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GOD’S PURITY OR MAN’S PERVERSITY—WHICH?
Denis Gibson
My text is Proverbs 30:5-6, "Every
word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their
trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou
be found a liar."
When will men heed Wisdom’s first as
well as final word on God’s inspired Words? In Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32
we read this first word of warning "moved and seconded:" "Ye shall
not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye
diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the
LORD your God which I command you … What thing soever I command
you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from
it."
In Revelation 22:18-20 this warning is
finalised and fixed forever: "For I testify unto every man that
heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto
these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this
book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this
prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of
the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."
Furthermore, does not that warning
re-occur repeatedly throughout the pages of the Scripture? We recall the
Apostle Paul’s final words to his successor Timothy: "And that from
a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee
wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim 3:15).
Here Paul calls the Holy Scriptures nothing less than ta hiera
grammata, not just sacred words, but "the
sacred letters," reminding us of Dean Burgon’s "every letter," for
do not sacred letters result in sacred words?
There is also Wisdom’s final word in
the Book of Proverbs on how men should treat the Word of God. What we have
in these verses, in germ, is expounded more fully elsewhere, as for
instance in Psalm 12, where the polluted words of the wicked
(verses 2-3) are contrasted with the pure words of God. God’s
Way is perfect, and God’s Word is also perfect
(Ps 18:30). It is not tainted with the deceit and flattery, the
dross and perversion, of sinful men!
THE CONTEXTUALISATION
Consider the context of Proverbs
30:1-9. The last two chapters in the book of Proverbs seem to be an
appendix to the whole Book. Generally speaking, the context, when
expounding the individual proverbs, does not affect their meaning; each of
the proverbs mostly stand alone, or in pairs, or in small groups. There
are places, however, where the context does have significance, and we
suggest the verses in Proverbs 30:5-6 appear to be so.
In the phrase, "the knowledge of
the holy" (v3), where holy is plural, is there not an allusion
to a certain plurality in the divine nature? This is understood by
many as a name for God Himself (cf "the holy [One]," Prov
9:10). It was certainly used by Isaiah as a favourite designation for God,
when he spoke of the holy one of Israel, and which he used some 30
times. Our God is the Thrice Holy One before whom the Seraphim
covered their faces and feet, and before whom Isaiah fell in deepest
conviction and confessed his own and his nation’s utter uncleanness! With
Moses, let us put off our shoes from off our feet, for we are standing
upon holy ground.
Who Agur was no one can say for
certain. Is it a name of one person, or are there four "unknown" men
referred to here? The name "Agur" means "to gather" (6:8, 10:5), thus Agur
may simply refer to someone who "gathered or collected" wise sayings. Agur
is also referred to as ben Jakeh, the son of Jakeh. The root of
Jakeh means "to preserve" from evil or fear, or to be pious,
so is Agur "a pious son" who preserves proverbs? Some (Jerome and others)
have conjectured that Agur was another name for Solomon himself, like
Qoheleth, "collector," "preacher," or Lemuel, meaning "devoted
to God," who is generally supposed to be Solomon himself. Undoubtedly,
Solomon was a consummate collector or gatherer of all sorts of knowledge
(Eccl 1:1, 2, 13, 16; 2:8). "It is well known that Hebrew names are always
significant, and therefore it is not surprising that such an ambiguity
should occur." 1 Derek
Kidner also noted: "The ancient versions likewise eliminate the proper
names here. It [their meaning] remains an open question."2 Yet
undoubtedly, whoever speaks here does so as a man of God, endowed with the
gift of prophecy (Hebrew hammassa, the burden of the Lord!), and
his purpose is to teach us some valuable lessons.
The meaning of the names Ithiel,
which literally means "with me is God" or simply "God is,"
and Ucal which means "an able one," have also been disputed. The RV
(1881, marg) changed these names into verbs, but in this context may they
not be taken as veiled references to Christ, the Son of God, with whom
their meanings so well agree, for it is the Son’s name, as well as the
Father’s, that is here inquired after: "What is his name, and what is
his son’s name, if thou canst tell?"
