Ecclesiastes 2:12-14

November 12th 2023

How have the lives of those before us, shaped us? We may not like to think on this fact, but the truth of the matter is that everything in our life that was in place before us, planned in advance by God, has shaped us and continually will shape us. The way our great grandparents raised our grandparents, molded and shaped the manner in which our grandparents raised our parents. And that has molded and shaped the way our parents have raised us.

Everything about the lives of those who have gone before us, has been condensed and purified through the various trials and furnaces of life in a fallen world, in us. In our life. In the way we raise our children, the way we love our family, the way we work, the way we relax. The books they read, the movies they watched, the media they consumed, the wars they fought, the culture our ancestors steeped in, influences the flavor of our current life. There is no way around it.

Was it a good, and Godly environment? Can we boast of circumstances that God brought before the thresholds of the homes of our ancestors? Was God moving in their life? Do you know if He was? When was the last time you asked your parents, your grandparents, if you're lucky--your great grandparents, when they first knew that God loved them? How God sanctified them? What was the valley of the shadow of death that your great grandparents walked through?

We must look to our ancestors, not because we worship them, not because they were greater than us, not because they were less than us. Not because they were stronger than us, and not because they were weaker than us. Their battles were ones that we could never have fought, and our battles are ones they couldn't even imagine. We must look to those who came before us, because God worked in their lives, intentionally, in ways similar to how He is working in our lives.

Are we continually filling ourselves with the wisdom of those who have gone before us? Learning from their trials and temptations, avoiding the traps they fell into, charging down the path they forged, dwelling on their words and their deeds? Or are we so foolish that we think we need no other instruction but “me and my Bible”?

Yes it is true that no other words on Earth are the breathed out voice of God in print, and were you hiding in a North Korean basement with nothing but a few pages of the Gospel of John…you would still have everything you need to know God and be saved from the consequences of your own sin…but you are not hiding in a basement. You are not alone on a deserted island, you are not ducking into alleyways to practice your faith in the dark and quiet. No, you are here, now, in public, singing loudly and flipping through your Bibles with earnest anticipation that the words of the preacher will guide you to the truth within its pages.

Learn from those who have gone before you,

to become the type of person that those who come after you

will want to learn from.

Leave a legacy of education and knowledge and a thirst for righteousness and wisdom and the beautiful delicacies of the God of the Universe to your grandchildren’s grandchildren. Let them learn from your mistakes…by admitting you have made mistakes and repenting of those you have made towards those you have made them towards. For if you refuse to admit your faults to your Children… they will think them to be normal and you will see your own sins passed down to your grandchildren, and the portion of the blame that belongs to you will be a burning coal searing your every thought. Admit the sins you have committed against your children, or watch as they do the same to theirs.

What do you leave in your wake, brothers and sisters? What lingers behind, when you leave a room? Is it anxiety or fear? Is it comfort and love? Is it strength and courage? Do the people in your life feel compelled to hug their children tighter, because of your example? Do they burn righteous fire, eager to fight the enemies of our God, riled and revved up because of your zeal? Do they overflow with compassion for the weak, the lost and broken, because they have seen you show love and mercy to the wayward?

Impart wisdom to them, teach them, love them, and leave behind something so incredibly grand and magnificent, that when you think about what your children will leave to theirs, you can't begin to imagine it. Leave behind a golden thread of the knowledge of God…and a broken and useless body. Be fully spent, when your dead body is lowered into its grave. Leave no heresy unchallenged. Leave no battle that comes to you, unfought. Leave no child unloved, leave no prayer un-prayed, no sin un-repented of, leave no strength in your body, your mind, or your heart. When you die, die with an empty tank, fully spent on glorifying God at a million miles an hour.

#2)

Even with the truth that much wisdom brings much grief, and increased knowledge brings increased sorrow, yes the more you know, the more you know that you don’t know. Yes, sometimes you will wish that you didn't know now, what you didn't know then. Yes these are true, Biblical statements, but it is also true that wisdom is far, far better than foolishness. Than stupidity. Than impulsive, unthinking, fast-dying, folly and madness. In our verses this morning, Solomon maintains his claim from Proverbs 4:7, in that “Wisdom is the chief thing” and that it is better than gold (Prov. 16:16), when he says that “wisdom excels folly” just like “light excels darkness”.

We must ask the question, brothers and sisters of the most high God; what does wisdom bring? What is the benefit? What is the profit? Will wisdom touch our life in ways that other things cannot? Last week we looked to J.I.Packer’s definition of wisdom as: “choosing the best means for the best ends”. Intentionally, and with specific forethought, being aware of what choices in the future, our choices in the present will force us to make. We make our own beds, and will have to sleep in them.

Wisdom is better than foolishness, because it will help us prepare for the events of life ahead of time. We need not simply be reactionaries, pushed to and fro by the tides of life like a ship with no sail or rudder. We are not aimlessly wandering about the wilderness with no compass or direction, for God has given us the ability to think, and reason, has shown us how to use them by having us go through the events of our life.

Have you learned the lessons that the lessons of life have attempted to teach you? Do you need to be taught them again? How many times will you have to go through the same thing, over and over and over again, before you finally learn the right way to move forward, whatever that right way may be?

Wisdom is a light on a dark path. A path through valleys and dangers. A path with toils and snares. A path with villains and thieves. Ditches and dangers. Our verse this morning tells us, from the pen of someone who knows what he is talking about, that the “wise man’s eyes are in his head.” He knows where he is going, when he is going to go there, and why is going there to begin with. He looks at the path, sees what lies ahead, and prepares himself. He arms himself with the weapons of prayer and fasting when he sees the enemy of temptation lying in wait. He knows where temptation lives, and avoids that road. He goes around it, or if the path where temptation lives is unavoidable, he studies the lives and stories and works of those who have gone before him to learn how better to fight. How better to pray. He tells his companions who are on that road with him, who may not be tempted in the same way, to keep an extra eye on him. To pray an extra prayer. The wise man admits his weaknesses and his faults. How easily he trips and falls in certain areas, and does everything in his power to work against it.

