Ecclesiastes Part #10: Christ is the Wisdom of God

Ecclesiastes 8:1-17

We’re going to be in Ecclesiastes, one of my favorite books of the bible, and one of the Wisdom books today, written by King Solomon, renowned as the wisest person to ever have lived, given the gift of wisdom by God.  So, open up to Ecclesiastes chapter 8 with me.

Intro: Albert Einstein said, “Information is not wisdom. The only source of wisdom is experience.”

There is a lot of talk these days about Artificial Intelligence and the Information Age… The Singularity where the AI becomes sentient or is suddenly a thousand or a million times more intelligent than all humans put together.

But, information or intelligence which is a quickness with information does not equal wisdom.  There is no such thing as Artificial Wisdom!  There is a vast amount of information in our world and it’s increasing exponentially but that is not making us increase in wisdom… Social Media and the 24 hour news cycle can give you information, much of which is wrong information… by the way… but it CANNOT give you wisdom… and I would even say it consistently decreases wisdom.  Only experience can give wisdom… As a teacher I am constantly having conversations right now about the effect of AI on learning and they found in an MIT study that being adept at using AI to help you write actually decreased brain activity and made it so that the participants in their study had much less memory and much less learning about what they wrote than the control group that had the classic experience of research and writing.  It turns out that this world was made with experience in mind, with actually doing things, and doing hard things yourself, and that is how we learn and how we develop.

“...Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”

-1 Corinthians 1:24-25

Experiencing the saving grace of the Father through Jesus Christ His son, you have to experience it yourself, you can’t be saved because your parents are saved, there’s no shortcut, the experience of real love and sacrifice, the experience of Jesus Himself on the cross… these actual experiences bring us the WISDOM of GOD… JESUS HAD TO ACTUALLY COME, LIVE AN ACTUAL PERFECT LIFE, DIE AN ACTUAL SACRIFICIAL DEATH AND ACTUALLY RISE AGAIN FROM THE GRAVE!!!  There is no Artificial Gospel, which is why we say that these things are in the heart and not in the head.  Wisdom is like information that’s not contained in your brain, it’s in the core of who you are and is built by your experience…

This is the tenth installment of our series on the book of Ecclesiastes.  We keep coming back to chip away at this book over the past 5 years.  It’s known as a tough book to understand, as a deep book, and I really believe it’s an important book for our day… in our culture… where we ask such a huge question WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?  

So, to recap what we’ve seen so far: Solomon, the richest, smartest, most talented man to ever live, set up grand experiments with his life to gain both the information about how this world works and the wisdom through experience to find the meaning of life so that he could write it down for us in an effort to save us some of the toil in gaining this wisdom… that we could learn from his experience.

The Meaning of Life?

He tries wealth, music, comedy, pleasures or all kinds, women, wine, feasting, parties, great public works, architecture, nature, everything you could imagine and more and he says it just doesn’t fulfill me, it doesn’t last, it’s like chasing after the wind, it’s a vapor or it’s like a soap bubble that when I try to grasp ahold of it and say THIS is the meaning of life, it pops and it is gone.  Or, it’s like looking at the underside of a tapestry and I see this jumbled mess of threads but I can’t see the picture of what’s really going on on the other side because only God can see that.  He says whether you are wealthy or poor you will meet the same end, whether you are wise or a fool you both will die and be eaten by the worms, whether you are the greatest or the worst the same thing happens to you in the end.  

