There Is A Righteous Man Who Perishes In His Righteousness

So this was supposed to be the second sermon on small groups since they're starting today. And I wrote that sermon. It was going to be on 1 Corinthians 13, and it was going to be on loving each other when you get irritated with each other. And maybe we'll preach that sermon next week or a different time, but I changed my mind. I was thinking yesterday that I ought to make some pastoral announcement or address to what's on all of our minds. And I thought, five to seven minutes. And then I thought, you might as well just not say anything because that's not enough time to say anything of meaning and substance given the circumstances. And so I went to bed thinking, well, I'm still going to preach my other sermon. And then I was in and out of sleep throughout the night and woke up this morning and went, I have to preach a different sermon. And I don't know quite what it is yet, but it's what you're going to get. I do have it here, but I did come early this morning.

And I am convinced of the things that I'm saying. I am not going to address every question or every response that's out there regarding the circumstances. That would take far longer than we have today. But I've been considering, I've learned about myself, not just in this situation, but in my life, that when something happens, whatever the thing is, I tend to just go quiet and think for a while. And it looks like I don't care much. And that's not true, though it often looks like that. And my wife could testify to that and say, you don't talk enough. You don't say what you think. And oftentimes what's going on is I'm figuring out what I think because I don't know yet. And so I've been thinking, I've been praying, I've been talking some. I've been observing the way that Christians and...

Non-Christians are responding this week online and amongst themselves and to one another. And some of the responses and some of the questions that Christians have had are alarming. They are bad. They are wicked. And it's my conviction that we, as God's people, need to come to his word and let scripture guide our hearts and our minds. Not all Christians have had the same response or the same questions, and that's to be expected. There is not a monolithic, one-size-fits-all response to tragedy or conflict. And it's hard to make room for other people having different responses or even to understand why they would have that response or value that response. John, I'm going to move this. This is too close to me today. I'm going to kick it. I know you're always stealing my space. I'm a lot bigger than you, you know. I need more space than you. Anyhow.

As I said, I'm not going to be able to address everything and every thought you've had, every Facebook or TikTok or Instagram or wherever you get your news from. We're not gonna be able to talk about all of that. I don't know that talking about all that's even helpful. My hope this morning is to show you from scripture what you can trust and rely on in situations like this, okay? The things that Christians ought to be committed to and agreed about, the things that shouldn't be under debate, all right? Now, that presupposes something that I think that we struggle with, and it's that scriptural arguments are the most weighty arguments, all right? There are political arguments. There are historical arguments. There are logical arguments. And I don't mean to say that scriptural arguments are opposed at every point to those things. That's not my contention. But my contention is that if someone makes a scriptural argument to you, answering it with a logical argument, or a constitutional argument is inferior, okay? It's inferior. We are Christians. And our whole basis of life is God's revealed will and word to us. And so there's no place for you to swat away, as if it's a fly, a scriptural argument because you have some other opinion. Your opinion's worthless if it's contrary to scripture.

Okay? And so I'm not going to contend with you this morning that I'm making, that there are no pushbacks to the things I'm saying scripturally. But if we're going to talk about it as Christians, our first desire and our first commitment should be to say, what does the Bible say about this type of thing? We know what our hearts say. They tell us the minute it comes out. Fear, anger, it's right there. We know that. What we don't know is whether that's the appropriate response. And what I hope to be able to do this morning is to show what I believe how Christians ought to respond or at least frame this as we process through it. Okay? We're going to do something a little different in terms of how we work our way through the text this morning. Our sermon text is Ecclesiastes chapter 7. It's verses 5 through 18. Normally, I would have you, after an introduction, I'd have you stand up. We'd read the whole text. We'd say, thanks be to God. You'd sit down, and then I would preach my way through it.

In the interest of time and for clarity, we're not going to do that this morning. What I'm going to do is they've got the slides. We're just going to work our way through the text. He's going to put up the slides we're talking about. I'm going to make comments, mostly somewhat like a commentary, but things that I think are helpful to us. on different sections as we work our way through. We'll do that starting with verse 5 on down through verse 14 and then verses 15 to 18, which was the original text I wanted to preach on and where I want us to spend a good bit of time. We'll read as a whole and then work our way through that. But we're going to take the smaller chunks as they come to us.

