Proverbs 30: 1-6

GOD IS, AND GOD WILL PREVAIL

This remarkable book closes with the two chapters which give the force and meaning of chapter 1: 8. That is to say, chapter 1: 8 covers the last two chapters of this wonderful book. It reads thus: “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother”. The instruction of the father is in chapter 30, and the law of the mother in chapter 31.

You will remember that I am here to preach the gospel, not to give an exposition of scripture, but I merely say that and pass on to the passage before us: “The words of Agur the son of Jakeh”. The Hebrew meaning of the word Agur is Gatherer, and of Jakeh is Instructor. He is in the presence of Ithiel and Ucal, in which lies all that I have to say. These two Hebrew names mean this: ‘God is’, and ‘God will prevail’. That is the meaning of these two Hebrew names, “Ithiel,” God is, and “Ucal,” God will prevail. That is the key to the position - the key to all I have to say. God is. He is and He will prevail.

Scripture says, “The fool hath said in his heart, … no God”, Ps 14: 1. It does not mean that such an one does not believe in the existence of a supreme Being, but the force of it is, ‘No God for me’. What it means is the exclusion of God, and there are millions of people who believe in the existence of a supreme Being, the Almighty God, and yet they constantly say and have said by their ways all their lifetime, ‘No God for me’.

Now, beloved friends, I pause before such a thing as that. It is the greatest possible folly to exclude God. The exclusion of God will end in eternal ruin. You cannot afford to exclude God. If I speak of religion, and there is to-day plenty of religion, my definition of it is this, that it is the respectful recognition of God at a distance on occasions. People make a respectful recognition of God at a distance on occasions, but there is nothing in that. It is not Christianity.

Christianity is this, that God has come into my life to beautify it, and to make me supremely happy down here in this world in the blessed knowledge of Himself. That is the nature of the proposal in the gospel. The blessed God desires that we should know Him, and know Him in such a way that our happiness shall not depend upon our circumstances here. The nature of the proposal is to make us supremely happy in the knowledge of God here and now. That was the nature of the proposal in the early days of the gospel. There was not one word said by any of the preachers in the early days of the gospel that if they believed the gospel they would go to heaven, not a word about it.

You may study it and look closely into the inspired record of the early proclamation of the gospel, and you will find that none of the preachers ever said that if they believed the gospel they would go to heaven. What was the nature of the proposal in the proclamation of the gospel? The nature of the proposal was this, that people should have the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and in the gift of the Holy Ghost there shall be the knowledge of God, and His blessed love shall be shed abroad in our hearts.

What a magnificent thought that is. Do you think that God would tantalise us with magnificent impossibilities? No. There is no such thing. God proposes to every one to make you supremely happy in the knowledge of Himself down here in this world. After the early Christians were thus blessed with the gospel and had received the Holy Ghost they were taught that they were going to heaven, and they were taught it because love wanted them there. That is how it comes out. I impress this point on you, that you cannot afford to exclude God from your life.

There was a time - I speak as a Christian when I tried to exclude Him, but now I am never happier than when I think of God. I have known Him for fifty-three years; He has come into my life and beautified my life and made me supremely happy, and that happiness does not depend upon whether I have a fine coat or a shabby one; a long purse or a short purse; whether I live in a palace or a cottage; my happiness does not lie in these things, but in the knowledge of God.

Now then, the fool hath said in his heart, ‘No God for me’. The Lord tells us in Luke 12 - I draw a contrast now - of a man who had a piece of land. Who gave it him? God gave it to him. He had the strength and the ability to cultivate that piece of land. God gave the ability. He had the sunshine and the rain. God gave it him. He was very diligent and he expanded it - men love to expand, because it gives them a place in the eyes of their fellow creatures, poor things that we are; he prospered and said, “What shall I do? ” “thou hast much goods laid up for many years”, 17, 19. “This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods”, 18. That is expansion. Now there was not one thought of God or of his neighbour. That man's life was self-centred and God was excluded, and not only God, but his neighbour.

