Hello, we will continue our study in the book of Ecclesiastes, uh, chapter seven. We're gonna start with verse 15 tonight, and by God's grace, we'll get through verse 29 and finish the chapter. This is an interesting part of uh chapter 7. Solomon says this be not overly righteous and do not make yourself too wise. Do not, why should you destroy yourself? Is it possible that we can be too righteous? Is it something to be concerned about that we can be too wise? It doesn't really seem to jive. I think most of us would say, boy, the more, the more I can become like my Lord Jesus Christ, the better I am. Uh Solomon isn't saying that, or is he? As we work our way through, the next thing he says is, be not overly wicked. Oh, you mean I can be a little wicked and be okay, but just don't be overly wicked? And then finally says, Don't be a fool. Why should you die before your time? This has been interpreted in many, many different ways by many commentators, uh, as we'll talk about as we go through this study. Um, Solomon, just uh to kind of answer your questions, does not mean what you would think that means, as I just read it and asked those questions. There's more to go on this, other than just those uh two or three verses. Um, and so let's uh let's get right on with this. Uh Ecclesiastes chapter seven, starting with verse 15 down through 29. Open up your Bibles, get ready to take some notes, and Lord bless you. Let's turn to uh chapter 7, and we're gonna start and uh with verse 15, and uh by God's grace, um and I may have to skip some of this so we get through tonight, but I want to finish the chapter tonight. So in uh I'm gonna read 15 through 19 uh right now. That's the first portion that we're gonna go through, uh, where Solomon says, 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? Verse 18 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 man more than ten rulers who are in a city. So this short section 15 through uh 19 uh is a passage that seems to be about either righteousness versus sin and maybe even legalism or tight-fisted religion versus immorality. If there's uh one problem in life, there's many, uh, but we often hear, uh even as mature Christians, why do the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? Why do the good die young? Well, the wicked seem to enjoy long lives. And if you think about that, and that's what Solomon is telling us here, and we probably we should all have that type of experience, maybe not personally in our lives, but certainly in the world around us uh where we where we see uh men and women that love Jesus from the depths of their souls, who just don't make it as long as a an evil despotic ruler of one nation or another. That doesn't mean that's always the case, but it's certainly a question that we've might have all asked ourselves or one another. And it does seem to be contrary to the word of God. After all, in Deuteronomy 440, God says this so you shall uh so you shall keep his statutes. Moses is speaking, I believe, here. So you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I am giving you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, that you may live long on the land which the Lord your God has given you for all time. And that also that the defiant or those that are against God, he has said these things. Deuteronomy four, twenty-five and twenty-six. When you become the father of children and children's children, and have remained a long time in the land, and act corruptly, and make an idol in the form of anything, and do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you will surely perish quickly from the land where you are going over to the Jordan to possess it. You shall not live long on it, but will be utterly destroyed. And in Psalm 55, 22 and 23, we read, Cast your burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain you. He will never allow the righteous to be shaken, but you, O God, will bring them down to the pit of destruction. Men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days, but I will trust in you, the psalmist says. Now, we know from life that these are these are true because it's in the word of God, and in some cases they're general statements. And uh God has mercy on some individuals, even though he's not drawing back on his word, um, especially in in New Testament, where we read that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No one gets to Father, comes to the Father, but but through him or but by him. There is no exception to that. We'll talk about that in just a minute. Warren Wearsby says this in his B commentary series. Yes, God did promise to bless Israel in their land if they obeyed his law. But he has not given those same promises to believers today under our new covenant. Francis Bacon wrote this. This goes all the way back into the 1600s. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament. You know, God was very clear. If you obey me, I will bless you. If you disobey me, I will curse you. That's the general sowing and reaping of the Israelites. So Bacon says, prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament. Adversity is the blessing of the new. Our Lord's opening words in the Sermon on the Mount were not, blessed are the rich in substance, but blessed are the poor in spirit. Second, the wicked appear to prosper only if you take the short view of things. This was the lesson Asaf recorded in Psalm 73, where Asaf says this, Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. Boy, shouldn't that be our prayer, right? My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. Asaph saw this, and Paul records this both again in similar fashion in Romans 8.18 and 2 Corinthians 4, 16 through 18, which we're not going to read. They, those that are against God, have their reward. Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 6, 2, 6, 5, and 6.16. He says this, thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. Their reward is short and swift on this planet alone. And then in verse 5, he says, And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. And finally, in Matthew 6, 16, our Lord says this, and when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, what? They have received their reward. So when we say, boy, look, the the good die young, the wicked seem to prosper, when we take this in light of scripture, we find that, as we heard once again at a funeral service that we went to over the weekend, the Lord delights in the death of his saints. Psalm 116. And if you don't have your eyes opened by the Holy Spirit, and you would read that, you would scratch your head and say, What kind of God is that that delights in the death of those that say that he is their father and Jesus is their Lord? But they don't understand, they don't see. Somebody made this great statement. The world has to see in order to believe. I'm not going to believe it until I see it. Whereas when God's Spirit removes the scales off our eyes, we believe and then we see. We believe, and the scriptures open up to us. We see the glory of God. We see how desperate we are for a Savior. We see how incredible, long-suffering our Father in heaven is, how filled with grace, how merciful he is, how good he is, how kind he is, how faithful he is to his own word and to his own children. They don't see that. And so the wicked seem to prosper, but they're prospering only for a short time. They have received their reward here on earth. But eternity is forever. They may gain the whole world. But what good does that do them if they lose their soul? This is the fate of all who follow the example and sacrifice this example and sacrifice the eternal for the temporal. Why might it be, even though they are receiving their reward here, why might the wicked seem in so many cases, or at least in enough to make this a reasonable thing to talk about? Why might they have long lives when they do have long lives? Listen to these few verses. See if they fit. Psalm 103.8. I'm reading from the New King James Version. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. There's a single verse that we could probably and should probably lean on every day of our lives. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy. How about this? The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and great in mercy. The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works. That's Psalm 145, 8 and 9. And in 2 Peter in the New Testament, chapter 3, 8 and 9, same version of the Bible. But beloved, do not forget this one thing that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Perhaps those that we deem to be wicked are given greater opportunity or a longer opportunity because of God's mercy and because of his long suffering, not because he's slack to fulfill his promise, but because his will is that none should perish, that he continues to give them life, that before they take their last breath, that they would bow their knee, bend their knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, as we get into verses 16 through specifically 18, let me reread this. We have to make sure we understand, try to understand what Solomon is saying here. Because be not overly righteous. You might think to yourself, can you be overly righteous? And do not make yourself too wise. Can you make yourself too wise? Why should you destroy yourself, Solomon says? And on the other side of the coin, be not overly wicked. You mean I can be kind of somewhat wicked, and that's okay? 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. There are many people that have taken Solomon's advice in this passage by saying this, that really to be pleasing, you need to kind of be a middle of the road type of man or woman. Don't be really, really a goody two shoes kind of thing. Don't be super evil, but you know, find your way somewhere in the beginning. Well, when they think that you should be this middle of the road type of man or woman, what kind of who are they thinking you should be that type of person in front of? God? Certainly not. Oh, maybe it's because people will be more accepting of you if you're that kind of person. I don't think that's what Solomon's got in mind here at all. Okay. The danger here, the danger here is that individuals, us included, may deceive ourselves through many pseudo-religious acts, let me call them that, that really are nothing more in reality than uh show-off uh types of things. Um and and um so what Solomon is telling us here in both 17 and 18 is this. He's not he's not telling us not to be too righteous or not to be too evil. What he's saying is when you look at yourself and you examine yourself and you start to try to determine who you are through your pride and sinfulness, stay away from that. And let me try to explain that as we move on here. I don't want to I don't want to get into the weeds here with with uh etymology, you know, the study of words uh in in this book. But when we look at um uh verse 16, we see, let me go back to it here. So be not overly righteous and do not make yourself too wise. What's happening here is that verb form in the Hebrew means this to think oneself to be furnished with wisdom. Okay, so when when when Solomon says, you know, don't be too wise, what that form of the verb really means is don't think yourself to be furnished with so much wisdom. In other words, it's a pride issue. It's saying, I'm more than I really am. And, you know, it's the whole hypocrite thing, right? Where you're putting the mask up in front of everybody else, trying to make them think you are somebody that you aren't by being by being more righteous than you truly are. He makes the same point in Proverbs 