Before that, these preceding verses, verses 5 through 14, are written very much like the book of Proverbs. They are Proverbs. Much of Ecclesiastes written by the same author are Proverbs. The book of Ecclesiastes are Proverbs concerning life and how it's to be lived in the pursuit of man. And the book of Ecclesiastes has refrains. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. That's one of the themes and the refrains of the book of Ecclesiastes. Futility, the concept, the theme of futility is all through it. And you have to remember that Ecclesiastes was written by a man who, when he was presented with the kingdom and a request to be made of God, he requested wisdom.

And what he did then was record his wisdom in the book of Proverbs largely. He isn't the only author of Proverbs, but the primary author of Proverbs. And then the book of Ecclesiastes as the wisdom given to him, a double portion from the Lord of how we ought to live and perceive our lives. For it to be a benefit to us, that requires us to say, there are people smarter than me. Many of the things you read, even in this text, are going to rub you the wrong way. It's not naturally immediately going to make sense. I ran into that. Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books. And there are things in there that are what you'd call hard sayings. Not hard because they're mean or hard because they're crass, but hard because they don't just offer themselves up as like, well, yeah, I already knew that. They're to be considered. They're to be meditated on. They're to be chewed on and ruminated over. And so that's what I hope we're able to do this morning.

We're going to start with verses 5 and 6. We will be taking these verses. They come in twos until we get to verse 18. So verses 5 and 6, Ecclesiastes chapter 7 say, And so it starts off saying that... And Eric mentioned, he didn't know what I was preaching on, but he talked about us listening to wisdom, us listening to wise men, us being willing to sit under the word of God and its rebukes of us and for us to hear them. And here we find Solomon saying the same thing. It's better to listen to the rebuke of a wise man than for one to listen to the song of fools. Here's the point. You're going to listen to somebody. Any of you who think you come up with all your own ideas, your head is so far in the ground, you don't know anything. Seriously.

I don't mean to be funny. If you think you are not being shaped and pulled in the direction of the people you listen to or the things you give yourself to, you are wrong. And it's not enough for you to forget who you listen to. You would be better off to say, I know who I listen to. I choose who I listen to. And I choose who I don't listen to. Okay? Otherwise, you're not going to be able to tell the difference between whether you're being influenced by a wise man and his rebukes or the song of a fool. Now, who would you rather listen to, a song and laughter or a rebuke? Of course, we would all rather listen to a song and laughter. That's fun, right? If we were to read a little earlier in this chapter of Scripture, it says that it's better to be in the house of mourning than in the house of feasting. That we ought to give...

Precedence to the place where truth and sobriety reign as opposed to the place where frivolity and carelessness reign. So what does it mean to listen to the song of fools? Well, I'll tell you. Most of what has been said lately, at least the initial responses, can be lodged and filed under listening to the songs of fools. Fools because there hasn't been time to understand what's going on or what's to be thought. We all had initial reactions. I know mine were. I saw what some of yours were. They weren't good. I'm your pastor and I love you. And I didn't see very many, any of you have a good response initially. You were angry. You were frustrated. You were scared. It was they and them. And then the conspiracy theories were about 30 seconds behind it. It was foolish of you to do that. You were participating in the songs of fools. And you were, to be fair, we were all inundated with it. It was everywhere.

I don't know how you could have gotten away from it. But here's what you have to know about the songs of fools. It's described in verse five as the song of fools. In verse six, it's described as the laughter of a fool. They are then attributed or described as a thorn bush under a pot. Okay, how many of you like thorn bushes? You like pulling them out? We pulled one out at our house yesterday. We're no fun. We don't like thorn bushes. What's the point of a thorn? It's to cause pain. It's miserable. It is the direct result of the fall. Thorns and thistles, it will grow for you. So when you run into thorns, you go, unpleasant, gross, get rid of it. We don't like things with thorns, right? We like roses, but we like the people who cultivate roses that don't have thorns. Thorns are bad. They're meant to hurt. They're the result of the fall. What is happening to the thorns here? They're under a fire, being consumed. That's what you do with thorn bushes. You cut them down, you dig them up, you remove them, and you burn them, okay? Fools.

who are running their mouths prematurely and not grounded in scripture, are as a thorn bush being consumed and they don't realize it. There's been a lot of wicked and foolish things said. Do you not think that destruction will come to the fools and that God will bring it about? In your time, perhaps not. Nothing's fast enough when we're upset or when we're scared or frustrated or had enough. But this proverb teaches us, That those who give themselves to foolishness, to laughing in the face of adversity, who reject rebukes, are as a thorn bush. They've become those who are only there to destroy, only those to cause harm. That they are under a pot, they are being burned, they're crackling, they're being done away with, they're perishing. And so as you look through society, you should be looking for the God working to cause those who are sending out their barbs to perish.

