If you would turn with me in your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter 7, you can find that on page 556 in the pew Bibles. We’ve been seeing so far in the book of Ecclesiastes that this is such an honest, and even at times a raw book, that these are true confessions of the Preacher, or Qoheleth. And so in that spirit, I thought I would share something of a family secret tonight. It’s really a multigenerational problem that’s been going on for decades in our family. We have a Kilwins problem. Kilwins is a chain of ice cream and fudge shops and there’s one particular Kilwins in this small vacation town in the North Carolina mountains that really exposes our family weakness. The smell of freshly made waffle cones fills the air all around the store, and I think so much so that they must have some special kind of venting system that just dumps all the smells out right there on the area on the sidewalk! And in the windows, there’s one of the workers, the confectioners, and he’s there for all to see. He’s making and molding and shaping and cutting the fudge right there in front of your eyes. And we can’t resist it! It’s almost impossible for us to pass by that store and not go in and get a scoop, or two, of cappuccino chocolate chip on a waffle cone! Is that so wrong? Remember what we read last week from Ecclesiastes chapter 5 – that it is good to find enjoyment in our food and in our drink and in our toil! And I’m good with including Kilwins ice cream in that list of good things of God’s gifts to enjoy!
And what that illustrates, our Kilwins problem, it illustrates the challenge of self-control. It’s hard for us to curb our appetites. It’s hard for us to bite our tongues. It’s hard for us to resist temptation. And yet real self-control is a mark of wisdom. Self-control is one of the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. But we rarely talk about self-control, do we? And unfortunately we find that self-control is in short supply in our lives. I think we find something of self-control in Ecclesiastes chapter 7. Ecclesiastes chapter 7 is different in some ways from what we have studied so far in this book because this chapter is much more like a chapter from the book of Proverbs where it’s a collection of assorted sayings that seem to have little to do with one another. And yet I think as we read this chapter and study this chapter that we will see that Ecclesiastes chapter 7 is a wonderful compliment to what we looked at last week as we think about, “How do we enjoy God’s good gifts and how can we do that with self-control?”
So let’s turn our attention to God’s Word and read Ecclesiastes chapter 7. Before we do, though, let me ask God’s blessing and help to understand and apply His Word. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we confess that we are often lacking in self-control. In fact, many of us would confess that we lack the self-control to sit here and listen and understand and to know Your Word, if it were not for Your Spirit coming and working in us to point us to Christ and to show us the fruit of the Spirit, to cultivate those things in our lives. So we pray that You would do that for us tonight. Help us tonight. Help us to understand, to hear Your Word, and to live it out before You and for Your glory. Speak Lord, for Your servants listen. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 1:
“A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth. It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fools; this also is vanity. Surely oppression drives the wise into madness, and a bribe corrupts the heart. Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it. Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?
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.
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. Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? 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.
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.
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.
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?
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. 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. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.
We were going along just fine, weren’t we? Maybe we were feeling like we were starting to understand the book of Ecclesiastes a little bit and then the Preacher has to go and say something like this, that – “One man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all these I have not found.” I mean is he trying to pick a fight? Is he trying to get himself in trouble? What do we make of that verse? Well I think it says more about the Preacher and his search for wisdom than about women in general. And it’s a reminder to us even as we come to this chapter that the Preacher often speaks in absolutes and exaggerations or overstates his case in order to emphasize a point. But it also reminds us and reveals something of the major battlegrounds in the struggle between wisdom and folly. We’ll come back more to that verse in just a minute, but this chapter is about the struggle of wisdom versus folly. In fact in a chapter that is seemingly a collection of unrelated thoughts and observations, the theme of wisdom and folly is a thread that is woven throughout the chapter and holds it all together.
Two Ways: Wisdom and Folly
Look back with me through the passage for just a few minutes. Verse 4 says that, “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” The next verse, verse 5, “It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools.” Verse 7 says that, “Oppression drives the wise into madness,” and then in verse 9, “Anger lodges in the heart of fools.” What do we have there? We have two ways. There’s wisdom and there’s folly, and Solomon says very clearly, verse 11, “Wisdom is good,” verse 17, “Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool.” In fact the first verse, “A good name is better than precious ointment” – what is a good name? It is a name associated with wisdom; it is a life of wisdom. Wisdom and folly. Wisdom is sober minded, restrained, humble, patient, strong and good. Folly, on the other hand, is impulsive, it’s easily provoked, it’s bitter, self-righteous, and it is immoral.
