Think of that passage? Let's pray together. Father, I thank you for your word, how it not only inspires us and comforts and encourages us, but it challenges us. It provokes us. It makes us scratch our heads and say, what is that doing in the Bible? Why would you see fit to inspire the preacher to write these words now and preserve these words for us? But you have. So our task this morning, this preacher's task, look into these words and ask, what would you say to us this morning, Lord, through these ancient words, that you would now make that message clear through me is the prayer of this preacher, and I pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, this is another difficult passage in a difficult book. And I told you when we started this, that I might not preach every verse of every chapter because it gets a little repetitive. And every time I hit a passage like this, I think, I'll just skip this one. I'll just sail right over it chapter eight, but there were things in this passage here, this latter half of chapter seven, you're not gonna see in the rest of Ecclesiastes. It raises issues that you're not going to find some pearls, some gems that you won't find in the rest of the book. So I thought, I would do it. In this text, this text alone, he deals with, he deals with parting, with wing walking, with anger, with employer, employee relationships, with sexual temptation and sexism, and how God's man or woman, how God's young person can avoid the pitfalls. It's a roadmap, a GPS, if you will, to avoid stepping on one or the other of these landmines. So the first thing this text teaches us is that Godly wisdom leads to a realistic view of life. Many people think that religion in general, Christianity made particular is escapism. That's so hardly anything but, look at what he says here in verse 15, I have seen everything during my lifetime of futility. This is a former king of Israel talking. I've seen everything during my lifetime of futility. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there's a wicked man who belongs to life and his wickedness. There's a paradox here, and many of you know it, that the older you are, the more you know, the more wisdom you gather, that the more pain and heartbreak, you experience the more grief you observe, the more you realize that life can be very painful unless you stick your head in the sand. Life involves a great deal of pain. Life is not always fair. We have all seen, are known, loved, a person who by the world's standards, is a very good person who lived a good and exemplary life. We've got sick and died young, and we all know wicked, despicable older people who lived lives of treachery to see, and they lived to be a hundred. Life is not fair. You remember the boomerang principle? You know, whatever you send out into life as well, come back here, if you treat people kindly, how many of you taught that to your children? Okay, if you did, call them up, and the service over, call them up, tell them you lied to them, and they're apologised to them, because they don't work that way, does it? Now, all things being equal, if you're nice to people, they will be nice back to you. If you treat people fairly, they will treat you fairly. All things being equal. All things are rarely equal, and we know that in this life, certainly in this city, if you're nice, and you let people go ahead of you, then what happens a lot of times is they'll cut right in front of you, and they'll take the last item you waited in line for. You know that happens. You say that somebody take your place in line, they bump you out of it. No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes, nice guys, finish last. When you stick your neck out for people, sometimes what happens is, they turn around and lock your head off and they enter right back to you, and they say, well, thank you, Reverend Sunshine. Pardon me, but I live in Realville, and this is law number one, life is not fair. Boy scout helps a little lady across the street. She makes it safer, and he gets run over by the bus, and she says, thank you, sonny. And you're chuckling, because you've all seen things like this happen. Maybe these things have happened. I'm trying to be a buzzkill here. I'm just trying to reach some reality into our worship service in this beautiful Sunday morning. Life is not fair. Don't be excessively righteous. Don't be overly wise. What? What's this doing in the Bible? Aren't we supposed to be righteous? Aren't we supposed to be wise? He is speaking here about the legalists, the self-righteous person, those who seek to make themselves acceptable to God by their own efforts, and they flip to the corner of the other side and he says, don't be excessively wicked, and don't be a fool. Why should you die before your time? Here he's talking to the parier, the drunk, the person who lives for the next party, the pothead. No, they didn't have marijuana legalized for otherwise. And ancient Israel, not that we know, their drug of choice was wine. And often they mixed it with something called gold, plant byproduct, or an animal byproduct that was used to dull the sentences of a sort of an anesthesia. Here, preacher warns about getting involved in excessive paganism, excessive heinous men. It looks good. It seems like fun. It seems so enticing and seductive. So you wake up the next day with your head exploding in your wallet, missing. preacher saying, don't do that. Don't go down that road. It looks at some of your faces, you know where else I speak. What are these two things have in common, legalism and hedonism? What are those two things? What's the common ground here? The common ground is preoccupation with self, preoccupation with self. One commits the sin of self importance, the other of self indulgence. One is the pursuit of self justification, the other pursuit of self gratification. It is simply excessive pride versus excessive pleasure. What's the answer to these two pursuits? These two false pursuits? The answer is the pursuit of God. The pursuit of God. That is