Click on audio player to download mp3 or to change listening speed
Ecclesiastes: Reality Check: Life has Lessons, part 2, 7:15-29
If you want to just take out your Bibles now and tum in them in the Book of Ecclesiastes to chapter number 7. Ecclesiastes chapter number 7 as we continue our study of this very mysterious Old Testament book.
In the movie “City Slickers”, comedian Billy Crystal plays a bored mid-lifer, a guy who works for a radio station selling advertising. He is invited to come to his son’s school to talk about his work. He’s frustrated about his life and his work, and, with a dead pan expression, he delivers a monologue that goes like this: “Value this time in your life, kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have choices. It goes fast. When you’re a teenager, you think you can do anything and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money, and you think to yourself, what happened to my twenties? Forties, you grow a little potbelly, you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud, one of your old girl friends from high school becomes a grandmother.
Fifties, you have minor surgery, you’ll call it a “procedure” but it’s still surgery. Sixties, you’ll have major surgery, the music is still loud, but it doesn’t matter because you can’t hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, You start eating dinner at 2:00 in the afternoon, you eat lunch around I0:00, breakfast the night before, spend most of your time walking around malls looking for the ultimate soft yogurt, muttering all the time, ‘How come the kids don’t call, how come the kids don’t call?’ The eighties, you have a major stroke, and you end up babbling with some Jamaican nurse who your wife can’t stand, but you happen to call her “mama”. Any questions?
Well, we may or may not be attracted to turn to Billy Crystal’s character and direct our questions about life to him. But let me ask you another question. If you had the opportunity to talk to someone who had investigated everything in life; someone who had seen everything in life; someone who had tried everything in life. And was one who had all the money that he needed, and all the wisdom that would be required to investigate all those things—if you had an opportunity to talk to somebody like that, would you listen to them? Would you try to learn from him?
Well, that’s really what we have laid out before us with the Book of Ecclesiastes, because we have the life journal of somebody who did that very thing, whose name is Solomon. And as we have seen in our study, this is a candid exploration of the backwater regions of life. Solomon does not flinch from asking the difficult and deep questions of life. In fact, the whole focus of the book is just looking at life, as we might put it, ‘on the flat lands of earth.’ He’s not looking at it so much from the divine viewpoint as just from the ‘flat land viewpoint.’ Looking at life ‘down under.’ Just one dimension living; just living on the human plain. Life as we can see and touch and hear and experience it.
Some people look at this book as a lot of quirky ramblings. They would say, “Well, this book just belongs in some sort of religious museum.” And yet the things that he talks about in this book are as true today as they were in the day in which Solomon lived. And nothing in the progress of man and civilization has ever proved his conclusions to be false or his advice to be bad.
Now, we have entitled our message today “Reality check: Life has Lessons, part #2”. We covered part #1 a couple of weeks ago. Today we want to look at part #2 about some lessons about life, and in chapter 7 verses 15 to 29 and this morning, we’re going to be looking at three things, so this is our outline, our plan for the day.
Number one, we’re going to see that he is going to say that Life Often Seems Unfair, so how should we live? So how should we live? Verses 15 to 18 cover that. The second thing he’s going to talk about is that True Wisdom is Invaluable, yet we are flawed and limited. We are going to see that in verses 19 to 28. And then number three, he’s going to draw One Clear Conclusion, and that is, our flaws aren’t God’s fault. We see that in verse 29. So that’s the outline, that’s the plan. That’s where we’re going today. And we’ll take it one step at a time.
We will begin, first of all, with the first step, and that is Life Seems Unfair, so how should we live? Notice with me please verse 15. Verse 15 he says, “I have seen everything during my lifetime.” Did you notice that statement? “I have seen everything. I’ve seen it all” he says. “I’ve seen everything during my lifetime of futility, particularly, there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his wickedness.” He is saying, you know, when I look around at life, I notice something: that there are righteous people who die early in life, and there are wicked people who live a long life.
