School is pretty much a reality. School is a reality all of life. You could probably say that really all of life is a school. The only problem is that sometimes we learn the lessons after we fail the exam, which is not too good. But that is the way it is. Fortunately, as we continue to look through the book of Ecclesiastes, we can see that we had a teacher throughout the entire book. A teacher who was not only willing to give us the life lessons before we would take the actual exam but, as we see today, he actually gives us the answer key to life itself; through the phrase “Fear God and keep his commands.” We have been going through this series all summer. I think we started sometime in June and it is called Under the Sun. It is one man’s search to find meaning in this world alone, only to come up short. Last week, the concluding verse was “‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Everything is meaningless!’” The Teacher, we know, is this guy named King Solomon who lived about the first century B.C. He was a guy who had the time, money, and power to be able to pursue pretty much every avenue of life only to conclude that from man’s perspective, everything is meaningless. As I mentioned last week, I actually said that this verse, 12:8, was actually believed to be possibly the last verse that Solomon would have written, at least in the book of Ecclesiastes. If you have your Bible, you know that there are about six more passages that go on. Some people suggest that these remaining passages were not written by Solomon but written by some sort of an editor that added some words after Solomon. They are words that give an endorsement for the book but also a nice, fitting summary to the book. As we have been doing through the whole series, I would like to have somebody read from the New International Version chapter 12 of Ecclesiastes starting at verse 9 and taking it all the way down to the end of the book, which is verse 14. (Scripture read here.)
What we see here is that it is easy to consider this little addition as possibly written by an editor because he refers to the Teacher in the third person when he writes “Not only was the Teacher wise, but also imparted knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs.” He is referring to the Teacher in the third person. Some suspect that maybe Solomon didn’t write these words and they were written afterwards that are kind of an endorsement for the book. Even today, we know that a lot of people put words in books that serve as an endorsement for certain books. In fact, some people won’t read a book unless it is endorsed by certain people. That was very common also in that first century B.C. for somebody to place words following the end of the book that would serve as an endorsement. Whatever the case, whether Solomon wrote it or not, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that probably Solomon would agree and receive the endorsement but also would probably agree with the conclusion. When we think about the endorsements words, he writes “Not only was the Teacher wise, but also imparted knowledge to people.” We know that Solomon was one of the wisest persons around. As we talked about sometime during the series, wisdom is not just an accumulation of knowledge. It is not just this intellectual knowledge. Wisdom is knowledge being applied to a certain circumstance. We know that Solomon had that. We saw it throughout the book when he was able to observe the cycles of nature and the cycles of life and be able to come up with some very creative nuggets of truth that would be applied even today. The good thing about Solomon was that he didn’t hoard that knowledge. He didn’t keep all those nuggets of truth to himself but actually it says that he imparted that to the people. He “imparted knowledge to the people.” In other words, he gave people what he knew. He had the power of observation and of writing down things and he would give it to the people around him, including the readers today. I think about how much wisdom there has probably been in the cumulative history of the world, including history or wisdom within this room, that sometimes people never take the time to share. People never impart it to others, and that is a shame. He talks about the idea that “He pondered it and searched out and set in order many proverbs.” A side note: when he is talking about proverbs, he is not just talking about what we consider the book of Proverbs. Really, he is talking about the collection of wise sayings that would be found in this book. There were a lot of illustrations, word plays, metaphors, and figures of speech. All those types of things would probably collectively be considered wise sayings or proverbs. It says that he pondered these proverbs. Pondered in this sense has the idea of weighing them out to see if they really have substance worthy of the book. Then he put those proverbs in an order. We may not agree with the order he put them in. The order may not make sense to us, but I am sure it made perfect sense to a guy like Solomon.
Then it goes on to say “The Teacher searched out to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true.” He had the knack for choosing good words. Words that were aesthetically pleasing. Words that maybe, we will talk about in a few minutes, caused a little bit of pain. But the way he put them together was just really neat. I was trying to pull some out of the past sermons. The one I liked was “A good name is better than a fine perfume.” Those are right words. He put those together very nicely. You may recall in chapter 7 when he started talking about “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven.” Then what did he do? He took the next seven passages and stringed together 14 life events that we all deal with. He talks about there is a time to plant. There is a time to uproot. There is a time to laugh. There is a time to cry. There is a time to keep. There is a time to give away. Just a very creative and delightful way of putting words together so much so that we mention 3,000 years later a group known as The Birds took this entire section and wrote a complete song around it without really changing the lyrics at all. He had the gift of being able to string words together in a very pleasant and delightful way.
