Wisdom in a Meaningless World
Notes
Transcript
God has a design for everything in creation, and the Bible (specifically the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) call living according to God’s design: wisdom.
Wisdom, biblically speaking is: living in accordance with God’s expectations.
A prerequisite for wisdom is the fear of the Lord. This, Solomon repeats throughout his work
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Wisdom is given to some and withheld from others. One really humorous passage in Job speaks about the ostrich and wisdom:
13 “The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully,
though they cannot compare
with the wings and feathers of the stork.
14 She lays her eggs on the ground
and lets them warm in the sand,
15 unmindful that a foot may crush them,
that some wild animal may trample them.
16 She treats her young harshly, as if they were not hers;
she cares not that her labor was in vain,
17 for God did not endow her with wisdom
or give her a share of good sense.
That is appropos of nothing, but it does talk about wisdom, so it counts.
The Hebrew word for “wisdom” is “hokmah”. The Greek word is “sophia”.
If you name your daughter “Sophia”, her name literally means “wisdom”. If you name your daughter “Hokmah”, well, that’s probably child abuse.
“Sophomore” is a compound word meaning “wise-fool” (sophos = wise; moros = fool). I’m not picking on my son or any other kid who might be a sophomore. I was a sophomore two different times, once in high school and again in college. “Wise-fool” is fairly accurate. You’ve been there.
The topic of these chapters is wisdom and its opposites. There’s wisdom—living in line with God’s expectations—and then there’s foolishness, wickedness, evil. There’s wisdom and the opposite of wisdom.
Here’s the thing: Solomon is struggling with the world as he sees it. If you were reading in Ecclesiastes this week, no doubt you picked up on the contrasting pairs: wise vs. foolish, wisdom vs. folly, wicked vs. righteous, good vs. bad.
Solomon is perched on the precipice of unbelief, teetering on the edge because he sees the mess the world is in (this was thousands of years ago, but, boy howdy, is it relevant for today).
Fools succeed.
The wise struggle.
The wicked prosper.
The righteous suffer.
The bad triumph.
The good fail.
Solomon’s looking around, and everything is unjust, it’s meaningless (hevel), and absurd—like ordering a Coke and the waitress offers Pepsi. It’s just wrong! Pepsi?!?! The world is out of sorts; just absurd.
As Solomon looks at the world and sees all he does, there can be two possible outcomes: it can drive people away from God or turn people to Him.
Solomon observes some really deep truths about humankind and about God. If you read these chapters with an eye to the NT, you would have picked out these verses.
20 Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous,
no one who does what is right and never sins.
Well, that’s precisely what Paul writes in Romans 3. Paul was probably referencing Ecclesiastes 7 when he wrote this to the church in Rome:
10 As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
Solomon and Paul are both aware humankind is not wise, nor are we righteous. We are a foolish, wicked lot, in desperate need of saving.
Solomon recognizes this:
29 This only have I found:
God created mankind upright,
but they have gone in search of many schemes.”
Men and women were created by God, and everything He made was good, good, really good. But, as with all things, we search and scheme, we sin and stumble. This is how it is.
Solomon is suggesting a wise course of action. He wants for us not to fall into the ways of the world. He doesn’t want us to do what fallen people do. The problem is, there’s a limit to our knowledge.
5 As you do not know the path of the wind,
or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb,
so you cannot understand the work of God,
the Maker of all things.
We can’t figure everything out. And actually, if we’re being totally honest, we’re going to figure out very, very, very little.
We can go about our lives, we can follow our hearts (that’s contemporary wisdom— “Follow your heart, man! You do you! Find your truth; live your truth. Go with your gut.”
(I know I’ve said these thing before, but all of that is just awful advice—that stuff is the opposite of wisdom).
Solomon, rather sarcastically, tells his readers:
9 You who are young, be happy while you are young,
and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth.
Follow the ways of your heart
and whatever your eyes see,
but know that for all these things
God will bring you into judgment.
You do you, follow your heart, but know that for all these things, God will bring you into judgment.
All of humanity—including you—has sinned and has departed from God’s wise design for the world. We all know this to be true.
I’ve known more than one person who has put gasoline into the tank instead of diesel or vice-versa (I won’t name names). That’s not going to work out too well.
The warning stickers that advise us to use an item for its intended use are there for a reason.
When I was in grade school, we went to a cookout at the Friesen’s, our good friends. It was summer time. Hot. Awful. Miserable. They put up a little pool and slip-n-slide for the younger kids.
Their youngest daughter went inside to the bathroom and put what she thought was sunscreen all over her body—head to toe. A minute or so later, everyone on the block heard a blood-curdling scream.
Instead of sunscreen, she grabbed a bottle of Nair.
Nair isn’t meant to be used as sunscreen; it’s meant to remove hair. Use something contrary to its intended purpose at your own peril.
To live in ways contrary to God’s design is foolish. There’s God’s way of doing things and there’s the world’s way of doing things.
Wisdom is Living Life as God Designed
Wisdom is Living Life as God Designed
God has a design for everything. The hope is that we would, by reading Ecclesiastes (and the rest of God’s Word), learn to walk in wisdom, learn to live life as God designed, not as our sinful hearts desire.
And so, in these chapters, and througout the Bible, we’re given piece after piece of sound advice, wise advice so that we can distinguish between wise and foolish and follow God’s way.
