Loving & Living God’s Better Wisdom

LOVING & LIVING IN GOD’S BETTER WISDOM

 - Eccl. 7:1-14

Well, good morning again to everyone watching online.  It’s good to have you joining us, whether you are a member, regular attender or someone “visiting” our live stream Sunday service today. In fact we have people from other parts of the world, including England and even India that tune into our livestream…so welcome all around the world!

Now, before we start in our Bible passage this morning, I promised last week that we would give our church an update on the mission trip to India that myself and 4 others went on, just a few short weeks ago. So, here is one our team members to fill you in on that trip:

VIDEO w/ slides interspersed.

It was  such a pleasure to be on this team with Cindy, Kristie, Lisa and Ryan…It truly was life-changing for me as well. I wanted to add to what Cindy has said by showing you a few more pictures and stories of people we met during our time in India:

The family on the left were new believers…They made breakfast for us while neighbors from the surrounding area, both Christians and Hindus came into the house for prayer…
ON the right is a couple who were celebrating their 13th wedding anniversary. They invited us to the party and asked us to preach the word and pray over them during the party!  IN fact when we were late because our van broke down, the man left his own party and came and picked us up!
This is a photo of some of the leaders of the church in one village. The family is prominent in the local village council and they lead worship for the church
These two men had dramatic testimonies. The on on the right was demonized until Christ saved him…and the younger man on the right came to Christ after his wife nearly died in child birth…the older man shared the gospel with him in the local market.
This is a plot of land donated by the older evangelist that is planned for a small church building.

There were so many others!  I wish we could tell more stories of these precious believers, and how they endure opposition simply to live for Jesus. We are truly looking forward to more fruitful partnership with the seminary as it moves the Northeast, and with the mission work in the villages.

And I also wanted to pass on my thank you to FCBC as I was able to arrange my flights on the way back to stop by our church in England, Bridgeway Church.  It’s been a year and half since we left the church we planned there to come back to the USA.

I was able to

gather with them for communion before their Sunday service
Meet new babies born to some of the families since I left
See that some who had fallen away have come back to following Christ
Get to preach to a gathering and worship with them even in the midst of many being absent due to the Corona virus scare

I can report that they are now flourishing, growing and experiencing God’s grace.

The elders, my friends Adam and Danny, that are leading are doing an amazing job and the whole church is growing together.  They’ve added to their numbers with new members in the short time since we’ve been gone!

They pass on their thanks for sending me there on a Sunday to preach the word to them…

And honestly, one of the greatest things in both places, India and England, was the worship!  Here is a brief clip with a little taste of each:

VIDEO

As I experienced all this I asked myself the question….WHICH WAS BETTER?…Being in a new culture and serving with our mission partners in India.  The absolutely electric joy in their sung worship that was so powerful….or visiting the church we planted in England and having an emotional reconnection and seeing God’s work there? Hearing them sing with beautiful simplicity, but also very loud!

I can’t really say which is better….

Is one really better than the other? Like a lot of choices, there are many factors and it can be a matter of perspective..

On a less serious note its like asking:

Do you like coffee from Black Rock or from Push and Pour?

Would you want a take out pizza from Blaze or MOD pizza?

Subway or Blimpie?

These things are trivial, but we ask those questions.  Which is better?

And that actually leads us to our text of scripture this morning in Ecclesiastes chapter 7, where we will be talking about:

Loving and Living God’s Better Wisdom.

I’ll show you what I mean after I read our passage for today.

READ 7:1-14

This passage is filled with comparisons, and we will spend the majority of our time taking about them. But, this passage is also full of the tensions we have come to expect in the book of Ecclesiastes. And let me remind us quickly of that tension and the context of this book as we start. Because as one commentator said, “chapter 7 is the most difficult passage in a difficult book.”

