Wisdom in an Unfair World

Good morning. We're studying Ecclesiastes. This is a wisdom book in the Old Testament. Wisdom plays a unique role as we consider how it fits into the rest of Scripture. Wisdom literature gives us guidance, shines light on the path that we should be drawing near to, and wisdom shows us dangers to avoid. We see both of those elements here in Ecclesiastes chapter 7. The importance for us, what are we drawing near to? What wisdom are we seeking to embrace? Jesus gives us wisdom throughout his Gospels. The Gospels are full of his grace, his law, his wisdom. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He tells many parables to give wisdom, and one of them is the kingdom of God is like a man who finds a treasure. He goes and sells everything he has to buy the land. The significance there is the man is willing to sell everything to find what God has provided. I want to focus there because the key is once you find the kingdom of God, once you find the treasure God provides, you're willing to give up anything and everything You get it. The confidence in the wisdom of God is what leads us to give up everything else to follow him. The confidence to enjoy and delight in and live as kingdom citizens determines how clear we will live up convictions. I'm burdened for believers this morning who lack confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ. who lack confidence in how clear, powerful, and good his word is, who might be practicing what we might call a mere Christianity, not fully believing all that he says, not fully obeying all that he says. We're looking at Ecclesiastes chapter seven. And I hope we see in contrast here with Ecclesiastes that says wisdom is hard to find. The grace of God, the kingdom of God, the truth of God, it's been brought very near to you. It is easy to receive. Our text in Ecclesiastes has two halves. If you look at the text, Chapter seven, verses 15 to 24, there's a dilemma declared, there's injustice, and then there's four instructions. Then, 25 to 29, after thinking about the wisdom needed in the midst of the dilemma of injustice, introduces another dilemma. Wisdom is hard to find that pleases God. There's two ways in which the preacher is pointing us towards God, to fear him, to please him. The bigger context is, can we find the wisdom we need? If you're new with us, we are walking through the book of Ecclesiastes, and last week we saw that chapter six, verse 10 is the beginning of the second half of Ecclesiastes, and verse 12 is so important to understand, really chapters six to eight. Chapter six, verse 12, our preacher asks, who knows what is good for man? And then he asks, who can tell him? How do we get the information we need to live? To know what's good? This whole section is about how do we pursue what is wise, what is good? The first half of our text, how do we pursue what is wise and good in the midst of all the injustice? The second, how do we wrestle with the dilemma that it is hard to find? One simple sentence summary, search for the wisdom that fears God and pleases God. As we look at this text, two halves, wisdom that fears God, wisdom that pleases God, and really two different dilemmas. Let us begin in chapter seven, verse 15. In my vain life. All right, we come to the key word of Ecclesiastes, vanity. It's meaningless, it's fleeting, it's difficult. Over and over again, our preacher has tried to declare, this is what I have found, this is what I've seen, this is what I've gained, and here's the problem. And we have yet another problem. And it's not necessarily new to the book so far, just coming back to it again. In my vain life, I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, And there was a wicked man who prolongs his life in evildoing. Here we see the dilemma. It's an unjust world. That's not fair. So here in chapter one, chapter seven, in 15 to 22, we see wisdom to fear God in an unjust world. The dilemma is interesting. You've got a righteous man, and he perishes in his righteousness, and that's a little vague, but the second declaration, which parallels, is very clear. The wicked, they get to live a long life in their wickedness? I believe the assumption being the righteous man dies early in his righteousness, and the wicked man, he gets to live a long life in his wickedness. And if we're really trying to enter into the world of the preacher in the ancient Near Eastern world, God's blessings were seen in how abundantly you had provisions and how long you had life and how many children and grandchildren you had. And so the dilemma is, the righteous person doesn't receive the blessing of being righteous because his days are ended early, and the wicked person, he's blessed in wickedness? The preacher's confused. It's a new movement in this overall unit. How do we pursue the good life? Where do we turn to learn how to live the good life? And that poem in chapter seven, where do we find wisdom? What's in the most unusual places? The places we don't normally look. It's not in the house of amusement, it's the house of mourning and sorrow. That's where we see the end of things that might lead us to a proper fear