The Advantage of Adversity
Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.
If you would, please take out your copy of God's Word this morning again and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 7. Almost everything tempts us to live by sight, not by faith. It is easier, and maybe we would even say it is more obvious to live in light of what we can see, rather than what we cannot see. And for some reason, the visible always seems to hold out more promise for us than the invisible. But I say that almost everything tempts us to live by sight and not by faith because sometimes the visible really isn't that pretty. Sometimes what we see and what we go through is downright ugly and hard and challenging and tiresome.
And it is at those times, and those are what we know as times of adversity, it is during those times that we desperately hope that there is something more than what meets the eye. And the first half of Ecclesiastes chapter 7 is all about these demanding and difficult times. And even more so, how that adversity can be, can function as a terrific advantage for us. It is really Solomon's answer to the question that he poses at the end of chapter 6. Look at chapter 6 verse 12. For who knows what is good for a man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow. And what is a rhetorical question at the end of chapter 6? What is good for a man?
He clearly intends to give us an answer to in chapter 7 because in chapter 7 he uses the word good or better 15 times in the chapter and he uses it 8 times just in the verses we're going to look at in verses 1 through 14. He clearly intends to connect the question, what is good for a man with now verses 1 through 14 and what is really good? And I think that what Solomon aims to teach us is that what is good for a man is God. God is our greatest good. Now you're asking, well how does that relate to adversity? Because adversity is not man's greatest good, except if it teaches us to trust God. And if adversity then turns our attention to God, if it causes us to fear God and live by faith in God, then adversity is actually a terrific advantage for us because it leads to our good, which is again, that is God.
And so while it may appear as we read through these verses, chapter 7, verses 1 through 14, through 14, it may appear like all we have in these opening verses is a rather random assortment or haphazard collection of various proverbs and sayings, the thread of adversity ties it all together. And Solomon is teaching us to value difficulty and he intends to weave into our thinking and appreciation for a proper esteem and value for adversity as it again points us to our good which is God. It's really interesting if you read chapters 5 and 6 you read Solomon teaching about the fact that prosperity is not necessarily a blessing. Material prosperity, financial prosperity, other kinds of worldly prosperity is not necessarily a blessing and here in In chapter 7, he's going to teach us that adversity is not necessarily a curse.
It can be a great advantage for us if we turn to God. Now of course, just because we know and even appreciate the potential value of adversity does not change the fact that life is hard and then you die. knowing that life is hard and then you die, it does not actually make it better. And there is a reason why it's called adversity and not recess or vacation or whatever possible brown paper package thing tied up with string you could envision as being enjoyable. There's a reason why it's called adversity because it's hard and difficult. In fact, we have a rather large extended family of English vocabulary that describes for us that is in our arsenal that we can use to describe how hard life really is.
We can talk about adversity, difficulty, hardship, distress, suffering, affliction, misery, tribulation, woe, pain, trauma, tragedy, calamity, setback, trials, hard times, and that's only half of what I found in the thesaurus. We are a people who know adversity and who experience much adversity, and we know that adversity is not an easy-going teacher. And yet, she has much to teach us. No doubt some of us are even feeling like, I really thought I learned my lesson from adversity. I think I can move on to another class now. But we're not in charge and we don't decide when we've passed the test. That's up to God. And there is value, advantage in adversity if we will learn.
The point of this passage is not to alleviate adversity. It is to tell us that there is a point to our pain that God has built in. And that's a good thing for us if we again fear God and live by faith. So verses 1-12 give us the hard lessons of adversity. And I have a fairly detailed outline this morning, and that's for the sake of giving you something if you're writing down the outline that you can take away and hopefully even go back and look at these verses and see the progression and the flow. But the hard lessons of adversity in verses 1-12. And in this school of adversity, we're going to have four lessons.
We're going to get a lesson from death, a lesson from rebuke, a lesson from corruption, and a lesson from chronic or ongoing struggles. First of all then is the lessons learned from death in verses 1 through 4. Let's read those verses. A good name is better than precious ointment and the day of death than the day of birth. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for This is the end of all mankind and the living will lay it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
And in these four verses what we have are three better than proverbs, three better than statements that make a comparison, that tell us what we should really place value on and then a summary. So three better than lessons and a summary. Lesson number one from death found in verse one is that death confirms man's character. The day of death is better than birth because death confirms a man's character. Look again at verse one. A good name is better than precious ointment and the day of death than the day of birth. Now the first half of this verse was probably a pretty familiar proverb in Solomon's Day. In fact, over in Proverbs chapter 22 verse 1, you find a very similar proverb that says, a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches.