But, he shows that God is sovereign over the lives of men, there is nothing new under the sun, but God is to be feared, God is to be put in a place of awe outside of our daily toil.  And he realizes, you know what, there are some things that are actually better than other things.  In my last sermon we dove deep into Ecclesiastes 7 where he begins to turn the corner on this experiment and instead of saying all is futile and chasing after the wind, he shows that going to a funeral is actually better than going to a party, the end of a thing is better than the beginning, that being rebuked is better than a song, etc… there are these counterintuitive things that are actually better for you in the long run than temporary pleasures that you thought would be the best initially.  This is wisdom, the worst thing that ever happened, Jesus living a sinless life: is beaten, mocked, and crucified and it is the BEST thing that could have ever happened for us… it was the way of God to defeat death and the grave, to bring us to Him through the forgiveness of our sins!  So, what can initially seem to be the worst things are actually the best…  

So today, in chapter 8, Solomon is going to focus on wisdom, how wisdom is actually a really good thing, he’s going to walk back his statements from earlier that wisdom and folly are both just a chasing after the wind, but also that was the wisdom of the world, and we will start to describe how and why wisdom, the wisdom of God, is really good, and remember Jesus is the wisdom of God.  And, we have the Holy Spirit to teach us the wisdom of God.

We need the leading of the Holy Spirit… So, here’s what we are going to see Solomon teaching us in Ecclesiastes 8 today: He is celebrating wisdom and then gives us 5 things to help us understand that wisdom helps us at all these various points in our lives.

Wisdom changes everything from the inside out.

8 Who is like the wise?
    And who knows the interpretation of a thing?
A man's wisdom makes his face shine,
    and the hardness of his face is changed.

Not only is wisdom rare, it’s precious.  And, the reason it is so precious is because it changes us from the inside out, it makes his face shine, his face is no longer hardened by bitterness, anger, or resentment, his face is literally changed.  Some of you have seen it in  your own life when you look in the mirror, you’ve changed.  When we are talking about wisdom we are talking about Jesus!  When Jesus comes into your life you are changed from the inside out, people start to say, there’s something different about you.  Your face is shining.

He’s not saying smile when your heart is breaking, put on a happy face, no that is fake.  He’s saying God gives you wisdom and it will change you.

Proverbs 2:10 “Wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.

Psalm 34:5 “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.”

This isn’t just a metaphor, wisdom… Jesus… changes everything… it will transform you.

Here is how wisdom relates to authority:

2 I say: Keep the king's command, because of God's oath to him. 3 Be not hasty to go from his presence. Do not take your stand in an evil cause, for he does whatever he pleases. 4 For the word of the king is supreme, and who may say to him, “What are you doing?” 

Solomon was saying this AS the king.  Keep the king’s command BECAUSE of GOD’S OATH TO HIM!  Don’t keep the kings command because you agree with it, don't even keep the kings command because of YOUR oath that you would!  Keep the kings command because of GOD’s OATH TO THE KING!

One of the trickiest things in life is dealing with those that God has put in authority over us.  Whether that is government, or bosses, or teachers, or parents, or pastors, we live our lives under some sort of authority so it’s important to have wisdom for how to deal with that.  But, these authorities are not perfect, look at verse 9: “I observed this… when man had power over man to his hurt.”  Some of these authorities are wicked, God gives authorities power, sometimes they use it wisely and sometimes they abuse it.  Often they abuse it.  With power comes responsibility and often with power comes the temptation to use that power for selfish gain… I’ve experienced this and probably you have too because we live in a world with fallen wicked hearts.  So, how do we honor God with how we relate to authorities that He has put over us.  Well, the overarching answer to this is simple… obedience.  Obedience.  And, you might not like that answer, so don’t take my word for it, let’s look at what Jesus said.

Luke 20:25 “Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”  You’re supposed to obey the authorities and pay your taxes… Jesus was a little sassy though with his answer, if you recall, he also says render unto God that which is God’s, which is EVERYTHING.

The writer of Hebrews speaking to church people says this:

Hebrews 13:17 “have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account.  Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.”

You won’t give an account for your leaders, THEY will.

Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3 “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”

Colossians 3:20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

Over and over again, obedience, obedience, obedience is the answer for how we should act.  Obedience is the first principle of living wisely under authority.

But,  you are thinking, Andy, why would we live in obedience when that leader is as black-hearted as the rest of us?  Great question!  True!  They are not morally superior to  you, that is not why you should obey and you should pray!  You need wisdom, real Jesus wisdom to know if you should leave that situation, not just disobey because you want to or because you disagree.  

