WWUTT 1714 The Righteous Perish in Righteousness (Ecclesiastes 7:15-29)

Why is it that we can go after all these things in the world, and no matter how much we accumulate to ourselves, we still feel empty?

The answer is sin. We must seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, teaching through a New Testament book on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, an

Old Testament book on Thursday, and a Q &A on Friday. With our Old Testament study today, here's

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 7, picking up where we left off last week.

We looked at about the first half of the chapter, and so I'm going to pick up in verse 15, and we'll go through verse 29 in the

Legacy Standard Bible. This is the word of the Lord through the voice of the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes.

I have seen everything during my days of vanity. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil doing.

Do not be excessively righteous, and do not be overly wise. Why should you make yourself desolate?

Do not be excessively wicked, and do not be a simple -minded fool. Why should you die before your time?

It is good that you seize one thing and also not let go of the other, for the one who fears

God comes forth with both of them. Wisdom strengthens a wise man more than ten men with power who are in a city.

Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and never sins.

Also do not give your heart to all words which are spoken, so that you will not hear your slave cursing you, for your heart knows that you likewise have many times cursed others.

I tested all this with wisdom and said, I will be wise, but it was far from me.

What has been is far away and exceedingly deep. Who can find it? I turned my heart to know, to explore, and to seek wisdom and an explanation, and to know the wickedness of foolishness and the simple -minded folly of madness.

And I found more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains, one who is good before God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her.

See, I have found this, says the preacher, adding one thing to another to find an explanation which my soul still seeks but has not found.

I have found one man out of a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all these.

See, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.

Now if you have not yet listened to the first half of this study of Ecclesiastes 7, if you missed last week's lesson, verses 1 -14, you got to go back and listen to that first.

Because I mentioned that what we read in the remainder of the chapter has to be in the context of what we read in the first half, or you're going to be lost.

So think about what we read at the start of chapter 7 last week. Verse 1, better is a good name than good oil, and a good name, a good reputation, that's something that you develop over time.

It doesn't happen right away, but it is a longstanding reputation of pursuing righteousness and people consider your name to be trustworthy, to be something that they can depend on.

They consider you a good man by your good name or a good woman or whatever else. So it's better to have that than a fine perfume, that's what's meant by good oil.

Just like a good perfume is fragrant, it fills the air, very, very valuable in those days as well.

A good name is even better than that and people love to hear your name because they know you as somebody who pursues good things.

So then in the latter half of that verse, and better is the day of one's death than the day of one's birth.

Now again, as I said last week, that does not mean, hey, better is the day that I die because that's the day that I go to heaven to be with the

Lord. That's even better than the day of my birth. That's true, but that's not what's being talked about here.

Better is the day of one's death, talking about another person, the righteous man who had a good name, his death, the day of his death is better than the day of his birth because on the day of his death, it causes you to ponder the meaning of life.

It causes you to think about how fragile life is and what am I doing? How am I making the most of the few moments that I have?

You are more likely to think about those things when a good man dies than on the day of his birth because on the day of his birth, he doesn't have any reputation at all.

But now he's died and now you're left wondering what is the meaning and purpose of life? How am

I making the most of my life? So with that in mind, we get to verse 15.

I have seen everything during my days of vanity. It's nothing.

It's empty. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil doing.

Now, even though we're reading here, perishes and prolongs. Those are the two words that get used there.

So the righteous man perishes. What would that make you think of? You would think of the righteous man dying and then the wicked man.

He prolongs his life. So what do you think of the wicked man here? He just goes on living. But what is really being implied here is that the righteous man did the right thing and he did not win his case.

His righteousness did not earn him or gain him anything. Whereas the wicked man, the wicked man prolongs his life in his evil doing.

He does what is wrong. People praise him for doing the wrong thing, and then he continues doing wrong and doesn't learn anything from his mistakes.

There is no ramifications or consequences for the wrong that he does.

That's what the preacher is musing about here, especially as we get to verse 15. Now, we see this happen in our world all the time, right?

People do the right thing. They try to do the common sense thing or they will do the godly thing and the world hates them for it.

Whereas you have a wicked man who does what the rest of the world is doing and the world loves him for that.

We see this happen in our world all the time. All kinds of examples we could apply to that. We do the right thing, the world hates us for it.

Those who do wickedly, the world loves them for it. And they look like they prosper in their wickedness because the world celebrates that.