You know, Job struggled with the very same thing. In fact, this surfaces a lot in the Old Testament. You can just jot down a reference; you can look at it later in Job 21.7 -13. But Job said, I see people who are evil and wicked, spending their days in prosperity, and they appear to just be living happy lives, and I don’t understand that.
Another time this surfaces is with a man by the name of Asaph, who is the Psalm writer in Psalm 73. And he says, this just bothers me. He says, when I looked around, I saw people prospering despite their wickedness. And, he says, they seem to live a painless life and they wear pride like a jeweled necklace and these fat cats have everything their hearts could ever wish for. They boast against the very heavens, and their words strut throughout the earth. And he said, I don’t really understand all of that.
It’s an interesting Psalm. By the way I remember preaching that Psalm one time when I was in Latvia, because a lot of evil people were prospering. And when Asaph finally realizes as he looks around on the earth plain, the flat lands, he says, Well wait a minute. Then I remembered the ultimate outcome, the ultimate destiny of the wicked people. And that is that You’re going to wipe them out; and they’re going to come into judgment. Really what he concludes is that the present life that they lead, or they live, is really one of dreams and illusions.
But it still seems unfair, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it to you when you see that type of thing happen…that you have a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness at a young age?
Many of you never had the opportunity to meet Todd Demeter. Todd was a former Wild-Wooder, who for a number of years with us played church league softball. I was on the team with him. That was a great man to have on your team at 6 ft. 5, 215 pounds. Todd was a gentle giant, who had an incredibly sweet spirit. Those of you who are from the Oklahoma City area know something about Todd because in 1979, he was the high-school baseball player of the year in the state of Oklahoma, a right-handed hitting first baseman.
In fact, upon graduating from high school, the two-time defending world champion New York Yankees made him the number 1 pick on their team right out of high school. It was so much fun to go to the church league softball games when Todd was there. It was fun to watch him smack it, you know, and it was just like kaboom! Like it was shot out of a cannon. And then it was fun to watch the guys who thought they could run around the basses on Todd. From the outfield they’d get that frozen rope throw that would come in, and people would just be shocked, they would get thrown out. They would go, “What in the world, who is that out there?”
We had a lot of fun together. I remember traveling together in the same vehicle several years down to the Pine Cove Men’s Retreat with Todd, and we’d have great talks over Scripture. I loved that guy. I really did. Then we1found out that he got Hodgkin’s disease. And they thought they’d battled it back, and then it came back with a vengeance, and the latter years were not very pretty. His weight dropped below 150 pounds. And I remember he had a problem with his nerve, the main nerve in his eye, and one of his eyelids was closed permanently. He just sort of went around like a little Cyclops in appearance. And then, at the age of 35, with five children, ages 11-4, he died. A righteous man who perishes in his righteousness early.
You have that, and then you have a wicked man who prolongs his life in his wickedness. And we’ve all known people like that. One great example to me is Joseph Stalin, who was the leader of the Soviet Union for many years. Do you know that Joseph Stalin—people like to talk about Adolph Hitler—Joseph Stalin was responsible for the execution deaths of twice as many people as Adolph Hitler…20 million of them. Joseph Stalin is someone who would send his goons out on an evening to the streets of the city to pluck off a young teenage girl who they would kidnap, bring them back to his home. He would have his way with her and then snuff out her life that very same night. A wicked man who prolongs his life in wickedness, Joseph Stalin lived to be 73 years old.
You know, it’s just interesting how, if you examine life just on the ‘down under plain,’ the flat lands of earth, on the human plain, at times it just doesn’t seem fair. And ultimately God has all the answers to those things. But it just doesn’t seem fair as we can see it. And so, the question is: how are we supposed to live then? How should we live?
Well, we’re almost shocked I guess when we first read these words in the next 2 verses. Verse 16 he says, “Do not be excessively righteous and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself?” Verse 17, “Do not be excessively wicked and do not be a fool. Why should you die before your time?”
