Blessed Balance
Ecclesiastes 7:15-29
Matt Chandler often tells his church, “Your life can change with one phone call. You’re not exempt.” Have you ever gotten one of those calls? “The cancer returned. There was an accident. I’m so sorry to inform you that…” As a pastor, I have received too many of these phone calls from dear friends and godly saints who share their pain, asking that infamous question, “Why? Why did this have to happen?” Tragedy can strike us anywhere and at any time. And when tragedy strikes, it does not always make sense. Why does the drunk driver live, while the godly mother of three young children dies? Why do the righteous die young and the wicked find old age?
Has life ever perplexed you? If so, you are in good company. For King Solomon, the preacher of Ecclesiastes, offers us wisdom to navigate life’s most pressing questions in hopes we will avoid the extremes, finding the blessed balance of living life before God.
The Blessed Balance of the Fear of God
In the first half of chapter 7, Solomon shows us several benefits of wisdom. In the second half, he wants to show his readers the limits of wisdom. Ecclesiastes 7:15-17 says,
[15] “In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. [16] Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? [17] Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?”
He begins with an observation of what he has seen in his vain and brief life. He sees righteous, godly people perish, while the wicked continue in their wickedness and prosper. This is a similar observation that Asaph makes in Psalm 73. He looks at the wicked prospering and increasing in their riches, while he tries to live righteously and is suffering. He was about to despair until he went to God’s house and considered the end of the wicked. Asaph looked past life under the sun to the one who rules over the sun.
Solomon offers a warning to us. He tells us not to be overly righteous and make ourselves too wise. He is not saying that pursuing righteousness is bad, for the rest of the Bible teaches the opposite. Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33) There are countless places throughout the Bible that encourage the pursuit of righteousness. Solomon is warning his readers not to be self-righteous or to use their righteousness to try and manipulate God for a long life. “Your life could change with one phone call. You’re not exempt.” A godly, righteous life does not make us exempt from tragedy.
There will always be the temptation in the human heart for self-righteous entitlement. We may believe that we do not deserve trial, persecution, or tragedy because we have lived a certain way. We may know this intellectually, but when we get that phone call, we still too often believe that we do not deserve it. “Lord, I have been faithful to you. I attend the gatherings regularly. I give my money away faithfully. I have been faithful to my spouse and raised my kids to fear you. Why would you allow this to happen? I do not understand.” Beloved, God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good. He sends rain on the just and the unjust. We cannot expect a life free from tragedy because we live in righteousness. God determines the times and the seasons of our lives. “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.” God sets the course of life. He is over life and death.
One small way to be protected from this self-righteous thinking is to remind yourself every time you are asked, “How are you doing?” “Better than I deserve” could be your reply. You do not have to always say it, but you should at least think it. We can focus on all the ways life is unfair, or we can look for how God’s grace and kindness sustained and carried us in the midst of our trial. If you are a Christian, you are always better than you deserve. Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death.” What we deserve for our sin is death, condemnation and separation from a Holy God. Let us never believe that we can make the opposite somehow true. “For the wages of righteousness is life.” As sinners, we cannot be righteous. One sin separates us from righteousness. One lie, one judgmental thought, one angry reaction makes righteousness and life impossible for us. Therefore, God sent Jesus Christ, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. Beloved, you are always better than you deserve because of the second half of Romans 6:23. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We cannot earn righteousness and life. We only can receive it. God offers eternal life through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is received only when we repent of our self-righteousness and efforts to earn salvation through our own works, submitting to Jesus Christ as Lord. Hear the ending of that verse again, “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Friend, repent of your self-righteousness. Submit to Jesus as Savior and Lord. For the righteousness he offers to us is always better than we deserve.
The second warning that Solomon offers is not to be overly wicked or to behave like a fool. He is not permitting a small amount of wickedness or that you can sin, just as long as it is not the really big ones. He is warning his readers not to give up and give themselves to sin when tragedy strikes. Some experience tragedy or see godly people suffer young, and they throw up their hands and say, “If that happened to them, why do I even bother? What’s the point?” I am sure many of you have had a season when you wanted to make a change in your life, and you started to read your Bible more. You were serving the church more faithfully and praying more, but the outcome you were hoping for never arrived. This may have led you to despair, turning you back towards sin. “If I worked hard to be righteous and that didn’t work, why don’t I just live it up? It doesn’t matter anyway.”
