Relying on What God Gives

Texts:  Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Luke 4:1-13

DID YOU KNOW THAT NOTHING in the Bible requires us to keep the season of Lent?  That's because our salvation depends on Jesus Christ and not on what you or I do the seven weeks before Easter. Nevertheless, our branch of the Presbyterian Church, along with other denominations of Christ's church worldwide, have judged that Lent can be a valuable time for Christians to think about who they are before God and about what God has done for us in Christ.  That way we can enter more fully into the joy of our Lord's resurrection.  How each of us chooses to observe Lent (or not) is totally between ourselves and God.  Traditionally, this has included periods of fasting, of abstention from the good things of the table or other pleasures of life.  Even unbelievers know enough about it to joke about giving this or that up for Lent, and some of them even do it, regardless of how they feel about God.

So I was surprised when I looked up the Revised Common Lectionary passages appointed for this morning.  The Gospel Reading is what you would expect for the First Sunday in Lent, one of the accounts of Jesus' fasting and temptation in the wilderness.  But the Old Testament passage is from Deuteronomy 26, and it's not about fasting at all, it's all about the good things of the earth and feasting  and rejoicing in the presence of the Lord!

Is there any connection?  I think there is.  In both these  readings the Holy Spirit reveals some wonderful things to us about the trustworthy provision of God, and can and must rely on Him totally, no matter what our situation might be.

But that can be difficult, managing to trust in God and what He provides for us.  Some of us are inclined to feel we don't need him when things are going well.  We say to ourselves, "My job is secure, I work hard and earn good money, my family and I have everything we want and we deserve it.  God, I'll call you when I need you, but not right now."  Others of us distrust the Lord when things are going badly.  We're sick, we're broke, the kids' toes are poking through their shoes, we hardly know where our next meal is coming from.  At such times, even Christians are tempted to ask, "Hey, God, if You're so great, why haven't you given me everything I need to live?"  Or we might say, "Yes, God, I know You're the great Provider, but it's my fault I'm in this mess.  I should have been smarter and more capable.  I can't ask You to help me until I've dug myself out of this hole myself."

But no matter which of these temptations you're pulled towards, our readings this morning are God's Word to you, calling you to depend on Him and what He gives, whether you feast or fast, whether you seem to have everything or feel you have nothing.

In Deuteronomy, Moses is addressing the people of Israel on the east bank of the Jordan shortly before they're to cross over and take possession of the Promised Land.  During forty years wandering in the desert they've had to depend on the Lord for pretty much everything. They've lived primarily on manna and quail sent straight from the hand of God.  They didn't even have to clothe themselves-- God made sure the garments they wore out of Egypt would not wear out and could be handed down to the next generation.  It was all God's provision all the time.  But Moses by the Holy Spirit looks forward to the time when the Israelites will have driven out the Canaanites and settled down on farms and grown crops of their own.  He sees the potential for danger.  What a temptation it will be for those Hebrews to say in the future, "All right, Lord, thanks for giving us everything we needed in the wilderness.  But see what I have produced for myself by the sweat of my brow!  Look what I've accomplished for myself!  Look how strong and capable I am!  Thanks, Lord, I'll call you if I need anything.  Bye!"

We can identify with that.  It's nice to have friends and family help us over a tough spot, but it feels so good to be past it and stand on our own two feet and owe nothing to any man.  But, Moses says, the children of Israel aren't to take that attitude.  They are to understand and acknowledge that, in the desert or in the Promised Land, they are totally dependent on what God gives.

To drive this lesson home, they are to observe particular ceremony which will involve doing and confessing certain things. They-- that is, the head of each household-- are to take some of the first of their harvest, put it in a basket, and take it to the high priest at the place where the Tabernacle is pitched, the place He has chosen as a dwelling for His name.  To the priest, as God's own representative, they are to say, "I declare today to the LORD your God that I have come to the land the LORD swore to our forefathers to give us."  Lesson No. 1: The land is a gift of God.