Now, these verses are frequently misconstrued by people. You know, some people say, Well here’s what Solomon is saying, and probably Billy Crystal would say it this way. He’s saying, now don’t get too righteous and too spiritual, you don’t want to be a fanatic. And don’t be too wicked, don’t be too wicked. You don’t really want to be a fool, but you want to stay somewhere in the middle Let’s just focus on moral mediocrity.
See, that’s what some people think he’s saying here. You don’t want to be way too righteous; you don’t want to be way too wicked, way too fanatical, way too foolish. Just be morally mediocre, somewhere in between. Well, that’s not, I believe, what he’s talking about here. This is a difficult passage to interpret, but most scholars believe when he talks about “don’t be excessively righteous” he’s talking about taking righteousness to pharisaical levels. H.C. Leupold who’s a commentator, says he’s talking about righteousness ‘gone to seed.’
Another commentator, Walter Kaiser, describes this idea of ‘not being excessively righteous’ this way. He says “it’s talking about”…listen to this, it’s talking about “a multiplicity of pseudo religious acts of sanctimoniousness; he’s talking about ostentatious showmanship in worship. He’s talking about a spirit of hypercriticism against minor deviations from your own views, with a disgusting conceit and supercilious, holier-than-thou attitude veneered over the whole mess.” You kind of go, “Wow… wow”.
Well, let me give you the Bruce Hess summary here, alright? This is what I believe Solomon is saying. He’s saying this: “Don’t act like something you’re not…don’t act like something you’re not”. When you are excessively righteous, you start having as your aim in your life this super spirituality, that’s what you’re going for. And that’s what the Pharisees did. They wanted to be known as ‘the super spiritual ones.’ They became overly focused on secondary issues in their spiritual life.
In fact, Jesus said of them in Matthew 23, he said, “You strain out a gnat and you swallow a camel.” In other words, you’re very picky about little, secondary issues, but then you’ll swallow a big issue that you shouldn’t, for example being prideful, which is what they were. Remember them? They were just proud of themselves, walking around as the super spiritual ones.
Those who are excessively righteous are those who know how to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s in their little theological system, and yet they don’t love their wife. They’re the ones who will make long lists of what you’re not supposed to do, and yet they really don’t care for and love other people. Don’t act like something you’re not!
He even talks about being overly wise. Now, he’s going to commend wisdom and in verse 19, he’s going to say, “Wisdom strengthens a man more than 10 rulers.” So, he’s not saying, in becoming overly wise, the idea is not, well, you’re going to get too much of that. He’s saying again: “Don’t act like something you’re not”. People who are “overly wise,” quote, quote, are people who act like they’ve got it all figured out. They’re the people who conclude really, practically, that there’s no more inscrutableness to God. Ever met people like that? They’re running around all over the place. They’re the people who have ALL the answers to everything.
And it’s amazing, sometimes, you know, they go off and they read these theological works, and then they come back with all of the answers. It’s amazing to me. I like to call that spiritual adolescence. Those of you who have been parents of teenagers know what I’m talking about. What happens with teenagers a lot of times? They think they’ve got it all figured out. They got all the answers. They just as soon sit you down—and they’re teenagers—and explain life to you. And these people in the church can be the same way. They’ve got it all figured out. Even the inscrutable operation of God, they’ve got all the systems figured out. And what ends up happening? If you act like something you’re not, you become prideful and legalistic and disconnected from the grace of God, and you can ruin yourself. And he says, “Don’t do that.”
Now, notice he says in verse 17, “Do not be excessively wicked, and do not be a fool. Why should you die before your time?” And you know, you first read that verse and you go, ”wait a minute, wait a minute. I’ve been looking for a verse like that, I’ve been looking for a verse that would give me permission to be just a little bit wicked.” And that seems to be what he’s saying, “don’t be excessively wicked.”
Well, I believe he’s saying in these verses: First, don’t act like
| ” |
something you’re not; and secondly, don’t make things worse than they are. Second, the verse is saying, “Don’t make things worse than they are.” Don’t just say, ”Well, I’m just going to chuck it all and go crazy”. His conclusion is: you’re going to be a fool if you do that because you’ll end up dying before your time.
