I want to read today in the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 7, starting in verse 15. The Word of God reads, I have seen everything in my days of vanity. There is a just man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs life in his wickedness. Do not be overly righteous nor be overly wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Do not be overly wicked nor be foolish. Why should you die before your time? It is good that you grasp this and also not remove your hand from the other, for he who fears God will escape them all. Wisdom strengthens the wise, more than ten rulers of the city. For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin. Also, do not take to heart everything people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. For many times also your own heart has known that even you have cursed others. All this I have proved by wisdom. I said I would be wise, but it was far from me. As for that which is far off and exceedingly deep, who can find it out? I applied my heart to know, to search and seek out wisdom and the reason of things, to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness. 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. 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. One man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all these I have not found. Truly, this only I have found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes. 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. God bless you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we exist in a culture that is drowning in a sea of pride and self-esteem. They think that the solution is even higher self-esteem and more pride. And this affects us, this culture has an impact on us. We run the risk of having a skewed understanding of ourselves. And as you say here in your word in this passage that causes problems, it creates dangers. And Lord, because of our desire to please you in every step we take, we just ask, please. Open our eyes and give us insight into ourselves, show us our own hearts. Make the mirror of your word clear this morning. So that we might not be hindered in our efforts to please you. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. How righteous are you If you could put your you'd measure your own righteousness. I mean, God commands us to behave in a certain way. And sometimes we succeed in that. Sometimes we fail in our effort to obey. When you think of how often you succeed and how often you fail. How accurate do you think your perception of all that really is? It's an important question. Because your assessment of your own righteousness controls a number of different things in your life, the way that you interact with people and temptation and all of that. If your estimation is too high, that will create problems in your life. And if your estimation is too low, that will also create problems in your life. So today, Solomon is going to help us gain a more accurate understanding of ourselves. Most of us just think we just sort of automatically think, oh, I understand myself. We think we understand ourselves almost perfectly, but just think for a minute how many times you do something and then afterwards you say, why did I do that? Why didn't I? I didn't want to do that. I resolved not to do that anymore. I didn't enjoy it. I didn't gain anything. Why did I do such a dumb thing? What was I thinking? Isn't it funny we ask ourselves that question? What was I thinking? You don't even know what you were thinking and you were the one thinking it. Right. How can we not pay attention to our own attention. How could you think about your own thoughts and not know what to make of them. And if you finally did figure out what you were thinking then you got the even more difficult question of why you were thinking it. Why were you thinking what you were thinking and why were you feeling and desiring the things that you were thinking and desiring and feeling. Proverbs 20 verse 5 says the purpose of a man purposes of a man's heart are deep. waters. It's deep, it's hard. Our motives are so complex and so hopelessly mixed that only God is capable of sorting them out. First Corinthians 4.4 says, My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It's the Lord who judges me. You can have a totally clear conscience and still not be innocent. You can be oblivious to wrong motives. So we can never have a perfect understanding of our own hearts. However it is crucially important we're going to see in this text. It's very important to have an accurate view of your own righteousness as you possibly can especially in this area of obedience to God in our verse by verse study of Ecclesiastes that we're doing. We left off last week in Chapter 7 verse 14 which where he says everything that happens comes from the hand of God. All of it. The happy days and the hard days, they all come from God. Now, verse 15 is actually an example of that. So in verse 15, verse 15 is a transitionary verse, so it's a conclusion last week. You probably should have included it in last week's sermon because he says, in my futile life, I've seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in spite of his righteousness, and there's a wicked man who lives long in spite of his evil. So that's just another example of that principle from last week. A really hard thing. It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem just. It's hard to take righteous people having trouble, unrighteous people getting blessed. I mean, good things happening to bad people and hard things happening to good people. Why does that happen? It's hard to take. And the message from last week was realize it all comes from God's hand. I mean, there's no ultimate injustice. God will make all things right someday in Judgment Day. But in the meantime, there's temporary injustice. And realize, when that happens, it came from God's hand, just like everything else. It all comes from God. So that's last week. But then, verse 15, it's a transitionary verse. It's going to conclude last week, but it's also going to introduce this next section. Because he says, let me give you an example of a hard thing that comes from God's hand. Really tough things happen to righteous people. And as soon as he mentions righteous people, he that starts him off on a new subject. He wants to talk about righteousness, specifically understanding your own righteousness. So let's talk about righteousness. Most basic definition of the word righteous is this. To be righteous means to just simply be the way that you ought to be. To be what you should be. When you do things that you shouldn't do, that's the opposite of righteousness. When you do things that you should do, that's righteousness. That's the simplest definition of the word. But there's a problem because we've got to figure out how to reconcile verse 15 with verse 20. Look down at verse 20. Verse 15, he says, sometimes righteous people die young. I've seen it happen with my own eyes. But then look at verse 20. He says there is certainly no righteous man on the earth who does what is good and never sins. So there he says there's no such thing as a righteous person. But then back in verse 15 he said I saw them with my own eyes. I saw some of them. So obviously he's using the word righteous in different ways isn't he. In fact there's actually three different ways that the word righteous is used in the Bible. And