On March 19, 2003, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq to destroy Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and remove Saddam Hussein from power. A day later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld held a news conference, where a reporter asked him “about the apparent failure to follow the war plan.”
Rumsfeld replied dryly, “I don't believe you have the war plan” (Steve Johnson, “Little Things' Add Up to Jumpy, But Compelling, News Coverage," Chicago Tribune, 3-21-03; www.PreachingToday.com).
People often approach God the same way. When life goes off the rails in an unexpected direction, they question God, “Why don’t you follow the plan?” To which God replies, “I don't believe you have the plan.”
Only God has the plan. Everybody else is clueless. We saw it last week in Ecclesiastes 7:14—"In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.”
You don’t know the future, so how do you find joy in the face of uncertainty? How do you smile today when tomorrow may surprise you? How do you rejoice now when the future may disappoint you? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Ecclesiastes 7, Ecclesiastes 7, where the Bible answers that question.
Ecclesiastes 7:15 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 (ESV).
Some people think that God will bless them if they are righteous and curse them if they are wicked. But that’s not the way life works. Sometimes, God cuts the life of the righteous short and prolongs the life of the wicked for His own reasons. So…
Ecclesiastes 7:16 Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? (ESV)
Don’t kill yourself trying to earn God’s favor in your own self effort. For, to earn God’s favor, you must obey ALL the laws of God, ALL 613 of them.
Deuteronomy 28 says, “If you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do ALL his commandments… the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth… But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do ALL his commandments and his statutes… then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you (Deuteronomy 28:1, 15).
In fact, James 2 says, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10).
You have to keep ALL of God’s commandments to earn His favor, but that’s impossible. You’ll just kill yourself if you try, so stay out of that game.
Avoid the trap of legalism. Stay away from attempting to earn God’s favor in your own self effort through good works. Or as Solomon puts it here, “Be not overly righteous.” On the other hand…
Ecclesiastes 7:17 Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? (ESV)
Be not overly righteous and be not overly wicked, either. Stay away from trying to keep the law in your own self effort—that’s legalism.
On the other hand, avoid the trap of license, too! Keep from ignoring the law altogether, because both extremes will kill you!
The Lego Movie explores the difference between legalism and license, with the cold-hearted “President Business” and his Octan Energy Corporation representing legalism. Under his iron-fist rule, everyone follows the instructions at home and work, enforced by cheery “I've got my eye on you!” ads and surveillance cameras. The "Master Builders" are President Business' greatest threat. They refuse to slavishly follow senseless rules, a crime that gets them locked up by President Business.
But the film also shows the other extreme from legalism—license. One of the movie's heroes, a former rule-following construction worker-legalist named Emmet, lands in Cloud Cuckoo Land, a place without any rules or laws to follow. Take a look (show The Lego Movie: Cloud Cuckoo Land Clip).
As Emmet approaches Cloud Cuckoo Land, he watches a horde of Legos dancing, whirling, and partying to loud music. “O-kaaay …” Emmet says, taking it all in. “I'm just going to come right out … I have no idea what's going on or what this place is at all.”
Suddenly a cute unicorn-kitten hybrid bounces up to Emmet and yells, “Hiiiii! I am Princess UniKitty, and I welcome you all to Cloud Cuckoo Land!” As Emmet watches the unrestricted partying, he says, “So there are no signs on anything. How does anyone know what not to do?”
UniKitty cheerfully explains, "Here in Cloud Cuckoo Land there are no rules. There’s no government, no babysitters, no bedtimes, no frowny faces, no bushy mustaches, and no negativity of any kind.”
One of Emmet's friends replies sarcastically, “You just said the word no, like, a thousand times.”
UniKitty smiles sweetly and replies, “And there's also NO consistency.”
Emmet asks, “So do you guys have laws here or building codes or gravity?”
UniKitty says, “Any idea is a good one except the not-happy ones. Those you push down deep inside where you'll never, ever, ever, EVER find them" (Mollie Hemingway, “Is the LEGO Movie the Most Subversive Pro-Liberty Film Ever?” The Federalist, 2-10-14; Kate Howard, The Lego Movie: Junior Novel, Scholastic Inc., 2013; www.PreachingToday.com).
As you can imagine, Cloud Cuckoo Land, with no rules, cannot last very long. License, like legalism, ends up destroying those who attempt to live either way. So avoid both extremes. Avoid the trap of legalism and the trap of license. Be not overly righteous and be not overly wicked, either.
