Better to Finish than to Begin

Ecclesiastes 7:1–14 and the Wisdom of a Good Name

Our text this morning is Ecclesiastes 7, verses 1 through 14. Better is a good name than good oil, and better is the day of one's death than the day of one's birth. Better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, because that is the end of all mankind, and the living puts this in his heart.

Better is vexation than laughter, for when a face is sad, a heart may be merry. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of fools is in the house of gladness. Better to listen to the rebuke of a wise man than for one to listen to the song of fools, for as the crackling sound of thorn bushes under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool, and this too is vanity.

For oppression gives a wise man over to madness, and a bribe destroys his heart. Better is the end of a matter than its beginning. Better is patience of spirit than haughtiness of spirit. Do not be eager in your spirit to be vexed, for vexation rests in the bosom of fools.

Do not say, why is it that the former days were better than these? For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this. Wisdom, along with an inheritance, is good, and an advantage to those who see the sun.

For wisdom is a shadow of protection, as money is a shadow of protection. And the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the lives of its masters. See the work of God, for who is able to straighten what he has bent?

In the day when there is good, be of good cheer. But in the day when there is evil, see, God has made the one as well as the other, so that man will not find out anything that will be after him. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for wisdom that flows in your word, and it confronts us, it confronts things that we hold near in our temporal minds. It confronts us with the inescapability of your purposes, Lord, how you will always accomplish your will, how you work everything for your will, your divine purposes, and we are reminded that that is for the good of those who love you.

Lord, I pray that we would be a church that is characterized by wisdom, that's characterized by a good name, and that you would give clarity to these words today, Lord, that they would not hide the truth, but instead that they would exemplify, examine it, and make it shine clear for us.

Scripture's Long View of Faith and Age

We depend on the Holy Spirit to do that, both in me and in the hearer, Lord, that you would give illumination to this text. It's in your name I pray, amen. Hebrews 11, 32 -34 says, I think in many things we get scriptural truth backwards, and we exemplify the strength of youth, and then we look down on the old and decrepit.

As time goes on and we think, I wish this generation would just die so that the younger people could get the work done. That is a common sentiment in the world today, and yet the way that God looks at us is about the long haul.

Encouragement for a Church of Faithful People

And so Christian, I want to encourage you this morning. I am known for maybe sometimes being exhausting as a pastor, as a preacher, as hammering hard things. And I think today, I think this text is, as I thought about you guys and I thought about the text, I think it should be one that encourages you, because I think there are a lot of people in this body who do have a good name.

I think there are a lot of people in this body who are not fools, who are not setting their minds and their hearts on things that are like trying to cook a meal with thorn bushes burning. It's a foolish thing to do.

And I don't think that's what we are. This text this morning is all concerned with a good name, with living for things that matter, with contemplating serious things and not being overly concerned with pleasure and fleeting passions.

Samson, Solomon, and the Meaning of Finishing Well

That Hebrews 11 passage has always been curious to me because of two names on it. You probably know the two. If you know the story of the Old Testament well, those names are Jephthah and Samson. Barak is kind of curious too.

But I want to focus on Samson just a little bit here by way of illustration. Samson, understand that of all the people in the Old Testament, of all the men in the Old Testament, Samson is listed in Hebrews 11 as a hero of the faith, as one who conquered God's enemies, as a man who we should remember, as a man who we should think about.

Now, if you remember the story of Samson, he had a miraculous birth that was like a typology of Christ. But Samson's life didn't go very well. Samson was very sexually immoral. Samson was led away by idolatry.

He married a foreign woman. And at the end of his life, Samson, completely debased, blinded, eyes gouged out, remembered the Lord. And he could not stand to hear the worship of a false god. And so Samson, with his last breath, prayed for strength not to argue with the Philistines, not to try to win them with his flowery appeals.

But Samson prayed that he would be able to knock the entire pavilion down, killing everyone in it, including himself. That's why Samuel is in Hebrews 11. At the end of the day, God's people are concerned with loving God and making war on God's enemies.