        After the priest has taken the basket and set it down before the altar of the Lord, the man was to confess before God his helplessness and the helplessness of his ancestors, and how he did not deserve that God should favor him.  "My father [that is, Jacob, called Israel] was a wandering Aramean."  Or as the NKJV puts it, "a Syrian about to perish."  This is lesson No. 2.  Abraham was pasturing his flocks in Chaldea (Iraq) when God first called him, but the family headquarters were in Syria at Haran.  And before Jacob and his sons followed Joseph down to Egypt, they were about to perish, because of the famine in Canaan.  All this time they were sheepherding nomads, without an inch of ground to call their own.  Who were they, that they should be self-sufficient and proud?

       And the head of household is to recount all the saving acts that God performed for them in Egypt, things no man could do, let alone the Hebrews, who were slaves.  And now (verse 9), the Israelite is humbly to acknowledge that God "brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey."  God gave it!  They didn't earn it!  It was all God's gift!  And in token of this fact, the man is to say, "And now I bring the firstfruits of the soil that you, O Lord, have given me."  Not, "I've brought these crops to pay You back," or "to show now what I can do for You, Lord."  No, even in the Promised Land the fruits of the soil are God's good gift.  All the Israelites are and everything they have are from His hand.

That's something for them to be glad about!  Verse 11 speaks of rejoicing, which is more than just having a thankful attitude, just like our Thanksgiving Day involves more than just thinking grateful thoughts.  For the ancient Hebrews, and really, for all human beings,  communal thankfulness meant eating and drinking and feasting.  The fact that the Levites and aliens are mentioned points this up.  They had no land to bring firstfruits from.  All this bounty was to be shared in a glorious feast in the presence of the Lord, because all of it represented the good things the Lord their God had given to each man and his household.

Here in Deuteronomy the faithful response to God's provision was feasting.  But with our Lord in the wilderness, trusting obedience meant continuing to fast.

In everything Jesus does, He acts as the New Israel.  He was and is the faithful Son of God the sinful children of Jacob had failed to be.  He kept His Father's covenant perfectly for Israel's sake, and for the sake of all whom God would choose to belong to His redeemed people-- including you and me.  So it's appropriate that Jesus should fast for forty days in the wilderness, for He is recapitulating Israel's wilderness journey, but without the quails and manna.  Luke tells us that at the end of that period he was hungry.  Starved or famished might translate it even more sharply.

And now Jesus faces a temptation for Jesus that's actually very similar to the one confronting the new Israelite farmer in Canaan 1,400 years before. Wasn't He entitled to reach out and take what He wanted and claim it for His own?  Forty days He'd withstood the temptations of the devil, and won every time!  Surely the trial was over now, and Jesus could enjoy all the privileges that came with being the Son of God in human flesh, including eating whatever He wanted.  He'd earned it, hadn't He?

And that's just what the devil tempted Him to do.  Satan renewed his onslaught.  Jesus was hungry, wasn't He?  "All right, Jesus, use Your power as the Son of God and transform a stone into bread."  And, "Hey, Jesus, Your mission in life is to bring forth a kingdom for Yourself, right?  Bow down to me, Satan, and I'll give You all the kingdoms of the world, with no trouble to You whatsoever."  And, "Well, Jesus, You want people to know God is with you.  Throw yourself down from the Temple and make God send His angels to save You.  He will, won't He?  And then everyone will follow You.  Isn't that what you want, Jesus, isn't it, if You're really the Son of God?"

After a forty days' ordeal, why not?  Why not prove one's power to oneself and all the world?  Trust in yourself and do it!

But Jesus didn't give in to it.  He was going to rely wholly on what God gave.  And so He confesses the truth about His Father and His relationship to Him.  Pervert creation and turn stones into bread?  Jesus responds, "It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.'" That's Deuteronomy 8:3, and it goes on to say, "but on every word that comes from the mouth of God."  The Word of God is our ultimate food, the only thing in existence we truly cannot do without.  Worship the devil to gain the kingdoms of this world?  No, Jesus answers, "It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'" Having God as our king is worth this world and all its splendor.  Force God to act in our behalf to gain glory for ourselves?  No, says Jesus.  "It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" We trust in God and what He chooses to give us; we don't demand outrageous miracles so as to make us proud of having the Lord of the universe at our beck and call.

This perhaps is hardest of all, because it forces us to have God and His gracious will as our greatest desire.  Relying on God for what He gives is one thing when we secretly hope He'll grant us the most glittering desires of our hearts.  But what if He says No?  What if He says, "You must fast a little longer, My child, whether you choose to or not"?  What if God says, "A cross is in your future, and without it you do not come to Me"?