And I don't necessarily mean that they will be killed, but I mean that they will be cut low by the Lord. I could go, but we're going to move on. The point is, those who run their mouths and those who listen to others run their mouths, who think they're winning, and that applies to both sides, not just one side, ought to be careful that they're not burning under a pot. Verses 7 and 8 say, For oppression makes a wise man mad and a bribe corrupts the heart. The end of a matter is better than its beginning. Patience of spirit is better than a haughty spirit. This proverb acknowledges the wise man's response, the anger that many of us have felt at the senseless violence and oppression that we've witnessed this week and in weeks previous. But the second half of this proverb instructs the wise man in how to respond.

Should he take a bribe? Of course not. What should the wise man do? What happens when you get angry? I'll tell you what happens when you get angry. It's the same thing that happens when I get angry. There is no future for an angry man. The only thing that matters is what's right in front of him. He does not consider the consequence of his desires. He does not consider the fallout. He doesn't consider the possibility of success or change. He's just mad. And he's convinced he's right. This is what happens when you're mad, isn't it? I mean, you think you just can't see how you could be wrong because our anger blinds us. And many of the responses to this have fit this description. The anger has blinded wisdom. And so scripture tells us that the end of a matter is better than the beginning. The angry man doesn't see the end. He only sees the beginning. He only sees the initial thing that has pissed him off.

The end of a matter is better than its beginning. And Solomon warns us that patience is better than haughtiness. Patience and humility are what are commended to us, to the wise man when he's angry. Patience and humility don't just get set on the shelf, okay? I hear lots of talk, and we'll come in the very next proverb, which talks more specifically about anger. But I want to tell to you, there's a lot of this talk of righteous anger. I don't give a plug nickel for your righteous anger if you're just mad. Just because you have justification to be mad doesn't mean your anger is righteous. It's not like, oh, there's no such thing as sinful anger now because a bad thing happened. Sure there is. Do you think Satan's going to be like, oh, sorry, their anger's all good now? No.

You can have a good justification to be angry and still be angry in a sinful way. Do we think that way? Or do we think, well, I have a reason to be upset, so I'm righteous in it. Don't be so boastful and don't be so proud to think that you are in the right just because something bad happened. Patience and humility are the wise man's response in the face of anger and adversity. Another way of saying it is that righteous anger doesn't run its mouth like a fool. It doesn't say things when if upon reflection, a week or a month later, we've been like, what did I do? Is this what I wanted? If you find yourself analyzing your past statements or your past actions and you come away going, what had gotten a hold of me? You can be assured that what got a hold of you was not righteous anger, but just anger itself. So patience and humility are a wise man's response when he's frustrated and when he's angry.

These are gifts of the Spirit, fruits of the Spirit. They feel weak. They feel insignificant. They feel inconsequential. They feel like a losing strategy. My point's not to argue with you about whether they're a winning or losing strategy. Scripture here tells us that's how godly men respond. Well, if I don't fight back, I'm going to lose. Well, okay, you're right. You might lose. I didn't know winning was the primary goal of your life. I didn't know gaining the whole world was what your whole life should be surrounded by. I didn't know comfort and ease and safety were the things that all Christians should prioritize over all other things. Now, I realize none of you are making that case to me or haven't made that case online, but that temptation resides in our hearts. And if you don't see it in your heart, you're blind. What does it mean if they say, well, they want him dead, that means they want me dead too. That's a fearful response. It may well be true, though I question to what extent it's true.

Why would it surprise us if that were true? They killed an innocent man. The wicked, godless Pharisees and Jews killed Jesus Christ with no cause. And the lies were evident and obvious as they were prosecuting him. And he was silent in the face of it. But we're so sure that that's not the prescription for us. And we're wrong. A haughty spirit is a proud spirit. It's one that declares itself to be right in the face of any argument before it. My way is the right way. Righteous anger doesn't speak or think or behave that way. So how would you describe the last couple of days and the interactions that you've had and the things you've had going on in your heart to the things you've observed online? Spirit of patience or a spirit of haughtiness amongst the Christians?