It hates what is righteous and will embrace what is wicked because they hate

God. Now, this really is the theme of what's going on here in verses 15 to 29. The preacher is getting here to looking at the world and recognizing, why is the world in this state?

Why is it that I cannot find any meaning and purpose in the things that I do in this world?

It's because of sin. It's because the world has fallen because of sin. So those who are sinful who are of the world are going to love those things that are worldly.

Those who are in Christ and desiring his righteousness in the kingdom of God, they're going to be hated by those who are in the world.

So the man who is righteous perishes in his righteousness. He is not able to progress in the world because he desires to do the thing that God requires.

Whereas you have the wicked man, he progresses in this world, prolongs his life because he does the things that the world loves.

Now having said that, having considered that about verse 15, 16 almost seems like we've changed topic or something.

Do not be excessively righteous and do not be overly wise. Why should you make yourself desolate?

But then verse 17 goes right along with that. Do not be excessively wicked and do not be a simple -minded fool.

Why should you die before your time? It is good that you seize one thing and also not let go of the other.

For the one who fears God comes forth with both of them. What is being said here?

What does this mean? Well, do not be overly righteous means that you should not always insist on being right in everything.

You cannot insist on yourself that you are the right person. Do not be excessively righteous.

Do not be that guy that says, I'm always right. And do not be overly wise.

Do not insist on your own wisdom. You're the one that everybody else has to learn from, in other words.

Why should you make yourself desolate? Because as we have read in the Proverbs, pride goes before a fall.

The haughty spirit before destruction. Verse 17, do not be excessively wicked and do not be a simple -minded fool.

Do not go on in ignorance, not knowing because you'll perish in that way as well.

You want to be the person that says that you're always right. It will lead to your destruction. You want to be the person that never learns anything.

You're going to be destroyed also. So it is good that you seize one thing and also not let go of the other.

There are things that you must humble yourself in so that you may learn. And there are other places where it's better to not know, to not have the wisdom in that thing and just remain ignorant about it.

What are some things that you should be ignorant about? Well, evil. You should not be well acquainted with or knowledgeable of what it's like to do these evil things.

Stay away from that which is evil. Paul said to the Romans, Romans 16, 19, I am rejoicing over you, but I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.

So there you go. There you have growing wisdom in these things, but be foolish about these things.

And it is the one who fears God who comes with both of them. The one who fears

God will humble himself so that he may learn, but will also abstain from evil so that he will not be knowledgeable of what it's like to partake in that sin and suffer the consequences for it.

Verse 19, wisdom strengthens a wise man. More than 10 men with power who are in a city.

There are all kinds of people that have lots of ruling authority doesn't make them wise. In fact, you just look at the current leadership in the

United States and you find all kinds of fools that are running this country.

So wisdom is better not to pursue power, but to pursue wisdom, to pursue what we may know according to what

God's word says to us. This is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. The fear of God, as it says in Proverbs 1, 7.

And we must grow in the wisdom and knowledge of our creator. As it says in Colossians, our minds being renewed after the image of our creator.

Verse 20, indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and never sins.

So if you think you're that righteous guy that everybody else needs to learn from, well, you're already doing wickedly and you've made yourself a fool because there is no righteous man on earth who always does good and never sins.

And again, the preacher is musing about these things here in light of a righteous man who has died.

And so even though there was a man who did good and the world is a less better place because he's not in it anymore, that doesn't mean that that preacher is looking at that man thinking, well, he was flawless.

He never did anything wrong. And I want to learn from that guy. What you learn from that guy is also in what mistakes he made and what he learned from.

Right. We read about these great people in the Bible, Old Testament and New, some of whom did some some pretty terrible things.

Samson, for example, in the book of Judges, all the awful things he did.

And yet he's talked about in Hebrews chapter 11 as a hero of the faith. So there are things that we can learn about from Samson that we should not repeat and we should not do.

And yet this was a man who gave his life to do what God required of him as a judge over Israel.

So we must be willing to believe the Lord even unto our deaths. There are things to learn from these men and in the sense that we should imitate them.

And there are also things to learn that we should not imitate. We should not be doing. So there is not a righteous man who continually does good and never sins except one.

Jesus Christ. He is the only one who always did good and never sinned.

Now, this in Ecclesiastes is written a thousand years before Christ, but there's something in this that's kind of foreshadowing that, right?

There's never been a man on Earth who has always done good and never sinned. And then Jesus Christ shows up and fulfills exactly that.

He always did right and never sinned so that he would become the pure, spotless lamb for us who would die on a cross for our sins so that all who believe in him, our sins are forgiven and we have everlasting life.

He covers all of our sinfulness by his blood, that atoning sacrifice for us.

He is the one, the one who came to Earth and continually did good and never sinned.

And he continually does good for us. The preacher goes on in verse 21.

Also, do not give your heart to all words which are spoken so that you will not hear your slave cursing you.

For your heart also knows that you likewise have many times cursed others.

Now, really, the gist of what's being said here in verses 21 and 22, don't listen to everything everybody says.

Be hard to offend, be difficult to offend. And this still goes along with there are things that you should be knowledgeable of and things that you should be ignorant of.

And in this particular case, don't be looking for everything that everybody says about you. You will never get to the end of all the awful things that people have said about you.

Don't even worry about it. And you've said awful things about other people. Seek Christ and pursue his righteousness.

Verse 23, I tested all this with wisdom and I said, I will be wise, but it was far from me.

He sought the wisdom. He was not able to find it. Verse 24 really kind of sheds light on that a little bit more.

What has been is far away and exceedingly deep. Who can find it? So we can study those things that have been, but we're still limited in in trying to grasp those things.

Even when we study languages like you study stuff that was written in ancient languages. Well, you not only have to learn that language, but you have to learn what those words meant to that people during that time.

The word probably meant something different to them then than it means to us now. So there are things that we can seek after that have been and yet still not be able to come away with any knowledge of it.

Verse 25, I turn my heart to know, to explore and to seek wisdom and an explanation and to know the wickedness of foolishness and the simple minded folly of madness.

The wise man wants to learn everything. He wants to learn what is wise. He wants to even learn what is foolish.

So that he can say that he has knowledge of all of it. And he goes on in verse 26 to say, and I found more bitter than death.

The woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains, one who is good before God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her.

It's such an important verse. And we really could spend a lot more time talking about this. We're really at the end of our lesson here.

We talked about this quite a bit when we were in like Proverbs five, six and seven, because this is really talked about there very heavily.

Stay away from the loose woman. Stay away from that seductress, the adulteress, the woman who wants to entice you while her husband is away or the woman that wants to draw you in with sexual immorality.

And in this day and age, it doesn't even have to be a woman down the street who is trying to get you to come over and do things with you that are immoral and will lead to your destruction.

If you get into those things, it doesn't even have to be a person that you personally know. It could be the woman who is the seductress online, who has taken pornographic pictures of herself and posted them on Instagram.

It could be that woman you never even meet, but she's got that come hither look in her photographs and wants you to lust after her.

That's exactly why she's worn what she's worn and taken the pictures that she's taken and posted them on social media so that she will be lusted after by men.

That's exactly why she's there. And more bitter than death is to give in to that woman.

And dwell on that woman and lust after that woman, it is worse than death itself, because if you don't repent of that, what will it lead to?

Not just death, but hell. It will lead to misery in this life because that's a woman that you can never actually have, and no other woman will ever be able to meet the standard of the person that you've made up in your mind.

So in that sense, you do great damage to yourself, to your family, to any future woman that you would happen to love.

But worse than this, if you do not repent of your lust and your sexual desire for somebody who is not your spouse, if you do not repent, you will perish.

In hell forever. For as it says in first Corinthians six, nine and ten, do not be deceived.

These will not inherit the kingdom of God. The sexually immoral are the first on that list. The sexually immoral, those who go after sex that is outside of the marriage between a husband and a wife.

That is what God created sex for. That's where it's meant to be. You go after sex outside of the marriage covenant, outside of the marriage bed.

You will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, if there's anything that the Me Too movement in our culture today has tried to push, it's that the men are evil.

It is the men who go after their sexually depraved fantasies.

And it's the women. The women are innocent. They're victims. They didn't do anything wrong. Men are by their nature stronger.

So they're always going to be the aggressor. They're always going to be the guilty party in such an encounter.

The woman is never the guilty party. That's what the world is trying to push on us. The Southern Baptist Convention is wrapped up in that false philosophy.

That is not what the Bible says. Women, you have got to hear me on this. If you dress yourself in such a way that you want to attract the eyes of men to your body or you're taking pictures of yourself and you're posting them online for that reason, you are a seductress.

You are just as sexually immoral as the man who takes advantage of you. And you will perish also and will not inherit the kingdom of God.

The scriptures are clear about this. Here in this verse in Ecclesiastes 7 26, it is saying of you women that do this, your heart is a snare.

It is a net and your hands are chains. Those are those are serious words.

And you will go down to that same pit that the men who take advantage of you will go to.

You'll go to the same place they'll go to because you and your heart desired sexual immorality as they did in God's courtroom where God's justice is done.

Men are not more guilty than women. You're both guilty and you will go to the place consigned for the devil and his angels and eternal fire.

You will go there as well if you do not repent. Now consider this as we close out these last three verses, 27 to 29.

See, I have found this says the preacher, adding one thing to another to find explanation, which my soul still seeks, but has not found.

I have found one man out of a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all of these.

See, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.

Now, what is meant by this? I found one man out of a thousand. I have not found a woman among all of these.

So is it, is it that he's able to find more righteous men than he's able to find more righteous women? No, that's not what's meant here, but rather that the, the wise man is seeking to find one righteous person and among men, he was able to find one out of a thousand.

And that could very well be the person that he has been musing about ever since the start of the chapter better is the day of one's death than the, than the day of one's birth, that righteous man who died.

And now the preacher Solomon is pondering about the meaning of life in light of the loss of that man.

So that could be what he's referring to. That was the man out of a thousand. I, I sought a good man and I found one, one out of a thousand.

The rest are evil. This is how rare it is to find a person who does good, who does righteously.

Most people that you're going to encounter are pursuing wickedness. Jesus said, it's the narrow road.

Matthew seven broad is the way that leads to destruction and many find it because that's the easy way, but narrow is the way that leads to life.

And few will find that because that's the difficult path. So that's, what's meant there by.

I found one man out of a thousand. Now, what about women? I have not found a woman among all of these.

Well, once again, consider the source. Who is it? That's writing. It's Solomon. And how many wives did he have?

If I remember right, it was 700 wives, 300 concubines to Solomon.

Marriage was to build alliances. First of all, the woman is a possession to him, but then it was also to, to build allegiances with other

Lords or territories or kingdoms. And so they would give a woman to him in marriage.

And then there would be this alliance that was formed, but there's no genuine companionship there.

So therefore marriage is really rather meaningless to Solomon. He doesn't really have one true companion to himself.

They're all meaningless relationships. He has made marriage into something trivial and it's something that is an indulgence, like,

Hey, I've got 500 wives time for a few more, you know? And so he just continues to gather up wives to himself and never finds anything satisfying by them at all.

So looking for a righteous man, he finds one out of a thousand, but searching for meaning among a thousand women.

And he doesn't find any, anything satisfying by them. And what is the reason why, why is there only one good man out of a thousand?

Why is it that I can have all of these women and not feel satisfied by any of them? It is because of sin and verse 29.

See, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices.

God has established righteousness and he has shown men the right way to go, but they don't go that way.

They instead create all of these devices. Even with regards to Solomon's marriages, God created marriage.

He created marriage in Genesis one to be between one man and one woman. From the very beginning, that's the way it was meant to be.

Jesus repeats that in Matthew chapter 19, that this is the way it has been from the very beginning.

Have you not read that he who created them made them male and female and said that a husband or a man will leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife.

And so the two shall become one flesh. And so they are no longer two, but one flesh.

What therefore God has joined together, let man not separate. And Solomon, instead of seeking out one woman to whom he would unite himself for his life, instead he seeks after a thousand and he finds among them not one good companion because he decided marriage was going to be something different than what

God had established it to be. And so because of sin, we go after our own devices instead of honoring the

Lord and doing what he has said. But if you are that one who seeks first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, as Jesus said in Matthew chapter six, then you're like that one in a thousand.

You are the one walking on the narrow road. You are the righteous man talked about in Psalm one.

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of Yahweh.

And in his law, he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither.

And in whatever he does, he prospers. So let us seek after Christ.

Let us desire what is Christ like according to what he has said in his word, walking the narrow road, which leads to life, not the broad way, which leads to destruction.

That's our lesson today. And I know I went rather long, but I thank you for sticking with me through Ecclesiastes 7, 15 to 29.

Let's finish with prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for these words. And I pray this is wisdom we take to heart and live by.

In Jesus name, Amen. You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .utt