And who can tell? Yes, there is
a Son in the Eternal Godhead, begotten from all eternity (cf Prov
8:22-30). Jesus Himself declared: "No man knoweth the Son but the
Father" (Matt 11:27). Though for a while the Son’s Name was secret
(Judg 13:18; John 3:2,13), and He was referred to as "the seed of the
woman" and "of the seed of Abraham," He had many names in the
OT. He was "Shiloh," "Immanuel," "Wonderful," "the Man," "the Branch,"
"the Lord Our Righteousness." His Name, which is the expression of His
Godhead, was not known by the light of nature, but only by "special"
revelation (Job 11:7-9). "But when the fullness of time was come, God
sent forth his Son" (Gal 4:4). His name is "Jesus," "the Messiah
(Christ)," "the Son of God," "the Word of God," "the Creator," "the King
of kings and Lord of lords," "Ho Erchomenos." Man could never have
guessed the answer to the question: What is his son’s name, but God
Himself sent us the Answer in His Son! "The hinge of history was on
the door of a Bethlehem stable!" (Ralph W Sockman).
C H Spurgeon said: "Agur passed the
greatest censure upon himself, that his hearers might not suffer their
faith to stand in the wisdom of men." 3
Could Solomon have uttered Agur’s words? Yes, for is not one of the marks
of true wisdom an honest awareness of one’s own ignorance, especially in
the presence of the God of the Bible? How brutish is man’s
knowledge now compared to that of an un-fallen Adam (Ps 73:22). Before
Agur would speak of such a God as he here describes, he must abase himself
(Prov 15:33; Matt 23:12). Amos said, "I was no prophet, neither was I a
prophet’s son," but what a prophet he was (7:14)! Should we not all do the
same, and lie in the dust before Him whose understanding is infinite
(Ps 147:5)?
So Agur, though his language is very
strong, may simply have meant: "I did not learn wisdom, for I have
knowledge of the holy" (marg "know"), and, as we know, "action is the
proper fruit of knowledge." Insufficient by himself, Agur humbly points us
to the Creator God, the One who controls the heavens, the winds, the seas
and the earth. It is, therefore, none other than this God
whose every word is perfect (vv5-6). It is none other than
this God before whom Agur can truly acknowledge his brutishness
and ignorance, and what God is to one saint He is to every saint. It
is, therefore, none other God than this
God whose every word is pure and can be trusted
implicitly. Such, then, is the contextualisation of Proverbs 30:5-6,
but there is more.
THE INQUISITION
Yes, there is an inquisition in
progress here as recorded in verse four. "Who hath ascended up into
heaven, or descended? who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath
bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the
earth? what is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell?
It has a familiar ring to it. It
reminds us of the questions God put so forcefully to Job (38-41), and also
as He announces the coming redemption of His people (Isa 40:12-14, 18-28).
This inquisition was intended to remind "man" of his puniness and
proneness to forget who he is, on the one hand, and to counter the
prevailing practice of forgetting who God is, on the other. Here, then, is
the challenge to remember who controls the heavens, the winds, the waters,
and the earth. Who has established all these things? What is his name,
and what is his son’s name, if you can tell? Again, we ask, Who can
tell? The answer is obvious. None but the Mighty-Creator-God of the
Scriptures, and His Almighty Son, can resolve "the riddle" of Life. Jesus
clearly referred to this passage when he said to Nicodemus: "No man hath
ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of
man which is in heaven" (John 3:13). Did He not command the winds and the
waves to obey Him, and did not the disciples cry out in amazement and
fear, "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey
him?" (Matt 8:27).
THE EXPOSITION
It is in this
context and of this God, the God of
Creation and Redemption, that we can now properly consider the Word of
this God that is set before us in Proverbs
30:5-6. Will we trust the pure Words that this
God has been pleased to preserve for us, or will we choose to follow the
"guessing game" of those who will be reproved by this God
and found to be liars (v6)? Let us now consider the Words of Him who holds
the World, and all who are in it, in His unseen but omnipotent Hands.
Its Perfection
"Every word of God is pure" (v5a).
This reminds us of Paul’s, "All scripture," and most surely
includes every word, Old Testament as well as New Testament,
without exception. The word "pure" refers to a process whereby
precious metal is refined or smelted in a furnace to remove every particle
of dross, thus producing the purest gold or finest silver. Psalm 12 says,
"The words of the Lord ... purified seven times." Seven is the number of
completion, of perfection, and means that God’s Words are and can be
nothing less than the purest perfection. There can be no misgivings
or doubts about their purity. "Of what other book in the world can this be
said? Where else is the gold found without alloy? The word is tried.
