"Wisdom for Teens" Ecclesiastes 10 Sunday Morning Worship Service

I'd like to begin our time this morning by reading the scripture that we'll be studying together.

So I'm going to begin in Ecclesiastes chapter 10 and verse 1.

Ecclesiastes 10 · chapter mention

Follow with me as I read from the Word of God, Ecclesiastes chapter 10, all the way down to the end of the chapter.

Ecclesiastes 10 · chapter mention

Hear the word of the Lord.

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.

But when a fool walks on the road, he lacks sense, and he says to everyone that he's a fool.

If the anger of the ruler rises up against you, do not leave your place, for calmness will lay great offences to rest.

There is an evil that I have seen under the sun, and as it were, an air proceeding from the ruler, folly is set in many high places, and the rich sit in a low place.

I've seen slaves on horses, and princes walking on the ground like slaves.

He who digs a pit will fall into it, and the 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's no advantage to the charmer.

The words of a wise man's mouth win him favour, 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 doesn't even 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 nobility, and your princes feast at the proper time, for strength and not for drunkenness.

Through sloth the roof caves 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

In eighteen forty-five, the German psychiatrist Heinrich Hoffmann published a cautionary children's tale that would forever change the lives of German children.

And since this morning is Youth Sunday, I would like to share that tale with you.

Color Illustration and all.

Here we go.

The tale is titled The Story of Little Suck a Thumb.

One day, Mama said, Conrad, dear, I must go out and leave you here.

But mind now, Conrad, what I say, don't suck your thumb while I'm away.

The great tall tailor always comes to little boys that suck their thumbs.

And ere they dream what he's about, he takes his great sharp scissors out and cuts their thumbs clean off, and then, you know, they never grow again.

Mamma had scarcely turned her back.

The thumb was in the lak a lack.

The door flew open, in he ran, and you're not ready for this, but here we go.

The great long red legged scissor man.

Oh children, see the tailors come and caught our little suck of thumb.

Snip, snap, snip, the scissors go, and Conrad cries out, oh, oh, oh! Snip, snap, snip.

They go so fast that both his thumbs are off at last.

Mama comes home, there Conrad stands, and looks quite sad and shows his hands.

Ah, said Mama, I knew he'd come.

To naughty little suck a thumb.

There you have it.

See you Sunday.

What genre would you say this story is written in?

You recognize immediately as I started the little rhyme what was going on here.

This is like this is a kid's tale.

It's like uh Aesop's fable kind of a thing.

It's a cautionary tale to teach children a moral lesson.

Most of the moral lessons we teach our kids are a little bit more serious than this, and most of them are a little less, you know, making up mythical creatures to scare them into obedience.

I hope that you don't read this story to your children.

If you do, Pastor Jesse's actually starting an eight-week parenting class.

But we do tell our kids kind of moral tales to teach them basic wisdom, right?

And all of them have a kind of similar form.

There are two ways of life presented to the kid.

There's a foolish way and a wise way.

And if you live the wise way, your life will be better, and if you live the foolish way, your life's gonna, you know, the tailor will get you.

Now why do I tell our why do we tell our kids these tales?

This this is cross-cultural.

Through all cultures and all times we do this.

Why do we do this?

Because we all know, it's we all know, every culture knows, that wisdom doesn't come naturally.

Folly comes naturally.

Wisdom has to be learned.

And so we try to enculturate in our children basic wisdom that has been accrued through the ages.

We try to pass it on to our children.

Ecclesiastes chapter 10 is a set of wisdom instruction that has been collected by the people of God and is now being passed on generation to generation, has come down even to us.

Ecclesiastes 10 · chapter mention

And for the three weeks in the life of our church, we are doing a wisdom series in our sermons.

Last week, Pastor Jesse taught wisdom for parents, next week he'll teach wisdom for children, and this week I have been given the duty of talking about wisdom for teens.

Teens are the stage of life where they are beginning to encounter the world.

And Ecclesiastes chapter 10 is a text that teaches us how to encounter the world wisely.

Ecclesiastes 10 · chapter mention

It is a wisdom text for teens.

