Brought a bible with you. I just invite you to turn to, again, the book of Proverbs. We're gonna look there at a brief passage there in Proverbs 30:24. I thought, as we end this year and come into this new year, that it'd be well for us, just to reflect on wisdom a little bit on what, God can do in our own life. Anyways, let me pray.
Father God, we just thank You so much that is we can just spend a few moments in Your word. I just pray, Lord God, that, You, Jesus, the Lord and head over all things and over this church, that You will be glorified, that You'll be blessed. And that every, person that is here this morning, every single one of them will be helped. Helped by Your Holy Spirit, guided by Your word. We pray this all in Jesus' name.
Amen. I come here this, morning a little uneasy. And I often do that especially when I've been asked to speak, in another church or, I'm in a group of people that I don't really know extremely well. I feel that every time I'm a guest speaker or preacher, I find it a challenge. I mean, you've come here this morning and you didn't perhaps even know that I was going to be here, but you came here this morning expecting that someone was going to share some words from God's word to you.
You expect that maybe as you saw me this morning that I might have something to say that is worth listening to, something that will help you, That I will share some clever insight that somehow will make your life better and maybe even as you enter into, the new year twenty twenty. But you know, I I don't really know what to tell you. The truth is the older that I get, the less I seem to know or at least the less I'm completely sure of. I mean, when I started ministry thirty seven years ago, I mean, I knew it all. I thought I knew everything and I had a lot to say.
But the longer I live and the longer I study, I realise how really little I truly know. So this morning, I'm going to borrow someone else's outline and sermon, someone else's message. What I'm gonna share with you this morning was written by a man who lived thousands of years ago, twenty six hundred years ago, a man by the name of Agur, the son of Jakeh. It's the words that you find in Proverbs 30:24-28. Now, the whole book of Proverbs is, is about attaining wisdom, about understanding, of gaining insight, words of understanding.
And if you want if you really listen to what Agur has to say to you, and as I listen to that, you're gonna learn something. You're gonna find some guidance in your life and you're going to say when you leave today, it has been so good to be here this morning because I've learned something. The insight from a man by the name of Agur. Now if you ever find a wise person, you do well to sit at his feet. You're gonna learn something.
A wise woman will give you good counsel and you will be well to listen. I mean, I've I've tried to do that in my own life. Whether it is to craft piece of furniture, to understand theology, repair a car engine or a motorcycle engine, to do ministry. I mean, I would always look for and I would listen to people who are perhaps a little bit older and much much wiser than than me. Wise people.
You know, it's always good for you and I to surround ourselves with wise people, not wise guys. I mean, wise guys are as numerous as speeding cameras on Queensland highways. Now look for those who are wise. And when you find them, listen. Because true wise people are as scarce as parking spots at the Queensland Rail Station.
Wisdom. Now, Agur tells us that there are four things on earth that are extremely wise. But they're just little, just little things. And he goes to tell us about ants, conies, locusts and lizards. Sounds a bit absurd, doesn't it?
I mean, no one keeps these animals as pets. I mean, no one walks their coney around the block after work. I mean, if you found a locust cast or or a lizard in your house, you probably would step on it, squish it. And Agur tells us that those little things, they're extremely wise. You find wisdom in little things.
Now, if Agur was around today and was going to show us wisdom that he might tell us about Albert Einstein. You know, Albert Einstein, the German born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity. Or the iron lady, Margaret Thatcher. I mean, the longest serving British prime minister of The UK in the twentieth century and and, you know, the first woman to ever hold that office. Or Steve Jobs, I mean, the co founder of Apple.
I mean, a billion people in the world today have an apple in their pocket. Or at least, you'd think that Agur could have picked a contemporary of his own day, King Solomon. Someone who the bible tells us was wiser than any other person in the world. But Agur doesn't go up. He doesn't go up to those who have scaled the ladder of success and knowledge.
Instead, he goes down, way down. And he tells us of four things on earth that are small yet they are extremely wise. Four little things that will give you wisdom and insight for living your days. Like ants. He tells us this, ants are creatures of little strength yet they store up their food in the summer.
Ants tell us what time it is, what season it is. Out of the instincts of the past, they use the present to prepare for the future. I mean, they know that winter is coming and food will be scarce. And so all summer long, they store up their food. And when winter comes, they have plenty to sustain their lives.
Now, there are some people, you know, who only live in the past. They remember the good old days of yesterday. They long for those years to return and they love to sing the song. Those were the days, my friends. Those days, I wish they'd never end.
