Testing the Limits of Wisdom

John Wivell

Ecclesiastes • Sermon • Submitted a year ago • Presented a year ago

Ecclesiastes 7:15–29

Wisdom

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Scripture Reading

Ecclesiastes 7:15–29 NKJV

I have seen everything in my days of vanity: There is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, And there is a wicked man who prolongs life in his wickedness. Do not be overly righteous, Nor be overly wise: Why should you destroy yourself? Do not be overly wicked, Nor be foolish: Why should you die before your time? It is good that you grasp this, And also not remove your hand from the other; For he who fears God will escape them all. Wisdom strengthens the wise More than ten rulers of the city. For there is not a just man on earth who does good And does not sin. Also do not take to heart everything people say, Lest you hear your servant cursing you. For many times, also, your own heart has known That even you have cursed others. All this I have proved by wisdom. I said, “I will be wise”; But it was far from me. As for that which is far off and exceedingly deep, Who can find it out? I applied my heart to know, To search and seek out wisdom and the reason of things, To know the wickedness of folly, Even of foolishness and madness. And I find more bitter than death The woman whose heart is snares and nets, Whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God shall escape from her, But the sinner shall be trapped by her. “Here is what I have found,” says the Preacher, “Adding one thing to the other to find out the reason, Which my soul still seeks but I cannot find: One man among a thousand I have found, But a woman among all these I have not found. Truly, this only I have found: That God made man upright, But they have sought out many schemes.”

Now part of being wise is knowing your limits. So a wise man will know what he can do and what he cannot do. But wisdom itself has limits, so being wise means knowing how far your own wisdom can take you. Solomon therefore meditates on the reality of discovering wisdom in this world.

Limit 1: Life Isn’t Fair

Solomon begins his statement on the limits of wisdom by observing that life isn’t fair. He has observed a just man perishing in his righteousness and a wicked man prolonging his life in his wickedness - neither are fair.

Job was the classic just man who perished in his righteousness; Stephen the Martyr was another

Jereboam II of Israel was a wicked man who nevertheless reigned for an impressive 41 years 2 Kings 14:23-27

2 Kings 14:23–27 NKJV

In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, became king in Samaria, and reigned forty-one years. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin. He restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which He had spoken through His servant Jonah the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher. For the Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter; and whether bond or free, there was no helper for Israel. And the Lord did not say that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven; but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash.

But why isn’t life fair? because we live in a fallen world, one cursed by sin in the Garden of Eden, and still our world is negatively impacted by that sin and the ones after it all the way down to today. It’s the nature of sin that it doesn’t just hurt the sinner, but it hurts other people. It’s inevitable, because we all live on the same earth, so whatever one of us does, impacts others based on your connection to them.

The second observation seems at first to be quite strange - what’s wrong with being righteous and wise, exactly? And this from the man who told us that “with all your getting get understanding.” Prov 4:5-7

Proverbs 4:5–7 NKJV

Get wisdom! Get understanding! Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth. Do not forsake her, and she will preserve you; Love her, and she will keep you. Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.

The answer is found by paying attention to what Solomon has just said - sometimes life isn’t fair. If that’s so, then expecting life to always work out better for the wise, and worse for the foolish will leave you disappointed.

Job’s friends fell into this trap. They assumed that the wise always prosper and only the foolish suffer, so when Job suddenly suffered immensely, they concluded that he must have done something foolish, when he hadn’t. Job 4:7-8 [Words of Eliphaz]

Job 4:7–8 NKJV

“Remember now, who ever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright ever cut off? Even as I have seen, Those who plow iniquity And sow trouble reap the same.

The opposite - being overly wicked — doesn’t mean that it’s Ok to be a bit wicked. Rather, what he’s saying is that if you notice life isn’t fair, and conclude that it doesn’t matter how you live, your wicked lifestyle will eventually catch up with you anyway. You’ll die young because you didn’t listen

Finally, Solomon argues (v.18) that the one who fears God will keep a balance, avoiding drawing quick conclusions about whether someone is good based on whether they are suffering; and also not giving up on doing good because sometimes life isn’t fair. So the answer to avoiding foolishness because life isn’t fair is to fear God.

Limit 2: Wisdom is needed for Fallen Humans

Solomon turns from life in general to the demands that living with fallen, sinful humans places upon each of us. Of course, all of us are sinners, Christians are just sinners saved by grace. And here’s one OT statement that emphasizes just that very thing (v.20).

This principle - that everyone is a sinner, has a corollary. Sin makes things complicates, so when someone is given authority - for example, being a ruler of a city - the fact that a sinful ruler must govern other sinners means that wisdom is going to be necessary to sort out the confusion sin will always create. Since everyone is a sinner, its not like there’s any other way of ruling a city.

We can carry that idea further - if sin makes things complicated, more sin make it harder. For example, which do you think is difficult. Teaching an ordinary high-school class; or being the teacher at a Juvie hall? Obviously teaching is difficult anyway, but clearly the troubled youths are going to be much harder and take more wisdom to handle properly.