Now, the tools of the war are various, and that's not the main point of today. But what we should not do is look and despise the heroes of the faith and look and pick them apart and go, yeah, but remember David with Bathsheba, maybe he wasn't that great.

And the author of Ecclesiastes gets that treatment a lot. We look at Solomon and we say, oh yeah, amassed many wives. What has become extremely clear to me as I've studied Ecclesiastes and we've gotten past the halfway point is that the wisdom of Solomon is at times confounding.

It's really hard to understand. And I think what that has highlighted in me is a distinct lack of wisdom. How snooty and how ridiculous to look through the paths of time as Solomon and say, yeah, you know, he amassed a bunch of wives.

I guess he wasn't that smart. I haven't amassed any wives. Yeah, I've also never administered the law to a nation. I've never had foreign dignitaries and leaders come to listen to the way that I describe God's word.

And that is Solomon. And he writes something today that is, it's kind of confounding. And I think the reason that it's difficult is because there are some things that are not true that Solomon works around.

And one of those things is this, death is not natural. Human beings were not created to die. Remember, death is a penalty for human beings' rebellion against God. And yet Solomon uses death to say it's better to be at a funeral than it is to be at a party.

A Good Name Is Priceless and Takes a Lifetime to Build

So what's he trying to say? And I think it's all tied up in the thesis. And I think this is the thesis of this first part of chapter 7, that a good name is priceless. Because as you saw in the Proverbs, Solomon will say this over and over again, the New Testament is very concerned with it, especially Peter writing in 1 Peter.

Paul in Ephesians, it's kind of proverbial also. Remember, in your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down in your anger. Very proverbial. He says, let the thief no longer steal, but work for his things.

Paul is writing in the same vein of the way that Solomon writes. And he says here at the very start that a good name is better. And what he's meaning here is very expensive anointing. A good name is better than to be anointed with very expensive oil.

Now you think to yourself, who else was anointed with very expensive oil famously? And there's all of this typology that comes into play. But what Solomon is going to do and what he's been doing is saying that a wise person, a wise person in God's kingdom is going to be one whose good name is in place.

And your good name is not made in one day. Your good name is made over the course of a lifetime. Your good name gets tarnished by the foolishness of your youth, does it not? In God's kindness I don't see a lot of the people that I grew up with.

And in some ways that is a kindness because there are people, not a ton, but there are people that would hear that I'm a pastor and they would be shocked at that. I could be cruel in my arrogance as a youth.

And I was cruel to some people. And yet God allows the sins of youth to be put away and to be washed away under repentance in the blood of God. And I see that a good name is one that it takes a long time to build and it takes no time at all to destroy.

It could be destroyed today. All the 46 years that I have put into trying to be known as a man of integrity, as a man who has some boldness, a man who is loyal and true to his wife, it could all be erased by some random clicks on a phone this afternoon.

And I could be known as something entirely different to every one of you guys. And it would take five seconds of action. That's what Solomon is talking about. Something that's hard to get is extremely valuable.

We know this from the economy, right? Diamonds are worth more than paper. Diamonds are very hard to get. They're very scarce. Paper, it's renewable. We can grow it. We make tons of it all the time. People throw it away without even writing on it.

Your good name is more important than the highest possession that you could get. And then he says something curious. The day of your death is better than the day of your birth. Is that true? Because we think about what we do, right?

There's about to be another wave of births coming through here. And we are going to rejoice, aren't we? Everybody's going to be extremely joyful and happy. And we can't wait to hear the cries of these new babies, especially when they're not ours, right, Kelsey?

Like it's very fun when they cry and we can hand them back. It's an amazing thing. And then we think about our best friends and our family dying. And we think, those two things. Solomon, what are you talking about?

But we have to zoom the lens out, right? Solomon's not saying that funerals are better than births. That's not what he's saying. What he is saying is the story of your life is what matters. What you are, what you become, and how you end is what matters the most to God.

I have prayed for many years, many, many years. It's one of the most consistent prayers in my life that I would end like Caleb and not end like the cowards, many of whom I have admired that have fallen.