The cross was in Jesus' future, and that hour of total deprivation was God the Father's way to give us everything we really need.  The reward and provision for God's Old Covenant saints was the land of Canaan and all it could produce.  Our reward and provision, our Promised Land, is Jesus Christ the Son of God, crucified for our sins and risen for our life.  He is our home and shelter; He is the firstfruits we offer to God; He is our provision and our Bread of life.  He is what God has given to us, and without Him all feasting is dust and all fasting is in vain.

This Lent, if you fast, fast to see beyond the gifts of this earth to the Gift from heaven.  Discover how weak you are and how dependent on Him for life and salvation.  If you feast, see and taste and know the Lord your Provider in every good thing you enjoy, and long for the day when you will enjoy Him face to face.

Until that day, let us gratefully receive what He has given us at His Table.  For this is the Table of the Lord, spread for you.  A bite of bread, a sip of wine: What is there here that can compare with the splendor of the kingdoms of this world?  But here at the Lord's Supper our God has promised to confirm to you all the bounty of the universe, everything you truly need, all found in His Son Jesus Christ.  Here eat His body and drink His blood as your spiritual food, and trust that in them God has given you victory over your sin, Satan, and death itself.  The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is trustworthy and His promises are sure.  Participate in this fast; partake of this feast, and rely on Him the Father gives.  Amen.

The More Certain Word

Texts:  2 Peter 1:16-21; Luke 9:28-36

WHICH IS BETTER: TO KNOW JESUS, OR to know about Him?  Is it more important to learn from the Bible learn who Jesus is and what He has done, or should we focus on knowing Jesus personally in our hearts?

Surveys have been taken of evangelical Christians, and the great majority say the essential thing is to feel Jesus living in your heart.  The Bible is important in telling us how to live, the majority responded, but it's not that crucial in helping us experience the Jesus we should be living for.  "Heart knowledge" trumps "head knowledge" every time, and "Word" constantly takes a back seat to "Spirit."

If this is true, if all these Christian brothers and sisters are right about this, we can expect that the Apostle Peter would be right at the forefront leading those who would say experience is better than knowledge.

For who had an experience of Jesus Christ like the Apostle Peter?  Three years walking with the Savior, starting with seeing Him baptised in the Jordan.  Imagine, witnessing that miraculous catch of fish in the Sea of Galilee!   Being one of Jesus' inner circle along with James and John!  Getting out of the boat at Jesus' invitation and for a few steps actually walking on water!  Being the first to seriously confess Jesus as the Son of God!  Even the horrible experience of denying Jesus three times surely affected Peter in a deeply-felt way, especially when Christ later forgave and restored him.  And then Peter saw Jesus after He was raised from the dead, and witnessed His wondrous ascension into heaven.  And perhaps most impressive of all, Peter the ex-fisherman, alone among the disciples along with James and John, beheld the Lord Jesus Christ revealed in divine glory and majesty on the mount of Transfiguration.

Think of it!  Peter had the ultimate experience of Christ a man could have on this earth.  He saw and spoke with Jesus shining forth bodily as the eternal Son of God!  Imagine how he and the other two disciples
must have felt!  What cold historical facts, what writing, what words could ever compete with that?

But the amazing thing is, in his second letter to the churches, Peter does not base everything in the Christian life on his experience, even his experience of Jesus' transfiguration.  He doesn't urge God's people (including you and me) to strive to get a mountaintop experience of Jesus like his.  Instead, he cites his mountaintop experience as evidence of the power and authority of the Word of God that witnesses to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  He wants all who read this letter to know and understand who Jesus is, not because we have some spiritual experience or feeling about Him, but because we have received and believed reliable testimony to Christ through the prophets and apostles.

