"Foolish Living is Hevel (Ecclesiastes 7)" | 10/16/22
Ecclesiastes 7 | 10/16/22 | Thad Yessa
Over the last several Sundays, we have journeyed through the first six chapters of Ecclesiastes, and we have watched Solomon “live his best life” seeking knowledge, power, pleasure, vocational success, status, and we have discovered that Solomon has found seven times in 6 chapters that all of this vanity, a grasping after smoke.
But this morning in chapter 7, we find a different Solomon, an older one who is looking back on his life and all of his attempts to find meaning and joy. This Solomon seems a bit callous, hard, and fatigued. As one pastor describes Solomon here as a granddaddy who has done it all. In this final season of his life, he invites you, his grandchild to sit with him in a dark room sipping black coffee, no cream, no sugar, and you better not ask for it. After a few moments in silence, Solomon takes a deep breath and begins to share with you all the wisdom that he has found, just hoping that you will listen to him.
In order to understand chapter 7, we must first go back to the final verse of chapter 6:12
For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? For who can tell man what will be after him under the sun?
Here is verse 12. We have two very important questions. You see have the first 6 chapters, Solomon shifts here at the end of chapter 6. This is known as the very middle of the book of Ecclesiastes, and Solomon, in some ways, will spend the rest of the book looking at these questions and this text today seeks to answer Solomon’s first question.
Solomon is asking, “What is good for a man?” Or to think about it in the context the book is written in, “How can a man live wisely?”
A good name is better than precious ointment,
and the day of death than the day of birth.
2 It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
5 It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise
than to hear the song of fools.
6 For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,
so is the laughter of the fools;
this also is vanity.
7 Surely oppression drives the wise into madness,
and a bribe corrupts the heart.
8 Better is the end of a thing than its beginning,
and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
9 Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,
for anger lodges in the heart of fools.
10 Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
11 Wisdom is good with an inheritance,
an advantage to those who see the sun.
12 For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money,
and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.
13 Consider the work of God:
who can make straight what he has made crooked?
14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.
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I.The mystery of LIVING WISELY. (1- 14)
Solomon explains that humanity naturally longs for prosperity, but the true meaning is pain.
Solomon uses contrasting ideas to drive this point home.
A good name is better than precious ointment
Precious ointment here is a symbol of wealth or luxury. Solomon is pointing out that we naturally would desire wealth, but a good name or reputation is better. And he uses this verse as a launching point to build his case.
The day of death is better than the day of birth.
Mourning
Sorrow
Sadness
Are better than
Feasting
Laughter
Mirth (Jubilation)
Joy
Is Solomon saying he wishes for death, grief, and suffering? No.
Is Solomon saying that the days of feasting, laughing, and celebrating are bad? No. Solomon says that painful experiences and painful seasons are better than prosperity and celebration. Because pain and discomfort cause us to wrestle with the true meaning of life and existence. In moments of sorrow, grief, and loss, we naturally ask deeper questions about our humanity. Why? How could this happen?
Example: questions we asked at the last funeral we attended
Think about the last funeral you attended and the questions that you wrestled with or even the thoughts you had about your own mortality.
Pain cause mankind to search for truth in a deeper way than prosperity and celebration ever could.
13 Consider the work of God:
who can make straight what he has made crooked?
14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. (Ecclesiastes 7:13-14)
Solomon is saying here that God, in His sovereign plan, includes days of prosperity and pain.
Solomon points to the fact that prosperity and celebration are good things, but living wisely sees pain as a better teacher.
II. The mystery of LIVING EXTREMELY. (15-22)
15 In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. 16 Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? 17 Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? 18 It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.
19 Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city.
20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
21 Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. 22 Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.
Solomon points out the difficult reality that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.
Retribution principle - the righteous will prosper, and the wicked will be punished.
Solomon is teaching that although this principle is true, it is not a guarantee. He acknowledges that sometimes life gets turned upside down or feels backward. On this side of eternity, those who love God will suffer, and those who hate God will prosper. From this realization, don’t be overly righteous, and don’t be overly wicked. The one who fears God will come out from both of them.