the only pursuit wherein we are guaranteed both justification and gratification. Right, the Hebrews says to us in chapter 11, verse 6, he says, without faith is impossible to please God. And the one who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. We come to him by faith, he justifies us and he rewards our efforts. He says, if you not heard this before, this is your first time in your church. First time in the church in a long time or first time in a church where you've been told these things. Bible is not about, the gospel is not about you good. Try hard, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. If you could do that, God would let you. The gospel is reality. You can't be good enough. You can't try hard enough. You can't pull those bootstraps hard enough to get yourself one centimeter off the ground. You can't do it. Jesus came and did it for you. Jesus came to take him on himself. Our sin, the places where we have fallen short of God's glory. Place where we couldn't try hard enough and didn't even want to. Place where we couldn't be good enough. And he lived that perfect sinless life for us and died a horrible, gruesome death upon across as the atoning sacrifice for the sins. You made the payment for the sins that are sins deserved. You've heard it before. We owed a debt we could not pay. He paid a debt. He did not owe. So you may be made right by faith in him by the grace of God alone. It's not about you. It's not about me and how hard we try. God is grace may manifest in Christ Jesus. And if you've never heard that before, we're so glad you're here. You are here by divine appointment. God had for you to be here today so that you could hear those words. So you might do business with God. Whatever else you get out of this service, we hope you are born via fellowship. We hope you love music. We know you'll love this sermon. Whatever, just check it and see if there's mics on. Whatever else you take from this place, don't leave here without doing business with God. That's why we exist. That's why we're here. It is good, he says, verse 18. You grasp one thing and also not let go of the other. Preacher didn't know, but he was articulating the first principle of wing walking. You are wing walking. Do not let go of one thing until you got hold of something else. By the way, that's a good advice for people in jobs too. You need another job. You don't like the job you've got. Hang on to it until you've got the other one. You've got the other sign contracting your hand. You know the rules. Easier to get a job while you've got a job. Don't let go of one thing until you've got hold of the other. Godly wisdom leads us to a realistic view of life. Godly wisdom also leads to righteous living. There's a corollary to this. Godly wisdom leads us to righteous living. Ungodly wisdom, I put in quotes, leads to unrighteous and ungodly living. In fact, if it doesn't result in righteousness, it's not wisdom. If it doesn't lead you to a more righteous life, by which I mean to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love your neighbors yourself, if it doesn't lead to doing those things, then it is not wisdom. In fact, if it's just an accumulation of knowledge and you use that just in your own self-indulgence, it's not wisdom. Citizenism, it's citizenism is gaining knowledge in order to use it to use other people. It's why Paul says to the Corinthians, knowledge puffs up, love builds up. Knowledge puffs up, love builds up. This is in our treatment of others, and here you mentioned our treatment of our subordinates. If you've ever been a boss or a supervisor, you know how this goes. Preacher says, do not take seriously all words are spoken so you will not hear your servant cursing you. Do you think that was new? Labor always hates management. Labor always resents management. Don't listen to your servant cursing you because he says, you said a few things other times and you didn't want your boss to hear either. He says, cut him the same slack you want somebody to cut you. When you said something unwise or unkind or untoward about your supervisor, about your boss, you hear your subordinate, you're underling. Your employee saying something bad about you comes some slack. Many, many years ago, excuse me, many years ago when a company was known as a standard oil company, and John D. Rockefeller was the CEO of the company. One of his subordinates, one of his main vice presidents did something mind-ementally stupid cost the company. He made a mistake, cost the company about $2 million. And that's not jump-changed today, but 100 years ago, it's a whole lot more than that. So this upper level executive makes its mistake to cost coming to $2 million. And all the other executives found very creative excuses to avoid Mr. Rockefeller that day. All of them just got missing. Step one, man by the name of Edward Bedford. Edward Bedford. He had an appointment with John Rockefeller that day, and he went ahead and kept, and he showed up in the great man's office, and he walked through the door and stood there quietly because Mr. Rockefeller sitting his desk with a pad of paper writing something down. Finally, he looked up, so, it's you Bedford. Come on in. I suppose you heard about our loss, Bedford said. And yes, I've heard about it. When Rockefeller said, well, I've been thinking it over. Before I asked that man to come here and discuss the matter, I've been making some notes. And Bedford wrote down, this is what happened. Across the top of the page was written, points in favor of Mr. Man who made the mistake. And they follow a long list of the man's virtues, including a brief description, how he had helped the company make that much money and many times over by his business savvy and his hard work. Bedford writes, I never forgot that lesson. Later years whenever I was tempted to rip into anyone, I forced myself first to sit down and thoughtfully compile his long list of good points as I possibly could. Invariably, by the time I finished my inventory, I would see the matter in his