PM Home Bible Study Group; March 24, 2010

Ecclesiastes 7:22-8:1

Theme: Even in the best of men, the pursuit of wisdom is hampered by the reality of sin in the human heart.

Solomon continues his monumental search for wisdom “under the sun”. And in the course of his search—laying out some of the practical conclusions he came to regarding wisdom in a fallen world—he now brings us to something that is tragically out-of-sorts in it all. Amazingly, he could find no better example to use than himself. It was the fact that he was the wisest of all men that gives his ‘example’ such powerful force.

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Solomon might have agreed with the words of “The Beast in Me”¹; written by Nick Lowe, and sung hauntingly by Johnny Cash:

The beast in me
Is caged by frail and fragile bonds
Restless by day
And by night, rants and rages at the stars
God help the beast in me
The beast in me
Has had to learn to live with pain
And how to shelter from the rain
And in the twinkling of an eye
Might have to be restrained
God help the beast in me

Sometimes
It tries to kid me that it’s just a teddy bear
Or even somehow managed
To vanish in the air
And that is when I must beware
Of the beast in me
That everybody knows
They’ve seen him out dressed in my clothes
Patently unclear
If it’s New York or New Year
God help the beast in me
The beast in me.

Solomon knew something of the unpredictable and destructive power of the sinful potential—that ‘beast’—that dwelt within his heart. It was at the height of his glory, and of his world-wide reputation as a sought-after man of wisdom, that we read in 1 Kings 11:1-8 of how “his wives turned his heart after other gods” (v. 4), and eventually brought him to shame. He became a proverb of sin’s surprising power; so that Nehemiah was able to tell the leaders of Israel, who had also married foreign wives, “Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? Yet among many nations there was no king like him, who was beloved of his God; and God made him king over Israel. Nevertheless pagan women caused even him to sin” (Nehemiah 13:26).

The point that Solomon seems to be making in this passage is a very practical one for those who seek to discover wisdom “under the sun”. Even in the best of cases, and even in the hearts of the best of men, the pursuit of wisdom is hampered by the one, great, universal fact that there’s something dreadfully wrong with man. Even though he knows better, he still seems prone to bring ruin upon himself over and over. It’s a condition that theologians have referred to as “fallenness”; and that was brought about by the sin of our first father Adam. It is—without question—the most empirically verifiable affirmation that Scripture makes concerning humanity; and it’s one that the pursuit of wisdom “under the sun” absolutely must take into account.

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Note, in Solomon’s words from our text this evening, . . .

I.HOW ELUSIVE WISDOM HAS PROVEN TO BE (7:23-24).

A.Solomon claims to have, thus far, proven much. He says, “All this I have proven by wisdom . . .” (v. 23). But it has not been happy news. The “all this” that he mentions may be the conclusions that he has drawn regarding the practical applications of wisdom to life; or it may be the very elusiveness of wisdom itself in a fallen world. In either case, he has “proven”—or, as it can be translated, “tested”—these things and has ended up frustrated by it all; because he says, “I said, ‘I will be wise; but it was far from me.’” He hints at what Paul eluded to in Romans 1:22 of the fallen men of this world—that “professing to be wise, they became fools”. The enterprise that Solomon began with such great promise has ended in such deep frustration; just as he said back in 1:13-14, “And I set my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven; this burdensome task God has given to the sons of man, by which they may be exercised. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed all is vanity and grasping after the wind.”

B.Solomon goes on to describe how wisdom is not only “far off”, but also unfathomable. “As for that which is far off and exceedingly deep, who can find it out?” (v. 24). In the original language, he uses a superlative; saying that what he seeks is “deep, deep”. Even if he begins to tread out into the depths of wisdom, he finds that he is soon over his head. Has there ever been anyone—even he, the wisest of men to ever have lived—who has come anywhere close to really touching bottom? If so, why is it that every new school of philosophic though seems to do nothing more than cancel-out the one that preceded it? Why has man, in all the centuries, really not yet learned to live wisely? Why is it that those few men who boast that they have found it ending up living so foolishly in the end? Why is it that, once a man feels he has grasped it, it quickly slips away from him—leaving him standing there looking like a fool? Why is it that the thing man’s heart seems to hunger after “under the sun” seems so tragically out of reach? It simply cannot be found apart from God (see Romans 11:33; 1 Corinthians2:10-12).

II.HOW EASILY HIS HEART HAS LED HIM FROM WISDOM’S PATH (7:25-26).

A.His failure to find wisdom “under the sun” would certainly not have been for lack of trying, though! He gave it a pretty thorough go. He says, “I applied my heart”, or “I turned my mind” (NIV); and then follows a list of infinitives: “to know, to search and seek out wisdom and the reason of things”. But it wasn’t just wisdom and reason that he sought out. He also applied himself “to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness” (v. 25). Think of it! He even made a thorough, scientific study of those acts which prudent men would consider stupid! He examined the destructive things that people do to themselves and to others—things that leave people wondering, “Why would they have done that? How in the world could anyone be so stupid?” This is what he eluded to in 1:17; how he set his heart “to know wisdom and to know madness and folly”.