3:7 when Solomon says, be not wise in your own eyes. That's really what he's saying here in these verse in this first part of it, be not wise in your own eyes. Thus, it's not the case of having too much righteousness or too much wisdom. Rather, it's the problem of self-delusion and the problem of having this ego or superego that needed to have a large dose of humility added to it. When people become too holy, too righteous, or too wise in their own eyes, then they become too holy and too wise for everyone around them, and they get to a point where the Lord has a very difficult time using them in that attitude. Now, maybe nobody in this room needs to or even tries to prove to anyone else that you or I are more than we are, but we need but we need to make sure that we don't even approach that area of our lives because we're we're still in sinful flesh. We are still we still have to fight pride, self-centeredness. We want what's best for ourselves, and you know, a little bit of recognition, a little bit of clapping for what we do or something like that. Um feels pretty good, and I'm I'm not totally against that. Whereas if we had true humility, we would do everything. Remember that we should be doing everything for the Lord and not for ourselves. So, again, how can a person be too good or too righteous or too wise? It's a warning against religious pride. It might be in legalism. Legalism is a great way for people to think that they're better than you. Setting setting ground rules that are non-biblical for others, staring at them, if you will, watching them, if you will, as they go through their life to make sure that they meet your legalistic requirements, even if they're not meeting them themselves. And and le legalism is a heinous crime. It really is. When you when you try to force someone to either dr you know, draw closer to God or um make them feel guilty about what they're doing through legalism. Uh that is a heinous sin in my book. I I can remember reading this uh book by uh Donald Gray Barnhouse, and it was it was a book on the Sermon on the Mount. He's a very good pastor, 10th Presbyterian Church, uh before James Boyce took over. A very uh big, big church in Philadelphia and a very evangelical born-again uh Christian church. And in the beginning of his book, before he even got to the foreword, his statement at the beginning of the book was, and he was pastor for, I believe, decades, he said, if only I had the grace then that I have now for my congregation. So he realized that, you know, as time went on that he had made some mistakes. I'm not talking about legalism here, but my point is that grace wins all the time. All the time, 100% of the time. Not legalism, not keeping, you you know, not I've got to get closer to God by by doing this and doing that. You know, you you wind up uh the the there's a there's a church out on the west side that if you walk into that church, and he's not the only one, but it's one that I'm aware of, you walk into that church and um you're a non-believer, and let's say you you're divorced, they will be all over you in a good way to bring you to the Lord Jesus Christ. Once you get there, then you know the fact that you're divorced kind of puts you in a separate category in the pews, and legalism starts. Grace takes a backseat to uh legalism. It's a horrible thing. And if anybody tries to ever pull that on you guys, you know, it's not worth the time for you to hear from them. Certainly, we are called to be obedient to the commandments the Lord. Jesus Christ has given us. But, you know, the fact of the matter is this you are saved by Christ alone. You know, you're saved by faith alone and Christ alone by grace alone. That's it. It's over. There's nothing to be added to that. You know what one of the seven sayings Jesus said on the cross when he died on the cross. It is finished, right? And most of us have heard this before. The Greek is to telesti, which means it's an accounting term. It means paid in full. His death on the cross, his propitiation for our sins is paid in full. There is nothing we can or need to add to that ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Legalism be gone. Solomon is saying that some people become overly righteous or wise in their own eyes, and when they do that, they become duped by their own religious act and think that they are a step above the rest of us. You know, guys, that even takes place in the church. Where, uh, and this, I don't know exactly where this started. It may have started in the Catholic Church, I'm not sure, where there is a hierarchy of uh people in the church. You know, obviously, if you go to Catholicism, you got the Pope, and that guy's on a stage by himself, and then you got cardinals and bishops, and I don't even know how the thing goes. But one is at a level lower than the one above, and lower and lower and lower until you finally get to the average Joe in the pews, the laity. Well, that certainly has crept over into even the evangelical church, where you you go to a church and um gee, I'd like to talk to the pastor. Well, he doesn't have any time. You know, we've got these people to do that or those people to do it. And it's it's kind of even if it's inadvertent, um, you kind of get this two-tiered Christianity, and uh, and that is not a good thing, right? Never, there's there's no steps at the foot of the cross, right? There's no tears at the foot of the cross. It's flat and level ground. And I don't care how great a preacher you are, uh and and we can certainly give God all the glory for the great preachers they are there are, whether they're local, national, or worldwide, because he uses their preaching, right? How can people believe if they don't hear, and how can they hear if there isn't a preacher, right? So God gives these men wisdom and insight if