Ecclesiastes 9:13
Thanks for having me back. It’s
good to be back again tonight. What a treat to begin and end
the day with worship, right? It is. It’s a blessing that we
shouldn’t take for granted. I think that it’s just so easy
with the freedoms that we have to be able to worship the Lord
in our nation that we can take that for granted. And that’s
not the case everywhere in the world. Our believers, our brothers
and sisters around the world suffer for doing what we’re doing
right now. So it’s just a privilege to be able to worship in the
morning and in the evening together. I have my computer in front of
me this evening because my printer decided to, my printer is a very
strict sabbatarian and takes Sundays off sometimes, so I am
using my computer for the notes that I have. But we’re going
to look at Ecclesiastes chapter 9, and we’re going to begin in
verse 13, and then we’re going to read through chapter 10, verse
20. So Ecclesiastes 9, 13, and then
we’re going to read through the entirety of chapter 10. The title
of this message… Kind of goes in line with what
we explored together this morning. We’re looking tonight at what
it looks like to live wisely under foolish leadership. How
do we live wisely under a government and under authority that oftentimes
acts and makes decisions that are not in the best interests
of people and that is quite foolish at times? Now, I have to tell
you, one of the Old Testament scholars that I was reading when
I was preparing the sermon said that this is probably the most
difficult passage in Ecclesiastes to understand. And there are
other Old Testament scholars who believe that Ecclesiastes
is the most difficult book in the Bible to understand. So this
is a difficult passage. And when you read it, you’ll
understand that because Solomon, who’s writing here, is not the
world’s most linear thinker. If you’re someone who likes things
in ABC outline, you’re not always going to get that from this.
But we’re going to do the best that we can. And one of the things
that I think is clear from the passage is that there are really
two ways to live. There are ways that we can live
that are in line with what is wise, and good, and true. And
then there are ways in which we can which are foolish. And
foolishness, it doesn’t take much of it to ruin that which
is wise. In fact, you can live a life
that is in pursuit of wisdom and goodness and truth for many,
many years, and it just takes one foolish act to undo and cause
so much turmoil and undo so much of that wisdom which you’ve pursued. And we need to have this in mind
as we figure out how to best and in the most godly way live
under leadership that is less than ideal sometimes, less than
godly. So with that in view what I want
to do is take a moment to pray and then we’ll hear God’s word
together. So let’s pray. Jesus, we need you to open our
eyes and ears and our hearts. We need this Word to feed our
souls every bit as much as we need food to feed our bodies.
So, please nourish us now through the reading and preaching of
your Word. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. So, Ecclesiastes
chapter 9, beginning in verse 13. I have also seen this example
of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. There
was a little city with a few men in it, and a great king came
against it and besieged it, building great siege works against it.
But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom
delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor
man. But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the
poor man’s wisdom is despised and his words are not heard.
The words of the wise, heard and quiet, are better than the
shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons
of war, but one sinner destroys much good. Dead flies make the
perfumer’s ointment give off a stench, so a little folly outweighs
wisdom and honor. A wise man’s heart inclines him
to the right, but a fool’s heart to the left. Even when the fool
walks on the road, he lacks sense, and he says to everyone that
he is a fool. If the anger of the ruler rises
against you, do not leave your place, for calmness will lay
great offenses to rest. There is an evil that I have
seen under the sun, as it were an heir proceeding from the ruler.
Folly is set in many high places, and the rich sit in a low place. I have seen slaves on horses,
and princes walking on the ground like slaves. He who digs a pit
will fall into it, and a serpent will bite him who breaks through
a wall. He who quarries stones is hurt
by them, and he who splits logs is endangered by them. If the
iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use
more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed. If the serpent
bites before it is charmed, there is no advantage to the charmer.
The words of a wise man’s mouth win him favor, but the lips of
a fool consume him. The beginning of the words of
his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is evil madness. A fool multiplies words, though
no man knows what is to be. And who can tell him what will
be after him? The toil of a fool wearies him,
for he does not know the way to the city. Woe to you, O land,
when your king is a child and your princes feast in the morning. Happy are you, O land, when your
king is the son of the nobility and your princes feast at the
proper time, for strength and not for drunkenness. Through sloth the roof sinks
in, and through indolence the house leaks. bread is made for
laughter, and wine gladdens life, and money answers everything.