And many have fallen in the last five years. People who I trusted, people who I revered, people who I read and learned from, and they threw it all away in a second. And so I think, yes, in many ways, the day of my death will be better than the day of my birth because the story is written.

And I will never disappoint anyone. And what I am is what's going to be talked about at my funeral. You can't talk about what somebody is at their birth, can you? You only talk about what you hope they will be.

You only have dreams and hopes, and we pray in here that our kids will have the gift of repentance, that they will turn to Christ. And I think that that is normatively going to be true. I think that it's largely going to be true.

But we still don't know. And at the day of your death, people know who you are. They know what you are. And they know that you have taken a lot of time. And that's what Solomon is talking about, and that's why this couplet is together.

Because a good name is extremely valuable, and the only time that you know that your name is written in stone is when it's actually written in stone. Did you know that? When you're born, nobody knows anything about you.

We know that you're going to foolishly sin in youth. Kids, kids, look at me now. You are going to sin in your youth, and you're going to be ashamed of it when you grow up. But God's repentance and His kindness is better than that.

You don't make your name when you're 15. And there are many who have, and it faded away. The first one that comes to mind is a guy named Tiger Woods. You know, he was on the public scene when he was a toddler, a prodigy.

At 18, he's winning college tournaments and competing in the Masters, and then he goes on a rampage of golf. And Tiger's name was what? If you rewind the clock about 20 years, what did people say about Tiger Woods?

He's the greatest golfer ever. He's a professional, wasn't he? He conducted himself with professionalism on the golf course. He had endorsements everywhere, and the reason why is because he was the perfect athlete.

And then the truth comes out, and it's all gone. And what's Tiger Woods thought of as now? He's a cautionary tale. He's what happens when you fly too close to the sun. You can't build your name in one day.

It takes time. And then we have this thing, and we can get unconcerned with our good name, and that's reckless, or we can be overly concerned with what other people think about us. And that's why I said Peter has something to say about this.

A Christian's Name Before God, the Church, and the World

You have to have a care, Christian, for the basis by which you're loved or hated. Our name is a very important thing. It is very costly, but we have to be careful about how we're measuring our name. Because I assure you, if you are godly, there are going to be plenty of people who hate your name.

So it matters. Why do they hate your name, and who hates your name? Peter says, It's the upside-down kingdom of God, isn't it? The bearing up. But think about the way Peter talks about that. We have this form of Christianity that has infected us, that we think, we just got to get whipped all the time.

But look at the words that Peter uses. You have favor with God when you bear up under harsh treatment. When you take it on a strong back. When you harness the load, and you grab onto it, and you carry it.

And you don't whine and cry. And you don't try to make political hay of it. But you patiently suffer and endure it. This finds favor with God. And who's going to be doing this? People who revile you. And so with this first part, this thesis of the first part of Ecclesiastes 7, you have to understand that it all goes back to this.

Your name is very important, and your name is only determined when you die. It can be ruined and changed at any point before you die. Sobering thought, isn't it? For us of all ages. Because some of us who are older than Corey, some of us have a lot more time in this.

And we have to remember that we are being guided by the Holy Spirit. And the way that we appeal and the way that we act according to God's law is by His power, not by our power. So do we pray diligently?

Do we pray that God would keep us? Do we pray that He would make us more and more righteous every day? And I think that we do because I see the fruits in you. But we have to constantly trust the process.

And we have to understand that there are three levels of this having a good name. There are three levels to how you're going to be evaluated by death by three different groups of people. The first is that your name is primarily important before God.

And your good name before God is based only on one name. And this is going to sound pietistic, but it's not. And that's the threat today, is we have to talk about how do you live heavenly-minded while actually accomplishing something.

And we've missed the plot in the church. But your good name is primarily important before God, and that is based on the name of Jesus Christ. Because you are innocent before Christ and declared righteous if you have faith in Him.

So do you have faith? And I think you do. I look out, I think you do. So God is going to deliver your name just like He did Jephthah, just like He did Samson, and just like He did Lot. He is going to look at you, and He is going to see you as righteous.