the writer Ecclesiastes uses all three of them in this section. So let's take a look at all three to get a handle on this. We'll start with verse 20 because that's the easiest one. Verse 20 is the easiest one to define because he defines it for us in that verse. He says there's certainly no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. So so the definition of righteousness there that kind of righteousness is very simple. Not sinning. Not sinning in your behavior. Right behavior. That's what right just means right behavior. And when I say behavior, I don't just mean actions. I'm talking about words and thoughts and attitudes and desires and motives. All those things are part of your behavior. So the first kind of righteousness, not sinning. We can call this behavioral righteousness, sometimes it's referred to as practical righteousness, I'll call it behavioral. So when it comes to behavioral righteousness, how many perfectly righteous people are there in the world? Zero in this world. Zero one in heaven. Zero here. That's the point of verse 20. No one is perfect. No one is sinless. We all do and say and think and desire evil things. All of us. Some worse than others, but all of us are guilty of sin. So there's no righteous people, but if there's no righteous people, then back to verse 15. How can he say there's some righteous people he saw die young? Clearly, he's using the word righteous in a different way in that verse, right? So what does that mean? Turn it in your Bible back to Genesis 15. This is one I'd like you to see with your own eyes, because this is one of the most important principles in the entire Bible in Genesis 15, 6 here. So what we're going to find here in this verse is that it's actually possible to be considered righteous by God, even though you aren't righteous in your behavior. That's Genesis 15 6 where it says Abram believed in the Lord and he credited it credited it to him as righteousness. So God knows none of us are perfectly righteous in practice in our behavior. But he actually God has actually made a way for us to still be perfectly righteous in his sight. You're not perfect. But you can have perfection credited to you in God's eyes. So this kind of righteousness let's call this credited righteousness. Or if you like the seminary word imputed righteousness same thing. So how do you get this to get credited right. How do you get God to credit righteousness to your account even though you're not perfect in practice. How did Abraham get that. What did he have to do to get that. What does it say. Abraham did what he believed literally in the Hebrews as he believed in Yahweh. So to believe in someone means to trust that person so much that you become a follower of that person. Abraham trusted God so much that he entrusted his whole life to following God God's way instead of his own way. And when God saw that level of trust that level of faith God says you know what I'm going to count that as if it were righteousness. It's not perfect righteousness but God says I'm going to count it as if it were. If you trust God like that, he'll consider you righteous, even though you're not. Pretty sweet deal, huh? That's pretty sweet. You get credit for something you haven't even done. It's just a gift, which is why the Bible calls it grace. That's what grace means. It's a gift. And how do you get that gift? There's only one way. Through faith. There's no other way. Just through faith. You trust the Lord Jesus Christ enough to follow him. God will credit Jesus' perfect record to your account and he'll credit you all your sin to his account, which is why Jesus had to die on the cross. Now, when you get that credited righteousness, does that have any impact on your behavior? I mean, is there any connection between credited righteousness and behavioral righteousness at all? Absolutely. Yes. Yes, trusting Jesus Christ in this way will always have a purifying effect on your heart and your behavior because you're trusting that his way of living is the best way. Right. And so you're going to strive to walk in that way and your thoughts and your feelings and your desires and words and actions. So so all those things, your motives and your actions, your thoughts, they'll all start to become more and more what they should be, more and more righteous in your behavior. So people who have credited righteousness also have an ever increasing level of behavioral righteousness. But it's a work in progress. It's not perfect. It's always a work in progress but God accepts it as perfect because of the credited righteousness which is perfect. Jesus righteousness credit your account which is perfect. So that's why if somebody claims to have credited righteousness, they say, well, I believe. And so I'm a believer, basically anyone who claims to be a believer. If there's no increase in behavioral righteousness, they're kidding themselves. Because it'll have an impact. Now, the vast majority of the time when you see the word righteous in the Bible. Um, it's used in one of those two ways. Every, every, almost every time you see the word righteous, it either means credited righteousness or behavioral righteousness. One of the two. And you can look in the context and figure out which it is. But with that in mind, what are we to make a verse 16? Look back to Ecclesiastes chapter six, verse 16. He says, don't be excessively righteous and don't be overly wise. Why should you destroy yourself? What does that mean? Don't be excessively righteous, you just be moderately righteous. You need to sin once in a while. I mean, don't be over wise. You got to be moderately stupid here and there just for some balance. Is that what he's saying? Well, when he says don't be overly wise. The word translated be there to reflexive form which means show yourself as being that's the literal translation of that word to show you present it has to do with the way you present yourself. And the construction translated don't be excessively righteous can be translated the same way. We don't see these exact phrases anywhere else in the Bible but we do see them in other Hebrew writings and it's translated that way. For example Sirach Book of Sirach, chapter 7, verse 5 says, has the same construction. It's translated this way. Do not parade your righteousness before the Lord or your wisdom before the king. And then in chapter 10, verse 26, do not try to be smart when you do your work. Do not put on airs when you are in difficult situations. So it has to do with how you portray yourself and and how you your own conception of your righteousness and wisdom and then the result, how you portray yourself. That's the third way that the word righteous is sometimes used in the Bible. It has to do with your impression your opinion of yourself your own level of righteousness and the result how you portray yourself to others. An example of it being used that way would be Matthew 9 verse 11 where it says when the Pharisees saw this they asked Jesus disciples Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners. And on hearing this Jesus said verse 13 I have not come to call the righteous But sinners. So I haven't come to call you guys. I've come to call the sinners the sick. Now when Jesus said that was he saying that those Pharisees were perfectly righteous in their behavior. No. Were they righteous. Did they have credited righteousness because of their faith. No they didn't have any actual