Studies In Ecclesiastes

Studies In Ecclesiastes Presentation 07

Wilting Wisdom Chapter 7v1-29 Presentation 07

Introduction We have seen how this amazing book of the Bible charts the search of the man who has closed God out of his life. His search for meaning and purpose takes him down one blind ally after another. Life for him has become a maze, a puzzle, a baffling and frustrating experience. In the chapter before us the author changes his style by introducing a whole string of proverbs. This collection is designed to show both the limitation and inadequacy of human wisdom as a means of providing the solution to life. Presentation 07

Fact Finding Wisdom begins by encouraging us to face certain uncomfortable facts. We are told to take the brevity of life and the fact of death seriously. Death days have more to teach us than birth days cfv1... “the day of death better than the day of birth”. What a strange starting point! Why are we asked to begin here? It is because death has more to teach us than birth. Think for a moment. A birth is a festive occasion; the general mood is one of excitement. There is no time to dwell upon life's brevity or upon human limitations but in the house of mourning it is a different story. The mood is thoughtful and the facts are plain. Presentation 07

Fact Finding We faced with the fact of our mortality, we dare not adopt an approach to life which says, "I've nothing to worry about, I'll always be here." If we shrug off the lessons which life's brevity are meant to teach, it is our own fault. The psalmist realised this and in Ps.90, which is often used in funeral services wrote, "so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." Presentation 07

Fact Finding The fool fails to learn the lesson of life's brevity. Some try to avoid the lesson by laughing it off, by refusing to take life seriously. Christian joy is unlike the hectic empty gaiety of the fool which we are told in v6is quick to catch alight but also quick to fade. "Like the crackling of thorns under the pot so is the laughter of fools." Have you ever watched thorns burn, they are meteoric, a quick flash and they are gone. So much empty laughter is like that. The T.V. comedian grins widely before the camera and has his audience rolling in the aisles but what is he like on the way home. If you read your newspapers you will discover that some of the most highly acclaimed comics plumb the depths of depression in their private lives. They know that it’s impossible to escape into empty laughter. Presentation 07

Fact Finding Young people don't like to think about the brevity of life. They have their whole life in front of them. It’s strange we spend half our life promising ourselves how great it is going to be and the other half looking back and telling ourselves how great it used to be. We are not being called in these verses to engage in morbid introspection but to see in all this sadness a preparation for the truest form of joy. Just as the pain of childbirth prepares the way for the special joy of motherhood so the pain of sadness and grief prepares the way for eternal joy. Presentation 07

Fact Finding Jesus prepared his disciples not only to cope with his death but with their own. Jn. 16.20-22. “you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy”. There is sound wisdom in that. But the secular man doesn't want to talk of death or think of it. He goes through life laughing at it but the laughter is empty and turns to cries of despairing anguish when death touches his family for he has no assurance of joy beyond the grave. Presentation 07

Sense Soaking In v7-14 the preacher meets the secular man on his own ground and argues that the quality of his life is impaired because he doesn’t even listen to mere human wisdom. And so they are told that they need to “screw the heid” [remain calm]. He illustrates this in v8-9 where he argues that whether we regard patience as a virtue or quarrelsomeness as a vice we should at least see the practical good sense of self-control. Presentation 07

Sense Soaking But a man will often cut off his nose to spite his face. We are shown a man who is involved in a certain matter but he doesn't stick with it. He doesn't follow it through. Why? Oh because someone else has affronted his dignity. Here is a man who makes lots of beginnings but never finishes anything because there is always someone around who has slighted him and given him cause for offence. He lacks self-control. It is human pride that often causes men not to see things through to their conclusion. Presentation 07

Sense Soaking In v10 it is nostalgia that takes a body blow. Nostalgia can create a self-indulgent mood. We sigh for "the good old days". But this is often unrealistic and unhelpful. Why? First,itbecomes a substitute for action and involvement in the present. If we live in the past because things aren't what they used to be, we are drained of the will to work and so do nothing in the present. Secondly, living in the past is unrealistic because it overlooks the evils that may have taken a different form then or evil may have been more pronounced in a different section of society. We look at the past through rose coloured spectacles. Presentation 07