Which one of those two things, wisdom and folly, sounds more like the culture in which we live? Which of those things are more likely to be celebrated in our culture today? I think the answer is obvious, and sadly it’s folly rather than wisdom. And yet before we get all down on our own culture in our own moment, remember what the writer of Ecclesiastes says, that “there is nothing new under the sun.” This is the way it has always been with the world versus the kingdom of God. One secular writer recently observed that we live in a culture where emotional reasoning and impulsive behavior are encouraged and that there seems to be an underlying assumption that emotion is a better guide than reason, even in areas such as politics and academia where rational discourse is essential. And what he says is that that leads to the avoidance of anything that causes discomfort. It leads to blaming others for one’s own problems. It leads to being offended and outraged at even the slightest of infractions and then condemning anyone who holds a different opinion or belief than yourself.
These attitudes and behaviors, I believe they are familiar to us. Aren’t they? We’re familiar with these things on social media and in political discourse and in education and on the news. We know the clichés and the soundbites about the snowflake generation and cancel culture and hookup culture and #madonline and all those sorts of things that we hear about in our day. Irrational behavior and impulsivity is going on all the time all around us. And yet, how often are we led astray by our own emotions and by our unchecked impulses? Maybe it’s that we have had too much to drink or we lash out at someone who has upset us. We talk bad about someone behind their back. We look at indecent pictures or videos on the internet. All of those things are more or less acceptable or even celebrated in our culture, but they’re addressed in the book of Ecclesiastes. They’re addressed in Ecclesiastes chapter 7. And Ecclesiastes chapter 7 calls them out for what they are – folly. It’s folly.
If you look in verse 4 to 6, there’s the carefree, “Let the good times roll” kind of lifestyle. Verses 4 to 6, the writer is talking about the house of mirth and the song of fools and the laughter of fools. And then he goes on and he looks at the short tempered and sharp tongued person that goes with someone “with anger lodged in their heart of fools,” verse 9. Verse 14 and 16, the Preacher warns us about complaining in days of adversity but he also warns us about acting like a know-it-all and making ourselves out to be too wise. Verse 26 and 27, he takes us into that dangerous territory of the immoral woman “whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters.” That’s not all of the issues that are covered in Ecclesiastes chapter 7, but it’s a survey of what he’s looking at. It’s a survey of folly.
The Need for Self-Control
And the overall picture that this chapter presents to us is that folly includes, among other things, a lack of self-control; an inability to say, “No.” In 2 Chronicles 18 and 26, we find the stories of two of the kings of Judah. There’s King Jehoshaphat and King Uzziah. In 2 Chronicles 18, Jehoshaphat was approached by King Ahab of Israel. And Ahab said to him, “Let’s go to battle against Syria and Ramoth Gilead.” And he was probably saying things to him like, “We’ll divide up the spoil! We’ll make a name for ourselves!” and all this talk about where men win glory on the battlefield. And he was trying to give this sales pitch to Jehoshaphat to come and to go to battle with him. And Jehoshaphat went. He went even though he was warned by a prophet beforehand. And after the fact, a prophet rebuked him for having done so.
When we get to 2 Chronicles 26, there’s Uzziah. Uzziah had gotten too big for his britches and he exalted himself to the place of priest. He went into the temple and he wanted the honor of being both the king and the priest, but it didn’t go so well for Uzziah. Instead, he broke out in leprosy and he was a leper until the day of his death.
Here are these two kings, and in Michael Wilcox’s commentary on the book of Chronicles, he says, he identifies one of the weaknesses or faults in each of those men. He says that “Jehoshaphat could not say, ‘No’ to others. Uzziah could not say, ‘No’ to himself.” That’s one of the first words that we learn to say – “No.” It’s usually, “Mama,” “Dada,” and “No.” And yet, it’s one of the hardest words for us to hear, especially it’s hard for us to hear, “No,” it’s hard for us to say, “No,” when it comes to our own sinful desires and inclinations. Jerry Bridges calls the lack of self-control, “one of our most respectable sins.” It’s one of those respectable sins that we tend to tolerate. We don’t think about it; we don’t do much about the lack of self-control. And yet, the writer of Proverbs, Proverbs 25:28 says, “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” It’s a man who is exposed, he’s vulnerable, and he is open to big time trouble. You see, we need self-control to protect us from the dangers of folly and to build up a life of wisdom.
