Wisdom is Better Than Might

0:00And amen. Good morning. Yes, thank y'all, man. That is wonderful. Turn with me to the book of Ecclesiastes. I think we have two more weeks after this. We have a large section of text to cover. And as a result, I'm not going to read every single verse. We're going to skip around. We're going to try to cover the majority of it as I began preparation for this week. The commentary I read said that while there has been several difficult passages thus far in Ecclesiastes, this is by far the most difficult passage to preach in the whole book. And as we read it this morning, I think you will see why that is the case. But such things do not deter us, do they? No, they don't. We will preach the full counsel of God, and by his grace, may his word be a blessing and a help to us this morning. So what are we talking about this morning that makes this passage so difficult? Why is that the case? And it's not so much that the content is what makes this passage so difficult, but rather it lacks a specific coherence is probably not the right word. It lacks a specific direction. Have you ever talked to somebody who just like one thought rolls to the next in conversations? Um and the whole conversation ends up becoming this giant run-on sentence. Somebody's laughing, they probably know some people like that. Maybe you are somebody like that. Now, imagine trying to summarize and expound upon one of those conversations. Like, what did you even talk about? Was there a main theme or focus? Was there something that you can maybe take from that conversation? Well, I mean, who knows, right? Because it was covered so much. This is somewhat the situation we're facing with this portion of the text. Uh but there's still something for us here. Um just giving you fair warning, uh, this week's message may feel a little more uh scattered than usual. Uh maybe they always feel scattered, I don't know. Um so there's a lot to digest, and and there is a a theme uh that we can draw out. And that theme, if you're taking notes, or if you have the notes, uh, is that the wisdom of God is the answer to the folly of this world. The wisdom of God is the answer to the folly of this world. Yes, we're gonna talk about wisdom one more time uh this morning, uh, but this is wisdom literature after all, so uh that shouldn't surprise us too much that we've hit this now a few times. But uh we're gonna look at it from another angle, uh, through which uh is wisdom, wisdom as our weapon against a foolish world. Wisdom as the weapon against a foolish world, or you might say wisdom as our strength or our might. Uh so that's that's the introduction. Let's read the text and then we'll jump into it. And again, I'm not gonna re be reading everything. I'm gonna be skipping around a bit, so why don't you all stand up with miss with me if you wish? And uh we're gonna start in verse 13 of chapter 9. Verse 13 of chapter 9. I have also seen this uh this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed uh great, and it seemed great to me. There was a little city with 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 the 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 in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good. Skip down uh well, let's let's go to verse one of chapter ten. 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. Skip down to verse five. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, as it were an error proceeding from the ruler. Folly is set up on many high places, and the rich sit in a low place. I have seen slaves on horses and princes walking on the grounds like slaves. Let's skip down to verse nine there. Or sorry, verse eight. He who digs a pit will fall into it, and a serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall. He who quarries st uh 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 its charmer. Let's skip down to verse twenty, finally. 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 winging creature tell the matter. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you again for your word. We thank you for the wisdom that you've given us in your word, Lord. I please, please ask that you would uh speak now for Christ's sake, and it is in his name that I pray. Amen. Y'all can have a seat. So you can see there that there's a little bit uh uh interesting topics there, a broad, broad base of things to cover which we will do, Lord willing. I think the question we should pose to ourselves as we begin is this Do we rely on our God-given wisdom to help us and to guide us? Or do we trust in our own strength? Do we rely on God-given wisdom to help us and guide us, or do we trust in our own strength? Even worse, do we give ourselves over to foolishness or worldly wisdom, and in doing so erase all the gains that wisdom has brought? Well, that's what we're going to consider as we begin the text with our first point this morning, which is wisdom is better than might. Wisdom is better than might. The teacher recounts a story here for us, and we can assume that he is recounting a true event in this story that he starts on verse 13 of chapter, uh, verse 13 of chapter 9. Uh we can assume that this is a true event, but I don't think it matters whether this is an actual, this event actually happened in history or whether this is a parable of sorts. Uh the the the application is still the same. And in the story, as we read, he tells us that there was a great king, likely uh with many men on his side, this great king, and he sought to overtake this little city that only had a few people in it. And this great king built siege works against the