A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on July 30, 2023.
In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them. Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city. Surely there is not a righteous man on earth 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 is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out? I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme 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 (Eccles. 7:15–29).[1]
On the sixth day of the week of creation, God created man, in the image and after the likeness of our triune God (Gen. 1:26), “in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness.”[2] In the beginning man and woman, were created in sinless perfection, “yet under a possibility of transgressing,” as the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it, “being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change.”[3] And it did change, even in the tranquility of the Garden. Satan, in the form of a serpent, tempted the woman and she sinned, and the man was sure to follow. Theologically, we refer to this as the Fall, the greatest catastrophe in the history of the world, plaguing creature and creation from that moment forward.
Such is the ancestral inheritance that we have received, leading ultimately to death. Everything bad and sad in this life under the sun is the result of the Fall, and neither you nor I have known a nanosecond of existence apart from it. We are fallen. But because God created us in the beginning “with reasonable and immortal souls, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, after his own image,”[4] we are totally depraved in the comprehensivity of our fallenness but not utterly depraved in our humanity. In our image-bearing likeness we share God’s communicable attributes, and seared upon our conscience is a sense of right and wrong.
This is why, for example, when we see injustice or inequity in this world, it bothers us, even if we are guilty of the same. It is as if we know how it should be, that everything that is true of this reality is not true eternally. We hear echoes of Eden in the conviction of our consciences. There is a yearning for things to be right again, like in the beginning, before sin, before the Fall. But in this passing moment we call life, sin is an ever-present reminder that we are not where we once were nor where we long to be.
The Inequity of Sin
Solomon says, “In my vain life I have seen everything” (7:15). The Hebrew word translated “vain” here is the word for “vapor” or “breath.” Life is short, as short as a breath of air. But in his brief life, Solomon has been granted providential perspective. Of course, to say he has seen “everything” is hyperbole. It’s not that he has seen it all without exception, but he has seen life’s exceptions, inequities that should not be. He sees “a righteous man” who dies young and “a wicked man” who grows old. Proverbs tell us that a righteous life is rewarded with longevity (Prov. 16:31), but the moral man Solomon sees is rewarded with death. Is the wisdom of Proverbs wrong? No, but there are exceptions, like the scoundrel who should die young but instead flourishes into his golden years.
If this is not how it should be, how do we respond to such exceptions? How do we live a life filled with such uncertainties? Solomon answers this quandary with two extreme examples of how not to live: “overly righteous” or “overly wicked.” To be clear, Solomon is not talking about positional righteousness or wickedness but practical. Positionally, through faith in Christ we are justified as righteous, perfectly and completely, not “overly.” Positionally, apart from faith in Christ is eternal condemnation, forever. Solomon is using hyperbole to make a practical point.
Who then are these overachievers? The “overly righteous” are those whose definition of righteousness is not only unbiblical but obnoxious. Their list of sins exceeds the standards of Scripture, and they are happy to hold you to compliance. Even that which is not a sin they craft into a sin, manipulating Scripture to tie burdens around their neighbor’s neck. Claiming to be recipients of grace, they are practical legalists, looking down their Pharisaical noses at anyone who enjoys liberty. In contrast, the “overly wicked” are those who manipulate the definition of grace to include their licentiousness. In their warped minds, sin is not sin but evidence of grace. Pursuit of holiness is dismissed as legalism. Claiming to be in Christ, they would have his heaven but not his commands. Rather than abiding in his life, they are bent on self-destruction.
Solomon cautions, “It is good that you should take hold of this”; learn from it, “for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them” (7:18). Legalism and licentiousness are two sides of the same coin: Practice neither, avoid both. For, manufactured merits and loose living come not from God but sinful self. By God’s grace, he shows us our sin and gives us a Savior. As Blaise Pascal explains, “Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.”[5] Life is uncertain and full of exceptions, but our salvation is not: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
The Problem of Sin
Proverbs teaches, “Blessed is the one who finds wisdom” (Prov. 3:13), but wisdom has its limits. Solomon says, wisdom “gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city,” an idiom meaning the maximum amount of strength, but “there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins” (7:19-20). Practically speaking, the wise man seeks to live a righteous life, but positionally before a holy God, “None is righteous; no, not one … for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:10, 23). This of course presents a problem: If no one is positionally righteous, then how are we to live righteously? And why even try?
