Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

Main Idea: God alone is Most Wise, and He reveals Himself to us.

Text:

We’re going to be talking about wisdom this morning: what is wisdom, who is wise, and how can we be wise?

Like most married couples, Abby and I sometimes disagree about things. And, like in most married couples, Abby is usually right, and I’m usually wrong. So it would be wise of me to know when to keep my mouth shut, right? Especially when there’s even the slightest amount of doubt whatsoever about whether I’m in the right. But I prove over and over again that I’m not so wise in that area.

But, once in a while, I absolutely 100% know that I’m correct about something, so I don’t back down, which probably isn’t very wise of me either. But eventually, I prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was right, and in those rare occurrences, I’ve learned to get out my camera to document the occasion. And I’m probably a fool for showing you this, but here is what Abby said to me on March 1, 2022.

[Video of Abby saying “You were right”]

So, because I clearly was right in on that occasion, was I wise? Or did I just prove myself to be foolish? And if wisdom isn’t just about being right and having knowledge, what is wisdom, how can we gain wisdom, and who is truly wise?

To answer these questions, we’re going to be looking this week at Ecclesiastes 8. But first, let’s pray.

Father, help us to acknowledge our lack of wisdom before You. We don’t often know as we ought to know, and we don’t usually live how we ought to live. So we ask You for Wisdom. Transform us by Your mercy and grace. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

We saw a few weeks ago that wisdom and righteousness are good things, even though we can’t be perfectly righteous by our strength, and even though we shouldn’t think of ourselves as all that wise, because that wouldn’t be very wise of us. Today, we’re going to see how wisdom is good even though we often lack it, and how it’s good even if we have just the tiniest little bit of it. Verse 1.

Who is like the wise person, and who knows the interpretation of a matter? A person’s wisdom brightens his face, and the sternness of his face is changed. (Ecclesiastes 8:1)

Based on what Solomon writes in this verse, I can confidently say that we often have wisdom all wrong in this life. We often think wisdom is all about knowledge. We think wisdom is primarily about being able to discern what’s true versus what’s false, or foolish. And certainly wisdom deals with these kinds of things, because Solomon writes that the wise person knows the interpretation of a matter. When faced with a difficult situation, a situation in which most people would just throw their hands up and say, “I don’t know what to do,” the wise person will be able to see the situation for what it is, and come up with a good plan to go forward.

It’s like when Solomon himself was presented with the problem of two women who gave birth to their children at roughly the same time. We read about it in 1 Kings 3, starting in verse 16.

Then two women who were prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. The one woman said, “Pardon me, my lord: this woman and I live in the same house; and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. And it happened on the third day after I gave birth, that this woman also gave birth to a child, and we were together. There was no stranger with us in the house, only the two of us in the house. Then this woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on him. So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from beside me while your servant was asleep, and she laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast. When I got up in the morning to nurse my son, behold, he was dead! But when I examined him closely in the morning, behold, he was not my son, whom I had borne!” Then the other woman said, “No! For the living one is my son, and the dead one is your son.” But the first woman said, “No! For the dead one is your son, and the living one is my son.” So they spoke before the king. (1 Kings 3:16-22)

So Solomon was presented with this seemingly impossible situation in which both of these women were claiming that the living child was theirs, and that the dead child belonged to the other. And this was far before it was possible to determine the truth of this kind of thing by getting a DNA test or going on Maury Povich to hear, “You are not the mother!”

So what would Solomon do? We continue reading.

Then the king said, “The one says, ‘This is my son who is living, and your son is the dead one’; and the other says, ‘No! For your son is the dead one, and my son is the living one.’” And the king said, “Get me a sword.” So they brought a sword before the king. And the king said, “Cut the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” But the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king, for she was deeply stirred over her son, and she said, “Pardon me, my lord! Give her the living child, and by no means kill him!” But the other woman was saying, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; cut him!” Then the king replied, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother.” When all Israel heard about the judgment which the king had handed down, they feared the king, because they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice. (1 Kings 3:23-28)

So that clearly displayed the wisdom of Solomon, or rather God’s wisdom in Solomon, and that had to do with being able to discern the truth of a matter in order to make a good plan going forward. That’s wisdom.