It has stood all the trials, and no dross has been found in it. ‘Having
God for its Author, it has truth without any admixture of error for its
matter.’" 4 Another old
commentator agrees: "There are no superfluities in the word of God. Every
word of God is useful and holy, righteous and true … Because the word of
God is very pure, we ought to love it, and to believe it with all our
hearts, and to trust in God, as he is revealed to us in it. Blessed are
all they that put their trust in him."5 Why then should there
be any misgivings, or any doubt as to their reliability, or any need for
their "improvement" by the unholy hands of men? "To reject therefore one
‘jot or tittle is a sufficient demonstration,’ as Dr. John Owen admirably
observes—‘that no one jot or tittle of it is received as it ought.’"6
Its Protection
"He is a shield …". Does "shield"
here (v5b) refer to God or to God’s Word? The Hebrew, we suggest,
could be rendered either way, though most commentators treat it as
referring exclusively to God. Certainly, there are many verses
where God is called a shield to His people, but we take the
primary reference here to be every word of God. Is not God’s
Word just another way of referring to God Himself, Himself revealed, who
is behind His every word? When we believe that every word of God is
pure, that Word acts as a shield to them that put their trust
[seek refuge] in it, that is, in His
Word (in Hebrew "word" is masculine gender thus giving rise
to "he"). It is the word of faith (Rom 10:8) to be
believed, the faithful word to be held fast (Tit 1:9),
and it is that Word that holds firm the one who trusts in it too!
"Yes—if the word of God be pure, it must be a sure ground of
trust." 7 Without his
shield, would not the soldier, in the thick of battle, be in deadly peril
from arrows or sword? Do not many Christians admit that those times of
breakdown in their testimony were due mainly to their failure to use this
divinely provided shield, the Pure, Preserved and Preserving Word of God?
Its Preservation
"[It] He is a shield to them that put
their trust in him [it]." Many evangelicals while paying lip service to
verbal inspiration have difficulty with verse 6. A Hebrew professor of
Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary states: "Verses 5 and 6 clearly go
together, linked by God’s ‘words’, yet verse 6 is difficult to explain
or even to accept, especially by people who write commentaries." 8
"Difficult to explain or even to accept," says this Hebrew professor, and
no wonder, for these verses contain another clear and fearful warning not
to tamper with God’s words. Our Lord Jesus said in His encounter
with the Devil in the wilderness, "It is written that man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word of God" (Luke 4:4). The critics
omit "but by every word of God" from this text. Why? Certainly it
is not because it is "difficult to explain or even to accept," but because
of "the presuppositions" by which these textual critics operate. They
prefer to trust a perverted minority text rather than the text that is
supported by the vast majority of the manuscript evidence. They wilfully
disregard God’s repeated warnings not to mix the pure gold of God’s words
with the dross of human conjecture, for, in spite of all their claims to
have superior manuscripts and the latest scholarship on their side, it all
comes down in the end to "human conjecture" which is just a covert way of
saying "man’s fallible guesswork." "The fining pot is for silver, and the
furnace for gold, but the Lord trieth the hearts" (Prov 17:3). Yet this
removal of God’s inspired words is still going on in most modern versions.
May we not say "all" modern versions?
Many insist on separating
inspiration from preservation, leaving them free to add to or
subtract from the Words of God. The historic Confessions all affirm
that God "by His singular care and providence kept pure [His Words] in all
ages." If it is not inspired "it does not matter if the Bible has been
preserved ... It also follows that if the Bible has not been preserved, it
does not matter how it was inspired" (Dean Burgon Society on
"Preservation").
THE CONCLUSION
"Add thou not unto his words,
lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar." "In certain parts of
America the woodpecker is known by the name of sapsucker. We beg
the honest woodpecker’s pardon for the liberty we take in applying the
term spiritual sapsuckers to those who drain the Church’s vitality
nowadays by preying on its very pith and marrow, the life-giving Word of
the Lord." 9 Beware of
these spiritual sapsuckers!
Will not many textual critics of the
pure words of God be proved to be liars in the Day of
Judgment! Why, we may well ask, do these clever, highly trained, textual
critics still refuse to heed the repeated warnings and to bow before God’s
Pure-Preserved-Preserving Words? Why do so many pastors in "evangelical"
pulpits glibly assure their congregations that "one version is as good as
another," that is, "all except that archaic KJV!"? No wonder that
multitudes of "Christians" rush out to buy the latest version hot off the
presses? Does not the reason for this mishandling of the Bible lie in the
widespread indifference to truth in academia today, and in
our society at large today? It has been well said that "the hallmark of
modern humanity is its relentless emasculation of truth." What is called
modernity, that is, this so-called more enlightened
age of ours, now determines our value-systems.