You know, I can still remember the Saturday morning I got up early in the morning. I’m not even sure why I was headed north on Western Avenue. I don’t even remember why I was going up there, but I was driving up Western Avenue on Saturday morning and I came upon what was very quickly evident to be a very recent car wreck. In fact, I was the second car that arrived from the south. And I got out and I walked up to see if I could help in some way. This was this incredible wreck, in fact there was a car on fire.
What had happened is that 4 teenagers from Oklahoma City had stolen a vehicle, and they were out for a joy ride. They’d come about 70 miles an hour, down one of the streets that intersects with Western Avenue. And they had a stop sign but they didn’t stop. And they ended up broadsiding into another vehicle that happened to be carrying an OU fraternity guy and his mom who were their way to a fraternity event at OU. And all of them were killed in the wreck.
But I can still vividly see in my mind the car that was carrying the teenagers—which was the one that was burning—because three of the bodies of the young men were hanging out of the windows. And of course, at this point, the individuals were all charred, and I was just thinking to myself, as the fire finished consuming that car: those guys were foolish. Foolish. Why do you have to die before your time by being foolish? And that’s really what Solomon’s saying, he says “don’t make things worse than they are.”
You know, it’s interesting the way our minds work. Sometimes our minds play tricks on us. Sometimes we make some bad choices, and you know what we do? We start using those bad choices as an excuse to make more. We say, “You know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve done a couple, a few, little wicked things, so maybe I just ought to do more.” We use that to justify our behavior. And it’s interesting how people will spiral down that way. I’ve done a little bit, oh, maybe I should just go ahead and do a little bit more.
I like the saying I found a number of years ago. It says, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Just think about that picture. If you’ve dug yourself a little hole in making wrong choices, don’t just keep digging there. You stop digging and you get out of the hole.
Notice verse 18 says, “It is good that you grasp one thing and also not let go of the other; for the one who fears God comes forth with both of them.” The idea is that you ought to have a grip on both of these ideas. Don’t act like something you’re not. And don’t make things worse than they are. And then he says, “The one who fears God,” notice that, “comes forth with both of these perspectives in their life.”
When it talks about fearing God, it’s talking about recognizing, actually knowing and recognizing God for who He is, and then living accordingly. When you fear God—when , you recognize Him for who He is and you live accordingly—you’re going to have both of those things in your grasp. You won’t act like something you’re not; and you won’t make things worse than they are.
Then there is a second thing he wants to talk about in the section we’re studying today, and that is that True Wisdom is Invaluable and yet we are flawed and limited. And this is a pretty big section in verses 19 to 28. Notice he says in verse 19, “Wisdom strengthens the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city.” In other words, wisdom is better than surrounding yourself with ten top men. If you can get wisdom, it’s better than surrounding yourself with ten top men. Just jot down a verse that’s always meant a lot to me. Psalm 119:99 says, regarding God’s wisdom and God’s Word, it says “because I have Your Word, I have more insight than all my teachers.” That’s an exciting thing to think about. As a young person, that you have the opportunity to have more insight than all of your teachers because you take God’s wisdom to heart.
Even as you look at the University of Oklahoma, many of those teachers are pursuing the world’s wisdom that’s going to lead to dead ends. And yet, when we have God’s wisdom on our team, we can have more insight on life than all of them. When you heed God’s wisdom it will help you to avoid life’s pitfalls and help keep you ahead of the pack. Anyone want to be ahead of the pack?
You know, we have high school graduates going out right now. You want to know how to get ahead of the pack? You follow God’s wisdom. Those of us who are older already know what that’s like. I remember going to a ten-year reunion. I was ahead of the pack. I was ahead of the pack, not because I’m so good, but because I was pursuing God’s wisdom. And all you have to do is look at the lives at everybody at the ten-year reunion, and the twenty-year reunion, and so forth. And you’re ahead of the pack, because you follow God’s wisdom.