To see this more clearly we need to go back to the start of Peter's letter.  So if you have your Bible open look at verse 2.  Peter writes: "Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord."  Grace and peace come through knowledge of Christ.  This word in the Greek, to quote Bible commentator Norman Hillyer, "denotes exact and full knowledge of God and his ways, which follows as a consequence of conversion to Christ."  In the next verse the apostle writes that we have everything we need for life and godliness, again through our knowledge of God (same Greek word) who called us.  He has given us his very great and precious promises (verse 4), promises given to us in His holy Word, including those spoken through the prophets concerning the coming Messiah.  In verses 5-7 Peter urges us on to the practice of many active Christian virtues.  Why?  Because (verse 8), these qualities will keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge (there's that word again!) of Christ.  This knowledge of Christ is the good news of the gospel, telling us what Jesus did for us on the cross and how He has saved us by His own precious blood.  No experience of ours could ever tell us that!  It takes the word of Scripture ministered by the Holy Spirit to get this good news into our minds and into our hearts, and there it bears its fruit.

This knowledge of Christ and His finished work is so important that Peter says (verse 12) that he's going to keep on reminding us of it.  Even we who have heard and believed the gospel need to have our memories refreshed about these things.  It is so important that Peter is going to argue from his apostolic experience to prove to us that the Word he speaks is trustworthy.  So as we read in our epistle selection,  "We [apostles] did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus." 

Now, right here we see a number of things.  By bringing up "cleverly invented stories" Peter introduces the fact that there were those claiming to be God's prophets who were spreading that very thing.  Later in chapter 2 he will warn us against them and their corrupting influence.  The testimony of Peter and the other apostles isn't like that.  They are giving the church the true word about Jesus Christ, the facts about Him and His ministry on earth.  In our passage we also see that the truth the Apostle is emphasizing goes beyond salvation through the cross and to the time when Jesus will come again in glory.  How can we believe Peter's word about this?  He saw a preview of it.  He, James, and John were eyewitnesses of Jesus' majesty on the sacred mountain.  They saw Him receive honor and glory from God the Father.  They heard the voice from the Majesty Glory-- that is, from God Himself-- declaring "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."  If Peter tells us that Jesus Christ is coming again in power and great glory, we should believe it.

Having heard Peter recount what he heard and saw of the glory of Jesus, it would be good for us to turn to the gospel of St. Luke and read what the Holy Spirit has recorded for us there.

We see that Jesus took the three disciples and went up onto a mountain.  We're not told which of the mountains of Israel it was, and that's a good thing.  Otherwise we'd all be trooping up it trying to get the same experience for ourselves, and totally missing the point of what God revealed there.  We are told He went there to pray; that is, He entered into intense communication and fellowship with God the Father.  Jesus had gone up into the hills to pray before, but on this occasion "the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning."  And then, "two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus."  Why Moses and Elijah?  Why not David and Abraham?  Because together Moses and Elijah represented the Law and the Prophets.  In their glorified persons they stood for all the promises and predictions God had sent to His people Israel throughout the Old Testament.  They represented the Word of God that had always pointed towards the Messiah who was to come.  And now that Messiah, that Christ was here, and the two blessed Old Testament saints were speaking about His departure.

Departure?  What does it mean, "His departure"?

It might help to know that the word in the Greek is "exodus," which for Greek-speaking Jews and God-fearers would raise the echo of the exodus from Egypt.  It would remind them-- and should remind us-- of the great day when God led His people out of slavery under the leadership of Moses.  And now Jesus the Son of God was about to lead His people out of a greater slavery, the slavery to sin.  The befuddled disciples didn't understand it then, but soon they would know that Jesus would accomplish that through His sacrifice on the cross.  Jesus was about to depart in a particular way.  By His death He would perform the divine act of liberation that the law and the prophets had predicted.  Everything that had been written in the Scriptures led up to that crucial event.

We read in Luke what Peter said on the occasion, and it's significant that he doesn't mention it in his letter.  I don't think it was because he was embarrassed to.  Rather, how Peter felt about the Transfiguration wasn't important.  What was important was the fact of Christ's glory and the revelation of who He was.

Luke tells us something more that was said by the voice from the Majestic Glory.  The voice of God also said about Jesus, "Listen to Him!"  Listen to His word!  Listen to what He tells you about your need for His atoning death!  Listen when He tells you He is coming again to judge the living and the dead!  Moses and Elijah represented the Word of God, but Jesus Christ was and is the living Word of God, standing there transfigured before the terrified disciples.  The Law and the prophets all give witness to Jesus.  Listen to Him!