That's the verse that's always on those little cards that go with your name that you can pick up at the Christian bookstores. People always gave those to me, Shawn, what my name meant, and then quoted this verse. Well, of course, Proverbs 22, Norah, Ecclesiastes 7, 1, has anything to do with your actual name. It has everything to do with your reputation. Your good name is more than just your title. It's a label that describes you. And so those little cards are meaningless. They're really empty, but they make somebody money, I'm sure. The point is, in fact, that the only difference between Ecclesiastes 7.1 and Proverbs 22.1 is in the object of comparison.
In 22.1, a good reputation is better than riches. Here a good reputation, a good name, is better than precious ointment. Now the New American Standard translates that as good ointment, but this is not a lubricating thing for stiff joints. It's not that kind of ointment. is more similar probably to what we would understand as perfume. Guys wear cologne, it was an anointing kind of oil, undoubtedly with great fragrance. Perhaps the reason that Solomon makes this comparison here as opposed to riches in chapter 22 verse 1 of Proverbs is because of the play on words. In fact, there's four Hebrew words, tov, sem, sem, and tov. So it's good, name, ointment, good.
tov, sem, sem, and tov. And so it sounds nice, it's fun. And therefore may be memorable. I think that's some of the reason that it makes it. But precious ointment, fine oil and perfume was valued in the Hebrew culture. In fact, buying perfume today, it can be a painful process. Because even today perfume and cologne is a rather expensive purchase. And it was definitely highly valued in Hebrew culture, but just like today, precious ointment may not be more than just a fancy cover-up. I'm thinking in particular of the many camps and retreats I've been on with junior high high school boys who believe that the right kind and enough of some kind of cologne or body spray will disguise the increasing stink growing underneath.
And so in that sense the external fragrance, the closer you get, the worse you see it really is it's it's really not of great value. And in this case the good reputation is better than the precious ointment. Not because the precious ointment isn't valuable, it has some value, but here's the thing, precious ointment can never overturn a bad character. If you have a great character and reputation along with smell good juice, well that's great. But no The whole amount of smell good juice is going to overcome or overthrow somebody's opinion of your bad reputation, if it is bad. Now, that's really not that complicated.
But how does that relate to the second part of the verse? And the day of death and the day of birth. Some commentators that I read suggested they don't have anything to do with each other. In fact, this is just another opportunity for Solomon to take a pot shot at how hard life is, and so it's better to die. And it's just an expression of his pessimism about life. But I really don't think that that's the case. In fact, I think that there's a significant connection. In fact, I think that the first part of verse 1 prepares us to understand the second part. I might translate it like this, just as a man's character is better than Cologne.
In the same way, his death is better than his birth. Well, why? And that's an important question. Why is a man's funeral, the day of his funeral, better than the day of his birth? This is why, because no matter how much hoopla and excitement and the big party that is thrown when you are born, that will not overturn a miserable life. And no matter how great and how excited and how much potential and how much promise there is at anyone's birth, a great birth It doesn't actually guarantee anything. And a man's character is not confirmed until he dies. If he has a good character, it is confirmed because he has persevered and has made it to the end with that good character, and it is confirmed then for all time.
The day of his death is better than the day of his birth because his true value, his inner worth, his good reputation has been proven solid. Of course the day of death is also better than the day of birth for the man with the bad reputation because at least it can't make it any worse than it already is. So in both senses it actually works, but I think the primary point is to reveal to us that death proves a man's character and it's intended really to motivate us to keep going and to continue to pursue the good character and persevere in that, we'll see even later on in verse 8, better is the end of a thing than its beginning.
And to get to the end requires patience and trust in God. And so when we come to a funeral, it causes us to think about what people are going to think about us and our reputation at our funeral. And not to motivate us then to pursue, like I said, that good name and that good character, not just today, but tomorrow. I remember when I was in high school, it always kind of bugged me, even though I knew it was true. I played baseball and my baseball coach pretty much before every game told us all, you know what your batting average doesn't matter today. No matter how many hits you got yesterday, no matter how great your average is, that does not guarantee you're going to get any hits today.