At the same time, he wasn’t just about stringing words together so they would be nice to our ears. He was interested in truth. He goes on to say “What he wrote was upright and true.” Upright in the sense it was right in the eyes of God. It was righteous. True not just in the sense that it was true to himself and his own experience. What he was able to do was find proverbs that were universally true across time and space. Some of the comments I got throughout the series by a lot of people is I just love this book. I just love to read this book. Somebody last week told me they read it through five times. They just love the book. I think that is because the words of Solomon ring so true today. Even though they could be down or they seem to be gloomy at times or they seem depressing, they ring of a certain truth that allows people to connect with those words in a very real way. Even though those words ring true, we also know, again thinking about the book, that those words sometimes could be quite painful. He says “The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails – given by one Shepherd.” As an aside, there is speculation of who this one shepherd is. We don’t know who it is. We know that the Shepherd is capitalized, but it could be Solomon himself because kings were considered Shepherds. Some suspect that he could be referring to God. I suspect that most of you are familiar with the 23rd Psalm where David writes “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He takes me and sets me down by green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He keeps me on the pathway of righteousness for his name’s sake.” Then he goes on to say “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, his rod and his staff will provide comfort for me.” That is a very comforting Psalm, especially during times of death. While that shepherd that David speaks of provides words of comfort, this shepherd seems to imply that these words can be quite painful. He says “The words of the wise are like goads.” A goad is an instrument that a shepherd would use to prod cattle along the road. A very painful looking instrument. How many of you would like to get that jabbed in your side a few times? That is what it was. A pointed instrument that would move the cattle or livestock along the road and in some cases get them to turn in a whole different direction. That is what he is saying here. The words of the Shepherd can be quite painful. They might be pleasant to the ear in some sense, but they can also be quite painful. We experienced that when we read about different passages. Some of them came across a little pointed. Really sharp. I think about the passage that speaks of “It is better to be in a house of mourning than a house of feasting” or “The end is better than the beginning” or “The day of my death is better than the day of birth.” Those are words that can be quite painful, especially if you are in the midst of some form of grief. We have to remember that Solomon was not just using his words to cause pain for the sake of causing pain. It was often a method he would use to get people to stop and think about things and ideally change the course of how they are doing life.
Jesus himself used this method. Jesus was also called the shepherd. He called himself the shepherd. He said “I am the good shepherd.” Sometimes he had to use goads on his apostles. You remember the story about the Last Supper where Jesus got up and said he had to go on to the cross and go on to suffering. Peter stood up and rebuked him and said no way Jesus. This isn’t going to happen to you. Jesus was pretty stern in his words back. He says “Get behind me Satan. You do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men.” He was basically goading him back to right thinking because he was not going in the same direction as Jesus. Then you have the story of Paul. We told the story of Paul in the series called The Story. Paul, early on, was one who was going after Christians. He was trying to get them arrested and put them in jail to persecute them. Then the Lord got ahold of him on the Damascus road and all of a sudden a bright light began to shine and he fell off his horse. As Paul describes the scene he says “We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’” What is he saying? He is saying, Paul, you have to quit resisting me. It is just causing a lot of pain. You are pushing me away. I am trying to take you in the right direction, but you keep pushing me away. It is hard to kick against the goads. I suspect there are people here today that might be kicking against the goads a little bit. Maybe God is calling you to put aside a certain sin, attitude, possibly a prejudice, or maybe he is even calling you into a deeper relationship with him, or possibly even calling you into ministry. What you are doing is resisting those goads. You are resisting that prodding by God.
Anyway, the writer says that “The words of the wise are like goads”, but he also goes on to say they are like nails. He says “their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails – given by one Shepherd.” Here again we don’t know exactly what kind of nails he had in mind. Some suggest he was referring to tent pegs or something like that. Whatever the case, we know that nails or tent pegs are used to secure something; to keep something from moving. We know that wise words, such as the wise words of Solomon, if adhered to, can actually provide a sense of firmness and stability to our lives. The words of the wise are like goads but they are also like firmly embedded nails.
And then he appears to do kind of almost an aside in the form of a warning. He says “Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” I don’t see any teenagers in the room, but this is a passage you don’t want to give to your teenager. That first day of class when they get that long reading list for the year. Halfway through the year you ask how are you doing on that reading list. They say you know what, of making many books there is no end, and study wearies the body, so I decided to take a nap instead. It doesn’t work right? All kidding aside, he is not suggesting that we avoid study or avoid books. He is just saying be careful what you read. There were a lot of books back then that were passed off as wisdom literature. Even today there are a lot of books that give the appearance on the cover that these are wise books on everything it speaks about. About health or finances or even spirituality. What he is saying is be careful what you read because all of it is not wisdom. You have to measure the world’s wisdom against God’s wisdom and a lot of times it doesn’t measure up. It was Paul in Corinthians who wrote “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of the age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” So again, be careful of where you are getting your source of wisdom.
