I remember being
asked to speak to a very large connect group in our church. Many didn’t know me
from Adam though we attended the same church. Our church has several thousand
members with multiple services so it is easy to get lost in the shuffle of the
saints. So during a brief introduction about myself, I told them I had two life
verses and not the usual one. I had asked the crowd if anyone had Galatians
2:20 for a life verse; some had raised their hand. Then before I told them
about my other life verse, I conjectured that there was probably no one in this
room that had my second life verse for a life verse. So confident was I that I
speculated that there was probably not another person in the whole wide world that
would claim this verse as their life verse either. So, I read the words of
Agur, an unknown sage who wrote Proverbs chapter 30,
Pro 30:2 Surely I am more stupid than any
man, and do not have the understanding of a man.
Pro 30:3 I neither learned wisdom nor have knowledge
of the Holy One.
The audience didn’t
know at this juncture whether I was crazy or making a confession. Nobody raised
their hand when I asked for any claimers. Silence filled the room; jaws were agape.
Indeed, Rom 8:28, Php 4:13; or Prov 3:5-6 are great and popular life verses for
many, but for me, Agur’s words fit the bill for a second life verse. I struggle
with Gal 2:20, and I certainly am challenged to meet the muster of Prov 30:2-3.
I confessed that whenever
I went outside of God’s will, this is exactly how I felt – stupid for doing so.
The consequences of disobedience can be a hard taskmaster; we can be forgiven
(1 Jn 1:9), but the consequences of our rebellion may follow us for the remainder
of our days. Why is stepping outside of God’s will stupid for a believer? Primarily,
it is because our fellowship with God (not a salvational relationship) is broken;
something very important to Agur as we will see in a few. Secondarily, it is because
the eternal significance of service to God resides inside of His will (cf. Eccl
3:14; 1 Jn 2:17); there is nothing temporal, meaningless, or futile in God’s
will for our lives.
Anything done
outside of His will is where the futility lives, nothing but fodder for the
fire for a believer (Rom 14:12; 1 Cor 3:11-15; 2 Cor 5:10). We need Agur’s
words as a reminder to stay in the will of God though Satan, the world-system,
and the flesh never cease to try and pull us away from His will. It is a never-ending
struggle in saying no to distractions, but nothing can make us go outside
of God’s will; it is strictly voluntary. And by the way, fighting this spiritual
warfare in our own strength is nothing more than a path that leads to yielding
to sin (cf. Zech 4:6; Gal 5:16). We know these things, but we need to hear them time
and time again to stick with the principles of Scripture regardless of the
circumstances.
These words of Agur
also articulate how I feel about my lack of wisdom and knowledge of the Holy
One (v3). I am not sure that Agur was referring to the former feeling of stupidity
mentioned in v2, but his feelings may be more akin to verse 3. So verse 2 may be more of an application while verse 3 is a primary
interpretation of what Agur was saying to us. In other words, acting unwise and being ignorant of the Holy One is seen as being less than human, brutish like a beast, or just plain stupid.
Some interpret it
to mean that Agur is confessing to being too stupid or brutish to be human
(falling below the level of what it means to be human) or more stupid than any
other man by acting like a brute beast at times (cf. Job 11:12; Psa 49:20; Jer
10:14)? In either case that’s how a believer should feel going outside of God’s
will whenever he or she gives ear to the devil dropping innuendos contrary to God’s will, or
buying into false needs of the marketing schemes of the world, or giving in to
the desires of the flesh (cf. 1 Jn 2:16). Within God’s will is where the eternal
inhabits.
Being in the will of God, in some sense, brings us closer to being truly human despite the fact that we are rotten sinners to the core (beasts because of sin) though saved by grace through faith (Eph 2:8-9). Obedience to God brings us closer to what humanity intended before the Fall; that's the ideal (being holy as God is holy). Disobedience, on the other hand, reveals the bestiality of our sinful nature or just being plain stupid, the bad kind.
