Wisdom's Conclusion

Today we are going to finish out our brief look at the book of Proverbs by going to the book of Ecclesiastes!

I know, I know—technically, this doesn’t make sense. However, our goal through our brief look at Proverbs has been to gain a better understanding of what godly wisdom looks like and how it impacts the way we react to the world around us.

The passage we look at this morning puts a nice ending to it as we look at what may have been Solomon’s final words on the issue of wisdom.

Go ahead and turn over to Ecclesiastes 12:9, where we will spend our time this morning.

Although there is some debate, we believe Solomon actually wrote three different books of the Bible: Proverbs, which we have been studying, the Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs), and Ecclesiastes.

As we have seen, Proverbs is a book that covers a variety of topics and helps us see how God would have us act, speak, think, and react in a wide range of situations. It is very practical and can be digested in bite size chunks.

The Song of Solomon is a beautiful love poem between a man and his wife. In it, Solomon gives a powerful, God-honoring picture of the passion and physical expressions of love that are an incredible gift to be enjoyed within marriage.

Of the three books, Ecclesiastes is, on the surface, the most depressing.

Solomon likely wrote this book in the later years of his life, and in it, you find a strong tone of regret. However, there is still a tremendous amount of wisdom in it, especially in his closing summary.

You see, Solomon started off so incredibly well. As King David’s son, he had an incredible, godly heritage to draw from. When God appeared to him and offered him whatever he wanted, Solomon asked for wisdom.

God graciously granted that request and went beyond to give him wealth and power and prestige unlike any king the world had seen.

We have been seeing that wisdom reflected in the Proverbs we have seen, where Solomon has taught us to pursue wisdom, to trust in the Lord in every area of life, to make our words matter, and to work diligently to honor the God who saved us.

Unfortunately, he didn’t pay attention to his own proverbs. The passion that he wrote so beautifully about in Song of Solomon became twisted, and by the end of his life, he had accumulated 700 wives and 300 concubines.

Those wives encouraged him to build temples and offer sacrifices to their gods, and Solomon gave in.

The Bible sums up his slide this way:

1 Kings 11:6 CSB

Solomon did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, and unlike his father David, he did not remain loyal to the Lord.

As he wandered away from the Lord, he reached the point where he uttered the refrain that opens and closes the book of Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 12:8 CSB

“Absolute futility,” says the Teacher. “Everything is futile.”

Other translations render this as “meaningless” or “vapor/smoke”.

As he reflected back over the years he lived without following the Lord, he saw that everything we pursue apart from him is ultimately meaningless, vapor, or smoke.

He said that he tried pleasure, but it left him empty. He gained wealth, possessions, and status, and it couldn’t soothe the ache of his soul. He studied and learned everything he could, and it never satisfied. He tried hard work, but he realized that even that was meaningless because you would die and whoever took over after you would run your business into the ground.

When you take God out of the equation and look at life like it is around us, life is frustrating, exhausting, and meaningless.

Feeling glad you came to church today? Just to hear that life is meaningless?

Truthfully, there is comfort, even in this. See, the Bible doesn’t paint a rose-tinted picture of life. Nowhere does he promise us that this life will be easy and smooth and make sense all the time.

In fact, if you look at life around you and don’t understand who God is and how he works, then it may all seem meaningless.

That’s where a lot of people miss what Solomon is doing through this book, though. There is a thread that is woven throughout, reminding us that although life under the sun apart from God is meaningless, there is a God in heaven who adds meaning and value to everything we face.

Life may still seem confusing, even meaningless and random at times, but God’s hand is working through it all.

That’s what we find in his final summary in our passage this morning. Read it with me...

With all we have talked about over the last few weeks, I wanted to end our time talking about wisdom by reminding you of three simple truths that guide us as we think about wisdom:

1) God is the source of all truth and wisdom.

In the first few verses, Solomon sums up what he has tried to accomplish with his life.

He taught people, he collected and arranged proverbs of his own and from other wise people. In fact, the Bible says that he spoke 3,000 proverbs and wrote 1,005 songs.

Verse 10 tells us that he tried to arrange them in ways that were pleasing to read and accurate.

In verse 11, he acknowledges that there are many wise men and other teachers out there, and the wisdom they share spurs us on to do what we should as we walk in a wise way.

There is an interesting note at the conclusion of that verse, though…All true wisdom is given by one Shepherd.

He shifts here from what he has done and what other wise people have said and taught and goes back to the source.

There is one Shepherd who is the source of all truth and wisdom, and that is God himself.

We have seen that through Proverbs as we have been called to seek God and trust God and honor God with our words and our work.

I want to drive this home one more time: true wisdom comes from God himself!

Remember how Jesus described himself to the disciples on the night before he was betrayed:

John 14:6 CSB

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

He doesn’t just know the truth; God is truth.

He shows us what is right and what is wrong and how he works and how the world works, and in doing so, he is showing us himself!

All the wisdom he gives directs us to honor him and follow him as the Shepherd of our souls and even of history itself!

He is the one guiding and shaping and pushing us forward to know him better and honor him more so the world around us can known him better.

He is the source of wisdom, which is what Solomon lost sight of in his pursuit.