true perspective, keep my temper under control. There's no telling how many times his habit has prevented me from committing one of the cost of mistakes any executive can make losing his temper. I commend it to anyone who must deal with people. Timely, it's ancient, but it's timely. Wisdom lays in gentlemen. There's a corollary here, Godly Wisdom leads to loving and serving others. Ungodly Wisdom leads only loving and serving oneself. Not really Wisdom at all, it's just cynicism. Just calculates cynicism. Wisdom used service to others is biblical. Wisdom used in service to oneself. It's just idolatry. Wisdom used in service to others is biblical. Godly, Wisdom used just to serve yourself. Nothing more than idolatry. You're just bowing down at the altar of your own ego. That's all. Listen, I've been in the PCA a long time. That's just an nomination we'll call it Presbyterian Church in America. And there are many great things about it in nomination. We're one of the few, Saviour me to say, we're one of the few that still really believes the Bible to be the Word of God. We really do. We really believe this to be God's Word. Even these ancient inconvenient books that say all these weird things. We really believe this came from God and it's for us to hear and to receive and to obey, to apply. If I have a criticism of our denomination, and I've got a few, I've been on the inside long enough now I can criticize you. I have a criticism of our denomination. It would be this, all too often, we value knowledge for its own sake. We value knowledge for knowledge of sake. Now there are strengths to that. We tend to put our pastors, our technical pilots, teaching elder. We tend to put our pastors through more training than a lot of other denomations do. When you see a guy who's a pastor in T.C.A. Church, odds are he's probably been through a lot of years of education having his skull pounded by theological heavyweights. And that's a strength. It keeps people who maybe shouldn't be in the pulpit from staying out of it. It keeps people like me from saying things because I wasn't raised with this stuff. It keeps me from saying things maybe I would have said if I hadn't been well trained. And that's okay, that's a strength. But it also tends to make our faith more academic and practical. And that's not okay. You've heard me say this before, we made your own study in the Bible. And that's a good thing. But beloved, the word study here's twice in the New Testament. The only one I'm positive. Study to show ourselves a proof unto God. The other one's when Jesus said the parat Pharisees, you're the ones who study the scriptures and you don't even know who I am. So studying is a great strength, but it can also be a great weakness. If it doesn't move out and move into the lives of brothers and sisters in Christ and those who don't yet know him, we're just accumulating knowledge from knowledge and say, I know I've told you this, but when I talk about this, I think of some who hadn't been meeting me many years ago. It was in a secretary university getting a degree in counseling. And we're giving a study, a research study, a study group we're supposed to take the study apart and critique it for its strengths as we exist and check for its reliability and its correlations, validity, and so forth. So our group did a pretty good job taking it apart and putting it back together. We presented our findings. Our professors in the Dr. Canada, our professor said, that's a good job. So what's the other question that you needed to ask about this study? Well, nothing, we did it completely. We got it all, Dr. Kennedy. Well, the other question you need to ask about this study, and he said, how does it help people? How does the study help people? We just said they're looking at each other. We didn't make that exact question, right? He took the study, he took the piece of everything and he just threw it on the ground. He said, if it doesn't help people, what good is it? What good is it? We have a two-to-red, two-dimensional phase, ladies and gentlemen. We're here to honor and glorify God Almighty. That's what we do when we sing His praise and we pray when we give our offerings, when proclaim His word is truth. To glorify God in first and foremost, but if that does not translate into love for our brothers and sisters, it's empty, it's hollow, it's noise, the clanging symbol, and a sounding gong, Paul said, it's just noise and the world's noisy enough. So I've challenged you to make this year a year of service. Find somebody, some group. You can't serve, you can make a difference so that if you're not there, they miss you. But if you're not there, they notice that your gift is your service is absent. But this church wasn't here, the people would say, well, what do those people go? Once you love and serve our community faithfully. It doesn't help people, we'll get it. It's not the only question, but it's a good question. Now look at verse 26. This is the one I wanted to skip, 26, 27. I discovered more bitter than death, the woman whose heart is snares and nets, his hands are chains. One who's pleasing to God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her. Proverbs deals a lot with sexual temptation. There are other places in the Bible. And basically what it says is, run, flee. Don't see how close you can get to the fire before you get burned, run away from it. You're facing it, you're facing the wrong direction. Run away, Paul gives you a password named Timothy, that exact same advice in the letter we call first Timothy. Unfortunately, what we do in our culture so often, we say, get me behind me, Satan, and push. Move me in the direction of that temptation. I'm not gonna belabor it, that's the Bible's wisdom, sexual temptation, there's just, get away from it. I think it was Benjamin Franklin said though, he said the older I get, the less I have to worry about avoiding temptation, it avoids me, it avoids me. I discovered this as a feature, we're adding one thing to another, my explanation, which I'm still