But it's also the kind of text that you don't really get over once you turn 20.

This text contains the kinds of principles that you need to keep applying to your life in a deeper way.

You need to freshly apply the truths of this text to your life again and again in order to live in this world wisely.

So as we walk through the text, this is a wisdom text for life, but before we can understand Ecclesiastes chapter 10, I really think we need to back up and see where Solomon begins this teaching in chapter 9.

Ecclesiastes 10 · chapter mention

He sets up this section of Proverbs that he gives in chapter 10 with two paragraphs at the end of chapter 9, where he teaches us what this world is like that you're going to engage.

If you're going to engage in the world out there wisely, you have to understand some things about the nature of the world.

And he teaches us at the end of chapter 9 two principles about the real world.

Notice in chapter 9, verse 11.

Look in your Bibles, chapter 9, verse 11.

Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge.

But time and chance happen to them all.

See what he's saying?

Life is uncertain.

He gives five illustrations of this reality.

That it's not always those who are who are smart or those who are strong who succeed, because you cannot guarantee outcomes in this life.

Life is uncertain.

That's just the nature of the real world you're going into.

Now, when he says time and chance happen them to happen to all, he's not resigning himself to fatalism.

He's already told us in chapter three that God is in control of the world.

What he's doing here is he's just speaking experientially.

You're going to go out and encounter the world, and the world that you are encounter is a world where you're experienced that you can't control things.

You can't secure all outcomes.

Life is uncertain.

That's the nature of the world you're going into.

But in verse 12, he says, There is one thing that is certain about this world.

Look at verse 12.

Man does not know his time, like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare.

So the children of man are snared at an evil time when it suddenly falls upon them.

You see what he's getting at here?

There is one thing that you do know will happen in life, and that is that you're going to die.

But you don't know when.

It will happen swiftly, suddenly.

So even those who do manage to succeed in this life, their successes will be transient because one day it will be snatched for them, like a fish going on a nice swim on a summer day, suddenly caught in a net.

So death will one day rob you of all you attain in this world.

So the world you're going into, the way it works, is that it's uncertain.

You can't always guarantee outcomes, but you can guarantee that one day death will come for you and you don't know when.

So life is uncertain and fleeting.

But there's a second truth about the world Solomon wants us to start with.

In verse 13 through 15, he gives us a little parable about the nature of the world.

Look at verse 13.

I have 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 by his wisdom he delivered the city.

So in this little parable, this wise man, we don't know how, whether by treaties or warfare, somehow he delivered the city.

It seems like this wise man, if the world were fair, would have secured himself honor and status in his little city.

But look at how the parable ends at the end of verse 15.

Yet no one remembered that poor man.

It's just the reality of the world that you live in.

Solomon concludes in verse 16 I say wisdom is better than might, but the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.

The conclusion of the matter is that life is unfair.

So here's the collected wisdom of Scripture that's being handed down to us.

The world you live in, the world you're gonna go out and engage in, is a world that is uncertain, and your life in it is fleeting, and that while you're here, this world is going to be unfair to you.

That's the real world.

So what are you gonna do?

Well, Solomon says the right response isn't just to despair, but the right response is to live in this world with wisdom.

You only have one life, so you should live in this world wisely.

And that's what chapter 10 is.

Isaiah 10 · chapter mention

Chapter 10 is a kind of summary statement of what wisdom in this uncertain, unfair world would look like.

But before we get into chapter 10, I want to say just two things about kind of introductory matters about the nature of wisdom.

If I were to ask a group of teenagers, since this morning is a lesson for teens, what is wisdom?

I would get a lot of answers, and I have asked teenagers and gotten a lot of answers, but there tends to be a common thread in them.

Wisdom is something practical.

So knowledge is like book knowledge, you know, it's that dumb stuff I get in school.

Ugh.

Wisdom is something that happens in the real world because school's not the real world.

That's the Twilight Zone, and the real world is somewhere outside of school.

And though knowledge is something you can get from a book, wisdom is applied knowledge so that you can actually succeed in the world.