Sober-mindedness
But what does that self-control look like? Well there are actually several features of a self-controlled and wise life that are on display in this chapter. And the first thing that we can say is that there is sobriety, or sober mindedness, not specifically in the area of alcohol, but thinking about appreciating the gravity of a life lived in the shadow of death. We see that talk about the day of death better than the day of birth. The Preacher is saying something like this – that going to a funeral is better than going to a birthday party. And why does he say that? It’s because a funeral gives us a sense of our mortality. It gives us a sense of our mortality that is needed in order to enjoy life and to fulfill our callings and responsibilities faithfully to God.
You see, the other option is to live a life that is always living for the weekend; it’s going from one party to the next. And very often the parties that he is talking about, the mirth and the feasting, that’s going to include elements of alcohol for sure. But doing that, living that way, is trying to avoid anything that is serious or substantial, but it’s also going to miss anything of real and lasting joy. I’ve heard it attributed to one of our former pastors, Dr. Miller, who said years ago, “Run to a funeral and walk to a wedding.” Run to a funeral. Walk to a wedding. Why? Because it means more to those who are grieving to be there at the funeral, but also because we need regular reminders of our mortality. The certainty of death should give us a weightiness to our choices and our actions. So there’s a sober mindedness.
Patience
And then in verses 7 to 14 we find patience. Patience is praised over anger and discontentment. Verse 8 says, “The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.” Verse 14, it talks about the day of prosperity and the day of adversity and that “God has made the one as well as the other.” We don’t know the end of a thing and we don’t know what will be after us, and so we have to do one of the hardest things there is for us to do – and that’s wait. We have to wait and to watch and to look in humility at what God is doing by His plan and by His wisdom and by His power. We have to be patient. How often do we get ourselves into trouble by being dissatisfied with our circumstances and then trying to force or manipulate our own circumstances or others around us in order to work and to serve for our own benefit? That’s impatience. And there’s almost nothing in our culture around us that is training us and leading us to be patient. There’s high speed internet. There’s streaming entertainment. There’s online shopping. There’s two-day or even same-day delivery. It’s all about now or instant or immediate gratification. Nothing in our culture is training us about patience, and yet there’s a need to be patient in order to be self-controlled.
Humility
There’s sober mindedness, patience, and then there’s humility, verses 15 to 22. I’m sure it sounded strange as we were reading through these passages – it sounds strange in a book about wisdom to read in verse 16, “Don’t make yourself overly wise.” And of course it makes sense to say, “Don’t be overly wicked. Don’t be a fool.” But, “Don’t be overly righteous”? What’s that about? What’s the Preacher talking about by saying, “Don’t be overly righteous”? I think he’s saying something about recognizing our limitations. On the one hand, we’re not to think too highly of ourselves, to think we are better than other people around us. It’s like what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:12, what David read in the sermon this morning – “Let anyone who thinks that he stands, take heed lest he fall.” But then on the other hand, it’s important to be realistic about who we are and about our capabilities of falling, about what kind of sin we are capable of committing. Robert Murray M’Cheyne, the 19th century Scottish pastor, said, “The seed of every sin known to man is in my heart.” And that’s true of all of us.
We all need a healthy dose of suspicion about our own motives and our abilities, but also about how far we are capable of falling. Where does that sort of humility come from? Where can we get a humility like that, that recognizes our limitations and guards us against falling in such a terrible way? It comes from what verse 18 talks about. We’ve seen it over and over again in this book and we looked ahead to the conclusion. It comes from a fear of God, the reverence of God. Verse 18 says, “The one who fears God shall come out from both of them.” The one who fears God shall come out from both the self-righteous and the unrighteous. Humility. Humility is essential for ordering and disciplining our lives for God’s glory.
Integrity
And then we come back to the Preacher saying, basically, “A good woman is hard to find.” He says, verse 28, “One man among a thousand I have found, but a woman among all these I have not found.” He’s talking there about pursuing a life of virtue or integrity in our relationships, and especially in our relationships with someone of the opposite sex. Remember who’s saying this. Remember this is someone who wrote earlier in the book, back in chapter 2, that he got many concubines, “the delight of the sons of man,” chapter 2 verse 8 says. What was he doing there? He was looking for love in all the wrong places. And now he’s saying here what he found from that; his conclusion from that. It’s no wonder that he was unable to find a satisfying relationship. And can’t we agree and acknowledge that looking for love or pleasure with wandering eyes or outside of marriage or on an elicit website is a snare and a net and a fetter and it leads to destruction? The Preacher is giving us a warning. He’s giving us a warning and he is saying, “Yes, it is important to be careful with how we choose our friends, but it is even more important to take great caution with how we choose a spouse.” A life will be derailed by following our lustful desires. Integrity in our relationships is a major component of a life of wisdom.