Sense Soaking Verse 13 asks how we cope with life's trials! Many of the circumstances of life seem to us twisted or crooked. How do we react? Do we accept both the good times and the bad as from God for what they can give and say with Job, "the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.“[Job 1.21]? Or, do we react with the impassiveness of the Stoic who grins and bears it? Or, do we react with the restlessness of spirit unable to address sore circumstances with an open or reflective mind? Secular man when met on his own ground, as here, struggles to live life even according to accepted wisdom of his day. Presentation 07

Wisdom Warning The preacher is not happy with everything that stands under the umbrella called ‘human wisdom’. Because it is human, it is flawed. It has no unifying principle, is often contradictory and sometimes dangerous. The danger which he turns to in v15ff is the fruit of thinking which refuses to take God seriously. Established popular wisdom says "nothing to excess", but the motto has never looked as cheap as it does in v15ff. Moral cowardice has never spoken with such a straight face as it does in these verses. Don't be over righteous but don't be over wicked either. ‘You need to strike the right balance’, says Mr Worldly Wiseman, ‘a little bit of what you fancy does you good. Don't be an extremist!’ Presentation 07

Wisdom Warning Worldly wisdom says, ‘give house room to some evil in your life as long as it’s not too much and as long as it’s not socially abhorrent’. That is becoming more openly the norm in our own society which discourages us from taking anything too seriously. ‘Go to church now and again but not too regularly. If you've got to read a Bible don’t do it too often. Prayer is O.K. but just in emergencies. Striving after righteousness is a thing of the past, rooting vices out of our lives is a bit old hat’. We are told Jesus got it wrong when he said, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled," and, "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness...”. Presentation 07

Wisdom Warning Many think Jesus is too extreme. You can only draw that conclusion if you close God out of your life and resort instead to popular wisdom which is not very demanding and sneers with contempt on the wholehearted commitment to God that Jesus advocates. These verses betray the shabby, dangerous, self-regarding side of ‘common sense’. They show us the logic of the secular position which seeks to reduce religion to a superstition and God to the status of an indemnity clause. Presentation 07

Carry On Chasing The inadequacy of human wisdom is exposed. It may helpfully make us face the facts about the brevity of life; it is able to contribute towards the quality of the life that we live but it is not consistent and so can be positively harmful. Its final failure lies in the fact that it is not able to reveal the purpose of man’s existence or explain life's meaning. Listen to the frustrating conclusion of the secular philosopher in v23... “ I was determined to be wise but this was beyond me”, and so secular man carries on chasing the elusive wind of meaning. He does so by turning to human relationships. These he views through the distorted lens of sin and the limitation of his own experience. Presentation 07

Carry On Chasing We are startled with his bitter verdict v28…’he has found only one man in a thousand who is not a disappointment and not a single woman’. This is one man’s experience but it reveals the part that sin can play on both sides of an encounter between the sexes. A deeply disillusioning entanglement described in v26 can distort and even destroy any future attempts at forming a relationship. [Is Solomon in view here? The king with a thousand wives who for part of his life shut God out and looked for fulfilment in the wrong place.] Human relationships can only be truly fulfilling when God is placed in the centre of them, they are no substitute for living our lives in relation to God! Presentation 07

Conclusion The last verse is full of penetrating insight! "God made man upright but men have gone in search of many schemes“ v29.We are reminded here of the biblical doctrine of the fall of man. Man is groping about in search of meaning because he closed God out of his life by his wilful disobedience. Man became depraved and that depravity has affected his thinking. It didn't make him stupid but morally distorted. As a result he is exposed to the ingenuity of a wisdom that can cloud moral issues as he continues to close God out. Little wonder men are stumbling about in the dark. Presentation 07

Conclusion But it was into this dark world that God's Son, the "Light of the World”, came. He did so to seek and to save those who are lost. Do you see the picture? Man has closed God out and has gone off to look for alternative sources of satisfaction and meaning? God has, at great cost to himself, come chasing after man not only to bring light into his darkness but to construct for man a way back to God. The choice that we make about Jesus will determine whether the remainder of our lives are marked by futility or purpose. May God help each one of us to ensure we make the right choice. Presentation 07

Studies In Ecclesiastes