Turning Point

David Michael Jeremiah: The more you study Solomon’s writings, the more you’ll appreciate the perspective of wisdom. But just as impressive is the power of wisdom. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah considers four examples of wisdom’s incredible power, straight from Solomon himself. From Searching for Heaven on Earth, here is David to introduce the conclusion of “Wisdom to be Thankful For.”

Dr. David Jeremiah: Well, if you have a Bible close by, friends, you might want to find Ecclesiastes chapter 7. Today we’re exploring verses 11 through 29, the conclusion of that chapter. In those verses are eight different illustrations of how wisdom touches our lives, from the wisest man who ever lived, Solomon, writing to us in the book called Ecclesiastes, which has the meaning of “The Preacher.” Ecclesiastes means “The Preacher,” and Solomon’s doing a little preaching for us, giving us some wisdom to help us get through each day.

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You’ll look forward to it every month because it contains a daily reading program to read the Bible. The reading schedule goes along with what we’re talking about on the air each day. It’s a great synergy between the magazine and television and radio, and we’d love for you to be a part of it. Right now, we need to finish up what we started yesterday. We’re talking about “Wisdom to be Thankful For,” from Ecclesiastes chapter 7.

Next, he says that wisdom helps us to deal with providence. Notice verses 13 and 14: “Consider the work of God; for who can make straight what He has made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: surely God has appointed the one as well as the other, so that man can find out nothing that will come after him.” Solomon says the truth of the matter is that affliction is the appointment of God, and it’s the crooked thing we can’t fix.

Walter Kaiser, who is a wonderful scholar, has paraphrased these verses that we just read like this. I want to read his paraphrase; listen carefully. “Look with wonder, admire, and silently wait for the result of God’s work. The contrasts of life are deliberately allowed by God so that men should ultimately develop a simple trust and dependence in God. For prosperity and the goods from God’s hand, be thankful and rejoice. But in adversity and the crookedness of life, think. Reflect on the goodness of God and the comprehensiveness of His plan for men.”

We all can get all excited about the prosperity we’ve enjoyed. Maybe you’ve had a good financial year. Maybe things are looking up for you. But what Solomon teaches us is that we ought to thank God that we have learned from the troubles we’ve had too. Job one time when he was going through the loss of everything that he experienced—you remember he lost everything, all in one short period of time? His family, all of his funds, his health, everything. The only thing that was left was his wife.

I’ve often thought that God leaving his wife was the biggest curse he ever got because she was a real pain. She was chiding him one day about all of the suffering he was going through and telling him what a terrible thing it was that God had treated him this way. Job turned to his wife—and I can almost see this conversation in my mind’s eye—in Job chapter 2 verse 10, Job turned to his wife and he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. What a wise man he was.

We all rejoice when everything’s good and we’re so thankful, but can you learn from God how to be thankful that in the midst of the storm, God’s there? I’ll tell you the truth: God is never closer to you than He is when you’re going through adversity. You almost feel sorry for people who have never been in that place to see and to sense the wonderful provision of God.

Warren Wiersbe, one of my good friends, has a sharp pen, and he wrote, “God balances our lives by giving us enough blessings to keep us happy and enough burdens to keep us humble. If all we had were blessing in our hand,” he said, “we’d fall right over. So, the Lord balances the blessing in our hands with burdens on our backs. That helps us keep steady. As we yield to Him, sometimes we can even turn the burdens into blessings.” Do you get a visual picture of that? What would happen to you if God just gave you all blessings? You’d all be bent over, you wouldn’t be able to walk. But God gives you blessings and then He gives you burdens, and now you can kind of stand up and you can be straight.

So, be thankful for the wisdom God gives you to understand His providence in your life. And then Solomon adds, if I might paraphrase, “Don’t even think about it, you’ll never figure God out anyway, so don’t even try to think about it. Don’t worry about it. He knows the future, you don’t, so just let God be God and you be you.”

Wisdom to deal with prosperity, wisdom to deal with providence, and then he adds a third thought in verses 15 through 18: wisdom to deal with the puzzles of life. Now you know life is full of puzzles. Did you know that? Every day there’s a puzzle, things you can’t figure out. There are a lot of puzzles in life. One of the puzzles he talks about in verse 15 is the puzzle of reversed rewards. Notice: “I have seen everything in my days of vanity: there is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs life in his wickedness.”

We’ve dealt with this one before in this series, so I won’t stay here long, but why do the wicked prosper and why do the righteous suffer? Solomon says he wants us to know that we are only seeing the outside of this puzzle, that we must get beneath the surface of this in order to understand what God is up to. The fact is, we never are able to do all of that in this life. Listen to what King Solomon says in the 11th chapter of this book we are studying and verse 5. He said, “As you do not know what is the way of the wind, or how the bones grow in the womb of her who is with child, so you do not know the works of God who makes everything.”