they're trying to follow him in their lives. And that's wonderful. But to think that they're to think that they're a step above anybody else is wrong. They need to ask forgiveness every day just like we do. They need to repent of their sins every day just like we do. They sin and make mistakes, and they need to ask humans for forgiveness. They need to ask their Lord for forgiveness. Not once in a while because they're better than us. They've been elevated by God to be better than us. No, they're the same as us in that regard. Yes, they've been given a calling. They are a shepherd with a lowercase s of their flock. They're responsible to guide them and teach them in the gospel and in the word of God and do and to uh uh come to their side when they're when their flock is in need. They've been given that responsibility, and they will be held accountable for that on judgment day, uh for how they handle the flock that the Lord has given them. But forgiveness and uh sinlessness, no. No, just like us. And uh when you when you uh and and and we all know when we hear pastors preaching, when they're preaching, and you know they're preaching to us on the same level we're on, ears are wide open, right? Our ears are wide open. This guy's coming at me because he's experiencing the same stuff himself, and we identify with him, and he identifies with us. And we can draw close and and and have good relationships. Since Ecclesiastes 17 follows the pattern of sixteen, and these two verses are part of the same thought, here might be the resulting translation of these two verses, if you will. Do not multiply your righteousness, and do not think you're so wise in your own eyes. Why destroy yourself? What does James tell us? God gives grace to the who? The humble. Who does he oppose? The proud. And then going on, do not multiply your wickedness and do not be a downright fool. Why die before your time? In Psalm 55, 23 in the New Living Translation, we read this But you, O God, will send the wicked down to the pit of destruction. Murderers and liars will die young, but I am trusting in you to save me. And then in Proverbs 10, 27, fear of the Lord lengthens one life one's life. Not uh, look at my religiosity, look at how many verses I can quote, look how often I'm in the Bible, look how many times I teach the word, look how many times I'm sitting in the pews, I never miss church, look how reverent I am when I take communion, look how I can recite the Apostles' Creed without looking down, look how well I know the Lord's Prayer. No, none of that stuff. Fear of the Lord is what is what gives us life. And in the Proverbs 10, 27, the fear of the Lord lengthens one's life, but the years of the wicked are cut short. The fact that this interpretation, uh, I think is the correct one, can be tested by reading the next verse, verse 18, right? So verse 18 tells us 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. It is good, urged Solomon, that women and men take hold of the one, namely wisdom that comes from the fear of God, and not that which comes from puffing our own selves up. Rather than grasping the other, that is the folly of fools. In the end, it's the person who fears God who will be delivered from all these extremes. And that's what protects you and me from really being absurd Christians, from being people that no other Christian wants to be around, holier than thou, better than you, bragging on themselves. Verse 18 again balances the warning. We should take hold of true righteousness and should not withdraw from true wisdom, and the way to do it is to walk in the fear of the Lord. Fear of the Lord. I have a book upstairs that I'm working my way through. It's on the it's on the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the title of the book is Fear and Trembling. Say, boy, that doesn't that doesn't sound like that's a good title for the gospel. The gospel's good news. And and the point that the writer is making through this is we now, having had the scales removed from our eyes, even if it's dimly, we now know what God has done for us. We also know how holy and majestic and righteous he is. We also know how desperately wicked and evil we are. And as we think and meditate and ponder on those things, the distance, if you will, between spiritually, between us and him continues to get greater and greater and greater and greater. His love never waxes or wanes depending on how good or bad we are as his kids. It doesn't wax or wane depending on the distance there is between how we see our evil selves and how majestic and glorious we see him. He's the same yesterday, today, and always. But, amen. But as we dig into those thoughts that are almost too much for our minds to grasp, we say, my goodness, what if he didn't save me? And it drives us, it drives us in a loving way toward him to do what he has commanded us to do. No, we don't fear and tremble for concern, anxiety, or worry over a penalty for our sins because Jesus paid that price. But in this godly, reverential uh way, we look at him and we look at us and say, My goodness, this God, who is more than my brain can even fathom, saved me. We sang a song in church yesterday, even me, even me, that he saved even me. I did nothing. No one in this room did anything for him to save us. And yet he did. And with that, there is this, there is this um, again, not out of fear, but understanding and recognizing even dimly, even partially now who he is, what he could have done, but what he did do. And we move forward in his love reverentially and carefully. Thank you, Jesus, for paying it all. So through these verses, write down somewhere in your Bible and your notes, Solomon is not suggesting to do anything that's even in the slightest immoral. He is not suggesting that we do anything uh to make ourselves look better than we truly are. On the contrary, he wants us to be aware of the fact that false righteousness is our enemy, and we need to expose in our own lives any false pretensions that we might have toward wisdom. Finally, we read in verses 20 through 29 this surely there is not a righteous man on earth who never does good, uh who does good and never sins. 