But he has a message for us I think in verse 20, that we need to remember. And this is what I think the message in verse 20 is: “Don’t get cocky.” You know, we can embrace God’s wisdom, but don’t get cocky. He says, ”there’s not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and never sins.” We are still flawed. Even when we embrace the wisdom of God, we are still flawed.
Notice he says in verse 21, “Do not take seriously all the words which are spoken.” Do not take seriously…Don’t give your heart to, literally it says in Hebrew, “Don’t give your heart to all words that are spoken.” Let me give you some advice from that statement: Don’t swallow all the praise that you hear. Don’t give your heart to everything that you hear. Don’t swallow all the praise that you hear. Someone has said this number of years ago, I’ve never forgotten it: “Compliments are like perfume, you’re supposed to smell it, not swallow it”. Don’t swallow all the praise that you hear from people.
On the other side, don’t be shocked when criticism comes your way. Don’t be shocked when criticism comes your way. Notice what he says there in verse 21. He says, “lest you hear your servant cursing you.” Your servant is someone who’s close to you, someone who knows you. You could just use the word roommate, or spouse, or friend, or fellow worker. And when Solomon’s talking about cursing, he’s talking about—I believe—running you down in front of other people. And what he’s saying is, when that happens, don’t give your heart to that, don’t let that just deeply imprint your life. Don’t do that. When criticism comes your way, you do need to listen it. You do need to process it. You need to ask, “What is the core of truth that might be communicated by this criticism?”
We need to be open to wise reproof. But sometimes, what happens when we get criticism? What happens? We allow it to derail us in our life, don’t we? And sometimes to embitter us. It’s always been said to me over the years you can run into some people in the church of Jesus Christ who have withdrawn from ministry in the church because they were wounded by criticism. And then they went into this little self-pity thing, you know. Someone criticized me and I think I’m just going to sit around for ten years and think about that. No! Don’t be shocked when criticism comes your way, and don’t allow it to derail you in your spiritual life.
Notice what he goes on to say there in verse 22. He says, “for you also have realized that you likewise at many times have cursed others.” In other words, the whole idea is, you know, we get on to something that someone says to us, and we forget that we’ve done the same kind of thing. We’ve run other people down in front of others also. And others have failed us. We need to remember that we’ve also failed other people. Every one of us has failed other people. In fact, everyone around you is going to fail you at one time or another. Those of you who are younger haven’t figured that out, it’s about time that you realize it’s coming. Everyone around you will fail you at one time or another, but we need to extend grace to them because we have failed everyone around us at one time or another. We are flawed!
But not only that, we are limited. Notice verse 23, he says, “I tested all this with wisdom and I said, ‘I will be wise.” Solomon said, you know, “I want to become so incredibly wise”. Then he said in the rest of the verse, “but it was far from me, it was far from me.” You know, that’s an amazing statement for someone to make who was the wisest person who ever lived. It’s an amazing statement for someone to make who had all the money he ever needed to pursue wisdom and had all the opportunity he ever needed to pursue wisdom. He says, “I wanted to be wise, but it was far from me.”
This kind of reminds me of when I went off to seminary. I believed I was going to the place where, once I returned from there, I would have all of the answers. I came away realizing I don’t have all of the answers. And you know what is interesting to me? You can spend your whole life trying to understand yourself and you can’t even get that done. You know what I’m talking about? You can spend your whole life trying to understand yourself, and we can’t even get that done. How often have you thought, you know, of someone who is significant in your life, and you could say, “I just wish they would understand me, I wish they would understand me.” We can’t even understand ourselves. Right?
I mean, don’t you have those situations where something just comes out of your mouth and you go, “My gosh, why did I say that?” Or, you know, “Why did I respond like that?” We’re just admitting, I don’t even understand myself. I don’t know why I respond the way I do at times. I don’t know why those words came out of my mouth. And yet I’m expecting everybody else to understand me? Doesn’t make any kind of sense.
