Weekly Pastoral Message prepared by Rev. Murray Adamthwaite
for Sunday 20th September 1998

From the Pastor: Three plus Four is not Seven IV

"Four things are small on the earth, but they are exceedingly wise." Proverbs 30:24 Direct observation, we are often told, is the path to true knowledge. Book learning is therefore disparaged as "second-hand", or in some other way inferior. Such a position asks us to despise the wisdom of the past and the accumulated fund of knowledge, and instead embark on a never-ending mission of repeating and re-learning what has already been acquired, on the imagined supreme value of each individual finding out for himself. The sage of Proverbs 30 was also a keen observer of the world around him: here he describes the habits of ants, hyraxes, locusts and geckos (instead of the traditional 'spiders'). They all have in common one feature, viz. smallness, but each has its own distinctive version of sagacious agility, whether hard-working productivity in the case of the ant, or the gecko with its ability to cling to the smoothest surfaces (even modern science has puzzled over that one!). The natural world has many lessons to teach us in spiritual things, and this sort of message comes out particularly in Proverbs. Equally, our Lord criticized the Pharisees for being acute observers of nature but failing miserably to discern the work of God among them (Matthew 16:3). Direct observation may be a path to knowledge of practical skills, but without the informed interpretation from the Word of God, and the company of God's people past and present one can wallow in the mire of wild speculation, or suffer from plain obtuseness. The next time we look at an ant, of marvel at a lizard on a bare rock, or even gripe about the locusts on our windsreens, let us reflect on the need for wisdom, the fear of the Lord.