What an awful life to live, to be self-centred, to shut out God, and if you shut out God you shut out your neighbour. That was the condition of that man. The neighbours said, ‘Well done’, the newspapers would say, ‘Well done’, but God says, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee”. In one fell moment he went from time into eternity, and while I am speaking that kind of thing is still going on, and that should make us very serious.

Have you excluded God from your life? If you exclude God from your life here, He will exclude you from His life there. Awful exclusion to be without God for ever and ever. The very fact that such is the danger that some of my hearers are in fills me with anxiety, and I long after your souls, for this man used the goodness of God to exclude God.

I will draw you another picture from this precious Gospel of Luke with which you are more or less familiar. The evangelist puts it so graphically that you can see it livingly before you. There is a man in Luke's gospel standing in a boat in the water. He is a fisherman and pursuing his avocation, and the circumstances are that they have been out all night and have taken nothing. If you do not take anything, you have to wash your nets in the morning anyhow. He is there washing his nets.

Yonder on the beach a great crowd is gathering and in the foreground of that crowd is Jesus, the blessed Son of God, and they are crowding down to hear the gracious words that proceed out of His mouth. Who is this Jesus?

He it was who spake and it was done; commanded and it stood fast. He it was who spangled the heavens and upheld them with the word of His power. It was Jesus, and He is here - let it touch your hearts - the blessed God has come down to man to win the confidence of His poor degraded creatures. Do you know that this degradation as God sees it lies in distrust of Him, all the rest is detail. Jesus is there, the blessed Son of God, and they press down to hear the words which fall from His lips, and He draws near to this man. The first meeting of these two is found in John's gospel, they are known to each other, but this was going to be a wonderful day in the history of Peter.

Jesus says, ‘Let me preach from your boat’. The people are crowding down on the beach you see them there - and Peter is there listening. I think I can see him there listening to Jesus, the blessed Saviour. Have you listened to Jesus? He will make you forget everything and everybody but Himself. Have you listened to Him like that? Peter is listening and he forgets his nets. So may it be with you; you have heard about Him, you may have been taught to lisp His name from early childhood, but I do ask you with great anxiety, does He stand out before your consciousness in the reality of what He is? Have you heard His voice? Has He spoken to you? Is there a living link between your soul and this Jesus, the blessed Son of God? God grant that to-night there may be a link with Him, that you may listen to Him and that you may hear His voice and be conscious of a living link between your soul and Himself.

When the preaching was over and the audience dismissed, the Lord turned to Peter and said, ‘Launch out into the deep, and I will give you a draught’.

Peter said to the Lord, “we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word”. “At thy word”. That proves the value of the listening; as Peter was listening his heart said, ‘I can trust you’. So shall it be. That is the point, the blessed God was there in Peter's boat and He won his confidence. Has He won yours? “Nevertheless at thy word,” Peter said, and he let down the net, and then He who created the fish commanded them and filled Peter's net with fish. Creatorial power and goodness were shining there. The nets are full of fish, the threads are breaking and the boats are filled with that living freight; but the draught of fish drew Peter's soul into the presence of God. “ Ithiel,” God is.

Let me tell you, dear friends, that is conversion. If God be for me at any given moment it must raise the question as to what I am to Him. Let me tell you that conversion is intensely individual. We are not converted in a company; but one by one we come to Christ. We must come to Him; we must have the sense in our souls that He has received us, that we have heard His blessed voice. Here is the point, you know very well I speak as a man - what it is to have the feeling of success in your veins when you have done a good stroke of business, when you have had a good catch of fish or whatever it may be. What is Peter thinking of? The commercial value of that catch? No. He never had a catch like that before. But what is happening in that man's soul is this, he is drawn into the divine presence.