You could have batted a thousand so far every time you were up at the plate you hit a home run. That does not mean that the next time you step into the batter's box you're going to get a hit at all. And the same is true with a man's reputation. You may have a great reputation right now, but it's not done. And we need to consider our death, the day of our funeral, so that we would maintain and persist in that good reputation until then. So first of all, the first lesson of death is that death confirms a man's character. Secondly, the second lesson is that death cannot be avoided. That's found in verse 2. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind and the living lay it to heart."
Death cannot be avoided. In fact, that was one of John Williams' three points, word for word, with what he said yesterday in his Gospel presentation. Death cannot be avoided and you can't help but think about death when you go to a memorial service or a funeral. It's harder work to not think about your death when you go to a service or to a graveside or even to a crematorium or whatever it is. It's harder to not think about death when we're like that. Solomon says it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting. Some of you may be connecting this with some of the earlier passages we've studied in Ecclesiastes here in Big Church like, There is nothing better than for a man to eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.
Well, how are you going to be finding enjoyment in your toil going to a funeral? Don't those kind of contradict each other? And you know what? They don't. Because Solomon has never encouraged us to find enjoyment in all of our toil by running around flippantly and with silliness and just trying to be light hearted and empty-headed. He's never said that true joy is found in empty-headed mindless silliness. That's not where true joy is found. It's just the opposite. True joy is found when we come to appreciate what really matters most. And true joy in the process comes when we fear God, and where better to go to be reminded to fear God than to the house of mourning.
I mean, it is an adversity. It's intended to direct our thoughts and minds to God. There is much to be learned at a memorial service, at a funeral service. But nobody thinks deeply, at least at a party. That's the house of feasting. Aphasophisting is a party or a banquet. It was typically an occasion for drinking and fun. And those who spend their time in this house don't take life seriously. In fact, they're just trying to find the next party so that they can avoid taking anything seriously if they can. But for all of the diversions that they try, it's not going to change the simple fact that They are going to die.
That it cannot be escaped. This is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. We were formed from dust, and we're going back to dust. You know who said that? God. In Genesis 3.19, that is what he told Adam and Eve. I made you from the dust. You're going back to the dust. And that's the end of everybody and the wise lay it to heart and they number their days. That's Psalm 90 verse 12. Number teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. And this is the reason because wisdom does not flourish in flippancy and serious thinking and appreciation for life does not grow in the soil of silliness.
That's not where true joy, and that's definitely not where fear of God grows, is in silliness and the house of feasting. So the second lesson teaches us that the world is passing away, that death is coming, and the intention of that is to focus our attention on God and what is beyond the sun than just living for what we see. And if it does that, that's a great advantage to us. So death confirms a man's character. It cannot be avoided. The third lesson is that death clarifies what matters. I kind of already said that. Death clarifies what matters in verse 3. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
How sorrow is a pretty heavy word here, especially through Ecclesiastes. It's almost always related with sadness and anger and intensity of grief, a bitterness of frustration, of vexation. And I want to point out that the sorrow here is connected with death. It's connected with verse 2 in the house of mourning and verse 4 in the house of mourning. It's sandwiched in between two houses of mourning. So it's not just that you can walk out of here and have your own self-made pity party and feel sad for yourself, and that kind of sorrow is better than laughter. That's not the point. It's genuine grief that comes from adversity like death.
In the same way, the laughter that's being talked about is not any kind of laughing. It's not saying that we have to walk around as sour and dour and upset looking on our face as possible, just because that's what I'm trying doesn't mean that that's what we should all try. You are allowed to smile and laugh. Proverbs chapter 17 verse 22 says that a joyful heart is like good medicine. Undoubtedly that's going to come out in healthy laughter at times. But the laughter that sorrow is better than is this silly, frivolous, house of feasting, house of mirth kind of laughter. The point then in verse 3 is that sorrow is better than mindless silliness and again we ask the question why?