I can understand. I don't expect the unbeliever and those who are still dead in their sins and enslaved to them to respond with patience and moderation. That's a gift of the Spirit that they don't have. But the Christians, us, verses 9 and 10 say, do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of fools. Do not say, why is it that the former days were better than these? What is not from wisdom that you ask about this? Who would have known when we came across this passage that all the things that go on in our hearts were somebody already thought them and felt them and wrote them down? Because he's just like going right through me. And so just as I mentioned earlier concerning righteous anger and the assumption that your anger is righteous because there's a reason to be angry is not sufficient. You have to ask yourself, am I the sort of person who's just looking for a place to fight?

a place to express the anger that is always burning inside of me. No one owns being angry. I mean, maybe some of us would be like, you know, from time to time, I get angry. But if we were to go into the New Testament and remember that when one of the lists, it says that there are those who are given to fits of anger, like they're just always mad or always able to get mad like that. It's like, it's always just, it's, you know, it's like a stock pot that's always just below boil, you know? And all it takes is just a little tick on the temperature and it's boiling. It's an angry person. They're eager to be angry. They keep it just under boiling. Now, whether they want to or not is not the point. But if you're always angry, hear what God says. Don't be eager in your heart to be angry for anger resides in the bosoms of fools. And I'll tell you, people tend to have one or two responses when there's trouble.

They either tend to get angry or they tend to get fearful. I tend to get angry. It does not take much for me to be aggressive or to want to fight or to argue. If you want to argue, we can argue. That's fine. We can have at it. That's my natural bent. And so I'm not just talking to you. This is me, but it is also you. And what I find is that those who might not initially be given to anger doesn't take much to flip your despair into anger. And so this is... A common temptation. Which means that we should always be on guard against our anger because we're warned that anger resides in the bosoms of fools. Are you calling me a fool? I'm at least calling you foolish. And I'm pointing out to you the foolishness of it. Or showing you where scripture points out the foolishness of it. Shut your mouth if you don't know, if you're given to anger. Shut your mouth until you've got something to say.

that someone might recognize as having been thought about for more than five seconds, and that they could maybe link some way to patience. Angry men, you know some of the things they tend to get upset about? And here we are with the wisdom of Scripture. They say, why is it that the former times were better than these? Right? So we blame others. What is behind that statement? That is a statement that's searching for fault. It's searching for blame. Right? What do young people say about why times are harder now? Whose fault is it? It's the boomers' fault. It's just the boomers' fault. Like, you all know because you're all young. You're like, oh, it's those boomers. They went and created these terrible government policies and they have social security and they've ruined our taxes and the welfare state. All these things, all their fault. They're just selfish. It's all their fault, right? What do older people say the problem is? Why aren't things the way they were when they grew up? It's kids these days. It's their kids, right? And grandkids.

We're always doing this. We're always like, well, there was a better time. If we could just get back to a better time. Now, I'm not arguing that there aren't better or more favorable times to live in than others. That's not actually the point. The point is that if you are just a discontent true who always has someone to blame or someone else to find fault with, when things aren't going the way you are, the problem is with you. Even if the things you're seeing are real. The anger that resides in the bosoms of fools leads them to ask the question, why is it that the former days were better than these? And you know what they never answer? Do you know what the people who ask that question never come up with as the answer? Because of me. They never say it. You know why my life's hard? Because I have a mirror and I can see why my life's hard. We blame our parents. We blame our children.

We blame the theological tradition we grew up in or we grew up in the church and we didn't grow up in the church or we grew up poor or we grew up wealthy or it's just, it's always somewhere else. And so if you find yourself blaming other people and other circumstances for the difficulties that you find yourself in, you won't find a good and helpful answer until you look at least, at least until you look in the mirror. This is not to say that everything is your fault and that there's no failure in any other place. That's not the point. My point is just to say, we never look at ourselves and say, It's with me. I did it. All right, verses 11 and 12. Wisdom, along with an inheritance, is good and an advantage to those who seek the Son. For wisdom is protection, just as money is protection, but the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the lives of its possessors. Here's a question for you. Aren't poor people the problem?