So if I've got a bunch of economic knowledge from a book in my head, I can pass the test, but that's just knowledge.

Wisdom is being able to actually go out in the world and make money.

You see the difference?

This is a very common definition of wisdom that kind of runs through society.

It's really not just a teenager thing.

And there's a certain extent to which, okay, that's kind of a decent common sense understanding of wisdom, but the way the Bible describes wisdom is much more.

Our definition is insufficient at best.

In the Bible, wisdom has two elements.

Number one, wisdom is theological.

The scriptures constantly teach us this lesson.

The book of Proverbs teaches us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

Chapter 9, verse 10 says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Wisdom begins with fearing God.

Now, what is the nature of fear?

Fear, if you think about just the nature of what fear is, fear is an experience that drives everything out from your mind.

Whatever you are afraid of, the object of your fear captivates you, grips you, compels you, it dominates you, it drives out every other concern.

You're not worried about anything else except the object of your fear.

This is a very appropriate metaphor to use to describe a right relationship between a human being and God.

We are to fear God.

That is, to see God as he is and his glory and power and goodness and grace, all that God is, should grip us and compel us to drive out every inferior worry and make us singularly devoted to God.

He should captivate us and compel us, and that would be the beginning of wisdom.

If we want to go a little bit further in understanding of wisdom, I think a helpful metaphor that's used frequently in the Proverbs is to think of wisdom as a path.

Wisdom is the path on which you live your life.

So if I can borrow from my teenage definition of wisdom, if knowledge is like a bunch of head stuff, you could think of in this path image, your life is a vehicle, it's a car.

And the knowledge that you have is the engine in your car.

If you've got a lot of knowledge, you can drive your car really fast.

But if you're not driving your car on the right road, it's not going to end well for you.

You can drive your car really fast, but if you drive off a cliff, congratulations.

Wisdom is knowing the path on which you can drive your car.

And some people will drive their car really fast, and some people will putz along a little bit slower, but if you are on the right path, that's living in the world wisely.

This leads to the second element of wisdom.

Wisdom starts theologically with being gripped by God and saying, I'm going to live my life according to the purpose that God has given me.

I'm going to live my life for God.

That's the path.

The second element of wisdom then is that wisdom is practical.

Wisdom is the summary of all the teachings in Scripture that teach you how to walk in the path, how to bring every element, every facet of your life into submission to God, how to live all of your life in a manner that pleases the God whom you fear.

Do you see these two elements?

Wisdom is one, theological and two, practical.

But I want to say one final thing about the nature of wisdom.

Where do you get all of this practical wisdom to live in a manner pleasing to God, to walk on the right path?

If I surveyed a bunch of Americans, I think typically the answer that I would get is that wisdom is acquired through experience.

It's a kind of common sense way to think about wisdom.

So think about this though.

If I were to tell a 17-year-old, hey, I want you to be wise, and the way you're going to get it is through experience.

So right now you're 17 and you're really dumb.

You don't know it, but you're really dumb.

But in 10 years, you'll have made a lot of mistakes and gone through a lot of pain in life, and you'll have learned from those mistakes, and you can be a little bit wiser.

Well, that's great news.

Thanks, Pastor.

The Bible actually doesn't talk about wisdom primarily being gained through experience.

That is a very minor note in the scriptures.

The major note in the scriptures is that wisdom is acquired through the scriptures.

I want you to notice in Proverbs chapter 1 again, start with these words, the Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction, to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth.

Proverbs 1 · chapter mention

Let the wise hear and increase in learning.

The scriptures say that they contain a collected body of wisdom revealed by God and preserved by the people of God, handed down generation after generation, and it's now come to us.

And wisdom is acquired not primarily through your own experience.

Wisdom is acquired by looking outside of yourself to the collected wisdom that God has revealed to his people.

You are still to study the scriptures, to pillage the pages of scripture, to find all the treasures of knowledge that God has revealed and that the people of God have stewarded down through the generations, and they're now offering to you.