What in the world is Solomon telling us? Is Solomon really instructing followers of God not to pursue righteousness? Is he giving us permission to pursue wickedness? The answer: NO! If Solomon was telling us to pursue wickedness, he would be contradicting all of Scripture. Rather what Solomon has in view here is the extremes of what we can categorize as extreme righteousness and extreme wickedness. Extreme wickedness is probably mostly self-explanatory, so we are going to start with extreme righteousness.
Extreme righteousness is the pursuit of righteous living that attempts to manipulate God so that He will give you something that you want or so that He will change your current circumstances. Solomon is speaking directly to us, the church goer. If we are really honest with ourselves, I suspect that all of us are guilty of this in our Christian lives at some point.
On the other side, Solomon switches to extreme wickedness and says don’t be extremely wicked, but Solomon also acknowledges that on this side of eternity, even after we have put our faith and trust in Jesus, we still struggle with sin. One of the hard things to wrestle with in the Christian life is that we are saints and sinners as followers of Jesus. We are saints who have been redeemed by the work of Jesus on the cross, and yet at the same time, we still choose to sin against our Heavenly Father.
Solomon, along with the entirety of Scripture, encourages us to flee our sinful desires and not allow them to control our lives.
III. The mystery of LIVING SINFULLY. (23-29)
23 All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me.24 That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out?
25 I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. 26 And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. 27 Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things— 28 which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. 29 See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.
Solomon, in his search for wisdom and goodness, was not enough. Solomon was given such incredible wisdom (1 Kings 3). The wisdom that God gave Solomon was great than anyone before him and would be greater than anyone after him. Yet Solomon here admits that the true depth of wisdom, aka the mysteries of God and His plans, are far deeper than he could ever grasp. The wisest man to ever walk the earth said that “The depths of God I cannot reach.”
Men and women alike are rotten miserable creatures. He is basically saying that humanity stinks.
See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. Ecc. 7:29
Solomon embraces the truth that humanity has fallen far from its Creator and they are in desperate need of their holy and righteous God.
Solomon looks for goodness and meaning in:
Sex
Power
Women
Authority
Status
Money
Wisdom
Humanity
Success
Solomon, after chasing after these things, comes to the conclusion that humanity is so broken and in desperate need of a holy God.
Solomon looks at humanity, and he realizes is that God is the only true good.
Pretty bleak message. By Solomon asking a simple question of how do we live wisely, Solomon turns our thinking upside down and encourages us to live backward. Pain is better than prosperity. We are so wicked that even our attempts at righteousness are stained by sin. And humanity stinks.
But remember, sadness and gloom are meant to teach us. Sorrow, pain, and hard truths are meant to be professors in the class called life. All this bad news, Solomon points to as good news, God. The ultimate answer to our question of what is good or how we live wisely is simple, God.
God is the only true good from which all goodness comes. Jesus, God, made flesh claimed this same truth in Mark 10:18 when a rich young man comes up to Jesus and says, Good Teacher. Jesus responds to this statement with a powerful question. “Why do you call me good? There is no one good except God?” Jesus wasn’t contradicting the young man but was challenging him with the deeper reality that stood in front of him, Jesus is good because He is God.
This Good Teacher, this Good God, stepped down from heaven to take on the human problem of sinfulness to live a truly good and God-honoring life, a life lived wisely in light of who God is. During his life, He endured pain, immense pain knowing that it was a part of God’s plan; He lived a truly righteous life free of all wickedness and sin. He is the one human throughout all of history that doesn’t stink. Because He is truly God.
Here’s the twist, though He was perfect sinful humanity rejected Him and sentenced him to death. Jesus offered up himself as a human sacrifice on a Roman cross, but why? Why did Jesus, this truly good God do this? Jesus did it to live perfectly in our place because we couldn’t and to die perfectly in our place so that we wouldn’t have to, to offer us what is the truly good life in him.
If you are searching for the good life, the world says to look inside yourself, but Solomon points us to the reality that inside us, there is no good, and goodness is only found in God alone, in Christ alone. When you center your life around God, only then will you find true meaning, true purpose, true goodness, and true life.
The book of Ecclesiastes is all about living faithfully in a frustrating world.