Why is this chapter so difficult? Why is this book so difficult? There are many reasons, but here are a few that reveal themselves both in chapter 7 and overall for us to remember

This book is Hebrew wisdom literature. It has a poetry all its own that is not readily recognizable in English or in our culture.
There is confusion about the purpose of this book. Is it 11 chapters of bad theology, just to show us to fear God and walk with him as the outcome statement in chapter 12 says?  Or is there a God-centered reality weaved throughout the entire book?
This book can seem overly pessimistic and we fight against that knowing the whole redemptive story of God. We want to get to the place where we things are not futile in Christ.  Not meditate on the futility of life under the sun.

We ask ourselves, do we really want to sit at the feet of a jaded, cynical teacher like Solomon when have such clear teaching in the New Testament to meditate on?    I believe the answer is yes! I believe this is a part of God’s word that helps us in the long run.

We perhaps prefer the book of Proverbs that tells us how to navigate life when things are going well….but we need Ecclesiastes when we are struggling to comprehend the meaning in life.

And we need to read it rightly…. In Ecclesiastes God has not sent us an angry prophet, but he has sent us a thoughtful teacher to expose the futility of life and point us to God infused wisdom once again.  It can seem bleak, but this is God’s way of pointing us to the ultimate wisdom in Christ that gives meaning to life in the here and now, and for eternity.

And in here in chapter 7 the preacher uses a handful of comparisons to point us to a wise life.  A good life.

It begins a section of this book that is less tightly organized and seems a little more like the book of Proverbs with its punchy statements.  Each one could be a sermon or a study, but there still does seem to be an overall connectedness to it.  In a series of “this is better” statements, we are getting the further answer to the question that he asked in chapter 6 verse 12:

“For who knows what is good for meanwhile he lives the few days of his vain life, which passes like a shadow?”

Having shown us in chapter 6 our hearts sickened discontent and started pointed us to the solution of coming under God’s rule and his knowledge of our lives, in Chapter 7 he presses the point in further.

And we need to pay close attention because many of his statements are counter-intuitive.  They don’t seem right…but maybe that’s because our hearts don’t always love the right things.  WE need to change what we love, specifically to Love God’s good wisdom more than our own.  And that’s what we see in verses 1-6.  The preacher wants our hearts to get to the place where we are:

Loving God’s Good Wisdom (v. 1-6)

And the first category we see that our heart loves need to be changed is to

1 - Love God’s name better than our fame

Look in verse 1

This is actually a double comparison even though they don’t seem connected. And it gets the heart of what we love the most.  You see we all want to have a good name in one way or another.

And on a level that is fine.  We want to be known for:

being hard-working
being a good husband, wife, parent or child
Or simply smelling good - even today doing live stream I got a shower and put on cologne!

But we also have this part of us that wants our name spread for our fame.  Just look at how we react when we get a “like” on a social media post, we get that retweet, or comment on Instagram about how people think we are beautiful, wise, or funny.

And those “names” we get for ourselves, whether matters of work family or instant gratification are like the ointment in our passage. In the ancient culture this is written in, this ointment or oil is the perfume that people bought, sometimes with medicinal effects.

It smells wonderful, it’s expensive and a lot of effort goes into getting it. but it doesn’t last that long.  Maybe a couple hours, or if you put a lot on like a teenage boy or girl.

But here the writer challenges our desire for momentary fame and the spread of the glory of our own name, and calls us to love the legacy of a lasting name.

And the idea is that every comment we make or action we take is building a character that leaves a legacy of self or of God.

You see, we as believers should all be known more for our:

joy rather than critical nature
Generosity rather than stinginess
hospitality rather than self-isolation (except for during Corona virus!)

That should be our character and the fragrance we spread…And finally as this passage says, on the day of our death this should be a good legacy…

finally sealed on the day of our death, when our tombstone is carved and the small dash of our lives between the date of our birth and the date of our death is over.

But, instead of daily building a legacy of little acts, our days start with grabbing our phones, reading the news and weather, going off to work, coming home exhausted, eating some food, maybe go to Life group if you can manage, coming home even more tired so you watch some tv, and then you can’t sleep and you watch you’ve clips or look for what you can buy on Amazon, before eventually falling to sleep to wake up exhausted the next day…!  All these little perfume shots all day long to keep us going, and are what we live for!