of God. Here we have a new movement. This doesn't seem fair, God. This isn't right. This isn't the way it's supposed to be. We call this an equity problem. Equity. How is God just here, that the wicked get to live longer than the righteous? Well, God is just. We're invited in to ask questions about his righteousness, his justice, but here we gotta feel the difficulty of what our preacher has seen and the, well, the truth of the reality. It is, it does seem unjust. Notice what follows this observation are four things to do. So if you're, well, not to do and to do. Four instructions. There's a pair of be-nots, be not overly righteous, be not overly wicked. There's a command clear to fear God and then what not to take to heart. So in the midst of the dilemma, we have some instruction. The first instruction, two extremes to avoid. So far, verse 15, pretty simple, straightforward. Well, the straightforwardness starts getting interesting in 16, doesn't it? Be not overly righteous. I probably could find that on a coffee mug if I wanted to, I just realized I didn't look that up. Sorry if you're new to us, I always try to find what weird thing in the, what unusual tax ecclesiastes can you not find on a coffee mug? That one I bet somebody's put somewhere. Be not overly righteous? The parallel, be not overly wicked? I fear this kind of statement is why some people like Ecclesiastes and say it's your favorite book. We need to realize there's a significant unique warning here. The rationale for not being overly righteous is very important. Be not overly righteous and do not make yourself too wise. Wisdom and righteousness tied together, why should you destroy yourself? What a question to follow up as to what he means. Be not overly righteous, be not overly wise, lest you destroy yourself. How is it possible that wisdom or righteousness could possibly destroy you? Is it possible to deny yourself and follow Jesus too much? That's the key question. That's the dilemma that I think we've gotta think about with this text. Let's look at verse 17 as we wrestle with how these two parallel one another. He declares, be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? Now in 15, his problem was the wicked, they live too long, but here the wicked, be not a fool, you might die before it's too early, but while it's too early, be not too wise. There's a measure, but he, He just absolutely says, do not be a fool. Allow no foolishness. Now, some of us have taken this verse and thought, well, okay, we're gonna, we have here kind of a principle of moderation. You don't wanna be too hot and too cold or too cold. You wanna find some way of getting like an Aristotelian golden mean, a happy medium. We all kind of live this way, don't we? We pretend we find some kind of safe middle ground. Not too sinful, not as sinful as those people. Not too zealous, not like those fanatic Christians, but we pretend we can come up with some kind of wisdom to find the happy medium. Jesus calls his disciples to sell everything. To deny all sin. to obey him as a measure of our love. I don't believe this passage is teaching any kind of medium happy spot. Rather, I think the wisdom here is a wisdom that does not fear God. I believe this is a man-appointed wisdom. And the reason being is the wisdom he's warning of is a wisdom that destroys you. If we pursue wisdom and righteousness in our own strength, In our own way, it doesn't produce anything of godliness or goodness. It just wears us out. If we get to try to decide what is good and right and then try to apply it ourselves, it's self-destructive. There's actually a wonderful warning here not to pursue our own wisdom and our own righteousness. In the same way, we want to avoid wickedness and sin. Notice that last declaration. Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does right, who does good, and never sins. Verse 20 there makes a strong declaration. There is no one who's actually pursued perfect righteousness, as the preacher knows at this point. Let's go to that third command and see how it's a correction. Do not pursue righteousness in its own. Do not pursue wickedness on its own. No, what are we supposed to do? Verse 18. It is good that you should take hold of this and from that withhold not your hand. They're speaking of the righteousness and the wickedness. For the one who fears God shall come out of both of them. There's a strangeness in this text. I believe what he's saying is do not pursue righteousness on its own, do not pursue wickedness on its own, but as the one who sees both righteousness and wickedness, well, that leads you to the proper thing to pursue, fear God. The proper response to all the injustice is not to try to figure out how to be as righteous as possible or wicked as possible, but it's to consider God and to fear him. I believe the wisdom that is being instructed here is a different kind of wisdom that's being referred to in 16. All God's wisdom is, it requires a fear of him. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Let me try to reason here. If true wisdom has at its root and base and source the fear of God, if we're to say don't be too wise, would we also be saying don't, Revere God enough. The whole point here is that we're supposed to be loving the Lord our God with all our heart. We're supposed to be revering him with all of our being. And that means we pursue wisdom with confidence and absoluteness. We need to get rid of this idea that we're trying to be safe, not too fanatical, not too sinful. No, when we see who God is, When we see him in his might, his power, his goodness, his righteousness, we're supposed to see the end of the book. How does Ecclesiastes end? It's the end of the matter. Fear God. And notice what he says after that instruction to fear the Lord. Verse 19. This wisdom gives strength to the wise man, more than 10 rulers who were in the city. The wisdom that fears God makes you strong. Greater than 10 rulers of the city. Now, I don't think this is a Jason Bourne scenario. I believe if we're to go back and see the unjust society, the way oppressors oppress the weak, wisdom that fears the Lord makes you strong to persevere. makes you strong to be the righteous person who endures. The wisdom of God makes us strong. And then that declaration at the end, verse 20, surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. I believe here there is a warning. We have a limitation as sinners. We can be free from the power of sin, we can be free from, Lord willing, the practice of sin, but until Christ returns, we're not gonna be free from the presence of sin. And here there's a declaration that's so important for us, and the book's gonna end with another one here in a moment, but there's not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. In the fear of the Lord, it gives us strength to persevere. It doesn't give us strength to be perfectly righteous. Again, I believe if we're to pursue righteousness on our own without the fear of the Lord, it's going to be exhausting. You become a legalist. It either destroys everybody around you or yourself. But if you pursue a fear of the Lord, it gives you strength to endure. Our fourth thing. overly righteous, not in, I believe, a God-fearing way, be not overly wicked, do not be a fool, fear the Lord, that is your strength. Well, verses 20 and 22 give us one last instruction. Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed. Others. All right, we've been instructed, fear the Lord. Well, now, fear the Lord, there's a warning against self-righteousness, there's a warning against wickedness. Here, there's a warning of taking yourself a little too seriously. Why? Well, if you hear what your servants are saying, and yes, there's a dynamic here of master and servant, But if you take to heart, if you really receive and meditate upon what other people are saying, they're saying cursing, they're reviling you, he's warning not to hear this. He's warning not to take it to heart. And it's very clear why. Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others. Now that's an interesting switch there. If you take to heart all the things people are saying against you, it's to your danger because your heart knows, do not take it to heart what people are saying against you, because your heart knows all of the different things you've said against others. I believe here there's a simple wisdom. Because the person who takes to heart what other people are doing against them are gonna make much of the sins against them and make little of the sins they do against others. What a problem we oftentimes fall into. to think little of our own sin against others, even though our heart knows we've done it, and to make much of something someone else does against us. Wisdom that fears God does not overreact to sins done against us. Spurgeon gives us wisdom here. He tells us anytime somebody speaks against us, anytime someone reviles us to just know, oh, Be comforted. You're much worse than anything they could possibly say. If you go back to verse 15, in an unjust world, you're gonna be treated with some kind of unfairness. Someone's gonna say something about you that feels unfair, unjust. Don't take it to heart. Do not let that meditate upon you in the way you're gonna emphasize the sin done against you. Realize in the wisdom of God and the fear of God, you're so much worse. This is why it's so important we see there is not a man who has not sinned. Believer, how do you perceive others wronging you? It's foolish to focus on how others sin against you and not on your own sin against your neighbor or your brother. There's an important way to reflect here. How easy is it for us to get upset about what we perceive as wrongs? A foolishness is quick to get upset. A foolishness is quick to make a judgment, whereas wisdom would say, no, I myself am that kind of reviler or cursor. And I fear God and the judgment he would have for me in my sin. As we consider this text in light of Christ, there's one clear text I believe we return to. As we see there, verse 20, there is no righteous man who does good and never sins. Well, we could go to Romans 3, verses 9 to 20. There's no one righteous. There's no one good. There's something here that our preacher is telling us that is very important. No one. is righteous. No