And that’s not all that we can say about Ecclesiastes chapter 7, but here we have for us contrasted wisdom and folly, a life of self-indulgence and a life of self-control. Self-control consists of being sober minded, patient, humble, and upright. Self-control has been defined as “having moderation and legitimate desires and activities and absolute restraint in areas that are clearly sinful.” And self-control, the last of the fruit of the Spirit, is necessary for pursuing and cultivating all the rest of the fruit of the Spirit. We need self-control in order to walk in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness. Just listen to what the New Testament says about self-control. Titus 2:12, “The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self- controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.” Second Timothy 1:7, “God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.” Second Peter 1:5, “Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness.” First Timothy 2:9, “Women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty and self-control.” We have prayed already, and you are aware that we are about to enter into a time of electing new elders for this church, and one of the characteristics, qualities of a man for the office of elder is to be self-controlled. Self-control is really important. Self-control is one of the fruit of the Spirit.
And this week, I went on a search for a good resource about the fruit of the Spirit, looking for a book. I looked on my bookshelf, I asked a couple of other staff members for a recommendation of a book on the fruit of the Spirit, I checked in the church library, and I came up empty. I couldn’t find a book on the fruit of the Spirit. I thought surely there’s some Puritan that wrote like a thousand pages on the fruit of the Spirit, but I couldn’t find it! I looked on Amazon and I did find a book on self-control on Amazon and it was out of stock. It was out of stock on Amazon and Amazon has everything! So I was striking out! I eventually found a book on the fruit of the Spirit in our church bookstore, for sale in the church bookstore, so good for Boopie Beard for having that book there.
Gospel Self-Control
All that to say, we obviously don’t read very much about the fruit of the Spirit and we probably don’t heard much about it or think much about it, especially when it comes to the last one, especially when it comes to self-control, because self-control sounds like it doesn’t really fit with the rest of the fruit of the Spirit. It sounds like one of those categories like all the other “self” words that we hear about in our day. Things like self-esteem and self-actualization, whatever that means, and self-fulfillment. But here’s the paradox about Gospel self-control. Gospel self-control first comes from outside of ourselves. It comes from the Holy Spirit dwelling within us through faith in Jesus Christ to give us self-control. True self control, self-control that overcomes sin and temptation and our passions in order to honor and glorify God, that kind of self-control comes from God. So if we want to resist temptation and if we want to curb our sinful desires, we have to know the love of the Father, and we have to trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, and we have to walk in the Holy Spirit and live not according to our own strength and not according to our own power, but according to the power of Him who is able to subdue all things to Himself. True self- control, it actually reflects the honor and the glory of the One who humbled Himself and made Himself of no reputation, took on flesh and dwelt among us. The One who was tempted in every way, like we were, yet without sin. The One who set His face, who was sober minded enough to set His face to Jerusalem and to go to His death. And when He was captured and He was condemned and He was mocked and ridiculed, He opened not His mouth and He gave His life to take it up again in resurrection power, to overcome sin, to overcome temptation, and to give us the gift of salvation.
That’s where we need to look tonight. Where in your life are you looking to Christ to see what Christ-like self-control is all about? What areas in your life do you need, do we need, to practice self-control? Ask yourself that tonight. Ask yourself. Look into your life. What are the areas where we need to practice self-control? Think about that this week and ask God to cultivate that kind of self-control in your life by the power of the Holy Spirit and for the glory of Jesus Christ and for a life of wisdom. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we want to be wise, we want to be fruitful, we want to be faithful, we want to bring glory to Your name and praise to our great Savior, Jesus Christ. And yet we recognize that we fall far short of what You have called us to be. We let our desires and our impulses carry us away into sin and patterns of destruction, and yet You offer to us freedom and grace and You receive us back again in repentance and faith. And so we ask that You would turn us to You and to turn us to Your abundant mercy and grace that we would find acceptance and freedom, that we would find in our new lives in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit the ability to control our passions and desires, to live with self-control, and to bring glory to Your name. We pray that You would help us do that and we pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.