David F Wells, no friend of Dean Burgon Society, pointed out that ours is
"the therapeutic age" where preaching has been "psychologised," and where
the meaning of the Christian faith is now "privatised." Belief in God or
the Bible or Truth has become simply a matter of "what makes me feel good
about [my]self." Yes, North America is "self-absorbed," but "the self is a
canvas too narrow, too cramped, to contain the largeness of [the]
Christian truth ... His [God’s] Word becomes intuition, and conviction
fades into evanescent opinion. Theology becomes therapy, righteousness is
replaced by a search for happiness, holiness by wholeness, truth by
feeling good about one’s self … All that remains is self … And when people
are no longer compelled by God’s truth, they can be compelled to believe
anything, [even] the lure of the novel or the illicit." 10
How, then, are we to communicate in
our time with those who openly reject ultimate authority, who ridicule the
sacred, and who debunk absolutes?! Yet it is to such a people, to such an
age as this, that we are called to proclaim "It is written!" Jacques Ellul,
commenting on this present scene, observed: "Anyone wishing to save
humanity today must first of all save the word [of man]." How much
more must we save the inspired, inscripturated Word of God.
Listen to this reminder from Louis
Gaussen on the importance of a single word of God. "But above all the
divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, even in their smallest parts,
is attested by Christians who have experienced their power, first in their
conversion, and afterwards in the conflicts that followed. They bear one
unanimous testimony. When the Holy Scripture, overmastering their
conscience, made them lie low at the foot of the cross, and there revealed
to them the love of God, what seized hold of them was not the Bible as a
whole, it was not a chapter, it was a verse; ay, a word, which was
at the point of the sword wielded by the very hand of God. It was an
influence from above, concentrated in a single word, which may yet become
for them, ‘as a fire, saith the Lord, and as a hammer that breaketh the
rock in pieces’. In the moment of their need that Word seized their
conscience with an unknown, sweeping, irresistible force. It was but a
Word, but that Word was from God, and they knew it to be the call of the
Lord Jesus Christ." 11
The story is told of a young man
defending his doctoral dissertation before a panel of academicians. When
reprimanded for the number of allusions he had made to hearsay evidence,
and challenged on the weakness of such a defence, he facetiously said,
"Just because something is written does not make it any more certain, does
it?" The chairman had a brilliant comeback. "All right then," he said, "I
just want you to know that we will be granting you the degree, but it will
not be in writing. You can just take our word for it." The candidate
quickly complied with the documentary evidence demanded.
Luther wrote words that became "the
battle hymn" of the 16 th
century Reformation, and they still carry power to this very day in which
we live.
And tho this world with devils
filled, Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear for God hath
willed His truth to triumph through us.
The Prince of darkness grim, We
tremble not for him,
His rage we can endure, For lo his
doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.
That word
above all earthly powers No thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Through Him who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go, This
mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth
abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.
Our Lord "felled" the Devil with
"every word of God" still extant! Luther "felled" the Devil with "one
little word" still extant! What if, from your "Bible" that "little word"
was no longer extant?!
"Every word of God is pure;
he [it] is a shield unto them that put their trust in him [it]. Add thou
not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar."
Let this be our prayer: Lord, bow down
our minds and hearts before Thy Pure, Preserved and Preserving Words to
humbly receive them, believe them, and strive to live
them, for they are "the Scriptures of Truth."
Notes
1
William Arnot, Studies in Proverbs (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1875),
561.
2
Derek Kidner, Proverbs (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1964), 178.
3 C H
Spurgeon, Proverbs, in The Biblical Illustrator, ed Joseph Exell,
(London, 1887), 669
4
Charles Bridges, Proverbs (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1846,
reprinted 1983), 593.
5
George Lawson, Proverbs (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1829, reprinted
1984), 837.
6
Bridges, Proverbs, 594.
7
Ibid.
8
Robert L Alden, Proverbs (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 208, italics
added.
9 S M
Houghton, ed, Truth Unchanged, Unchanging (Wiltshire: Bible League,
1984), 127
10
David F Wells, No Place for Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993),
101, 183.
11
Louis Gaussen, "Theopneustia," Trinitarian Bible Society
Quarterly Record (July 1965).
Rev Denis Gibson was an Instructor in Hebrew and Greek
at Toronto Baptist Seminary for five years. He later became pastor of
Calvary Baptist Church, Brampton, Ontario, Canada, remaining there for 25
years, and retiring in 1997; he is the author of a commentary on the
biblical book of Proverbs; he was also a regular contributor to the
international devotional guide, "Read, Pray and Grow" (RPG). Over the
years he has presented papers at the Annual Meetings of the Dean Burgon
Society (DBS) of which he is a member of the Executive Committee. The
above paper was presented at the 27 th
annual meeting of the DBS held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, July 20–21,
2005.
- Published in
The Burning Bush, Volume 12 Number
1 (January 2006)
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