Do you see the dangers of these two extremes? The twin dangers of legalism and licentiousness have always been in the human heart. Solomon offers how we overcome these extremes, an exhortation he has already said several times before. Ecclesiastes 7:18 states, “It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.” It is the fear of God that allows you to overcome self-righteousness and it is the fear of God that allows you to overcome sinful resignation. When we live in the fear of God, we do not live to try to earn an easy life or a long life through good works, but rather the pleasure of our Creator. We live, not to earn earthly blessings, but we live in the hope of eternal joy. When we live in the fear of God, we do not give ourselves to wickedness because we know that one day we will have to answer for them. We do not live for life under the sun but for the one who rules over the sun. To live in the fear of God is to live Coram Deo, before the face of God.
Remember that Solomon offers the fear of God as the solution to what he sees in his brief life. “There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing.” Solomon does not explain why the righteous die young or why the wicked prolong their life. He does not explain because he can’t fully explain it. Human wisdom has its limits. One of the recurring themes in the second half of the book of Ecclesiastes is how man cannot find out what comes after him. We see that in Ecclesiastes 7:14 and again in 7:23-24 where it says, “All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, ‘I will be wise,’ but it was far from me. That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out?”
Beloved, “Your life can change with one phone call. You are not exempt.” I have sat with grieving widows and widowers as well as parents and children as they got those awful phone calls of the death of a loved one. I have cried with dear brothers and sisters as they got phone calls of test results and received the timeline of the length of their days. They all want to know why? Solomon is trying to help us by saying, “We don’t know.” There are limits to human wisdom. We may not ever fully understand this side of eternity why things happen as they do, but we can deal with them in the fear of the Lord. We don’t give up on God or try to manipulate him, but we trust him. We do not know our future, but we know who holds our future. The Apostle Paul’s words are helpful for us here in Romans 11:33–36.
[33] Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
[34] “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
[35] “Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
[36] For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
When we do not understand life, let us trust God. His ways are inscrutable and his judgments unsearchable. He is God and he is good. He will carry us through all the “phone calls” in our lives.
The Blessed Balance of Humble Honesty
Solomon wants to help us see that there are limits to human wisdom. And yet, it is understanding our limitations that help us live in wisdom. Ecclesiastes 7:19 reminds us that “Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city.” It is clear to see that Solomon wants us to see the strength that wisdom offers us even in its limitations. The wisdom that Solomon specifically wants us to see is that all humanity is sinful. There is wisdom in understanding the depravity of man. If we are honest with ourselves and our sin, we will develop humility. Humility is the essence of true wisdom. It is admitting that you do not know everything, and you must submit to another. God is the Creator. We are mere creatures.
The depravity of man is a very practical doctrine. Theology drives practice. Every area of life and ideology in our world is driven by particular theology. Secular humanism undergirds much of popular American thought. It teaches the belief that humanity is capable of morality and self-fulfillment without a belief in God. The Bible strongly disagrees with secular humanism. The Bible teaches that all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God. There is no capacity in humanity for morality and goodness without God. Solomon states it clearly in Ecclesiastes 7:20. “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” Paul says in Romans 3:9, “None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” The reason our world is broken is because of sin. We are broken individually because of sin. We are broken as a society because of sin. Sin is at the core of every problem in our world. Why is discontent in your life? Sin. Why is there relational friction? Sin. Why is there ethnic oppression? Sin. Why is there slander and anger? Sin.
I want our society to improve. I want for people to treat one another with kindness and civility. I want structures that are designed to oppress people to be changed. I want to enact laws in our country that protect the weakest and most vulnerable among us. But I do not believe society will change until sin is addressed. We are missing the root problem, and if we miss the root problem, we will never get to the root solution. It is like someone who can’t walk long distances due to shortness of breath from lung cancer, and the recommendation is to get better shoes. The wrong diagnosis will always lead to the wrong solution. As Christians, we always must bring a robust biblical framework into every conversation.