He says, You’ve gotta learn, if you’re pursuing wisdom that you’re not going to get there, where you finally have ‘arrived.’ In fact, in essence he says in verse 24: What I had to finally admit is I don’t really have a clue about what God’s doing, and that’s a good place to come to in your life. When you finally realize, I’ve tried to understand, I want to grasp what God is doing. I want to, but it’s sort of like a puzzle. You know, you keep turning it all around—like a Rubiks cube, thinking, finally, I’m going to get all the colors lined up. Hey, the truth of the matter is, we don’t have a clue what God’s doing. We really don’t. We have not arrived. We’re very limited.
But I want you to notice verse 25. Part of Solomon’s investigation was regarding the evil of folly. He says, “I directed my mind to know, to investigate, to seek wisdom and an explanation, and to know the evil of folly and the foolishness of madness.” I like the way the NIV says, he said, “I wanted to investigate the stupidity of wickedness.” What a study that is.
And then he made a discovery in verse 26. Notice what he says there. “I discovered that more bitter than death is the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who’s pleasing to God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her.” He is saying, I went out to study the stupidity of wickedness. I went out there to study the stupidity of wickedness, the night life, the parties, the alcohol, the illicit sexual hookups. And I found that there’s things you’re supposed to avoid.
Now, he speaks here in this verse of a woman, because that’s his experience in life. But really what verse 26 is talking about is broader than just a woman, it’s talking about the foolishness of sex outside of marriage. He is saying, when I started looking at the stupidity of wickedness, I came to sex outside of marriage. Now men and women, sex is a pleasurable thing. Sex can touch us deeply, but outside of marriage sex is playing with fire. And we know, God has not clued us in everything. We’ve already seen that this morning. He just hasn’t. But He has told us clearly that we are to be sexually pure. I Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 3, “This is the will of God, that you abstain from sexual immorality.” And what does sex outside of marriage do? Well, it brings with us—notice the words in verse 26—words like snares, and nets, and chains. It is true that sex before marriage can bring snares and nets and chains.
Ray Stedman tells a story of a young woman who came to him and said that, in her life, she had been seeking the answers to the hungers of her life in one relationship after another with men. She said she woke up one morning lying in bed with a man she had met the night before. As she looked at this male sleeping beside her, she felt the most intense loneliness she’d ever experienced. And she realized then that sex was compounding, not solving, the emptiness and loneliness of her life. Did you catch that? It was compounding and not solving it.
Do you know, young people, when you get involved in sex before marriage it will derail the development of your relationship. You will not even be able to look objectively at this other person because sex tends to cloud everything there, in addition to the consequences that can come from that of pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease and a broken heart.
It will derail the development of your relationship. It will be a snare to you. And that is true before marriage, and that is true inside of marriage when someone looks to commit adultery. There’s a snare and there’s a chain that comes in your life. It will destroy your reputation. It will wreak havoc in your relationships. It can breed fear and anxiety. You notice people who are involved in adultery are not relaxed people? And it can destroy, potentially, your family. You cannot enter into an affair without being trapped. Now, let me just tell you, if anyone knew the danger and the snare of this Solomon did. He’d been involved with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women.
Now, I want you to notice what he says at the end of verse 26. “The one who is pleasing to God will escape from this, but the sinner will be captured by it.” It’s far better to escape. Far better to escape. And, by the way, the more he went into his search—we’re coming to the last few verses—the more flawed he found out the human race is.
Notice verse 27 and 28. He says, “I did discover this, says the preacher, adding one thing to another to find an explanation, which I’m still seeking but I have not found. I have found one man among a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all of these.” He’s talking about finding someone who was upright in his search. And he says, “I have found one man among a thousand and not found a woman among all these.”
Some people go, wait a minute, he’s slamming women here. No, he’s not a woman hater. In fact, he wrote Proverbs 31 about a godly woman. He’s making a commentary on humanity here is really what he’s doing. He’s looking for someone who’s genuinely upright, and he is saying, where was he going to find that in his harem? His harem was largely numbered with women from pagan religions. And, you know, it tells us in the Bible that those women led his heart astray. He said, “When I looked around, maybe one in a thousand,” which very well could be simply saying, “Hey, I virtually couldn’t find anybody who’s truly upright.”