righteousness. They just the only kind they had was imagined righteousness. So that's the third way this is used is the way that you think of yourself and convey that conception of your own righteousness to others. And that's the kind of righteousness that he's talking about there in verse 16. So when he says, don't be overly righteous, he's not saying, be careful, don't obey God too much. Throw in a little bit of disobedience. He's not saying that you can never obey God too much. But we can do too much is advertise your obedience to God and advertise your wisdom to other people. You can't go too far in being righteous, but you can go overboard in worrying about your reputation. And that's what he's talking about here. Now, your reputation is an important thing. That's actually something, you know, if the people who love you think that you did something bad and you didn't do it, then it's loving to let them know that, right? Go ahead and tell them the truth. I mean, be honest about what you are and if there's some righteousness there, you can you can portray that. That's fine. It's perfectly fine to do that up to a point. But it's also possible to take it too far. Some people are so consumed with worrying about protecting their reputation, so important to them that everybody think well of them and they just can't stand it if anybody thinks ill of them, if anybody's looking down on them. Or if they did something good and they're not getting credit for it, just drives them crazy. If they don't get proper credit for what they've done, they're filled with just anxiety all the time and distress. People like that have gone too far. Letting people know about the good things about you, the good things in your life, good things you've done, that's fine. It's OK, but it's a very small priority compared to other things. It's just not very important. And that goes for how you portray yourself to people and how you portray yourself to God. Some people try to use their own righteousness to manipulate God, right? They want certain things in life. And so they'll try to obey a bunch of commands, a bunch of God's commands, and go to church and read their Bible and do it in order to force God's hand to bless them in the ways that they want God to bless them. It's not enough for them just to say, well, I'm going to get God's blessing. It has to be the kind of blessing and the timing that they want. And so they're trying to manipulate God. And so they're advertising to God, this is all righteous. I am. And Solomon warns us, don't do that, don't do that, because you're going to be disappointed. Look at the end of her 16. She says, why should you destroy yourself? That word destroy. Actually, it normally means destroy. But in this form, this grammatical form, whenever it's in this form, it always means to be emotionally devastated or depressed or perplexed. And so what he's saying here is if you try to manipulate God, if you try to gain control over providence by being righteous and wise, then you're going to end up being perplexed and disheartened and disappointed by the outcome, because most of the time God's going to bless you. But it's not he's not going to bless you in the ways that you expect. You can't control it. So don't get carried away with protecting your reputation. Don't get carried away with telling God how righteous you are. Advertising your righteousness is just not very important. And the converse of this is also true. Don't go too far in advertising your righteousness, but don't go too far in advertising your sin either. That's verse 17. Don't be excessively wicked and don't be foolish. Why should you die before your time? And again, the point here isn't that you should be moderately wicked instead of really wicked. He's not saying that. He's saying don't go overboard in parading your wickedness and folly. It's good to admit to it. I mean, it's good to admit your sin, right? You don't want to lie about it. Proverbs 28, 13 says, the one who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy. So yeah we should we should confessors and we should be upfront about that James 5 16 confess your sins to one another so that you can be healed. It's good to do that. It's good to be open and honest about your foolishness and your wickedness in your life. But even that can be taken too far. Some people seem to think that humility is all about making a big show of how sinful you are. And they spend so much time talking about how much of a failure they are and how far short they fall and what a wretch they are. And they go on and on until, frankly, everybody's sick of hearing it. And really, that's actually a form of pride, not humility, because humble people don't do that. Humble people don't talk about how evil they are because they're not mostly thinking about themselves. Who are they thinking about? Typically, humble people, they're always thinking about God or about you, about other people. They're not focused on themselves. So when you get carried away with presenting yourself as really sinful and really wretched, you just become noxious to people and you become hard to be around. It's not loving to be like that, and it's not wise. Nothing good comes of that. So Solomon says, don't do that. Don't go overboard in that direction either. And and again, he applies it not only to this applies not only to interacting with people, but interacting with God. There are some Christians that seem to think that God is only interested in hearing them confess sin. The only thing God wants to hear from me is is about my sin. Does God want you to be honest about your sin? Yes. Confess your sin definitely to God. But what about the righteousness that he's worked in your life? Do you think he wants you to be honest about that, too? What about the fruit that the Holy Spirit is bearing in your life? Do you think he's doing that for a reason? When God works in you to will and to act over a period of years to create a forgiving heart. Or or patience or kindness or joy or love or refusal to keep a record of wrongs or hunger and thirst for righteousness. Do you think that that's pleasing to him to just ignore that work? Or downplay it? Because of your sin, don't you think you would rather us show gratitude for it? But how can you show gratitude unless you're willing to acknowledge it? If you think it's prideful to even acknowledge what God is doing in your heart, how can you ever be grateful for it? So if there's sin there, by all means, be honest about it, confess it to God, and if there's righteousness there, acknowledge that and celebrate that and be grateful to God. So what he's telling us to do here is is is just simply gain a balanced, accurate view of our own righteousness. See, we tend to be just too black and white when it comes to assessments, even assessments of ourselves. We just it's always I'm good, therefore not bad or I'm bad and not good. And a fallen, redeemed heart is just more complex than that. There's much good and there's much evil existing simultaneously of us. And To fix all of our attention on one and ignoring the other is foolish. Verse 18. Here's the solution. Here's what will keep you balanced in this. It is good that you grasp the one and do not let the other slip from your hand for for the one who fears God will end up with both of them. Fear of God again is a solution if you fear God that will keep you within the within reasonable limits in both directions