Being in the will of God, in some sense, brings us closer to being truly human despite the fact that we are rotten sinners to the core (beasts because of sin) though saved by grace through faith (Eph 2:8-9). Obedience to God brings us closer to what humanity intended before the Fall; that's the ideal (being holy as God is holy). Disobedience, on the other hand, reveals the bestiality of our sinful nature or just being plain stupid, the bad kind.
I know some people
get upset when they hear the word “stupid.” Parents get on to their kids for
saying it, but honestly, there is no better word to describe going astray as a
believer than being purely stupid; sinning
is, frankly speaking, a state of stupid.
It cuts through all the nauseating words that give the impression of a sickness contracted involuntarily (poor thing doesn’t realize that sin is sin); it’s rebellion! Rebelling against
God is nothing short of, what’s the word I’m looking for, oh yeah, stupid!
Whether you think my
approach borders on juvenility or not, “stupid” is a sound translation of the Hebrew
word, ba‘ar in Prov 30:2, which
can also be translated as “brutish.” So let me give two examples of the wrong kind
of stupid when it comes to our relationship with God; naturally, the opposites
are the right kinds of “stupid!”
(1)
Thinking we are smarter than God. This doesn’t really need any further
explanation, but let me throw something out there for us to ruminate. Why don’t
we pray as we should (1 Thes 5:17)? We think we can get by without it! The bad
kind of stupid is when we think we can live a Christian life apart from God.
The realization that our wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One is finite
or limited as compared to His infinite or unlimited all-knowingness which we
call omniscience is the right kind of stupid (cf. Isa 55:9). Insightfully,
Matthew Henry commented on this verse, “The more enlightened people are, the
more they lament their ignorance.”
To be enlightened you have to have an appetite for it which
explains why so many believers suffer from spiritual anemia. Then there are those
who think they know it all. People with this mentality fail to understand that
the more you know the more you realize how little you know and the more you
need to know. This could very well be admitting that Agur is not one of those
learned men who profess to know everything about God with a perfect
understanding. Knowledge of the Holy One is a lifetime pursuit that has no end
for God is eternal, infinite, and unchangeable; man is just the opposite.
Genuine humility recognizes that in short order. There is definitively no pride
expressed here by Agur. There are no masters of the Word, only
students.
(2)
Sinning against God in knowledge or willful ignorance. This also
is the wrong kind of stupid. It reveals a lack of thankfulness, being disrespectful
and irrational, preferring a break in fellowship with the Lord resulting in
chastening rather than blessings! The feeling of rebellion is wrongly believed
to be superior to the joy of the Lord at the moment!
Wasn’t it Forrest Gump that said, “Stupid
is as stupid does?” A state of stupid would include willful ignorance, too!
This would fall under the category of sinning against God for we are commanded
to be holy as He is holy, right, and not intentionally ignorant of His Word. In
essence, the bad kind of stupid is a love problem (cf. Jn 14:15). One of the
reasons believers do not read the Bible is because it is too long! Given the attention
span of adults today, if God had written a catchy title, kept it under 250 words
or less, and had a catchphrase at the end, more people might be interested in
reading the Bible, memorizing every word, and be done with it. The point of this
is that failing to read the Bible is, what’s that word I am looking for…?
John MacArthur
views Agur’s words in verses 2-3 as “a statement of humility and recognition
of the reality that, apart from divine revelation, there would be no true
wisdom.” Boy, if we would only grab hold of that truth on just how rare and indispensable
the Bible is to our lives! We can’t express the wisdom from above without it,
but when we go stupid, we are doing just the opposite, thinking we are smarter
than God, and we are off to the races sinning against Him. Next thing we know;
our experiences are superseding the authority of God’s Word; and a strange
mixture of self-righteousness and self-absorption fills the heart. We begin
spending less time seeking God and His truth and wasting more time on
self-seeking and chasing after things. Does this sound like Christian life in
America today; it’s all about me and political correctness (PC) rather than all about God
and being biblical?
It is not in the
rhetorical questions or observations Agur makes in this chapter that really
reveals his wisdom as much as his prayer to God does. Interestingly, this is
the only prayer in the book of Proverbs, the prayer of Agur, a seeker of wisdom!