The wise man’s eyes are in his head.

“But”, our verses continue “the fool walks in darkness.” The way of the fool is one of constant confrontation. The way of no rest, the way of no peace, no slumber. Not slowing down, not taking a breath, not surveying the landscape before him, not spying out the road before, and not learning from those who have already walked it. The way of the fool is in darkness because he refuses to see the light. He refuses to look at those who have gone before him, or at those by his left and right. He refuses to learn, in fact, Solomon told us in Proverbs 1:22, that the fool hates knowledge. He loves his own way…all the way to the grave. He thinks he has all the answers, and assumes that the knowledge he has is all there is to be had, and any attempts to instruct or turn the fool upon a different path, will result in the fool lashing out at him, and then blaming the wise man for his troubles and trials.

The fool walks in darkness because he hates the light.

#3)

Our verses continue, however.

Yes, it is true that wisdom excels folly just like light excels dark. Yes, wisdom is a compass well suited to navigate this world, but we must remember what kind of world this is that we are living in. Solomon has this in mind when he writes “Yet, I myself perceived that the same event happens to them all.”

This world is broken. Fallen from its state of perfection, to one of death and shade. And the shadows of this world, dark and deep, grow in ways we may never see coming.

The cold and gray fingers of hurt, sin and shame, make their way into the lives of people we love, and into our own life as well. We know not which way the shade may turn, nor how badly it will hurt when it does. No one is free from suffering, no one is free from hurt. No one is above the fray of trauma and tragedy. There is no super Christian, whose faith is so incredibly strong that it stops the waves of sorrow from crashing against their shore, and eroding away the embankments of love and comfort they have built for themselves. Jesus Christ Himself, the king of Kings and lord of Lords, speaks of this very truth in Matthew 5:45 when He says: “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

At some point in our life, fellow children of the most high God, there will come a time when we will not know where to turn, or what to do. Who to listen to, or what to say. We will experience life changing hurt…and a lot of that hurt in our lives, is our own fault. We are our own worst enemy, causing and propagating that same tragedy we think ourselves to be above by our self willed sins. We all make choices we know better than to make. We all cause hurts that we hate. We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

To not steal from next week’s Sermon, where we will further discuss how the wise man and the fool will both be lowered 6ft beneath the Earth when their pre appointed time of death reaches them, we can still say that everything we go through, is common to someone. Your hurts, can dovetail into someone else's in such a way, that if you have found a way of thinking, a way of acting, a way of praying, a way of living that helps you peel your eyes off of your pain and place them upon Christ, you can help someone else do the same. And the lives of others, lived out as God sees fit for them to live, can help you as well.

This is why it is so important for us to learn from those who have gone before. To see their ups and downs, and learn to be wise. To hear what they have to say about God. To have the storm clouds that God allowed for them to sail through, be the winds which push us closer and closer to Him. So that when we go through storms, when we go through trials, when our own stupid and foolish choices create maelstroms of suffering and shame that we are unsure of if we can ever sail through, when we finally see the light of day beyond them, we can teach those who come after use, and those storms we went through can be the self same winds that carry our grandchildren's grandchildren closer to God than we have ever been this side of eternity. Dear God, please allow me to go through hurricanes, so I can teach my children to harness those winds.

In closing, I would like us to look back at the very first verse we looked at this morning. Ecclesiastes 2:12. The second half. He says “For what can the man do who succeeds the King?” Remember, Solomon is looking at the grandeur of his life as the King, and thinks that anyone that comes after him, will just be a copy. He’s already reached the summit, so to speak, so what else is there for a King of Israel to do?

Now, turn with me, if you will, to Matthew 12:38-42

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A King, greater than Solomon has walked the Earth. A King, wiser than Solomon. A King, far richer than Solomon, who owns everything, both visible and invisible; who has authority over everything, over all principalities, over all Nations, over all dominions, over all angels, over all demons, over every military, over every election, over every office, over every king, emperor, mayor, governor, and dictator, has walked this Earth and proved Himself. And now, even now, He sits at the right hand of His Father on High, continually praying for His children.

Not only that, but this King greater than Solomon, has promised us, promised us, the very same mouth which spoke the Universe into existence, whose lips have never lied, has promised us to use everything that will ever come our way, for, our, good. Whatever comes your way brothers and sisters, be it a tidal wave of hurt at the hands of someone else, or be it a wound inflicted by our own choices that we hate to admit is our own fault to begin with…whatever comes our way, Romans 8:28 tells us, will be used for our good.

In fact, if we go further back than even our verses this morning, all the way back to Genesis 50:20, we see Joseph saying to his brothers that sold him into slavery, that what they meant for evil…God meant it for good. He didn't simply pick up the after-effect pieces of Joseph's life, and then use it for his good, no. He meant it for his good all along.

In closing, it must be said, that this is only true if we have repented of our sins and believed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If we have looked at the bleeding wounds of our heart that we have put there, if we look at the bleeding wounds in the hearts of other people…that we have caused, if we admit that we have sinned and fallen short and that nothing we can ever do will make us holy before the eyes of an all-knowing God, if we repent of our sins and believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then and only then will He mean for, and use, everything that comes against us for our good. He will forgive us of all of our unrighteousness, forgive us of our sins no matter how dark and wicked they may be. Will give us meaning that transcends the storms we have used as part of our identity. And will make us holy in the eyes of His Father.