And He does not remember the things that you did in your youthfulness, the things that you did in your rebellion. Those things are gone. Micah says that they are tied up and thrown into the depths of the ocean.

The psalmist says that they are separated from you as far as the east is from the west. God does not remember your sins. Because Jesus' blood and that covenant and that sacrifice was so powerful, not only that it wipes it away, it obliterates it and exiles it.

Your sin is gone. So are you in Christ? But secondarily, you have to trust the process of righteousness that you have to have a good name before God's people. And this is where it gets a little trickier.

Because God's people are sinners. And God's people can be critical. And God's people can get very focused on disagreements on a whole range of things. From how you're raising your kids, to how you educate, to how your marriage is going, to what doctrines you believe, to where you go to church, what kind of songs you sing, what kind of music you listen to, what movie you watch, can you believe they watched that movie.

All of these kinds of things can mess with your name among God's people. And so what we have to do is we have to live according to God's law and follow our conscience. And what's going to happen is over the course of time, from the time you're born until the time you die, if you are faithful and steadfast to the Lord, your name is going to be remembered well among God's people.

And we have to trust that. And we also have to remember among God's people that we have to love our own. This is not optional. This is a mark of the effectiveness of Christ's work that His people love one another.

Can it be preached enough in our day and age that Christians need to love one another? Disagreement does not throw other Christians into the outer darkness, no matter how distasteful that disagreement can be.

And I can tell you, I have disagreements with other Christians and some of them, they really bother me. Like a lot. It's no secret, and I'll say it again, I really can't stand dispensationalism. I don't like it at all.

I think it's at odds with Christian history. And at the same time, it is wrong, unloving, sinful of me to throw those brothers to the outer darkness and to focus over much on our differences when there are so many more important things that we have to accomplish.

We have internal debates and squabbles. But we are way too quick, way too quick to start to tear down other people's name within the church. Now, to be sure, there are enemies in the church. The enemies don't have a little bit of doctrine that we think is wrong.

Enemies work for the enemy. Enemies work for the enemy. They tell lies. They sow dissension. They attack the work of Christ. They attack the authority of Scripture. They embrace and worship, like the Philistines did, the false gods of our day.

They are not all that hard to discern if you watch them long enough. Be careful. We have to protect our name among God's people, but we also protect our name among all men. And this is where it gets difficult, because some people are going to hate you.

Some people are going to hate you. What's important is that they hate you for the right reason. That they hate you because they hate Him. They hate you because they hate the truth of what you say. And what you say is loving all men, because we have a deep need to be right with our Creator.

We have to understand that God's enemies are going to hate you. They're going to revile you. But they need to revile you for righteousness, not because you're insane or an idiot or wicked or saying provocative things to try to make people upset with you.

The offense of what we believe is enough without adding a bunch of stupid stuff to try to just inflame people. Look guys, homosexuals are going to burn in the lake of fire. Do we need to flower that up to make it more offensive to the world that we live in?

It's incredibly offensive. Wives are to obey their husbands, as Sarah did, calling Him Lord. And husbands have real authority to rule their household. Can you say anything more offensive in this culture?

Do we need to flower it up? No. We are offensive enough as it is. So we have to be wise, and you have to protect your name. And here's what I would like to see for us in protecting our name. Don't be flaky.

Don't say you are going to do something and then flake out, don't do it. Don't be a coward. Don't be a coward. When something is burning in your bones to say, you need to say it. You know the Spirit gives that prompting to people when it is time to make opposition, when it's time to try to capture arguments that are against God.

Do not be reviling. Don't be the person who is reviling other Christians, no matter how much they annoy you. And believe me, friends, there are a lot of them out there that really annoy me. Okay? Don't revile them.

There's a reason I don't post on social media, and I'm just telling you flat out, it's because I can't handle it. I will become a reviler if I go on there. I will. They make me mad, and it's not good.

Don't be a negative divider. Don't do that. Remember last week, and remember the week before that, your negative talk about other people, it's coming from your own sinful discontentment. So put that away.

