Would you take your Bible's pleas and turn to the book of Ecclesiastes among the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, most of it written by Solomon himself, and we believe that this book of Ecclesiastes is in a sense as memoirs as an aging king about to retire or go on to be with the Lord? He's on a grand search, searching for fulfillment and purpose in life. He's looking for anything that will give him satisfaction, and joy, and significance under the sun. By that, he means life on earth, between birth and death, as a prelude to eternity. So he says at the beginning of his memoirs in chapter 1 verses 12 through 14, lie the preacher had been king over Israel and Jerusalem, and I applied my heart to seek and to search by wisdom all that is done under the heaven. It's an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun and behold all his vanity in striving after wind. So he tells us in chapter 2 that his search has led him to three different experiments. He would try to find fulfillment in pleasure, chapter 2 verses 1 to 11, or in wisdom, chapters 2 verses 12 through 17, or as we'll look at next week in success, verses 18 to 26 of chapter 2. First King tells us that Judah and Israel were as many as the sands of the sea. And they ate and drank and were happy. Solomon ruled over all the kingdom from the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life. Solomon's provision for one day was 30 cores of fine flour and 60 cores of meal, 10 fat oxen, 20 pasture-fed cattle, 100 sheep, besides deer and gazelle, row bucks and fattened cow. Walter Kaiser says some estimate that it would take perhaps as many as 30 or 40,000 people to consume that much food every day. No wonder first King says that Judah and Israel were as many as the sand which is by the sea in multitude eating and drinking and making Mary. The whole plan of life for Israel was to sample mirth and pleasure and wine and folly until they could endure it no more to determine what was good for the sons of man. Pleasure had failed them. And so what was next? I mean, it's a daunting question. If a guy like Solomon had the wealth of the world of his fingertips and it didn't satisfy him what did out, let's try to be as honest with our own souls as Solomon is about his. How many times if you thought or daydreamed or mused as you drove down the expressway and it says power ball, 169 million and you do the math, I do the math every time, I have to say I do the math every time, let's see after taxes I get about 55% of that and I come out with a staggering figure, 80 some 90 million dollars, mine in one paycheck, wouldn't that solve all my problems. And Solomon says no actually I had money beyond your ability to count and not only did it not solve all my problems, it created quite a few more. So he says I'm going to try something else, chapter 2, verse 12. So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. In other words, here's what Solomon's saying. I tested life from both ends of the continuum, from the folly of party life and pleasure and unbridled purchase of whatever gave me satisfaction and I found that it was empty. And so I ricocheted to the other end of the continuum to consider wisdom in comparison or in regard to this folly and I found that it too was empty. He had already said this in chapter 1, verse 16, I said in my heart I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge, and I applied my heart to no wisdom and to no madness and folly. I perceive that this also is by the striving after win for in much wisdom is much vexation and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. This seems to be Solomon's pattern at least in his young years of life. He would go from the folly of pleasure to the vexation of wisdom and back and forth. You'll see that ricochet, that pendulum, that back and forth throughout his memoirs and it's confusing. Until you realize that what he's saying in verse 12 is I turned about, that's how little he reads in Hebrew. He did a 180 degree turn in regard to wisdom in relation to madness and folly. People are troubled by what he says about wisdom here in these first few chapters because it appears to be the opposite to be contradicting what he said in other places with his own pen. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and destruction. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy one is insight. For the wise man will never be moved. He will be remembered forever. But here Solomon says in verses 12 through 17, the exact opposite. Is Solomon contradicting himself? Is the scripture saying opposite things? I think not. I just believe that scripture doesn't contradict itself because I believe it has one grand author who is God, the Holy Spirit, and he doesn't make mistakes and say one thing one day in the office at the next. So we have to allow Solomon to have his say, knowing that scripture does not contradict and ultimately Solomon will not contradict himself, but we may have to wait awhile until we get to chapter 11 and 12 to him to come around and so the whole thing into a neat package. But here's what he's saying. If you agree with me that a life of party, pleasures and passions and doles leads to nothing eternally worthwhile, then you must also agree with me that the other extreme of life, wisdom all the time will lead to little more to celebrate than Folly did. That's what he says in verse 12 and following, follow along with me. So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and Folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king, only one has already been done? Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in Folly as there is more gain and light than in darkness. The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceive that the same event happens to all of them. Then I said in my heart, what happens to the fool that happened to me also? Why then have I been so very wise? And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. For of the wise as of the fool, there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool, so I hated life because what is done under the sun was grievous to me for all his vanity and striving after when. Solomon talks first of all about the relative value of wisdom. He says first of all that wisdom is good for life. He says it is better than Folly as light is better than darkness and as a man who can see is more happy than a man who is blind. What makes us so difficult is that the opening verse of this paragraph, verse 12 is extremely difficult to translate in the Hebrew. In fact, in all the commentaries I consulted when I looked at the Hebrew myself, I don't know how to translate it. So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and follow for what can the man do who comes after the king only what has already been done. That's how the English standard version renders it, but it's probably not a real good translation. Commentators have absolutely plundered this verse. Some of them take the end of chapter of verse 12 and they stick it at the end of verse 11. Some of them take the end of verse 12 and put it at the end of chapter 18 or 19. Some of them, the common approach is to turn the end of verse 12 into the answer of a question in verse, the first part of the verse, but there's really no question to ask. Here is what the Hebrew literally reads like. If I were to put the Hebrew here and read it word for word, this is how it would come out. Then I turned to consider wisdom and madness and Folly. What is the man who will come after the king whom they have already made? So the second part of the verse is not an answer or a statement, but a rhetorical question. What is the man who has already been made and what does that mean? It could mean two things. It could mean I turned to consider wisdom and Folly and madness and I asked myself the question, what is the man IE the king who will come after me to do better than the king whom they've already made, king, me? How much wise will my children and grandchildren be than I am? Or it can be what others think is that he's saying this, what is man, meaning humanity in general, who will come after me considering the man who was already made, Adam. In other words, Solomon is saying, if I was as wise all my life as I've been and never made one foolish mistake, then the people who come after me and mankind would ruin whatever I have done with Folly. So this is simply the ugly fact about fallen humanity. We are prone to Folly, not wisdom. Whatever verse 12 means, here's the nice thing about it. It's not as important as verse 13 and 14 because there he says wisdom is worthwhile. Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in Folly, there is more gain in light than in darkness. Wisdom brings light enlightenment to the spiritual darkness of the fallen soul. Think what life would be like, Solomon is saying, if people only acted and always acted in Folly, think how dark life would be. But there is a light that comes from spiritual common sense. Wisdom is better than intelligence or education or even knowledge or information because wisdom is the ability to use information and education and knowledge so that God will bless us. And wisdom, he says, allows us to see things as God sees them. We would say in our problems, we look at reality with eyes wide open. And that's what Solomon says. The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness and yet I perceive that the same event happens to all of them. The wise person we would say has his head on straight and looks at reality the way God sees it, the way it really is. He looks at life with his eyes open. He's not closing his eyes and whistling through the dark. Wisdom is a good thing. It gives a spiritual knowledge that brings practical wholeness which God blesses. And Solomon should know because he is the primary author of most wisdom literature. See Gun 3 in her little book The Wisdom of God, seeing Jesus and the Psalms in the wisdom books. It's a little Bible study about the wisdom literature says as a result of Adam and Eve's fall and they're sin. And the curse that came upon all of creation because of this, all of us are born naturally with a resistance to wisdom, especially wisdom that comes from God. But God in his mercy and grace has not been content to leave us living in darkness and in foolishness. God over history has continued to reveal himself, God called people to himself and spoke to them through dreams and visions and prophetic words and gave them his covenant and his law. God gave his people story and symbols and shadows to prepare them to understand his wise plan but it was not yet explicitly clear. Faith for God's people in the Old Testament meant placing their hope in God's promises, promises that an element of mystery to them as to when and how they would be fulfilled. And to guide them into living by faith as they waited for God to bring about more of his plan, he gave his people the wisdom literature. He gave them five books. Job shows them how a wise person lives in a world in which people seemingly suffer for no good reason. The Psalms provides the wise person with praise and prayer and lament for expressing his heart and his human experience to God. Proverbs offers practical daily advice for living as a wise person in matters of relationships and work in the real world. Ecclesiastes reveals that living wisely requires not just living under the sun but under the rule and in the fear of the Lord. And the song of Solomon sings a new song of wisdom in regard to sexual desire and delight. On the one hand, the wisdom book help us to make sense of our world and on the other hand, they strengthen our trust in God