Ecclesiastes 7-11 are so full of proverbs, one verse statements, you might have thought you were reading Proverbs (turns out, Solomon’s books sound like they’re written by the same guy).
This is some of the wise advice we’re given:
8 The end of a matter is better than its beginning,
and patience is better than pride.
9 Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit,
for anger resides in the lap of fools.
10 Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?”
For it is not wise to ask such questions.
2 Obey the king’s command, I say, because you took an oath before God. 3 Do not be in a hurry to leave the king’s presence. Do not stand up for a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases. 4 Since a king’s word is supreme, who can say to him, “What are you doing?”
5 Whoever obeys his command will come to no harm,
and the wise heart will know the proper time and procedure.
6 For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter,
though a person may be weighed down by misery.
7 Since no one knows the future,
who can tell someone else what is to come?
1 As dead flies give perfume a bad smell,
so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.
2 The heart of the wise inclines to the right,
but the heart of the fool to the left.
3 Even as fools walk along the road,
they lack sense
and show everyone how stupid they are.
12 Words from the mouth of the wise are gracious,
but fools are consumed by their own lips.
We have all these wise sayings, the wisdom/way of God laid out for us in our laps—the WORD OF GOD in our hands!—and still, we behave foolishly, worldly.
The Problem: We Don’t Always Like God’s Way
The Problem: We Don’t Always Like God’s Way
We behave foolishly. We don’t always want to do things God’s way.
Another way to put this: SIN.
Stuff is CROOKED.
14 There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless.
We don’t always like God’s way, we much prefer our own way, so we decide that we know best when, in reality, we’re broken people trying to fix our brokenness with more broken stuff.
Jonathan Akin writes this:
“Some people think gender reassignment will fix their brokenness, but that only makes suicide 20 times more likely. Some people think intimacy will fix their brokenness so they go from relationship to relationship tryng to fill the void, but they end up hurt and unsatisfied each time as they look harder and harder for something they will not find. Others look to success in a job, or making lots of money, or hundreds of other things, but these things never bring lasting satisfaction.”
We worship money, pleasure, sex, power, success. We look to them to give us what they never can. This is the brokenness of departing from God’s good design.
We don’t always like God’s way, so we look for our own way. “We know better than Him,” says the fool.
13 Consider what God has done:
Who can straighten
what he has made crooked?
Sometimes we are broken by the course of our own sin. Sometimes, by the fallen world. Stuff doesn’t work they way we think it should.
Life in this cursed world doesn’t work right. We’ve taken a sharp right turn off the path God would have us tread, and we find ourselves living in a world of injustice where the wicked prosper and the righteous pay for what the wicked person does.
The Good News: God is in Control
The Good News: God is in Control
In Ecclesiastes 7-11, I think Solomon wants to get us thinking about the upside-down nature of the world. He wants to expose us to the brokenness of the world just in case we somehow missed it.
It’s God’s goodness to us, His love toward us that frustrates us intentionally, to drive us to God and to His Gospel.
Ecclesiastes encourages faith in God by revealing God is in control and is working things out according to His timing and His plan:
14 When times are good, be happy;
but when times are bad, consider this:
God has made the one
as well as the other.
Therefore, no one can discover
anything about their future.
15 In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these:
the righteous perishing in their righteousness,
and the wicked living long in their wickedness.
16 Do not be overrighteous,
neither be overwise—
why destroy yourself?
17 Do not be overwicked,
and do not be a fool—
why die before your time?
18 It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.
God’s plan for our lives includes both prosperity and adversity. Like Job, should ask ourselves: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
God mixes both together to bring about something beautiful, even though we can’t see what that is right now.
We need to trust Him.
The Good News: God is in Control & Jesus Saves
The Good News: God is in Control & Jesus Saves
Solomon tells a story addressing injustice at a personal level.
13 I also saw under the sun this example of wisdom that greatly impressed me: 14 There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it. 15 Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man. 16 So I said, “Wisdom is better than strength.” But the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are no longer heeded.
Who does this sound like?
These verses tell the story of a poor, wise man who save the city but is rejected. The people are indifferent to the hero who saved them.
Sinclair Ferguson calls this passage a prophecy. He writes, “Whose name most naturally comes to mind when we hear of a poor man, full of wisdom, who became a savior but whose life and teaching have been rejected? The answer is obviously ‘Jesus!’”
Jesus is the wisdom of God:
24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.
Jesus designed creation and entered creation to live out that perfect design. He took on flesh, grew in wisdom and stature. His wisdom never faltered. He is the true and better Solomon.
Since we couldn’t make our way to God to get wisdom, God sent His Son to us with His Wisdom. Wisdom is a person.
We are sinful fools who will never be wise—never able to live according to God’s expectations—apart from Jesus Christ. Jesus took our sin, our folly, our death in order to save us from them. And, in exchange for our foolish wickedness, He gives His perfect, spotless righteousness.
Isaiah 53 explains the wisdom and foolishness of Ecclesiastes 7-11. The Righteous One got what the wicked deserved, so the wicked could get what the Righteous deserved.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
In Christ, we get to recover and pursue God’s design for our lives. That means living out the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, which is only possible in Christ Jesus.
Wisdom is living to please God, not the world. The only way to please God is through His Son, the true Wisdom of God.
The world is upsidedown, and it has been since the Fall of man. Our actions are going to seem strange to some, strange to many, even. But living to please God as enabled by Him is far and away the best way to live.
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”