It has been a few weeks since we've been in Proverbs. And so it is worth understanding as we're wrapping up our series in Proverbs how the book of Proverbs all fits together. Like, what's going on in the book of Proverbs? And so here's a high level overview of the book of Proverbs to make you appreciate Proverbs 30 because Proverbs 30 is a wonderful chapter that gets overlooked if you don't understand how it connects to Proverbs one through 29. Proverbs one, if you remember, is wisdom's invitation.

It's the invitation for people to come and study wisdom. And not just any people, it's the invitation from a a father and, by extension, the father and mother, parents, to a around 14 or 15 year old son. It's an appeal an appeal to that son to treasure and come find wisdom. It's the parents saying, there's a life in front of you. You can have this life.

Come to it. That's Proverbs one. Proverbs two is letting you know you'll have to fight for wisdom. It will not come easy. So the 14, 15 year old son that says, yeah, mom.

I'm in. Yeah, dad. I'm gonna live a life of wisdom. Alright. It's it's gonna be harder than you're imagining.

There's enemies of wisdom, and Proverbs two is basically spelling out that there's gonna be a fight, but it will be worth it. Proverbs three, wisdom is beautiful, and it's gonna be worth it. In fact, Proverbs three almost reads like an appeal for an arranged marriage. It's the parents telling the kids, hey. Here's this lady I met.

Wisdom. Man, she's beautiful. I know her parents. We can make this happen right now. That's Proverbs three.

Like, go ahead and just get married to her, will you? Proverbs four is the wedding ceremony. Proverbs four is the it's got the voice of the grandfather, remember, the night before the the wedding with the last minute advice. Proverbs four is the commitment, the marriage where the person says, now I'm married to wisdom. Proverbs five is the famous chapter warning against adultery, which makes sense that it comes after the the marriage, warning the son.

Now that you're married to wisdom, be afraid of adultery. And, of course, it's a real warning against real adultery in a real marriage. It also stands representative as the warning for cheating on wisdom, for becoming a fool after you've said you're going to pursue wisdom. Proverbs six, also a very good post marriage speech. Proverbs six is, oh, yeah.

Your friends are gonna have to change also. Proverbs six talks about all the friends of the world that will spoil your marriage. I know people who get married often think, oh, and I'll keep my friends exactly the same now that I'm married. Just because I was friends with them when I'm single, I can still be friends with them when I'm married. Because you grow up.

You mature. That's Proverbs six. You know, some of your friends are gonna have to go or they're gonna mess up your marriage. Proverbs seven. Oh, yeah.

Again, don't commit adultery. Another warning against adultery. Proverbs eight shows you how wisdom reflects God, how wisdom is is the attributes of God on display for you. Proverbs eight gets theological. Proverbs nine separates two paths again.

There's the path of wisdom and the path of folly. Remember what you chose. That's Proverbs nine. You signed up for wisdom. You got married to wisdom.

You know about the God of wisdom. This is your life that I'm setting in front of you. Don't go over here. That's bad. So that's Proverbs one through nine.

Proverbs 10 through half of chapter 22 is what people call elementary wisdom. It's just the generic wisdom about things like speech, money, work, ethics, your conduct. That's Proverbs 10 through 22. The generic proverbs and we spent a lot of time going over those. We talked about those categories, speech, money, greed, contentment, joy, work ethic.

Proverbs 22 through 29 is the more complicated wisdom. That's things like parenting, personal relationships, friendships in Proverbs 27. How to know, do you confront sin or cover sin? Leadership, principles for leadership and, that the king would use in governing his country. Conflict resolution.

The more complicated interpersonal dynamics. That's Proverbs 22 through 29. And now that's done. So all of those proverbs and the words of Solomon are done. That's how that's how they all end.

It's the words of Solomon have been discharged now. What's left? So there's three chapters left or two chapters left, three different speeches left. You have Proverbs 30, which is a different king. Commentators tend to think he's probably an Egyptian king, but who is trained under Solomon.

And you wonder how did that happen? Well, Solomon married half of their princesses. So I'm sure there's some overlap somewhere. It's some king. And maybe the word king here just means a royal court official or or something like that.

It's somebody who is educated, who has some authority around him, has some political appointment, probably trained under Solomon. That's just a guess. We don't know. Doesn't appear to be overly Jewish. Most commentators suggest that he's from some other nation.

That's Proverbs 30. Then Proverbs 31 is about, you know, the the lesson about who to marry for king Lemuel, who may very well be Jewish. We don't know. We don't know who these kings are. They're not kings of Israel.

They're not kings of Judah. They're trained under Solomon. And so these last three chapters serve almost like the epilogue. And it's interesting. It steps outside of Solomon here.