You might have said to Peter, ‘You had better wait till you see the Lord alone, James and John are seeing you and listening’. It does not matter about James and John when God is there, we are delivered from all such feelings when God is there. God and you, and you and God, and no intrusion of a third person. That is conversion - in the blessed solitude with God to learn what you are and to learn what God is.

He turns his back on his companions and on his fish, and he falls down at Jesus' feet. Well I know it through grace, I know the action of it. “Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord”. ‘You have filled my nets with fish that I might learn that I am full of sin, that I am a man full of sin. But if you go what shall I do?’ He tells Him to go but clings to Him. What is it? Why just this “Ithiel,” God is. “Ucal”, God will prevail. In the day of grace He will prevail, but if He prevails not with you in the day of grace He will prevail with you in the day of judgment. Surely it is most blessed to meet Him now in the day of His grace.

The Lord looks upon Peter and says, If you are full of sin I am full of grace, and My grace is greater than your sin. That is it, “Ithiel” and “Ucal”.

You see, on the one hand, the rich fool excluding God. Creatorial power and goodness only served to make him selfish and he left God out, but he died that same night. Here in our other passage creatorial power and goodness only drew this man into the light of the presence of God to learn that he was full of sin and to learn that God is full of grace, and His grace is greater than sin. How blessed it is; does it touch your heart? I never tire of the story, the more I speak from it the more I enjoy and love it. That is what is so lovely in God's word, the more you read it the more you love it and the more blessed it is, you never tire of it.

Surely we who are the subjects of God's grace are growing as Christians in the sense of the grace that has met us. Do I forget the first touch, my first meeting with Christ? How can I forget it? It is growingly beautiful to me. I do not lose the sense of it, but there is a growing apprehension of the grace that met me.

I have said all this that you may see the force of these words, the divine meaning of these words “Ithiel” and “Ucal”. “Ithiel”, God is, and “Ucal”, God will prevail. No matter what evil you may find in yourself, you will find that the good that is in God is greater than the evil in yourself, and if I have to learn - and I must learn - the evil in myself, it is to find God - blessed finding. If I have to go down through the mire, and it is very painful, I have to go down and find what I am, and I find God underneath it, and the goodness in God is greater than the evil in me. He never condones evil, but He has taken advantage of the evil to shew what the good is in Himself.

I am saying this that your heart may be led to trust Him, that the presentation of Him may win your confidence and you may be found among those of whom it may be said, “Every word of God is pure; he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him”. He was a shield for me and He will be a shield for you.

Now this scripture is very fascinating and I will proceed to shew you the force of verse 4. I call special attention to it. Did you catch the thought? I trust that God may impress it upon you - that if God raises a question in your soul - He always does when His presence is there - if God be for you at any moment it must raise the question of what you are to God. It must necessarily do so. God raises such a question in your soul to introduce His own blessed answer. You cannot answer it, but God can answer it, and God's answer to every possible question is Christ.

What a magnificent thought. How my heart is thrilled with such a thing as that. He raises a question with me as to what I am, and He raises the question to introduce the answer, and His answer is Christ. Many of you here are Christians. Is there one answer to all your tears, all your desires, all your prayers? He has got one answer and that is Christ. If you are passing through bereavement and sorrow and the heart feels it - God intends you to feel it - it is to find Christ. Blessed compensation. If I have been through deep sorrow and have found Christ, what blessed compensation. I have found that He is more than enough to fill every breach. Do you think I could, by searching with my brain, find out Christ? Every bit of appreciation of Christ has been through a sense of need. It is an experimental thing, not a doctrinal thing. There is no such thing as a mere doctrinal knowledge of Christ. No. I beg your attention to it; every bit of apprehension you may have of Christ, you have been led into the knowledge of - and the blessedness of - experimentally.

But to return, I called attention to verse 4 of our chapter. To analyse it as one would like to do in detail would take longer than the time at my disposal. It is most vast. There are five questions raised in verse 4, and these five questions are answered by Christ.