Well it's because sorrow produces the opposite of mindless silliness because in sorrow the heart is made glad. I'm not making that up. We typically would talk like this, don't be sad, be glad. Well that's not what Solomon is saying. Solomon is saying be sad for in that you will be made truly glad. We don't put those things together. Solomon does. How does that happen? How does it work that being sad would make us glad, would cheer us? Well one, it increases our appreciation for joy. Being sad increases our value and appreciation for times of prosperity and joy. But more than that, sorrow has a clarifying effect to teach us and point out to us what is genuinely valuable.
The times of sorrow can actually be some of the most clearest thinking times that we have, where we're not distracted. The amusements and the entertainment that's all around us is meaningless to us, and we appreciate what really matters. Sorrow can have that effect. The adversity of death reminds us to live in light of death, and sorrow reminds us what truly makes us glad. This third lesson is that sorrow over death can be a great advantage to us if we turn to God, and He is our ultimate good. So then the conclusion in verse 4, So then the wise dwell on death. If death confirms a man's character, it can't be avoided anyway, so you should be thinking about it.
And ultimately it clarifies what matters. Then dwell on death if you want to be wise. Verse 4, the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. The heart is the inner man, his thoughts, his affections, his attention, his memory. By saying that the heart of the wise man is in the house of mourning doesn't mean that the man is just always looking in the paper to find out when the next funeral service is and he's attending those all day long, all day and every day. The point is that he's dwelling on it or thinking about it. Not in some morbid way, fascinated with death itself, but rather thinking about what it means for the end of his own life and how he should choose to live now.
By contrast, it's fools who blithely go about like there's no end in sight. That's foolish. That is not smart. Fools are always hanging around the house of mirth, the house of the party, the house of the amusement. We have boxes we've brought into our own houses to provide that for us with sitcoms and silly things that we watch to divert us from thinking seriously, we ought to spend some more time thinking about death. Why is it that when people go to the doctor and the doctor gives them a timeline of how much time they have left? That most of those people don't respond by going home and sitting on the couch for the days that remain.
But for with whatever strength and energy they have, they get up and they make a list of all the things they want to do, and who they want to talk to, and how they want to spend the last days they have on what really matter. And isn't it really us who should be more concerned with that since nobody has given us a timeline? We don't even know. No doctor has told us it's going to be in two weeks or three months or whatever it is. We don't even know. It might be tomorrow. And if we were thinking about that more, we would live differently. I mean, we would make different choices. That is the experience that we know.
When we're dwelling on sorrow, times of death, we choose different things. It's kind of interesting that for all of the make-believe death we watch on TV, or in movies, or wherever it is, and even for all of the non-fiction reports of death that we get on the news, all of that tends to desensitize us, rather than disturb us like it should. And maybe that's just because seeing four seconds of somebody dying is not enough time to properly dwell on the ramifications of what that means. And that's why dwelling and thinking about what's in the house of mourning is what the wise are really doing. If we would be wise and if we would get advantage from the lessons of death, we would learn what death has to teach us in particular, we would pursue God.
Well the second lesson of adversity is found in verses 5 through 6. Verses 1 through 4, the lessons learned from death. Verses 5 and 6 are the lessons learned from rebuke, from admonition, from confrontation. In verses 5 and 6 contrast wiser proof and silly songs. Not necessarily just the silly songs that Bob and Larry are singing on the Veggie Tales, but any kind of silly song that doesn't necessarily cause us to get serious. It is true that most people prefer entertainment over sitting down and going through a list that someone else has come up with of all of our faults. We generally appreciate more, mindlessly being amused and entertained than we do listening to a wise person tell us all the things we're doing wrong.
And in that sense, rebuke can be another type of adversity. We typically don't wake up in the morning looking forward to rebuke. In that way, it's kind of an adversity. And yet, in trying to avoid rebuke, we avoid the advantage it may bring to us. And in particular, there are two lessons that we learn from rebuke. And number one is found in verse 5, and that is, rebuke makes wise. That's just the truth. Rebuke makes wise. Verse 5, it is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. This is different than the English proverb we know, early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
This actually says sitting down with somebody who's telling you that you're headed in the wrong direction and do a bunch of bad, stupid things, that's what makes you wise. It's a little different. It's not about your bedtime. It's about rebuke. Now the word songs here, then to hear the song of fools, the word song, great word, it's used over 70 times in the Old Testament and every time it refers to songs, to words set to some kind of tune. That's all it is. And the song of fools is intended to function as a distraction or as an escape, as a way to avoid thinking seriously and dealing with how tough or hard life is.