in the way that you present yourself. Fear of God will it will prevent you from trying to bypass the curse and get control over Providence by manipulating God because that's obviously not fearing God if you do that. Right. I mean if you think you can get God to do what you want to do by jumping through his hoops that's a low view of God that's not a reverent view of God at all. So fearing God will protect you from that. And fearing God will protect you from getting it carried away with how you present yourself to people as well. Right. People who obsess about their reputation. They're not fearing God. Who are they fearing. Man. That's fear of man. They care more about what people think than about what God thinks. They're more concerned about their reputation on earth than they are about their reputation in heaven. But when you fear God, then his assessment of you will matter way more to you than anybody else's assessment, more than anything. And you'll find that you just don't have much interest in worrying about what people think of you anymore. So fear of God will put all of this in place for you. All right, so that takes us through verse 18. The rest of this section is just a list of proverbs and wisdom sayings instructs instructing us on how to live wisely. Because again, he wants us to live joyful lives by pleasing God. In order to do that, you need wisdom. So he's giving us some wisdom here. He's going to show us how to live wisely. But specifically, he's going to show us how to live wisely and what role self-knowledge plays in living wisely. OK, if you want to live a wise life, you've got to have a good understanding of your own level of righteousness. And so he's going to help us here. You get a skewed out of balance understanding of your righteousness. You're going to it's going to interfere with your ability to live wisely. So look at verse 19 says wisdom makes the wise man stronger than 10 rulers of a city. It's just a statement on the value of wisdom there. The word rulers here refers to those people that control a lot of they have a lot of influence because they control a lot of resources. So the picture here is of influence and saying you're going to have more influence than almost influential people in the city. If you just simply exercise wisdom. That's a better route than trying to do it through your reputation, instead of trying to get influenced by by letting everybody know how what an amazing education you have and how much experience you have and how wise you ought to be. Just be wise. Just live wisely and that will have more influence than reputation will have. So live wisely, but keep in mind your limitations. Verse 20. There's certainly no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. So no matter how good you get you're never going to get you're never going to reach sinless perfection in this life ever ever. You get that out of your mind. The doctrine that says oh you can be totally sanctified in this life. Forget it. It's not true. Even the most godly, righteous, sanctified person in the world sins regularly. Proverbs 20, verse 9, who can say I've kept my heart pure? Nobody. Nobody. And understanding that can go a long way in helping us deal with people wisely, because the thing about dealing with people is the thing about people is they sin, right? You notice that? And that makes dealing with them hard. Because they keep sinning. And for you to deal with them in a wise way, it'll help if you have an understanding of your own sin. Here's an example. Look at verse 21. Don't pay attention to everything people say. I love this. This cracks me up. This verse. Don't pay attention to everything people say, or you'll hear your servant cursing you. For you know that many times you yourself have cursed others. So what he's saying is, look, don't listen to what people are saying about you. Why? Because they're saying something bad. How do you know that? Because they're just like you. That's what they say. And don't even try to tell me that you don't do it because you do. We all do it. We all do it. We know it's wrong, we know we shouldn't gossip, we got to get a control of our tongue and we should try to do it less and less and we try to, you know, but when it comes to our speech, we all stumble in many ways. If anybody's perfect in this area, his whole life would be perfect. So let's just admit it. OK, we all there's plenty of things that come out of our mouths that are gossip and that we would never want it to get back to the person that we're talking about. You know, sometimes you email and you accidentally hit reply all and it goes off to the wrong person. Oh, no, I didn't want them to see that. Imagine if your speech did that. It's just randomly things that you said would just go off to the person you're talking about. You say, but yeah, yeah, but I know I do that. I know. I know. I talk about people. I say things. Sometimes I'll make an assessment of somebody. I'll point out a flaw. But when I do that, it's not like I have any malice in my heart towards a person. I'm not. Honestly, I. Yes, I pointed out a flaw, but I still love that person and I have high respect for that person. I don't look down on him in any way. Exactly. It's exactly the point. See what he's saying here, it's possible to make a negative remark about somebody to point out a flaw and still have mostly love and respect towards the person. It's possible in your life. You know, that's a reality in your life. So why can't it be a reality in those in the lives of those people who are gossiping about you? We get so outraged, we find out somebody gossiped about me. Oh, how dare he say something negative about me to someone else? And half the time, the only reason I know that he gossiped about me is because I found it out in a conversation where I was gossiping about him. Right? Isn't that how you find out? And then now I can't even confront him about it because he can say, how do you know I said that? And you have to admit there's another conversation. It's like when you're in Sunday school with a little kid and you saw someone with his eyes open during a prayer, but you can't tell on him because the teacher's just going to say, well, how do you know his eyes were open? And I'm not saying I'm not saying here that gossip is OK. I'm not saying the fact that we all do it justifies it. It doesn't. Unnecessary gossip is a sin that causes problems and it harms people. And we need to fight against that and get it out of our lives as much as we can. But while we're fighting against it, in the meantime, can we all just admit we're still fighting against it and we haven't won the battle yet? And very often we slip. And can can we admit that just as those slips in my life doesn't mean I hate the person So, his flips don't necessarily mean he hates me. And this principle, it applies beyond just gossip. Gossip is just one example, but just in general, being alert to your own sinfulness can really help a lot in being patient with other people's sinfulness. In all kinds of contexts. How about when somebody makes a commitment and they don't follow through and it causes a problem for you? It's aggravating, but Haven't there been times when you've done the same thing? You didn't fall through on a commitment, you say, well, yeah, but that's because I mean, you got to understand. Yeah, yeah, I know you got a great excuse, but maybe they do, too. How about times when somebody