city. And these siegeworks were these towers that they would build up around the city so that they could climb up these towers and they would shoot arrows over the walls of the city or they would they would hurl uh fire to burn the city. Um they would build these towers. They called them siege works. We also learned that in this city there was a poor wise man. And this poor wise man devises a clever way to counter this great king and his siege works. We aren't given how he did it, but against all odds, it says, and against great strength of this king and his men, uh this poor wise man uses wisdom to defeat this great king. There is, uh, and this should certainly remind us of other stories in the Bible, like David and Goliath, for instance, where victory was granted not by human strength against strength, but in David's courage exercised through wisdom. Right? Not strength against strength necessarily, but courage exercised through wisdom. And these passages are also steeped in the gospel, right? It is assuredly the gospel that these stories, like the one that we just read this morning, and certainly uh David and Goliath, that they are really communicating. These stories are really communicating the gospel to us. Think of the arrest of Jesus. When Peter draws his sword and cuts off Malchus' ear, right? He is ready to battle strength against strength. Might against might. And we know that Christ heals Malchus' ear and tells Peter, that's not how we're doing this here. It was never the intent to battle strength against strength, right? As though anyone would actually stand a chance in a strength against strength fight against our Lord. That was not the plan. Because God's plan was much wiser than that. This poor wise man. Do you see the connection? Back to the gospel. This poor wise man from this little town called Nazareth was going to topple the siege works of the enemy not by strength, but by the wisdom of God. It was assumed that our Messiah would be a great warrior first, and that he would come and overthrow governments and establish his kingdom, but he came as a poor servant. And says that the meek shall inherit the earth. The expectation was a lion, but in reality the strongest person to ever live was a lamb led to the slaughter. This doesn't mean we should shun bravery, right? Not at all. We should certainly not shun bravery, nor should we shun strength, but all throughout the Bible, including the gospel, we see that the measure of strength is not might, but wisdom. Wisdom is the measure of strength, not might. Not just any wisdom, though, right? Not just any wisdom, only God's wisdom will do. Proverbs 24, 5 and 7, a wise man is full of strength. A wise man is full of strength. And a man of knowledge enhances his might. For by wise guidance you can wage your war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory. Wisdom is too high for a fool. In the gate he does not open his mouth. Again, Proverbs 25, 5 and 7. So we can see the clear connections between all of these things. I told a story in my class I teach for co-op a few Fridays ago, and I'm not going to repeat this whole story here. It's not pulpit material, but it's interesting and very telling in light of this passage. The story was from Norse mythology. And the virtue that was communicated is that for the Norse people, the ideal person was not someone who was just a strong warrior type, right, who fought battles and won wars. Nor was the ideal person for them this poetic and creative and wise thinker, but someone who possessed equal parts blended into one person. They envisioned, right? Pagans, Norse pagans, envisioned a man who was wise and brave and meek and strong. These are pagans. They were seeing and knowing and longing for a Christ that they did not quite know. And this is the evidence that Paul was spot on in Romans, as we've talked through this section in Romans, likely because he had heard those same pagan Norse myths in his day. When he said, For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived. Ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so that they are without excuse. And we talked about that again this morning. The world knows Christ. The world knows Christ. They know the one who spoke the world into existence. And they know that this one who spoke the world into existence and did not speak a plain world into existence, but one that declares his glory and his majesty. A world that is so full of beauty and so creative that artists and poets they spend a lifetime trying to recapture what Christ spoke into being. They also know this gentle comforter, who draws near to the brokenhearted, who meets them in the gentle breeze. They know the healer, who has bound up their pain and their sorrow, and soon these will be no more for us all. They also know the Christ who will return again, riding on a white horse with his sword drawn. They know the consuming fire that will lay waste to all who do not follow him or that follow their own way. They know this God. They know this Christ. Everyone knows this God, and the beginning of wisdom is the awe of this God, the submission to this God. If the only way to gain wisdom is to bow down before the one true God, and the only way to be truly strong is to gain the wisdom that only this God can provide, then the strong are the ones who fear the true and living God. I'll say that one more time for you. If the only way to gain wisdom is to bow down before God, the true God, and the only way to be strong is to gain the wisdom that only God can provide, then the strong are those who fear God, who fear the true God. These are the truly strong, mighty