But no matter how difficult it may be to sit and hear someone correct or reprove you, isolating yourself from that is not an advantage. I promise you that King David valued and saw it as an advantage that Nathan confronted him, the Prophet Nathan confronted him about his sin with Bathsheba and her husband of adultery and murder. He valued and appreciated that confrontation and rebuke way more than all of the performers that they could have found in all of Israel entertaining him day after day. And why was that an advantage for him to be rebuked and to get that confrontation? Because as he says in Psalm 51, it caused him to repent and turn back to God where he could get the joy of his salvation returned.
And what he understood was that the joy of salvation is better than mindless, silly, frivolous, flippant joy that is all around us in our world. in his inimitable way, Doug Wilson says it this way, quote, if given a choice between hearing a wise man enumerate your faults and hearing the spice girls try to sing something, the choice is an easy one. And yet for as easy as that choice is right now, is that actually how we spend our days?
No. There is rebuke that makes wise, but then the second lesson is found in verse six, and that is frivolity is vanity. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fools. This also is vanity. Verse 6 is the reason for Solomon's assumption or assertion in verse 5. And there's a terrific play on words here in verse 6. It's like the sound of serum thorns under the seer pot, the sound of serum under the seer. One commentator translated this way to try to make the play on words in English, he said, like nettles cracking under kettles. And we know it happens today just as much as in Israel that dry, brittle thorns are a rapidly burning, somewhat easily extinguishable kind of fuel. But the crackling of thorns under the pot for all All of the quick flame and impressive sparks and annoying noise it provides, it provides almost zero heat and very little lasting heat.
You know what? The laughter of fools is the same way. For all of the commotion and noise that it creates, there really is no lasting value whatsoever. Solomon concludes that's so much the case that it's vanity, it's empty, it's meaningless, useless. And so while we may feel that we're being roasted when we're being rebuked, it is actually a great advantage to us if it causes us to learn the lesson and get to God. So lessons from death, lessons from rebuke, third in in verse 7, lessons from corruption. Verse 7 says that this way, surely oppression drives the wise man into madness and a bribe corrupts the heart. The thing is about the previous two lessons is not only are we told about the advantage of death and the advantage of rebuke, we're also comparing the value of wisdom with foolishness. And we may be tempted by now to when we get to this third lesson to think that the answer is wisdom.
So maybe if we could just get everybody a better education and get them wisdom that would guarantee that they could avoid adversity and the fact is that isn't the case at all. Not only because wise people die, no matter how wise you are you're still going to die. There are a lot of really well educated people whose lives are in utter shambles. Totally miserable, totally difficult. The reason is that though wisdom is valued by God, it has relative value. Wisdom is valued by God, but you know what? Wisdom is never a replacement for God. No matter how much wisdom you have, you still need God. We needed Him when we think about death. We need Him when we think about rebuke, even here with wisdom we need him when it comes to corruption.
Wisdom certainly may help us to avoid some self-caused trouble, but in the end, in and of itself, it cannot insulate us from adversity. In fact, the first lesson here is that wise men can be driven to corruption. That's the first half of verse 7. Just because you're wise doesn't mean you can't be driven to corruption. oppression drives the wise into madness. The first word in verse 7, ESV is surely, first word in the New American Standard is for. I think that's a poor translation because verse 7 is not providing an explanation on verse 6. One, because it's moved into a new arena of adversity, but two, because the phrase, the formula, this This is vanity, typically is the end of a section, not the beginning, or even the middle.
And so, this is vanity concludes what we saw in 5 and 6, and so verse 7 starts us out on something new, and so I think surely is the better translation. The first half of the verse deals with oppression, or we might use the word extortion. Maybe we would use the word blackmail. That's where somebody is putting pressure on you from the outside. They're exerting some kind of force through threats or making demands, exerting control. And this is not just viewing it, this is experiencing it. Based on the second half of the verse, the parallel part, where it is the wise man himself whose heart is corrupted through bribery, here the wise man is not just observing oppression, it's his own arm behind his back that's being twisted.