Pro 30:7 Two things I request of You (Deprive
me not before I die):
Pro 30:8 Remove falsehood and lies far from me; give
me neither poverty nor riches— feed me with the food allotted to me;
Pro 30:9 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.
This is an intense
desire, not a fickle one (“deprive me not before I die”). The first petition
pertains to the spiritual desire that he would live an honest life. He
didn’t want to deceive or be deceived in any manner. God knows there is plenty
of deception stemming from being in a state of bad stupid. Whenever we “play”
the role of being a Christian is dishonesty and deception. Let me quote a man
of another religion because his premise is true, and the truth is truth, and all
truth is God’s truth, “To believe in something, and not to live it, is
dishonest” (Mahatma Gandhi). That’s painful to think about! We are very good at
wearing masks; are we not? Agur’s second petition is physical in nature and a
Mt 6:11 kind of prayer request – “feed me with the food allotted to me” (v8).
Agur recognized the
dangers posed by the polar opposites of poverty and wealth; from the extreme emerges an incredible truth, a certain realization we should contend for with
all of our will and energy. If he was full he might quit depending on God, and
if he was poor, he might steal and curse the name of God (v9). The neat thing
here is that Agur was sensitive about his
relationship with God; he wanted nothing to come between Yahweh and him! Are we like him?!
I wonder how often we
as believers concern ourselves with those possible spiritual ramifications in our
fear of poverty? Do we lust for position, power, and pleasure under the idea that it is far better to have more than enough than not enough! A simple
lifestyle should not be considered a sign of failure or a lack of ambition, but
many run from being poor as if there was a social stigma attached to it. History is replete with the haves and the have-nots. Go into any
church and see that acted out where the haves are treated differently than the
have-nots by the membership and staff.
Agur was very
serious and sensitive about his relationship with God above all things. In an environment of more, there is a tendency to forget God (Deut 8:11-17; Prov 10:15;
18:11), and in an environment of less, there is an inclination to become sluggish (Prov 6:5-11), blaming and cursing God (Lev 24:15-16). The absence of
dishonesty, affluence, and poverty is what Agur desired to avoid in his life, any
state of stupid, being less than human, brutish like an animal.
Some would not
see this as wisdom but as “weird and stupid,” but that is why many are unwise
because they are caught up in that negative spiritual state of actually being in
the bad kind of stupid! Whenever we let our flesh rule rather than our faith or
we fail to grow in wisdom and knowledge of the Holy One (2 Pet 3:18), we are in
a bad state of stupid; it’s an easy litmus test if we are being good stupid or
bad stupid.
After my address
that morning no one came up to me and questioned my second life verse. I would
like to believe it was because it made sense rather than making me look kind of,
stupid; yeah, that’s the word I was looking for!
Admittedly, Agur’s
words are not eloquently inspiring compared to the more popular life verses,
but it does challenge and remind me that I have a choice, to be stupid or to be spiritual (good stupid): remaining
spiritually ignorant and sinning (bad stupid) or growing in wisdom and
knowledge of the Holy One and avoiding sin because I value my relationship with
God above all else (good stupid).
Let’s face it;
taking God out of the equation of our life is just plain stupid, brutishly so! Now,
the world thinks we Christians are stupid anyway for believing the Bible and
living a life according to its principles (cf. 1 Cor 2:14). This is the meaning of being good stupid! What they fail to understand (2 Cor 4:4) is that the only source of wisdom from above is the Scriptures. We can possess the knowledge of the Bible and still be unwise, but we cannot be wise without the knowledge of the Word of God. Sinning against the LORD is nothing more than, dare I say, bad stupid; obeying the LORD is good stupid!
As Michael Gump
would say, “Spiritual is as spiritual does,” and you thought all this time that
MG only stood for Michael-Grams…? Dare to be spiritual this new year that God
has given to us! Truly, there is a state of stupid that is good and wise and to
be exercised; dare to be that kind of stupid until He comes!? <><
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