You and I may think we are doing the best we can, living a little better today than yesterday, but Solomon reveals our hypocrisy, pointing to the tongue. He says, “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” (7:21-22).We may think nothing of our careless words, but if we hear that someone has said something about us, we are enraged. We may be offended by what someone said or did and think we will never get over it, but if we offend someone else, what do we expect?
We are hypocrites, all of us, from one degree to another, because we see each other’s sin more clearly than our own. But before God, we are guilty of sin, not only in our words but our thoughts and our deeds too. This is a problem that wisdom cannot solve.“All this I have tested by wisdom,” Solomon says, “but it was far from me” (7:23). Wisdom cannot solve the problem of sin, but it can reveal its folly.
The Folly of Sin
At first reading, 7:25-29 can sound like the rant of a male chauvinist, a maelstrom of misogyny, toxic masculinity, and some have interpreted it this way. But the wise student of Scripture will recall that Solomon characteristically uses the female pronoun to personify an attribute. For example, in Proverbs Solomon personifies wisdom, saying,
…gain from her is better than gain from silver
and her profit better than gold.
She is more precious than jewels,
and nothing you desire can compare with her.
Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honor.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;
those who hold her fast are called blessed (Prov. 3:14-18).
But wisdom is not the only woman in Proverbs; there is another. She is enticingly forbidden with smooth words and seductive charm. She is not meek but “loud and wayward” (Prov. 7:11a). Her “heart is snares and nets, and [her] hands are fetters” (7:26). Beware: “many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng (Prov. 7:26). She is not wisdom but the folly of sin.
Thankfully, her traits are identifiable, recognizable. In a line-up of a thousand men, she stands out. But though we know and see her, we can still be easily ensnared by her. And here, an advantage of living righteously is revealed: “He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her” (7:26). The righteous see her and flee, like Joseph from Potiphar’s house, but the wicked are easily taken.
But observing, knowing, and recognizing the folly of sin, does not solve the problem of it. In other words, sin remains, and we see evidence of its folly all around us: the righteous die young, the wicked live on, the overly righteous are still obnoxious, the overly wicked are just terrible, and somebody said something behind your back today. And the list goes on and on, leading us to wonder: Is this all there is? Is there no hope of life, without sin, suffering, and sadness? Is the purity of Eden forever out of reach?
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, after the final battle and the ring is destroyed at Mount Doom, Sam wakes up, realizes he has survived, and is surprised to see Gandalf next to him. Knowing that what has happened is significant, he turns to Gandalf and asks, “Is everything sad going to come untrue?”[6] It’s a quirky, curious question. He’s not asking whether good things will come true but whether sad things are going to come untrue. It is perhaps an echo of Eden: Will the sad reality of the Fall one day no longer be reality?
It doesn’t take long in reading Ecclesiastes to realize that Solomon is teaching us that the world is not as it should be. We all long for a day when everything sad comes untrue, but is this even possible in a world full of sinners? Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). The apostle Paul explains, “when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:4-7).
In his mercy and by his grace, God has dealt with our sin problem: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Positionally, by God’s grace through faith in Christ we are perfectly righteous. Practically, through his Spirit we are enabled to live in obedience to him. And while in this life under the sun, we battle our sinful flesh, Christ is preparing a place for us where the inequities of this life are not true, where the righteous don’t die, where there is no folly nor sadness because sin no longer is. This is the Christian hope, that in the final consummation, we will hear from heaven “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5), and on that day everything sad comes untrue.
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 10, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 362.
[3] “The Confession of Faith” 4.2, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 18.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Quoted in Douglas Sean O’Donnell, Ecclesiastes (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2014), 156.
[6] I am thankful to Dr. Michael Krueger for emphasizing this scene and quotation in his post, “‘Is Everything Sad Going to Come Untrue?’: Eschatology in the Lord of the Rings.” https://www.michaeljkruger.com.
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 