Instead, fear God. Live in awe of the Lord of the Universe. Respect Him enough to trust and obey Him.
Ecclesiastes 7:18 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 (ESV).
The one who fears God avoids both extremes of legalism and license. He or she grasps both warnings not to be overly righteous or overly wicked.
Now, to fear God in the Old Testament wisdom literature means to trust and obey Him (Proverbs 8:13; 16:6; 29:25). When one has a proper respect and awe of God, that person depends on God for the power to obey His Word. So you’re not killing yourself trying to keep God’s law in your own strength, nor are you ignoring the law altogether. Rather, you keep God’s law as He empowers you to do so, avoiding both extremes of legalism and license.
Jerry Bridges, in his book The Joy of Fearing God, describes the healthy tension between responding to God’s power and responding to His love. He says:
In the physical realm there are two opposing forces called “centrifugal” and “centripetal.” Centrifugal force tends to pull away from a center of rotation, while centripetal force pulls toward the center.
A stone whirled about on the end of a string exerts centrifugal force on the string, while the string exerts centripetal force on the stone. Take away one and the other immediately disappears.
These two opposing forces can help us understand something of the fear of God. The centrifugal force represents the attributes of God such as his holiness and sovereignty that cause us to bow in awe and self-abasement before him. They hold us reverently distant from the one who, by the simple power of his word, created the universe out of nothing. The centripetal force represents the love of God. It surrounds us with grace and mercy and draws us with cords of love into the Father's warm embrace. To exercise a proper fear of God we must understand and respond to both these forces (Jerry Bridges, The Joy of Fearing God, Waterbrook Press, 1997; www.PreachingToday.com).
Responding only to God’s power can push you towards legalism. Responding only to God’s love can push you towards license. Responding to both, out of a proper fear of God, keeps your life in balance.
That’s how you find real joy in the face of uncertainty. Fear God to avoid the extremes of legalism and license, both of which will disappoint you. So, if you want to rejoice today when tomorrow may disappoint you…
RENOUNCE YOUR OWN GOOD DEEDS, BECAUSE GOOD PEOPLE SUFFER.
Your self-righteous acts do not earn God’s favor. More than that…
RENOUNCE YOUR OWN WISE DEEDS, AS WELL, BECAUSE WISE PEOPLE DON’T EXIST.
Reject your own good judgment. Depend on something other than your own common sense.
Some people think, “If righteousness doesn’t guarantee happiness, perhaps wisdom will.” “If good deeds fail to ensure a good future, perhaps wise deeds will.” But true wisdom is impossible to attain. So, you have to reject human wisdom to find real joy in uncertain times. You have to depend on something other than your own good judgment.
Ecclesiastes 7:19-20 Wisdom gives strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city. Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins (ESV).
Wisdom is powerful, but there are no truly wise people around. Nobody has the skill to live a righteous life, which is the biblical definition of wisdom.
Ecclesiastes 7:21-22 Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others (ESV).
When you criticize others for cursing you, know that you have cursed others many times. When you point the finger at other people’s sins, know that there are three fingers pointing right back at you. No one, not even you, has the skill to live a righteous life. In fact, not even Solomon himself has that kind of wisdom.
Ecclesiastes 7:23-24 All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me. That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out? (ESV)
Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived (1 Kings 3:12), fails to find true wisdom. “It was far from me,” he said, “and deep, very deep,” past finding out, i.e., far beyond his ability to discover.
Twenty years ago (2003), Sesame Street published a wonderful picture book titled The Monster at the End of This Book. In it, furry old Grover pleads with the young reader not to turn to the next page, because he’s afraid of the monster at the end of the book. The young reader, of course, ignores Grover’s pleas until they come to the end of the book. Then they discover who the monster is. It’s Grover! He is the monster at the end of the book (A. J. Swoboda, A Glorious Dark, pgs. 16-17, Baker Books, 2015; www.PreachingToday.com).
In the same way, we fear the monsters out there until we discover that we are those monsters. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” “There is none righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:23; 3:10). Nobody has the skill to live a righteous life.
Even so, you can avoid the trap of folly.
Ecclesiastes 7:25-26 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. 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 (ESV).
