Ecclesiastes 7:23-29

Ecclesiastes chapter 7 beginning with verse 23 reading through verse 29 all this have I proved by wisdom I said I will be wise but it was far from me that which is far off and exceeding deep who can find it out I applied my heart to know and to search and to seek out wisdom and the reason of things and the no the wickedness of folly even of foolishness and madness and I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets and her hands as bands whosoever pleaseth God shall escape from her but the sinner shall be taken by her behold this have I found, said the preacher, I counting one by one to find out the account which yet my soul seeketh but I find not. One man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I not found. Though this only have I found that God hath made man upright but they have sought. out many inventions. May God bless to us his sacred holy word this evening. There was a man who was talking to a farmer about his soybean crop and his corn crop and rain had been abundant so the results were quite good that year. They had a lush growth. It looked like it was going to be a very good year. So the farmer’s comment to the man surprised the man because the farmer said my crops are especially vulnerable. Even a short drought could kill them all. And the man asked why and the farmer explained that while frequent rains are useful and beneficial they create a problem. When there’s a lot of rain, the roots of the crops don’t dig down into the soil in any depth and therefore a quick drought of some sort, even a short one, can kill them off because they have no root system deep enough to get moisture in the earth and it would kill off these unprepared plants. Solomon has indicated the fear of God is the foundation stone of life. It is the beginning of wisdom as verse 18 seems to indicate to us. We’ve talked about the fact that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. It is in him that we are found to be wise. He’s also spoken about the virtues of wisdom in verses 19 through 22 that we looked at. But there’s still more to think about. And that is with regard to growth in wisdom, which is what he takes up, it seems, this evening. How can you obtain a deeper understanding of what is happening in your life? This is certainly necessary for those stressful times. If all you receive are abundant showers of blessing, then you will not be prepared for those times that are dark and difficult that come into your life. If you don’t dig your spiritual roots in deep in search of what God is doing, the droughts of life will overwhelm you. But God would have us to grow in wisdom and therefore be prepared for whatever comes our way. So I’m going to talk tonight about how to grow in wisdom. I’ll begin by saying this. You grow in wisdom by understanding your own limitations versus 23 and 24. All this have I proved by wisdom. I said I will be wise. But it was far from me. That which is far off and exceeding deep. Who can find it out. Though Solomon has given a great deal of thought about the meaning of life. He has determined I will be wise. He has tested or proved by wisdom, all sorts of problems, all sorts of situations in life. And we find the evidence of that earlier in the book. He tells us about all the different things that he attempted to do and try to do and what happened. However found, having found the right direction to take in life, created another problem. Notwithstanding all the advantages he has of being a king and being a wealthy king at that, he found wisdom to be far from me, something exceeding deep, beyond man’s ability to obtain it to any real degree. In other words, Solomon realizes his own limitations here. Now, the human brain is a powerful tool and in its quest for understanding, we can appreciate his desire for wisdom. But wisdom is it mere knowledge is the right use of knowledge. Wisdom involves the spiritual realm. Wisdom involves that. which is eternal, that which affects God himself. So true knowledge comes from God. It is his gift to man. Therefore, it’s not a matter of how hard we seek after it. It’s a matter of God actually granting it. Now, not that we shouldn’t seek for it. We have to understand he must give it to us. Or we will not have wisdom. We will not have wisdom. as we go through this life. I like what the psalmist said in Psalm 139 in verse 6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain onto it. Charles Bridges, a Purit writer from years ago in his book on Proverbs, said this. Our highest knowledge is by a mere Adam when compared with the unsearchable extent of our ignorance. The more we know of God, his nature, his works, his dispensations, the more we are humbled in the sense of our ignorance. He seems to indicate the more wisdom God gives you, the more you realize how much you don’t really know. know. And so there is a difficulty with wisdom because it’s divine wisdom. It’s, there is a vast sea of divine wisdom, and we only have just a little bit of it. And to be thankful for what we have, but there is a lot certainly to learn. Augustine used to call this learned ignorance. The more wise you become, the more ignorant you realize yourself to be. You are taught them to trust God for all the things you don’t know or cannot comprehend. Lee Edward Travis was the founding dean of the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Seminary. As a young psychologist, he was the first American to develop technology. relating to the study of the human brainwaves. And as he began his research, he was he was heady with hope of getting to the core of what it means to be human. And yet the more he worked in the lab at the University of Iowa, the further away he found himself from the profound aims of his research. The subject was much deeper than he anticipated. participated. Later, he turned to the study of speech impediments, especially stuttering. And for years, he labored with students and colleagues to understand the physical and emotional causes of stuttering and defective speech. He helped to found the American Speech in Hearing Association. Again, however, his hopes were dashed. The country was dashed. closer he tried to approach the essence of humanity, the further way it moved. He couldn’t fathom it. It was beyond him. Of course, he didn’t start with the right understanding first. And in order to have a right understanding, we have to have God’s revelation. We have to have the Word of God. Without that, we will not have true