But that’s not all of what wisdom is.

Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 8:1 that true wisdom ought to cause us to have a certain kind of disposition. He writes, “A person’s wisdom brightens his face, and the sternness of his face is changed.” In other words, if what you call wisdom causes you to have a very pessimistic view of the world, so that you scowl about life and complain about everything, Solomon seems to be saying that that’s not wisdom. Wisdom ought to make us into happier people!

And this is really a running theme throughout Scripture.

Psalm 16:11 says in prayer to God:

You reveal the path of life to me; in your presence is abundant joy; at your right hand are eternal pleasures. (Psalm 16:11)

Then Isaiah 12:3 says to all of us:

You will joyfully draw water from the springs of salvation! (Isaiah 12:3)

It’s a joyful thing to know the salvation of God. And Jesus even said in Matthew 6:

Whenever you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites. For they disfigure their faces so that their fasting is obvious to people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting isn’t obvious to others but to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:16-18)

In other words, even when we do something as sad as depriving ourselves of food, we should do with it joy, knowing that we don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So this is an interesting test for wisdom: are you happy? Now this isn’t the only test, because you can be a happy fool as well, but what the Bible in this verse doesn’t leave open to us is being a wise person who thinks they know it all, and yet always be grumpy. Which means, of course, that we’re not always very wise, are we? I don’t know about you, but I often find myself being grumpy, grumbling about things out of my control, or even in my control.

You see, wisdom isn’t just about knowing things, and it isn’t just about applying your knowledge. According to Solomon, true wisdom leads to having a calm assurance. Wisdom doesn’t lead to having a doomsday mentality about everything, but leads to having a peace about everything. Wisdom is knowing that God is in control, and that you can trust Him.

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, had this wisdom at the end of his life. Even though his accusers were stoning him to death, Stephen had a peace beyond all comprehension, and even prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Which sounds a lot like Jesus, of course, when He prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

You see, we can only have this kind of wisdom, which leads to this calm assurance, when we know Jesus as Savior. In 1 Corinthians, Paul describes Jesus as the power of God, and the wisdom of God. So if you really want to have wisdom that makes you happy, you need to place your faith in Jesus. Not just as a once and done kind of thing, but every day, looking not to the things of this world for joy, but to Jesus.

Solomon also gives an example of this kind of wisdom in verse 2.

Keep the king’s command because of your oath made before God. Do not be in a hurry; leave his presence, and don’t persist in a bad cause, since he will do whatever he wants. For the king’s word is authoritative, and who can say to him, “What are you doing?” The one who keeps a command will not experience anything harmful, and a wise heart knows the right time and procedure. For every activity there is a right time and procedure, even though a person’s troubles are heavy on him. Yet no one knows what will happen because who can tell him what will happen? No one has authority over the wind to restrain it, and there is no authority over the day of death; no one is discharged during battle, and wickedness will not allow those who practice it to escape. All this I have seen, applying my mind to all the work that is done under the sun, at a time when one person has authority over another to his harm. (Ecclesiastes 8:2-9)

Solomon’s example of wisdom is obedience to your government. Paul also talks about this in Romans, how we’re subject to the governing authorities. Now, we might say that it was easy for Solomon to write this, because Solomon was the king, so certainly he would tell people to obey the king. And yet, in giving this advice, Solomon writes about it not appealing to his own authority as king, but to God’s authority. He writes, “Keep the king’s command because of your oath made to God.” No matter who you are, or how much authority you have in life, we must all answer to God, because God is the true authority.

John Piper preached a message in 1998 that addresses how we ought to view our authority and rights in relation to God. He said in that sermon:

[John Piper Quote]
[The] man-centered mindset says, “I have rights. I can even call God into question. I can put God Almighty in the dark and demand that He explain himself.”

