Responding To Paradox

0:00Well, good morning again. How about? Welcome to week number two of the new year. How many by show up? No, I'm just kidding. How many of you have fallen behind a little on reading the entire Bible this year on that plan? How many have fallen behind? We got a hand up. Okay. Let me encourage you, as I encourage myself, to make uh reading through the Bible every year and specifically this year a part of your daily habit. There are many things that we do every day, and I mean many things that we do every day as a part of our daily routine. Things that you do every day almost without thinking. There's no real reason why reading God's Word uh can't or shouldn't be a part of that. I confess to you, church, that I fell a little short in 2023 of getting through the whole Bible in a year, but I'm resolved to not let that be the case this year. I've been inspired by Cora Rose, where she at and she made it through the whole Bible last year. Uh, and with God's help, I pray that all of us uh will get through the Bible this year. Uh in that effort, I'm gonna recommend to you an application uh for your phone for everybody who who puts apps on their phone, which is probably everybody in this room. Uh it costs a little bit of money every year, but it gives you several narrators and Bible translations. It's just it's very well done. Um and you can read along with the Bible as you're listening to it, which is uh it's just I found it's really, really cool. Um and it has the Bible plans built right into it, so you can follow along. Uh it's called um Dwell. I don't think I did I even put that in the notes. I think it's called Dwell. D-W-E-L-L, Dwell. Um so um take a look at that. And now I can send out an email too, but it it's worth it. We can do it. We can get through the whole Bible uh this year together. Now then, turn with me to the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 7. Uh we're gonna cover verses 15 to 29 this morning, uh, which is the rest of chapter 7 that we started last week. The theme or title for this morning is responding to paradox. Responding to paradox. Um this is one of the more difficult passages in this book of Ecclesiastes to preach, as this is one of the more difficult passages to discern. There's kind of a lot going on. It makes matters a little troublesome for me this past week. Uh there's a lot of disagreement from commentators on exactly what the aim of this passage is, what is trying to be communicated, various interpretations of these verses, um, and some a bit of uh unclarity as to exactly the direction of it. Um but this morning, as with all difficult passages, we're gonna go the route that is most clear, uh, that is most direct, and that is most supported by the rest of the passages, both in this letter and in the Bible as a whole. We should all by this point be no strangers to the reality that the Bible is full of paradox. The Bible is full of paradox. Coming off last week, that is especially true. I pray that we see again this week that there is a reason why God hides his wisdom in paradox. There is a purpose behind God concealing things and not giving us a crystal ball through which we may look into and see and know everything that he holds for us. There is a plan behind things not making sense to us, at least not now. And it is chiefly humility and faith. Humility and faith. So how do we respond to paradoxes? How do we respond to them? Do we shake our fist at God? Do we deny his hand in such matters? Those at which we cannot comprehend? Or do we live in simple faith and obedience to him, trusting him and what he is doing in our lives? And so those are the questions that I pray our Lord will help us answer this morning through through this word. So let us stand together. We're gonna read Ecclesiastes chapter 7, starting in verse 15 through the end. 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 evil doing. Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? 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. Wisdom gives strength to the wise men more than ten rulers who are in a city. 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. 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? I turn my heart to know and search out and seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. 