Even in your thoughts do not curse the king, nor in your bedroom
curse the rich, for a bird of the air will carry your voice,
or some winged creature tell the matter.” That, believe it
or not, is God’s Word to us tonight. So, this passage seems to zero
in on what it means to live wisely under a less-than-ideal world,
less-than-wise leadership, and more particularly, how we should
live under corrupt government, corrupt political leadership.
The world has never been short of this. So what we’re seeing
today and in our own world is nothing new. There’s been foolishness,
there’s been corruption, there’s been wickedness coming from on
high since the very beginning of times. Wicked kings, abusive
kings, and presidents, and powers, and so on and so forth. The world
has always been full of these types of people. And no doubt
some of you are concerned about what life will look like, again,
as we consider what is ahead of us. What is this going to
look like? How are we going to navigate this? How is this going
to work out for our children? How is this going to work out
for us? How is this going to work out for the church in this
antagonistic world, in a world where foolishness seems to be
winning the day. The people that are sitting at
the tables of power in our nation are just so antagonistic very
often to the things of God. So what are we going to do about
that? That’s what Solomon is seeking to help us discover here.
And the way he goes about seeking to answer these questions is
by giving us three creature-based proverbs in this story. A proverb about a fly and a snake
and a bird, and they help us discover what it looks like to
live under abusive leadership. So in chapter 10, verse 1, Solomon
says that dead flies make a perfumer’s ointment give off a stench. So a little folly outweighs wisdom
and honor. In other words, you can have
this beautifully aromatic perfume, something that takes much effort
and energy and thoughtfulness to create, to have. And then
if just one or two little flies get in there and die, the beautiful
smell ends up giving off a stench and it ruins the whole thing.
That’s the image and the sensory data that Solomon wants to impress
upon us. And how many leaders have there
been who have made all kinds of wise decisions over the course
of their rule and yet in their foolishness they allowed flies
in the ointment? maybe even for you in your own
life. You look back upon the history
of your own life, and you see that maybe you’ve made, on the
whole, wise decisions in your life, but there was a moment
where you made a decision that was foolish, and it really sent
you off course, and it caused a lot of destruction to you and
those within your life. Speaking of these people who
are reigning in power and they lack character or competency
or moral conviction and it ruins them and it causes harm to the
people under their care. It reminds us of a story of Solomon’s
son, actually, King Rehoboam, in 1 Kings chapter 12. And in
1 Kings chapter 12, what’s happening there is that King Rehoboam has
all these advisors around him, and they are advising him to
pull back on the oppressive service that Solomon had placed upon
his people. So they’re advising him to do
something good and godly, and yet there’s another group of
advisors that comes into King Rehoboam, and they’re more inexperienced,
but they give him the opposite advice. They give him different
advice. They say that he needs to ignore
the people’s fatigue, and what he really needs to do is continue
to exploit them. He needs to add to their burden.
He needs to suck them dry, and what ends up happening? Well
Rehoboam decides that he’s going to listen to the second group
of advisors and as a result he lost 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel.
The whole kingdom was fractured because of this foolish decision
and his oppressive leadership. Because he was not listening
to wisdom, to biblically framed and shaped wisdom and truth as
to how to love people and work for their best interests. And
contrast that, contrast that story to what you read about
here in Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 13, the first verse that
we read here. The example here is of a poor
yet wise man who delivers a besieged city from an abusive king. And
how does he deliver the city? Is it through his welding of
power? Is it through his money? Or his sharp words? Or his outrageous
promises? Or his covering up failures with
lies and excuses and minimalization? That’s not what he’s doing there. He delivers the city by what it says here in the passage,
by his wisdom. He delivered the city and then
what happens? He’s forgotten. Nobody knows where he’s buried.
Nobody knows where he is. He does what is good and right
and true and he dies and he’s forgotten. No one remembers him.
And yet there were people who still despised his wisdom, still
despised it. And the point that Solomon is
getting here is that wisdom trumps No pun intended. Wisdom trumps
power. It trumps power. It is to be
more greatly valued. And if there was something that
is at odds with the spirit of the age, that is it. Because
when you don’t acknowledge God for who he is, when truth is
made rather than discovered, When you make it up as you go
along, then the way in which you impose truth upon the world
is by power, not by wisdom. But the scripture here has a
completely opposite understanding of what is good and what is right,
what is true. And what we’re being taught here,
what we’re discovering here is that wisdom is to be more greatly
valued. more highly sought than just
power. And that’s what Solomon is saying
here in chapter 10 verse 2, that the heart of the wise inclines
him to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Now
some of you know exactly what I’m about to say, don’t you? That that is, you know, that’s
your political doctrine, right? And you’re like, yes. See, the
Bible even says so, right? The heart of the wise inclines
to the right and the heart of the fool to the left. Well, you
know, let’s not impose our 21st century understanding of things
upon Scripture. Here’s what he’s really saying.