What if everyone in the church constantly built up everyone else in the church? And what if every correction within the church was made face-to-face with the person that you want to correct? What would that be like?

It'd be pretty good. Wouldn't it? It'd be pretty good. You wouldn't have to wonder what somebody else is thinking about you because they would just tell you, and you would know that they love you. And we are far from that.

We know that, but we are sinners. And the thing is, we don't go, well, it'll never happen, I quit. No, we pray to God for sanctification, and we work in that direction. What you do have to be is you have to be truthful.

You have to be reliable. You have to be loyal. You have to be full of integrity and wisdom. And then we have a question. After we get the thesis statement of what is your name going to be, we get object lessons about how you fall in one camp or the other.

Mourning, Patience, and the Long View of Wisdom

How do you ruin your name, or how do you build your name? And the first thing that we look at is being hasty or being strong. Are you going to be hasty, or are you going to actually have strength? This is where the day of your death is better than the day of your birth.

This is a long-term thing. Better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting. Would you rather go to a funeral or go to a Thanksgiving party? What are you talking about, Solomon? What's going on here?

Why? Here's why. Because that is the end of every man, and the living takes it to heart. When you feast, think about it. When you feast, you are thinking about how good you feel right now. Aren't you?

And that's not a bad thing. Solomon has already taught us about pleasure. Pleasure is not bad, but pleasure is not the end. And what Solomon is trying to teach us here is that there is a way of wisdom, and the way of wisdom is not to be overly concerned with the things that satisfy for the next 10 minutes.

It's to be more concerned with the things that satisfy for the next 50 years, and then eternally out of that. Why is it better to go to a house of mourning? Well, because you think about life. You think about what you're doing.

You think about, what are they going to say about me when I die? Have you ever thought about that? What are they going to say about me? I sure know what I hope they say about me, but that book's not written, is it?

I know what I hope they say. Since I was a 14-year-old boy, I remember having to, I don't know why we were doing it, some public school nonsense. We had to write like an obituary or something for ourselves.

I don't know who got off on that. Probably a crazy English teacher I had. And I remember just writing this one thing. It was like, I hope that people will say that I was a godly man. That's what I, as a 14-year-old.

And listen, when I was 14, I was far from godly. I loved Christ. But there was a lot of sanctification to happen. In Friends at 46, there is still a lot of sanctification to happen. It's still going. Do you think about this?

Sorrow is better than laughter. Who believes that? Now, Kelsey thinks I'm a weirdo because I like movies that punch you in the face, that are just horrible to take. I like The Road. You guys ever seen that or read it?

It's awful. It's absolutely horrible. I love to feel horrible. It's therapeutic for me to feel horrible. But Solomon's right there with me, so you guys are wrong. Because the wisest man ever said it's better to feel horrible than it is to feel happy.

That's why I like golf too. Most of the time you feel horrible. 2 of the time you feel amazing. All right? Sorrow is better than laughter. For when a face is sad, a heart may be happy. How does that work?

How does that work? Well, your face may be sad. But again, not to be too cute. Don't you know who you are? And don't you know what your destiny is? And don't you know who is working for your good at all times?

And even when things are brutally sad. And friends, there's been a lot of that. There's been a lot of that nationally. There's a lot of it in this church. There are people who struggle. There are hopes that have been dashed.

There are all kinds of things that happen in the world that you live. Where you are going to have times of tremendous sorrow. And you're going to have times of happiness. And during the sorrow, a heart that is happy is more powerful in a way.

Isn't it? Than the face that smiles when things are good. Which one gives God more glory? Isn't it bearing up under suffering? Remember, Peter said that that finds favor with God. Solomon said that having a good name and having favor is better than silver and jewels.

Because favor is a thing that you can only buy it fleetingly with silver and jewels. The mind of the wise is in the house of mourning. While the mind of fools is in the house of pleasure. Better to listen to the rebuke of a wise man than the song of fools.

And this is repeated over and over again. You want to find a fool, you find someone who surrounds themselves with flatterers. Look, there's been a, I hate, I'm sorry, I'm sorry guys. There's been attempted revisionist history of the Star Wars prequels in the last two weeks.