You don’t. You can’t figure it out. Does that bother you? At first it bothered me, but now it doesn’t bother me anymore. It makes me just so excited that I have a God who’s so awesome that in my infinite wisdom—which is pretty finite—I can’t comprehend Him. Why, His ways are higher than my ways, His thoughts than my thoughts. He’s the inscrutable God of history. That’s why I worship Him. If I could fully understand Him, He would be no more of a God than I am. He’s the God of history, the God of providence, the God I worship, the God I give gratitude for, all that He does even though I don’t always understand it.

We know that adversity comes to good people. We know that God is loving. We know that God cares about His children, and at the same time, we know that God is powerful, He can do anything He wants. How God’s love and His power are blended together to create His will, we do not know and we cannot know. Solomon says we need to accept it. Remember, do not let what you can’t understand keep you from enjoying what you have from God. Remember the woodcutter? You only see a fragment. Remember what he said? “You people are obsessed with judging. Don’t go so far. Who knows if it’s a blessing or a curse? No one knows. We only have a fragment. Life comes in fragments,” says the woodcutter.

Well, that’s the puzzle of reversed rewards, and now we come to the puzzle of righteous rhetoric. This is really one of the most difficult passages in the book of Ecclesiastes, and it’s the most misinterpreted passage in the entire book. Listen to what Solomon says in verses 16 and 18, and you won’t have to ask me why it’s misinterpreted after you read it with me. “Do not be overly righteous, nor be overly wise; why should you destroy yourself? Do not be overly wicked, nor be foolish; why should you die before your time? It is good that you grasp this, and also not remove your hand from the other; for he who fears God will escape them all.”

Many liberal scholars say, “Oh, here’s the proof text. What you need is moderate holiness. Let’s all applaud mediocrity. Don’t be very good and don’t be very bad, just be medium.” Have you ever talked to anybody like that? Sometimes you’ll talk to somebody about their walk with the Lord. You say, “Do you know God?” And what do they say? “Well, I’m not as bad as a lot of people I know and I’m surely not as good as some people I know. I guess I’m just sort of medium.” They use this as their text.

I’ll tell you what: medium won’t get you into heaven. It won’t. Medium will send you straight to hell. You can be medium and get there just as fast as if you’re wicked. Because it’s not saying just be partially good, don’t be totally bad. What Solomon is saying here, in the Hebrew language it’s reflexive, and he’s saying whatever you do, don’t go around bragging about how good you are. And don’t go around bragging about how humble you are. Don’t be filled with righteousness that’s self-centered. Don’t be wise in your own eyes, as he mentions in the book of Proverbs. Don’t be going around telling everybody how good you are.

And on the other hand, don’t be going around bragging about how bad you are. That’s not where it’s coming from. The fact is, this verse is not cautioning against being too righteous. It’s warning us against righteous rhetoric that’s not backed up by righteous living. Solomon has made it clear in verse 20 that there aren’t any righteous people, so he can’t be talking here about true righteousness. He’s speaking out against the self-righteousness of the hypocrite and the false wisdom of the proud, and in both cases, these sins lead to destruction.

The way to avoid the ditch of self-righteousness and false humility is to stay in the middle. And the middle of the road is verse 18: “It is good for you that you grasp this, and also not remove your hand from the other; for he who fears God will escape them all.” Have you ever been around a self-righteous person? Oh my, our churches are full of them. I mean, you can see it dripping off of them when they walk up to you. They even have a little church voice. Have you noticed? Oh, you know, God spare us from those folks.

I read a story about a pastor who had a guy in his church who was having an affair with his wife and he got caught. He was humbled and confessed it and got everything right, got right home. He went off and went to a couple Bible classes and he came back spouting all kinds of self-righteous rhetoric about: Pastor wasn’t doing this right, and Pastor wasn’t doing this right. The Pastor grabbed ahold of his arms, looked him right in the face, and he said, “I liked you better when you were an adulterer, at least you were humble.”

You understand that lesson? He’s saying don’t get caught up in self-righteousness. And don’t be walking around badmouhing yourself all the time. What you need to do is walk in the fear of God. That’s what Solomon is saying. Stay off each of the side roads and stay on the center road: fear God and walk with Him. And he said, “You better grab ahold of that one. Grasp that one with your hands.”