And if you will gather up this treasure that's hidden in the scriptures and apply it to your life and write it on the tablet of your heart, you will know how to bring every part of your life into alignment with the will of God, how to walk on the right path.

You'll know how to live wisely.

So wisdom is theological.

It begins with fearing God.

And then it's practical.

It looks like applying the principles of Scripture to every facet of your life to live in a manner pleasing to the Lord.

What chapter 10 of Ecclesiastes is going to do is it's going to give us a kind of 30,000-foot view of what does it look like to apply the wisdom of God in a world that we know is uncertain and unfair.

In this text, in Ecclesiastes chapter 10, we get four principles to live in the world wisely.

Ecclesiastes 10 · chapter mention

Number one, we have some wisdom for the wise.

Look at verse 18 of chapter 9.

Solomon says, Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.

And that theme is going to follow us through this first section down to chapter 10, verse 3.

The principle here is that wisdom is more valuable than anything in this world, but it is so easily ruined.

Just a little bit of folly ruins a lot of wisdom.

We know this is true, and Solomon illustrates it in chapter 10, verse 1.

Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a stench.

So a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.

The perfumer's ointment is just talking about any kind of perfume or oil that would be used in the ancient world.

This was far more valuable commodity than it is for us.

For us, cologne perfume can kind of be, you take it or leave it, because we have this thing, it's really amazing.

It's called showers.

They're great, not accessible in the ancient world.

Basic to hygiene was that you needed perfume.

And the way that you get this perfume is you would take olive oil and you would mix it with different fragrances, whatever kinds of spices you could acquire through trade, you would mix it and you'd allow it to ferment and it would produce a pleasing aroma and you would use it for all of your hygienic needs.

But it's the kind of thing that would be acquired through lots of labor and time.

A time-intensive activity is what this is.

Most of the time you would have to grow your own olive trees.

Do you know how long it takes to grow an olive tree?

I I don't either, but I do know that it takes a lot longer than clicking buy now on Amazon.

And so you would value this thing much more than you would value anything that might be in your closet or shelf somewhere.

Then one day, when you open this up, you find that it doesn't smell pleasing, but it's putrid, and you look inside, and there is a fly that has gotten in there, died, and has ruined the entire thing.

You see, the lesson that Solomon is teaching us is that just a little bit of folly can ruin a lot of wisdom.

You know this from experience too.

You know that you can live 90 years of godliness and you can ruin a lot of it with 90 seconds of foolishness.

This is the nature of the world that you live in.

Just one little fly can ruin the ointment.

The question that Solomon is compelling us to ask of ourselves is: do you have flies in your ointment and what is your attitude towards them?

Do you tend to say, that's not a big deal, and just minimize the things in your life?

Or do you follow the path of wisdom and say, no, I'm so gripped by God.

I desire to please God.

Any flies that are in the ointment, I want to get them out.

If they're a big deal to God, they're a big deal to me.

I'm going to be pure.

Well, the choice is set before us, and what we get in verses two and three is a warning of the madness of folly, because what happens in verse two and three is this is a person who has not removed the flies from his ointment, and look what happens to him in verse two.

A wise man's heart inclines him to the right, a fool's heart to the left.

Because we're in DC, I just have to say it's not a political statement.

There's no GOP in ancient Israel.

It's a common idiom.

The right hand is for strength and favor.

The left hand is what you use for in the ancient nearest, they didn't have sharman.

In the ancient nearest, this is what you use for the unmentionables, and so you don't shake hands with your left hand because it's not hygienic.

So the left hand is used for something disfavorable, for the opposite of success.

Or you could translate this something like this: a wise man's heart inclines him aright, a fool's heart inclines him astray.

This is the choice that's set before you.

But notice that we are, all of a sudden in verse 2, we're already back to the path metaphor.

Wisdom is the path on which you're supposed to walk, but just a little bit of flying the ointment begins to entirely putrefy your life, and before you know it, you're off the path and you're astray, you're off in the woods, you don't even know where you are.

So that verse three then begins to characterize you.

Look at verse 3.

Even when the fool is on the road, he lacks sense, and he says to everyone he's a fool.

