The Importance Of Wisdom

Intro:

Good morning!

As we get started today I want to recap where we left off two weeks ago and to let you know that we will continue to put out a message every week until things get better.

If you have the Faithlife app you can open it up and use the outline in the digital bulletin as we work through our passage today.

If you don’t have the app, I would ask that you download it, especially if you don’t use Facebook.

I will start posting there as well as our Facebook page so that you guys get all the information.

You can also take advantage of the digital giving option in the FL app.

This is a great time for all of us to prayerfully consider what we are giving.

Some of you are out of work as a result of Covid-19 and need to ask God how to adjust your giving.

Some of us are able to continue working and need to ask God how to adjust our giving.

Just like everything we do, we need to ask God and follow His leading.

Already there are needs, both locally and abroad, that God is calling us to meet and the way we do that is through faithfully obeying God in our giving.

Someone in you LG may be out of work and need help in the coming days.

Glen found out yesterday morning that there is serious need for assistance in our community in Romania.

Glen is in communication with ACF to meet those needs and we are asking God about what we are called to provide for support.

We are also going to continue to provide a meal for the students in the McKeithen neighborhood on Wednesday nights.

Bethany and Brittany are also putting together a devotional book to send to every household.

There is a lot going on and even though we aren’t getting to meet together, it doesn’t change our call as the body of Christ.

I also want to encourage each of you to take advantage of the extra downtime by spending time with God every day.

Depending on how long you have been staying at home, you may or may not be getting restless.

As I talk about often, the perspective we choose to have about this situation will make a huge difference in your experience.

Asking God for His perspective on what is going on will be far more valuable than the one we are going to gain from news outlets and social media.

You may have asked God for more time to spend with Him.

Well, here is your opportunity.

This is also an incredible time for us, as we are abiding, to show God’s Love In A Broken World.

It is no accident that God has us in this study right now.

Our world is literally breaking, but in the midst of it all, God still loves His children and desires for us to make Him known.

The way we communicate with others, whether on social media, text, or the phone can help shape their perspective as well.

We want to be an encouragement to our brothers and sisters, but more importantly, we want to share the truth that we are discovering as we seek Him.

During our last message on Ecclesiastes we discussed the following things to help us understand the book:

The problem: Life is upside down. The righteous receive the reward of the wicked and the wicked receive the rewards of the righteous.

The answer: Enjoy God’s gifts as He intended them to be enjoyed.

Allusion: The language of this book points us back to Genesis and God’s intent for men and women when He created them.

Fear of the Lord: Living in the right relationship with God by abiding in Him.

Hevel: meaningless, vapor, breath, idol, temporary, or being like Abel. This is a general word that is often translated in a specific way which can lead to a misunderstanding of what the teacher is trying to communicate.

If you will remember, we started this study at the end so that we could read this book through the lens of its conclusion.

Our two main take-a-ways from the end of the book were:

Our lives are temporary and upside down.

This is the result of sin that entered the world in the beginning.

Life is just hard sometimes.

That isn’t the way God intended it, but it is the result of the fall.

The whole of man is Love and Obey God.

We were created to be in a relationship with God and that is where we will find rest, peace, and joy.

Knowing God by experience is what it means to be human.

This is the gospel: to love and obey God.

I want us to keep all these things in mind as we dig into our passage today.

Let’s pray together as we begin.

Ecclesiastes 1:1 NLT

1 These are the words of the Teacher, King David’s son, who ruled in Jerusalem.

One of the commentaries that I read this week said the following.

“This was Qoheleth’s goal: to enlighten his assembly about the importance of wisdom...”

Fredericks, D. C., & Estes, D. J. (2010). Ecclesiastes & the Song of Songs. (D. W. Baker & G. J. Wenham, Eds.) (Vol. 16, p. 65). Nottingham, England; Downers Grove, IL: Apollos; InterVarsity Press.

Wisdom is important.

Think for a moment about the wisest person you know.

I want you to take a moment to see them.

Visualize them in your mind.

Think about the details of who they are.

If it is someone you are close to, perhaps a grandparent, dive deeply into this moment.

Remember the sound of their voice, the texture of their hands, the way they smell.

Do you have it?

My grandfather used to wear original old spice.

Now, what is it that has made them wise?

How did they arrive at that status?

Did they take a class on wisdom?