Solomon looks at the world and says it is broken because of sin. And then he provides incredibly practical wisdom in light of the depravity of man. Ecclesiastes 7:21–22 states, “Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.” Do not take to heart all the things people say. Don’t listen to everything you hear because people are sinners. I was on Twitter earlier this week and was so thankful that I am not well known. I do not have a large following on Twitter. No one goes to Twitter or Facebook to find out what Dave Kiehn is thinking about regarding the world. It is shocking to me how many people “curse” others online. Condemning, judgmental, arrogant attacks were in abundance. Solomon would say, “Don’t take it heart. People will curse you because people are sinners.” You and I do not need a large twitter following to have people criticize and curse us in their hearts. If you have people in your life, they are probably going to curse you one day. It may be under their breath or in their heart.
I want to be a good pastor. I want to love people well, but I know there is no way I can care for everyone in the church the way they want to be loved. If 90% feel like things are going great and love the leadership of the elders, there will be 10% who struggle with decisions that are made. How do you deal with criticism? You must remember the depravity of man. First, people will sin against you. Second, you will sin against people. Do not be surprised when people curse you. Remember, Solomon says, how many times you have cursed others. If people knew all my sins, the criticism would be far worse. And yet, the one who knows all loves me in spite of it all. Be merciful when people sin against you, for God was merciful when you sinned against him.
We do not want to be a church known for cursing others. It is sin. We do not want to be a church known for responding harshly when others curse us. It is sin. We want to be a church that has honest humility in understanding our fallenness and our desperate need for a Savior. We want to be a church that has honest humility in understanding the fallenness and brokenness of others in our lives, always treating them with the grace and mercy we have received from God. Do not deny sin. If we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar and his word is not in us. Confess your sin. Admit it. We all are broken sinners, for surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
If you are not a follower of Jesus, have you ever been honest with yourself about your sin? Have you ever come to grips with what your sin deserves? We all have a sin problem. Our sin problem is not just our brokenness with one another but with God. God is righteous and cannot allow anyone in his presence who is unrighteous. We all need righteousness if we want to be with God in heaven. Our sin problem is a righteousness problem. The good news is that God sent Jesus Christ, the righteous, to deal with our unrighteousness. Jesus lived a perfect, righteous life. He willingly laid down his life by humbling himself to death on a cross. He was dead and buried, but God raised him from the dead. The resurrection was God’s sign to the world that sinners could be made righteous again, not by their good works, but through faith in Christ. Hear Paul teach on forsaking this life with the hope of the righteousness that comes through Christ when he says in Philippians 3:8-11 that,
[8] Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ [9] and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—[10] that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, [11] that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Friend, let me plead with you to deal with your sin. Repent and forsake all to follow Jesus Christ in faith. In so doing, you will receive a righteousness from above given by the hand of God, so you may attain the resurrection from the dead.
An honest humility helps bring balance to our life. It helps us understand when we sin and when others sin against us. It also warns us of the trap of folly. Ecclesiastes 7:25–29 states,
[25] I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. [26] And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. [27] Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things—[28] which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. [29] See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.
Solomon reiterates the same point here. We are sinners and in danger of falling into the trap of folly. As Solomon also writes in Proverbs 9, wisdom and folly both call aloud, inviting you to follow them. If you do not understand your own depravity and sinful desires, you may fall into her trap. It is only the one who pleases God that escapes folly and the destruction that comes with her.
Solomon says he searched for the scheme, or the sum, of things. He searched to understand life, but again, he says, “I have not found.” What he has found is sinful people. “One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found.” It is a poetic way of saying how rare it is to find righteousness. He ends by saying, “See this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.” God made man good, but we have fallen into sin.
Beloved, do not underestimate sin. Do not underestimate sin in your heart or in the heart of others. Sin wants to trap you. The way we overcome sin is by having an honest humility about our condition. Yes, for those of us in Christ, we are redeemed from sin and have the power of the Holy Spirit of God. And yet, as long as we are in the flesh, we are susceptible to sin. Know your limitations. Confess your sin. Bring it to the light. When sin is confessed, let us encourage one another with the gospel of forgiveness and mercy. In light of our sinfulness, let me exhort you with Ephesians 6:10–11. “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.”
We are weak, but we are strong in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are schemers, but with the whole armor of God, we are able to stand against the schemes of the devil. We are sinners but are made righteous in Christ. Never lose the blessed balance of our weakness and God’s power.
When your life changes with that one phone call, know that by God’s grace, you will never have to answer it alone.
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul
It is well with my soul.
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