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 far off, very deep and deep, very deep, who can find it out? I turn my heart to know and to search out, and to seek wisdom in 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 the schemes of things, which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. See, this alone I found that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. Wow. Um I don't know if we're going to get through this, but we're going to try. Here's what we read in the book of Psalms, Psalm 143, 1 and 2. Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my pleas for mercy. In your faithfulness, answer me in your righteousness. Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you. Of course, the New Testament version of verse 20 is this if we say we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, right? 1 John 1 10. And in Romans, Paul says in chapter 3, 9 and 10, what then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin. As it is written, none is righteous, no not one. Solomon is saying the same thing all the way back in Ecclesiastes. Mightfield has a guy that he works with who says he doesn't need a savior because he hasn't sinned yet. And he believes it. Read 1 John 1:10. Read Romans 3, 9 and 10. Read Ecclesiastes chapter 7, verses 20 through 29. There is no one who hasn't sinned. All have fallen short of the glory of God. Verse 21, do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. We let what other people say about us drastically affect our relationship with them. And usually when we examine ourselves about the things that people say, we generally generally rationalize that we are a-okay and that they're a hundred percent wrong. And incidentally, going back to verse 21, uh, do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you, and that cursing you is to treat you with contempt, bring dishonor to you, or to be lightly esteemed by you toward you, or to be despicable about you. But if we are humble, you know, that's how we rationalize things, right? Oh, somebody says something that's not exactly how we perceive or want us to be known by others, and so we say they're 100% wrong, and I know I'm A-OK. That's what we do. But if we're humble, a healthy sense of our own imperfection and sinfulness will help us to take these types of criticisms, if they're done in love with grace, take these criticisms more in stride. If we hear someone who works for us or is under us in some social or workplace level, we can always be glad of this, that he or she doesn't know us any better. Because then they'd have more fuel with which to diss us. Also, we've talked about this before, but let's not forget these incredible words of David in Psalm 141, verse 5, New Living Translation. Let the godly strike me. It will be a kindness. If they correct me, listen, it's a soothing medicine. Don't let me refuse it. When someone in a loving, even in a loving, gentle manner confronts you and says something about you that they think out again, out of love, that you should work on, that might be better for you to think about and see if there's a uh a different path that you would take. When they do that, our knee-jerk response is one way or another, I don't want to listen to this anymore. Get away from me. You know, you might be throwing a bunch of stuff around in your head, uh, yeah, they're slightly right, but they don't really know what I've gone. You know, we just start this prideful thing. Here's what David says right, you're coming at me in love, you're showing me grace, you're really out for me being more like my savior, then let me say to you, strike me. Lay it on me. Why? Because in all, when I look at this, it's a kindness to me. It's a soothing medicine to me. And don't let me refuse it. Verse 22 says, Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others. We should always remember that we have been guilty of the same things that someone else may be saying about us. Many times we have cursed others in our heart. We can scarcely expect others to be perfect when we are so far from perfect ourselves. That's one of our frustrations. Every one of us has this. We want everything to go our way, and we want all people to hold us on a pedestal, even if it's only a half an inch higher than where we belong. We have cursed others in our heart. The King James uses this word, censoriousness. Censoriousness is a good old English word to remember. It comes from the Lat word censura, which means judgment. Someone who is censorious judges everyone and everything, and they are harshly critical. It is sin because it is almost always filled with falsehoods, and it is always, always filled with pride. Oh, now that person over there, let me tell you something. I saw them do this, this, and this, and therefore I know what they're gonna do when this situation comes up. I know who they are. Let me tell you when you do that, it's utter sin. It's putting yourself on a pedestal. You may say, oh, this isn't pride speaking. No, no, no. This is just me uh understanding better. No, it's pride speaking. It's sinful behavior. Listen, God is our only judge. Do we need to pray for that person? Probably need to pray for the person that's censorious even more than the one that they're going after, all right? We don't want to be censorious people. When we look at someone, we don't want, we want to give them the benefit of the doubt. We want to love them. Listen, we don't want them to go down a wrong path. That is a totally