God Chooses to Use Ordinary People

Proverbs 30:1–10
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Agar the inspired writer of these verses is not mentioned anywhere else in Scripture and even though his father’s name is given there is no clue to his family or tribe in Israel. Ithiel and Ucal are appar­ently his companions but are also unknown (v. 1). Agar seems to have been a plain and simple man who had little natural ability and was perhaps even below average human intelligence (vv. 2-3). Yet the Lord opened his understanding, revealing to him great and precious things and enabled him to impart these things to not only Ithiel and Ucal but to untold thousands. God still chooses to use just ordinary people to do his work. The only answer to the five questions in this verse is God (v. 4). Man does not have by nature the ability to know by himself the nature of God.

Man can only know God as He has revealed Himself through the written Word (v. 5). To attempt to add to what He has written is to deny the all-sufficiency of Scripture to meet and provide for every circumstance of life. There have been many frauds who have sought to add to the Scriptures by claiming to have had special revelations which we are warned about here (v. 6). Some of these are: the Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith, visions of Ellen White as found in Seventh day Adventist literature, and certainly the unchristian and unscientific theories of Mary Baker, Glover, Patterson Eddy in Christian Science. There are two things the writer wants the Lord to do him before he dies: Make me absolutely honest and don’t let me be too poor or too rich (v. 7). Give me just what I need (v. 8). If I have too much to eat, I might forget about you; if I don’t have enough, I might steal and disgrace your name (v. 9). Don’t tell a slave owner something bad about his slave (v. 10).

Application

The only way I will be able to know God is to spend time with Him and His word.