people. And that's a somewhat roundabout way of saying, but a necessary way, I guess, of getting to what it really means when we say that wisdom is better than might. It's not that any wisdom is better. It's not as though smart people are mightier than strong people, but that God-fearing people who know and follow the true God represent the highest level of strength available. As we see demonstrated from the text, strength alone is not enough. It's not enough. Strength alone is not enough. Godly wisdom coupled with courage and assurance, this is Christ. This is who we are to know. And that is what we are to know. And by the grace of God, this is who we shall be made to be. So we seek God. We seek God. We know and we imitate Christ. We submit to the transformation of ourselves into his image, and in doing that, we will find all the strength that we ever need. Amen to that. Feels like I should just end the sermon there. I mean, that's probably good. We'll just wrap it up. We have some more to do. There is something that stands in the way of that pursuit. There is something that stands in the way of that pursuit that we laid out, and that's what we must look at next. This is starting in verse uh this is verse one of chapter ten. 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. And I'll read verse three as well. Even when the fool walks on the road, he lacks sense. And he says to everyone that he is a fool. And we can easily deduce the meaning of this text. I hope, I think. Um this is familiar to us because it's given to us all over scripture. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. We've heard that one before. And you can imagine a perfumer working with uh or working diligently on this new scent that he is working on, only to have a fly land in it as he's putting it away on the shelf to I don't know, depercolate or uh, what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know. I guess you maybe put them away for a while. He returns to it a few days later, maybe to bottle it or to use this new perfume that he is worked on, uh, only to find this little fly that has landed in there has ruined the whole batch. How can such a small little thing ruin an entire batch? Right? It's just a little fly, after all. I mean, it's a giant bottle of perfume, and this little fly, how can how can that be? And the reason is because folly or sin is so diametrically opposed to wisdom. Sin is so opposed to wisdom. A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, but a fool's heart to the left. And the teacher is, of course, not referring to the left and right in terms of our modern day politics, but according to their understanding of what it means to be right and left. In ancient Israel, the right was synonymous for power, deliverance, and moral goodness. That's why we see that the right hand of the king was the side of honor and authority. The left for ancient Israel symbolized disobedience and perversity. This is why Jesus says that the sheep are on the right and the goats are on the left. And I'll let you all decide if this analogy still applies to American politics. That can be y'all's decision there. What we can say, or perhaps but what we can say, is that the right and the left in that sense are opposed to one another, completely opposed to one another. They do not mix. When it comes to the wisdom of the God and the gospel, our Lord is black and white. Left or right. Even the tiniest speck of black mixed in with white makes gray and gray won't do. Gray is lukewarm. And we know where that gets us, right? Only pure white is acceptable. And I say this not to condemn us in any way, but to demonstrate our desperate need for Christ. Apart from him, what hope do we have that we could ever attain this purity of wisdom that is acceptable to him? But with him, and the cleansing flow that is offered by him, our stains are removed, and we are once again made pure. For nothing good have I, whereby thy grace to claim, I'll wash my garments white in the blood of Calvary's lamb. Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stem. He washed it white as snow. And this is true with respect to our souls, right? Though the purity of our souls is completely outside of us, because it is, the purity of our souls is completely outside of us. It is something that happens to us by grace through faith. We still strive to be pure, right? Though it happens outside of us, we still strive to be pure, be holy, for I am holy. We depend wholly on the righteousness of Christ given to us as our acceptance, but nonetheless, righteousness is a pursuit that we should claw after with everything that is in us. Again, there is a connection to what we're covering in Sunday school as well. It's interesting. In the same way, we understand that God's wisdom is wholly outside of us, right? God's wisdom is wholly outside of us, and we are wholly dependent upon Him to grant us access to His wisdom, but we still seek it with everything we have. Understanding that even a little sin, even a speck of sin, destroys His wisdom because the two do not mix. They don't mix. And I don't want to sound repetitive here, but I do want to make sure that we get this wisdom that we are talking about here. This is the revelation of God. This is his gospel, and this is this word that we have in front of us. This is the wisdom of God. There is no space in this wisdom for dead flies or sin. One is the right and the other is the left. One leads to life and informs and blesses our life, and the other ruins us, leads to death. The real question that we should be asking is: do we really believe that this revelation, this