Thank God for the perspective of wisdom, verses 11 through 18. And now let’s finish up this chapter and thank God for the power of wisdom. He’s going to talk to us here about how wisdom, while it doesn’t solve everything and it doesn’t give you the answers to all the questions you wish you had answers to, wisdom first of all gives you perspective, as we’ve learned. It helps you understand providence. It helps you understand prosperity. It helps you figure out some of the puzzles or at least understand what they’re all about.

But now Solomon is going to teach us that wisdom also has a power resident in it. He says in verses 19 and 20: “Wisdom strengthens the wise more than ten rulers of the city. For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin.” Wisdom to deal with the problems we encounter. The wise person fears the Lord so much that he has power. He is fearing the Lord so much he doesn’t fear any man at all. Now that’s the kind of a power you need. I fear God so much I don’t fear man at all.

He walks with the Lord, he’s confident that he’s going to be alright. He faces the sinfulness of man and the problem of his own sin, he finds his answers in his God because that is where his fear and reverence is centered. He is strengthened by his wisdom and he becomes more powerful than ten rulers of the city. He faces problems with confidence because he knows his God. What does the Old Testament say? “They that know their God shall do exploits.” When you know God, you can be strong, not worry about what else people are saying.

I always think about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the Old Testament who were told if they didn’t bow down, they were going to burn. They didn’t bow down and they were supposed to burn, but they didn’t. And they basically said, “You know, we serve a great God. If He wants to deliver us, fine. If He doesn’t, it’s okay. He’s our God and we trust Him, and we’re not afraid of you, Nebuchadnezzar.” When you know God, you can be strong, you can be confident. You can have the wisdom to deal with the problems you encounter.

Here’s one that everyone of us will get into, verses 21 and 22: wisdom to deal with the people you employ. “Do not take to heart everything people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. For many times, also, your own heart has known that even you have cursed others.” Now this is a great just everyday kind of good to use wisdom. Don’t get concerned about what people say about you. Don’t pay attention to the gossip of the day because you know in your own heart that you’ve sometimes said things that would not be acceptable to others as well. That’s what he says: “For many times you also, your own heart has known that even you have cursed others.”

One man said, “I never worry about people who say evil things about me because I know a lot more stuff about me than they do, and it’s worse than what they’re saying.” Amen? And Solomon says let’s be honest. If we get upset when people talk about us, we’re holding them to a higher standard than we hold ourselves because we’re prone to do the same thing. Isn’t that true? Just when you feel upset because somebody’s talking about you, you’re talking about them.

Wisdom to deal with problems we encounter, with the people we employ. Here’s the third one: wisdom to deal with perplexities we experience. He says in verses 23 to 25, “All this I have proved by wisdom. I said, ‘I will be wise’; but it was far from me. As for that which is far off and exceedingly deep, who can find it out? I applied my heart to know, to search and seek out wisdom and the reason of things, to know the wickedness of folly, even the foolishness of madness.”

Solomon says I cannot understand all these things. There’s a whole book full of stuff here that he said he doesn’t understand, but you know what? He’s okay with it because he understands God. And his God is in charge of all understanding. It’s like that old phrase we used to use when I was growing up as a boy: I don’t know about the future, but I know who holds the future. I know Him. Solomon is telling us don’t get obsessed with the things you can’t understand because if you keep trying to do that, you will just drive yourself crazy. There’s so much about this world and this life we can’t comprehend, but the one thing we do know is that God is good.

Remember the little trilogy? God’s plan is good, His purpose is clear, but His program’s mysterious. I’m going to live in the first two, let Him deal with the third. I love His plan and His purpose. I know that. I don’t understand sometimes what He’s up to, but that’s alright. Wisdom to deal with the problems we encounter and the people we employ and the perplexities we experience.

And now number four and last: wisdom to deal with the pitfalls we escape. Notice verse 26 almost seems like it’s out of place in this chapter, but it’s not. He said, “And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God shall escape from her, but the sinner shall be trapped by her.” Solomon ends this chapter on a really strange note, but especially you men, listen up. This is for all of us, listen carefully. He talks about the power of wisdom to keep us out of illicit relationships. His wisdom will keep you from falling into the pit, being snared into an illicit relationship or—wisdom will keep you out of an affair. That’s what he’s saying.

Ray Stedman, a pastor who used to pastor up in the northern part of California who’s now with the Lord, wrote in one of his writings about Ecclesiastes, he said, “Solomon was trapped himself by sexual seductions. He went looking for love. Many a man or woman can echo what he is saying. He went looking for love and thought he would find it in a relationship with a woman. He went looking for that which would support him, strengthen him, and make him feel life was worth the living, but what he found was nothing but a fleeting sexual thrill. He found himself involved with a woman who did not give him what he was looking for at all. He still felt the same empty loneliness as before.”