He’s saying that wisdom goes one way and foolishness goes
another. That’s what he’s saying. They’re
at odds with each other. They’re diametrically opposed.
Wisdom and foolishness are opposites. And that’s part of the reason
why there is the polarization that we have in our world. And
if you don’t listen to wisdom, and if you don’t cling to it
with white knuckles, then what you’re going to end up doing
is you’re going to steer in the direction of foolishness. Because that’s
the natural arc of our soul. is to bend in the direction of
foolishness. And so there’s a sort of broad
and narrow application here that I think we need to remember.
From a narrow perspective we need to go and look at what Solomon
says here in verse four, when fools run over us and undermine
what is important to us, what we believe, how we’re to live,
and there’s no question that that’s the reality of life. Then one of the challenges here
is to, and this is a theological term I learned in seminary, chill
out a bit. Calmness will lay great offenses
to rest. That’s what the passage says,
calmness will lay great offenses to rest. We don’t fight foolishness
with foolishness. When we’re shouted down the tendency
is to shout back, when we’re hit we want to hit back harder.
That’s the bent of our heart, to raise the volume, to use sharpened
language. And the volume is loud, I mean
it is dialed up in this world in which we live right now. But
Solomon counsels us differently here and he would know. He would
know, given the life that he’s led and the reign that he has
had, that we ought to stand our ground. Yes, we don’t waver from
truth, but we respond with calmness and a confidence that Christ
is king, a confidence that God reigns and rules and that he’s
sovereign. We don’t just spout out this reformed sovereignty
gobbledygook. We actually believe it. and we
adhere to it and what that does is it places us at a posture
of peace so we don’t have to just wield power instead we can
wield truth and let the Holy Spirit be the Holy Spirit instead
of us being the Holy Spirit. And there’s a colossal difference
I think there. And it’s consistent with what
we see in the Proverbs. Solomon writes in Proverbs, he
says in Proverbs 25, 15 that it is with patience that a ruler
may be persuaded and a soft tongue will break a bone. And in Proverbs
15, 1 Solomon says this, he says, a soft answer turns away wrath. but a harsh word stirs up anger.
It’s not only what you say, but it’s how you say it. How you
speak about those who lead poorly, who lead in ways that are unjust
and unwise, you need to speak to those who
follow them and admire them in ways in which they can hear.
Sober-minded, measured, gentle words. And that’s kind of where
the broad application comes in, because as we encounter those
in authority over us and consider how we are to live really under
foolish leadership, we need the wisdom to know whether we ought
to even speak at all. Sometimes we should, and sometimes
we should just stay silent. And the challenge here is that
we need the wisdom to know the difference. We need to be anchored
in the wisdom that God brings to us through his scriptures,
through his word. We need to seek it. We need to
desire it more than any treasure that we could desire. We need
to spend time with wise people. We need to read wise things. We need to hear what is good
and right and true. And more than anything, we need
to live ourselves under the lordship of Christ again. who speaks wisdom
and truth into our life through his word.” So that’s the first
thing, the fly and the ointment part. Now here’s a second creature
that Solomon’s going to introduce to us here. And it’s in verses
8 and 11, and it’s a point that he illustrates through a serpent,
through a snake. Now listen, I don’t know how
I’m going to die. But I know how I’m not going
to die. And I’m not going to die by getting bitten by a snake.
Like, that’s not happening to Darren Stone. I stay away from
those slithery creatures. Most snakes are just completely
fine. But you only have to be wrong
one time, right? And that is something that I don’t want to
experience. But in verse eight, what you
see here is a person who’s, this is the image, so crazy, but what
he’s doing, he’s hacking away at a wall, and behind the wall
there’s this poisonous snake that was nesting in it. And in
verses eight and nine, we see that no matter how much wisdom
you have, he’s trying to do a good and right thing, he’s trying
to do a wise thing, but no matter how much wisdom you have, you’re
still not immune to danger. So we’re to crave wisdom, we’re
to pursue it, But that doesn’t, even that doesn’t make us immune
to danger. You can wear your mask all you
want, you can socially distance, you can wash your hands, you
can do all of those things and still get a virus. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t
do those things. It’s wise to take care of yourself. It’s just
that All the wisdom we have in the world isn’t going to totally
keep us from the danger of living in a broken and fallen world.