one has never sinned, according to the preacher here, as much as he knows. We've all gone astray. We've all gone astray in different ways, right? We all don't go astray in the same way, but we've all gone astray, away from God in every different possible way. And that's so necessary for us to understand. because we have all gone astray in every possible different way except for the one way to trust God, and he has made one way to come back to him, and it's only in his son, Jesus Christ. As we wrestle with the difficulty of how we can be overly righteous in our own self-righteousness, we can be a pursuit of wickedness, as we really don't fear God, and as we take other sins against us way more heavily than we take our own sins against others, how foolish we are. how much we need help, and how clear it is that God the Father has sent His Son, not only to be the one righteous man who never sinned, but then who died for my sin, who rose again for my sin. We all need this grace. If you're not a believer this morning, That's the verse to really wrestle with. You've sinned. You've fallen short of the glory of God. And he's a perfectly righteous God. You will have to face him and there will be judgment. Unless you believe in Jesus, who died on the cross for your sins, who took your place, who took your judgment, so that you might be forgiven. Believer, fear God. Here, how quickly do we get to the point where we're ready to condemn somebody? Not seeing our own sin as warned about there in 21 and 22. How quickly do we see our own sin and want to repent of it versus how quickly do we see somebody else's sin and want to make a judgment? Fear the Lord protects us. from this imbalance. The dilemma is injustice. As we consider this instruction in the middle of this injustice, we do want to go and think about the horror of the shooting this past week. It's not the same kind of injustice, it's a wicked injustice. As we think about the tragedy, the horror, I believe we're supposed to find our solace in fearing God. In the midst of this tragedy, in the midst of us asking so many right questions, why? How could this be? I want to point you to fear the Lord for two reasons. There's so many more things to say that there's things I want to make sure I don't say. But it's important to see we fear God right now. One, He is the God of perfect justice. He will avenge. He will bring his wrath upon the wrongdoer. There's a comfort we're supposed to have when we see evil. We have to be reflective that that same evil, it does reside in us. We're capable of every possible sin. But there's a comfort that fears God. He will bring perfect righteousness. And that's just praise. The second way in which we should fear God, He provides healing and comfort for the families who lost their children, for the families who lost loved ones, for that school and that church, that community, for our nation. Those who are hurting, He is the God of compassion and care. Out of fear, reverence. We draw near to Him. This is a season and we have too many of these seasons. This is supposed to be a time where we pause, we reflect. This world is not the way it's supposed to be. It is full of injustice. It is full of terror. Our hearts are also full of sin. and yet the good God reigns over it with all of his power and his righteousness and he's ordaining our days and we know he's brought a great salvation and we know he'll bring a great judgment. He also brings great comfort. The key here is we look up to fear him and revere him and seek him during these times. The first half of our text, there's a dilemma, there's injustice, there's things not to do and then there's things to do. Fear the Lord is the constant command. It's the regular key command throughout Ecclesiastes. Now, we go from the clear section to the more complicated section. Find wisdom to please God in this dangerous world. Search for wisdom that can not be found. We see three parts here. First, wisdom must be found. Verse 23, all this I have tested by wisdom. I said I will be wise, but as it was far from me, that which has been far off and deep and very deep, who can find it? We, We've asked for what do we do in this unjust world, we'll fear God, that's the key wisdom. And now we're asking, well, how can we test it? How can we find it? What do we do to get it? The dilemma is, it's far, it's deep. Our preacher tells us who can find it. This is challenging, and well, let's just be very clear. Flip on over to chapter eight, the end of this overall unit. So six to eight is, six, 10 to eight is meant to be a unit. Notice how it ends. When I applied my heart to know wisdom and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night one's eyes sleep, then I saw the work of God that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out, even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out. The dilemma. How hard it is. The complication. If we go back to Ecclesiastes 6.12, who knows? Who can tell? Now let's just be very clear, it is incredible how God has designed us to learn so much. With the telescopes, the new telescope, the images, we've been able to learn about the universe. The