Join us on this enlightening episode of Hope for Today as we delve into Ecclesiastes chapter 7, exploring Solomon’s profound insights into the nature of wisdom. In a world filled with opinions and so-called experts, how do we discern true wisdom? David Hawking takes us on a journey through Scripture, shedding light on the dangers of self-righteousness and the pitfalls of human reasoning, and reminding us of the necessity to fear God and rely entirely on His wisdom.
00:00:00 The Importance of Humility and Dependence on God
00:00:42 Introduction to Hope for Today and The Search for Wisdom
00:25:17 Closing Thoughts and Coming Episode Teasers
SPEAKER 04 :
We need to fear God. We need to understand our total dependence upon him and never think that we have arrived. Romans 12.3 says that a man should never think more highly of himself than he ought to think. Proverbs 16.18 says pride goes before destruction. That’s exactly what he says here. If you are overly righteous, you are overly wise, you will destroy yourself.
SPEAKER 02 :
This is Hope for Today. We live in a world full of opinions, don’t we? Everyone has some advice, and so-called experts, well, they very seldom have a whole lot of wisdom, do they? In Ecclesiastes chapter 7, verses 15 through 29, Solomon strips away self-righteousness, exposes the dead end of human wisdom, and leaves us with one unescapable truth— This is not feel-good religion. This is God’s Word speaking clearly into a confused world. Well, today, David Hawking begins day one of his message called The Search for Wisdom. Open your Bible and join us as we turn to Ecclesiastes 7, verses 15-29, and we’ll get started in just a moment. First, a quick word about the Hope for Today Media Center. Listen to Hope for Today Media Center at DavidHawking.org. is the place where you’re going to find video on demand Bible teaching, full message series from David Hawking, taught verse by verse and straight from the text. There’s no trendy spirituality, no self-help religion, just scripture opened, explained, and applied the way God intended. If you want depth, clarity, and Bible truth that holds up under pressure, go to DavidHawking.org. And we have a number of series there for you, perfect for your own Bible study, or maybe to share with a group. The Media Center at DavidHawking.org. Let’s open up God’s Word now, and here’s David with today’s study.
SPEAKER 04 :
Let’s take our Bibles and turn to Ecclesiastes, please. As we continue our study of this great book, which Solomon attempts to explain the concepts of God and his plan to a world that desperately need to hear it. Israel had heard it. But the Gentile nations around Israel were the responsibility of Israel. They were to tell them about God and his plan for them. And Ecclesiastes was especially written for that. That’s why we call it a cultural apologetic, telling his world in his day what it means to have a personal relationship with God, to fear him, to please him. And he tries to summarize all the problems of life, the frustrations, the futilities of them. The last time we started looking at the value of wisdom in chapter seven, just to remind you in the first 10 verses, we said that wisdom evaluates life circumstances from God’s point of view. That’s the first 10 verses. Then in verse 11 and 12, we said that wisdom exceeds all the advantages of worldly possessions or security simply exceeds it. That was verse 11 and 12. Then verse 13 and 14 is that wisdom encourages our dependency upon God and his plans for us. As the writer says very clearly in verse 13, consider the work of God. You can’t do anything to straighten out what he’s done. And if it’s prosperity you’re enjoying, then be joyful in your heart. But if it’s adversity, consider carefully. God’s made both of them. And you can’t find anything out about the future, so you’ve got to trust him completely. Carefully consider the work of God. Well, he really continues his discussion in verse 15, and we’re going to take it all the way down to chapter 8, verse 1, because I believe verse 1 of chapter 8 belongs in the section of the end of chapter 7. And we’re going to share with you at least four more things about God’s wisdom. Let’s read it now, verse 15. I have seen all things in my days of vanity. There is a just man who perishes in his righteousness. And there is a wicked man who prolongs his 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 taken by her.” No amens, men. This is not your wife’s favorite verse. Truly, this only I have found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. Who is like a wise man? And who knows the interpretation of a thing? A man’s wisdom makes his face shine, and the sternness of his face is changed. Now, if you’ve read another version while I was reading, you know there are some interesting differences. And we’ll try to comment on that as we go. Let’s look to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you and we praise you for your love. That you know us better than we know ourselves. We thank you for the wisdom that you give to us. God, how we need it. We struggle through life. We make so many mistakes. God, how we need you. And I pray that today, Father, you by your Holy Spirit will cause us all to know how much we need you in our life. We must call upon the Lord while he may be found. We must seek the Lord with all of our hearts. We need your wisdom. And you say if we lack wisdom, we are to ask of God who gives to all men liberally and never reproaches us for asking. God, I ask you to give us wisdom. God, teach us to be humble. Teach us to be dependent upon you. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. The thoughts of Solomon are comparing wisdom with the facts of his life. And that’s probably why in verse 15 you have this statement, I have seen all things in my days of vanity. He’s going to really illustrate the value of wisdom in his life and what he has seen in his life. The vanity, the meaninglessness, the frustration of life. Trying even to understand what’s really happening. Most of us are glad we just got up and we could somehow make it through the day, let alone try to understand the meaning of it. And sometimes in those quiet moments when you really have time to think, you begin to think, what am I doing? What am I really here for? What’s really happening in my life? And these questions can trouble your heart and the answers don’t come easy. If you’re reading out of the New American Standard, he said, I have seen everything during my lifetime of futility. Or the New International says, in this meaningless life of mine, I have seen. And then he goes on to explain what he has seen. And he’s still talking about wisdom. And he’s still searching for God’s wisdom. He’s trying to tell us we need the Lord. We need his advice. We need his counsel. Stop trying to make it on our own. We need to fall on our knees and say, God, I need you desperately in my life. What will it take to make some of us see that? Solomon is going through problems and saying, let me give you some reasons why I think you ought to seek the wisdom of God. So let’s take a look at several of those. In verses 15 to 18, he’s continuing his discussion about wisdom and telling us that wisdom exhorts us to avoid extremes. It exhorts us to avoid extremes. Some people call these four verses here, 15 to 18, the most difficult in the book of Ecclesiastes. What is this text telling you? Is this telling you not to be too spiritual? What does it say? Don’t be overly righteous, it says. What does that mean? Is it ever wrong to be overly righteous? And what about the verse that says, don’t be overly wicked, verse 17? Does that mean you can sin a little, just don’t do it too much? I mean, come on, what is the meaning of that? So you see, when he deals with this particular problem, the problems of extremes, he’s telling us that wisdom will help us to avoid it. And basically, by remembering our accountability to God, which would be the point of verse 18, for he who fears God will escape them all, or both problems. Now, there are two problems here to face. Let’s just break it down and see that we understand it. Two problems to face. One is the proud, righteous person. The pride of the self-righteous. I want to prove to you that he’s talking about self-righteousness and not the righteousness of God. But we have the problem of the pride of the self-righteous. And then the second problem we have is the presumption of the wicked, who by indulgence thinks that he will never pay any consequences for his great sinning, which is foolish also, for he will die before his time. So we have two conclusions to each of those. To the pride of the self-righteous, he says, if you notice verse 16, why should you destroy yourself? Isn’t that interesting? Self-righteousness actually destroys what you are really all about. Legalism may be a cover and a veneer, but it is also destructive to the inner spirit. Legalism that assumes that there’s some righteous spiritual character to something God has no comment about. will literally destroy you inside. It’ll make you bitter. It’ll make you critical. It’ll make you judgmental of others. It’ll make you proud spiritually that you’re somehow better than someone else because you don’t do certain things that you have decided are spiritual matters. If God doesn’t say they’re moral and spiritual, then they aren’t. That’s your opinion. Being overly wise, overly righteous. Now, I believe this is clearly talking about self-righteousness and not God, from what is obvious that God would never want us to have too much of his righteousness. But for another reason, the little word overly wise or overly righteous in Hebrew is a grammatical form that if I were translating it in a more expanded way to give the meaning, it means to think oneself to be furnished with wisdom or with righteousness. What it is, is an attitude toward yourself. And the grammar indicates that the person thinks he is wise. The person thinks he is righteous. And that’s self. That’s not coming from God. The wise person before God never believes he’s wise. He believes he needs more of God’s wisdom. The unwise person thinks he’s always arrived, that he knows something others don’t know. And God says he will destroy himself. It’s like Proverbs 3.7 says, do not be wise in your own eyes. It’s very important that Christians understand what the problem here is. Whenever you think that you understand the ways of God, which Solomon has been continually saying you don’t know. You can’t make crooked what he’s made straight or vice versa. You don’t know what the future holds. You don’t know anything about God’s plan except what he reveals. Whenever you begin to think that you do know, that you do have wisdom, that you no longer need to fall on your face before God and trust him, you are headed for destruction inside. It’ll destroy you as a person. And Solomon’s been warning us actually all along. We need to fear God. We need to understand our total dependence upon him and never think that we have arrived. Romans 12.3 says that a man should never think more highly of himself than he ought to think. Proverbs 16.18 says pride goes before destruction. That’s exactly what he says here. If you are overly righteous, you are overly wise, you will destroy yourself. An