But he also said in that sermon, talking about God:

[John Piper Quote]
He is there with rights as the Creator of the Universe. Oh, how we talk about human rights and civil rights. Have you ever read an article about Creator rights? They are the ultimate rights of the universe. The ultimate rights of the universe are Creator rights and the ultimate goal of the universe are the goals of the Creator. What constitutes a problem in the universe is what doesn’t fit with His goals and what contradicts His rights — quite apart from your rights and your needs. That’s the clash of the universe.

In other words, we get so consumed in this life about what we think are our rights, but we often completely ignore God’s rights. God, being worthy of all praise, has the right to do whatever He pleases with us, and we owe Him all praise for creating us and sustaining us.

So wisdom is having the humility to recognize that although we’re free in our country, we’re God’s servants. And since we’re God’s servants, we should serve Him joyfully, not serving ourselves in our pride. Because if we serve ourselves in our pride, casting off all authority, whether God’s or the government, we will pay the consequences for our sin. Kings and governments are gonna do what kings and governments do: they’re going to punish what they see as wrongdoing. So the wise person will be careful to obey every law that doesn’t contradict God’s law, because otherwise, it may not go so well for them. Verse 10.

In such circumstances, I saw the wicked buried. They came and went from the holy place, and they were praised in the city where they did those things. This too is futile. Because the sentence against an evil act is not carried out quickly, the heart of people is filled with the desire to commit evil. Although a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, I also know that it will go well with God-fearing people, for they are reverent before him. However, it will not go well with the wicked, and they will not lengthen their days like a shadow, for they are not reverent before God. There is a futility that is done on the earth: there are righteous people who get what the actions of the wicked deserve, and there are wicked people who get what the actions of the righteous deserve. I say that this too is futile. (Ecclesiastes 8:10-14)

In a fair world, the wicked would always get what they deserve, and the righteous would always get what they deserve. But Solomon here points out the unfairness of this world. And before we wish that we lived in a fair world, remember that he just wrote in the last chapter that there is not a righteous person on the earth who always does what is right and never sins. We often use these terms–righteous and unrighteous, good and evil–when referring to people, but we use them very flippantly, because the Bible is clear that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We are all unrighteous sinners.

And Solomon writes that the sentence against an evil act ought to be carried out quickly. So we all deserve hell, and we deserve it now. When God warned Adam about the consequences of eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God told him, “On the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.” The just penalty for sin against God is immediate death.

And, biblically, that’s exactly what happened. Paul wrote in Ephesians that we were dead in our transgressions and sins. Because we sinned, we’ve already died spiritually, and we will die physically, and we cannot make ourselves righteous, no more than a dead person can make themselves alive.

In fact, there has only ever been One truly Righteous Person to ever live, and we crucified Him on a cross.

And yet, through His death, we have life. Through Jesus’s sacrifice, we gain assurance of a relationship with God, and we even gain the righteousness that we couldn’t achieve for ourselves. It’s through Jesus that we have permission from God to live a peaceful and quiet life, in all reverence and godliness, because life is not about our rights, or about what we can do, but all about what God has done.

Verse 15.

So I commended enjoyment because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat, drink, and enjoy himself, for this will accompany him in his labor during the days of his life that God gives him under the sun. When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe the activity that is done on the earth (even though one’s eyes do not close in sleep day or night), I observed all the work of God and concluded that a person is unable to discover the work that is done under the sun. Even though a person labors hard to explore it, he cannot find it; even if a wise person claims to know it, he is unable to discover it. (Ecclesiastes 8:15-17)

Much of Ecclesiastes combats the idea that we need to make something of ourselves. In the effort to make our mark on the world, we often think we need to achieve something, or be remembered for something. But through Solomon, who had it all as king, God gives us permission just to enjoy His good gifts.

And God also gives us permission not to have it all figured out. I used to think that I had to have it all figured out. As a pastor, I’m expected to know the answers. I’m expected to have what we typically think of as knowledge and wisdom. But wisdom is not knowing everything about everything. It’s resting in and pointing to the One who does know all things. God alone is Most Wise, and the good news is that He reveals Himself to us.

That’s what Jesus came to do. In dying on the cross for us, Jesus showed us the Father’s heart.