I mean, they always go through life looking through the rear view mirror. I mean, their closets at home are full of memories, immortalised in photo books. Remember when. And as they finger through each of those page, they remember when. And they love to talk about the good things that they have done in the past.
But let me tell you, my friends, that if if all you think about in life is the good that you have done in the past, you're probably not doing a lot of good today. I mean, some people live in the past, other people live for the future. You know, when I graduate from high school, then I will have finally arrived. Or or when I get married, then life will be good. Or or when we have children, you know, then finally our lives will be complete.
Or when our children finally leave home, then we can really begin to live. Or when I retire, then the good life will begin. And for us as Christians, when I go to heaven, then God's gonna make all things right. So we live for the future. Some live in the past, some only live for the future.
And there are others in our world today, maybe you too, that you only live for today. Your model in life is eat, drink and be merry. That's your slogan. Why I mean, why worry about tomorrow when you can live it up today? I mean, we've just gone through a whole season of craziness of people living for the moment just to make a merry merry merry merry happy Christmas.
And I know too many people who just go through life and they pop a pill, they shoot their veins, they sleep around, they drink too much because today only matters. But not the ant. While you're sitting with your family having a picnic at Miami Beach, eating your snag and washing it down with lemonade, the ant is working. One by one, the little grains of sugar are being lifted off your sweets and if you stick around long enough, they will go after your chips. For they know what time it is.
It's summertime and winter's coming. And knowing the past, they use their present to prepare for the future. Maybe you don't know it, but winter's coming. No, it might be summer, but winter's coming. And winter comes in many different ways.
The report that you receive from the doctor that you're battling stage three or stage four cancer. Your boss tells you that your position that you worked at for thirty five years has now become redundant and now you, 59 years of age, you gotta look for a job. Your wife walks out on you and your whole family. Our age has crept in one year at a time and with it, loneliness, fear, and insecurity. What you take into that situation is what will carry you through those days.
And winter is also coming in our society. The cool brutal Arctic air is blowing. We see the blast of winter all around us. The increase and the acceptance of sexual immorality in all its various forms. The lack of dignity given to life from conception, the unborn to the grave, the unwell.
The covert denial of biblical truth. The rise of the persecution of people who are willing to quote and stand up for what God teaches us in his word, persecution of Christians. We need to be prepared for the future by what we do today. I believe the biblical writers would have applied this especially to young people. Another preacher said, remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come.
When it is summer, get to know your creator. Read His word. Meditate on it. Memorise it. Get it into your head and into your heart.
As Agur tells us, every word of God is flawless. Feed on His word. Store it up in your heart. Are you doing that every day? Or you say, well, I don't need it.
Yes, you do. You gotta store it up in your heart. You gotta allow God's word to just resonate there in your heart and in your mind and so that when the winter comes, because winter is coming, you'll be able just to remember and know where to turn to when you open up scripture. Read God's word, memorise it, meditate on it. And then when winter comes, Winter will come in your life, in my life, in all of our lives.
And when winter comes, the word of God that you have stored up in your heart will carry you through the long winter days. See, the ant tells us what time it is, what season of life we are in. And then Agur tells us, conies. Conies, well, they're just small creatures, little power, yet they make their home in the crags. Conies are rock badgers.
They're not much bigger than a little chipmunk or a squirrel. They're brown in colour and they make their home in the crevices of the rock, the size of hills and mountains. Because they know that if they wander out into the prairie or into the open field, they would be no match for an eagle or a cougar or some other predator. And so they live near rock formations and they hide themselves in the crevices of the rock. Ants tell us what season it is.
Conies tell us where our security lies. It lies in the rock. And the biblical writers, I mean, they would have applied that rock to God. I mean, earlier in this chapter, Agur tells us that God is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. The book of Psalms, we have so many references to God as being our rock.
He's my rock and my fortress, my deliverer, my God, my strength in whom I trust. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. My defence and my rock is the rock of my refuge. God, the rock of our salvation. See, the Coney knows that her security lies in the rock.
Now imagine for a moment if you will, that if a bunch of Conies got together for a bible study. Now, some of the conies, they wanted to talk about how high the rock is. Others wanted to talk about how wide the rock is. So others wanted to talk about how strong the rock is. And then there were those who wanted us all to remember that the rock was in the middle of everywhere, so the rock was for everybody, not just for Conies.
You know, the sad reality is that that's so often what happens when we come together as Christians in our bible studies, in our small groups, in our churches. We do a lot of talking about the rock and we discuss theology at length. Now, theology is important. But in the end, it's not what you know about the rock, what you know about God that matters. But do you hide yourself in that rock?