And I should remind you that God is ultimately in control
of your life and this world. And we are at his fatherly disposal
in every condition in which we find ourselves. And we have the
responsibility to live wisely. And more often than not there
are blessings that attend a wise life under the Lord. But the
Lord is the one who gives and the Lord takes away, isn’t he?
Our wisdom isn’t going to make us immune to pain and suffering.
It doesn’t just make it vanish. So we do well to stop fretting
about everything under the sun and live our lives. as if we were in the hands of
our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who works all things for our
good, for the good of those who love him and who have been called
according to his purpose. And that’s what can anchor you
in the midst of just utter confusion and utter what feels like chaos,
is to know that he’s working for your good, to know that he’s
pursuing your good, that he loves you, and that he is a good father. And to pursue wisdom is good,
but it’s never going to fully insulate you from the perils
of living under foolish leadership. But it certainly does help. And
if you take what you discover in verses 10 and 11, Ecclesiastes
chapter 10, you see here that people oftentimes suffer because
of their own foolishness. They cut with a dull blade. They work themselves to the bone,
they mess with the snake before it’s charmed, and they get bitten
by it. Those things happen oftentimes
because of their stupidity. A while back, Melanie and I,
we went to Bed Bath & Beyond and we bought these lifts for
our bed. It was just designed to give
it a little bit more of a prominent look, but mostly it was for practical
purposes so we could put our luggage underneath the bed. We
didn’t have enough storage in our house, so we wanted to put
the luggage underneath the bed and a few other things. And so
the first foolish thing that we did is we decided that we
wanted to install these lifts on our bed at around midnight
on a Saturday night. Now, that is not usually where
your best decisions are being made, but that’s what we decided
to do. And the second dumb thing is that It was later in the day
and we were tired and we decided not to take the mattress off
of the bed frame. So this thing is heavy now and
I’m hunched over a bed and lifting the bed while Melanie is sliding
these lifts underneath the bed frame. But the other thing is
that it’s a king-size bed, and so you’ve got to get into the
middle of the bed, all the way underneath, and put one of the
lifts underneath there so that it doesn’t just fall apart in
the middle. what happens is I’m getting underneath
the bed and I’m going to lift the bed and she’s going to, while
I’m lifting the bed, she’s going to put the lift in the middle
part. Well of course what happens is
the whole bed kind of slides off the frame and the frame collapses
and there we are with our white legs hanging out underneath the
The bed frame. I mean, it’s like from knees
from knees down out We’re both underneath there and I’ve got
no leverage to lift this up and I’m thinking we’re about to have
a 9-1-1 moment here But I can’t dial 9-1-1 because I can’t get
to my phone. So this is how it all ends I
mean, is this what’s gonna happen here and we’re stuck and and
I And it was a bad situation. So here’s the point of that ridiculous
story. We eventually will hear to live to tell about it. So
things somehow worked out. But it was touch and go there
for a while. And the point is this, right? We sometimes suffer
because we live in a fallen world, but a lot of times we suffer
because of our own stupidity. Right? We suffer because we make
foolish decisions where we don’t take into account fundamentally
the wisdom of God, the truth of God, the righteousness of
God, being dialed in and anchored to who he is. And because of
that, we suffer. we experience pain. And you don’t
need me to tell you that we live in a world where it’s just in
so many respects gone off the rails. It really has. And there’s a good chance that
the evil that we’re experiencing in this world may increase and
become more intense. and that what gets articulated
to your children and grandchildren becomes even more profane and
more bizarre and more foolish. And our calling isn’t to capitulate
to it and fight stupidity with stupidity on the other hand,
but what we do and how we live is indicative of not only what
we believe but it’s indicative of in whom we believe. And the calling for us is to
let our light shine before men that they would see our good
works and glorify our father in heaven. To be anchored to
the wisdom of God so that we know how to live in this foolish
world. And to keep this in view, there’s
this image that Jesus even brings to us in Matthew chapter 10,
right? He says that he’s going to send us out like sheep into
the midst of the wolves so that we should be as wise as serpents
and as innocent as doves. And that’s our calling. That
in Christ, because of his goodness and faithfulness and truth, We
go into the world as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. We don’t imbibe the world’s foolishness
to fight the foolishness of the world. And finally I want to
just point out the third creature here. The third creature is found
at the very end of the passage in verse 20 and that’s the bird.