The preacher says, you need a different legacy! You need a different name…

And in the Bible’s terms, a lasting name come through God loving us and us loving God and his name.  All throughout scripture, the people with a good name are those that had hearts changed to love God.

Think about

Abraham - who went from being an idol worshipper to a friend of God Moses - who went from being a murderer to a leader of God’s people

David - who though he failed tragically he was a man after God’s heart

And I love particularly the story of the woman in Luke 7 and Mark 14.

She started as a woman of bad character, who when she came to Jesus the first time, she had to fight through the condemning glares of the religious people around her.  But yet she wept at the feet of Jesus and poured out costly perfume at his feet. She was loved by Jesus and and forgiven by Jesus in that moment!  Then later we see her loving Jesus by pouring perfume on his head to anoint him for his burial.  I love that Jesus tells this woman, that because of this act of love..that this story will be told wherever the gospel goes!  That is a legacy changed.  A good name given through the forgiveness and love of Christ.

That’s how a good name happens.  A good name is not to us trying to keep up a reputation, or an appearance…but about loving god and his glory because He has loved us in Christ so well.

That is what we have in the gospel.  So we don’t have to be anesthetized by the perfumes of the culture around us, but we can love the name of God, who gives us a good name.  Then when we really believe this,  we can live in that daily and build a legacy for His glory.

The preacher continues in verses 2-4 with more wisdom Specifically that our hearts should:

2-4 - Love sad lessons better than superficiality

Let me read again verses 2-4…

This is where it gets really counter-intuitive.  We don’t like this comparison….How is better to go to the house of touring rather than the house of feasting…But remember it is a comparison.  This isn’t saying that it wrong to enjoy life (we’ll see that later). Jesus himself was at feasts very often in his life on the earth. BUT, it is saying that one is better than the other in this life under the son. That the house of mourning (a funeral) is better than the house of feasting (a birthday party)

This is particularly hard for a culture like our that does everything it possibly can to domesticate, deny, or run from death like the plague.

I am convinced that part of our reaction to the current COVID -19 crisis is not only because it is a a serious disease that is sadly taking the lives of many people….but also because we can’t handle the hard straight look into the face of death that this pandemic is giving us.

We are the opposite of the medieval culture that actually had a booklet called the “art of dying” that warned about temptations that could arise for dying people, pointed them to seek forgiveness through confession of sin, and instructed on prayers you could pray modeled on Christ’s 7 prayer from the cross. They thought about death, and they considered death, and it made them prepare for it before it ever came to them.

But we run from this, don’t want to talk about this, never see death (until now), and think it isn’t relevant to us. And because we aren’t prepared, when the rattle of death starts to ring loud like it is in culture today, we don’t know where to turn.

Luther said we should:

“Invite death into our presence while it is still at a distance”

This is the reality that Psalm 90 brings to bear on us….”Teach us to number our days and thus gain a heart of wisdom.”

What the preacher is saying is that we can learn more at one funeral than we can at 100 birthday parties…That’s hard for us to believe.  We would all rather go to a birthed or anniversary celebration.

And now he says, we need to love this reality…But How can I love these sad lessons you might say?

I do this by remembering the lessons learnt from several funerals of people I love.  For example:

My Pop-pop. He died when I was in my early twenties.  Sadly he had a heart attack in the parking lot of a grocery store and was found in his car later.  When I went to his funeral, I was doing ok….until they actually lowered his casket into the ground and then it was buried.   I LEARNED FROM THIS THE FINALITY OF DEATH. In a way I never would have learned this… It made me want to make sure people knew about Jesus Christ.
My Grandmother - She was an ardent unbeliever for much of here life. My parents prayed for years for her.  Sadly she got a cancerous growth on her forehead, which led to a surgery, where our her forehead lost much of its mass.  But through this tragedy, she began to go back to God…To read her Bible, confess Jesus as savior, and go The power of the gospel and a changed legacy
An alcoholic man that we ministered to in England. The first time we met him he was in the gutter outside the church. He would come and weep when he would her the Bible, but sadly we could never tell what he believed.  And one day he passed away in his apartment.  We went to the funeral and realized how all alone he was and as the priest gave a message of absolution for a man he did not know, I realized the loneliness of death and the deception of religious false hope.
A Dear Lady in India. While not a funeral, it was surely the house of mourning.  We had the sad opportunity and privilege to pray for a woman who was in the back of a residence with a massive cancerous growth on her cheek.  I learned that there is only HOPE ONLY IN CHRIST. When all the western medication is not available, when there are no hospital beds, only concrete floors…There is only Christ to hope in.

These kind of lessons can only be found in the house of mourning.  It is not better in regards to being more enjoyable, but you can love the lessons learned through being there.

Next he goes on to say that if we are to have our hearts changed to love God’s wisdom, our hearts will learn to:

5-6 - Love hard truths better than hilarity

Read verses 5-6 again…

I am someone who loves a meme more than anyone else..I love sharing them, emojis, jokes and ways we can have a little levity and share some fun together. I’m sure we’ve been doing this a lot during our time of isolation and staying at home.

But if I am on my death bed and really throughout my life, I want someone to speak to me - not jokes, not the drunken songs of fools, but something with real substance. Real wisdom that has weight.

That’s what the “Crackling of the thorns under the pot, being the laughter of fools means.

He is comparing the light hearted way that people deal with their lives with the way the ancient culture had their version of a microwave meal.

They would gather thorns and light them up, they would flame hot, but go out very quickly….That is all that foolishness gets you.  A little heat without any real substance…and that’s our culture of laughter.

The preacher isn’t saying something that should be considered new to us as NT believers, because Jesus himself said:

“Woe to you who laugh now because you will  out and weep”

The serious attitude of Ecclesiastes is encouraging us to think about life and death. Some people just caught heir lives away…IN fact that is the norm.  One of the worst things you could be labelled as in our culture is NOT FUN….And why is that so bad? Why is it so important..?

Of course we should have joy…but is life a joke?  The fool thinks it is. But there is nothing funny about life and death.  The preacher says, you need to learn to listen to rebuke from the wise. Godly criticism, which is counter-intuitive wisdom.

Jesus said things we didn’t want to hear, like “repent, the kingdom of God is at hand…” And this writer in Ecclesiastes has done the same thing all along…telling us we often pursue futility.,..

So that leads to a question.  Who are the wise people that you pursue to tell you the hard truths?  Men and women who will tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear…

Being people who ask questions and ask for help…Not being like people in our culture just want to spout their opinions, and and are internet experts in life. People who say I will figure it all out myself…I don’t need to listen to others.

Then we get offended with those who have experience and can bring wisdom to bear on us…

No, as God’s people we need to love God's wisdom, to be those that can say with God’s word - tell me anything from the word, every bitter word will be sweet to me.
And as God’s people we need to realize that the light heartedness we see in our culture about every bit of life is not necessarily the whole story in the Bible.

The overarching tone in scripture is full of joy and feasting and laughter, but is very serious. It tells us of a world all around us that is dying.  Our neighbors are dying with out Jesus Christ, in the futility under the sun that the preacher talks about.

Jesus tells us to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and die….to be able to go to people and say…MY life looks joyful, but also serious.  That’s because I am living for more than the concerts and songs and laughter of fools.

Well, that first section in verses 1-6 told us how our hearts loves need to change to love God’s upside down wisdom…But as we move on, we see our second main point.  We need to also be brought around to:

Living Contentedly in God’s Good Wisdom (v.7-12)
7- 8— Live Content that the long game is better

Reading verses 7-8 again we some some points that will be more quick hit points to remind us that once our hearts our changed to love what God loves - you love the truth being told to you, you love the lessons you learn through sorrow - as you love them, you can live out a life content with God’s better wisdom.