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. Behold, this is what I found, says the preacher, while adding one thing to another to find out the scheme of things, which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all these I have not found. See, this alone I have found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you again for your word. We thank you that you have uh given this to us, and Lord, I pray and ask that you would teach us through this word this morning, and you would speak for Christ's sake, and it is in his name that I pray. Amen. Y'all can have a seat. Thank you. Uh when Job was going through his suffering and adversity, the first advice he received was from his friends, three of his friends, but the first advice came from Eliphaz. And he said, This, Remember, who that was innocent ever perished? Or who, or sorry, or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plough iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed. That's Job 4, 7 to 9. This was Eliphaz's way of telling Job that he must have done something wrong. Because innocent people aren't treated like this by God. Upright people, Eliphaz says, aren't cut off from blessing like this. You must have done something terrible, Job. Just repent. Get right, and all this will go away. We have all certainly heard others use the same logic before, right? Perhaps even in our own lives. But the teacher of Ecclesiastes opens this section by saying that he has observed the opposite of that. He says that he has seen everything, and in his observation, there are righteous people who perish, and they perish in their righteousness. And there are wicked men who live long and prosperous lives to fight, despite the fact that they are evildoers. This is certainly supported by the whole of Scripture as well. Abel was a God-fearing man, righteous man, who was murdered at an early age by his brother Cain. Stephen, another good example. He was a warrior for the gospel of Christ. He was stoned to death right when his ministry was beginning. And not just in Scripture, but the whole of church history. We see faithful men and women who passed from this life to the next far sooner than we would have expected. At the same time, we see wicked men doing wicked things, living long, full lives with their families and friends. It's a paradox, isn't it? Doesn't make sense. It seems contradictory. If such things are so plainly true, though, why is our logic typically that of Eliphaz? If something is going poorly for you, surely there is a specific circumstantial reason for that trouble. If we look hard enough, we should be able to root that thing out and fix it. When such attitudes are taken, there are only two ways, or is maybe only two ways, but two specific ways that things go wrong. And there's one way in which we can correct it. And understand here that I'm not just making things up. I'm not just like a worldly psychologist devising some pseudo-intellectual therapy for us this morning. I'm going to take it right out of the word. You can see it for yourself. The first way that things go wrong is to become overly righteous, the text says. Become overly righteous. And this is always coupled with being overly wise, right? Overly righteous coupled with being overly wise. That sounds strange to me, right? How is it possible to be too righteous? How can you be overly righteous? If something is going wrong for me, if I'm going through some great adversity, if I wish to avoid such adversity altogether, if I wish to give myself the best shot at a long and healthy life, I just need to be righteous. More righteous. If I can just be more righteous, surely I will be spared from such things. This is all my fault. I'm just not good enough. I don't read my Bible enough. I don't pray enough. If I could just get better, things would be better. Anybody said that? This is how the Pharisees lived their lives. Such that their individual pursuit of righteousness became the measure of all of their circumstances. This is true of many preachers, pastors today as well. If you live rightly, everything will be right for you. Christians, this type of transactional living is not in accord with the freedom that we now have in Christ, nor does it align with our doctrinal understanding of imputation. How much more righteousness can you add to yourself above the perfect righteousness of Christ that is given to you? That is imputed to you by grace through faith. What are you hoping to achieve with these vain attempts to accomplish something or gain something that has already been accomplished for you and given to you? Jesus said that no one adds even a day of their life by worrying about it. It's also true that no one adds even a day to their life by trying to earn more of them. Let me just figure out all the things, right? I'll learn my way out of the situation I'm in. Maybe I think uh uh the problem is not my behavior or righteousness, but it's just that I don't know enough about this. We talked about this at length when we were going through Knowing God uh on Wednesday night. Shameless plug for Wednesday night starts this Wednesday, 7 o'clock, next door, Pilgrim's Progress. Come and join. Um but we talked to us about this at length when we were Knowing God on Wednesday nights. We often assume that if we can just peek behind the curtain, right? We can just climb up to the control tower and see how all the mechanisms of God's plans are working, then we'll be wise enough, we'll be at peace, if we can just kind of figure everything out, learn enough, we'll be, we'll be set.

14:31Right?