different thing. Censoriousness is judging someone without having the facts. You don't know what you're talking about, but every time you do it, you sure do feel better about yourself. I'm not like that person. You don't say that, but that's what's going on right here. You don't say, oh, I'm I'm not as bad as them. I'm not like that, but that's really what's in your heart when you do that. Oh, look at this person. You know, they're they're uh whatever, they're liars. Uh that person I saw, that person uh stole paper, a thing of paper clips off the off the boss's desk. You know, you you fill in the blanks, okay? You fill them in. Oh, that person left 15 minutes from work. I would never do that. You know, and then you you draw to a conclusion that because the person did that, they are like horribly evil. And if anything else is missing in that place, oh, we're gonna look at them first because I saw that nickel box of paper clips were stolen. And really what we're saying to ourselves is, I'm better than that. I'm not like that. Judgment, erroneous, sinful judgment on other people's lives. We have to escape from that, and we can only do that by the grace of God. And every time we do that, repenting of it and turning to God and saying, Stop me, Lord, forgive me, and stop me from doing that. I am no better, probably worse than that other person. In verse 23, Solomon uses his wisdom to probe into all sorts of areas of life. He wanted to be wise enough, or hoped he was wise enough, to solve all mysteries and unravel all the problems of life. But because he was making his investigations, in this case, apart from God, he found that ultimately all the answers eluded his questions. Because without special revelation, life remains an insoluble riddle. And guys, remember, that's what it is for almost everybody on this planet. You know, the big questions in life. Why am I here? Why was I born? Where am I going? What what purpose do I have in life? Is this all there is? You know, one of the one of the uh comments that our our pastor, whose whose mother passed away and had a service this weekend, he said, you know, um we have two things that uh most, if not all, uh men and women work toward. One is accomplishments. And many men, too many men, put that as the number, and I'm talking about males, guys with people with Y chromosomes, but it does include women as well, but probably more men. They work their tails off for more and more accomplishments. I'm at work, I'm at this level, I want to get to the next level, the next level, the next level, and they do that, and while they're doing that, they forget about the fact that the more important thing in life is not accomplishments, but relationships. And so every single one of their relationships suffers, every single one of them as they drive for more accomplishments. If they're born-again Christians, the relationship with the Lord suffers because the time that they could be spending with him is now being spent at work. The relationship, if they're married with their wife, suffers because the time that she wants to be with him, he's at work. The relationship he should be with. Have with his children suffers because the time that he should be out there batting a ball with his kids, throwing a football with his kids, hitting a golf club with his kids, or whatever, kicking a soccer ball with his kids, or teaching them, opening the word of God with his kids, he's not there because he wants the next accomplishment. And Solomon is in this conundrum. He's in this puzzle because he can't figure any of this stuff out because he's trying to do it under the sun. Think of all the atheistic philosophers that have tried to explain life and find a purpose in life. I was looking at some of these things on a website, questions that a professor would ask a student in a philosophy class. And if they weren't so serious, they would be almost humorous. They're trying to get the students to ask questions of themselves and of this world so that they can assign some value to their lives. They can't do it. You can ask a million questions. You can't get to the right answer for these questions. Why am I here? Where am I going? What is my purpose? They all elude the philosophers of this planet that are not born-again Christians because they're blinded to the word, and the word is the only thing that will show them why they're here. And Solomon is in the same predicament. In verse 25, in spite of his failure, Solomon's failures to come up with answers, he continues to persevere in his search for greater wisdom and a solution to the human equation. He wanted to understand the wickedness of folly, even the foolishness and the madness and the things that oftentimes leave men and women into a lead men and women into a life of immorality and disgrace. This book, again, I'm going to say it of Ecclesiastes, is just a wonderful book for a non-believer. Because this book looks at life the way a non-believer looks at life. But Solomon finally, when we get all the way, and he mentions it here at the end of this chapter, but when we get all the way to chapter 12, he finally says, he finally says what the answer truly is. And it's God. It's God. That's the only answer. What a great book to give to a nonbeliever. This book exposes people that have disregarded God in their lives. It talks about how their lives are being affected here on earth. It does talk about life after death. You know, a young adult starts to use drugs because she wants to have feel better about herself. She doesn't know why she's here. She doesn't have enough purpose in her life. So she says, I want more, and I can't find it out in life. I've tried so many things. Just like Solomon tried so many things. I can't find it. She turns to drugs for an escape. She takes the fool's way out, as the Bible would