Then he basically comes to the conclusion of the entire matter. He says “Now that all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” What he is saying is after everything I wrote in these past 12 chapters, after all the perplexities of life, the puzzles of life that I tried to uncover, all the dark alleys that I visited, life and death, and all this kind of stuff, it all boils down to this. Here is what you need to do: you need to fear God and keep his commandments. You read this and think this is all you got? All 12 chapters and this is what I am left with. It almost sounds too elementary. But if we think about, this is the heart of a relationship with God. This is what God wants us to have with him. A fear of him and to keep his commandments. But as I said earlier, the fear of God is not something where you are terrified of God, although some people probably should be terrified of God. He is talking about a reverent respect for who God is. For his power and his authority. It is less like a relationship between a master and a slave than it is with a father and a son or a father and a daughter. That is what he is talking about. A relationship where you understand that God has this incredible power and at any second he can pretty much squish us all like a bug. But at the same time, we sense that this Father has this incredible love for us. He has our best interest in mind. The more we meditate on this idea of his power and his love, the more we really begin to comprehend the whole character of God, what happens is we begin to really trust God. In spite of all these perplexities and these things we don’t understand in life about life and death and everything else, what happens is we tend to rise above it. We say it is going to be okay. I am safe in God’s kingdom. When I dwell in the shadow of the Almighty, I am safe there. It is an assurance that God is in control, so I don’t have to be in control. So I can rise above those complexities of life that I don’t get that Solomon spoke of. The natural response of knowing you worship a God who is powerful but loves you unconditionally is basically to obey his commandments. He goes on and says later “Fear God and to keep his commandments.”
When we talk about keeping his commandments, we are talking about obedience. Not just the Ten Commandments but the commandments that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. Love our enemies. Praying for those who persecute us. That type of obedience. When we think about obedience, it generally sends off a negative tone to people, but that is because they are looking at maybe the relationship between them and God as maybe a master and a slave relationship rather than a parent and a child. When you look at it as a parent and a child, obedience becomes an action of love to God. It was John who wrote in 1 John “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world.” A child who loves a parent obeys not out of obligation but out of love. Why do we need to obey his commands? Because he knows what is right for us. When we obey his commands, we begin to come in line with the will of God. When we are in line with the will of God, the one who controls all things, we know that we are safely in his hands. We are going to be protected. We might not understand the perplexities of this world, but we know again that we are safely with him.
Then he goes on to give his reason why we should obey God and why we should fear him. He goes on to say “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” I don’t know how it reads in all the Bibles, but if you use the NIV, you might see a couple brackets around that word “duty”. That is because the word duty was inserted by a modern-day translator because they thought doing so would give more sense to the passage. If you take out the word duty, you get “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole of man.” That doesn’t make sense does it? It only makes sense when you realize that what he is talking about here is that the fear of God and keeping his commandments is the whole essence of man. It is the whole essence of man. We were created from the first day in the garden to fear God and to keep his commandments. To have a reverent fear for God and to live under submission to him. That is the whole essence of man. It is not just the duty. It is who you are. If you do not live a life of fearing God or keeping his commandments, you can honestly say that you are less than human. This is how God designed us to be. Whole. Complete. Living in fear and submission to God.
Then he goes on to give a second reason. He says “For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” This is basically saying, from Solomon’s point of view, everybody is going to have to stand in front of the judgment of God. In this world, we get a little frustrated because we see the wicked seem to prosper. We saw earlier the wicked prosper and sometimes they live longer while sometimes the innocent or the righteous live in poverty and sometimes their lives are taken away. What this verse implies is that in the end everybody is going to get exactly what they deserve. There is going to be a fairness dealt out because the lid is going to be popped off our entire life. The people we thought were good could be the bad people. The people we thought were bad could be the good people. It doesn’t matter. The bottom line is every hidden thing is going to become known. I don’t know about you, but this is the type of verse that, if you don’t have Christ, can be very scary. I am sure it was scary for Solomon and it is scary for some of us today to think about someday everything, every thought, every deed is going to be exposed before God. It is a scary thing. At the same time, as I have emphasized throughout the sermon series, Solomon did not have the complete picture. He did not have an understanding of Christ. In his mind, God was a judging God. That is what God was all about. It was about judgment. But what did we learn in the New Testament? We learned through one of the most popular verses in the Bible, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Sometimes we don’t read verse 17, which actually I think is even more freeing. It says “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” He did not send him into the word to judge us. He sent him for the primary purpose to save us. To be our lifesaver. Because of the cross, he took the judgment of God that was supposed to be upon us, he took it and basically set us free. For the Christian, what occurs is that the one who at one time could be our judge actually turns out to be our savior. Isn’t that an amazing thing?
In conclusion, this is the end of the series. I am hoping that you were able to, through the series, pick up a nugget or two or possibly three that you will try to apply to your life. There were a lot of good nuggets of wisdom there. More importantly, what I want you to take away is that you can’t live this life totally under the sun, from man’s perspective. The only logical conclusion is that this life is meaningless with all the perplexities. What the point was from this whole sermon series is that we don’t live life under the sun. We have to learn to live life under the Son. We have to learn to live our life under the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The one who did not come to condemn us, but the one who came to save us, now and forever. Amen.