You know, what he’s saying is that there’s no doctrine in the Bible that is as easy to prove as human depravity. All of us are infected by sin. And we have to admit—everyone of us—that we’re not all that we could be, or that we should be. We have to admit that there’s something seriously wrong with the human race. We have to admit that left to our own, we have a proneness to do that is wrong, that which is wrong, and to do our ‘own thing.’ And we have to admit that no one can successfully deny these tendencies as a human race. We simple have the tendency to not be upright.
And that leads us, thirdly, to the one clear conclusion that we see in verse 29, and that is our flaws aren’t God’s fault. He says, “I did find out this, that God made men upright.” God made us without sin. God literally put us into paradise. But what happens? We chose our own way. They, mankind, “have sought out many devices”. I like the way the New Living says it, it says, “Each of us have turned to follow our own downward path.”
See, the world’s problem and our problem can be summed up in one word. What’s the one word?? Three letters, begins with an ‘S’, ends with an ‘N’. Sin! And our only hope to deal with sin in our life is a radical change that comes from God, from the inside out. That’s our only hope that we have. We choose our own path. We got ourselves into the problem, but He is the one who has made the way out.
Now, as we close today, we’re going to ask the question, What does God want from me today? As we’ve looked at this, What does God want from me today? For those who know Jesus Christ, I think what God wants from you and me today is To Operate in Wisdom. To operate in wisdom. What does that mean? First, it means to obey God in what we know. He has told us that we ought to live pure, we are to be clean in a dirty world. Obey God in what you know. Some of us today may have a relationship with another member of the opposite sex that needs to be broken. Some of us have a relationship that is standing in the way of us honoring God and He wants us to operate in wisdom to obey God in what we know.
Secondly, if we’re going to Operate in Wisdom, it means that we need to trust God with what we don’t know. I mean, listen, life is not just cut and dried. Life is not just clearly fair and always readily understandable. Sometimes we just have to trust God with what we don’t know. I will never know exactly why God took Todd Demeter home at 35 years old until I get to heaven.
And then thirdly, to Operate in Wisdom I think it also means that we stay humble at all times. Don’t act like you’ve got it all figured out. All you’re going to do is nauseate everyone around you. Alright? Don’t do that. We need to stay humble at all times. We need to remember that we fail other people also. Isn’t it interesting when they fail us, we want to make a federal case out of it? When we fail other people, we’d like it to be a little municipal misdemeanor. You know, no big thing. Stay humble at all times. We need to be quick to forgive and to extend grace.
And then, if you’re here today, and you do not know Jesus Christ, what does God want from you today? And I think the answer to that is To Seek Him. I don’t know, I don’t know who you may be, and I don’t know what may be going on in your life. But I think God is calling someone here today to seek Him. To be able to recognize that sin is a problem that we all have, and He’s made a way out. T come to Him and admit, “You know, God, I’ve been living independent of You, and the only hope that I have, the only hope that I have of ever breaking out of this, is to have a radical change in my life from the inside out. And that’s what I want.” And You could do that today if you simply express that in your heart to Him.
Now, I’m going to close us in prayer, we’re running a little bit over, so we’re not going to have a closing song. But please stick with me as we just pray together.
“Father, we just thank You again for the Living Word and the truth that it brings to our life. For those of us who know You, we would pray that we would Operate in Wisdom. It’s going to bring the greatest fruit in our life to do that.
But Father, for someone who may be here who doesn’t know You personally, may they realize that God is really not there condemning them. Otherwise, He would have never sent Jesus Christ to die for them. And I think if we’ve got an individual who’s struggling with their life that hasn’t worked the way they wanted to—they’ve tried it on their own, it’s been a dead end—there’s a wonderful, new opportunity if we come to Jesus Christ. We give up our own independence, to seek forgiveness in Him. We would pray that they would do that and come to know the One who is indeed the wisdom of life, Jesus Christ.
And we pray these things in His great, mighty, and precious name, Amen.”