For all of his wisdom, it didn't guarantee that he would avoid or get out of this kind of difficult situation. And that just proves that wisdom by itself does not safeguard man. He's driven into madness. His judgment is impaired. His understanding for all of his wisdom actually gets him no benefit. He starts acting like a madman. Well, not only can wise men be driven to corruption, But the second part of verse 7 teaches us that wise men can be drawn into corruption. And here instead of oppression, we find bribery. A bribe corrupts the heart. So adversity hits wise people from outside and can rise up from inside.
It's a bribe here, an offer of advance that would tempt a man. And even a wise person can act like a fool when he's enticed by money or position. It corrupts his heart. And basically the final payoff for the man who takes the bribe is that his own heart is ravaged. It's destroyed. It's corrupted. And while we might like to think that wisdom would be a guarantee for our integrity and and for our perseverance, it doesn't. Wisdom is not stainless steel. Wisdom by itself cannot stand up against the heat and the pressures that we face on a regular basis. Wisdom by itself is not foolproof. We need wisdom, but more than wisdom, we need God.
And the lesson here as we examine corruption, even for the man who has wisdom, is to realize that we should fear God and have faith in Him. That's what we need. That is what is good for us. Sure, we ought to pursue wisdom, but we need to depend on God. If seeing or even experiencing this kind of difficulty turns us to God, that's an advantage for us. And that leads us into the fourth lesson of adversity. Lessons learned from death, lessons learned from rebuke, lessons learned from corruption. Now, lessons learned from chronic struggles, ongoing affliction. Today you can buy long-term insurance for those ongoing difficult extended periods of time. And here in verses 8 through 12 we again have three lessons and a summary. And these are brutal, at least they're brutal as I think about might need to apply them, so you may find some similarities here.
But number one, the first lesson from chronic struggle is that impatience does not accelerate chronic struggles. Being impatient about how hard it is does not make it go faster. Now we know that, but to watch our lives, perhaps many people would not think that we know that. Man, if I can just get really upset and impatient about it, that'll make it go faster and we'll get to the end. And that is obviously not the case at all. And Solomon puts it this way, better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. And so we have a contrast between the end and the beginning of a thing, a thing and between the patient person and the proud person.
And the connection is that the proud person loves to boast up front at the beginning, but the proud person is going to end up being impatient in the middle of the process because something is going to go wrong. That's how God has made this vain, short life unto the Son, is something is going to go wrong. And so you may boast at the beginning, but in the middle you're going to get impatient and irritated and upset about it and want to give up. And the reason for that is because the proud people are depending on who? On whom? They're depending on themselves, their own wisdom and their own ability. And so when they get into it, it's not going their way.
Well they get upset because it's about them. The patient person, the person who makes it to the end, is the person who is not depending on themselves, it's the person who is depending on God. The adversity, even over the long haul, is intended to cause us to focus on God and not on ourselves. Those who are proud in spirit, the actual word is the idea of having a high spirit, elevated or inflated spirit. And interestingly enough, the patient spirit here, the word has the idea of long or extended, so both of them are this play on the idea of extension in space. It's better to have a long spirit than a high spirit.
Perhaps the idea is the higher your spirit, the quicker the crash is going to be, but if you have a long spirit, then you can make it and endure to the end. But the fact is, proud people love to boast at the beginning. And then, for all of their plans and their program, sometimes they don't make it to the end. And it's because they're depending on themselves, and they're not depending on God. I really like a story in 1 Kings chapter 20. You can read about it there, you don't need to turn there. It's the story of the king of Syria, Ben Hadad. And he comes to Samaria, and he tells King Ahab that the Syrians are going to crush the hill of Samaria.
They're going to level it to dust. I would like to say that's big talker, Betty Crocker. Here he comes in. We're going to level this hill to dust. That's what you guys are going to have left. And I love how King Ahab responds. First Kings chapter 20, verse 11. And he says, let not him who straps on his armor boast like he who takes it off. Now that's good. Because when you put on your armor you have proven zip. But when you have taken off your armor, more than likely as the proverb there is intending to communicate, you have fought the battle, you still are standing at the end of the battle. And perhaps then at that point there's something to boast about.
Of course, most of the people who make it to the end of the matter still don't boast that they made it to the end because it was so difficult all along they knew that it wasn't them who enabled them to get through it. It was only by God's help anyway. The point is that the end is better than the beginning and if you're proud, you will be impatient and that will not make it go faster. Impatience has never expedited the solution. makes it go faster. Not only that, not only does impatience not help out, verse 9 teaches us secondly that anger does not eliminate chronic struggle. Verse 9 says, Be not quick in your spirit to become angry for anger lodges in the bosom of fools. Now I don't like that.