He tried to enjoy pleasure without first enjoying the God who created all good things. He tried to accumulate possessions without first acknowledging the God who owns everything. He pursued wisdom as an end in itself, not as a means to understanding the God who is truth. He worked hard to try to achieve, not out of a heart to honor the God who created, sustained, and saved him.

That’s why he looked at life as meaningless; because he rejected the very God who pours meaning into every moment.

Even though we have talked about it for a few weeks now, is there anything in your life this week that reflects that you are pursuing wisdom from God? Have you spent time in his presence through prayer and meditating on his word, running it through your mind again and again until you sense what he has to teach you?

Or, are you still wrestling through all the competing voices around you without resting in God’s wisdom and design?

That’s the second truth we want to glean from this:

2) Looking elsewhere will wear you out.

Read verse 12 again...

There are wise people who have said wise things, and God is the source behind that as he shapes us to know, honor, and follow him.

However, there is no end of people with ideas, thoughts, and wisdom.

Although it is hard to find specific numbers, it seems that Amazon lists over 32 million books for sale.

There may be as many as 10 million blog posts a day, and 4.75 billion items shared on Facebook every single day, of which the average user will see 1500 posts per day.

You cannot keep up.

If you go on a quest to find your own meaning in life, to search out and become the most wise and the most knowledgeable, etc., then you will never reach the end.

Have you figured that out yet? Have you read and reread and searched and stared at the ceiling as you lay in bed?

You can search as far as you want, read as much, watch as many YouTube videos as you can, and end up with a head swimming with every idea under the sun.

You need an anchor; something to hold on to, to give you clarity with all the competing voices.

Solomon gives us that anchor in verse 13, which is a truth we want to spend some time on:

3) The essence of wisdom is to fear God & keep his commands.

I love where Solomon lands.

He has looked at everything, experienced everything, owned more than anyone ever had before him, and when it was all said and done, this is what it comes down to: fear God and do what he says.

This ought to sound familiar if you have been watching these messages with us, because this was similar to the very first point we made about wisdom.

I think it is important enough that it is worth looping back around to, though.

The core of wisdom is responding rightly to God and his commands.

To do that, we have to take the time to get to know him. We have to spend time in his word for ourselves, reading what he has to say about himself and us and life. We need to pray and sit quietly with him, allowing the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts through what we have read and what he is up to.

We need to call or sit with and worship with others who are following Jesus, asking them questions about things we don’t understand and praying for each other and supporting each other as we grow to know him better.

As we grow to know him, we honor, respect, and obey him, or as Solomon says, we fear him and we obey him.

How does that help us practically as we pour through 1500 posts on Facebook?

We can take everything we see, read, or hear, and run it through these two filters: does this help me fear God?, and is this in line with God’s commands?

Let’s try to play this out using an example:

Assume you are reading an article that talks about how to get ahead at work. The author focuses on the fact that ultimately, you are the master of your own life and the burden is on you to make something of yourself, so dig deep and do whatever it takes to succeed.

Just from what we have said here, is this wise? No—by asserting that we are the master of our own lives, the author is rejecting the fact that God is the one ultimately in charge. He is the king, lord, and leader of our lives, not us. As we have seen, we have very little control over our lives in the long run, so this runs against who we know God to be. That makes him smaller in our eyes, not larger, so it leads us away from fearing him.

Not only that, but God’s command is to surrender to that control and submit our desires, our actions, and our plans to his standards and his plan. Doing “whatever it takes” to succeed may call you to violate God’s commands, which ultimately, isn’t wise.

We can apply that filter to everything we see, everything we read, everything we hear, and everything we think.

Again, you can only answer that as you get to know God better.

These two questions won’t answer every challenge or help you sort through issue raised by an article, post, or news story, but they give you an anchor to come back to when you wonder what is really wise: does this show me God better and lead me to love, respect, and fear him more? Does it line up with what I know he has said is right and wrong?

When you hit complex issues like our current political climate, issues of race and justice, and others, you will have to wrestle with opposing ideas of what is most honoring to God.

That’s where it is great to be in a Sunday School class and have other friends who are believers who can sit with you and you can pray, talk, read, and grow together.

It may seem reductionistic to say that we need to bring it all back to fearing God and keeping his commands.

However, that is the core that we come back to time and time again.

Why? Because of verse 14...

The God we revere, the God we fear, is the one who brings everything into judgment.

As Solomon has said throughout the rest of Ecclesiastes, we won’t understand what is going on and we may feel it is meaningless.

There are times we see some of God’s justice in this life as you see men like Jeffery Epstein exposed and their sins come to light.

Other times, it may seem like people get away with what they do wrong.

However, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God will ultimately judge what is right and wrong, both in this life and in the next.

If he is the one with the final say, then he is the only one who can tell us what is the right thing to do today.

That’s what makes the one true God all the more incredible.

He is the one whose character and declarations sets what is right and wrong.

He fully understands what is going on in the world at every moment and what needs to happen next.

He is the one who made us for a relationship with him.

Like Solomon and so many others, though, we sought to make our own path and do our own thing, and it separated us from God.

Yet the infinitely wise God lovingly pursued us by taking the condemnation we deserved and dying in our place.

In light of the kindness of God, what more could we do than put our whole trust, all the honor we can give, and everything we are into his control?

That’s wisdom: fearing God and keeping his commandments.