research we're gonna perform and understand the human body and we can replace organs and do incredible surgeries and improve life. We have incredible abilities. As image bearers, God has made us and equipped us to do incredible things. But the most important truths, the most important knowledge, it's out of our reach. What is our origin? What is our end? What is our purpose? What is a good life? Our preacher who is giving us an under-the-sun perspective, a under-the-sun, not God-ordained, God-inspired for our instruction, but if we're only looking for wisdom here, he's telling us that wisdom that we're looking for is far off, it's deep. There's a song that represents our secular pluralistic society fairly well, and the chorus goes, we go to the doctor, we go to the mountains, we look to the children, we drink from the fountain. Yeah, we go to the Bible, we go through the workout, we read up on revival, we stand up for the lookout. There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line. And the less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to find. What a fantastic mess of gobbledygook. That's a theological term. It means nonsense. But how well that captures our pluralistic, secular mindset. Oh, the more I give up on knowing anything, the happier I am. Oh, friend, ignorance is not bliss. Our society tells us the only certain thing we can know is that we can't know anything for certain, and that just fails the test of circularity or consistency. How we try to live in this foolishness that holds out, oh, there's just so much mystery I can't know. Friend, I wanna go ahead and give us hope before we move on too far. Our preacher in Ecclesiastes says, that wisdom, it's so far from me. It's far off, it's deep, it's very deep. Who can find it? Well, that's why we read from Deuteronomy 30 earlier. Because God has brought truth and his law and his word for us. And it's not far off, it's near. If we're left to ourself, it is far off, it's so distant, it's so difficult, it's impossible to find. Oh, but this is why we are a book religion. God has given us his words that we can read and hear and understand and consume and embrace. how good it is that we don't have to go far off to try to find what is good and right. Praise God, you're not relying upon me to go out and try to find what is right. No, we're all gonna come up underneath this book together. The words that are good and true, the very Word of God. And these passages are difficult, but let's just be very clear. God's Word is good, true. The truths we need are so clear. We're sinners in need of grace and God has given us his son who died and rose again. We listen to him, we seek his wisdom to obey him. Church, we can never take for granted how good it is that our God speaks. He's not mute as if we've gotta go figure out what he wants. No, he's very clear. He speaks with perfect goodness and power. Notice verses 25 and 26. Wisdom is far off, wisdom is difficult. Now we see folly is easy to find. After saying he wants to test everything by wisdom, verse 25, notice what he says he's going to search out. And a key word for this whole section, verses 23 to 29, is the word find. Who can find it out? I turn my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom in the scheme of things. The scheme being, how do things work? What is the system here? And to know wickedness, a folly, and a foolishness that is madness. So very important, verse 25, he has sought to find two things. Wisdom, foolishness, you with me? Very important we get that. He has sought to test everything with wisdom to find out both wisdom and folly. Notice verse 26. He found something. 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. He has found something more bitter than death. We need to see here, he sought wisdom and folly, and here he is declaring with great certainty and clarity, he found folly. This woman here is Lady Folly. If you want to know more about Lady Folly later on, you want to go to Proverbs 5 to 7, where Proverbs personifies foolishness in the voice of a woman who calls from the streets to entrap you, to ensnare you. The voice of Folly is the voice of a woman, and it's Lady Folly. Now, I just want to be clear here. The voice of wisdom is also in the voice of a woman. Here, what he says absolutely is how easy it was to fall, to find, and to be entrapped by the lady folly. And there's only two kinds of people. There's a person who pleases God, the person who fears him and keeps his commandments and they were able to avoid, and then there's Sinners who easily get entrapped. This is important. Virtue is rare and difficult. Vice is easy and abounding. You don't really have to go looking for foolishness, do you? It's easy to find. Foolishness is easy to find. Lady, folly. is easily, always out on the street, calling out and making it look as if this way is very broad and easy to get onto. She just doesn't show you it's going to be destructive. There are two different folks, the one who pleases God, the one who's easily trapped. Last week in that poem, we saw how dangerous it is to embrace sin, not because of what it does to others, but because it does