wisdom. and so how could he even begin to understand what it means to be human if he didn’t know what it was to be created by God and God to reveal to us what man is truly like? So a quick glance of the book of Job, and especially the early chapters, reveal that God has an agenda which is beyond our comprehension. and we get tiny peaks into Job’s life. We have a behind-the-scenes look at what is taking place and God’s dealings with Satan and how that relates to Job, which he didn’t know about. Many profound things are revealed in Scripture. How is it that God is one and yet a Trinity of Persons? Isn’t that what’s revealed in Scripture and yet is very profound, isn’t it? How can God take upon himself a human nature? How did God plan such a marvelous salvation that He has granted us? I suppose if you and I had to sit through the quiz that God gave Job, we couldn’t answer it either. Because there are a lot of questions in there, and it’s like, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. you’d flunk it too. And so like Solomon, you have to realize that what we have is just a thimble full of true wisdom. Just a small amount of it. And the wisest man, whoever lived, here Solomon, tells us this much. And apart from Jesus Christ, we have no wisdom at all. and so therefore he’s telling us that even as the wisest man, he doesn’t have a lot of wisdom. It is an elusive thing. So your growth in wisdom, you grow in wisdom by understanding your own limitations. You can be wise, and God may even classify you as a wise man, biblically speaking, because you know the truth. God’s word. But even that knowledge is still limited in scope. Secondly, you grow in wisdom by understanding the human problem. Now let’s look at verse 25 and then jump down to verse 29. I applied my heart to know and to search and to seek out wisdom and the reason of things and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness. and madness. Verse 29, though this only have I found, that God made man upright, that they have sought out many inventions. Here Solomon applies his mind to the human condition. He is addressing the whole issue of the mystery of life. Why are we here? The words applied mine heart, search, search, seek out, reason of things, knowledge, all seem to indicate some type of careful study that he’s been doing with regard to this situation. Solomon has applied himself and applied his great God-given wisdom with all the intensity that he can muster. to make out what is happening in life. And he left no stone unturn. His research concerns the problems of rational man being so irrational. Why does a man act so foolishly? What is the matter with him? Why does a man do the very things that end up destroying him? Why does one originally made as a bearer of God’s image, sometimes stoop to the most brutalizing and dehumanizing excesses. Why does it get involved with drugs and alcohol and sexual immorality? The excesses of seeking revenge. The senselessness of killing. a fellow human being and so forth. Why is this world, which is so full of life, disfigured by so much misery and death, Solomon seems to indicate here, why have I even experimented with foolishness and self-destructive wickedness? Why have I even attempted this? So Solomon calls upon you to reflect what you do and why you do it. You learn sooner or later that if you pursue your own lust, it leads to self-destructive behavior. It’s pure folly. It’s better to know nothing of evil than to learn it by experience. In fact, it would be better to learn it by observation than by experience. I had Russell read from Proverbs 7 about the young man who gets caught up with a woman who is sexually immoral, whose husband is out of town, and she cajoles this young man who’s foolish enough to follow her home into the bedroom, into sexual immorrent, not knowing that it is the way to death, not knowing that it is the way of self-destruction. Solomon is saying, I looked out my window, I saw this, I observed this. What a foolish man, this young man is. It’s better to get it by observation than experience. But God’s word is the best teacher with regard to these things. So with all the intellectual powers man has, he isn’t so bright. He perceives that he’s bright. He thinks he’s wise, but he is a fool. You can be a genius and yet be controlled and dominated by various lusts that are self-destructive. Who doesn’t need to pray along with the psalmist, keep thy servant from presumptuous sins? Psalm 1913. It’s so easy to head off into spiritual destruction. So easy to get into disaster. It’s almost as if man had a passion for spiritual suicide. Even as Christians, you have to confess, along with the Apostle, Paul, the good that I would, I do not, the evil that I would not, that I do, and he doesn’t even understand that completely. It’s hard to understand yourself. Man originally was made in an upright, state. That’s what he tells us here in this text of Scripture. And he has only himself to blame for the predicament. He gets himself in. Man is far from that now. And why is it? Well, he says he sought out many inventions, actually, schemes. He was not content with his original state. He took the bait of Satan. He wanted to be like God. He wanted to be a God. And so in his pursuit to be a God, he listened to Eve, his wife, who had already partaken of the fruit, and ate of it, and therefore plunged the whole human race into this state of depravity and self-destructiveness. This led to the whole race that. This led to the whole race that. and doing things that took them far away from God and created the problem of man being self-destructive. I read a story on a lonely three-mile stretch of a beach in Florida. 