Do you find your security in Christ? Do you make your home in a relationship with almighty God? Do you put your trust in God and in God alone? Is that where you find yourself going to time and time again in your life? And as you think as you move into the new year, is that where you're going to turn to time and time again?
Are you going to run to the rock? Are you going to hide yourself in the rock? Don't be like my grandson and just wanna get into geology and and and just learn everything you wanna know about rocks. But hide yourself there. Hide yourself in Christ.
Oh, by the way, if you ever attend a Coney's worship service, you would feel right at home. For their most favourite hymn, they like to sing is Rock of Ages cleft for me. Let me hide myself in Thee. May that be the song in our lives. That Jesus is the one that we always hide ourself in, in the cleft of the rock because we know the predators are out there and they're going to do whatever they can to devour us.
So we're gonna hide ourself in Him and Him alone. A Coney tells us where our security lies. And then Agur tells us locusts. I mean, they have no kings yet they advance together in ranks. Now, if you have one locust, one grasshopper, it's not really an issue.
I mean, I find them from time to time in our gardens, munching on our veggie patch or flowering plants. I I mean, I simply shoo them away or use some beautiful spray that makes them kind of go limp and die. Or I remove them from our gardens. But you know, if you have a swarm of locusts, the results can be unbelievable. But that's what locusts do.
They advance together in ranks. They might not have a king but they do battle together. I mean, one swarm of locusts, they could be billions in numbers. They can cover thousands of square kilometers. They can consume 30 to 40 tons of food per day.
So it's no wonder they call a swarm of locusts the plague. Ants tell us what season it is and conies tell us where our security lies. Then locusts tell us where our strength comes from. Our strength, our power is in community, in being together. Mean, the biblical writers in the old testament would have applied that to the people of Israel, God's covenant community in the old testament.
And they would have applied it to the church in the new. I mean, you can have a personal faith but you can't have an individual faith. You cannot be a Christian alone. You can't. It's interesting that in the bible though, in the New Testament in the New Testament, the word saints, referring to the people of God, to the true church, is never in the singular.
You can't be a saint. You're always saints. You're always coming together. A few pages later on in the bible, we have these words, two are better than one because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up.
But pity the man, the woman who falls and has no one to help him up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? The one can be overpowered and two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.
Two is always better than one. We can't do battle alone as believers. We need each other. I mean, I need you and you need me and we need each other. We need each other if we're going to stand up strong.
There's too many people in life today, they just fall down morally, spiritually, physically, emotionally because they're lone rangers. They don't surround themselves with other believers. I mean, when Jesus was on earth, He had a band of brothers, the 12 disciples. He also had a group of women who followed Him around and provided for them so that they could continue on in doing the ministry that they were doing and making sure that they were well supported, that there was always food to eat and places to sleep. And when Jesus sent out His followers into this world, He said, never go alone.
Always go two by two into the world. The apostle Paul, you read a lot about him in the New Testament, you know, major church developer. Person who came to Christ and then started to surround himself with all kinds of believers. In the letter to the Romans, Paul is now writing from prison. And he tells about Andronicus, Junia and Urbanus and Timothy and Lucius and Jason and Tertius and a whole list of women.
I mean, these were the people who stood by him and with him in ministry. And now in his last letter written from prison, he tells that only Luke is with him now. Good old faithful doctor Luke. When you're old and frail, it's good to have a good doctor nearby. But Luke was not enough.
He also sends for Timothy and Mark. He says, make sure that they come too. Paul knew that he needed people around him if he was going to fight the good fight of faith, and so do we. All around us today, we see families that are broken and children who are confused and people who are lost and wandering and we see a growing immorality. And we do battle.
In our world today, we do battle with consumerism, and secularism, and Darwinism, and humanism, and all the other isms of our day. And our only strength to do battle is founding community. We need each other. I don't know where you're at, but I'm just so grateful in my life that I have a band of 18 other people that meet with me on a regular basis. Every week, we come together to study God's word, to do ministry together, to pray with one another, to cry together, to laugh together, to do life together.
Who are those six or seven people in your life that are your band of brothers or sisters? Those people that you do life with. I wanna challenge you that if you move into 2020, if you are not yet part of a group of people, not just coming together like today, but coming together weekly under God, sharing life together, doing life together. If you're not part of a group, make that your first New Year's resolution. Find a band of people that you could do life together with because your strength is not in yourself.
It's in the strength of the people that gather around you. Alone, you can be overpowered. Two will help. But you get three or more people together, it's hard to tear that string apart. The locust teaches us that.
