Words of Truth from Solomon's Shepherd
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
<<READ vv9-14>>
Recap - 2 sentences - just enough to get them to hear
Last week, we read Solomon’s final words in the book of Ecclesiastes, with verse 8, finishing as he began.
The wisdom of this book has been challenging. But it has also prepared us in perhaps unexpected ways for Christmas. How can we really rejoice on Christmas with wisdom if we don’t first realize the depth of our need for a savior?
Today’s verses summarize Solomon’s words, and give us a clear picture of why they matter.
ILLUST: Every year, thousands of Geometry teachers pause mid-sentence while explaining how to write a Geometric proof, and call on the kid in the third row who’s had his hand up for five minutes, sighing loud enough for everyone to hear it, and the kid says, “Miss, when are we ever going to use this in real life?”
The groans you hear are the math teachers.
And the snarky ones immediately say, “I assure you that your test next week is real life.” The really snarky ones say, “You spend hours a week training yourself to push buttons in precise combinations and careful timing to make an imaginary car drift around a nonexistent race track, or master pretending to defeat enemy soldiers in a first-person shooter, so don’t pretend you care about real life.” And the really good ones say, “It teaches you logic and critical reasoning, which will apply to every situation you will ever face, forever.”
Ecclesiastes ends with a sort of “reason” for the book, including its application to quote unquote real life.
Q. What should we do with the “words of the wise"?
I.
I.
Context for v11
[9-10] -
Verses 9-10 tell us that Preacher Solomon didn’t keep his wisdom to himself, or think that he had nothing to learn from others. He taught the people, and he listened to others - weighing, studying, arranging.
He didn’t invent every proverb or saying that’s here, or in Proverbs. He also adapted wisdom from others. This is a rare insight into how God inspired this particular part of Scripture.
He searched for wisdom acc. to verse 10 - he “sought to find words of delight.” And the true ones, he wrote down. But he didn’t just write them however he found them. It says he wrote them down uprightly.
6 For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
All wisdom comes from God.
But our sin garbles it, wastes it, or twists it. But Solomon took the best of the world’s wisdom, and by the Holy Spirit’s work in him, he squeezed the idolatry out of it, and then cast those true words of delight in their proper, Godly context. And this is something he did with great care.
[11-12] -
In verses 11-12, the narrator focuses on the character of this book as wisdom given by God, and then cautions his son against trying to imitate Solomon in the weighing and the studying, and the arranging of proverbs.
[13-14]
And in verses 13-14, he reminds us why it all matters. Wisdom - seeing God’s world the way God does - helps us figure out what the fear of God looks like in any given situation, in light of judgment and eternity.
But look again at verse 11. This is where we’re going to focus.
<<READ 11>>
Like Goads
“Like goads” - a stick with an iron point at the end. A shepherd pokes a pokey sheep to get him moving.
Goads awaken, arouse, even anger; but they get you moving.
The delightful words the Preacher sought were not the kind that make you comfortable, the kind that make you feel good about yourself and stroke your ego. But that kind of preacher does show up in Scripture, and there are more of them in the world today than there are preachers like Solomon. As Paul warned Timothy
1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
But if our passions motivate us to want preaching that makes us happily anesthetized against the truth, the most delightful thing a preacher can say is something that wakes us up, because it’s true, it stings, and it points us back to the Shepherd.
I wonder where Ecclesiastes has poked you.
A Stable Frame - Like nails firmly fixed
Verse 11 continues, “And like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings,” and if you’re looking in another version, it might say something like, “and like nails firmly fixed are the masters of the collections.” It’s another one of those ambiguous phrases in Hebrew where it might mean either or both of these. But the effect is the same - goads get you moving, and nails firmly fixed keep you moving with stability.
Pick any verse out of this book, and it might prick like a pointy stick. But altogether, they give you a stable framework.
Here’s what I mean. A goad is an ancient word picture. But here’s a couple modern ones.
Imagine you’re in the left turn lane. And you’re waiting, and your phone dings. You look down at it, you get more distracted than you ought to, and you don’t see that the light turns green.
The words of the wise are also like the horn that startles you into moving.
Or picture a young child, who finds mommy’s keys sitting on the table, and picks them up, and wanders over to the electrical outlet. And just as she’s about to shove that key in the hole that seems like just the right size,
The words of the wise are also like the gigantic NO! that makes you drop the keys. I’m very grateful for a very wise member of our congregation who brought that word picture to me this week.
