God has set aside for His children an inheritance, that it's His desire to provide for us as much as we need, that He will take care of our needs, He knows what we have need of, and if we will pray to Him, He will provide it for us, well, then in times of adversity, we should be willing to say, your will be done, and to understand that God sees what is best for us, and that believe it or not, when we are suffering adversity, then it should occur to us then, in some sense, this is what I need, because I know that God has brought this to me. Now, that doesn't mean that when we're poor, because we are sitting around on the couch eating Cheerios and playing Xbox, we shouldn't say, this is what the Lord wanted for me, you know, and I'm not rich, because obviously not. We're being taught a lesson here that by indolence we don't amass riches or even have enough from time to time. That's something else that's taught in Proverbs. But if we are in a humble estate, or if we're going through tough times and that's not our own doing, well, then we know that this too is something that God has sent to us for a reason. And in having a lack of things, there's actually less danger, is what the Bible tells us. As Thomas Watson put it, honors come with temptations, all of them. And so the more wealth we amass, the more honors we have, the more temptation to turn aside from the Lord, the more temptation to say, who is God that I should serve him and so on, to act like Pharaoh. That's what enters into our hearts. So rather, let's pray for that contentment that God can give so that whether we're in a jail cell or whether we are doing very well, we will be content with what we have and that we will not seek to make riches the ends of our lives. May it be that the riches that we seek are the ones that are stored up for all those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven. Let's go before Him now. God our Father, I do pray, Lord, that You would help us to do that which is very hard, to desire neither to be poor nor to be very rich, to not allow the temptations of this world, the vanities and the lies to overcome us. Help us instead, O Lord, to be content with as much as we need, a little bit along the way until we reach heaven. For we know full well that when it comes to material goods, we can't take any of it with us. So, O Lord, help us then to be happy in what you give to us. And in those times of adversity, perhaps when we do not have as much as we want, or perhaps sometimes from time to time when we do not have as much as we need, Let us be content knowing that You are doing Your work in us. And help us to be able to say in those times, Thy will be done. Help us to be content no matter what. And we pray these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen.