Hear now, the word of the Lord from Ecclesiastes

15 In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. 16 Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? 17 Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? 18 It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.
19 Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city.
20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
21 Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. 22 Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.
23 All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me. 24 That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out?
25 I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. 26 And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. 27 Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things— 28 which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. 29 See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.
Ecclesiastes 7:15-29, ESV

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Our passage this morning is focused on the topic of wisdom. So to frame this discussion of wisdom, I want to return to an illustration I've used in the past in a related but different biblical concept. The biblical concept of mystery, a mystery, as we've talked about before, is something that God conceals until the time at which he sees fit to reveal what formerly he concealed. He conceals something, that's the mystery, then once he reveals it, that's the mystery which is revealed.

Now, the reason for talking about wisdom and mystery at the same time and using the same illustration for both is that God's wisdom, we are told, is a mystery. The Bible tells us this explicitly. Paul writes this in 1st Corinthians 2:7, he says, "But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery. The hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages unto our glory."

The wisdom of God is one of these mysteries that is concealed until the time when God chooses to reveal it. So as we consider wisdom and what the preacher is telling us about wisdom in this passage, I want us to think about this illustration that I've used in the past about an escape room. Have you ever been into an escape room? If you've not, they are wonderful thrills. I really enjoy doing them, although I'm not all that good at trying to get my way out of the escape room.

When you go into an escape room, usually an escape room has some kind of theme. I've done one where I was trying to stop the assassination of JFK and another one where I was trying to escape the sinking Titanic. You go in and there's some kind of back story, usually a fairly contrived back story. The thing about it I escape room is when you get in that room, everything around you is a clue. When they lock that door, you are left with just the clues to try to look at the clock and look at the calendar on the wall and look at the things that are written on the boxes in the room and to try to use all of that information to be able to turn that information into combinations for combination locks. When you unlock the different combination locks, you get more clues, using those clues, you keep unlocking combination locks until you're able to finally make your way out of the escape room.

You need the information that's there. You can't just start randomly trying to try all the possibilities of the combinations. You don't have time, you're on a limited time frame. That information is hard to figure out sometimes where it is leading you to. In fact, sometimes invariably as you're going through escape rooms, at least if you're me and you don't have the sharpest analytical abilities for things like this, you're going to find yourself stuck. You're going to find yourself where, you know maybe a few of the clues and you're able to work out a couple of the answers and the puzzles that you're facing. Then you find yourself looking over the same information again and again and again, looking again at the clock, and again at the calendar, and again at the sign on the wall and saying, I don't know what I'm supposed to do next.

So when you call the employee, you know, you do the call of shame and ask for help to try to solve the next puzzle. They come in or I had a walkie talkie for one, and they'll say, go and look at this again and you look and the answer is right there. It was right there the whole time, but you missed it. You felt stuck for that whole time until you realize the answer was right in front of you. You just didn't realize it for what it was.

In your life you may feel like you've been able to solve a few of the puzzles in your life. Today you might be here feeling stuck, feeling like you keep looking again and again at the information that you know about your life and you look at this knowledge that you have about your life and you try to piece it together in different ways and different combinations. Yet the puzzle remains, and you feel like you don't know what's next. You don't know what to make of your life.

Well, in an escape room, again, this means that you've overlooked something and perhaps something very simple that's been in front of you the whole time. What the Bible tells us about the wisdom of God, is that what's in front of us the whole time. What the Bible declares everywhere, but that we overlook it because we don't realize it for what it is, is the principle that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

If you want to understand your life, if you want to understand who God is, you've got to start your first principle, your first step must be toward the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That's our big idea for today.

In fact, the Bible says that you actually can't solve any of those simple puzzles at the beginning in life. You can't navigate your way well through life at the beginning until you get stuck. You are stuck until you realize this fundamental principle, that's the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and nothing else can happen until you start there.

So this morning, as we consider wisdom, we will see three points.
1. Wisdom is not in Pretense.
2. Wisdom is not in Pragmatism.
3. Wisdom is not in People.

Wisdom is not in Pretense

So let's start with this idea. That wisdom is not in pretense. It's not something that you can pretend to possess, in verses 15 through 18 of our passage.

15 In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. 16 Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? 17 Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? 18 It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.Ecclesiastes 7:15-18, ESV

The preacher says, "In my vain life, I have seen everything." Then he gives us two examples that's supposed to summarize both the examples and everything in between. He says on the one hand, "there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness." Then on the other hand, "there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil doing." Now, part of what the preacher is saying is that all people must die. Whether you are righteous or whether you are wicked, everyone dies. He said this at many times in many ways. In this book, for example, in Ecclesiastes 6:6, "do not all go to the one place?" No matter who you are, everyone must eventually die.

He's addressing two groups of people, those who are "righteous", and I'm going to put that in quotation marks because he's not using it in a genuine way. These are people who put on righteousness as a pretense, who pretend their righteousness. Then on the other side, the wicked. He's saying that those who put on righteousness as a pretense, and I'll explain to you why I don't think this is a genuine sense of the people who are in the Bible called righteous in a little bit. Those who put on righteousness as a pretense don't have protection in this life.

Sometimes we think if I just do the right things, if I go to church, if I pay my taxes, life will work out well for me. I will have a good life and people will be happy with me and I will prosper because I do the right things because I am righteous. But the preacher says even the righteous one will perish in his righteousness.

That doesn't mean that we can just ignore God's rules. It doesn't mean that we can do whatever we want as we try to chart our own path through wickedness, even if it requires it to get to our goals. Because those who do so, they may prolong their life in one way or another, but they do so in their evil doing. That is the length of their life will be characterized by the suffering that comes from sin.

You don't find protection from dotting all your i's and crossing all your t's in righteousness. You also don't find safety and security by doing things your way, even when it involves a wickedness. So the preacher addresses both of these groups and versus 16 and 17. In verse 16, he says, "be not overly or be not greatly or much righteous and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself?"

Now the preacher, this is one of the clues we have that the preacher isn't talking about real righteousness. He's not saying here, by the way, why don't you try to sin a little to balance things out? That's really the way to wisdom. He's not saying that at all. That's not the point here. That's the way one commentator puts it and I think that really captures the idea of what the preacher is not saying. He's not saying sin a little to balance things out.

Instead, what he is talking about is someone who puts a righteous or a wise face to the world. Who tries to conduct everything that people can see externally in their life to project righteousness to the world, but someone who does it from a pretense where it is not genuine and coming from the heart.

This is the belief that outward religious show, if I just come and I walk through the worship service and I stand what I'm supposed to stand and I bow my head what I'm supposed to bow, and I sit through the whole thing, that will make me safe and secure with God. The preacher says, don't believe it for a moment. That's not where your safety and security rests.

Then he turns to the wicked in verse 17, he says, "be not overly or greatly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?" The wicked are not granted long lives just because they are wicked. The wickedness, in fact, that they live their lives by will very often lead them to die before their time. The preacher is saying, look as long as you may get on and feel like you are getting off and getting by your wickedness, understand that at the end of the day, the way of the wicked will perish. Psalm 1:6, "the way of the wicked will perish." So don't live by thinking that your wickedness can be a shortcut to success in this world.

Instead, verse 18, he says, "It is good that you should take hold of this." This being the warning to those who are righteous in their own eyes or righteous outwardly. "And from that the warning to the wicked withhold not your hand for here's the better way. the one who fears God shall come out from both of them." Listen to the warning to those who make themselves appear righteous to those who are outside of them. Listen to the warning of the wicked, but instead fear God.

The fear of God, as the Bible says everywhere, is the beginning of wisdom. We read this in Psalm 111:10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All those who practice it have a good understanding." Proverbs 1:7, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction." Then Proverbs 9:10, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the holy one is insight."

Don't try to make righteousness or wisdom, a pretense, a show. Don't try to live according to your wisdom or your wickedness, instead live by wisdom, which is characterized by a fear of God. A fear of the Lord.

So what then, is this fear of the Lord? Why is it so important? Well, there are two factors that characterize what the fear of the Lord is. First of all, the fear of the Lord requires recognizing and acknowledging your helplessness, your hopelessness, your vulnerability and your guilt before Almighty God. It's recognizing that and dealing very seriously with that. But second of all, it means entrusting yourself to the Lord anyway, realizing that that God is the righteous judge of all the Earth. He is almighty God and you stand condemned before him. Yet, entrusting yourself on the basis of the promises of his mercy and love sealed for us in Christ Jesus anyway. In a word, the fear of the Lord is what the Bible otherwise describes as faith. The fear of the Lord is faith.

A few weeks ago, someone very generously gave me four tickets to the Nebraska v. Fordham football game, and I was very excited about this because I had been thinking that might be a good opportunity to take my three older children to their first real football game. I was we were excited about it. They were as excited about it. But I was personally a little frightened by the thought because I know the waywardness of my children and that all they like sheep are very prone to go astray. I know how crowded it is in that stadium. And so I was terrified that at some point one or all of my children might become separated from me.

So we took a few precautions. I gave them all a copy of my business card. My third youngest son, the one that I was really most concerned about, wore pants without pockets that day. So he just held it the entire day, but he had it the whole time. It had my contact information.

The other thing we did is that as soon as we arrive, I began pointing out the police officers to my children. I said, "Do you see that man? That's a police officer." Now police officers understand our frightening to children. They're usually really big, strong people. They have these official scary looking uniforms and they even carry guns. Police officers are terrifying. I mean, I don't want to get pulled over, so not only to me, but also to my children.

Yet the first thing I began to do is to say these are people who are here to help you. If you get lost, you find someone in this uniform and he wants to help you. I know he's scary, but you can entrust yourself to this person anyway because that is his heart. That's what he's there to do. He's there to help you.

Understand our God is the awesome, terrifying, holy holy, holy God. He is the one from whom the angels in glory must cover their faces and from whom they must divert their eyes. He is the consuming fire, the God who brings wrath and desolation on the Earth. Yet he is the loving, gracious, compassionate God who tells us to approach him as children approach their fathers.

You cannot fake your way to security with this God. You cannot live as though wisdom were a pretense, something you could pretend. You cannot scheme your way to success in life. Why should you die early by living according to your wickedness? Neither by adopting the forms of righteousness and wisdom, nor by pursuing goals through whatever wicked means that will take you will you find success in life? The only safe path is the straight and narrow path, which begins, the first step begins with the fear of the Lord. That's the beginning of wisdom on this path.

Wisdom is not in Pragmatism

So what then, is this true wisdom? Well, this brings us to our second section. Wisdom is not in pragmatism. Pragmatism is putting the highest value, deciding what you are going to do, based on what seems like it will work in this life. I say seems because even what seems to work in this life does not genuinely work in the eyes of God. So wisdom is not in pragmatism.

19 Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city. 20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

Wisdom is true power. It is more power even than those who possess genuine power over life and death, those who are in charge of governing cities. Wisdom is real power. Then in verse 20, it is easier said than done to possess this wisdom.

Now understand that in the wisdom literature. So in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the righteous are the wise and the wise are the righteous. The wicked are fools and the fools are wicked. To be righteous is to be wise. So if there is no one who is righteous, that is the same thing as saying that there is no one who is wise. Wisdom is real power, more power than 10 rulers over a city, but there is no one who possesses this kind of wisdom. It's easier thing to say than to do it, to possess it. So then the preacher begins to give us a practical example of what this wisdom would look like.

21 Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. 22 Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.

Now this is a very straightforward, practical bit of wisdom. When you hear someone who is cursing you, whether you overhear them directly or it comes to you as reported from others who overheard it directly, the preacher saying, don't take that to heart. You know that sometimes you've blown off steam. You know that sometimes you've said more than you intended to do. So don't take it to heart when someone does the same thing against you.

Now this is great. This is practical wisdom. This is true. We should follow this. We're tempted to say this is great. I've got this. Check that off. Preacher, what else you got for me? This is when in verse twenty-three and twenty-four, he says, not so fast. Wisdom is not just a set of tips and tricks and life hacks and strategies for living your best life. Now, wisdom is something that's beyond your comprehension. It's a mystery that you can understand until God reveals it to you.

23 All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me. 24 That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out?

Again, wisdom is not tips and tricks and strategies. Wisdom is something much deeper and much more mysterious. He's talking about the very wisdom by which God created the world. We read this in the Proverbs Chapter eight, that wisdom, God worked through his wisdom to create the world. We even read wisdom speaking to us, "wisdom says I was beside him the Lord at creation. Like a master workman, and I was daily the Lord's delight, rejoicing before him, always rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man."

Because wisdom preceded creation, because wisdom was what God used to create creation, wisdom understands creation, but creation cannot understand wisdom. Again, if wisdom preceded creation, wisdom understands, wisdom knows the origins of creation, it gets creation, we must listen to God's wisdom to understand creation. But creation cannot fully understand wisdom. This is why the Bible also tells us that wisdom cannot be found in creation. It wasn't a part of creation. It existed before creation.

So in Job chapter twenty-eight, we have this incredible passage on the way to find wisdom. In Job 28:12 we read, "But where shall wisdom be found? Where is the place of understanding? Earlier in this chapter Job wrote about how there's a place for everything. Everyone knows the place to find the hidden ore under the earth, to mine that out, and everyone knows the path of the birds. But where shall wisdom be found and where is the place of understanding? Verse 13, "men does not know it’s worth, and it's not found in the land of the living. The deep the seas say it is not in me, and the sea says it is not with me"

“But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man does not know it’s worth, and it is not found in the land of the living. 14 The deep says, ‘It is not in me,’ and the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’Job 28:12-14

Then in Job 28:20,

“From where, then, does wisdom come? And where is the place of understanding? 21 It is hidden from the eyes of all living and concealed from the birds of the air. 22 Abaddon and Death say, ‘We have heard a rumor of it with our ears.’Job 28:20-22

Creation cannot understand wisdom because wisdom came before creation. It's like when you're a child and you feel like you know everything about your parents because you're with them every day, day in and day out, you certainly know more about your parents than anyone else that you know about. Then you understand that there was a time before you existed, and so you hear about their childhood, a time when you weren't a part of their consideration, a time before you existed. Years when you were not even alive. Then You realize there's so much more about your parents because they came before you.

The same thing is true when creation tries to understand wisdom. So where is wisdom? Well, Job 28:23 says this, "God understands the way to it, and he knows its place." And then at the very end of the chapter in Job 28:28, here's the answer we get, listen carefully, "And he God said to man, behold the fear of the Lord. That is wisdom. And to turn away from evil as understanding."

If you are stuck. It is because you are trying to find wisdom in this world. If you were stuck, it's because you haven't guided your first steps according to the fear of the Lord. This is the clue you were looking for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Wisdom is not in People

Well, the preacher searches one more place in this world to find wisdom, and that's in people and so in the third section, we find that wisdom is not in people and verses 25 through 29. Now, remember, the preacher says that wisdom has been far off and deep, very deep, who can find it out. But in verse 25, he says he's going to try anyway.

25 I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. 26 And I find something more bitter than death: the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her. 27 Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things— 28 which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. 29 See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.Ecclesiastes 7:25-29, ESV

You can also translate in verse one the sum of things like when you add two numbers together to get the sum. There's a lot of mathematical language here. So he wanted to know the sum of things and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness. Because the value of wisdom is so great, even though it's far off and deep, very deep, the preacher wants to find it.

In verse twenty six, he identifies the first stumbling block, the first obstacle. The main thing that can lead him astray from this pursuit of wisdom and namely that's sexual immorality. In verse 26, he says, "And I find something more bitter than death. The woman whose heart is snares and nets and whose hands are fetters. He who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her."

Now, this is probably not something that would be written in the 21st century but let me explain to you what is going on here. The preacher is not giving a blanket condemnation about women. First of all, understand Ecclesiastes is a book that was written originally to men. The warning here, then, for men is to beware the adulterous woman who might lead them astray into sexual morality. If this book's primary audience had been women, he would say the exact same thing about the silver tongued, manipulative men who would lead women away into this form of sexual immorality.

The other thing here is that he's echoing language we find in other wisdom literature, especially in the book of Proverbs. If you look at the first nine chapters of Proverbs, you find not one woman, but two women. One of the women is this woman that the preacher is talking about here. She's called the Woman folly or Dame Folly foolishness. We read that she's seductive and she is adulterous and she's very persuasive, and she's trying to draw the fool into death by sexual immorality with her.

She's not the only woman. The other woman is lady wisdom herself. The Hebrew word for wisdom is feminine, and so she's depicted as a woman. The idea is, be like this woman, Lady Wisdom, not like this other woman, Dame Folly, as she leads you away into death in sexual immorality.

The point here is that as we pursue wisdom, as we pursue Christ, who is to us wisdom from God, sexual immorality the Bible teaches us everywhere is a unique sin that uniquely separates people, draws people away from Christ. Paul talked about that in our sermon series a couple of years ago in First Corinthians 6:12-20. He makes that point very plain.

You see, the thing is, it's common knowledge to pastors, if you hear many pastors talk about this, everyone talks about it among pastors, circles. That when you see people apostasy and turning away from Christ, especially those who've grown up in the faith, and then suddenly they turn away from Christ. It's never just an intellectual thing. It's not just that they go to college and take a class on philosophy, and they suffer, oh my goodness, this is all just mistaken. It always has to do with sin. It's not just to think something different, but it's the desire to go a different direction than what the scriptures lay out. And almost always, this is bound up in sexual immorality. Time and time again, not always, but very often when you see this happen, this is so common knowledge to pastors, that it all almost always involves some kind of sexual morality, pornography or fornication or homosexuality.

Young Christian man and young Christian women, you need to listen to this and listen carefully. Sexual immorality will destroy you. It is more bitter than death. It will bind you with snares and nets to keep you from finding the pure wisdom of Christ. Let me also say that's not the whole story. If you are bound, there's freedom in the gospel. If that is where you are stuck, there is freedom in the lavish grace of Jesus Christ. Please come talk to me. Please come and talk to me so that we can talk about how the gospel of Jesus frees even those who are bound in this particular sin to walk in newness of life through Jesus Christ.

Well the preacher then in verses twenty-seven and twenty-eight continues his search. He says, "Behold, this is what I found, says the preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme or the sum." There's that mathematical language, he's trying to add things up to find the sum of things. "Which my soul has sought repeatedly. But I have not found one man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found."

Now, once again, he's not saying something misogynistic. He's not making a blanket condemnation against women. What he is saying is that he's tried to understand things, he's tried to understand people, and he's saying he hasn't gotten very far. He can barely understand one man among a thousand, and he hasn't understood even one woman in all his time of trying to wrap his head and get to the bottom of things.

That's the understanding of a particular commentator that I was most persuaded by as he tried to work through the difficult language here. There's more information in the sermon notes if you want to dig a little bit deeper into that language.

What the preacher says in verse twenty-nine he says, "See this alone, I found that God made man upright", originally, God created man upright, "but they sought out many schemes." Now here's where I think schemes captures the better, but the same word used throughout. People go in different direction. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. All of us are trying to find different schemes, paths where we think that we will ultimately find safety. Maybe it's righteousness as a pretense, or maybe it's wickedness by which we think that we will chart our own course.

Living without wisdom, the wisdom that begins with the fear of the Lord is like trying to solve a complicated math problem. I talked about this with the youth group this week on Wednesday night. It's like trying to work your way through a complicated, lengthy math problem, but where you make an early mistake. Do you ever do that on your math exams or you made an early mistake? It doesn't matter how brilliant your mathematical prowess is from that point on, you will end up with the wrong answer. You'll work and work and try to recheck things and try to add things together again, but if you made an early mistake, you will invariably come to the wrong answer.

Scheming, then, is when you can tell that you've got the wrong answer in life because of your misery, because of your dissatisfaction, because of your sorrow. You can tell that something is wrong and you're stuck there. So you try different approaches. But you keep making the wrong answer with the same early mistake, it's like being desperate to try just random combinations on the escape room locks. Living by scheming doesn't work, as Warren Wiersbe says, "Faith is living without scheming." Faith is living without scheming. It's to live according to the fear of the Lord.