seeking, Benatha, I found one man among a thousand. It's not exactly a great batting average. I've not found one woman among all these. Sexism, ladies and gentlemen, right here before your eyes, sexism. Now, you men who are smiling and looking smug and maybe elbowing your wives while you're hearing this text, again, it's one in a thousand guys. It's not exactly a record to be proud of. And you women who are height lift and arms folded because the preacher there just said, what's your remember? This is this man's observation. This was his life experience. He's not saying it does say it's the Lord. This is the way it is, world without end, oh man, that'll never change, that's not what he's saying. He's saying my experience has been. I found very few wise men and no women at all. How many of you men have never said that about? You're looking so self-righteous. How many of you men have never said that about women? Ladies, how many of you have never said that about men? That you want to throw a stone, throw them at the preacher, not me. I see it's an old story. The young man who sat on the side of his bed, head in his hands, he said, God, why'd you have to make girls so pretty? God said so that you'd like them, my son. Why'd you have to make so soft that you'd like them, my son? Okay, but why'd you have to make them so stupid so that they would like you, my son? Remember what I told you last week before about how you understand the harder parts of scripture and light of the clear parts, understand the older parts and light of the newer parts and understand the older testament, light of the newer testament. Here's the principle that I want you to get from the scripture. Here's the principle, Paul says this to the Galatians, you are all sons of God, the faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you were baptized in the Christ who have closed yourself, clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew, nor Greek, slave, nor free, male, nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. That's the principle. That's the biblical principle. If you read the gospels, all of Jesus' interactions with women, every single interaction is with women, they're all positive. There's not a single example, not a single encounter in all of the gospels of Jesus having an unpleasant or negative experience with women, only men, only men. Godly wisdom leads to righteous living, including how we treat others, especially how we treat others. James says, who's wise among you? I'm sure by his good behavior and by his deeds, and his gentleness as a wisdom. Wisdom strengthens a man more than 10, reassuring and say, I'm going back a little bit to this. Amen. Listen to me. Listen very carefully, I'm about to say, the foolishness we see emanating from our nation's capital these days, on both sides of the aisle, the foolishness that passes for political discourse. I am one who has read a great deal of the founding fathers, their words, their writings, their letters to one another, their political thoughts. I've read a great deal of our founding fathers. I've read a great deal of early American, excuse me, early American discourse and literature. I can't help compare those men and women with our elected representatives and we elect them. I don't care if you're a Republican Democrat, a libertarian independent, we elect these people to go to Washington. I can't help but compare the giants we have in our past. We stand on the shoulders of giants and we have replaced them with pygmies that our founding fathers, they were to see what has gone on in our nation's capital over the last picture lifespan. 20, 30, 40, 50 years, they'd be shocked, they'd been embarrassed at what past. Now listen, don't get me wrong, our founding fathers were sinners, they were sinners, every bit as much as the people in Washington DC today, but they were intellectually and philosophically, so far above what we have but we get the government we deserve, ladies and gentlemen. It's incumbent upon us to try to look for wiser, deeper men and women to be our representatives, but even the wisest person has ever lived, even the wisest, they're still sinners, they're still flawed, and he said it's not a righteous man on earth, he genuinely does good and never sins. There are any perfect persons. Godly wisdom leads us to a realistic view of life. Godly wisdom leads us to righteousness living. And then he says this, and this is fascinating to me. Verse 20, I tested all this with wisdom, and I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me. What has been his remote and his exceedingly mysterious, who can discover it? He's talking big picture here, like universal big picture here. He's wondering about ultimate questions of how we got here and who put the world in motion and how this cosmos came to. He's asking the big pictures, I wonder what the preacher would have thought if he could have looked through the Hubble telescope. You can do it online anytime you want. He got a glimpse of the Hubble. If he went online to see what curiosity is showing us from the surface of the planet Mars, we'll know what he would think. I don't know if he'd be more overwhelmed than I am. Now look what's going on, the cosmos ran right now. Where does this kind of wisdom come from? Let me go to an even older source, the book of Job. Book of Job. Where then does wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding? Thus it is hidden from the eyes of all living. God understands its way and he knows its place where he looks to the end of the earth, ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens. And he saw it and declared it. He established it and also searched it out. And the man he said behold, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The depart from evil is understanding. Listen, you can be highly intelligent as far as what the world considers intelligence. You can be off the charts and determine what we can measure for the IQ test. It's still be completely clue of this when it comes to real life. I think I've