Peter personally heard the voice of God testifying to Jesus' divine Sonship when they were with Him on the mountain.  But should we believe Jesus is the Son of God only because of Peter's experience?  Well, in a way, yes, because he was one of Christ's holy apostles and the Spirit spoke the word of God through him.  But Peter adds this as well: "And we have the word of the prophets made more certain."  That is, "We have more than my apostolic experience; we have the fact that Jesus fulfilled all the prophets spoke about Him."  The Greek in this phrase literally means, "we can take a most firm hold on the prophetic word."  You and I can rely on what the prophets said in the Old Testament and take our stand on it, because in Jesus Christ it all came true.  We should and must pay attention to what the Scriptures say to us, because they are our light in this dark world and will help us see our way "until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts"-- that is, until Jesus comes again.  We can rely on what God's New Testament prophets, the apostles and evangelists have written by the power of the Spirit, because they have written by the power of the Holy Spirit.  For Old Testament or New, prophecy-- by which is meant the entire Word of Scripture-- never was a matter of human beings making up things out of their own heads.  No, true prophecy, the authentic Word of God that points to Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen, is from God and God alone.  It is to be believed and trusted and by it we should direct our lives, until the day of Jesus Christ.

The Word is essential; our feelings aren't enough.  Our personal experience of Christ won't save us and won't preserve us-- unless it's based on a true knowledge of Jesus Christ and what He actually said and did, as recorded in the Scriptures.  This world is very dark, squalid, and dismal, and if we rely on our emotions to assure us that we are saved, we will stumble and fall.  If we trust our feelings to guide us in what we should do, we are in grave danger of going astray.   But we have the truth of Christ recorded for us in God's written Word, and it shines as a light to all who have been called by God's own glory and greatness.

Let us thank God for those times when we feel especially happy or joyful in Him.  Let us praise Him for seasons of blessed peace and comfort.  But do not lose heart when trouble and distress and darkness come.  We have the prophetic word made most certain, for it testifies to Jesus Christ and what He has done.  He did it for you, to give you hope and everything you need for life and godliness through knowledge of Him.  He is the Word of God Incarnate, the Word made flesh.  He is the bright morning star, the same Jesus who was transfigured on the mountain, the Son of Man who died on the cross and rose for you in glory.  This same Jesus has promised to return and take you to live with Him in blessedness forever and by the testimony of the apostles and prophets we know His promises are good.  By the power of the Holy Spirit may His glorious word be established in your heart and may you grow in grace and knowledge of Him until He comes again.  Amen.

Father, Give Us This Day

Texts:    Proverbs 30:7-8; 1 Timothy 6:3-10; Luke 11:1-13

    WITH THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION JUST a few weeks away, there's a lot of debate over the sorry state of the national economy.  Both sides disagree on who's to blame for it all, each claims it's the other side's fault.  This morning we won't get into who's right and who's wrong on the question, but one thing I think we can agree on is that the economy is still in trouble.  People are still losing their homes, their jobs, their savings.  Experienced adults are having to make do with part time and occasional work, and it's not enough to live on.  Many people having given up on finding gainful employment altogether.  People are scared, even panicking.  Some of those people might be folks you know.  Some of those people might be you.  We hear about the working poor.  Our times have given us the hidden poor-- those who still appear to be middle class, but they're desperately hanging on by their fingernails, knowing that if something doesn't develop, if something doesn't change, they'll soon slide down into ruin.  What do our Scriptures for today say to people in that condition?  What do they say to us as we struggle with our own financial worries, or worry about the struggles of those we love?

    We could be superficial.  We could take our passage from 1 Timothy with its verse about the love of money being the root of all kinds of evil, and conclude we should feel guilty about wanting to provide materially for ourselves and our families.  We could imagine we're being told that money doesn't matter at all and we shouldn't bother to provide materially for ourselves and our families. 

    And then our passage from Luke 11.  As it winds up, Jesus seems to be saying that whatever we want, we can ask God for it and He'll give it to us.  That's what the prosperity gospel preachers say.  That you can have anything you desire-- houses, cars, wealth-- if you just ask God with enough faith.  So if we don't have the material things we want and need, does that mean we don't have enough faith?  Is that what Luke is teaching us?  And are St. Luke and St. Paul at odds with each other, one saying God wants us to have money and the stuff it'll buy, and the other telling us that money and possessions are somehow evil?