Now for one reason, it's just so obvious that, Solomon did not marry well. Solomon did not follow his own advice. And so for Proverbs 31 to be written, it's actually more effective if it's not written by Solomon. We all understand that. But Proverbs 30 here, why isn't that from Solomon?

Because it's taking all of the wisdom of Proverbs one through 29 and giving it to somebody else who's looking back at it retrospectively and saying, yes. I did this. My mom had this conversation with me. My dad had this conversation with me. I married wisdom.

I led the life of of purity. I stayed faithful to wisdom. I did Proverbs 12 or sorry. Proverbs 10 through 29. I I acted that out.

Of course, you don't act it out perfectly, but that's the idea of this guy, that he's he's been weary is what he says in verse one. He's he's exhausted himself. He's actually done the work of wisdom. He's done this. And now at the latter part of his life, he's looking back on it.

Did it work? That's the question. That's why Proverbs 30 is such a powerful passage. It's from somebody who did Proverbs one through 29 and how he's here now to report on how it all went. And it's kind of a surprising turn.

This is not the epilogue you would expect to get through the publishing house. The an editor should have caught this and taken it a different direction. However, Proverbs fits in the wisdom literature. Proverbs 30 has the ring of it kind of like Ecclesiastes. Get some of Ecclesiastes bleeding over here into Proverbs 30 or Job.

There's verses here that appear to be very similar to content from the book of Job as well. The main point that this guy comes away with is that wisdom only gets you so far. Wisdom is good. Don't get him wrong. Wisdom is good, and it has governed his life well.

It's been exhausting, though, and it only gets him so far. Verse one, the words of Agur, son of Jacob, the oracle. Now he goes on to write, the man declares, I am weary, oh God. I am weary, oh God, and worn out. Just about every English translation renders verse one very differently.

It's complicated Hebrew, which has led some to suggest that perhaps he was Egyptian. There's two words in there that could be other names, like foreign names. And so some translations say, you know, words from Agur, son of Jacob, to these two different names, two different people. DSV is, as I understand it, I'm not a not a Hebrew scholar, but I'm friends with them. DSV probably has the best understanding of it with I am weary, oh God.

And that last phrase in worn out, it could be worn out, or it could also be I can overcome. I'm weary of the fight, but I I think I can still win. I think I can overcome. But it's the idea of an exhausted athlete. The closing whistle is about to blow, and they're up by a goal or two.

And he thinks, I've I've poured it all out on the field. I'm tired of this, but I think we're going to win. It's that kind of concept in his mind. That's what verse one is indicating. So he's not dissing wisdom here.

He loves wisdom. He's led his life by it, and he's about to have victory because of it. But with that said, he also recognizes that it only gets you so far. For outline, we're gonna look at the limits of wisdom, the first limit of wisdom. Wisdom is just bordered in.

Wisdom doesn't cover everything. He starts here by looking up at the the Lord. He looks up in this first stanza to God. He prays to God. I'm weary, oh God.

I'm weary. And then verse two, surely I'm too stupid to be a man. Remember what I said it goes kind of a different direction here expecting? I'm just dumb. It's not what you want the guy who spent his life living Proverbs to say at the end of his life.

Like, I've done it. I've memorized I've memorized Proverbs, but, man, I am just stupid. I don't even have the understanding of a man, he says in verse two. I'm so low. I'm tired, and I'm a sinner, and I'm frail.

I've not learned wisdom, he says in verse three, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Ultimately, he doesn't know God thoroughly. He knows God, of course. And you're gonna see that he has some pretty good theology here. He knows God perhaps in a more profound way than many of the other Jewish kings knew God.

But he recognizes when it comes to who God is, I have leaned on wisdom, and I don't know him thoroughly. He knows him truly, but not totally. You could say it that way. He knows God truly, but not totally. And now he's gonna have a series of questions.

Verse four. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who's gathered the wind in his fists? Who's wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who's established all the ends of the earth?

That's his question here. He's lived his life with wisdom, and he stuck with the the basic concept here of how did God create the world? How can I think I'm like God? Yes. I know him.

Yes. I know his word. But I don't know all the secrets of everything. I don't know how God made the world. And this should be reminiscent of the end of the book of Job, where Job basically spends a long time in the book proclaiming himself an expert in these things.

Even Job would say he doesn't know all things, but he knows enough to know that he's getting the short end of the stick here. And then when God appears, remember God gives Job a pop quiz. You know, you Job, you think you're gonna stand before me and question me? I have some questions for you. Do you dispatch the lightning bolts?

Are you there when the mountain goats give birth, which is kind of a funny question? Now you don't know anything, Job. You don't know about goats. You don't know about lightning. You can go ahead and be quiet for a second before you question me.

Well, here, king Yagura is there ahead of that. This is a life of wisdom. At the front end of that, he's not questioning God. He's saying, listen. I spent my life in wisdom here.