They don't have a king but they always do life together. The locust tells us where our strength lies. Now, the fourth thing that, Agur mentions is this, a lizard, he said, can be caught with the hand but it is found in king's palaces. I remember the first time I ever saw one of these lizards. Our family was vacationing in Florida.
I mean, the condo was on the 6th Floor and we would notice those same little lizard, these geckos crawling up the walls. And you'd even find them on the 6th Floor. And I wondered, how did they get there? I mean, did they climb on the outside of the building? Did they take the stairs?
Did they use the elevator? How did they know how to get off on the 6th Floor? I mean, it was incredible. Twelve years ago, we moved to Australia and I find them everywhere, every day, all around our house. The little lizards, these geckos.
You know, you can also find them in king's palaces. Now, if you and I go to The UK and we wanna see the queen, we probably would not find ourselves in Windsor or Buckingham Palace. Yet a lizard is found in the palaces of kings. Maybe it's too cold and wet in The UK, but if you go to the island of Tonga, you can be sure that you will find a lizard in the palace of King Tupou the sixth. I mean, we might not have an audience with the queen, but you'll find a lizard in the palaces of the king.
If ants tell us what season it is, if conies tell us where our security lies, if locusts tell us where our strength can be found, what in the world do lizards teach us? When I read this, I tried to make sense out of this. It just doesn't make sense. A gecko, a lizard, a small little lizard in a king's palace doesn't belong there. And yet, you'll find it there.
And you know, I believe that this describes for us the incredible nature of God's grace. All of us are sinners. We all fall short of the glory of God. There's no one who does good, no one who is perfect all the time. And Jesus, the one whose birth we just celebrated, the one who the bible calls as the King of Kings, He tells us that He is preparing a place for you in His palace.
That's what He's busy with right now. He's busy preparing a place for each one of His children, for you and me. In My father's house, Jesus says there are many rooms and I'm going there to prepare a place for you. You know, the longer I live, the more I realise that I am more and more like a lizard. I don't belong there.
I'm a sinner. Sinful from the time of my birth. I often sometimes lay awake in the middle of the night and I pray that prayer that David prayed and said, father, remember not the sins of my youth. I mean, God might have forgotten but I still remember. As I reflect on my life, I say I don't belong there.
I don't belong in that place. But yet Jesus is preparing a place for me in the palace of the king. There's a room being prepared for me in His father's house. That's good news for lizards and that's good news for sinners like you and me. We don't belong there.
But because Jesus went to the cross and He carried our shame and He paid the penalty of our sins, we are forgiven completely. Sin and death conquered as Jesus arose from the grave and with Him we rise to new heights. Not just to the 6th Floor, but we have a place in the palace of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Because of Jesus, one day you and I will have an audience with God Himself, the King of Kings forever. And that's something to believe, to put your trust in.
That's good news for lizards, for you and me. And I don't know if you're at that point yet where you have really surrendered your heart to Christ and put your trust in Him alone. If you've not done that yet, I just encourage you do that today. And you put your full confidence in life, not in yourself, because there's no confidence there. You're just a lizard, a locust, a gecko.
Put your confidence alone in Jesus and what He has done for you. Believe that He has fully paid for all of your sin. And one day, when your days are numbered and God calls you home, He's calling you home to His home in the palace of a king. Ants tell us about the importance of preparing for the future by what we do today. Storing up God's word in our heart.
And you and I do that. Tell us to find our security in no other place than the rock of ages that was cleft for us. Hide yourself in that rock. You'll find security when trouble comes. Locusts tell us never to do life alone.
Never do life alone. Find a brother, find a sister, find a bunch of people that you could do life with a Christian community that will join you in the good fight of faith. And lizards tell us about the incredible nature of the grace of God. It is a place in the palace of the king for people like you and me. So my friends, the next time you see an ant, or a cone, or a lizard, or a locust, sit at its feet if you can find them.
They have a lot to teach us. And golly, we have a lot to learn. Let us pray. God, thank You so much for the good news that is ours in Christ. That there's a place for us in Your presence.
And until we are called home that You have allowed us to be part of a Christian community where we could be strengthened in our faith. Lord, we don't know what tomorrow may bring, but, Lord, may the echo of our words be into the new year. The Lord has given, the Lord has taken, but blessed be the name of the Lord. And we can only say that when we find our security in Your word, Lord, in our hearts, in our lives, in our families, in our church. So that when that day of trouble comes, when winter comes, the stuff that we've stored up in our heart will see us through.
Guide us by Your Spirit into Your good way of life, the way of wisdom. For we pray it in Jesus' name.