revelation from God, that we are holding now and hold every day, I hope? Do we believe that that is sufficient wisdom for you? Is it enough for you? All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. This revelation that we are speaking of, this wisdom that we are talking about, teaches us that it is enough. So it is. Finally, we turn our attention with the teacher to the consequences of folly, right? We've looked at wisdom in relation to might. Our second point was that sin destroys wisdom. And finally, we look at the consequences of folly. The consequences of folly. What happens when we don't operate in our society and in our personal lives according to the wisdom that has been given to us in Scripture? What happens there? This is verse 5 of chapter 10. There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, as it were an error proceeding from the ruler. Folly is set in many high places, and the rich sit in the low place. I have seen slaves on horses and princes walking on the ground like slaves. The text tells us that a world operating from or against true wisdom is an upside-down world, a backwards world. This error, as it was, or as it were, starts at the top and it trickles down. That's what it says. Error proceeding from the ruler. It creates sin in many high places. Error proceeding from the ruler creates sin in many high places. Don't we know that to be true? Still? Amen. He then uses a few analogies to illustrate that in this scenario everything is backwards. Right? The people who are truly rich, that is those who have eternal heritage, that is us believers, those who are truly rich are put in low places. While those that are eternally broke are elevated. I don't care how much money guys like Bill Gates and others have. This is folly in a high place. This is a slave on a horse. It doesn't matter how poor you are, dear Christian. You are the rich in a low place. A prince or a princess walking on the ground. It's an upside-down world that we are in. That acts in opposition to God's wisdom. This is an upside-down world that we are in that acts in opposition to God's wisdom, where the folly is raised up and the righteous are made low. But this same wisdom also gives us comfort because it tells us that there is a sure outcome of not following God's wisdom. When the wisdom of God is rejected, everything flips upside down. We know this. We can see this. Of course, we see this all the time. If something is backwards, it is because that something is in opposition to God's wisdom. Because it can't help it, right? It's either right or it's left. And if it's backwards, it is in opposition to God's wisdom. And the good news for us is that it's not always going to be this way. Everything is going to be righted. Everything will be righted. Every prince will be put back on his horse. And everyone who is truly rich, eternally rich, will again be exalted to a high place. The sin and folly will be laid low. So do not fear. And do not turn to folly in a foolish attempt to gain that exaltation, for such would be backwards. Make no mistake. If your present exaltation is by means of sin and folly, you are a dead fly in a bottle of perfume. But it smells good, right? For now, just give it a little time. It'll turn foul. It always does and it always will. But if you are seeking the wisdom of God and true strength in Him, and you find that it seems like all is lost, that you are defeated, and that you are low, just give it a little time. It will turn. It always does, and it always will. Wisdom will defeat the enemy, right? Because wisdom is better than might. Christ was for a little time made low. That in his suffering he may give us eternal life. And through the wisdom of God, the king was made a slave. But that did not stay upside down forever, did it? We know that after his suffering he was exalted and now sits at the right hand of the Father, having toppled the siege works of the enemy. And though he, like from our text, is forgotten by many, it is only a matter of time before all will be made right again. And because of that truth, and only because of that truth, we must know that wisdom is better than might. And we must hold on to this wisdom whatever the cost. Whatever the cost. And further, it should be a joy to us to follow that same road that our Savior walked. Wherever that road leads. This is 1 Peter, in this you rejoice. Though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. So that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in the praise and the honor and the glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him, and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible, filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls. Amen. Let's pray. We thank you, Lord, for this great wisdom that you have given to us in your word. We thank you for the warning that you have given us about the consequences of not following your wisdom, Lord. We thank you that in this word you've given us clarity to the things that we see. Lord, I pray and ask that you would come quickly and right the wrongs, Lord. That you would turn this upside-down world back to you. Lord, and in that way give us opportunities to right what is wrong, Lord. Open doors for us to share the true wisdom and the true strength that only comes from you and from your word. And know and believe that it is that that will give us strength. And that alone. And now as we get into this time of supper, Lord, I pray and ask that we would confess our sins to you. Lord, and see that you are just and faithful to forgive them. We ask all these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.