I don't know those things. I'm not God. This is what Moses says at the end of Deuteronomy. The word of God is near you so that you won't have to say who can go up to heaven to get it, who can go down to the bottom of the sea and get it. It's near you.

It's in your mouth, on your heart, in your mind, on your tongue, and all that. This king understands that. He knows the word of God is near him. Of course, he does. But he's saying, I don't know what it's like to actually go up to heaven or to go down to the water.

Wisdom can't get me into the inner workings of God. Remember what Moses says after he says all that too is the secret things belong to the Lord. That's where that's where king Agares just starts. The secret things belong to the Lord. I haven't gone into his throne room.

He hasn't paged me. He's never consulted me. I don't know those things. I wasn't there. I wasn't there.

It's interesting that he starts his approach to wisdom by humbling himself. He recognizes that wisdom begins with God and not with man. And this is a very profound point to end the book of Proverbs with. If you get nothing from the book of Proverbs other than that observation, then you've won. Wisdom comes from God, not from man.

So many people act as if wisdom begins with them. They make themselves the judge over God and God's word, and they determine what is true or false based upon their own perception, not based upon what God says. They live life based upon how they feel. They respond to ethical situations based on what they think is right. They're in a complex ethical situation and they say, oh, what do I think is the right thing to do based upon what I feel this or how I feel that?

And they're not going to God and God's word. They're elevating their own desires of thought, their own affections, their own feelings become the director of how they should ask rather than God's word. King Edgar is ahead of all that. See, that's not where he's going. He's recognizing that right wisdom starts not with oneself, but with God.

And there's apologetic influences in this. I was looking at Van Till. Van Till, of course, presuppositional apologetics. And that just means that the challenge in apologetics is to get people to recognize that truth comes from God, not man. And so I would summarize that.

Van Till writes, quote, if one does not make human knowledge wholly dependent upon the original self knowledge and consequent revelation of God to man, then man will have to seek knowledge from himself as the reference point. So you catch that? Van Till says, if you don't start by saying God's the source of knowledge, then you're going to end up saying you are the source of knowledge, and that's, of course, bad. That reminds me of Calvin's institutes. There's two categories of knowledge.

You know, that's how Calvin begins his institutes. Those that reveal God and those that reveal man. Gotta start with God, my friend. Van Till says, that person will have to seek an exhaustive understanding of reality before he can say anything. Then he'll have to hold that if he cannot attain to such an exhaustive knowledge of reality, then he has no true knowledge of anything at all.

Do you catch Mantell's logic there? In order for if you're going to say that knowledge doesn't begin with God, it begins with man, then for you to say anything that's true, you have to know everything there is to know about everything. Otherwise, you will say something that you don't know if it's true or not. He goes on to give, you know, kind of classic, philosophical or logical examples of that. You know, for you to say there's no gold in China, you would have to look everywhere in China.

That's the idea. You're never really able to say that unless you have exhaustive knowledge of all of China. That's his illustration. Either a man this is Van Till again. Either a man must therefore know everything or he can know nothing at all.

That's where king Agur is. I don't know anything, he says, because knowledge can't start or end with him. So he says, who can know God? And then here's what I mean about his his theology. What is his name at the end of verse four?

What is his name, and what is his son's name? Surely, you know. Now I know you're not allowed to say that the Old Testament writers knew that God had a son who would be the savior. Oh, no. No.

Of course not. They would never know that. And that's my sarcasm voice. You know? You can get to the the deity of the Messiah, I would say, from Psalm two, Psalm 110, other passages as well.

It appears that he got there. And it's so interesting to read commentators that say, you know, when he says who's his son, it means Israel. He's talking about Israel. Israel is functioning as God's son. So he's saying, who is the one who made the heavens and the earth, and how do you know him through Israel?

It would be fascinating if this person is not Israelite in saying that. And if the answer is Israel, then he knows that, and the question doesn't make any sense. It's better to take him as really wrestling through the kind of messianic prophecies that are all over the scripture, including Psalm two where the Lord is going to appoint his son on his holy hill, and his son will rule the nations. This is this is Proverbs eight. The wisdom is embodied in the second person of the trinity, namely the eternal son of God.

And he's asking himself, who knows that son? Surely, you know. Surely, someone does. And if you say, oh, no. The son has to be Israel.

That's fine. Jesus is the true and better Israel as well. Either way, you get to the savior. Verse five. Every word of God proves true.

He's a shield to those who take refuge in him. That's his conclusion from Proverbs. Just run into the arms of God and his son, and he will protect you. All of God's words are true. Man man's words are not true because men don't have knowledge.

And that's why that's his basic argument here. He's saying, I don't know all things, so I don't know anything. But I do know this. God's word is true because truth comes from God. So you find shelter in him, and you will be safe.