lies to you? Isn't it true that sometimes you're not totally honest? Come on, isn't it true? You say, yeah, but the lie he told me, I mean, it was just a big, bald face lie right to my face, just lie right to my face. Oh, so yours is so much better because it's behind his back. People who are constantly condemning others for their failures and are constantly angry at people because of their failures. Typically those are people that just have a head in the sand approach to their own sinfulness. They just they just not alert. There's not aware that they have sin to. Now the hardest time to put this principle into practice are those times when the sin they're committing is something you don't struggle with at all. And in those times it's so hard to be patient because you just it seems easy to have victory in that area because you're not tempted in that area. And so you're just like, what is your problem? Just stop doing it. How hard is it? Just stop. I mean, I'm not doing it. And and we're tempted in those times to think, you know what, if he were really serious, then he would just change. That's baloney, that is absolute baloney. Where is that in the Bible? Show me that in the Bible. No one in the Bible doesn't say all you have to do to gain victory over besetting sin is just get serious about it. There's plenty of people that are very serious. Isn't it true that you're serious about certain sins in your life and you're still struggling? When you're when you're tempted to look down on someone for failing in areas that are easy to you, just think this way. Remind yourself that for them, that area is like it is for you in your area of struggle. The area where you just can't seem to get victory, you can't get for them. That's what that area is like. Now, you say, well, does that mean we never confront each other, we just overlook everything, we never confront sin? No, no. If the person is on a path towards self-destruction, what's the loving thing to do? You've got to get them off that path, right? You don't want to destroy themselves with sin. But when you do that, you don't have to do it with a condescending attitude. You can you can do with a humble attitude. You can just say, look, you and I are both sinners. I've repented. Come join me. I've repented of my sin. Come join me in repentance. We'll both be repentant sinners. How's that? That's how we confront sin. And that's also how we deal with people who are foolish, you know, not just unrighteousness, but foolishness. You deal with it the same way you realize your own lack of wisdom. We realized I don't exactly have a corner on wisdom either. When somebody behaves in a foolish way, maybe I don't have that kind of foolishness, but I got my own kind of foolishness. I do plenty of dumb things. One of the keys to being wise is realizing how elusive wisdom actually is. Verse 23, look at the next verse, he says, I've tested all this by wisdom and I resolved I will be wise, but it was beyond me. What exists is beyond reach and very deep. Who can discover it? I turned my thoughts to know, explore and seek wisdom and an explanation for things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity and folly is madness. So all this effort, he's saying, I'm just really, really, really trying to gain this thing, and it's so hard to grasp. And what is it? What's so hard to grasp? Well, there's one principle that wickedness is stupidity. It's dumb to sin. That's the principle that he's trying to get in his head. It's like I'm trying to learn this thing. It's dumb to sin. It's dumb to sin. I'm trying to get that. I can't get it. I just can't get it. You know, and again, I can get it in my head, you know, I can understand it in my head, but to get it into my bloodstream, you know, to make it part of what I believe, my belief system, so that it controls my desires and controls my attitudes. And this one simple principle, it's dumb to sin. I can't get it. It's just elusive. and realize how how elusive wisdom is. And then secondly, how enticing sin is. This is another problem we have. Not only is wisdom elusive, but sin is just so enticing. Verse 26. And I find more bitter than death. The woman who is a trap whose heart is a snare and whose hands are chains. So he describes a seductress here, a woman, one of those women that just she just knows how to seduce a man. She knows she's so skilled at drawing men into sin that all you have to do is get in with an arm's reach of her and you're trapped. And what Solomon is doing here is he's using a woman like that as an illustration of the way that temptation just tends to work. All temptation works this way. It all works the same way. It draws you in like like like a hunter drawing in prey into a trap. You know, a hunter sends it such a trap. He hides it, right? He doesn't put a big flashing neon sign saying trap, you know, enter here. It doesn't say that he's hiding it. He wants the animal to sense no danger at all. He wants to handle the animal to be perfectly at ease and not on edge, because if it's animal scared, it's never going to work. He's not going to go into the trap. That's exactly how Satan is with temptation. You know, I believe that Satan will very often go out of his way to prevent you from feeling any temptation at all in order to lure you further into his trap. He'll make you feel spiritually strong. Guy and a girl are dating, they have an opportunity to be alone together in a morally dangerous situation, and they think, you know what, normally we wouldn't do this, but Right now, it's OK. I think it's OK because I'm strong. I don't feel any temptation right now. I think of I think of immorality and it's repulsive to me. I don't want to do it. I don't have the slightest bit of desire to sin. And my heart is pure and I'm strong. And so I think it's and so they decide it's OK. It's OK. It's OK for us to be in this private place alone for an extended time. And that feeling of spiritual strength is so powerful that They think, you know, even if temptation were to arise, it would be a piece of cake to resist. No problem. In fact, we're so strong, it's fine. We'll just we'll just watch a movie together and and we'll sit on the couch together really close. And Satan withholds temptation, hold it back, hold it back, hold it back, lures him in further and further into his trap. Now it's mixing, you know, it's one o'clock in the morning, both are tired, guard is down. Maybe a little snuggling, maybe a little kiss, and then, bam, it just hits full force. Unrestrained onslaught of temptation with Satan, just with both barrels, he fires. And they fall before they even know what happens. And you talk to him the next day, and it's always the same story. What happened? I don't know where that came from. I was fine. I wasn't tempted at all. And all of a sudden, out of the blue, it just came over me. And it was too late. This is the way temptation works. Person struggles with overeating. They think it's OK. I can go with my friends to the party and to the restaurant. I won't be tempted. I'm strong. I can be home alone watching TV at night. No accountability and food all around me. I'll be fine. And there's no temptation at all until the person has wandered so far into the trap that when it springs they don't have a chance. I can go to this party. I'm not going to be tempted to drink. I can click on this link. It's just a curiosity. There's nothing. I'm not going to be tempted