His entire life is now beginning to be characterized by folly that's just starting to course through his whole heart and his life.

In fact, he doesn't even know it.

In verse 3, we have this expression, he lacks sense, which is a translation of this very literal phrase, his heart is empty.

This is what the fly has done to him.

The fly's taken over.

So the question that Solomon, as I said before, is compelling us to ask of ourselves is what do we do with the flies in our life?

Do we tend to minimize them and say it's not a big deal?

You know, after all, I'm not as bad as that guy.

That's not the way the wise man prayed.

Psalms give us an example of the way a wise man prays.

Search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my thoughts, and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.

No flies in the ointment.

I want to be pure.

Lord, purify my heart.

The fool says, I'm not as bad as that guy.

The wise man says, I want to fear the Lord.

So, how do we respond?

The foolish way, you can see this even in a child.

The typical way when you read a child one of these stories, a parable or a fable, is they typically will immediately begin.

To invent all kinds of reasons why that would never actually happen to me.

I actually had this experience this week.

I read my children the story of Conrad and they formed a committee and they've had been having meetings all week about all the reasons that's not gonna happen to me, Dad.

Now that's that's true.

By the way, I was not telling them the Taylor's gonna get them.

It was just we were just having some fun.

But their natural response is no, that would never happen to me.

Because folly is bound up in the heart of a child.

This is the way we come into the world.

Pre-packaged, we are prone to think it's not that big of a deal.

But the scriptures say the nature of life is that you were made for God.

You were made to know God and to fear God.

And a wise life is a life that is gripped by God and says, Search me, God, and know my heart and see if there is any grievous way in me and lead me on the way everlasting.

I want to be completely yours.

This is the way of wisdom.

So I call this wisdom for the wise because this is where Solomon starts.

For those of us who desire to walk on the path of wisdom, let us take heed lest we fall.

Purify our hearts and see if there is any grievous way in us.

Then we proceed to the next lesson in wisdom.

Wisdom for the boss begins in verse four and runs down to verse seven.

Verse four is a wisdom principle for dealing with the fallen world, but verse five through seven again describe the nature of that world.

So let's begin in verse five, where Solomon writes, Is there an evil that I've seen under the sun, as it were, an air proceeding from the ruler?

Folly is set in many high places, and the rich sit in a low place.

I've seen slaves on horses and princes walking on the ground like slaves.

Now he's describing here the wiz excuse me, the folly that comes from a leader who puts fools in leadership and displaces the wise.

Notice in verse 6, he parallels the folly with the rich.

So here he's using rich as a stand-in for the wise.

Now, obviously, he's not saying that every rich person is rich because they were wise, but he's playing on this general theme that runs to the Proverbs that if you live in God's world in God's way, if you apply wisdom to your life, generally your life goes better, and you're able to obtain wealth and status in the society more than you do obtain by walking in foolishness.

That's a general principle.

And the same principles at play in verse 7.

When he compares the princes and slaves, he's not saying that slaves are worthless and the social wrong really reveals your character.

The opposite, in fact, he is playing on the character here.

He's playing on this theme that generally, when you walk with integrity, you obtain favor in the world.

He's also playing on this reality that the way slavery law worked in ancient Israel is that it was more or less a bankruptcy law, which could happen to anybody because of all kinds of happenstance, because the world is unfair.

But sometimes it happens because of mismanagement, and you find yourself in a desperate situation having to sell yourself into slavery.

And what he is pointing out here is that it is foolish to promote people who don't know how to manage things well and to demote people that do.

Now you could look at this if you find yourself in this world as a person in a position of authority and apply an implicit lesson in the text that you should appoint people who have wisdom into places of authority, and you should surround yourself with people who have wisdom rather than just yes men.

That would be a very fair and appropriate reading of the text.

But I just want to point out that the text really isn't aiming at teaching us a wisdom lesson.

This is aiming at just describing the way the world works.

So that if you go out in the world and you see that it is unfair and it's unjust, you shouldn't be shocked at it.

That's the way the world works.

It's uncertain and it's unfair and it's upside down.