I really wish that to the degree I got mad, to that same degree I could eliminate my difficulties. That would work really well for me. But Solomon says, that's dumb. That's the way of the fool. Anger does not make anything go away. It does not eliminate our struggles. The word angry is a word permeated with exasperation, resentment. And whereas verse 8 made its point through comparison, verse 9 simply gives us the command, Do not be quick in your spirit to become angry. The reason is found in the second part of the verse because anger lodges in the bosom of fools. Bosom is a word that is used to describe the innermost, the depths, the deep-seated part of a person.
The expressions of anger reveal that really what makes up a man is foolishness, not wisdom. Anger is characteristic of fools and it doesn't make adversity go away, no matter how mad you get. That is not going to make your misery go away. In fact, it's just the opposite, isn't it? Anger does not blow away the clouds of adversity. Your anger actually makes the clouds darker. It works the exact opposite way. It's not beneficial during these chronic struggles. And then verse 10. Okay, so if impatience doesn't help us, and if anger doesn't help us, maybe we could just think about the good old days. Maybe that'll make it better.
But verse 10 teaches us that nostalgia does not resuscitate the good times. Say not, why were the former days better than these? For it is not from wisdom that you ask this." And here's the second command. We are not supposed to talk this way. This is not wise. Just like being angry is a demonstration of foolishness, so is this kind of nostalgic, reminiscent kind of life. We long for the good old days, but Solomon says that kind of sentimental, sappy kind of question attitude on our part is a demonstration of foolishness. Now even though he doesn't tell us exactly why it's foolish in this verse, I think from Ecclesiastes and other parts of the book, we might be able to make these conclusions.
First of all, one of the reasons that nostalgia does not make it better is because every time has bad things and good opportunities. There is nothing new unto the sun, which means it's not worse today than it was yesterday. There isn't anything new. It's one cycle that God keeps going and nothing is new. And so whether it's collectively as a group in the passing of decades and we long for that simpler time, drinking our lemonade out on our front porches or whatever it is, was probably before my time, but there's nothing worse today necessarily than then. And even if we look at our own lives individually as the days pass by, there's nothing particularly worse about today than there was yesterday.
We may have good days and bad days, but in the end, there's always good times and there's always bad times. Second, not only does nostalgia then not resuscitate good times because they're just always good and bad together, but second, the good old days are gone because God said so. God is the one who keeps the days passing and the sun coming up and going down, and God is the one who has made it that way. And when we long for yesterday because it was a better day, you know what that reveals? It reveals that what we liked about the day was that it was good, not that we had God. If what we were valuing was God, well, bring on the day, because it's what He has for us.
In fact, this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. Whether it's good or bad, I've got God. So it's foolish to say, well bring back the old days, that proves what we wanted was the day, not God Himself. Now that third, it is really self-defeating to dwell in the present about how much better was the past. That's self-defeating because that just makes the present worse. It just is increasing your misery because it's not like it used to be. That defeats the purpose. actually is not the answer. And so, yeah, we ought to look back for the sake of praising God and all that He has done. There is that benefit in looking back, but looking back for the sake of escaping what God has for us today is wrong. Look back and praise, but don't look back to escape what He's got today. It's easier to look back. Why? Because it doesn't take any faith.
Oh, today takes faith, and tomorrow will take faith. Yesterday didn't, at least not from this viewpoint. And yet it's an advantage to us to realize that nostalgia doesn't help if it again points us to God. So then the conclusion in verses 11 and 12, for sake of time, I won't talk about them a whole bunch, but the point here is simply that wisdom does help in tough times. In all three verses we learned the contrast between the wise person and the foolish person. There is some value in wisdom just like there is some value in an inheritance. There is some value in difficult times to having money. It can help alleviate some of the problems, but ultimately money is not the answer.
And even based on what he's already said, wisdom is not the ultimate in and of itself or by itself answer. So there's value in wisdom. Don't live impatiently or angrily or sentimentally. Live wisely, but still understand that there are some limitations. Just like there's a limitation of inheritance, it's only good when you're getting it, not when you're giving it. When you're giving it, that means you're no longer there to receive any benefit. It's temporary.