say. A man starts to drink as an example, because in his folly, he thinks that all that matters is money, better house, more cars, what you know, longer vacations, whatever it is. And he can't get there. He tries and tries and tries. It's coming too slowly. And so he turns to the bottle, maybe to protect himself from his failures or for not having gained all that he wants to gain. Life's not exciting enough for a man or a woman, so they disregard their vows and they run into another's arms. More folly that will only lead to more emptiness. I was there. I'm a living example of that. Living example of that. It is more folly that only leads to emptiness. I remember James Dobson talking about this very issue. And he said, as an example, a mother of a wife was tired of doing the laundry, doing the dishes, doing all the cleaning, making the bed day after day after day. And so she finds someone else that promises her a better life. Oh, it's exciting at first. It's a new adventure for her, as sinful as it is. She's taking that path. And after a short period of time, what is she doing? She's doing the dishes, she's doing the cleaning, she's making the bed. It's just in a different house with a different man, perhaps without her children. Now, as we get into 26 through 29, and we've got to fly through these things, I want us to remember the fact that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He says in verse 26, he says in verse 26, and I find something more bitter than death. Wow. 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. So in that connection, he may have thought especially, he may have thought been thinking of a loose woman or a prostitute, a woman whose influence is more bitter than death. Her mind is filled with subtle ways of snaring men, and those that are in her clutches are bound as if by chains. Anyone whose desires to please God will escape her traps. But the man who plays around with sin is sure to cross her path and be hooked by her. Women have a powerful draw on men. A powerful draw on men, every woman does. And they can have a powerful draw on men for good or for evil. When it's for evil, those women must be avoided at all costs. Think of how Ahab went along with his wife Jezebel when she had God's prophets killed, and when Ahab coveted Naboth's vineyard. What did Jezebel do? In that case, that latter case, she formed a plot which worked to have Naboth killed. And here's Ahab following her like a sheep behind an evil shepherd. What about Delilah? Right, here's a judge of Israel. Samson was loaded with flaws. Okay, loaded with flaws. But he was a judge of Israel. And he wound up falling in love with a woman that had no good desire in her heart for his well-being. When a woman has righteousness in her heart, she can be in great ways an incredible guide to her husband, even her boss. Right? I mean, a wise woman, a woman who has righteousness in her heart, is just someone people want to be around. But if it's a husband that we're talking about here, she can get him to do amazingly wonderful things, all to the glory of God. She will never do those things to bring uh the light onto herself. She will do those things so that her husband will be aided and guided, and she will be a help to him to be the man of God that he has called her husband to be. Women, you have an incredible power over men. Make sure you use it daily. If you are if you're married right now with a husband, make sure you use it daily to help your husband be a better man of God. Because whether or not you know it, you affect his thoughts, you affect his words, and you affect his actions on any given day. No ifs, ands or buts about it. You do. You have that kind of power over men. It's up to you that you are not a roadblock to him, but that you, your your words and your actions are holy ones toward him, that you again you can help him be more of the man that God wants him to be. Verses twenty seven through twenty nine seem to express Solomon's general disappointment with his fellow human beings. All that he discovered that was that was good men are rare, and good women's rare still. He found one man in a thousand who came close to his idea of what good would be. He didn't even find one woman, he says in Ecclesiastes. Now remember, remember again the thoughts about Solomon and his relationship with women. He was in very bad straits with what he had done. And as we wind this up, for all of us here today, we may not be drawn, you know, guys, we may not be drawn into the into the web of an evil woman. Um but we still need to, we still need to fight all the things we need to fight day in and day out. But let me say this for all of us here today. Most of us, if not all of us, are parents and some of us are grandparents. And these words from Ecclesiastes, once again, may not have a super lot of impact in our lives at our ages in this stage of life that we're in. But I want you to think of them and then look at your sons, look at your daughters, look at your grandsons, look at your granddaughters, and see if you need to need to apply these words to their lives. And then if you see that these things are happening in your family, take the necessary action to be wise and loving and tell them what they're doing will only bring heartbreak, sin, and maybe even destruction. Somewhere along the way, Solomon had met women who tried to destroy him. I've got some Proverbs written down here, but we've run out of time. But we know that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and these Gentile women, these heathen women, even had him sacrifice to the false god Molech, who was a god that required detestable things. That can be found in 1 Kings chapter 11, 7 and 8. Molech required babies to be sacrificed to him. Solomon, who was the wisest man that God ever created, he was the wisest