to our own hearts. It forms an appetite that makes us more susceptible to sin. If we're not living lives that please God, if we're not actually following His way, we are the ones who are following folly and are easily trapped in folly. Everyone is a sinner. Everyone has sinful tendencies. We all fall into all different kinds of entanglements and traps, whether it be from our lust, our anger, our coveting, our deception. The reality, the more we practice God's righteousness, the more our desires are changed and we're less tempted and easily trapped. The folly is easy to find. So we've seen 23 and 24, I wanna find it out. It's far off, it's deep, it seems difficult. Oh, folly, that was easy to find. Lady Folly was easy to find and man is more easily trapped by her. And now we come to 27 and 29. Wisdom is difficult to find. I want us to see 27 and 29. It's a climactic ending of this section. Again, the word find is the key word, and the word find is used eight times in the entirety of 23 to 29, but it's used five times here in 27 to 29. So it's important what he finds and what he doesn't find. But I want you to see how he draws our attention. Behold, see, this is what I found, verse 27. Notice the parallel, 29, see, this alone I found. He's drawing our attention. Keep your eyes open. This seems important. This is what I found, says the preacher. While adding one thing to another, I find the scheme of things. So he has found something, he's been calculating, he's been trying to figure out what in the world's going on in this world with my soul has sought repeatedly, it's constant, it's ongoing, but I have not found the scheme of things. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. All right, this passage needs to have some attention. He sought out the scheme of things. He's declared, I have found something. I have sought for all the things that make sense of this world, and I have not found what makes the ultimate sense, but here's the trouble with what he has found and not found. Notice that second part of 28, the one that has you asking all kinds of questions. One man among a thousand I found, okay, that means one man among a thousand wisdom, men who please God I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. I wanna be clear as we understand Lady Folly presented there in verse 26, Proverbs five to seven. I believe the reference to the woman in verse 28 is Lady Wisdom, Proverbs eight to nine. He is not making a grand declaration about a difference in genders here. Okay, this is a proverbial idiom. We believe there's definite distinctions between men and women, but the one thing that is true and united among men and women is that we're all made in the image of God, which means we all can hear the word of God. That means we're all designed to serve God. That means we all can live in the wisdom of God. There is not an Aristotelian distinction that men have wisdom and virtue and women do not. That is not what he's saying. Everybody nod, I get that. You didn't nod enough. All right, all right, some of you are doing it very enthusiastically. What he's saying is actually terrifying. All right, the one in a thousand is rare because he's seen men over and over again fall into the trap of the lady folly, but what he's actually saying is I've not found lady wisdom. in my own strength, on my own terms, in my own pursuit. She's too far. I've not found the wisdom. I found the folly. It's too easy to find. I found what ensnares, but I've not found the wisdom. In the search for wisdom, he finds folly, but he does not find the wisdom that fears God and pleases God among men. Verse 29, I believe, reinforces this. See this alone I found. He's coming to a bookend there. See what I found? See this alone I found. God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. Schemes being another key word for this text. That passage is so helpful. We see God making again in verse 14. We saw God makes the day of prosperity and the day of adversity. God makes, we know, male and female in his image. God has made all things, the power of his word speaking into existence. Here, God made man upright. Wisdom doesn't tell us about our true origin, apart from God, but here we see it. Here, I believe we have our preacher moving out from his under the sun and reflecting upon Genesis one through three. God made man good. God made man good. So where does all the inequality come from? Where does all the evil come from? Where does all the injustice come from from the very first dilemma? Well, man has sought out many schemes. This is help for us to understand who we are. God made us good, that explains the common grace we have that we can have good neighbors, we can be good neighbors, we can treat each other with a mutual respect. But also explains our corruption, how we see all kinds of corruption all over the world. You see, God made us upright. God made us good, and there's one way to be good, it's to fear God and trust God and obey God, and we refused him in that. And so then we all follow our own schemes, we all go our own different way. We go every way other than the one God way. We go after our own way of worshiping. This