Hence, the warning in verse six. So don't add to his words. Let's see or rebuke you, and you be found a liar. That's a kind of warning that is often after these kind of passages, even in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy has that the expression of who can go up to heaven and who can go down to the water.

But do you remember Deuteronomy chapter four? Do not add to the word that I command you or take from it. John's description of the judgments in Revelation 22 end the same way. I warn everyone who hears the words of this prophecy of this book. This is Revelation 22 verse 18.

If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share of the tree of life in the holy city, which are described in this book. So it's interesting. You have the Torah. The first five books of the scripture, and with that kind of warning in Deuteronomy four.

You have the wisdom literature with that kind of warning here, and you have the prophetic literature with Revelation 22. There is a constant warning. Do not add to God's word. Because truth doesn't come from you. It comes from him.

So he recognizes limits of what he can study. All he can do is pray to God, and he's gonna do that. In fact, verse seven becomes a prayer. Two things I ask of you, lord. Don't deny them for me before I die.

Remove far from me falsehood and lying, and give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, who is Yahweh? Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God. You can tell he's a preacher because he says, I just have two prayer requests, two points, and then gives you four. But you recognize they consolidate under two headings.

Don't let me be a liar, and don't let me be greedy. Give me the right truth, and give me the right needs. Get lying away from me. Now notice that this is a prayer, that God removes things from him, that God purifies him. He has the right concern about truthfulness and contentment.

He's focused on his character. He wants to be a truth teller, and he wants to be content in the Lord. And he knows that his circumstances can affect that. And so he wants liars to be gone from him, and he does not want either poverty or riches. If he's around liars, he'll lie.

If he's poor, he's afraid he'll steal, and that would profane God. If he's rich, he's afraid he'll forget who God is. Lest I be full and deny you and say, who's Yahweh again? Who's Yahweh? I don't remember.

I have everything I need. Why do I need to pray? This is a model prayer for us as well. Of course, you can pray not for riches because if God gave you riches, you would you would forget your dependence on him. You think, oh, no.

I'd I spend the rest of my life being thankful for God. Yeah. Right. So you just pray, God, give me what I need so that I don't go to bed hungry. I'm not tempted to steal.

And so I'm dependent upon you. That is a very, very mature prayer. And it would be sobering for you to ask yourself, do do you pray that prayer? Do you actually ask God to give me what I need? I mean, we're so eager to have savings accounts and, you know, everything squared away for the future.

And of course, there's wisdom in financial planning. Obviously, there there's wisdom in the book of Proverbs. There's wisdom in financial planning so you can pass on an inheritance to your kids in this very book. Nevertheless, after all that, it is worthwhile to pray, god, I don't want more than I need. I just wanna be contingent on you.

This is in a way I called it a model prayer for us. You see prayers like this elsewhere in the bible. Here's one, the lord's prayer. Two things I ask of you correspond pretty well to our father in heaven, addressing your prayer to the father. Lest I profane the name of my God, what's the next thing in the Lord's Prayer?

Let your name be sanctified. Hallowed be your name. Give me my allotted bread. First, give us our daily bread. Keep falsehood and lies far from me.

Lead me not into temptation. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Forgive me my debts as I forgive my debtors. This is very much a model prayer. The Lord studied Proverbs 30 and developed his own prayer from it.

And yet, much more I could say on this, but I don't wanna get stuck in the middle of this part. We got a long chapter in front of us. It keeps going. There are some fools that don't know their limits. Proverbs 10 or 30 verse 10.

Don't slander a servant to his master, lest he curse you and you be held guilty. Servant here is the word not just for slave but for somebody in a royal court. So don't if you're talking to the the governor, don't complain about his secretary. Alright? Because it'll come back to you.

He's probably the governor's secretary because he likes her and trusts her. So if you walk in and say, oh, that that lady's out of her mind. How'd she get hired? What's that intern doing over there? You know, it's probably gonna come back on you.

That's the point. It's interesting. This guy's a king, and he's giving after all that theology here, he has kinda one random proverb before he gets to other stuff, and it's about that. Well, that's something he's he's summing up his life of wisdom. He's like, all these proverbs are good and helpful.

You can't truly know God. So just pray that God will keep you content and truthful. Oh, yeah. And stop saying mean things about the staff. But there are those, verse 11, who curse their fathers and don't bless their mothers.

There are those whose who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed to their own filth. There are those, how lofty are their eyes, how high their eyelids lift. Yet their teeth are swords, their fangs are knives. They devour the poor from the earth and the needy from among mankind. So now he's just saying after all of this wisdom, can you believe it, after everything in Proverbs, there are still people in the world that don't honor their parents.

This whole book has been structured around parents making an appeal to the young people to trust them. After all of that, there's still people in the world that don't trust their parents, that speak evilly of their parents. And they walk around thinking they're wise. That's the incredible thing. It's almost the most basic level of wisdom here is do you trust your parents?