    We know better than that.  The Holy Spirit is the Author of Scripture and He does not contradict Himself.   And it's not the purpose of the revealed Word of God to give us financial advice.  No, these passages and all the verses of the Bible that talk to us about money and material things speak with one voice, and they all intend that we should have the right attitude toward these things, because we first have the right attitude towards our holy Father God. 

    Lest we should say great riches are always a sign of God's blessing, or conversely, in case we should claim that poverty is  good in itself because God only favors the poor, let us take our verses from Proverbs 30 as our keynote.  They say,   

    Two things I ask of you, O Lord;
            do not refuse me before I die:
     Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
            give me neither poverty nor riches,
            but give me only my daily bread.
        Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
            and say, ‘Who is the Lord?'
    Or I may become poor and steal,
            and so dishonor the name of my God.

    You probably remember the Prayer of Jabez fad a few years ago.  We were told that the formula to a happy, God-blessed life was to be found in a prayer prayed by an otherwise unknown Judahite mentioned in 1 Chronicles.  I suggest that we in our times might take this prayer of Agur son of Jakeh especially to heart.

    "Keep falsehood and lies away from me," he implores, and aren't we surrounded by untruth and even active opposition to the Truth every day we live?  But beyond this, see what Agur prays regarding material possessions.

    First of all, he does pray regarding material possessions and his prayer is recorded in Scripture as an example to us.  There is nothing shameful or guilt-inducing about wanting our material needs to be met.  God created us with physical bodies.  They were part of us when Creation was still "very good," and our heavenly Father knows we need food and clothing and shelter from the elements.  He knows it's good for us to have and enjoy things to delight the eye, to stimulate the soul and to rejoice the heart.  Of course we are in need of material things, and it is right and holy that we should ask the Lord God for them.  For when we ask, we're acknowledging that we depend on Him, that we know that every good gift comes down from Him in heaven, even our life itself.

    But what shall we ask?  Shall we ask to win the lottery and be rolling in cash?  Shall we beg God to give us a higher salary than anyone else in our company, not because our work earns it, but because we want to feel how much more important we are than anyone else there?

    No.  By the Holy Spirit Agur prays, "I may have too much and disown you and say, "Who is the Lord?"  That is the snare in riches.  That is where the love of money proves to be the root of all kinds of evil.  It's when money and possessions come between us and God.  Money can so easily become an idol, especially when one has so much of it he believes he is entirely self-sufficient and no longer needs his Lord.  Indeed, in his letter to the Colossians St. Paul frankly labels greed as idolatry.  The person who on an earthly level has earned his or her fortune is particularly in danger of falling into this pit, for if he will not exalt God as the Giver, he begins to raise up himself as the author and perfecter of all he has acquired.  You may have heard the expression: "He's a self-made man, and he worships his Maker."  But rich or poor or in-between, we have only one Maker, who is the divine Creator of heaven and earth, and only one Provider, who is our Father in heaven, and only one Master, who is the triune Lord.  And if we deny Him; if we stand on the highest pile of possessions the world has ever seen and stick our paltry human noses in the air and proclaim that we are the captains of our fates and the masters of our souls, we are poorer than the frailest, sickest, most starving Christian child in the refugee camp at Darfur, for we, unlike that child, have lost God.

    At the same time, Agur prays that the Lord not give Him poverty.  God certainly is described in the Bible as the special Defender of the poor, but there's nothing noble or virtuous about poverty in itself.  Like riches, it offers its own temptations to idolatry.  Agur feels that if he should become poor, he might be driven to steal.  And what is theft?  It's another way of refusing to trust God, of preempting His right to give you what He wills for you in His good time.  Theft, too, is driven by greed, which is idolatry.  When a child of God descends to stealing to provide for himself, he dishonors God not only in the crime itself, but in what the theft says about God's ability to provide.  It declares that the Lord is not to be trusted.  But when one is poor and desperate, waiting on the Lord is a difficult thing to do.  "My family and I are hungry now!" we might protest.  "I have the right to take what I need!"  With Agur we pray we will never be led into such temptation.