Verse 7 makes a reference to the fact that even wise people can be bribed and corrupted, and the end is the better.  The outcome of our lives and the end needs to be pointed to.  Wise people need to get to the end as well.

I can live in this present moment because there is more going on than this moment tells me.  As Romans 8:28 says, all things are working for good for those that love God and are called according to His purpose.

It is clear that here the author is saying even for wise people things can go poorly, but wait for the outcome.

Parents, are you discouraged at the season of your kids lives? Wait for the final outcome, you don’t really know how He might work. Who is to say the outcome won’t  be good by God’s grace.
In any ministry. Like I experienced in church planting.  There were so often trials, difficulty and even opposition.  Many times I wondered how can this small weak group of people including myself do anytime for God’s glory.  But then a year and a half later, got the opportunity to see that they are flourishing, growth is happening, the elders are leading well, and God is at work. Praise God for the end and the outcome!

Whatever the case, whatever the situation, we need to keep in mind the words of Romans chapter 5:1-5:

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

You see, the long game is what God is all about.  He pours out his love by the Spirit, through Christ, in us and then we can recognize that this endurance and persevering patient spirit is what we need.

Because the proud man says I need to manipulate my life right now and control it…if not there will be consequences for those around me..

That’s how the preacher continues in verses 9-10, where he teaches us to

9-10 - Live Content that the present is better

When we realize that we can be patient, play the long game by the grace of God.  We don’t have this unsettled dissatisfaction that increases in our impatience to anger…

We look at dead end jobs, money being tight, kids and family being a mess, health issues, Corona virus….We look at all this and if we are not patient we can develop an angry resentful sprite because we don’t like our reality and we can’t escape our reality.

And the preacher says “Don;t say the former day were better…”

There is one temptation to look forward and say, I will make things better…then it will be good. The other temptation is to look back in nostalgia and say wouldn’t it be great if things were like they used to be….BEFORE CORONA VIRUS!

But were you really happy then? See, glorifying one time over another in our lives is an illusion and it robs us of the joy living for God in the present today.

This is the shadow of the passing life that the writer talked about in 6:12.

The writer is making the “uncle Rico” joke.  He is painting the picture of a man looking back to his high school glory days, who would have been a starter on the team…who thought he was all full of glory in school! But high school ended, and in fact it will end for everyone…it doesn’t last!  And instead of trying to hang on to that glory, learn the lessons of life that will equip you with the wisdom and skills to really live in the present every day after you have left school.

So the question is are you living in the wisdom of God now to see his glory and future come to pass in your life…Are you patiently waiting for God’s plan to come to pass in your life.

Be patient:

In your sanctification - with yourself
With your husband, wife and children
IN the mist of your isolation

Finally he says in verses 11-12:

11-12 - Live Content that your benefit package is better

I’m sure many of you will thankfully receive a check from the government as part of the stills package that is happening..

I’m sure you have already calculated it and know how much that will be.   You know what your “benefit package” will be - what you are entitled to. And that is fine and good.  If you have out a job or business or just need some help that is God’s gracious and sovereign provision for you right now.

This passage tells us that money CAN provide protection - literally a shadow over us in our lives. He compares money and wisdom in a good way here…Money does mean something…but wisdom means more.

The same way that chapter 6 said our life is a shadow, now it says there is a shadow bigger than that.  Bigger than the shadow of protection money can provide.  It’s the picture of a massive umbrella covering us right when the storm breaks and it rains cats and dogs on us.

Throughout this book money has been decried as our hope, and here it is seen simply as less of a protective shield than the spiritual wisdom i God’s word that can guard you in this life and lead you to eternal life.

Finally, what is the summation of all of this?

We need to be:

III.   Living IN and Loving God’s good work in the world (v. 13-14)

We read verses 13-14 again, and the writer goes back again to what we remember from chapter 6. It echoes the same truth that God is in control.