And in that section, what Solomon says is that, Now, maybe you’ve
heard a nugget of gossip in your life, and you ask someone, where
did you hear that? And they’ll say, well, a little
bird told me. And that’s kind of, I mean, they probably don’t
know it, but that’s where they’re getting this from. They’re getting it from this. In other words, our words are
very rarely kept as classified information. It just gets out. In an evil world, where vocalized
contempt and criticism for those who govern us is out there all
the time. When we speak that way, it comes back to bite us so often. And I think that we’ve seen that
in the church so much over the course of the past several years.
That our language, our discourse about those who are wrong, about
those with whom we disagree, is really no different than that
of godless people. And our collective witness to
the world looks different. I mean, it shows that our hearts
are so often galvanized by what’s happening politically, by who’s
holding all this, by the decisions that they make, and our hopes
and our fears are banked in what is happening there. And so it
comes out What is in our hearts comes out, out of the abundance
of the heart, the mouth speaks, and it comes out. And that’s
the witness to the world, and the world has got to think, what
difference is there, right? Again, these people are just
a voting block, really. That’s what they are. And that’s
not what the church is. Nowhere in scripture, from Genesis
to Revelation, do you see that that is what the church is designed
to be. The church is to be salt and light in the world. And there’s
a great warning for us, there’s a great warning for us here.
I mean in the New Testament you see James reminding us to be
people who are quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become
angry, right? And proverbially you may have
even heard that we’ve been given two ears and one mouth and we
should use those two instruments in proportion to one another.
In other words, we ought to be people who do more listening
rather than just talking and talking and talking. Because
the fool talks and talks and talks. And through all of his
talking, through all of his voicing his opinion, and spouting off
at the mouth about everything, he reveals his foolishness. And we have so many platforms
in which we can reveal that foolishness. And in contrast the wise person
wins favor by taming his tongue, taming her tongue. Jesus again
says this, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Remember that. What we speak reveals our heart. If you speak anger and bitterness
constantly towards those who govern, you’re revealing that
your heart, again, is shaped by who’s in power in this world,
more so than by who’s in power over all things, which is the
Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s not the gospel. That’s
not Christianity, that’s hopelessness. You’re going to be demoralized
by who reigns and rules regardless of their party, by who is in
power, but you’re not when your hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus’ blood and his righteousness. Let me say one last thing before
I finish here. It has to do with a church I
used to pastor. One of the things I wanted to
do was I wanted to help shape our church to think and speak
in ways that were informed by God, that showed love to our
neighbors, yet did not waver on the truth. And so we had some
resolutions of who we were going to be as a church. And one of
the resolutions said this, it said, we resolve to avoid language
that belittles people who hold different political, spiritual,
or social positions. or is disrespectful of people
with whom we disagree, or who may be wrong. We resolve to minister
to people from a posture of humility and grace, rather than of self-righteousness
and pride. We resolve to always talk as
if unbelievers were present, and we resolve to do this not
merely as an outreach strategy, but because the gospel has changed
our heart. Jesus never calls us to water
down the gospel message, never to leave the difficult parts
of the truth aside, never to cave in to the world’s demands. He calls us to stand firm. He
calls us to preach that God is holy, and that we are not, and
that our hope is in Christ alone, and that is where our hope can
lie. And it can’t lie in who governs us, and it can’t lie
in what laws are passed, and it can’t lie in what we accomplish,
or any of those things. It can only rest in Jesus, but
we’re called to speak that truth in love. were called to show
honor and respect to those who have not earned it. All of the
callings to show honor to those who rule are not contingent upon
their deserving of that honor. were to give that to them because
God has in His sovereignty and in His wisdom, beyond anything
that we’ll ever figure out, placed those people right where He has
them. And so we show them respect that
is due to them. We approach our leaders and we
approach our neighbors from a place of humility rather than pride.
And my prayer for myself and for you as we go forward into
this really really bizarre time that we live in is that he would
grant us wisdom, that he would grant us grace, that we would
seek wisdom, that we would speak wisely in a world that is hopelessly
broken apart from Jesus Christ and the gospel. Amen. Let’s pray
together. Jesus, we thank you for your
word, and we pray that you would continue to knead out your truth
and grace in it, and make us repentant, and stir up humility,
and give us great joy in your promises and in your precepts.
and that you would continue to build in us a hope that is living
and active and eternal based upon the reality of what you’ve
done for us in Jesus Christ. It’s in him we pray. Amen. Let us close our time of worship
with standing and singing Psalm 20B.