They're the only people in the whole world whose sole job is to look after you. It's not your friend's job. It's not your teacher's job. It's not your coach's job. It's your parents' job.

And so after 29 chapters of wisdom, this king kind of rolls his eyes. And some of it has a little bit of kids these days kind of flare to it, doesn't it? Kids these days walking around, pants all down by their knees. Come on, kids these days. Some of it has that flare to it, but some of it is true.

He's looking at people that think they are so wise, and he's like they don't get the most basic part of wisdom. They act wise. They got all their makeup on their eyes and everything, and their their teeth are nice and brushed. They think they're so wise. They don't respect their parents, so you can forget the rest of it.

Their little makeup eyes, all that's doing is showing how how arrogant and pretentious they are. They make their face look pretty, and their soul is trash. That's the idea. They put makeup on, and their hearts don't respect their parents. Their teeth are only swords, just destroying everybody around them.

There's an attitude here of this is a great mystery. How can people be exposed to so much wisdom and think they're so smart and not trust their parents? It really is staggering. Of course, it doesn't mean parents are are infallible. Obviously, the king here starts off by saying he's not infallible.

But he is marveling at the fact that there are people that claim to be wise that don't know anything about wisdom. So that's first. There's limits of wisdom. And what you can what can you do? You can pray.

That's what he is. After all this is wrapped up, god help me. God help me. Second, limit of wisdom. There's also limits of understanding.

There's some things that you cannot understand. And now it starts a series of numbers. There's seven sets of numbers in here. Seven, of course, being a number of completeness itself. It's not a coincidence that when it starts listing these sets of numbers or these pairs that it they come in a group of seven.

The first one doesn't have a number before it. We just look through that. But the next ones all have numbers. You see this in verse 15. The leech has two daughters.

Give and give, they appear to be identical twins. In Israel, there's something called a horse leech, and the horse leech has two organs to it. That's all the horse leech has. It's composed of doesn't have a brain. It's got two organs.

One organ latches onto skin, and the other organ sucks blood. That's all it is. And that's the the Hebrew word that's used here. It's this horse leech, and it is two daughters give and give. It's it would be apparently some kind of expression or wisdom idiom they had.

All that thing that thing is only good for two things, sucking and sucking. That's all it does. Well, that leech has two daughters as well. The leech that can only do two things, suck and suck, also has two daughters, give and give. That makes sense.

You're never satisfied. They're leeching on you. You have a friend who's leeching on you, she will never be satisfied, or he will never be satisfied. He's only taking or here personified as a woman. She's only taking.

Now there are three things that are never satisfied. Four never say enough. It's almost like a riddle. It's almost like a riddle. What are the things that are never satisfied?

Sheol. The grave will never say, I've had enough dead people today. That's it. Too much death in the world. We're closed.

If you need to die, come back tomorrow. The grave is never gonna say that. The grave always has room for more. The barren womb, never satisfied. A woman who's who's barren will never say, you know what?

It's actually a it's okay. Never be satisfied. The land never has enough water. Now a little spot of grand ground can get saturated with water, but the earth doesn't get saturated with water. The earth is never gonna say, rain, that's enough.

You can turn off. Nope. The water will just keep flowing. And then fire. Ever gone to throw a piece of wood in the fire and the fire says, no.

I'm full? I've burned enough. Of course not. The fire will keep burning as long as it is fed. The ground will keep taking the water as long as it rains.

The woman will keep desiring a child if she's barren. As long as she's alive, the grave will keep receiving the dead to it. Now what's this doing here in Proverbs? He's just saying it's a it's a it's a mystery. Those things are never ever satisfied.

That's the way the world works. There is death and there is birth. There is rain and there is fire, and they will always be there. And you can give up trying to map it all out. Population grows even though women are barren.

Fire burns even though there's water everywhere. How those things are held intention is belongs to the mind of God. All you can do is marvel at it. You can look at the hydrological cycle and marvel. You it's it's good and godly.

Men in your backyard, you got your fire pit going, and you're, like, mesmerized. Why do I move the sticks this way? I move the sticks that way. Do I build them like this? Do I build them like that?

And I have a fire pit in my backyard when I have friends over doing it. Every every guy there is always a fire marshal. Yeah. It's god here at Proverbs 30, he's telling you it's godly to do that. It's godly for the minute to stick around and poke the fire the opposite way your friend just poked it.

That's godly. All you're supposed to do is marvel at it. That's the point of our first number pair, but we we have more. The eye that mocks the father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by vultures. So these people, they're not marveling at the fire.

They're not marveling the way God made the world. And what's gonna happen to them? They're gonna die and ravens their parents are not going to bury them is the idea. It's like, oh, that kid died. That's a little bit of an exaggeration, of course, but that's how's a vulture gonna peck out his eyes if he's buried?