The futility and the crookedness we feel in this life is instituted by God.  That is a part of his active work.  He passively allows this reality of futility to continue so that we have to learn his wisdom and learn to love his wisdom that we might live the good life, respecting and considering that this is all from his hand.

Human experience is twisted and bent, the world is full of death and sorrow the writer has said. But God operates on a level infinitely above us. He says “My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways…”

No amount of us sanitizing our lives, or isolating ourselves from the realities of life can change God’s work and what he is doing in the midst of this brokenness.  So we need to see what God is possibly doing right now.

Take for instance this quote attributed to  CS LEWIS, from all the way back in 1942. (Note: after the preaching of this sermon, the author found out that this quote was mis-attributed to CS Lewis.  Apologies for this mistake, but the sentiment and point in the sermon remain.)

“Satan says:

I will cause anxiety, fear and panic

I will shutdown business, schools,

places of worship, and sports events.

I will cause economic turmoil.

Jesus says:

I will bring together neighbors,

restore the family unit,

I will bring dinner back to the kitchen table

I will help people slow down their lives

and appreciate what really matters.

I will teach my children to rely on me and not the world

I will teach my children to trust me

and not their material resources.”

So, God is at work!  Can we consider that today….

Why can we love his better wisdom, why can we live contentedly in his better wisdom?

Because He is at work!  Sometimes the work seems good to us and feels great.  Sometimes we are called to acknowledge all his good gifts…Many of us were in a season of that only a few weeks ago.

But the problems arise and disaster strikes, call out to God, as verse 14 says.

God has made one as well as the other….!

We see this, we accept that, but what can make our hearts get into this place where we love the hard truths God speaks to us, where we love learning the lessons of life through sorrow and suffering…Where we love living in his wisdom, not in the future or the past..but today for His glory.  What can give us a legacy like that, and for our kids and our grandkids one day?  What can do that work in us?

ONLY UNDERSTANDING THE LOVE OF CHRIST FOR US IN THE GOSPEL CAN DO THIS.

Seeing someone spend their legacy and give up their good name for you, will do that.

Maybe you are cold, struggling to live for Jesus.  maybe you don’t like his wisdom in this present moment and want t live for the future or the past…what can you do?  Look at Jesus!

To illustrate how this change takes place, I’’l use an illustration I heard from another preacher.  From the movie Iron Man.

The main character Tony Stark was stuck in a cave taken captive by terrorists and told he had to build them a bomb.  He didn’t want to do that.

So he secretly was contrasting a suit that would help him get out of there.  an Iron suit.  he did this with the help of an other scientist in the cave.  Well just as they were about to complete this suit, they heard the enemy coming.  The scientist proceeded to take a gun and hold them off so that Tony could finish the suit.  He did and he got out of there…but the scientist was shot and dying.

As he approached this dying man, he said thank you…thank you for saving me….And the man responded with one phrase…

DON’T WASTE IT…

And he didn’t! He went on to be Iron Man!  But the point is, the sacrifice of one man changed the heart of another man to want to live for a legacy beyond himself.  It was love that changed his hearts loves, and then he went and applied all the wisdom he learned i that cave to the rest of his life.

May we love God and his better wisdom.  Christ the wisdom of God.  The expression of the counter intuitive wisdom of God, who gave up his own glorious name and took on no reputation to pay for your sin by coming to die for us in his love….

All he asks is a changed heart, a response that says I will live for his glory, a legacy in the line of all those wit changed hearts and good lives and good names that point to Christ.

May God give us his Spirit in this season to do that in all the ways we can in the limited sphere we all have now in the midst of this current season of suffering…

Amen

Application Questions:

What aspect of God’s better wisdom seems hard to love naturally for you?
How has hearing the wisdom of God in this chapter spoken  to you today?
Where do you see Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s better wisdom in Eccl. 7?
What work are you aware that God is doing in your midst through your joys or adversities right now?