That's the way every society has always worked under the sun.

So how do you deal with that world?

Well, Solomon gives us a principle for how to deal with the unfair world in verse 4.

If the anger of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place, for calmness will lay great offenses to rest.

So how do you deal with this world?

Well, don't leave.

Don't leave your place.

Engage with the fallen world.

Don't leave.

Where else are you gonna go?

This is the only world that you have to live in.

There are no countries where perfect justice reigns.

There's no world where you can go, where you're gonna escape the reality that the world is uncertain and unfair.

This is real life.

So you have to engage with the real world as it is.

And how do you engage with it?

Well, Solomon is giving us kind of a test here.

He says that the anger of the ruler rises against you.

So suppose someone gets unjustly mad at you, or someone overlooks you unfairly.

When you are treated unjustly, unfairly, how do you respond?

The natural way of responding, because foolishness is bound up in our hearts, is to be off put in all kinds of ways and to say, How dare you?

Don't you know what I've done for you?

How could you overlook me?

Or why are you getting mad at me?

I'm out.

And Solomon wants us to recognize that's natural, but it's foolish.

It doesn't help you.

Because you're not going to make the world any better by running away from it.

The world is unfair.

So engage it.

And how do you engage it?

You engage it by first recognizing the world is unfair.

So when the anger of the king rises up against you, you're not shocked by it.

You know that this is what you bargain, you're bargaining for this.

You know that this is what you signed up for when you went out to work in the real world.

It's an unfair world, and this is what happens.

Now you're able to deal with it.

You combine with that the principles that Solomon has been teaching us through Ecclesiastes and through the Proverbs up until this point, and you recognize that the world is very unfair, but you know, I never deserved anything more anyway.

I came into this world with nothing.

I'm going to go out of this world with nothing.

I've sinned against the God that made this world.

I don't deserve anything.

Anything I do have is more than I deserve anyway.

That frees you to loosen your grip on this world.

And when you receive unfair treatment in the world, you're able to respond, not naturally, but with divine wisdom.

How do you engage with unfairness in the world?

Solomon says at the end of verse 4, calmness will lay great offenses to rest.

Or Proverbs 15, 1, a soft answer turns away wrath.

Or chapter 12, verse 18, the tongue of the wise brings healing.

Or Solomon says in verse 12 of this chapter, the words of a wise man's mouth win him favor.

We could translate that literally, the words of a wise man's mouth are grace.

When you recognize you came into the world with nothing, you'll go out of the world with nothing.

While you're here, the world that you're dealing with is an unfair world that frees you up to say, what matters is God and my relationship to God.

And I'm gripped by God and I fear God and I know God is my judge and God is the arbiter, and so I'm going to live in the world in wisdom.

And if God tells me to engage in the world by speaking grace, even in the face of unfairness, that's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to leave the results to God.

I'm going to speak wisely and not run away, but I'm going to engage the unfairness of the world with wisdom and with truth.

That frees you to live in the world wisdom with wisdom.

So we've seen wisdom for the wise, wisdom for the boss.

Now Solomon moves on to wisdom for work.

Look down in verse 8.

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.

Now all four of these are legitimate vocations.

This is legitimate practice of work.

These are just good, hard-working jobs.

But what Solomon is pointing out is just a healthy dose of reality.

Even as you are engaging in honest, legitimate employment, you're endangering yourself just by going in the world.

If you're quarrying stones, you could get hurt.

Life is dangerous.

Now, what he's relieving us of is this silly fantasy that all of us have been indoctrinated into, if we have lived in the United States for very long, where we have been told from the time we were very young, you know, if you go find a job that you love, you'll never work a day in your life.

That's a lie.

And it sets you up for misery in the world, because that's not the way the world works.

The world is uncertain, the world is unfair.

If you start with that basic axiom that the way the world works is it's uncertain and it's unfair.

I came in with nothing, I'm going out with nothing, and the way work works is it's work.

God cursed work when he cursed Adam and Eve in the garden in Genesis 3.

The earth, sprouts, thorns, and thistles.