Now fortunately, a wise man will be able to sort out the confusion, and his ability as a wise man will strengthen the city more than simply multiplying the people in charge.

The second observation that follows, is that you should not take people too seriously. That is, you know, if you think about it, that you yourself sometimes secretly have less than complementary things to say about, well, lots of people, even if you don’t voice them. You think other people are different? So give people a bit of slack, not because they don’t deserve rebuke, but because you’ll wear yourself out trying to fix everything and everyone, and you’ll end up doing much more harm than good.

Now there’s clearly a balance here. Give people too much slack, and you’ll not help them change and grow and they’ll hurt themselves in ways you might have been able to prevent. But be too focused on spotting negatives, and you’ll destroy relationships and people will stop listening you anyway, so you’ll end up doing nothing except getting people to be suspicious of you. Sometimes an issue needs addressing. Sometimes “love covers a multitude of sins.” Wisdom is knowing the difference.

Limit 3: Human Wisdom is not enough

Solomon above all people was successful in his search for wisdom. He strove to be the wisest human, and managed to be just that. But even Solomon’s human wisdom was not always enough. That’s what he was saying. Sometimes even when we try to be wise, and search to know the consequences of wisdom and folly in that situation, sometimes we end up doing the wrong thing anyway.

If that’s true, then Solomon applies the idea to that most intimate of relationships - marriage. As the closest relationship on this earth, getting that wrong puts you in a world of hurt that can’t be righteously escaped from. That’s what he means about the woman whose heart is a trap. Solomon had a thousand women - some of them had to be bad girls. So even the wisest man ended up getting trapped by his own foolish choices; he knew he was trapped but couldn’t do anything about it, even though he was the king.

So what’s the answer when our wisdom isn’t enough? lean on the Lord Prov 3:5-6. If you live a life that pleases God you’ll avoid the “people trap.” I think it can and should apply to more than just marriage. Solomon is just using marriage as the biggest, most serious example of when your own human wisdom isn’t enough.

We should remember that since everyone is a sinner, both men and women can be that kind of “trap.” But Solomon’s original audience was men, so that’s why he mentions women; it’s because he is talking about choosing a spouse. or spouses in Solomon’s case.

Limit 4: A true Friend is hard to find.

Now at first glance this passage seems to be shockingly misogynistic. one in a thousand men but no women? What’s Solomon talking about?! To solve that, it’s important to figure out what Solomon is looking for. I think he’s looking for a true friend, for someone who will love without conditions. Remember that Solomon is the king, and he is fabulously wealthy. When you’re in that spot, everyone seems to love you, but it’s because they want something from you. They want to advantage themselves because you’re powerful; they want some of your money. Solomon is saying that he wasn’t very close to his thousand wives (“all these” would be all his wives.”). He can’t confide in them, because he’s got a thousand of them.

It’s sad and not the way marriage is supposed to work, but in Solomon’s case, it’s inevitable. He has no friends among his wives; and the vast majority of the men he deals with aren’t really his friend either. Most of them want something from him. that’s not the way friends are supposed to work, but in Solomon’s case, it’s inevitable.

But why does it have to work that way? Why can’t Solomon find a real friend? Because people are sinners, so they all plan schemes to better themselves. God didn’t make them this way. He created Adam and Eve to be innately good; however, when they fell, people became schemers, and this universal tendency to scheme prevents people from forming genuine friendship. Since this isn’t the way God meant for people to be, this causes loneliness that can’t be readily fixed.

So how do you fix that? well, to a large extent, you can’t. But you can make it better, by devoting yourself to the church, where you’re more likely to find people like that. Even in the church, a true friend can sometimes be hard to find. It’s part of the problem of human nature, and Christians are still human.

Conclusion

So what’s the solution to the limits of wisdom? To some extent, we’ll have to wait for a better world to escape all of these limits. We live in a fallen world where the sins of others hurt us; we live in the midst of fallen humans where their sin, and our own, makes our life needlessly complicated; We live in a world under the judgment of God, which means that sometimes we can’t predict all the consequences, even when we try; We live with sinful people, which prevents us from being as close to our fellow humans as God originally wanted us to be.

The solution is to lean on the Lord’s Wisdom. Live a life that please him, and God will protect you from many of these consequences; and when he doesn’t, he’ll use it in your life for your own good. The solution is to recognize the limits of wisdom, while still fearing the Lord. Give people enough slack so we can coexist in this fallen world, without giving them so much rope they hang themselves. Recognize that sometimes it isn’t fair, but that God will, someday fix it. In the mean time, we live in a fallen world with fallen people; Praise God the day is coming when there will be no sorrow, crying, or pain. Until then, my heart will go on singing; until then, with joy I’ll carry on. Until the day, my eye beholds the city, until the day, God calls me home.

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