In fact, Solomon tells us why we should obey in verse 2.  Because of God’s oath to him.  Or in the Hebrew it literally says, “because of The Oath of God.”  it doesn’t say to him. So here is what I think, the point is not that God has made an oath to the ruler, and God needs your help to keep a promise to the ruler… it is THE OATH OF GOD… it is God’s oath that He is in charge, He is in control of everything, and you can be assured of His control over everything.  You can be assured that no matter who is in authority over you, no matter who is in power, God put them there and they are accountable to Him and God is in control.

Psalm 24:1 The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.

Proverbs 21:1 the king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.

Here is how wisdom relates to going through hard things:

5 Whoever keeps a command will know no evil thing, and the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way. 6 For there is a time and a way for everything, although man's trouble lies heavy on him. 7 For he does not know what is to be, for who can tell him how it will be? 8 No man has power to retain the spirit, or power over the day of death. There is no discharge from war, nor will wickedness deliver those who are given to it. 9 All this I observed while applying my heart to all that is done under the sun, when man had power over man to his hurt.

Life is still hard when you have wisdom.  Life is still hard when you have Jesus, but it just doesn’t crush you anymore.  Look at the lives of the apostles, the lives of the saints, the lives of Christians, there is still tragedy, there is still pain, there are still enormous problems from living in a fallen world… but there is also hope… without Jesus there is NO hope.  There is peace in the middle of the storm.

Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Here’s how wisdom helps you deal with loss:

10 Then I saw the wicked buried. They used to go in and out of the holy place and were praised in the city where they had done such things. This also is vanity. 11 Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil. 12 Though a sinner does evil a hundred times and prolongs his life, yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before him. 13 But it will not be well with the wicked, neither will he prolong his days like a shadow, because he does not fear before God.

Ever been to the funeral of a scoundrel?  Someone you know had evil intention in their eyes.  There is still hope that in that moment they looked to Jesus and He said, I will see you today in paradise, but nothing in their life pointed to that… People lie at those funerals and say all sorts of nice things… people avoid those funerals and just have other things going on that day that they can’t get out of… those funerals are hard… but wisdom shows us that oftentimes the hard things are what’s good for us… I would recommend for you to go to those funerals and to be a light in dark places… that’s the really fertile ground for telling people about Jesus… not so much in the going door to door and annoying them when they are comfortable at home, but bringing hope when they are uncomfortable and questioning the meaning of life… evangelism at a funeral in the saddest places… bringing hope where there is no hope, I think that is what Jesus would do…

You see, before Jesus, Solomon realized that Man could not know God’s ways.  We have seen Jesus, the God-Man, we see what he did in life situations and how he acted and what he said and did.

Here is how wisdom deals with injustice:

14 There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. 

Notice the prophetic picture here of Jesus on the cross, the righteous to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and Barabas, the wicked to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous.  And this pattern will be seen throughout your life, the wicked that get away with it and the righteous who are falsely accused.  And, what do you recommend Solomon? —Worship Team Come Up —

Here’s how wisdom deals with not being able to figure in all out:

15 And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.

16 When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep, 17 then I saw all 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.

Solomon recommends JOY… not happiness, not pretending, not complaining about how hard things are, but actual JOY!  Because the JOY of the Lord is our strength.

Isaiah Prophecies about this JOY: in Isaiah 51:3

For the Lord comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; JOY and GLADNESS will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.

What the experiences of your life should show you, especially the hard experiences, is that the ONLY REAL RESPONSE IS THE JOY OF THE LORD!

Let’s sing and make a joyful noise to our Lord, for He alone gives us wisdom and a perspective to see that He is the answer to our search for the meaning of life.  We find it only in Him… He brings us hope and peace and joy in the midst of our storms… so let’s give him back our praise for all that He has done all that He is continuing to do in us.  Amen.