Application

Well, again, our big idea today is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Our application then, is tremble before the Lord. Tremble before the Lord. We are directly commanded to do this at several points in scripture. Psalm 9:9 says, "Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness, tremble before him all the Earth."

First tremble before the consuming fire of the Lord's holiness. Why should you fear the Lord? Because he is the almighty king over all the Earth and you stand guilty and condemned before him. Psalm 99:1, "The Lord reigns let the peoples tremble. He sits enthroned upon the cherubim, let the Earth quake." Psalm 114:7, "Tremble, oh, Earth at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob."

You see in the Bible, the Lord is calling to you with true wisdom. The Lord is calling you to organize your steps according to the fear of the Lord. It begins with considering the wrath of God that is against us for our sin. The scriptures gives us the language, it teaches us to lift up our voices in prayer like this, Psalm 90:11, "Oh Lord, who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you?" Or Psalm 119:120, "My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments."

That fear of the Lord begins with acknowledging our vulnerability and our helplessness and our hopelessness and our guilt before the Almighty God, the judge of Heaven and Earth. And in light of this, the scriptures call us to fear the Lord that we might be saved from his wrath, the wrath for those who persist in disobedience against his counsel, his wisdom. Psalm 2:10-12, "Now, therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, or rulers of the Earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed or all who take refuge in him."

To recognize this is the great God who is the one whose wrath is quickly kindled, and yet it's to find a course of throwing ourselves at his mercy anyway, based on the promises that blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Tremble also then before the Lords unsearchable wisdom. Do you think yourself to be wise? Do you think yourself to be clever? Do you imagine that you have found a shortcut to success and safety in life that bypasses God? Proverbs 3:7, "Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil."

You see, the Lord vows that he will humiliate the wisdom of this world that exalts itself in opposition to him. 1 Corinthians 1:19, "It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than that."

The Lord is warning you in his word, do you hear him calling to you? Why should you destroy yourself? Why should you die before your time? And the answer that the Bible gives is, the only answer is because of stubborn rebellion. Why should you persist in your foolishness? Proverbs 1:29-32, "It's because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof. Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their way and have their fill of their own devices. For the simple are killed by their turning away and the complacency of fools destroys them." This is the sovereign God, and he calls to you, warns you turn from your sin.

Tremble finally before the love, the grace and the mercy that the Lord is extended to you as a compassionate father in Christ Jesus. Throw yourself at his mercy anyway based on the promises he makes to you, because the Lord promises his goodness toward those who fear him. Psalm 31:19, "Oh, how abundant is your goodness which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you in the sight of the children of mankind?"

The Lord promises his protection for you. Psalm 34:7,9 "the angel of the Lord in camps around those who fear him and delivers them. Oh, fear the Lord, you were saints. For those who fear him, have no lack."

The Lord promises compassion Psalm 103:13, 17, "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children."

These promises are not in vain. The preacher says the wisdom of this world is vain. He's considered everything in his vain life, but the promises of God are not in vain. God as fulfilled every one of these promises in his son, Jesus Christ. Who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that as it is written, "let the one who boasts boast in the Lord", First Corinthians 1:30.

Understand Jesus Christ may indeed be a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles, but First Corinthians 1:23-24 "To those who are called. Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God." So therefore, live your life without scheming. Trust the Lord, start with the fear of the Lord. The Lord who loves you and the Lord who died to purchase you back from the power of sin, death and the devil. Put your faith in Christ for it is by grace. You've been saved through faith, that is through the fear of the Lord. For, as it is written, Psalm 147:11, "The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him and those who hope and a steadfast love."

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you are the good God who gives us hope and who cares for us in the midst of our sin and our rebellion and our foolishness. I pray that you would lead us once again to despair of our own righteousness. To tremble at the thought of where our paths of wickedness may lead us and instead. To organize our steps, according to the fear of the Lord, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom we have in faith in Jesus Christ. It's in Jesus Christ's name that we pray. Amen.