The point is he's not buried. The vultures and the ravens will eat him up because they don't marvel at the right things. Now back to numbers again, verse 18. There are three things that are too wonderful to me. Four, I don't understand.

The way of an eagle in the sky, a serpent on the rock, a ship on the seas, and the way of a man with a virgin. All four of these this is a great line from a commentary I read. All four of these present elements that are difficult to negotiate. Air, rocks, seas, and women. I mean, the eagle flies so effortlessly, and they dive and they, you know, go in the water and fetch the fish.

And the eagles are amazing how they fly, and they never break a sweat doing it. They just fly instinctively. It's incredible. You can't understand it. The snake doesn't have arms or legs, and yet it can go up and down rocks, rocks that would trip you.

The snake just goes all around them. The snake, in fact, appears to be in its element when it's on a boulder pile. And like I said this morning, you can study that all all week long and not figure it out. Oh, the, you know, the scales are recalcitrating and move like this and blah blah blah blah blah, and you realize biologists are just making this up. They don't know how that snake moves.

That's a mystery. It's a mystery. The ship in the heart of the sea remember, the Israelites weren't seagoing. This isn't an Israelite person writing this. He's he's marveling at what he knows about being a king.

There are ships. They're in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. They can't see land anywhere. They're tossed to and fro, and the ship just hangs out there. How does that thing even float?

You see the cruise ships today. I mean, he would've King Agar, his mind would've been blown had he seen a carnival cruise ship. Like, it's over for him now. We might say how a plane flies. You know?

You can be sitting next to a pilot and watch your Airbus a three eighty take off. It's got four engines on and everything, and the pilot can be like, actually, there's a thing called drag and lift. And when the flaps are set at 40 degrees, it compel and you're like, what are you talking about? This thing does not belong in the air. I can see these things take off a thousand times.

It does not go in the air. I'm promising you. And yet they always do. And then the way of a man with a virgin. You know, what did people do before they had premarital?

How did they figure out how things worked? It's a mystery. And yet they did somehow. They figured it out. And this it's a mystery, he says.

There's only so much wisdom helps you with. There are things in this world that you do not need to understand. You just sit and marvel at them. All four move without difficulty and impossible circumstances. And yet, verse 20, the adulteress, she doesn't marvel at all.

She eats and wipes her mouth and says, I've done nothing wrong. The adulteress here, she doesn't care. The the beautiful mystery of intimacy and with a man with his wife, that's one of the things compared to the eagle and the the snake and all that. It's it's supposed to be beautiful and a mystery you don't have to understand. You just marvel at it and appreciate the way God made the world.

The adulteress has no time for that. She sleeps with whoever she wants to. She gets money for it. She eats. She wipes her face.

And she's like, I haven't done anything wrong. Person's gotta eat. What a fool. Verse 21, your next list. Under three things, the earth trembles.

Under four, it cannot bear itself up. Now you get four things that it's almost like everything gets flipped here. The slave when he becomes a king, a fool when he gets fed, an unloved woman when she gets a husband, and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress. So this is this is opposite day. The slave is supposed to be obedient to the commands of the king.

Somehow, he became king. Who's he gonna be obedient to? Himself then. It's gonna be to the country's harm when a slave becomes king. A fool when he gets food, that's gonna be to society's harm.

Fools shouldn't get food. They should they should go hungry because they're not willing to work. And so when they get fed, it ends up undercutting the very moral constraints God has built into society. This is why Paul strictly tells the church, if a person won't won't work, do not let them eat. And yet the society reverses that, ends up undercutting the foundation society is built on.

So don't feed fools. Don't make slaves your king. Thirdly, an unloved woman when she gets a husband. That word unloved, it could be an uncontrolled woman or a hateful woman. It could be about her speech even, that if she can't control her mouth, how would she control a house?

She's a woman. They can't control her own mouth. And you're gonna put her in charge of a house? It's going to like a slave will be to his country's harm, like a fed fool will be to his society's harm, an unloved woman or a woman who can't control her mouth, you put her in charge too of a house, it'll undercut the house. It'll make the house a miserable place.

Or a maidservant when she displaces her mistress. The maid somehow got in charge. What kind of mistress is she gonna be like? You would think, oh, she knows what it's like to be a maid, so she will be soft and gentle. Probably not, though.

It's revenge time. So all four of these end up hurting the people that they replaced. Verse 24. Four things on earth are small. Oh, but they are exceedingly wise.

The ants are people not strong, and yet they provide their food in the summer. This is the great mystery about ants. Where are they nine months of the year? What are they doing? Biologists tell you that they store their fats in the ground and, like, the queen ants, you know, eat all the other ants or whatever.