Even though wisdom is unattainable, avoid the trap of folly. The woman here is a prostitute, the personification of folly in the Old Testament wisdom literature (Proverbs 5; 7; 9:13-17). If you fall into her trap, she will destroy you in the end, so avoid the trap of folly.
You may not attain wisdom, but you can escape folly. You can find deliverance from stupidity if you please God, i.e., if God approves of you.
So how does an unrighteous, unwise person please God? How can the morally destitute ever find God’s approval? Certainly, not through their own good or wise deeds, but only through the righteousness of Christ.
Jesus kept God’s law perfectly on our behalf (Hebrews 4:15). Then He died on a cross to pay the penalty for our sins (Rom 5:8). The Bible says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). God treated Jesus as a sinner, so He could treat us as righteous. Now, anyone who puts their faith in Christ pleases God.
Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
Faith is the only way to please God. So put your faith in Christ, who died for you and rose again. Trust Him with your life and so find His righteousness in you, the only kind of righteousness, which pleases God.
In and of yourself, you don’t have the skill to live a righteous life. Nobody does, but you can avoid the trap of folly by pleasing God through faith in His Son. You can avoid life’s traps even though you don’t know God’s overall plan.
Ecclesiastes 7:27-28a Behold, this is what I found, says the Preacher, while adding one thing to another to find the scheme of things— which my soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found (ESV).
Solomon wants to discover God’s overall plan—“the scheme of things,” but has failed to do so. Neither can anybody else figure out God’s plan.
Ecclesiastes 7:28b One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found (ESV).
People who please God are very rare—one man among a thousand. In fact, they’re nonexistent—not a woman among them. Now, Solomon does not intend to downgrade women here. He just uses the literary structure of synonymous parallelism. He puts two phrases together, which say the same thing, using different words. His point is, “No one pleases God,” in and of themselves. That’s why we need Jesus!
Ecclesiastes 7:29 See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes (ESV).
When God created Adam and Eve, He created them upright—literally, He created them straight. But they and all their descendants followed their own plan. They veered off the straight and narrow path onto a path of their own choosing. Thus, in the absence of discovering God’s scheme of things, people devise their own schemes. They concoct their own plans instead of trusting God plan, which He reveals only one step at a time. And that’s what gets them into trouble.
In 2009, Jan Souman, a German scientist, took a group of subjects out to empty parking lots and open fields, blindfolded them, and instructed them to walk in a straight line. Some of them managed to keep to a straight course for ten or twenty paces; a few lasted for 50 or a hundred. But in the end, all of them wound up circling back toward their points of origin. Not many of them. Not most of them. Every last one of them.
“And they have no idea,” Dr. Souman told NPR. “They were thinking that they were walking in a straight line all the time.” Dr. Souman's research team explored every imaginable explanation. Some people turned to the right while others turned to the left, but the researchers could find no discernable pattern. As a group, neither left-handed nor right-handed subjects demonstrated any predisposition for turning one way more than the other; nor did subjects tested for either right- or left-brain dominance. The team even tried gluing a rubber soul to the bottom of one shoe to make one leg longer than the other to straighten their path, but nothing worked.
“It didn't make any difference at all,” explained Dr. Souman. In fact, moving in circles goes beyond just walking. Ask people to swim blindfolded or drive a car blindfolded and, no matter how determined they are to go straight, they quickly begin to make looping circles in one direction or the other (Yonason Goldson, Proverbial Beauty, Timewise Press, 2015, p. 136; www.Preacing Today.com).
It's human nature to veer off course, especially when you can’t see ahead.
So if you want to find real joy in the face of an uncertain future, renounce your own good and wise deeds; stop devising your own schemes. Instead, fear God and please Him through faith in His Son. Trust God with your life each step of the way. Then, no matter what life brings, you’ll be able to rejoice, knowing that God is working out His perfect plan in your life.
Ira Stanphill put it this way:
I don't know about tomorrow;
I just live from day to day.
I don't borrow from its sunshine,
For its skies may turn to gray.
I don't worry o'er the future,
For I know what Jesus said.
And today I'll walk beside Him,
For He knows what is ahead.
Many things about tomorrow
I don't seem to understand.
But I know who holds tomorrow,
And I know who holds my hand.
My dear friends, just walk into an unknown future hand in hand with Jesus. Then, you’ll enjoy fellowship with Him no matter what life brings your way.