and the face of things that we really can't make sense of. They address the tension of living in a world marked by sin as we anticipate a world when sin will be no more. So they are perhaps the most practical, good and godly books in all of the Bible, but there's a limit to their value. That's what Solomon says at the end of verse 14. And yet, I perceive that the same event happens to all of them. So not only is wisdom good for life, but here he says in verses 15, 16, 17, wisdom will disappoint you in life. I said in my heart, what happens to the fool happen also to me. Why then have I been so very wise? And I said in my heart that this is also vanity. For of the wise, as of the fool, there is no enduring remembrance seeing that in the days to come, all will have long been forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool. So I hated life because what is done under the sun was grievous to me for all his vanity and a striving after win. Two things he says inevitably happen to the wise man in the fool, both of them ultimately will die. Wisdom probably, in most cases, will prolong life and certainly enrich it, but in the end, the same fate it could be translated in Hebrew. Awaits them both, is appointed for men to die once, and after this the judgment. And wisdom cannot forstall the inevitable wages of sin which is death. What's even worse is after they die, eventually they will both be forgotten. Whether he's the wisest man on the face of the earth like Solomon. Or the biggest fool in the world, people tend to forget the great and the good men who went before them. In fact, it appears sometimes that they remember evil men long after they have forgotten good men. I'll give you an illustration of this. It was hard for me to accept, but years ago back in 1996, I was on a little vacation in Europe after a mission trip and I rented a car and I drove through Switzerland to see all the sites of the great reformers. And in Reformation history, there are four great names. There's Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Knox. Luther, as you know, was in Germany and everybody in Germany remembers who Martin Luther is. And in Geneva, they'll probably spit on the sidewalk, but they will remember who John Calvin is. And in Scotland, there are statues of John Knox all over the place. But when I went to Zurich, Northern Switzerland, German speaking Switzerland, I was looking for the Church of Ulrich Zwingli, the Grossmanster, the Great Church. Well, in the old section to see, there were steeples all over the place. So I parked in this place for public parking and I put my money in the meter and I noticed that there was a meter made coming down, checking the meters, young attractive lady, and two young men that were hitting on or trying to get at eight. And so they came up and I said, I wonder if I can ask you young people a question. I said, oh, of course we speak English because everybody in Switzerland speaks about five languages. And I said, do you know where the Church of Ulrich Zwingli is? And they went Zwingli. He has passed her in one kind of church or I said, he's dead. Oh, he's not living, no, no, he lived back in the 1600s or 1500s in the time of the Reformation. But what? I said the Reformation. Vossus Reformation. So I gave him a little history lesson there. At the end of which they said, we did not study this in school. I said, well, outside his church, there's a statue of him like this holding a sword. Oh, man with the sword. Is that church right over there? Now, had I asked those young people, they didn't have a clue Ulrich Zwingli was, although he transformed their world. And I would have asked them, is there anything here about Adolf Hitler, they would know exactly who I was talking about. But they had forgotten the great spiritual reformer, perhaps the greatest man in all of their city's history. And that is what Solomon is bemoning. In a sense, a Stanley Gail says, if we look under the sun, don't we see the same thing? We put a value on education yet we see the high school drop out making vast sums of money in a rock band, and someone with a Ph.D. flipping hamburgers. We see the wise man carefully investing his money yet losing it all in a free falling stock market, while the guy who's somewhat insane, stuff says money in a mattress and is still solvent. And where is God in all of this? Doesn't God bless wisdom? Isn't that what the Bible tells us? And Solomon challenges that. Now Solomon is not giving up on wisdom. It will be the theme that he will come back to more than any other subject in his memoirs. And he will arrive at a couple of conclusions. He will arrive at the fact that first of all, wisdom is good to teach us traditional spiritual and communal values to protect and preserve and prosper the community at large. He will say in Proverbs, the simpler killed by their turning away and the complacency of fools destroys them, but whoever listens to me will dwell secure, will be at ease without dread of disaster. He sees, as Derrick Tidwell says, that wisdom is not speculative philosophy. It is a down to earth good old fashioned practical kind of philosophy. About the tradition of values which are embedded in society, in which had served the ancestors not too badly. The former generations had been blessed by this wisdom. There was reason to believe that so will the generations yet to come. He'll arrive at a second conclusion in his book about wisdom. And this is the most important. That wisdom is a compass that points to God. That's its main purpose. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. Stanley Gail says, we could put it this way. Wisdom gives us more than just street smarts to navigate the road way of common life. Wisdom is the compass of God, where do north is the glory of God, and the magnetic pull is the fear of the Lord that is due his name. What these verses say is that the way we size things up in life under the sun, and the choices we make in daily life, have reference to God, all of them, whether we acknowledge it or not, and we have been given a moral and spiritual dimension that we must honor in life, and a compass that points us to something that's greater than what's on television, or in the workplace, or in the halls of government, we have a compass that points us to God. I want you to leave Ecclesiastes for a few moments and turn to the New Testament to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. For Solomon tells us about the relative value of wisdom, but Paul talks about the reference point of wisdom. It's not as if Solomon and Paul disagree. In fact, if I may put it this way, at the end of his life Solomon will arrive at the point that Paul is at when he writes 1 Corinthians. These men have a lot in common. They were both Hebrews, both men steeped in the Bible, both preachers and teachers, and both men of wisdom, and both of these men in their own trajectory of life and faith will find the answer in Jesus Christ, who Paul says is wisdom for us. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 26. For consider your calling, brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world even things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
And because of him, because of God, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us these four things, wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boasts in the Lord. It is Paul who is opening up the mind of Solomon and showing us something. You're why did Solomon produce and pursue all these great building projects and all of these great buildings and all of these great economic and educational and political ventures? And why did he pursue all of these pleasures and all of these possessions and all of these passions? It was to bring himself glory. You read about the Queen of Sheba and she just pours the praise on Solomon, is if he was a God and Solomon will tell us later on in his memoirs that one of his greatest problems was pride. He just got full of himself and he says in a sense, I did the same thing with wisdom. I thought I would pursue wisdom to the point where I had the answers and I figured out life and I was smart enough to determine my own destiny. You know, I was talking to Jane on the way over here. There's something in the church of Jesus Christ and I don't know if it's always been in the church, I guess it has been because Paul wouldn't have written this in first Corinthians if it wasn't that something about the way we think about people that is somewhat nauseating folks if I may put it that way, so bluntly. And here, Jesus shatters all that, consider your calling brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, we think we are. After all most of us at college educated and we're, you know, upper mid-come, middle-class, intelligent people. Not many powerful. We think we are. We're the majority of Americans. Grine out loud most of us Republicans. Not loud count for something. Not many of noble births. I don't know about you, but I've always thought that I'm among the beautiful people of the world. I mean, how many times have you heard that as a pastor? You who are pastors? Oh, you need to, this guy's really sharp. This is a sharp couple. What does sharp mean? It means that she's pretty and he makes a good amount of money. The kids dress nice and he's going to tie. Well, that's what it means. Go after those people. Forget the other people who aren't sharp. But God chose what was foolish in the world to shame the wise. But was weak in the world to shame the strong. He chose what is low and despise in the world, even the things that don't count to bring to nothing, the things that think they do count. God is unimpressed with us. You need to know that God is unimpressed with you. What God is impressed with is His Son. Who became for us, wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that if we're going to brag, we brag in Jesus Christ. That's the reference point for wisdom. Jesus Christ, first of all, Paul says, is the reference for wisdom. He is the word incarnate, the word made flesh. We've never seen God at any time. We've never had wisdom personified in a person like it has been in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is what Solomon foreshadowed. Paul would say in Colossians, I want you to know this. How great a struggle I have on your behalf, and for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance and understanding and knowledge of God's mystery, which is in Christ? In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, what a marvelous statement about Jesus Christ, in him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, this one who has become to us wisdom. The wisdom literature all points to Jesus Christ. He is the do-north of the compass. Job is not about an innocent man suffering. It's about Jesus Christ suffering on the cross. He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf, the righteous dying for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God, the innocent man suffering for the guilty, that he might bring us to God, Psalms. Psalms are written... You know why the Psalms are so wonderful? They're written by Jesus Christ. These are the songs and prayers he sings to his father. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is right. Christ is the singer of the Psalms. He got that from St. Augustine, the whole of the Old Testament, for Jesus Christ and Types and Symbols, and the Psalms are especially one that throws light upon our Savior's inward prayers and thoughts in life. The Psalms which in their diversity of feeling embrace all the possibilities of human life actually become the prayer book of the mystical Christ, whom we hear praying as God and to God once as the head of the church and then as the body of the church. The period of the whole book is the whole range of knowledge of the human experience expressed and existentially experienced in Jesus Christ, who becomes the consciousness and the expression of humanity. Our humanity threw Christ to God and echoed back God talking to us. It's an amazing to think of the Psalms that way, but if you read them they're autobiographical. It's Jesus saying in Psalm 2, I will tell the decree of the Lord. The Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have forgotten. You ask of me and I will give you the inheritance at the end of the earth as your possession. Jesus Christ is saying, the Lord is sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Jesus Christ is weeping and crying out on the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Psalm 22 verse 1. It is the love relationship between God and his son that we hear in Psalm 45, not the praises of a handsome groom named Solomon, but the bridegroom of the church, Jesus Christ. My heart overflows with a good theme. I address my verse to the king. My tongue is like the pen of a ready writer. You are the most handsome, all of the sons of men. Grace is poured out upon your lips. Therefore, God has blessed you forever and loved you above all others. The proverbs, this is the wisdom and counsel instruction and knowledge and discipline that God the Father imparted to God the Son. In eternity past, the way of a blessed life that Jesus Christ becomes the incarnation of, I am the way and the truth and the life. The song of Solomon, a loved song between a husband and a wife that has been often seen as an allegorical poem about Christ's love for his bride, the church, and who romance with her redeemer and champion who is the lover of her soul? That's why the book of Revelation ends with these words, hallelujah for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns, and let us rejoice and exalt, give him the glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready. In Ecclesiastes, as a book that will tell us that life under the sun is futile and frustrating and foolish, a mere chasing after vanity and win if we do not pursue Jesus Christ first. How many parables did Jesus tell about rich men who built barns and filled them up with stuff and said, soul, take your rest only to hear from heaven? You fool, you unwise man, this night your very soul will be required of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be after you? Then Jesus said, so is the man who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. The answer to Solomon's questions about wisdom is found in Jesus Christ. And so is answers about righteousness. Jesus Christ became to us wisdom from God and righteousness. Solomon devotes a lot of attention to righteousness. He muses eight different times and eight different passage over the righteous man, three times he memones the lack of righteousness on the earth. I saw under the sun that in the place of justice even there was wickedness and in the place of righteousness even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, I will ask God the judge, the righteous, to judge the righteous and the wicked for there is a time for every matter and every work and the wise man heart inclines him to the right while the fools directs him to the left. Solomon will eventually arrive at the point chapter 12 where his righteousness is found in God. Jesus Paul would say not by works but by faith, faith in a promise Messiah yet to come, righteousness so that the righteous will live by faith. Jesus Christ is also the reference point for holiness, for he has become to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification. Solomon was a religious man. I mean, there was no more religious man than all of the Old Testament. He was a good man. He was a wise man. But what Solomon lacked was holiness. Solomon sought for holiness by trying to make life fit together in a good and God the manner but without the moral compass of a God word life. As he asked, he will find that Solomon tried to add holiness to his life, to take off the edge of everything else rather than make Christ like character the chief pursuit of his life. He attempted to add God to his life rather than have God be his life. He would come in the end in chapter 11 to say that he was a fool for thinking that anything else could be pursued except holiness and really make a difference in life. Solomon did not yet heard what Paul would tell us. If then you have been raised up with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is. See at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth for you have died in your life is hidden with Christ and God and when Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. What marvelous statements about Jesus Christ, your life is hidden with Christ tucked away in God and Christ listen to this who is your life, not something you add to life. When Christ who is your life is revealed in his sinless glory, then you will share a sinless glory with Him. Jesus Christ is not something we add to life. He is our life. There is no life other than his. And Solomon will arrive at that conclusion that his life was wasted because he lived it with Jesus on the side rather than with Christ at the center. Martin Luther used to say, one of his students asked him one time, he says, Martin Luther, what do you do when the devil keeps coming and tempts you about the same thing? You know what Martin Luther says? Oh, I don't worry about that. I go to the door and I open up and I say, hello, Lucifer, good to see you again. You are inevitably looking for Martin Luther, but he doesn't live here anymore. He is dead and I shut the door and he leaves me alone. We're