Every job that's out there, when you grab hold of it, ouch! That's why it's called work.

Proverbs 14, 4 is one of the best Proverbs about work.

It says, where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.

The only way that you are going to experience anything worthwhile in life is if you actually have the ox.

You actually get to work.

But as soon as the ox is in there, as soon as the ox is in the stable, he's gonna make a mess.

And you're gonna need a shovel.

That's the nature of all work.

You starting with that actually frees you up to enjoy work with contentment.

Because you're not putting so much work on your job that you think this is the thing that's gonna define me and give me identity and give me meaning and purpose in life.

Rather, this is an honest vocation that I can work in a way that pleases God, does good to neighbors, and provides for my family.

If you're caring for your family and you're not placing all of this weight upon raising your children to my children, are gonna give me my identity, my all of my sense of worth and value, because man, your kids don't come into the world thinking, man, I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure that my parents are elevated in society.

That's just not the way they work.

Well, the way they work is they think, give me candy.

Instead, you're freed up to say, My family is a gift from God, and it's gonna be hard work, but it's gonna give me enjoyment and satisfaction to labor in love to raise my family in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, because this is a gift from God.

You see what Solomon is teaching us, is he teaching us divine wisdom.

The way the world works is you came in with nothing, you're going out with nothing.

The world is unfair and it's uncertain.

So work hard and enjoy the results that God gives you.

That's where we end, this last bit of wisdom here.

Wisdom for fools, in verse 12.

And I'm gonna read verse 12 all the way through verse 19 fairly quickly, and first I want you to, as I run through these Proverbs, I want you to listen for the kind of drivetrain of what characterizes the life of a fool.

What's his life look like?

Look at verse 12.

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?

And the toil of a fool wearies him, for he doesn't even know the way to the city.

Woe to you, O land, when your king is a child, and your princes feast in the morning.

And then verse 18.

Through sloth the roof sinks in, and through indolence the house leaks.

You see what characterizes the fool?

Lots and lots of boasting words, feasting for no reason, except self-indulgent pleasure and sloth.

That's the drivetrain of a fool.

Lots of boasts, lots of just self-indulgence and laziness.

Everything is oriented around me, and everything is transient, and everything terminates on me.

This is characteristic of the fool.

This is our natural heart's desires.

The converse of that is the wise person who is also set on display in these verses.

And the reason that I've called this section Wisdom for Fools is that what Solomon is doing is he is offering us a better way to live your life.

All of us come into the world as fools.

And if you're honest and reflect on your life, it's not going to take very long before you're going to be able to see many places, maybe your entire life, is characterized by what the Bible calls foolishness.

Self-indulgent pleasure that just ends on you.

But what's being offered to you is wisdom.

You don't have to live your life as a fool.

You came into the world as a fool, but you don't have to go out of the world as a fool.

You can go out as a wise person into the endless fields of divine glory.

You can learn wisdom if you humble yourself and receive the scriptures as the word of God.

And what the scriptures say about wisdom is in verse 12.

The words of a wise man win him favor.

Then verse 17 Happy are you, O land, when your king is the son of nobility, and your princes feast at the proper time, for strength, not for drunkenness.

In verse 19, bread is made for laughter, and wine gladdens life, and money answers everything.

You see the drivetrain of the wise person's life is he speaks grace, he lives for strength, and he enjoys what God gives him.

He's content.

He's content in the world.

He understands that the world is unfair and uncertain, but he's willing to engage with the world.

He's willing to work hard and entrust the results to God, and whatever he receives, he receives as a gift from the hand of the Lord and he enjoys it.

Bread is made for laughter, and wine gladdens life.

You're supposed to enjoy the gifts that God gives you, whether a lot or a little.

And this little expression, money answers everything, is just a proverbial bit of wisdom that money is the most versatile of all the blessings that God gives you, because you can use it for so many things.

You are supposed to enjoy the life that God gives you.

Solomon has said this many times in Ecclesiastes.

If you just flip back one page in your Bibles to chapter 5 and verse 18, one of my favorite texts that just summarizes a kind of view of contentment, wise contentment in the world.