told you before the story of the young lady in California, scored a perfect 2400 or SAT. There are very few of those, but every year there's a few. He scored a perfect 2400 or SAT. And so I asked her what is the meaning of life? She said, I have absolutely no idea. We can be so book smart, so life dumb, so life stupid, not to muggage, quite an intellectual himself said in modern man's research point where he has educated himself into imbicility. You know so much about so many things that ultimately do not matter. A little about the things that do matter. I think of people I know who are extremely intelligent, highly successful in their fields. They've bowed the tops off an IQ chart. And then on the third and fourth marriages, the drinking, accessibility, extremes from their own children. And I think, and they refuse, they hear that God created them for more than this. They simply will not listen to a simple gospel message. The Jesus came and died for the sins that have estranged you from your wife and your children of wives and your children that have made you miserable, that made you reach for the bottle or the fact of cigarettes or whatever the drug of choice and the Jesus came to deliver you from those sins and restore you and to give you a purpose in life and possibly even heal the risks between you and your family. Now, seeing it happen, I've seen it happen, and you probably have too. Godly wisdom leads to realistic view of life, at least righteous living and manifests itself in loving and serving others and finally, Godly wisdom leads us through the cross. Once again, I've told you how the Older Testament finds this fulfillment in the Newer Testament. This is where wisdom leads. This is the direction in which wisdom leads us. I told you it's a difficult passage. I almost wanted to skip it, but it raises these questions. They're really their questions, but they're also signs and indicators. They're a road map. It says, don't go this way. Go this way. I don't know if I can call it in GPS or not. I don't use one, so I don't really know. But it says, here's your true north. Here's your north star. This is the way you want to follow. We may not be able to find, throughout our own, but there are markers on the trail that he gives us. We may not be able to scale the heights of wisdom. He says, here are the handholds. Here are the footholds. And when you get there, you realize not only what wisdom is, but who? I directed my mind to know, he says, to investigate and to seek wisdom and explanation and to know the evil of folly and the foolishness of manness. Ladies and gentlemen, the gospel is the fulfillment. The gospel is the answer that is, the apostle Paul took some pains to explain this to the people in Corinth. Corinth was probably the most, the city, the most like Miami, and all of the ancient Near East. Corinth was the most like Miami. Sea town, a port town, a coastal town. Every pagan belief and philosophy and behavior amazed way through Corinth and went there first and set up camp. Every false ideology. Every form of paganism, needinism. It was all there in Corinth. Like I said, so much like Miami. This is what Paul said to the Corinthians, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us are being saved as the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wives, the intelligence of the intelligence I will frustrate. Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has God, has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through His wisdom did not know Him. God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews, the men, were active in signs and Greeks looked for wisdom. But we preach Christ, crucified, a stumbling bark to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those whom God is called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God, is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by the world's stand, by human standards. Not many were influential. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world, shame the wise, God chose the weak things of the world, shame the strong, He chose the lowly things of the world, and the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus who have become for us the wisdom from God. That is our righteousness, holiness and redemption, therefore, as it is written, that Him who boasts, boasts in the Lord. It's wherever you've accomplished in life, great, wonderful. You've done it ethically and morally and legally, take great satisfaction in that. How many letters you've accumulated after your name? You've gotten them, did them be great, good, take pride and satisfaction in that. But just know this, in the final analysis those things, they don't mean that much. What means everything in that final day, is whether or not you know Christ as Lord, and acts of love and service and mercy, that you've extended others that you lead behind. That's your legacy, that's your heritage and your legacy. I've said out to you this morning, compliments of the preach, I've said out before you, a road map this morning. Now whether or not, you get on the journey, and how far and how well you travel it. Oh, that's up to you. That's up to you. Let's pray together. Father, thank you that you've extended to us, the opportunity and the privilege of taking part in the greatest adventure of all, the greatest journey any human can undertake. That of knowing Christ. It is my prayer this day that those of us who know Him, will follow Him as faithfully as we know how this day, this very day, in the moment we get up to leave this place to the drive home, where we treat one another on the drive and act lunch and in our homes and in our jobs throughout the week that you bring us back together again next week. We can come before you with our victories and our failures, our joys and our sorrows, our scars and our successes. And I present them before you again, as we seek to honor and glorify you, and our worship and our treatment of one another, or that you would bank that reality in our lives today. We pray.