B.Now; you would think that a man who had made such a careful research project out of that which is wise, and also out of that which is foolish, would then choose wisely for himself. But alas—it was not so! Solomon speaks from sad experience when he says,”And I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God shall escape from her, but the sinner shall be trapped by her” (v. 26). In saying this, he condemns himself as a sinner. He himself was drawn away from the path of wisdom by a lust for foreign women. It’s important to note that Solomon isn’t speaking here in a contemptible way about women in general. He’s speaking of how his attraction to ungodly, immoral, pagan women led him away from a devotion to God. And he isn’t blaming those women; ultimately, he’s blaming himself. In Proverbs 22:14, he wrote, “The mouth of an immoral woman is a deep pit; he who is abhorred by the LORD will fall there.” In Proverbs 5:3-5, he said,”For the lips of an immoral [or "strange"] woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, and her steps lay hold of hell.” In Proverbs 6:24-26,he offers words of wisdom “to keep you from the evil woman, from the flattering tongue of a seductress. Do not lust after her beauty in your heart, nor let her allure you with her eyelids. For by means of a harlot a man is reduced to a crust of bread; and an adulteress will pray upon his precious life.”

C.Just think for a moment about how many otherwise great and wise men in the public eye—men who, it seemed, had everything in the world going for them—literally destroyed it all by being drawn away from faithfulness by the allures of a woman? In all of the long history of humanity, wouldn’t you think that wise men would know better? And yet, they never seem to learn! Not even Solomon avoided it! This simply underscores the reality of that dreadful thing called sin within us—that “beast” that “is caged by frail and fragile bonds—restless by day; and by night, rants and rages at the stars”! How can we ever hope to find wisdom “under the sun”, when —no sooner than we find it—that beast in us sabotage everything. How can I find wisdom, when “I delight in the law of God according to the inward man; but see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members” (Romans 7:22-23)?

III.HOW FRUSTRATING HIS SEARCH BECAME BECAUSE OF SIN (7:27-28).

A.This reality of sin is an inescapable hindrance to the success of Solomon’s whole enterprise. He cannot find wisdom; because once he seems to grab hold of it, the sin in him pulls him easily away from it. “‘Here is what I have found,’ says the Preacher,’adding one thing to the other to find out the reason, which my soul still seeks but I cannot find . . .” (vv. 27-28a). We almost lean forward to hear this great conclusion—and yet almost fear to do so because of how he says he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. “One man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all these I have not found” (v. 28b). He isn’t speaking here from out of the bad experiences that he’s had in romance. He’s pointing to his quest for wisdom. It’s important to note that,according to 1 Kings 11:3, he had “seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines”; which totals to a thousand women. He may, then, be speaking of personal experience—that out of the thousand women that he had allowed to draw his heart away from a pure devotion to God, he found not one wise in the bunch. He’s saying, then, that while the averages may have been better for men as a source of wisdom than for the women in his life—he’s still only found, at best, one out of a thousand men that he could call wise. (And as a side note; if a man were to try to use this passage to suggest that women are inferior, it would be pretty fair proof that he wasn’t one of those ‘one-in-a-thousand’!)

B.Why is the average so tragically low? The reason seems to be—given the context of this passage—that there’s this thing called sin within us. It pops up and destroys us,even when we’re relatively “wise”. Think again about Solomon’s own experience. His downfall didn’t come about because of ignorance. God had warned the children of Israel in His word—as clearly as possible—that they were not to intermarry with foreign women. In Deuteronomy 7:3-4, God said that, in their interactions with foreign people groups, they were not to “make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly.” The wisest man in the world knew this; and yet, he disobeyed it. He married women “from the nations of whom the LORD had said to the children of Israel, ‘You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you.Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.’ Solomon clung to these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart” (1 Kings 11:2-3). How can we hope to find wisdom”under the sun”, when sin yanks the rug out of from under even the wisest of men?

IV.HOW FAR FROM GLORY OUR HEARTS HAVE PLACED US (7:29-8:1).

A.Solomon concludes this portion of his search with these words; “Truly, this only I have found: That God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes” (7:29);or, as it is in the NIV, “men have gone in search of many schemes”. God has laid out the right way of wisdom to us in His holy commands; and man—fallen through the sin of his first father Adam—has departed from God’s good way in search of ‘alternatives’. Man’s search for wisdom is clouded by a state of self-deception. His mental capacities have fallen with him. He has left God out of the picture; and has enthroned his fallen reasoning in the place that only God should occupy. And now, man cannot find the wisdom that his heart longs for because he can not and will not see things as they really are. His search for wisdom is, as someone has put it, as a blind man in a dark closet,chasing after a black cat that isn’t there.

B. And yet, this isn’t how it was meant to be. As Solomon says, God had made man “upright”. Solomon longs after the man of wisdom; saying, “Who is like a wise man? And who knows the interpretation of a thing? A man’s wisdom makes his face shine, and the sternness of his face is changed” (8:1). Oh, how far we’ve fallen! And oh, how much we long after what was lost! Oh, how it all makes us cry out, “God help thebeast in me!”

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All this reminds us that help is available “above the sun”. As Paul has written, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:1). And as Solomon’s father wrote in Psalm 19;

The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul;
The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;
The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes;
The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
Yea, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them Your servant is warned,
And in keeping them there is great reward (Psalm 19:8-11).