to look at anything bad. I can go into that bar. It's just a bar. It's a building. I can hang out with those friends. It's not going to affect me. It's just one innocent game in the casino. It won't be a problem. I can just drive by that area just to see what's going on. I'm not going to stop. I'm going to get out of my car. In fact, I think very often Satan will sometimes let you wander all the way into the trap and then still withhold temptation and let you wander right back out and not not get caught so that the next time you're really overconfident in your own ability, and your guard is way, way down. And then when you fall, you think that fall was the anomaly, and the time you escaped was the reality. So, the picture here is very vivid. I think this is a good verse to memorize. It's just a vivid picture. Her hands are chains. Think about that. Her hands are attached to the end of her wrist. Instead of hands, are handcuffs. And she's just you don't notice that until you get close. You know, you think you're safe. You just get close. And as soon as you're within arm's reach, all she does is just touch you and boom that fast. You're locked in. You're chained. You're caught. And the result of that, once you're caught, once you're ensnared by the temptation, the result, Solomon says, is more bitter than death. It seems so enticing and then all of a sudden you get enslaved to it and it's a bitter life. Being enslaved to a sin. Bitter, bitter life. So why do we keep falling to the same trick every time? Why do we fall for it? Well, usually it's because we have way too high a view of our own righteousness and our own wisdom and our own strength. See, when you're weak and you know you're weak, you tend to be careful, right? But when you're weak and you think you're strong, that's when you do dumb things like wandering into dangerous situations. And so having a good concept, understanding of your own level of righteousness will help you escape temptation and sin. Remember, we saw last week that we already saw last week that wisdom can be short circuited by a desire. Remember that? This is just another example of that same principle, no matter how wise you are, no matter how much doctrine, you know, no matter how much you've learned in your past Christian experience, one strong desire can come and just overturn all of that in a heartbeat, just wipe it all out. If you try to fight the battle against sin at the level of just knowledge and ideas and information and principles alone without dealing with the level of desires, you can forget about having lasting victory. You got to deal with the desires simple desires have to be kept at bay and that can be done by feeding those desires. So how do you escape temptation. Verse 26 it says the one who pleases God will escape her but the sinner will be captured by her. See one of the keys to escaping temptation is if you can if you please God in other areas God will tend to give you more grace to escape temptation in this area. But the more you compromise in the other areas, the more God will actually allow you to become susceptible to sin in this area. See, sin always breeds more sin, and righteousness produces more righteousness. That's the way it works. That's the Galatians 6 principle. Do not be deceived. Verse 7, God is not mocked for whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. Because the one who sows to the flesh from the flesh will reap corruption. The one who sows to the spirit from the spirit will reap eternal life. You reap what you sow. Sowing means planting seeds. The flesh when he says sowing to the flesh the flesh in the New Testament refers to that part of you that still sins even after you become a Christian. Your flesh is the part of you that's tied in and with an influence by the world the sinful evil world system. And so sowing to the flesh. Planting seeds in the flesh means doing things that will activate and strengthen the responses of that sinful part of you. The part of you that still sins. That's what sowing to the flesh is. There's certain things you can do that activate that, right? There's certain commercials you can watch. There are certain people that you can hang around. There are certain places you can go, certain memories that you can dwell on that will activate that fleshy part of you, that part of you that wants to sin. You start dwelling on how somebody hurt you. You just rehearse it in your mind. Or you start fantasizing about some forbidden thing. You start thinking about anything from a worldly perspective and you're not saying anything evil you're not doing anything evil but in your thoughts you're planting a bunch of weeds that are going to be very hard to kill once they grow up. But the good news is it works the other way too. You can plant good seeds in your heart, too. You can sow to the spirit. Ideally, that's what you're doing right now. Right. I'm hoping you all are and there might be a few in this room right now that are sowing to the flesh with some bad thoughts and attitudes, but my guess is most of you right now you're sitting there, you're sowing to the spirit. You're planting good seeds, you're thinking thoughts that are moving your soul in the direction of God. And that's going to pay dividends. Dividends that will in in many cases you won't even notice because you know there'll be a temptation is going to rise up Tomorrow and you'll blow right by it without a second thought and you won't think anything of it You think that doesn't count that was barely even a temptation that was I mean that What you don't realize is if you hadn't been planting those good seeds today, you would have fallen to that temptation even if it is small That might happen 100 times in a day. Who knows how many times, how many horrible sins you might be mired in and locked in with right now in your life and captive to right now in your life, if not for all the time that you've spent sowing seeds to the spirit. Temptation with her handcuffed hands. snuck up behind you and tried to grab on and latch on to you. And because you have been pleasing God in other areas and sowing to the Spirit, God saw to it that you escaped. Praise God for that. Pleasing God and sowing to the Spirit are wonderful things, but the sad reality is not very many people do it. Millions of people Think that they're righteous and they're not. Millions of people say, oh, I prayed a prayer. I went forward in an invitation. I invited Jesus Christ into my heart as my personal Lord and Savior. And they honestly, they meant it with all their heart. But they're not saved. Because there hasn't been any actual transformation, if you look around for the truly godly people, you're not going to find very many. You're not going to find many. That's verse 27. Look, the teacher says, I have discovered this by adding one thing to another to find out the explanation which my soul continually searches but does not find. Now listen what he says. Among a thousand people I have found one true man. But among all these not I've not found one true woman. Now what is that. What is that. Now. A lot of people in our Hypersensitive culture will read that and just be outraged. What? How can you say that men are so much better than women? But honestly, look at it. Look at it. And that's what all the commentaries that go on and on about how, you know, how do we deal with this sexism here? Look at the verse. Is he really making this? Do you look at this first? You see a giant contrast between males and females. 