Poor people who don't understand. Poor people who don't do right with their money. Poor people who have children out of wedlock. Poor people who give themselves to drugs. Poor people who can't keep the jobs. Poor people who live off of the state and your tax dollars. Aren't they the problem? Like, well, I don't know what you want me to say, pastor. Those are problems. Hey, I didn't say they weren't problems. I'm asking in your heart, are they all the problem? Do you think that money, and if they had a little bit of money, things would be resolved? But we live like it. Wisdom is much more valuable than wealth. And the primary difference between wisdom and wealth is that wealth only is beneficial in this life. But wisdom, we're told from this proverb, preserves the lives of its possessors. Whether they have wealth or not, it preserves their lives. It prepares them and equips them for the life to come for eternity. And so it ought to be our pursuit over and against our pursuit of wealth.

What do you want to be when you grow up? I don't know, wealthy? Said every one of our kids. I wonder where they learned that. Who taught them that? How much scripture did you teach them? How many sacrifices did you live out in front of them? How many sacrifices did you bring them into because you believed it was wise? We would write that off as bad parenting and move right on. But wisdom has the advantage over wealth. and that it preserves the lives of its possessors. And I would say it's a blessing to their children to teach them. And so have we taught our children these things? Verses 13 and 14 say, Consider the work of God, for who is able to straighten what he has bent? In the day of prosperity, be happy, which isn't difficult, right? Some of us have trouble. Like, I often joke with people. I'm like, you're the kind of person who could find a $100 bill on the ground and complain that it was all wrinkled up. But most of us can...

Get along with being happy in the day of prosperity without much effort. But in the day of adversity, consider, right? Don't talk, don't take to the social media, the interwebs and all that type of stuff. Consider, think, consider. God has made the one, the day of prosperity, as well as the other, the day of adversity, so that man, we, will not discover anything that will be after him. So when difficulty comes, And anger rises. You're to consider why and what God is doing and teaching us. And I'll just tell you, if you're the kind of guy who can have that answer in two minutes, you don't have a good answer. It takes time to consider. Do any of us know for certain what the upshot and the result will be of this whole situation? You don't.

But I've seen plenty of people online saying that the reason that this is going to turn our nation around and people are going to come to repentance and people are going to show up to churches and they're going to realize, finally, the shades are going to come off, right? And they're going to see things the way I see things. I don't know how you can be so sure of that when we count how long it's been in hours. It takes time to consider what God is doing and why he has done it. It's difficult to trust that God has a purpose in everything that comes to pass. The good we can accept, but the bad we struggle with. We're all glad to say that good will come of this. You see this at funerals very often. People will say, but good's going to come, but good's going to come, but good's going to come. Wouldn't it be better for us, instead of calling it a celebration of life, say this is a manifestation of our enemy and the result of our enemy. And thanks be to God that he's overcome this thing right here by the power of his son.

while we're crying and grieving the loss of our loved one. But now we have celebrations of life and we talk about how good they were and we lie about the people where the one we describe isn't, like the people who knew him, they're like, that's not the whole story. He was angry all the time or he was a drunk or he was an adulterer or he, whatever. We just always want to lie to ourselves so that we don't have to consider what God is doing. Those whom he takes home early. he brings to a better place. And scripture admonishes us about men who loved God and served him well. And I'm not prepared to say, I don't know Charlie Kirk well enough and his ministry or his work well enough to say definitively. But I do believe he was a Christian. And I do think that his speaking was, I think he spoke in a political context about moral things. Some things are moral.

And they get talked about in a political sphere. And some things are political and they get talked about in a moral sphere. And the clarity of Scripture and the priority that ought to be given to them by Christians are not the same. Okay? Abortion and illegal immigration are not on the same field. They're not on the same plane. They are not equally condemned in Scripture. One of them is a predominantly moral discussion. Murder of innocent life. Another, but politics and politicians and law have something to say about how we're allowed to, what we're allowed to do in society. But it's a moral issue. Immigration is a political issue.