Of course not, but there has been something that brought them to that place.

Is it simply their age?

I would say no, but it certainly plays a role.

If not, why is it that we sometimes tell someone that they are “wise beyond their years”?

So what then, is wisdom?

Wisdom is a proper action or decision that is the result of the application of experience.

Experience… It seems like I’ve heard that before. lol

We talk about this all the time.

We want you to know God by Experience.

What advantage does that give us? We are able to know God in a way that we cannot know him by study alone.

When we apply what we learn in God’s word by walking with Him, obeying His directions, we gain experience that informs every other area of our lives.

We call this abiding.

The very beginning of this book introduces the speaker.

Ecclesiastes 1:1 NLT

1 These are the words of the Teacher, King David’s son, who ruled in Jerusalem.

The teacher is introduced so that the reader can understand that the person writing this book isn’t just some yahoo that can write.

It is penned by a man who has spent his entire life walking with God, learning, and making application of all that he has experienced.

The application of those experiences is what he is sharing with us.

Because we now understand where the teacher is coming from, when we read his words, no matter how rash or blunt, we can know that he isn’t just saying those things for effect.

These are things that he has learned over the course of his life.

Understanding that wisdom comes to a person over the course of their life is important and it is something that we know by experience.

Have you ever been given advice by someone that you know is speaking outside of their experience and your gut tells you it is not good advice?

Equally as important is when someone who is speaking from experience tells you to do something that seems crazy, but you find out, by experience, that they knew what they were talking about.

I’ll give you an example.

Years ago I was the purchasing manager at my day job and part of that position was selling and billing parts for gas pumps.

I spent lots of time on the phone helping people figure out what parts they needed and then shipping them out.

The conversations often went something like this.

Me: “Sir, what kind of pump do you have?”

Billy Bob: “A blue one.”

Let me stop right there.

You see how ridiculous that answer is right?

What kind of car do you have?

I have a blue car.

There is a point to this illustration.

One day, I spent hours on the phone with a guy trouble shooting his issues. We finally figured out what he needed.

I gave him a quote and he asked me to ship the parts to him. So I did.

What he needed was some 0-rings. If you don’t know what that is, it doesn’t matter.

All you need to know is they were around $0.83.

In other words they were cheap.

I packaged up what he needed, made the invoice, and put them on the UPS truck (standard shipping) as he requested.

The next afternoon He called and was irate because the parts total was one penny off what I quoted him AND that he had to pay more for the freight than he did for the parts.

He asked for that shipping!

Now I was beyond irratated. Can you believe this guy?!?

So I sat down and wrote a letter to this guy.

You know the kind of letter I’m talking about. The kind we all write in our minds when someone acts like a fool.

It was a good letter and I was proud of it.

But something in me told me not to send it but I REALLY wanted too.

I brought across the street and let my dad read it.

He laughed and told me I couldn’t send it.

But I rebulted that this guy needed to understand what an idiot he was being.

My dad told me something I’ll never forget.

He said, “If someone is acting like an idiot, they already know it, and you telling them won’t change a thing.”

My dad was taught this lesson by the man that founded our company, a man that spent his life dealing with all kinds of people and had learned, by experience, how to handle those kinds of people.

That was some wisdom right there and that lesson has stuck with me and guided me ever since.

So, here at the outset of this book, we are given some perspective on where this wisdom comes from.

We need to keep in mind that just because what he is saying doesn’t quite add up for us, he is speaking from experiences that we haven’t yet had.

We need to listen, spend time meditating on these things and asking God to show us how they apply to our lives.

Let’s look at the following verses.

Ecclesiastes 1:2–11 NLT

2 “Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless!” 3 What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. 6 The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. 7 Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. 8 Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content. 9 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. 10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 11 We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.

In verse two we see that word hevel again. I just read it from the NLT and it is translated as meaningless.

So let’s read that gain in a different version so we can gain some context.

Ecclesiastes 1:2 ESV

2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

We see this kind of phrasing all through scripture.

It is a way of communicating the highest or greatest form of something.

1 Kings 8:27 “heaven and the highest heaven”

Song of Solomon 1:1 “Song of Songs”

1 Tim 6:15 “King of all Kings and Lord of Lords”

So, following that train of thought and understanding the various meanings of Hevel, the teacher is communicating a truth that we need to really understand.

Life is fleeting.