100 percent of women are bad but men are way better because only ninety nine point nine percent of them are bad. Is that really how you would elevate men if that's what you're trying to do. I don't think the point here is that men are any better than women. The difference. Listen the difference the statistical difference between one in a thousand and zero in a thousand is statistically insignificant. He's saying the same thing. See, put it this way. Imagine, suppose I were going to go off and check out some other church. I want to learn about some other church. So I'm going to spend a month at this other church visiting. And so I'm there for a month. I come back. You say, Darryl, what was it like? And I said, oh, it's terrible. Church is terrible. I interviewed every single person there and that whole church of a thousand people. And I found one guy that I think has even saved. And you say, what about the women? I didn't find any. If you heard that, would you say, wow, the men in that church are so much better than the women in that church? No, you wouldn't think that. You'd think, wow, what a horrible church. See, I don't think Solomon's making a contrast between males and females at all here. You could reverse this. I think you could switch this and say one woman out of a thousand and zero men, and it would be the exact same point. It's kind of like when he says there's six things detestable to God, seven, six things God hates, seven that are detestable. It's kind of that. He's just stepping it up. His point is simply make a dramatic statement about how rare upright people really are. There's almost none of them out there. That's the point. OK. So that's that's a lot of wisdom principles to take in. I mean we've learned all this stuff about how wisdom is great because it'll help you resist temptation. Wisdom is great because it'll help you dealing with people and not not looking down on people and understanding the impatient all that a lot of wisdom. But one thing about the prince the preacher the writer of this book he never goes very far without turning our attention back up to God. Right. Because you could get caught up with trying to live out all these wisdom principles. And if you don't have your gaze fixed on what God is like and his attributes. You're going to fail. So in verse twenty nine, he lifts our eyes back upward and tells us something very important about the nature of God. He says, only see this. I have discovered that God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes. So he's saying, look, the sin comes from the people, not from God, because in this important, because remember, he's been telling us numerous times everything is from God. Everything is from God's hand. He's sovereign, which means he's in control of everything. The good days, the hard days, the happy days, all of it, it all comes from God's hand. But whenever he says that, it always brings up. And whenever I preach that every time I preach that about the sovereignty of God, I always get the same question. What about sin? How do you explain sin if God is totally sovereign, wouldn't that imply that God is ultimately the cause of evil? And there are some of our Calvinist friends who are so caught up in their Calvinism that they they get carried away with human reasoning and they'll end up saying, yeah, God ultimately God causes evil. The Bible doesn't say that James 113 is very clear. God does not tempt or entice anyone to evil period. But here's what you need to understand God has a plan. He's got a perfect plan and God's plan often includes evil people doing evil things. His plan includes that. But when God brings about his plan with his sovereign power, he doesn't do it by influencing those evil people to do evil things. He doesn't do it that way. He doesn't push anybody in an evil direction. See, part of God's plan was for Judas to betray Jesus, right? Part of God's perfect plan was for wicked men to murder Jesus on the cross. Evil things. God brought that about. The Bible is very clear. God did that. He brought that about. But how did he do it? Did he do it by getting in Judas heart and enticing him to evil, pushing him to in the direction of betraying Jesus? No, no, he didn't have to do that. He did the exact opposite of that. The only force God ever exerts on the human heart is always toward righteousness, always. But what happens when he exerts that force, we resist and we pull back and we resist and we resist. And sometimes God will let go. And he'll let us do our thing. That's how God brings about these kinds of actions without being guilty of sin. So God brought about his plan through Judas, not by pushing Judas, but by letting go. So, you know, when you think about Arminianism and Calvinism, Arminianism is that, you know, Arminians, they really emphasize the three will of man and Calvinists, they really emphasize the sovereignty, the sovereign control of God. and both sides can get caught up in human wisdom and human reasoning. The Armenians who are governed by human reasoning will sometimes say, well, logic dictates that if God were sovereign, then he would be guilty of causing evil. And the Bible says God's not guilty of evil. Therefore, he can't be sovereign. The Calvinists who are governed by human reason would say, well, logic dictates that they start out with the same premise. Logic dictates that if God is sovereign, then he must be the ultimate cause of evil. But the Bible says God is sovereign. Therefore, he must be the cause of evil. Both those groups are correct when they get to the part about the Bible says, but both of them are wrong in the initial premise that when they say, well, if God is sovereign, he must be guilty. He must be the cause of evil. That's the problem right there. That's human reasoning. The Bible never says that. Bible says God is both sovereign and holy. He's not the cause of evil, and yes, he's in control of everything. And if you're wondering, well, where do I put the blame for sin? Where does that belong? This verse is very clear. It lands on us. Verse twenty nine. God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes. God's influence was a good one. Human beings injected the sin. So that explanation for sin lies in the disobedience and wickedness of man. God only does good things. All right. So before we close one last reminder we can take a peek into the next chapter. Remember the purpose of the book. Teach us to live to enjoy life by pleasing God. Everything he's teaching us is going to help us on the pathway towards joy, including these wisdom principles. So these last two weeks, all these wisdom principles, wisdom principles. Remember, this is for joy. Verse one, who is like the wise person and who knows the interpretation of a matter? A man's wisdom brightens his face. I mean, he brings a smile and the sternness of his face has changed. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for all this, this counsel, all this wisdom that you've given us. Teach us to think of ourselves rightly so that we can resist temptation, understanding our weakness, and so that we can deal properly with people, understanding their failures because we understand ours. Give us that insight so that we might honor you and live wisely and have joy in you. We pray this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. That's left here before we dismiss. Any questions about the sermon? OK. So when it says God made man upright but he sinned. Is that talking about every single person is born good and goes bad or they're talking about Adam and mankind starting out innocent and falling in the garden. I think it's the latter. I think it's I think it's saying God made mankind good in the garden perfectly innocent without any bent towards sin and mankind chose to sin. All of us. are represented by that. And so all of us know no one could say well Adam blew it for me because if I had been in the garden I would have done that. I think scripture teaches that Adam is a representative. All of us would have done the same thing in the garden. All of us would have done the same thing. And so and we prove that all the time now when we choose to do evil. So. So. The blame lands on not just Adam but on each individual person for choosing evil. But. But I don't think we're born. Righteous. OK. So the mysteries in the Bible if you can't understand something in the Bible then what should you conclude. Should you conclude that maybe there's sin is the problem or something else that we're asking. OK. So yeah. When you get something about you can understand. I think it's a good reminder both in the area of righteousness and wisdom. So we might look at that and say I can't figure this out. I can't make heads or tails of this just goes to show how much I lack wisdom and how hard wisdom is to grasp. But it's also wise to search your heart and to say God is there a sin that's preventing me from seeing this. Is there some sin in my life that's making this hard for me to grasp. Or maybe I understand it, but I can't seem to believe it. Is there sin getting in the way? That's a good thing to pray. Go ahead and pray that. But don't assume it's true. Just ask God if it's true and then search your heart. And if you search your heart with honest, open eyes, God will reveal any sin that might be there that needs to be confessed. So you you ask him that question you search your heart. If you don't find anything at that point then you just trust God. OK. You know you haven't shown me this yet. I'll keep I'll keep searching. I'll be content to not know what you haven't revealed but what you have revealed. I'm going to strive and strive and strive to understand it. OK. Is there any difference in the way that people are saved in Old Testament or New Testament. There's a slight difference in the sense that the object of our faith is more defined now. We're saved in exactly the same way now as Old Testament times that is by grace alone through faith alone. You're saved only as a gift from God where you place your faith in him and he credits that as righteousness. That's exactly the same that has not changed. The thing that has changed is In the Old Testament, it was just faith in God. In the New Testament, it's specifically faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We know the object of our faith more clearly now than they did. They didn't know about Jesus Christ. They didn't know about the cross. They were saved because of the cross, but they didn't know about it. But now we understand it, which is why in Romans 10, he says, how can anybody be saved unless they hear a message about Jesus Christ? And the answer is they can't. You can't. You have to you have to place your faith in Jesus Christ. It's not enough. And this is so important to understand. People you hear all the time more and more evangelical leaders are getting up and saying, well, you know, these people in these other religions, they will worship the same God. They got faith in God. They'll we'll see them in heaven, even if they're Muslims or Hindus or whatever. We'll see them in heaven because they got faith in God. No, no. If they don't have their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ specifically, they can't be saved. That's Romans 10, 13 and 14. So great question. OK. Now I don't think I don't think they had to specifically put their faith in the coming Messiah. They did have information about the coming Messiah but it was enough for them to simply have faith in Yahweh. So. But yeah it was because of the cross that they could be saved. Michael. Right. Yeah. People say I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and I invited on heart therefore I'm saved. And and what we need to explain to those people is It's more than believing information it's trusting a person and trusting a person means trusting him enough to follow him. And if you say I trust you as my guide but I'm not going to follow you I'm going to go the other way. Obviously you don't trust him. OK. So you see people sinning. Should you just pray for them and not correct them or should you confront them with it and correct them. And the answer is some things are minor and you can just overlook them right. You don't have to confront every little thing but If a person is committing a sin and you suspect that they're not repentant of that sin, if they're repentant, you just leave it. But if they're if they're not repentant, then what's going to happen? They're going to destroy themselves. Right. And what what would love do? Love is going to say, no, don't go down a path where you're going to destroy yourself. And so, yeah, absolutely. The loving thing confront them in a humble way, understanding your own sin. You confront them and you call them to the same repentance that you're in. Your question came back. OK, so that's another possible interpretation when it says do not be over righteous. It means something like do not be overly legalistic. And so don't be caught up with rules and regulations and policy procedures and all this kind of stuff. Just focus on relationship. I don't know. There's a lot of excellent scholars that take that interpretation. And so. So you know take this for what it's worth. My take on it is no I don't think that's what he's saying for a couple of reasons. One is. That definition of righteousness I don't find in scripture. I find it in our culture. Our culture defines the word righteous that way is just legalism and caught up with rules. But I don't really see that so much in scripture. I know that I know that the Pharisees did that. They were caught up with a lot of rules made by men. So actually I guess you could make an argument that the word righteousness is connected with that. But. I might have to get back with you on that. I'm just kind of drawn a blank on why I rejected that. But I did consider that. I just thought that, you know, when I read this context here. Well, I know part of it is. The do not be over wicked part. Because then. If. If you saying do not be over righteous and that means don't have too much of the external kind of righteousness. than the do not over wicked. That would be kind of like do not have too much external wickedness which it just seems like a bizarre thing to me. I don't know how I don't I don't know any other way to make that do not be over wicked work. Secondly and I remember the other main reason is that just the most literal translation of the word be is show yourself. It's a reflexive I think there's got to be a work because it's they kind of go out of their way in the Hebrew to have this reflexive form it's the hit Paul form is just a big big. thing that they had to do with all these extra letters. And it's a point that they're making about the reflexive part. It really does mean show yourself as so.