    In all of this prayer, the main thing is not the petitioner's material state, the main thing is his relationship to Almighty God.  Agur knows his weakness.  He also knows God's strength: up in verse 5 he writes, "Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who trust in him."  But how easy it is in our weakness not to trust!  And so, he prays that the Lord will give him "neither poverty nor riches, but only his daily bread.  "Give us this day our daily bread," O Lord.  Assure me that I will have enough for my needs, and may I trust You to do the same thing for me day by day,  tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, not because I see the provision, but because I see You.

    And so, hundreds of years later, when the Son of God walked the earth in human flesh, His disciples came to Him and asked Him to teach them how to pray.  What comes first in the prayer our Lord taught?  It is that we may be given to acknowledge who God is and be fully submitted to His will.  He is our Father: kind, loving, benevolent-- and in charge.  May we always hold His name holy-- that is, may we realize that God is never a means to an end; rather, He is the end and purpose of all things in Himself.  May His kingdom, His everlasting dominion come, and may it be established here and now in me.  Once we understand the greatness of God, we can properly ask Him to fulfill our material, spiritual, and emotional needs.  Like Agur, our Lord teaches us to pray each day for our daily bread and for preservation against temptation to sin against God.  And Jesus teaches us to pray for our greatest need of all: for forgiveness of our sins, and for grace to forgive those who sin against us.

    Jesus commands us to pray believing in the goodness of God, trusting our relationship with Him.  He tells two parables to illustrate this.  We haven't time this morning to examine them in detail, but the point is clear: If a friend will bother himself to help a friend in need, how much more will our loving God open the door to us and give us relief.  If a human father, even an evil one, will give his son good things, how much more will our Father give good gifts to us, the children He has adopted in His Son?  And not just good things, but the best thing-- The Holy Spirit, who is His very presence with us.  If we have nothing else in this world, if we're being starved to death in a prison someplace but have the Holy Spirit living in us and ministering Christ and His benefits to us, we have all we need.

    I pray that you and I can get our hearts and minds and desires around this.  This same truth is what the Holy Spirit through Paul teaches Timothy-- and us-- in the First Letter to that young pastor.  "Godliness with contentment is great gain," he writes.  "For we brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it.  But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that."  "Godliness" is far more than an aspect of our own character or personality.  It's not walking around being holier-than-thou or bragging about all the things we don't do.  No, godliness is a state of being in continual fellowship with God in Jesus Christ, continually seeking His will and trusting in His love.  If that is how you know and walk with your Provider, if you have learned the happiness of trusting Him for your daily bread, you are way ahead of the game when it comes to material wellbeing.  If the Lord should grant you more than food and clothing-- and I suspect He has favored all of us this way-- rejoice in His gifts and thank Him for all He has done.  But wanting to get rich for the sake of getting rich can cause us to fall, as Paul and Agur son of Jakeh say, into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that can plunge us into ruin and destruction.

    Brothers and sisters, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be successful at our work.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to be compensated fairly for the labor we do and the work product we produce.  St. James in his letter condemns those who withhold wages from the workman, and the executive in his suite is just as much a workman in what he does as the lowliest sweating ditch digger.  The hazard, again, is lusting after wealth for its own sake, so you can sit back and rely on it and not on God.  The danger is learning to despise the riches that is God's Holy Spirit living in us.


    But how shall we stand in this world of lies and falsehood, in these times when financial uncertainty tempts us to try to get rich quick or to take matters into our own hands and steal?  We stand on Jesus and His death and resurrection for our sakes.  God gave up His Son for us: is there any other needful thing He will withhold from us He loves?  As Paul says in Romans 8, "He who did not spare His own Son, but gave him up for us all-- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?"

     Not all at once, and not everything we are convinced we need, not necessarily even what we think is best.  We may pray the prayer of Agur son of Jakeh in faith, and the Lord may say No, and give us riches and the responsibility that comes with them.  He may will that we taste poverty, and learn to trust Him not merely for our daily bread, but for our very breath hour by hour.  In all our prayers, may we seek to know God, His graciousness and His glory.  May we desire above all things to be found in Christ, who died for us.  May we rejoice in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, now and in all eternity.  For however the economy is going, whatever our fate on this earth may be, that is a prayer that our Lord will always answer with a gracious, loving Yes.  Amen.