He gives us this truth and then follows it with examples of what he is saying.

Before we go there though, let’s talk about the temporary nature of our world and lives.

Again, what incredible timing for this passage.

We are in the midst of a global pandemic.

Covid-19 is changing our world and it is changing people's lives.

Consider for a moment the people that have lost loved ones to this illness.

Or the people that are separated from their families so that they don’t infect one another.

Now, I fully understand that there are lots of different viewpoints on this topic and I have no desire to step off into that.

But what we can all agree on is that it is having an impact on the lives of every person on earth.

There are varying degrees of impact, but it is, or very soon, will be touching everyone.

If someone would have said a year ago that there would be anything that could happen that would have a global impact of this scale they would have been completely dismissed.

Why? Because people, especially here in America, had the misconception that we were invincible.

We had so completely placed our trust in our military might, economy, and healthcare system that we felt like nothing could reach all of us.

We worked hard for and invested heavily in those things and believed wholeheartedly that we were covered.

Now we see that those things we trusted were powerless to prevent what is going on.

We are in the midst of an experience that is changing how we see our country and our world.

Because of what is happening we have a much better understanding of what the teacher is saying.

We are gaining wisdom by applying the truth of scripture to our current context.

One of the many things that can happen during our quarantine is that God can reveal the area of our lives where we are dependent on the world instead of Him.

In verse three the teacher in points out that all our hard work is hevel.

We can toil away at things that we think are important, but in the end, those things will also pass away.

Ecclesiastes 1:3–11 NLT

3 What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? 4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. 6 The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. 7 Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. 8 Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content. 9 History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. 10 Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. 11 We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.

You know, we can look at this and be really depressed by it.

OR, we can see it for the blessing that it is.

Again, it’s all about perspective.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the little video going around Facebook the last few days with the guy washing his hands.

He then realizes that he turned off the dirty faucet with clean hands.

So he washes the faucet, then his hands.

then door handle and on and on it goes.

It’s funny because it’s true.

Unfortunately, that same idea is true of our lives.

Have you noticed that as you have meditated on this passage?

We spend our lives like a hamster on a wheel.

Working really hard, giving our best effort, not really going anywhere and at the end of it all we aren’t satisfied.

Invest in what is eternal.

Two weeks ago we looked at this passage, but we need to see it again today.

Matthew 6:19–21 NLT

19 “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. 21 Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

As a culture, there is no doubt that we are focusing on things of this world.

We chase after a better job, promotions, bigger houses, nicer cars, etc.

Many of us have and continue to be suckered into believing that those things will bring us fulfillment.

Those things in and of themselves are not bad.

In fact God may be telling you to pursue some of those things.

The problem is that we often allow those things to be what we focus on and seek satisfaction in.

We look up one day and realize that we allowed those things to become the priority in our lives.

Or at the very least, we have allowed them to cloud out what God’s intent was behind telling us to pursue them.

I struggled with this for years and you guys have probably heard me talk about it before.

When God called me to be bi-vocational, I struggled with the idea of it for a LONG time.

My struggle was that I felt like I was wasting my time.

It felt like a waste because I couldn’t see the eternal value in the secular job.

From my view point, I went from “all” of my energy being focused on ministry to nearly all of it on completing some task.

I prayed about it and finally realized that if God called me to work a secular job then there must be a really good and eternal reason for it.

For me, it was in realizing that the job itself wasn’t eternal, but the relationships that I had the opportunity to make were.

God had given me a way to invest in the lives of people that I would never have meet or had the opportunity to meet if I worked full time in a church.

Here we are stuck at home and having to meet and work remotely.

I want to challenge you to think about and to ask God about a few things.

Are your life and work centered on what He wants it to be?

If not, ask God what He would have you change.

If so, what are the eternal aspects of what He has called you to?

Ask God how you can BLESS those you live and work with.

Ask God to align the desires of your heart with His.

Feel free to add to that list.

We need to allow God to give us an eternal perspective on life.

When we focus on the things that don’t last is when we experience disappointment.

If we can allow God to change what we treasure then we will begin to experience life the way He intended.

God has given us all we need to experience joy, peace, and fulfillment.

He has given us Himself.

This week allow God to use His word to help you gain wisdom as you make application of it to your life.

Let Him help you to see how short life is so that we can move beyond what is temporary.

Once we realize what eternal in our lives we will experience life as God intended.