W K Tweedie
Taken, with editing, from The Christian’s Daily Companion.
Proverbs 30:8,9. Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full and deny Thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.
What is enough? is a question which has never yet been answered except where the grace of God has enabled people to say, “I have all and abound . . . My God shall supply all your need according His riches in glory by Jesus Christ.” The Christian alone can answer the question, and he does so by saying, That is enough which my God is pleased to send. It was somewhat in this spirit that Agur offered up his prayer.
When the Lord Himself came in the flesh, He taught His followers to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” – that is, to be contented in a state of constant dependence on God. So His servants who longed for His coming prayed, in a similar spirit, for a competent portion of the good things of this life and desired nothing more. They did not ask for poverty, for that would have been praying for trial and suffering, which the believer is scarcely free to do. They did not pray for affluence, for that would have been asking God to surround them with snares and temptations, but they besought God to grant them things convenient. They left the nature and extent of these to Him who judges righteous judgement, and spoke as if they felt that their happiness consisted in being what God had appointed and in enjoying what God sent.
Everyone who knows his own heart will feel the suitability of this prayer? No sooner does God load us with the bounties of providence than we begin to put them in His place, to deny Him and say, “Who is the Lord?” What is created, the gift, is preferred to the Creator, the Giver. And, when they are torn from us or take to themselves wings and flee away, the heart of many becomes disconsolate, like the man who once cried, “Ye have taken away my gods, and what have I more?”
See the wisdom of Agur’s prayer. He wished to be kept from creature dependence, and therefore he asked that his God would, in mercy, neither visit him with poverty as a trial, or with affluence as a temptation. And how countless are the temptations which befall the rich! On no point is Scripture more explicit, for on none is man more prone to err. “The love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” “Mortify . . . covetousness, which is idolatry.” “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” “The wicked . . . blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth.” These are some of the passages in the Word of God which unfold His mind on that universal passion, the love of money.
On the one hand, how solemn is the thought that so many in this nominally-Christian land are guilty of this idolatry, saying “to the pure gold, Thou art my confidence!” On the other hand, how wise the prayer, “Give me neither poverty nor riches”. In other words, Keep me by Thy providence in the golden mean, where my soul shall neither be oppressed by poverty, or elated by wealth.
But while the child of God leaves to his Father everything connected with the riches that perish in the using, there is one kind of riches concerning which his soul is insatiable: the unsearchable riches of Christ. The believer’s heart longs for them with a desire which increases from day to day. Greed here is a virtue, ambition has free scope. While the riches of earth elate and make people feel independent of God, the riches of Christ make them humble, for they feel that they have nothing which they have not received. The riches of earth drown men in perdition; the riches of Christ lift men to glory and fit them for it. The riches of earth often render man more unhappy the more he has amassed; the riches of Christ constitute the very fulness of joy. The riches of earth must all be dropped at the grave’s edge; the riches of Christ pass with us into eternity and unceasingly grow more precious there.
Who then, that has learned to weigh things in the balance of the sanctuary, would not covet earnestly Christian riches? Which is preferable: the riches that prompt us to ask, Who is the Lord that He should be a God to us? or the riches which make God Himself our portion, the riches which load us like thick clay and sink us at last into a deeper grave, or the riches that make good our title to heaven, the righteousness wrought out for us by the Son of God?
There can be no question as to which of these a believer’s soul would prefer; reason, religion, self-interest and the Spirit of God all conspire, in various ways, to show that he is not rational, and most certainly not religious, who prefers what he must relinquish at death to what he can carry with him into eternity. Say then which you prefer? Is it Christ or mammon? Is it the creature or the Creator? Would you have the riches which covetousness gathers, grasps and hugs – or the riches which rank among the things which God Himself has taught us to covet earnestly? By setting God and mammon over against each other as He does, the Judge of the quick and the dead would teach us that both cannot be served. Which then are you serving? In this matter, life and death, blessing and cursing, are set before you, and God says, Choose. Have you chosen, and is your choice such as the hour of death and the Day of judgement will approve? Have you laid up treasure on earth or in heaven?
Further, see how unmistakably God often shows His displeasure even on earth against the love of money. Have not some men, with thousands at their command, been so deprived of judgement as to deny themselves their daily bread and necessary clothing, lest they should diminish their idol hoards by the value of the smallest coin in the realm! Have not others been driven to madness because they had been stripped of their gold, which was in fact their god? Have not the children of miser parents often squandered in profligacy the ill-gotten gains of their fathers – so that, if man may interpret providence, parent and child have perished by the same law!
Now if we will take the Bible for our guide, may we not see in these things a protest from the God of providence against the abuse of what He has created? May we not infer the need of grace from God to help us to pray, and to act upon the prayer, “Give me neither poverty nor riches . . . ?”