Largely, it's a political issue. It has to do with a country's view and process for how they want to sustain themselves and what they think would be good or bad. And there are many different people with different opinions about what would be good, bad, or otherwise regarding that issue. But the Bible is not nearly so clear on how to handle that as it is abortion. So what did Charlie Kirk spend his time talking about? Homosexuality, transgenderism, race relations, these types of things. I'm not saying he never talked about... illegal immigration. I don't know for certain that he didn't. I think he probably did at some point or the other. But predominantly, he was talking about moral issues. How can you say that about gay marriage? How can you say that about transgendered people? Those are the clips I always saw. And so he's talking about a moral thing in a political context because that's how our world processes it. If he had said, hey, preacher coming to town, we want to talk about gay marriage on the college campus, you'd get way less of a following and an interest than if a guy comes and says, hey,

This is what we're talking about in our society, so here you go. That's what I think he was doing. You may disagree, that's okay. My point's not to argue those details. My point is to say, from everything I can tell, he was a good man. Sinner, I'm sure, but a good man. And so I think we can put him in the category of men of whom the world was not worthy. And so he was taken home. And that's a grief and a blow to those who remain, primarily his wife and his children. and his parents, and those who loved him. That's us. And so I think we ought to be careful and consider what God is doing and what his purpose is and what his ends are in it. You remember that when Eric read the scripture lesson, he said that there's, when he's talking about being stiff-necked and rejecting knowledge, there comes a point where you no longer are rebuked because you won't listen. And those are true words. There are times whereas

A coach, my high school coach, who was not at all a believer, my high school football coach, he said, you don't have to worry about us as long as I'm yelling at you. Because if I'm yelling at you, that means I think you can do better. He says, the problem will actually be when I stop yelling at you to do better. Because what that means is I become convinced you're doing as good as you can. You can't improve. Scripturally, we would describe that as throwing our pearls before swine or answering a fool according to his folly. There's a time when we are quiet. Because there's no likelihood of what we're saying producing any good thing. Except for those that we speak to, to turn and to trample us underfoot. And so we don't speak. So could it be possible that our brother Charlie was taken away from us because we don't deserve him as a nation? Now we go, that's not how we want it to be. And I don't want it to be that way. But we live in a nation. And do we deserve people?

who will tell us the truth. If all we do collectively as a nation is reject it. And how good are we as Christians if we decide to fight fire with fire and to overcome evil with evil when it's executed against us? Do we deserve righteous leaders if that's how we respond? If that is what's this far below the surface, it's not what we deserve. And so that ought to cause us to consider ourselves in our own ways. and our own angers, and our own frustrations, so that we know what we ought to repent of. Now we come to the final section, verses 15 to 18. Solomon wrote this book at the end of his life, after he'd spent his life pursuing anything he wanted. He tells us earlier in the book, there's nothing that his mind or his heart desired, that his eyes looked upon that he denied himself. He gave himself everything he wanted, looking for the meaning of life, looking for what was important. And so he writes this down as a summary.

and an exhortation of an old wise man to his son and to us. And he says, I have seen everything during my lifetime of futility. One other thing I'll say about his life is many of us would love to have his life. A life without limits. A life where there's nothing keeping you from the things you want. Not money, not people, nothing. Living in peace with all of the wealth and resources of the entire world available to you. And all you have to say is, I want it. And Solomon spent his life saying, I want it. And he spent his life getting what he wanted. And then here he describes his life as a lifetime of futility. Shame on us if we want lifetimes of futility. We should listen to him. I've seen everything during my lifetime of futility. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his wickedness. Do not be excessively righteous and not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself? Do not be excessively wicked and do not be a fool.

Why should you die before your time? It is good that you grasp one thing and also not let go of the other. For the one who fears God comes forth with both of them. So who wants to raise their hand and tell us what that means? Don't be righteous and wise? It'll ruin you? It seems like some sort of faithless, pragmatic advice. Like, just fly below the radar and just kind of, you know, stay within the boundaries and, you know, that's... That's what I recommend. But then we come to the end of the passage and it says this weird thing. He's like, he says, it is good for you to grasp one thing and also not to let go of the other. And you're like, what two things is he talking about? It seems like he's saying, get the righteousness and pour some of it in and get the wickedness and pour some of it in and make sure you've got a hold of both of them. And that's good as long as you fear God. But we all kind of chuckle because we're like, that can't be what he's saying. Like, how could scripture commend that sort of behavior to us?