dead. Dead. We've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer we who live, but what? Christ who lives in us. Christ is the center of life. And that's what makes a man holy. Not a list of rules, not a reform theology, not all the wisdom in the world, but a man who lets Christ take over his life. And his life and live his life through him. Solomon hadn't come to that point yet. Finally, Jesus Christ is the reference for redemption. He became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Bless his little soul. There was no one who were targeted to save good things, to rescue people to build a world that would last forever and no one who failed more than Solomon. Because Solomon did not seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. He had things inverted. He wrote about all those other things. And eventually he said, I'll get around to the kingdom of God. He is the person that the parable of the soil speaks about when it says, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things entered in and choked out the word of God. And it became unfruitful. Solomon being very close to losing his soul, very close. Because he sought for everything except the pearl of great price at the very end of life. Wisdom is a funny thing, friends. Its practical nature can cause us to miss its eternal message. Because there is a powerful influence of wisdom that allows us to live life in such a way that we are blessed. I mean, if you read the book of Proverbs, probably 75% of them could be read by a pagan and by an atheist. And they would still make sense to him. Get along with people. Learn from your elders. Work hard. Stay away from bad girls. Careful how much eat, how much you drink, where you go to bed at night. It's common sense things. And yet if that's all we get out of it, we've missed the whole point of wisdom, which is Jesus Christ. You know, when we study Proverbs, and I hope to do that this coming year, we're going to find it throughout the book of Proverbs, there's two ladies who speak. One is called Lady Wisdom, and the other is a pretty girl called Folly. Lady Wisdom says, Wisdom has built her house, hewn her seven pillars, slaughtered her beasts, and mixed her wine. She has also set her table. She has set out her young women to call from the highest places in the town, whoever is simple let him turn in here, to him who lacks sense, she says, come eat of my bread and drink of the wine that I have mixed. Leave your simple ways and live and walk in the way of insight. Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse. And he who reprudes a wicked man incurs injury, do not reprove a scoffer or he will hate you, reprove a wise man and he will love you. Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser, teach a righteous man and he will increase in learning, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. For by me your days will be multiplied and years will be added to your life. If you are wise, you are wise for yourself. If you scoff, then you alone will bear the consequences. We get lost in that personification thinking that wisdom is a woman, a wise mother, perhaps one of Solomon's princesses or queens speaking to her young son, but lady wisdom is Jesus Christ. Sending out his ministers around the world to say, come to me, either would have life and have it abundantly. Come drink from the fountain of my wisdom, eat the bread, drink the blood of myself, come into my house, the church, learn and live. Scoff, Jesus Christ, is this Lord whom we fear, who is the beginning of wisdom. He is the Holy One, the knowledge of whom gives insight to turn from the world and live forever.
That's what poor Solomon missed most of his life, that's what he found in the end. He found the fear of the Lord and he found wisdom.
He looked at the compass one more time and appointed do north in Solomon went there. Father it is always so easy for us to take the gifts you give us and to use them in a way that is counterproductive to what you would accomplish in our lives and how you would bless us. It's easy for us to love the things you give us rather than to love the giver himself and that is to also wisdom. If all we pursue in the wisdom of the Bible is how to have a better marriage and spiritual children and a good life, secure finances, good reputation and moral character then we will have received great blessings but missed the Christ. It is wisdom that points us to Jesus Christ who is for us wisdom from God and righteousness and holiness and salvation and laying hold of him. We become wise unto salvation. That's what you told Paul and what he told young Timothy that he was to attend to the sacred writings which were able to make him wise unto salvation even for us evangelicals for the reform types in the world. It's easy to think that our salvation comes from knowing more and more of the Bible and its way of life rather than knowing more and more of Christ who is our life. We want to thank you, Father, for thinking ahead, for exerting infinite and divine wisdom and how you have saved us. You have taken our lives and hid them with Christ and tucked them away in you so that our folly will not lead to death. And we would ask your Holy Spirit to unfold for us more and more both in Ecclesiastes and in every other time that we open up the Bible to explain and expose more and more this person of Jesus Christ who is all we need for life under the sun and life in heaven. Give us faith in Jesus Christ. Give us love for Him, a fear and a reverence for Him and affection beyond anything we've ever felt before and let us place at the very core of our life, the one who is our life and surrender to Him as He lives His life through us and in so doing takes us to glory. This is what we would pray and ask for us and for our children as we would pray and ask this in Jesus name and for His sake. Amen.