appears to be the best explanation we have in Ecclesiastes as to why the world is unfair. Why wisdom is so difficult. We all go our own way, and the one way we do not go is the way of the upright God. Friend, if not a believer today, see and just receive how true this is that virtue is rare, wisdom is rare, vice is easy and abundant. I want you to not hear the wisdom is so far off from you because you actually have it right there in the pew in front of you. We call it the Bible. If you don't have one, please take it with you. That is the very word of God that is near you because God came down to speak to us, to give us himself, to give us his truth. As we contemplate this, I referenced Augustine's confessions last week. Well, interestingly, I'm interested, you might be as well. Augustine says, you know, I learned the logos of God from Plato. There was a goodness and an order to the creation. From under the sun, it's really amazing how much he understood was true and right about that. But they said there's one thing that Plato couldn't teach me that only scripture taught me. And that is that that logos became flesh. The word came near. The word walked among us. No earthly wisdom is going to bring God in that kind of nearness to save us. Only God, the true wisdom of God, he has come down to save us. Jesus is God incarnate. The wisdom of God walked among us. And remember that warning there, those who please God avoid the folly, avoid the lady folly. As we consider Jesus at his baptism, The father's voice from the clouds declared, this is my beloved son, whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. I don't know if you think you're in that one of a thousand who can please God, but I want to warn you, you're probably not. And I want to point you to the one that I know has pleased God, and it's Jesus Christ, his son. And if you want to get out of the snare of lady folly, listen to Him. Repent of your sin. Follow Him. He forgives you of your sin. He frees you of the fetters. He frees you of the slavery of sin. He frees us from our own appetites of sin. He's the only one who's truly, fully pleased God. You can follow Him. There's all kinds of wisdom at different times and different places. I want to challenge you with something here. take up the word of Christ, take up the word of God, and ask, God, show me my folly and my wisdom. Kind of do what our preacher here has said he wants to do in verse 25, but do it with the word of God. Here's my challenge for everybody. Read a proverb a day. It's April 2nd. Just read two today and then keep going, all right? You're one day behind. So that was the advice given to me when I was 18 and lost. When I was ensnared by Lady Folly, I began reading the Bible because I knew something was wrong, and I began reading it like I read every book at the beginning. And somewhere in Leviticus, I started asking friends, like, what in the world do you make of this? And they said, why are you reading Leviticus? They weren't Christian friends, I wasn't a Christian, but they knew enough to, sadly, they were pastor's kids, those were the guys I was partying with, so they knew something. They said, get out of Leviticus. They said, read a proverb a day and read Matthew. It was amazing. Every time wisdom was described, it just seemed so good. And every time the fool was described, it was like looking in a mirror. Every time Jesus spoke, it was clearly words of life and truth and goodness. And every time he described the life of destruction and foolishness, it was me. Praise God, he warns us of the dangers. Praise God, he draws us to the truth. So this is my challenge. If you're not a believer, if you're a believer, read a proverb of a day. Take up the word and ask, Show me your wisdom, God. Show me my folly. Show me how I am falling short of the life you've designed for me. Show me how I am pursuing destruction in my foolishness. Christian, this morning, we need to have a certainty. Luke, the book we preached just before Ecclesiastes, we studied. He began by saying, I'm writing to you that you might be certain. God's word is not confusing. God's word is not far off. God's word is not some deep. God has come to speak to us so that we can know him, so we can know him by him, so that we can know how to live in his ways and enjoy him. I mean, wrestle with this. Jesus tells us the wise man builds his life on what's certain, sturdy, and stable. And there is no source other than the scriptures that he has given us. Let us pray. Fathers, we thank you for your word as we wrestle with this wisdom literature. But we thank you for the clarity of all of your word. But we thank you, Lord, for these more difficult parts so we can read them in light of all of your truth. We thank you that Christ, your wisdom and power, has come, Lord, to illuminate our minds so that we might see our sin. We might know how to repent. Illuminate our hearts and our minds so we might see your glory and your goodness. Lord, help us to see folly and have the grace to run away from it. Lord, help us to see your wisdom and the grace to draw near to it. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.