The point of this section is to show that wise, God-fearing men live in quite a bit of tension without drawing foolish conclusions like the ones I've just said. Solomon's life, he says, was futile, but also full of wise observations, many of which he didn't observe or follow himself, but he learned through his own errors. And one of the things he points out at the very beginning is that righteous men perish while wicked men live. And that's a question that we all have, isn't it? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why would someone who's doing the Lord's work be taken away from it prematurely? And why does the Lord let those who are obviously and openly wicked, why does he allow them to live? Let me put a finer point on it. In the fifth commandment, he tells us that if we obey the Lord, if we submit ourselves to him, what does he promise us?

A long life in the land that he gives to us. And so it seems that long life in this world is meant to be an indication of a longer eternal life in the world to come. But that short lives in our world are often the result of wickedness and sin. You think of the man who was born blind and his parents asked, was it him or his parents who sinned? Why does he have this difficulty? That doesn't make any sense. Now, here's what you see in that story and in this passage, the connection, the thread that runs through all of it. We all live as though God is a vending machine and that our action, that he is bound to give us or to do certain things if we do other things. Meaning, if I obey him, I will have a long life. He even promises that in the fifth commandment.

We also have Asaph in Psalm 73 acknowledging that he's kept his way in vain. He's surely, I've kept my way pure in vain. There's no pain in the wicked's death and their eyes are fat and they're rich and wealthy. They have all the stuff that my flesh wants with no trouble. And he's asking why. Why do I struggle and fight and seek the Lord when they have the comfort that I want? It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem equal or just. What Asaph said in Psalm 73 is that when he came into the house of the Lord, that he perceived their end. That he realized there was something more than just what he was observing in the moment as to what was going to happen. Do you remember the parable of the beggar? I think it was Lazarus and the rich man. He's like begging for crumbs. Like, feed me what the dogs eat off the floor. Like, I'm starving over here.

And the rich guy wouldn't do it. And then he dies. And then he's like, hey, what about my brothers? Can someone go back and tell them this? I was wrong. All while he's looking at Lazarus, who had all of his hard times in this life, and probably his life was shortened as a result of the adversity and trials that he faced, reclining and resting in Abraham's bosom. We know that he looks at him and recognizes him because he says, hey, have him bring me some water. He's just a servant. He's just a nobody. He's here, he's meant to get me what I want. And he's just like, there's this huge chasm between heaven and hell. And he's on one side of it and he's entered his rest and you're on the other side of it and there's no more rest for you. And so when we look at this and we say that there seems that the righteous man perishes, you have to realize that when we look at the righteous dying prematurely and we say they've perished, it's either, it's probably at least a statement of our own grief at losing them, but it's also,

a short-sighted testimony that we don't think there's anything worth living for beyond the grave. Do the righteous perish and are no more? Are they just gone and then there's nothing more to them? In this world, yes. But Paul tells us that if we've hoped in this world, in 1 Corinthians 15, when he's talking about the resurrection, he says, if we've hoped in this world only, then we above all men are most pitiable. That it's a pathetic and unchristian and unbiblical way to think and to process. our lives and the lives of those around us in the context of their death. It's a bad question. Why do the righteous perish early and the wicked live for long? It only takes into account this life. I would ask you, does Lazarus have who died and then went and reclined in the bosom of Abraham, does he have a better existence in life and eternity than the rich man who wouldn't give him crumbs? Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly.

And so it ought to be that when we see the righteous taken away from us prematurely, that we shouldn't grieve as though there's no hope of a future resurrection or a life to come. For them or for us, our lives as Christians, we're told, are hidden with Christ in his heaven. And that means they're not here on this earth. And though this earth is all we've known, and it's our only point of reference that we've ever seen or experienced, We accept and believe by faith that there is a world yet to come that we haven't seen or participated in, but that we will. And so when our brothers dearly departed leave and are brought home and enter into their rest through the means of wicked, sinful men, we should not lose hope. We should not be ready to fight as though this world is all there is to care about. Because it's not.

I do want to say something about his exhortation not to be excessively righteous and overly wise. His rebuke is in the words excessive and overly. It has to do with this idea that if I do enough righteousness, then I will secure for myself the thing I want. You will not. If you are a Christian and you're going to go to heaven, you will have received that as a gift from God and not because you are anything. And your ability to do all the right stuff is the fruit of God's work in your life, not the cause of it. And so if you're so fearful about screwing everything up if you make the wrong decision or if you sin, you lack faith, okay? I often tell young people, life will be easier for you once you make a big mistake, once you really mess something up you care about.