Friends, these movies are horrible. They're horrible. Okay? But do you know what happened? Here's how they got made. George Lucas got fantastically wealthy and was Hollywood royalty because he made these incredible movies in the 70s with a shoestring budget.

There was a lot of trouble. But then having everything around him, all of the resources that he could possibly imagine, he makes these three movies in the late 90s and early 2000s. And then when you watch the behind-the-scenes stuff, every person agrees with every idea that George Lucas has.

Even Jar Jar Binks. How did they allow him to happen? Wheesa Free. Who thought that was a good idea? Let me tell you what. Probably not some of the people who are around Lucas, but what do they tell him?

Oh, yeah, it's great, George. It's great. This is going to play well. No, it didn't play well. And then 20 years later, some Zoomers who don't know anything are trying to tell me these movies are good.

They're horrible. Horrible movies. They are a cautionary tale for what happens when you surround yourself with people who only tell you that you're right. And the more power you get, the more you're going to find these kinds of people.

Look at your friends. Do they ever correct you? And then on the flip side, are you easy to correct? This is a very difficult thing, isn't it? You guys all know this. When someone corrects you, it does not feel good.

It never feels good. And your first instinct is always going to be to go, Yeah, but you don't understand. You don't know what I was thinking. Listen, everybody's intentions in their own mind are always good, but you still do bad stuff.

So at some point, who cares about your intentions? A fool surrounds themselves with people who sing songs to them. Isn't this incredibly important for a man like Solomon? Who do you think was trying to hang around Solomon?

He was incredibly wealthy, incredibly powerful. And Solomon is telling his sons, and boy does it come back to haunt his sons, he is telling his sons, Do not surround yourself with fools who are just going to sing songs about how awesome you are.

That is a recipe for disaster. Think more about death. Think more about what's going to happen at your funeral. Don't be so concerned with all the wine and the wives and the good things that you have.

Because over and over in Scripture, the way you're remembered is way more important than the way you start. I'm going to keep going back to this thesis. Psalm 25 7, Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions.

According to your loving kindness, remember me for your goodness sake, O Lord. God doesn't remember the sins of your youth or your transgressions of your youth. They've been put away. Thank God. Many, many men have seen this.

And kids, kids, I'm going to tell you again, just repetition is the key to learning. You are going to sin in foolish ways. And what you need to think about right now, yeah, Ellie, Sam, my kids, what you need to think about right now is that you have to resolve that you are going to confess your sins, repent of them, and honor your parents.

You find favor with God by obeying your parents. The right thing for you to do is to obey your parents. And if you want to set your feet on a path that's going to end in God having favor with you, it starts with obeying your parents.

It starts when you sin, confessing your sin to God, turning the other direction. It's not about being sorry. It's about looking at it like the raging fire and sickness that it is and turning away and running the other direction.

My parents constantly reinforce that in my life, and that reverberates to the next generation. In the church, we have to have that. We should think about what we're doing. Kids should think about what you're doing.

We have to think about life. We have to think about who is around us, and we have to think about our friends. And it can be tough, especially if you're a business owner. If you're somebody who's just a little bit ahead of someone else, people are going to want to come into your life, and they're going to tell you that everything you do is the most brilliant thing ever.

You've probably experienced it. I've definitely experienced it. It's a wild thing, and it is exhilarating when people tell you how awesome you are. It's amazing. I love hearing how great I am. And yet, the fool who tells you how great you are, it's not real.

They're kissing because they want something. They are profuse kisses of an enemy. And in church, in life, in your job, the flatterer is the one who has malice and evil intention in his heart because God tells us not to flatter.

So if you flatter, you don't respect God's law. Isn't that true? The flatterer is sinning against you, and you feel good about it. So it's very, very dangerous. Remember who's writing it. Solomon says this to his sons.

And the great professor, he said this. You need to avoid people who feel fair, look foul, or the other way around. It's Tolkien. It's very difficult. You need to listen to what people actually say and not how they look.