I could be confusing these with bees. I don't know. But they store all their fats and they hibernate. And then when it thaws enough, they, you know, multiply and make new hives or whatever. And there's nature documentaries where they apparently put, like, GoPros and the ants, and you watch the queens fight.

And it's yeah. It's amazing, and I think it's also kind of made up. Who knows what happens to the ants? Are they really living in your drywall subsisting on their fat for nine months of the year, and then they come out and take over your sugar? It's a great mystery.

And yet they take care of their stuff. I know an ant can lift, like, eight times this weight, and they're supposedly really strong. Not really. Eight times an ant's weight is like they can't even lift a penny. Are those worthless ants?

And yet they take over your house and have food all year long. Just marvel at them. What about the rock badgers? A rock badger is not strong. Have you ever seen the biceps of a rock badger?

Rock badgers have the tiny little arms. They're the little things. Rock badgers can't do anything. They can't even lift a rock. But they're called rock badgers because they live in the rocks.

And those things dart to and fro all over the place. They come out of impossible circumstances. You can't find a rock badger hole if you wanted to. Yosemite National Park has these things all over them, the same kind that are in Israel. They live all up and down the park.

And you'll be hiking along, minding your own business, then, bam, a whole family of rock badgers looking at you, looking for your food, actually. And you go to hit them with your stick, and they disappear into the rocks. And they're up on cliffs. Rock badgers. All you can do is marvel at them.

They don't have strength, and yet they live in a place where human beings could never live. What about the locusts? Verse 27. They don't have a king, and yet they march in perfect rank and file. Those locusts, they line up right on time.

They present themselves for inspection even though there's no one giving them orders. Verse 28. The lizard, you can catch him in your hands. The Hebrew says two hand. It's a two handed catch.

So you can't catch him with one hand. But we have all these lizards all over our yard, and we have a eight year old boy who lives next door to us, and he loves it's his favorite thing to do to catch those lizards. And they're not hard for him to catch. Like, he has a cage filled with them. He stacks them on top of each other.

And And you just get your arms around them. And I've watched him do it. He gets your arms around him. Super fast lizard. The eight year olds can catch it.

Keep them in his aquarium in his backyard. And it's so easy to make fun of those lizards. Like, you think you're so fast the eight year old just caught you. K. You make fun of it, but guess where the lizard's gonna show up tomorrow?

Verse 28. In the king's palaces. You can't get a White House tour. That lizard could be at the White House tomorrow if it wanted to be. He can go in and out of that place at his own free will.

So you take all four of these things together. These are tiny, tiny creatures that do not have strength or sense at all but can all do things better than you can. Those weak ants can store their food better than you. Those weak rock cradchers build better houses than you. Little lizard, man, he has more powerful friends than you do.

That's the point. The locusts, they're more intimidating than you. You get one locust by itself. You can pull off its wings if you want to. You get a million of them, and you you run and cower.

The point of these four is that we as humans do so much less with so much more. All you can do is marvel at it. We feel like we are studying wisdom and trying to be all that we can be. At the end of our study of wisdom, the rock badger is better than we are. He's not studying proverbs.

He just knows it. And, obviously, you think through this. You know, like the ants and the rock badgers and the lizards, whatever, they're not studying proverbs, but God made them in such a way they can live like this. So all you can do is marvel at it. God didn't make you a rock badger.

You can just marvel at them and think, man, all of my wisdom, it doesn't help this. It's just a mystery, and I embrace it. And then our finally our our I came across a line this week. Ivan DaSilva is a commentary I've been reading about. He teaches at some school in the Pacific Ocean, like, on Oregon somewhere.

So I was assuming he was Hispanic with the last name DaSilva, but he called this section, quote, the stories of we beasties. Maybe not Hispanic, I guess. For the rest of my life, I'm calling this paragraph the story of the we beasties. This goes through our fourth group, those that are stately. This is the seventh pair of numbers here, verse 29.

Three things are stately in their tread. Four are steady in their stride. The lion, which is the mightiest among the beasts, he doesn't turn his back before anyone. Man, lions strut around. It's called the pride of lions, not even because of how good they look in a group.

They almost look better individually. That lion boss doesn't walk around, and you would hide. Verse 31, the strutting rooster. The strutting rooster. The rooster walks around so proud, doesn't he?

Roosters look ridiculous. They look so proud. How about the he goat? I don't even know what that means. No idea.

Goats walk around like they own the place, I guess. I assume maybe Israelite goats are more dignified than American goats. I I don't know, and I couldn't figure it out. So that's just gonna be a mystery that I can marvel at. Wisdom only gets me so far.

And then the king whose army is with him. And it's pretty funny that king Agur ends this section with that. Man, kings walk around just like a lion, just like a rooster, just like a he goat when they have their army with them. When they're at home, they put their pants on one leg at a time like everybody else. But, man, when the king's got his army with him, that guy is strong.