inward character is damaged greatly by outward legalism. What happens is you’re destroying yourself. And the more things that you do like that, the more overly righteous and overly wise you get, the more you’re hurting your inward spirit. You’re unable to relate to people in love anymore. You can’t show Christ’s compassion towards others anymore. Because they aren’t what you thought they should be. This is really a serious problem. Wisdom exhorts us to avoid that extreme. And to understand what God says. Wisdom comes from the Bible. If it’s not in the Bible, then hey, we’re free to use our own consciences and our own decisions about what we’re going to do on that. And we’re not to judge each other in it. Wisdom carefully evaluates what God says. The second part of this extreme, though, is the presumption of the wicked. In verse 17, it says, don’t be overly wicked, nor be foolish. And I think the issue here is moral indifference that leads to moral indulgence. And there’s a danger here for all of us. Some of us can become indifferent to morals simply because we don’t want to be legalistic. But he says, why should you die before your time? You say, is that true? Do people die young because of great indulgence? Psalm 55, 23 says, The deceitful man shall not live out half his days. The Bible’s clear on this. God, those who think they can just sin like crazy and get away with it, they’re cutting short their life, according to God. indulgence he’s warning us about it but it’s the presumption of the wicked that is the problem it’s presuming upon the grace of God that I can somehow sin and get away with it. Now, I’m going to get a little touchy here, but it seems to me that believers, Christians who love the Lord, fall into the same trap. Wisdom will avoid that extreme. We get to thinking because we know the grace and forgiveness of our Lord, that somehow we can sin and get away with it. Somehow we can do something on the side. Maybe we think nobody else knows it, and we can get away with it. We’re presuming upon the grace and the forgiveness of God. And Solomon, I believe, is warning us. Moral indifference, I believe, always leads to more moral indulgence. Once you decide that an issue is not really that critical, all of a sudden you are free under the right temptation and provocation to do it. And that’s why legalism appears to be on the surface an answer to this. I don’t want to be morally indifferent, so I’m going to draw the lines differently than God did. I’m going to put a hedge around me that’s totally different, but I’m going to do that to protect me from having that problem. The trouble is, the problem is in our hearts. It is not out there in society. Don’t be overly wicked. Don’t be foolish. Don’t think that you can get away with it, that you’ll never suffer any consequences, because it simply is not true. Wisdom teaches otherwise. So there are those two problems to face, the pride of the self-righteous, the presumption of the wicked. But he then gives you a basic principle to follow. Look at verse 18 again. “‘It’s good that you grasp this,’ he says, “‘and also not remove your hand from the other.'” For he who fears God will escape them all. Now, some of you have read this, and if you’re reading out of the New American Standard, it says it comes forth with both of them. The idea of the New American, I think, would be if you really fear the Lord and you’re trusting him, then you will come forth with a balance of how much righteous you should be and how much wicked you should be. That’s the argument there. The New International translates that if you fear God, you will avoid all extremes. And I think they’ve got somewhat of the sense of it that you’re not going to go to the self-righteous side and you’re not going to go to the presumptuous side of the wicked and think you can get away with sin. Wisdom will be balanced. It’ll know the difference because it’s trusting the Lord. That makes sense. The New King James says that if you fear God, you will escape them all or them both, meaning both sides of this, all the problems related to it. If you fear God, you’ll have the wisdom to escape it. And I think the King James is right on also. The same word, for instance, in 1 Samuel 14, 41, and let me just translate it, says Saul and Jonathan were taken, but the people escaped. It’s the same word translated here. Escape is a good idea. I need to know how to escape the extreme of being legalistic. Especially when I run into a problem that I don’t think is right. And what sort of standards I set. I need wisdom to escape the extreme of becoming self-righteous and judging other people. On the other side, I need wisdom to escape the terrible problem of being morally indifferent… of not really caring about it, or thinking it doesn’t really matter, you can go ahead and sin and get away with it, because God is a God of grace and forgiveness. See, both things are wrong, and to escape both problems, I need to fear God. So as we said, these verses are really teaching us, exhorting us, to avoid extremes by remembering our accountability to God. I think where we get into trouble, people, is we forget our accountability to God. Like you believe it, but you don’t apply it in the situation of either being legalistic or being rather loose. And you don’t apply the fear of God. All of a sudden you forget that, even though you know it’s a true principle. And then you wind up on one of these problems and you get all messed up and forget we’ve got to go back once again as we’ve always gone back to the wisdom of God and bow down to the Word of God, the wisdom of God, and say, Lord, what would you have me to do?