I could not speak on it if I had not the light of the New Testament scripture. The first question is, “Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended?” It appals you. “Who hath ascended?” That is not a geographical question, behind it is a moral question. Who has measured the distance between a holy God and an unholy sinner? Who has measured it?

Let me tell you, dear friends, that one of the sweetest thoughts - and there are many sweet thoughts in the gospel - but one of the sweetest is this, that God felt the distance at which His poor creatures were. He felt it. God cannot bear distance. He loves nearness. He cannot bear silence, and silence is the result of distance. If you are in distance you are silent towards Him; but God sent His own Son to remove the distance and to break the silence; the blessed God. You remember that when the prodigal “was yet a great way off, his father saw him … and ran”, Luke 15: 20. If the boy was hungry, and he was, the father's heart was hungry for the boy. That is God. He felt the distance. There were painful results to the poor prodigal; there was departure, distance, destitution, and degradation, but the father felt it.

Is God like that? He is. He felt the distance in which His poor creature was, so He sent His own Son to remove the distance. How? How could He remove the distance? By going into the distant place. Where was the distance removed? In the cross. Have you heard that bitter cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt 27: 46) wrung from His blessed lips and from His heart? Who could measure what it was for Jesus to be out in the distance? In dark Gethsemane angels were sent to strengthen Him, but when He was there no angelic being could cross that dark abyss; He was left alone. Come and learn His love, and learn to hate the sin that put Him there, by that bitter cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

The distance was removed by the blessed Son of God being in the distance. It is a moral idea. He removed the distance; and He who measured the distance measures the nearness.

So near, so very near to God,

Nearer I could not be,

For in the Person of His Son,

I am as near as He.

He felt the distance. One could spend a whole evening on that one thought. I am presenting Christ to you according to that which He has wrought.

The second question is, “who hath gathered the wind in his fists?” Who is greater than Satan? Satan is a powerful being, the prince of the power of the air. Satan is behind all those things that we are subject to. He can blow with his winds and raise the mighty fury of the will of man; but the One who opposed Satan, the Son of God, is greater than Satan; He has been down into Satan's dark domain and He has broken his power. He is greater than Satan. Who is? Jesus, the Son of God. He has won the victory. He has gone down into Satan's headquarters and broken them up.

What a wonderful Saviour He is. How we should trust Him. I sometimes feel that I cannot stand against Satan's winds. I am a poor creature, however can I stand against Satan? But I can get behind the One who has gathered the wind in His fists and I feel perfectly safe there. “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death ... and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage”, Heb 3: 14, 15. What a mighty victory He won over Satan.

Question number three. “Who hath bound the waters in a garment?” In other words, ‘Who has annulled death?’ He is greater than death. Who? Jesus. How He looms before my delighted heart in the grandeur of what He is. He has annulled death and He has brought to light life and incorruptibility through the gospel. When you came into the world - every one of you - death said of you as children of Adam, ‘I will pull you down; I will feed on you’. Dare you deny it? You cannot. Of every child of Adam death could say, ‘I will pull you down and I will feed on you’. It cannot be denied.

One of the greatest statesmen of the last century was dying; a Christian doctor stood by his side and held his hand, and he said, ‘O doctor, I am overwhelmed’. Death was overwhelming him. Death was over him. Gone were all his honours and all his glories. Oh, how pitiful it is. That is what brought me to Christ, the thought that I must die. My heart was beating high with ambition, I wanted to get on in this world, and I was urged to do so by some who knew me. But I was the subject of a mother's prayers she looked through her tears at me when I left home and said, ‘I will never leave off going to God for you’.

When I went away - poor silly fellow that I was - I thought to see life, to have a fine time, to have sea liberty. It was absolute slavery - my mother kept praying for me. I have sat in a concert hall and heard sweet music and I have felt the touch of my mother's hand and heard her pleading voice. She was spoiling all my pleasure by her prayers.