100 pilot whales through themselves onto the dry land in an apparent mass suicide. It was another example of just self-destructive behavior that continues to baffle marine biologists. These used creatures beach themselves in a sort of a fall of the leader fashion, one after the other. People came from miles around and tried to form a human wall in the water to stop them from coming in, but they pushed them aside and still came in. They were pushing them aside. the whales trying to get them out back into the water, but they would turn around and come back in again. There’s something about human beings that mimics those whales. As an unbeliever, your sinful nature’s nature causes you to self-destruct. Even as a believer, the rem that you have of your sinful nature, it’s still present with you. That still troubles you and lead you astray also. It does harm to your soul and your person. So, God has provided a sea of wisdom for us to live in, and yet like the non-rational animals, we become obsessed with the desire to break out of the element that we were created for, and we self-destruct. Instead of submitting to God and enjoying freedom and peace, man throws himself on the arid ground of disobedience. Sort of a fall of a leader situation. Adam sin and we all fell in him. So you grow in wisdom by understanding the human problem. The human problem is sin. Thirdly, you grow in wisdom by understanding relationships. Versus 26 through 28. and I find more bitter than death, the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands, whosoever pleaseth God, shall escape from her, but the sinner shall be taken by her. Behold, this have I found, said the preacher, counting one by one to find out the account, which yet my soul seeketh. but I find not. One man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those, have I not found. So the central factor that runs through man is this sin factor. It has a tendency to lead to misery and ruin. And because no man is an island, sin is sort of contagious. We sin and we drag others into our sin. It’s not surprising, therefore, that psalman began to think about the most intimate of relations, sexual relations, in this passage, the scripture. He warns here against the predatory nature of the seductress in this passage, who will surely ensnare the person who does not walk in the ways of God. She’s going to sin and she’s going to drag some young man with her into this sin. Only the man who pleases God is going to escape her trap. She’s all snares and nets and bands. She, these words are used with regard to trapping birds. So they’re used here in the sense of trapping men. Solomon’s had his own problems in this area. The Bible records a month. the many nations, there was no king like him who was beloved of his God. Nevertheless, even him did outlandish women cause to err. Nehemiah 1326. It is recorded in Proverbs 5, 4, and 5 by Solomon. The end of a strange woman is bitter as wormwood. Her steps take hold on hell. That’s what he says. There’s been a regret which a man will have if he buries his name, his substance, his soul and body in the bosom of a harlot or seductress. Solomon realizes you need God’s power to keep you from her clutches, if you would. Remember, Joseph was seduced by… Potipher’s wife, but he was a man that sought to please the Lord, and he was kept from falling into that terrible sin. Paul talks about God-centered self-control in our lives in 1st Corinthians 7, 7 through 9. In the area of sex, the power of emotions is very strong. Lust and desire can overwhelm people. yet there is so much potential for harm in your life, in your family’s life, and even your community’s life through this. Later, Solomon is going to talk about the joys of marriage. It’s not that he’s against sexual relations. He sees that arising as a mutual commitment to one another in the marriage relationship, as God planned it in the book of Genesis. A monogad in this marriage where there’s one man and one woman, the wife of your youth, a lifelong relationship you’re committed to one another till death, a mutual support with regard to faith and life. And of course, there’s the children. God’s blessing, making the marriage fruitful. And so you have an obligation to keep your body in subjection. don’t let your passions run free because it’s destructive as well as displeasing the Lord. Now, Saul makes a cryptic statement here in verses 27 and 28, and living in the day and age in which we live where there’s sensitivity to sexist language, it’s important to understand these words. First, we have to consider the results of his research here. and that’s just precisely one-tenth of one percent. He found one man among a thousand that was wise. He didn’t find any among a thousand women who were wise. It’s just a little different, one from the other. The aim is not here, I don’t think, to put down women, because later he will talk about the virtues of women. Proverbs certainly does. And so I don’t think that is the issue here. But it is true that women can often be more profane than men. Jezebel was worse than Ahab. When you look back on those two. Who would question Luther’s judgment? There is not on earth so lovely as a woman’s heart with God’s grace to guide its love. There are many godly. and noble women that are mentioned in scripture. So we’re not going to put down women. Perhaps the answer to Solomon’s puzzling words are found in his own family. When we count up the wives that he had, he had scripture reveals to us in verse King’s 11, 700 wives and 300 concupines. Well, what do you know? That’s 1,000 is not. And among the thousand, and they were strange women, they were foreign women, the Bible tells us, in 11-1 of First Kings, dwelling in that crowded harem that he had, he found himself living in open violation of God’s law. How could he expect to find a virtuous woman, a woman, among them when they didn’t know the Lord? So among his thousand, he didn’t find one who was wise. Solomon has to even admit he was taken in by their seductive charms. Who was the one wise man among a thousand? Probably Solomon, when he looked at himself. So you grow in wisdom by understanding relationships, and it is always best to marry in the Lord, because that’s what is commanded of us. And when we don’t listen to what God commands us, we get into trouble. And so the Bible says to marry someone who knows the Lord if you were a believer. Don’t do what Solomon did. Look where it led him. The farmer who worried about his crops after frequent abundant rain, realized that the roots of those crops were not very deep, could not withstand a drought, even a short one that would come along. If all you receive were abundant showers of blessing, going to be unprepared for the difficult moments of life. Solomon would have you more prepared. So you need to sink your spiritual roots deeper. You need to grow in wisdom. And the areas here that he mentions are to understand your own limitations with regard to wisdom. To understand the human problem that we’re falling in Adam and we have sin that plagues us. And then finally to understand relationships. because one person can drag us into sin. So we find one person dragging another into sinful conditions. And that is not good at all. Well, let us close with a word of prayer.