He's invincible when he's got a hundred thousand soldiers in rank behind him. Agur knows. People are so fickle and thin. All you can do is marvel at them. This leads to the final limit of wisdom.

There's the limits of study. Limits of wisdom, there's some things you can't figure out, namely God. Limits of understanding, some things you will never understand how they work. You can just marvel at them. And finally, limits of study.

If you've been foolish exalting yourself or if you've been devising evil, put your hands on your mouth. After all of this, spend a second of introspection. Don't finish the study of Proverbs walking out and boasting. Finish the study of Proverbs and put your hand on your mouth and and shut your face. Like, just be quiet for a second.

Realize how foolish we are as human beings and zip it. That phrase is used elsewhere in the bible. Ecclesiastes eight. You find yourself in the presence of a king, it's not your opportunity to, you know, bring justice or whatever. You find yourself in the presence of the king, be quiet and figure out your surroundings first.

Figure out who's who and what's what. There are things happening in the room where you are. And this this maps very well onto American politics. You find yourself in the present in the presence of president Trump, and you think, oh, this is my chance to tell him about this or tell him about that or set him right on this and that. Just go ahead and close your mouth.

There are things and dynamics at play that you don't know about. And I'm talking about even even people that work in the government. You know, you're one of his advisors and you come into a chance encounter with him. Go ahead. This is this is not your moment to shine.

This is your moment to close your mouth and figure out what the currents are in the room, who told him what. Get the lay of the land. Just close your mouth. This is the verse that's used at the end of the book of Job when God asked Job all those questions and Job finally says, okay. I'm shutting my mouth.

Job figures out, I'm not supposed to answer the question, was I there when the when the mountain goat was born? That was a rhetorical question. I'm gonna close my mouth. And God keeps blitzing it. Remember?

Good job closing your mouth, Job. I got 20 more for you. That's Job 40 verse four. Job says, I'm of small account. How can I answer?

I lay my hand on my mouth. I spoke once. I will proceed no further. That's how King Agar ends as well. Pressing milk produces curds.

You want do you want your milk to be curdled? You're having your Apple Jacks in the morning and you're pouring milk in it. Do you wanna curdle your milk before you put it in? Of course not. So what are you doing stirring up your milk over and over again until it churns?

Why would you do that if you don't want it that way? Pressing the nose produces blood. Do you want a bloody nose? And, you know, little kids might go through that age where they keep sticking their finger in their nose, and they go out of that because they're sick of the bloody noses. He's talking to grown people here.

Do you want your nose to be bleeding? Then why are you punching yourself in the face all the time? And then, finally, pressing anger produces strife. Do you want an argument? Then why are you provoking people?

If you don't wanna fight with someone, why do you keep provoking them? If you don't want them to hit you, why are you poking them in the eye? Like, if you want peace, just be quiet. This is how the book of Proverbs ends. There's gonna be an epilogue about a king, and there's gonna be epilogue about the kind of wife to marry.

Two very fitting epilogues will save them for the future. But the wisdom part of Proverbs ends with you saying, there are things I will not figure out, and I should just be quiet before the Lord. This finally presents a full oratory picture, not just of wisdom, but of the gospel. You can look at the same list through the book of Proverbs. There's an invitation for wisdom.

There's an invitation to come to Christ. You have to be aware of your sin, like the king is here at the start of chapter 30, aware that you're just a man. You don't have righteousness in sin before God. You are weak and frail. And now you can receive wisdom through God's son.

You can receive forgiveness through Proverbs 30, verse four. The son of God. He brings you wisdom. He brings you forgiveness. After salvation, you grow in your understanding of God and his word.

You marvel at all the Lord is doing in your life and in your heart. That's the middle part of this chapter. And then you recognize that your whole life is a life spent in repentance. You're always repenting from your sins. The Christian life is a life of marveling and worship God, marveling at God and worshiping him, and a life of repentance.

That's wisdom. Wisdom and the gospel map onto each other exactly one to one. And that's because Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God. The gospel is the wisdom of God. And so it makes sense that you encounter Christ as the gospel, you're encountering the kind of wisdom that king Agra presents to you, that you're a sinner.

You need to turn to God's son, receive his spirit, marvel at what he's done in your life, and constantly repent of your sin. Lord, we're thankful that you are wisdom, wisdom incarnate, wisdom from heaven to earth, wisdom that shows us how to live, and wisdom that shows us God's son. We're thankful for the lord Jesus Christ and his invitation to pursue him. We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name. Amen.

And now for a parting word for pastor Jesse Johnson. If you have any questions about what you heard today or if you wanna learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church. If you want more information about the Master's Seminary or our location here in Washington DC, please go to tms.edu. Now if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel. I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church. Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.