And so wisdom is not certainly a guarantee against adversity either, though it's better to have. So those are the hard lessons of adversity. Verses 13 and 14 give us the right response to adversity, and these verses function as the umbrella that covers and concludes everything else we've already talked about. There are two imperatives here, which is actually one imperative that's repeated in both verses. It's the word consider. Solomon is telling us to chew on this. Bear this in mind. Take note of this. Here's what we're supposed to take away from these hard lessons on adversity, and there's two of them. Number one, consider you cannot change the direction of God's providence. That's not up to you. You can ask me to try on your behalf, but I'm going to be unsuccessful. You cannot change the direction of God's providence verse 13. Consider the work of God. Who can make straight what he has made crooked? And the answer is nobody except for God. You can't change what he's doing. It recounts what Solomon said in chapter 1
verse 15. Except in chapter 1 verse 15 he kind of left it vague saying just generally speaking you can't change what is crooked. You can't make it Here, he clearly attributes the crookedness, the difficulties and the adversity to God's orchestration. God is the one who makes what is crooked, crooked. He'll make it straight when he wants to. And for all of our impatience and anger and nostalgia we throw at the crooked stick, it's not going to make it straight. For all of the money that we have, it's not going to straighten out the stick. And even for all of our wisdom, we can't make the stick straight. And what that ought to cause us to realize is that depending on ourselves then is silly.
We need to depend on God. Consider His work. Depend on Him. We can't change the direction of His providence. And secondly, verse 14, consider you can't fathom the depths of His providence either. In the day of prosperity, be joyful, and in the day of adversity, consider. God has made the one as well as the other so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. The alternating days, good and bad, the cycle, the seasons, that is 100% up to God's control. The days of profit and the days of loss alternate at His command. They wait to come based on what He says. And we ought to accept both days in the day of prosperity.
Rejoice, be thankful, praise God in the day of adversity. Rejoice, be thankful that you have God and give Him thanks. Job actually told his wife, she was following the counsel of the silly foolish woman when And she asked, you know, give up. God has given these awful days to you. He's not worth it. Job says, shall we not accept both blessing and adversity? Because in both days we get God. And Solomon says that God does this so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. You know what that's saying? God keeps us off balance so that we would live by faith. As soon as we think we're on balance, we don't need him anymore.
We start acting like we got the wisdom, we got the strength, hey, we can handle whatever comes our way. The point is not just to accept whatever life has to offer you, the point is to accept God and whatever life He brings to you. Whether it's a day of adversity or a day of prosperity. For all of our ability, we will never outguess God. We may never fully understand the reasons why he does what he does when he does it. The point is we need to trust him. And there are certainly more adversities we could learn from than just death and rebuke and corruption and chronic struggles. There are way more. That's probably sufficient enough of a reminder for today that life is full of adversity.
When we live by what we see under the sun, all we see is that life is hard and then you die. adversity should cause us to get beyond the sun, live by fear of God, reverence for Him, and by faith and trust in Him. Father, that's what we want. And perhaps even this morning some of these lessons, as Solomon has shared them with us, will kind of clear away the clouds and draw our attention to You as You intend for them to do. It's of no advantage for us to try to escape adversity, to be diverted from thinking about it. Just the opposite, there is great value and wisdom and benefit. And seeing that you're in control, and whether it's what we would describe as good or bad, prosperous or full of adversity, that's because you are increase our taste for you as our good, cause us to learn these lessons well. For the sake of our true joy and for the sake of your ultimate glory, we pray this in Christ's name, Amen.
When we live by what we see under the sun, all we see is that life is hard and then you die. adversity should cause us to get beyond the sun, live by fear of God, reverence for Him, and by faith and trust in Him. Father, that's what we want. And perhaps even this morning some of these lessons, as Solomon has shared them with us, will kind of clear away the clouds and draw our attention to You as You intend for them to do. It's of no advantage for us to try to escape adversity, to be diverted from thinking about it. Just the opposite, there is great value and wisdom and benefit. And seeing that you're in control, and whether it's what we would describe as good or bad, prosperous or full of adversity, that's because you are increase our taste for you as our good, cause us to learn these lessons well.