The thought was on my spirit that I must die, and I wanted something to love outside the reach of death. Like the child who said to its mother, ‘Give me something to love that cannot die’. Pet after pet had died, and the child wanted something to love that would not die, but the mother could not do it. The Lord looked in pity on me - His compassions are very great. I well remember it, I was a sailor lad and sitting up in one of the largest churches in Glasgow, right away from home, and I sat up there in the gallery. There were probably three thousand in the place, and the preacher got up and said, ‘I take for my text the first chapter of Colossians and the nineteenth verse: “in him all the fulness … was pleased to dwell”’.

What kind of a sermon was it? I do not know, but I know what happened to me. This glorious Person, my precious Saviour, drew me out, He looked into the depths of my sad and weary heart and said, ‘I am for you, and you are for Me’. I said, ‘A poor sinful creature like me?’ ‘I am for you, and you are for Me’, and we two came together, never to be severed, never.

Many a time I have thought of it; it is fifty-three years ago, but it comes sweetly to me over again. ‘I am for you, and you are for Me’. Never to be severed. My heart was wakened to a new affection and I have found what my heart desired, some One to love outside the region of death, and I have got it. I have known hours of sorrow and bereavement and have had to look through my tears into His face and say, ‘I shall never lose Thee’. He is outside the region of death.

What a magnificent thing it is to be a Christian. He has annulled death. What is the good of my preaching to you if I do not say it to myself? I can say to death, ‘You will never pull me down and you will never feed on me now. I know the One who has said, “Whoso eateth my flesh ... hath eternal life”, John 6: 54. He has the keys of death. ‘Thou art my servant, O death’. That is it. That is Christianity. How could I say it but for Jesus, who died and went down into death to annul it.

Question number four is this, “who hath established all the ends of the earth? ” Take the last few years, where have people been? Governments breaking up, everything giving way. Many a time have I said during the last five years, I have received “a kingdom which cannot be moved”, Heb 12: 28. Everything for Christians is established on the resurrection platform in Christ. Established there. We preach a risen Christ to you.

That glorious resurrection morn

Bids doubts for ever cease,

For far and wide the news is borne,

Of perfect peace.

I was preaching at Newport (Mon.) some years ago, and I said to the people in giving out that hymn, ‘We Christians keep Easter all the year round; not only once a year, but all the year round’. He cherishes the fact that he knows a risen Christ. Everything is established there.

I should like to refer to it. I was travelling a few years afterwards in Somersetshire. I had been to a meeting and had to get out at the junction. It was a very dark night, but I heard a voice saying, ‘Mr Johnson’. I groped my way along the platform and said, ‘Who are you?’ There I saw the engine driver who had driven the train I had come in by, and he said, ‘You don't know me, but, thank God, I know you, and I thought I would tell you about it. Do you remember telling us in Newport that you kept Easter all the year round?’ I said, ‘Yes, I think I do’. ‘Well’, he said, ‘I have been keeping Easter all the year round ever since’. That is it. A risen Christ is presented to you. All is established in a risen Christ and on an unshakable foundation.

Now the last and best of all, question five. “What is his name, and what is his son's name, if thou canst tell? ”

Can you tell me what His name is? Who can tell what His Son's name is? We Christians can. “We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world”, 1 John 4: 14. That is His name and that is His Son's name. We can tell. All we Christians here can join with the preacher and say, “We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world”. Is He your Saviour? Your own personal Saviour? God grant it may be so.

I have endeavoured to shew you what is here in God is, that as you sit there listening your heart has been saying, ‘He is worthy of my trust, worthy of my confidence’. You are never saved by creed, but by personal faith in Christ. I trust that all of you here, if you have never been conscious of a personal faith and contact with Christ, may know what it is now to have a personal sense of your need. He is worthy to be trusted. I have known Him for fifty-three years. I have summered with Him and wintered with Him; I have not been all that I should like to have been, and I cannot take pleasure in what I have been, but I take the greatest possible pleasure in what He has been. May He be all this to you for His Name's sake. Amen.

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