14:31So we spend all of our time and our lives trying to figure out all the what's and the whys and the whens and the where's, but uh, Packer said that true wisdom is the admission that you'll never know. You're never intended to know the ways and plans of God. And that's how our message ended last week, if you remember. God has made the day of prosperity and the day of adversity, and from our perspective, there's no rhyme or reason to his plan, and he has done this so that man may not find out what will be after him. We're not supposed to know everything. How many times have you looked back at your life? I know we've had many of us have had this exact conversation. How many times have you looked back and been able to clearly see how God orchestrated all these details in your lives to bring you where you are today? Even your struggles, even your mistakes, how they were all orchestrated, and you can look back and say, Yeah, I see him there. Can you not see him at work in your life when you look back? Then why not trust him now? Don't be too wise now. Alright, so the first way things go wrong when we attempt to respond to these paradoxes, trying to be too righteous, which we have refuted, trying to be too wise, which we have refuted. The second way we go wrong is to be too wicked, to be a fool, is what our text says. If righteous, God-fearing people suffer adversity and some die far too young, and if wicked people live these long, healthy, prosperous lives, then what's the what's the point? Right? What's the point? If I can't change the will and plans of God by my own actions, then I might as well just do whatever I want. I'm gonna die anyway, right? Uh Brandon and I were talking the other day, uh, hopefully he doesn't mind me saying this, about deep sea fishing. Uh he expressed that he has at least some degree of apprehension towards the water, as we all might if we're out in the in the middle of the ocean. He says, though, he always wears a life jacket on a boat because he believes that, though he believes when it's his time, it's his time, he trusts that. Uh he doesn't want to test it, you know, which I think is an appropriate response. And my response to him was an agreement that God certainly does have our days numbered, but if you jump off a boat into the middle of the ocean, that's probably your numbered day, you know. Brandon may or may not have ever connected that thought with this passage, right, in Ecclesiastes, but he understands, and we all understand, this concept of human agency. If you want to live a long life, don't be a fool. It's pretty simple. In the same way, the fact that our obedience and our practice righteousness doesn't gain us extra favor with God, that's not an excuse or permission to just live however we want or do whatever we want to do. It is true that we're not promised tomorrow. It is true that no matter how healthy or careful we try to be, there's still no absolute guarantee. It is true that no matter how righteous or obedient you are, you're not adding any days onto your life. But just because we're not promised tomorrow doesn't mean we get to live however we want today. And doing so misses the reason for the lack of uncertainty about our future. The point of paradox, as I will repeat multiple times this morning, is dependence on God. We in our sin take such things and we run towards hyper-righteousness, right, in an unhealthy fear of God, or we run towards wickedness and our kind of foolish, flippant ignorance. But both of these are wrong. The text tells us what we are to do. This is how we should properly handle, right? The proper way in which we respond to paradox is all of God. The text says, the one who fears God shall come out from both of them, meaning those two things that we just said were bad, and that comes through fear. And don't think of fear as this unhealthy cowering, but a proper and relevant reverent, sorry, not relevant, but I guess it also is relevant, reverent awe of God. How do we avoid these ditches when faced with the paradoxes of life on earth? We live in awe of God. We don't run to personal righteousness as a means of protection. Nor do we run to wickedness because we feel like what does it matter anyway? We choose the narrow middle road. And that's a theme that will come up a lot during our journey through a pilgrim's progress on Wednesday nights. Careful obedience clothed in pure dependency that walks every step in awe of our God and Savior. Careful obedience clothed in pure dependency that walks every step in awe of our God and our Savior. There's so much freedom, comfort there. A life that isn't worried that a misstep is going to ruin them, and loves God and trusts him enough to follow his ways. Wherever he leads, I'll go. And knows that his ways are best. This is the biblical and healthy way that we respond to paradox. As I alluded to at the beginning of this section, think faith over circumstance. Faith over circumstance. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians, faith over sight. That's how he words it. Quote, so we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.

21:28Okay?

21:292 Corinthians 5, 6 through 9. Well, moving on, uh, starting in verse uh 19, our text continues with uh what feels like just some further random bits of wisdom uh through the end of this chapter. Maybe in some ways uh that is kind of what the teacher is doing here, just continuing to share his wisdom in Proverbs, but there are some connections that we can draw out uh with the remainder of this section. Talked about this earlier in verse 16. The teacher advised us to be against being too wise. Okay? So perhaps here in verse 19, he says this to ensure that we don't take away the assumption that wisdom has no value. Okay? And perhaps that's why he says in verse 19: wisdom gives strength to the wise men, more than ten rulers who are in the city. Godly wisdom is an extremely valuable thing. Certainly we can say amen to that. Godly wisdom is an extremely valuable thing, and one that we most certainly should pursue as one of our highest callings. To be too wise is to presume that your gained wisdom makes you righteous. And that that righteousness that you have gained through your wisdom elevates you to a high or higher favor with God. Hope we see the difference there between wisdom and too much wisdom. We must earnestly and diligently pursue wisdom, not as a means to some selfish end, but rather as a means to God. The former is being too wise, the latter is faithfully seeking the wisdom of God and benefiting from the strength that it provides to us. And following along those lines, the teacher offers to us a bit of godly wisdom in the form of Proverbs through the rest of this text. And even these in themselves contain some degree or a scent of paradox. One of those is surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. Is that what we think? Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins? Is that what the world thinks? Most people live their lives assuming they are basically good. And although they have made some mistakes here or there, they're generally good. And as a result, surely God will show them mercy in the final judgment. Most churches will minimize or gloss over sins in the name of charity and at the expense of honesty and truth. Isn't it strange, though, that we feel as though we need to be more charitable than the Bible is? But then again, man has always done what is right in their own eyes. There is great wisdom and humility for us in these words. Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. So much wisdom there. That the exact wisdom is given twice in Psalms, Psalms 14 and Psalm 53. Paul quotes the same in Romans 3. What is the paradoxical wisdom in telling man that he is inherently not good? Where's the wisdom in that? Telling men that he is inherently not good. He doesn't do good, and he's not without sin. To quote the megachurch pastor down in Houston, you know him. He says this quote, people are beat up enough in their everyday life. I want them to come here and be filled with encouragement and hope. End quote. I certainly do too. But the word of God seems to think that the communication of hope requires the reality and truth be given. And it's a real shame because the truth is so much better than a lie. It really is. There's salvation and paradox. You are not inherently good. I'll say that again. You are not inherently good. There was never a time in your life prior to your salvation when God looked down upon you and thought, man, I'm really proud of that one. Never has a single action of your life apart from the work of the Spirit brought a smile to the face of God. Never not once. All have turned away from him. Despite that God has made man upright, man has sought out schemes, our text says. We follow our passions. We seek our own desires. We chase wickedness. We ensnare our hearts and lusts and deceits. We curse others and we laugh about it. We become bitter when others curse us. That's madness. This is madness. We are all held captive to the sin that dwells within us. Wretched man that I am, Paul says. Wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. The observation of the world shows that our actions do nothing to affect the final outcome of our lives. The observation of the world shows that our actions do nothing to affect the final outcome of our lives. All will pass from this world, the righteous and the wicked, on the appointed day of the Lord, and there is nothing that any of us can do about it. The observation of man shows that no one stands worthy of anything before God, no matter what you've done. And there is nothing that any of us can do to change that. What helpless, hopeless despair is this? What are we to do? How can we even go on from that? Asking such questions is exactly where we all need to be. For that is where we find Christ. The living paradox of God and man, who from eternity past knew our desperation. He knew your heart would find that lowest point. And just when you felt for certain that all was vanity, when there was nothing left to hope in, when all your willing and your running had finally ceased, he extended his hand and he pulled you up from the valley. Then it all makes sense. By bringing order to your chaotic soul. The living paradox brings meaning to otherwise unexplainable paradoxes. Who is this man? That the wind and waves obey him. He's not just a man. He is Emmanuel, God with us. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is your wisdom and your salvation. He is the way, the truth, and the life. Because Christ is the meaning behind all things. He is the explanation of all things. So how do we respond then to paradox? The prophet Isaiah says this in Isaiah 6, 5, woe is me, for I am ruined. Have we been there? Woe is me for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, and his infinite grace and mercy, when he saves you from despair, when your heart finds rest and all in his blessed salvation. Here I am, Lord, send me. I can't make sense of it all, right? We can't make sense of it all. Or even a little bit of what happens in this life. And though at times we are tired and terrified, if the Lord is leading us, wherever he leads, may we gladly follow the King. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we confess to you this morning that we don't understand your ways. We are oftentimes confused by the things that happen to us, Lord. But we trust you. Lord, may our hearts be like the heart of your servant Job, who finally just stood in awe before you and closed his mouth. May that be the disposition of our hearts this morning, Lord, that we just stand in awe of you and trust you, Lord, to keep us on that narrow path. That we not seek out our own personal righteousness, Lord, but we receive the righteousness that you have gained for us and freely give to us by faith. Lord, may we not seek wickedness because we just don't understand. May we be careful to be obedient and faithful to the call that you've given to us. Lord, again, help us to keep help keep us on that narrow path. And we know that we can do that by just standing in awe and trust of you. And as we sang this morning, we come to the cross with empty hands, holding on to nothing, just asking for your forgiveness and your grace. We are so undeserving of it, Lord, but we thank you that you have given us your grace through Christ. It's in his name that I pray. Amen.