Chapter 5, verse 18, he writes, Behold, what I've seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment and all the toil with which one toils under the sun, the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is your lot.

Look, life is uncertain, life is fleeting, the world's unfair, you work hard, and if this world were all there is, man, there wouldn't be any meaning to it.

But when you fear God and you recognize everything that you receive is a gift from God that you didn't even deserve in the first place, you receive it with gladness and you're able to enjoy it with contentment.

And your life can be characterized by deep and abiding contentment and joy.

That's the way of the wise.

Where Solomon ends here, maybe even before we get there, let me remind you, I even read this in the New Testament.

It's a pass it's a theme that runs right through the scriptures.

In 1 Timothy and chapter 6, the Apostle Paul writes, Godliness with contentment is of great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, we can take nothing out of the world.

If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.

And a few verses later, he follows up by saying, God richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

When you recognize the way the world is, when you recognize that you were made for God and not for this world, whatever you receive in this world you receive with gladness, and you can experience genuine contentment and joy with the gifts that God gives you.

And where Solomon ends is in verse 20.

I want you to notice that verse.

For a bird of the air will carry your voice, or some winged creature tell the matter.

Now, if you read modern commentaries on Ecclesiastes, you'll find most commentators describe this on the human plane as be careful what you say, because people might hear you and go tell the king, and then you'll be in trouble.

And some of them will even equate the little bird with Twitter.

That's clever and true.

And that's certainly true, just a truism, that's the way the world works.

But if you read ancient commentators on Ecclesiastes, both Christian and Jewish, they take this verse in a different direction.

One of my favorite is the ancient Targum of Ecclesiastes, an ancient Jewish translation of Ecclesiastes.

It says, The little bird is the angel Razael, who hears every idle word and makes sure it is declared resoundingly in the heavens.

You know that's where every word is ultimately going.

Everything you say is gonna resound in heaven.

Because that's where Solomon takes us even at the end of this book in chapter 12, verse 13.

The end of the matter, all has been heard.

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

One day God's gonna rip the lid off of this world, and he's going to expose every idle word, every idle deed, and he's going to bring everything into judgment, whether good or evil.

And if you're not rightly related with God, that's terrible news.

By the way, if you ignore God and you suppose that there is no final judgment, that's not good news either.

It means that every single thing in your life ultimately is meaningless.

You have to consciously, with effort, ignore reality in order to have any kind of contentment in a world where there's no purpose to anything, not a single breath you take.

But the scripture says that's not true.

What is true is that there is a God that made this world, and he is going to bring everything into judgment, but if you fear him and keep his commandments, his judgment is very, very good news because it means everything in your life has meaning.

It means there is a day in which the uncertainty and the injustice in the world will be reversed.

And God will bring forth a new heavens and a new earth where there will be righteousness and there will be justice, and everything you do in this world will echo into that world.

In other words, look at verse 13.

Fear God and keep his commandments.

That's it.

You live in this world for a fleeting period of time.

While you're here, the world is uncertain.

You can't guarantee outcomes, and it's unfair.

That's the way the world is.

But if you recognize the nature of this world that I came in with nothing, I'm gonna go out with nothing.

While I'm here, I'm going to fear God and keep his commandments.

I'm gonna work hard in the world, I'm gonna speak with grace, and I'm going to enjoy the life that God has given me.

That will give you contentment into this world, and when God appears to bring every deed into judgment, he'll bring you into endless joy in the next world.

That's the path of the wise.

Father, we thank you that you have revealed divine truth to us in your scriptures.

We thank you that you have given us wisdom that we can store up in our hearts, that we can write on the tablet of our hearts, that we can apply to our life.

And we do pray by your Spirit, you would cause us to look not to things that are seen, but things that are unseen, not to the things that are transient, but the things that are stable and solid and lasting.

We pray that you would help us to look into the world to come, to put all of our hope not in this world, but at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We pray that you'd make us people who say, Maranatha, come quickly, Lord, help us to put all of our hope in you.

In the name of Christ.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBc.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to TMS.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.