Solomon says be wise, men. Don’t get caught up in the idea that the grass is greener on the other side. Don’t get caught up and think that you can find meaning and happiness and fulfillment and all that you’ve been looking for in some woman who’s not your wife. One day a guy asked me, he says, “Well, Pastor Jeremiah, what if I married the wrong woman?” And I always say the same thing: if you’re married, you’re married to the right woman. And you just settle that and get rid of that discussion right there.

You better honor that woman and don’t let the devil get you caught up in the idea that you can find something better somewhere else, because it never really happens that way. It comes with a bitter, bitter price. That’s just the way it is. You look back and some of you, I’m not picking on any of you who’ve had difficult times in your life, maybe you’ve been through divorce, and you come to church here and you know we love you and serve you and work with you and don’t even think about you being any different than the rest of us, except if we could sit down over a cup of coffee and talk about what it’s like, you would tell your story.

And your story would be filled with God’s grace and helping you through this, giving you another chance, but it would also be filled with the sorrow that goes almost to the point of the sorrow of death of a relationship that once was and is no more. And those of us who’ve been blessed and God has been gracious to us for that not to have happened, know what it’s like to look back over a long life of marriage together and remember the discoveries, and remember the intimacies, and remember the joys, and remember the growth, and remember all the things that we shared together, every memory on the same page. Solomon is saying don’t let somebody steal that from you because of having a bad day at home or your wife had a bad hair day or whatever. I don’t know. Because what you have with that partner of yours is so special you need to step back and take a look at it again and give thanks to God. Can I get a witness? Amen, amen.

When I read all of these things about wisdom in the Old Testament, I’m thankful I’m an Old Testament student and a New Testament saint. Because you know what the Bible says in the New Testament? Listen to me carefully. Colossians 2: in Jesus Christ are all the treasures of the wisdom of God. Do you know when you’re facing all these issues and you don’t know what to do? You accept the fact that you’re finite, you’re human, we all are, we don’t have the capacity to understand Almighty God.

But you know what? We know Jesus Christ. He’s the wisdom of God and He put His Holy Spirit in us. When we accept Christ, we get Jesus Christ and His Spirit comes to live within us. And He is the one who is the discerner in our lives. You say, “Do you have absolute wisdom?” No, but I’ll be just bold enough to tell you I got more wisdom than somebody that doesn’t know Christ because I got Christ. And I wouldn’t know how to get through life as messed up as it is today if I didn’t have Jesus Christ living in my heart.

I know that I can go to Him at any time and He’ll help me sort things out. He won’t give me all the truth that there is, He’ll just give me enough to help me know what to do for this day. He gives it to me like the manna in the Old Testament, just enough, one day at a time. Isn’t that wonderful? And so I want to tell you that one of the things I learned about life when I read the book of Ecclesiastes is that you don’t want to go through life under the sun without God. You want to go through the life with the Son, S-O-N, with Jesus Christ. And if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, I want to urge you today. You think life can’t get better? Oh, it can get a lot better even right here. He’s come to give you abundant life, life more abundantly. You can start sorting things out with Him.

Amen. Well, I hope you are wiser now than you were two days ago because we’ve talked about wisdom and how to get it and how to use it. And of course the Bible is a book full of wisdom, the wisdom of God. And the Bible tells us, as I mentioned yesterday, that if we ask for the wisdom of God, He will give it to us. That’s in the book of James. You can find that verse and you can discover that God has promised us what we’re looking for in these two days of discussion.

Tomorrow we’re going to talk about a subject that pops up in the Bible more than you would think. Tomorrow’s lesson is called “Facing Life with Humility.” I know people don’t like to talk about humility, and someone says if you talk about it, that means you don’t have it. But we’re going to do it tomorrow, straight from the scripture, and I hope you’ll be with us then. And don’t forget, be sure and get your copy of “31 Days to Happiness” when you send your gift to Turning Point today. It’s our way of saying thank you for your monthly gift. Ask for your copy of “31 Days to Happiness” when you send your gift to this ministry.

David Michael Jeremiah: The message you just heard originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and senior pastor, Dr. David Jeremiah. Your notes of encouragement mean so much. We invite you to write to us at Turning Point, P.O. Box 3838, San Diego, California 92163. Visit our website at DavidJeremiah.org/radio, or call 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David’s book, “31 Days to Happiness.” It’s filled with Solomon’s wisdom, and it’s yours for a gift of any amount. You can also stream more than 1,200 of Dr. Jeremiah’s messages on demand on any screen with our streaming service, Turning Point Plus, for a monthly gift of any amount. Visit TurningPointPlus.org for details. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue Searching for Heaven on Earth on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.