SPEAKER 02 :
That’s David Hawking, and this is Hope for Today. David returns shortly to put the finishing touches on today’s message. Stay right there. First, Matt Hawking is in studio with me now, and together we’re going to tell you about an excellent Bible study resource that’s going to help you preserve and save everything you’re learning in our current Ecclesiastes radio series and even go deeper into this book.
SPEAKER 01 :
Matt? We are grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord Jesus Christ through proclaiming the gospel and teaching the uncompromised truths of God’s word. Every book of the Bible has a message perfect for our day. Isn’t that amazing? The word of God. The book of Ecclesiastes speaks so powerfully to our generation. It asks the timeless questions. Does any of this truly matter or is life simply pointless? Solomon’s spirit-inspired assessment of life under the sun exposes the emptiness of a world focused only on human effort and achievements.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Ecclesiastes 1.12. And Solomon had everything the world says we should have for happiness. He had it all and found there was no happiness in that without God at the center. Amen. This is why we’re offering your dad’s impactful book, Is Life Worth Living?
SPEAKER 01 :
We want to get that into the hands of as many believers as possible. Yeah, drawing from Ecclesiastes, this timely resource helps readers understand not only the emptiness of life without God, but also the deep peace of a life centered on him and lived in light of eternity.
SPEAKER 02 :
And right now we have an excellent value package for you. that combines Is Life Worth Living with the complete set of messages in our current Ecclesiastes radio series.
SPEAKER 01 :
You can order that, Matt. Yeah, order the Life Worth Living Ecclesiastes package for just $40 by phone or online.
SPEAKER 02 :
Call 800-75-BIBLE in the U.S. or in Canada, call 888-75-BIBLE, 888-75-24253. You can also order online at DavidHawking.org. By the way, when you reach out, remember you can also get David’s downloadable study notes for Ecclesiastes, just $10. Again, the website, davidhawking.org. And if you’d like to send a gift, a donation that’s above and beyond the cost of any resource order, write to us at Hope for Today, Box 3927.org. Tustin, California, 92781. That’s in the U.S. In Canada, write to Hope for Today, Box 15011, RPO Seven Oaks, Abbotsford, B.C., V2S8P1. And some folks love the convenience of donating online on our secure website, davidhawking.org. Or call us at 875-BIBLE in the U.S. or 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. Again, to make a donation. Once again, here’s David.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now, if you folks have been with us for our studies here in Ecclesiastes, you know that when we hit chapter 7, we were talking about the value of wisdom. Such things as a good name is better than precious ointment. The day of death is better than the day of one’s birth. That’s an interesting one. And it’s better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. And he tells us why. He says sorrow is better than laughter. I mean, there’s a lot of interesting things in the opening 14 verses of chapter 7. But now, after looking at the value of wisdom, we come in verse 15 to the end of the chapter, verse 29, and talk about the search for wisdom. Solomon said, “…all things have I seen in the days of my vanity, my emptiness. There’s a just man that perishes in his righteousness.” And there’s a wicked man that prolongs his life in his wickedness. Wow. Verse 20 says there’s not a just man on the earth that does good and sinneth not. Well, that’s reality, folks. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. How thankful we are that there’s an answer in the gospel. Maybe you’ve been listening and you’re not really sure of your personal relationship with the Lord. I wish you’d give us a call, either in Canada, 1-888-75-BIBLE, or call us in the United States at 1-800-75-BIBLE. and ask for a free booklet about what is Christianity given to those who are interested, haven’t yet crossed that line, or not sure, we’d be happy to send it to you, no charge. We also have a Bible study by mail you can do at home to help you get started right and to understand your relationship to God. Don’t hesitate. Give us a call. Let us help. God bless you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, thank you, David. 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. And Bible again is 242-53. You can also use the contact form on our website, davidhawking.org. Well, tomorrow it’s day two of the search for wisdom from Ecclesiastes chapter 7, verses 15 through 29. Solomon’s going to take us even deeper, exposing the danger of moral pride, the deception of human reasoning, and why true wisdom begins with a proper fear. of God. Join us as God’s Word confronts our assumptions and calls us to biblical wisdom that actually holds up right here on Hope for Today.