man second only to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our Lord wasn't created. Solomon was the greatest, the wisest man that God had ever created. Look at the mess that he got himself into. Look at the women, what the women did in his life to draw him away from God to the point where he was even in agreement with sacrificing children to the false god Molech. It took a later king Josiah to reform all this that took place in the Valley of Hinnem, uh, which I think was outside the gates of Jerusalem, outside the walls of Jerusalem, uh, and and he just kind of destroyed the altar that was there to the false uh god Molech and tried to tried to straighten out uh Judah at the time. Just as a side note, the Valley of Hinnem in the book of Jeremiah, God calls it, he says, because you guys are sacrificing the lives of babies, something that never crossed my mind, God says. I'm no longer calling this the Valley of Hinnem, I'm calling it the Valley of Slaughter. And Solomon was in part responsible for that stuff taking place. He's not saying that all women are like this, but some of them are, and a wise person will heed the warning to flee from their temptations. The warning is open-ended enough that it could apply to many situations in life, but one obvious way is by is uh to apply it is by turning away from the seduction of sexual sin, including the temptations that come on television or over the computer. People call it a virtual reality, but the danger is real, it's actual. When temptation comes, rather than being lured by it and its sinful desire, remind your heart that the seductive woman is a trap. And I'm saying this maybe not so much to us, although it's all the word of God is applicable to every one of our lives, okay? But pass this on to your kids and your grandkids. If you give in to her enticements, Solomon says the result could be more bitter than death. She will lead you, could lead you into the soul destroying sin, your capacity for true intimacy will be destroyed, and you will never become the man or even the woman if we flip this around, that God is calling you to be. I'll end it with this. It's a quote from preaching the word commentary. Know this. And again, say this to your kids, say this to your grandkids, that there is a way of escape. Ecclesiastes says that although the rebellious sinner will be trapped by the temptress, the person who pleases God will find a way to flee. Never say that you cannot stop sinning. Always believe that by the power of God, the Holy Spirit, there is a way for you to give you the power to run away from that temptation, just like Joseph did when he was in the clutches of Potiphar's wife. Believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. Take your sin straight to the cross and confess it immediately. Grow in the knowledge of God through the ministry of his word. Pray for holiness in our lives, guys. Ask a friend to help us pray if we can't find the words or we're struggling. Get the shepherding help of a pastor if you need the shepherding help of a pastor or an elder in the church. Seek the pleasure of God, and by his grace, he will deliver you from the power of sin. And we have to keep tabs on our own lives. And you know something, guys? It's our responsibility to keep our tabs on our kids and our grandkids, no matter how old they are. Doesn't make any difference. You know, older women, you've got wisdom that you need to share with younger women. You've got wisdom to share with your kids and with your grandkids. How they take it is probably up to how much you pray about it before you open that box up. But if it needs to be said, then you need to say it. And for the men, exactly the same thing. Guys, we are the spiritual heads of our households. And although we lose that when our kids go away and they're in their own marriages, if they're women, they wives, they now have a husband who's the spiritual head there as well. But the wisdom that God has given us over the years that He has graced us with on this planet should not ever be held in a closed box. It needs to be shared, especially with those that we love. Temptations are all abounding. And uh, we need to fight them in our own lives. We need to help our kids fight those things in their lives as well. Greg, would you close this up, please? Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us in our Bible study on Ecclesiastes chapter 7 as we ended that chapter. I certainly hope that it has been informative for you and that uh these studies will not just uh educate you, uh, but will go beyond that. One pastor said this: every time you read the Bible, you need to read it as both a student and a soldier. And I think those are wise words. We certainly open up God's holy word to find out more about him and to find out more about us. We wind up getting an incredible uh insight to our Lord's mind, and and we understand how much greater he is than us, and yet he stoops so low to come to this earth and die for the sins of those that will accept him in a sacrifice. But also, not only do we want to learn more about him and about us and about the world around us, quite frankly, but then we want to read it as soldiers, and that means that we look at the word, we look at the commandments our Lord has given us, we learn about them, and then we take that knowledge and we go into the streets. You know, Jesus said, you know, go into Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and you know all the world and preach the gospel. And uh that's what I hope we are all doing as we grow in our faith, grow in our love more and more for the Lord Jesus, and uh understand exactly what he has done for us, even though we might only understand it dimly right now. Nevertheless, he still gives us an understanding. So God bless you all until next time. Thank you.