Because then in time, what you'll realize is that God is faithful and merciful, and that when you screw stuff up, all hope is not lost. But when you're young, you don't see it that way. You think, well, we have to raise our kids just like this, and we have to educate them like that, and we have to feed them like that, and we have to do this and do that. And you have to make all those decisions. Do it. It's, by comparison, an inconsequential example. You have to make those decisions. But here's the thing. You're going to screw your kids up. You're going to fail them.

And if your whole idea is, no, I won't, because if I do, it's irreparably harmed, then you're the kind of person who wants to be excessively righteous and overly wise. But it's foolish. Because you can't control God by what you do. And that's the underlying principle, is that God is this vending machine, as I said earlier, where if I do the right stuff, if I put the right money in the machine and push the right buttons, what I want will always come out. And so we don't have vending machines anymore. But if you're older and you remember them, there are times that you put the right money in and you push the right button and the little curly Q thing twisted and the bag of chips like, you know, it didn't fall. It didn't come out. You gave your money and you didn't get what you wanted. And then here comes your anger. Smack the machine, kick the thing, right? Try to reach up through the, you know. Some of you put another $1.50 in to get the first bag of chips.

Like, there's this idea, this cause and effect that was just hardwired into us. And then we project that onto God as though he will just always behave that way. And so here's the thing. A long life in this world is often and usually and promised by God to be considered a blessing by us and a blessing to those who are around us. But in his providence and in his hidden will, sometimes he cuts someone's life short. And we can't explain why. Years ago, sad story coming. Years ago, we had friends in our sending church and they were visiting their parents out of state. And some of the kids were in the car with the grandparents and some of the kids were in the car with the parents traveling behind them. They're in rural Illinois. And I don't know.

I don't remember all of the details of it, but there was a train track, and then there was a road, and they were really close together. They were on a road that was going over the train track and then down to the road. And it was in rural areas, so there's not all these cross guards and all that type of stuff. It's just big, wide-open farm country. And the parents and the grandparents were not right next to each other. There was some distance. Well, anyway, the grandparents ended up stopping on the train tracks. They were waiting for cars to go, and the train hit the car. And the grandparents both...

passed away, they were older, and one of their grandchildren passed away. And there were other kids in the car that survived. Tragic, incredibly tragic, right? And because then the parents come pulling up and it's like, there's a problem, but they don't know what's going on. It's awful. And it took a while, but eventually what the parents determined and realized was that that child who passed away was the only child they were confident of actually believing in Christ at that time. Does that mean they were glad to lose their child or even indifferent toward it? Of course not. But they were glad for their child who had believed in Christ to be the one who passed away, to have gone to be with Jesus and to be done with the misery of this world. And that was a comfort to them. But it took them time. You realize that wasn't their three weeks out perspective. When you go to the funeral and the kid who was in the car and survived and was still all bandaged up and bruised up and had cuts and casts all over, they weren't there yet.

It takes time to consider and to come to a godly understanding of these things. And so my exhortation to us is to take the time to consider it and to see what God will do and how he's working. Even when he calls one of his children home prematurely, we're left here on earth with his word and with one another to sort out how to carry on the work of righteousness without the ones who led us in it. And if you think about it, this is exactly what the disciples... who walked with Jesus for three years, went through. They lost their leader and their work was just beginning. And so there really isn't anything for the Christian that can happen in this world that will end our commitment to walking in his ways. And so be careful what way you wanna take when you're upset. Consider whether it's God's way. And if you're not sure, hold your tongue. And if someone pushes back and says, no, no, no.

Listen to them. You're not without hope in this world, though we do feel like that at times. It's an evidence of our humanity and our weakness and our dependence on God and his mercy. But don't grieve as those without hope. Don't talk of taking up arms as those without hope in God. Trust God. Trust God and be a voice of faith in him when, as many people have said, more people are willing to listen right now. They're watching how you respond. And if you respond poorly, they'll take note of it. And if you respond in a way that makes no sense to them, they'll notice it. And so you have before you an opportunity to testify to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his power and dominion over sin and death. Don't neglect it. Let's pray.