And the great big NO! might make the child cry, but the shock from the outlet will hurt more than the shock from the NO.
But the collected sayings are more than just a bunch of pokes and jabs. Solomon arranged this material with great care so that by the time you get here, to the end, you realize that every goad, every prick was meant to startle you, to shove you back towards God, because He’s the only stability there is. A right relationship with God is the only thing. That’s why verse 13 says <<READ 13>>. Literally, “This is the ALL of Mankind.”
They are given by one Shepherd
Look at the end of verse 11. <<READ 11 in total>>
And of course, in
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
God as shepherd (Ps 80:1, 95:7)
But as early as Genesis 49, we see the Messiah as the Shepherd, too. (Isaiah 40:11, Ezek 37:24-25, and:)
23 And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.
Before we even get to the New Testament, see how God’s Word pointed the way to Christ. The Lord is the Shepherd, but the Messiah is also the Shepherd, but there will be only one Shepherd. This is just another place where Scripture shows us that God’s plan was always that our savior would be God become man. The Son of God and Son of Man. David’s Son and David’s Lord. Immanuel, God with us, the Creator of all things, born of the virgin Mary.
So we come back to verse 11 with the pieces all put together, and we find that the reason Solomon’s book is full of wisdom is because these words are given by Solomon’s Shepherd, the pre-incarnate Christ.
Every time these words poked you in the ribs, it was Jesus goading you.
So, what are we supposed to do with the words of the wise here in Scripture?
II. Stick to the words of Solomon’s Shepherd
II. Stick to the words of Solomon’s Shepherd
Let’s see what Jesus Himself says about the words of the wise given by One Shepherd.
14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
Notice? They listen. And they don’t go join someone else’s flock; they stick with Jesus the Shepherd. The caution in verse 12 - my son, beware anything beyond these - is a reminder. Stick to the Shepherd’s voice.
Your Shepherd’s words are a firm foundation on which to build.
(carpet in basement - powder-actuated nails - firmly fixed). But how about this for a spot to build
24 “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
The collected sayings <<HOLD UP BIBLE>> are like nails firmly fixed.
To know God’s Word is know the voice of the One Shepherd.
And there are things in here that will prick like the dickens. Because your Shepherd loves you too much to leave you sleeping in sin and death.
Stick to the words of the Shepherd.
III. Don’t kick against the words of the Shepherd
III. Don’t kick against the words of the Shepherd
The book of Acts tells a story of a man who desperately needed a great big NO to shock him back to his senses.
Back in July, we saw his story, as he tells it in Acts 26. Saul - who became known as the Apostle Paul - says,
9 “I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10 And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. 11 And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities. 12 “In this connection I journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. 13 At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. 14 And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ 15 And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. 16 But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, 17 delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles—to whom I am sending you 18 to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’
And Saul, who had been kicking against the goads, finally heard the voice of the Shepherd surrendered to Him.
Kicking against the goads is a picture of stubborn foolishness. Like if you’re in that left-turn lane, and instead of moving, when the guy behind you honks, you get mad and throw it in reverse.
When you hear the voice of the Shepherd, don’t kick.
IV. Be quick to follow your Shepherd’s voice
IV. Be quick to follow your Shepherd’s voice
We have examples of this all over Scripture. Back in Acts 9, the first time we read Paul’s conversion story, it says “For some days, he was with the disciples at Damascus, and immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’”
A goad usually jabs you at just the right time, but it feels like the last thing you want right then. Pricks of conscience are never convenient, but God knows His timing.
7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
And notice how people respond to the Shepherd’s voice in the Gospels. Jesus meets Peter and Andrew in
19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him.
And two verses later, he says the same to James and John, and
22 Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
At the end of the Gospel of Luke, some disciples meet the risen Christ on the road, but they don’t recognize him at first, but listen to how they talk about it
32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
See, Jesus’s words burn and save. So, stick to His words, don’t kick against them, and be quick to follow when He calls.
When His apostles preached the first sermon,
36 Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” 37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
Today, the Shepherd calls out to you to follow Him. Believer, where is His Spirit pricking you? It is for your good. Don’t kick, whatever it is.
If your conscience is troubled by some sin, don’t soothe it or distract it. Stand up and get out.
If your heart is moved to some service to Him or to others, don’t wait for the feeling to pass! Stand up and follow your Shepherd.
Because <<READ v11>>