Ecclesiastes chapter 9. Now, the book of Ecclesiastes
is written to teach us this lesson. It's the emptiness of this life,
this physical life we live right now, the emptiness of this life
without Christ. Now, we know there can't be any
spiritual life without Christ. Without Christ, we're going to
say spiritually dead, aren't we? But this physical life here
below, is absolutely useless. There's nothing about it that
will satisfy us if we don't have Christ. Now, other than the Lord
Jesus, Solomon is the most wise man to ever live. You think about
the things Solomon invented and the things that he could learn
and just amazing things. The Proverbs and the things,
all the things that he wrote, you know, there's so many of
them that we have, but there's so many we don't have. is the
mind God gave this man is extraordinary. In verse 13, I want you to look
what he says in Ecclesiastes chapter nine. This wisdom have
I seen also under the sun and it seemed great unto me. And
that really caught my attention. There's something here that seemed
great to Solomon. You know, it doesn't take much
to seem great to my mind, but this seemed great to Solomon's
mind. And I thought, now I'd like to
know what that is. So look at verse 14. He says,
there was a little city and few men within it. And there came
a great king against it and besieged it and built great bulwarks against
it. And there's found in it a poor wise man. And he, by his wisdom,
delivered the city. Yet no man remembered that same
poor man. Now here's the lesson of this
parable that seems so great to wise Solomon. There is something
great for us to learn here. Here's the parable. There was
a small, insignificant city. It was a poor city that didn't
produce anything of any value. The land values there were low. There weren't very many people
that lived in the city. Maybe there used to be, but all
the young people are moving away to the big city to be able to
get a job. And here's this poor city. A
great king came, and he wanted to take that city. And he went
to great lengths and a lot of expense to be able to take this
city. He took his army. He surrounded it. He besieged
that city so nobody could go in, nobody could go out. He was
trying to starve them out, which I think is going to take very
long. It's a poor city. He built great bulwarks around
this city so that he could attack its defenses and tear down its
walls and things. And people wonder, you know,
they read in the newspaper, this king's attacking this city? And
they thought, well, why? It's not even worth it. But that's
what he did. And in that city, there was a
poor man. He was, he's not very well known. He's not very well respected.
He's a poor man, but he's a very wise man. God gave this man wisdom
and understanding. He watched what was going on
and in his wisdom, he devised some plan, some way to defeat
this great mighty king. And it was an ingenious plan
because it worked. That poor city with nothing.
was set free from this great king because of the wisdom of
this poor man. Now, can you imagine how happy all the people were
when they defeated this great king and they were all set free?
Oh, they were ecstatic. They were delivered from sure
defeat, from sure death, and I'm sure they had a big parade,
they had a big party, you know, to celebrate. And very quickly
after that, Everybody forgot this poor wise man. And in his
wisdom had devised this plan to save their city. Now you'd
think, after seeing his wisdom, setting their city free, you'd
think that they'd want to hear more from him. Well, why don't
you tell us some more of these wise things that you know. And
not only did they not want to hear from him anymore, verse
16 says, They despised his words. They wouldn't hear him, and his
words, his wisdom was despised. The pressure was off. You know,
the king was gone, the pressure was off, and they wanted a wise
man, but they wanted somebody that looked the part. They didn't
want this poor man. They wanted somebody that looked
the part, you know, they could listen to and follow. And in
that human nature, Solomon saw that. Human nature hadn't changed.
He saw it in his day as well as in ours. We tend to very quickly
forget those people who have done great things for us. And
it's because we have such a selfish, self-centered nature. That's
why we tend to forget these people who have done such kind and gracious
things for us, we just very quickly move on to the next person who
can do something for us. We really do have a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately
attitude. Now that's the parable. Now here's
the lesson of the parable. Don't forget Christ. You keep
seeking Christ. What's the point of living without
Christ? This life is useless without Him. Well, don't forget
him. Don't get rich and increased
with goods and think you don't need him anymore. And don't start
despising his word. Don't start despising his wisdom.
And you think, oh, I wouldn't do that. Yes, we would. Oh, yes, we would. That's our
nature. And that's been our nature from
almost the beginning of man's history on this earth. God created
Adam. He put him in the garden. In
all of the earth, all of God's creation, there was one man,
just one. There's all the animals and all
the plant life, all the life that God created on this earth.
There's one man. And eventually, I don't know
how long it was, but before too long, God made for Adam a help
me. He made him eat. And Adam loved him. Oh, he loved
to have her. He saw the other animals had
a mate. He didn't have one. Now he's, he's got to help me.
He's got somebody to talk to. He's got somebody to commune
with his wife. And for a time, they lived in
peace and joy and harmony in that Garden of Eden. And just
one man and his wife, in all of creation, you wouldn't think
anybody would take the time to take notice of Adam, would you? But Satan did. Satan knew Adam
was created in the image of God. He knew Adam was different than
these animals. He had a living soul. Adam was
made in the image of God in this way. He is a spirit. You and I are spirits. We have
a body, but we are a spirit. So Satan attacked Adam. Maybe
you and I wouldn't have thought it was worthwhile, but Satan
did. And he tempted Eve. He got to Adam by tempting Eve.
Satan got Eve to eat that fruit that God commanded him not to
eat. And nothing happened. until Eve gave that fruit to
Adam and Adam ate the fruit. Adam is the representative of
the whole human race. And when he in willing disobedience
ate that fruit, Adam died. And the moment our representative
died, we died too. When Adam sinned, you're not
sinned. When Adam became guilty, we became
guilty. When Adam died, we died because
we did what our representative did. And all seemed lost, didn't
it? Can you imagine the horror Adam
felt when he realized he was naked? He was ashamed. All seemed
lost. God came and thrust Adam out
of the garden, didn't he? Sin had entered the world, and
death because of sin. And for over 900 years after
that day, God thrust Adam from the garden. Adam lived in this
earth, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow, seeing the
earth bring forth thorns and thistles to him. Adam lived a
long time with the consequences of sin, didn't he? The consequences
of what he'd done. Adam, in that 900 years, watched
people die. People that came from him, his
children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Adam watched
them die. He watched animals die. Every time he knew, this
is my fault, my fault. And it didn't seem like there's
a way out. It didn't seem like there's a
way out of the sin and death that he thrust his race into.
But Adam had a hope. And he told his descendants,
he told all of them who would listen, now you listen to me,
God's promised a Redeemer. God's promised a Redeemer who's
going to come, the seed of woman. He's going to take away the curse
of sin. Now Adam didn't completely understand
how God's going to do it, but he believed he would. Adam and
Eve were looking for that man, that seed of woman who would
come and take away their sin, take away the curse of sin. Now
you think about it, how many people heard Adam himself, Adam
now, talk about the fall of man? That's one thing for you to listen
to me to say it. It's another one to hear Adam. I mean, can
you imagine? Adam could tell you what it was
like in that garden. when it was in perfection and
in innocence, he could tell you. He could tell about the fall.
He could tell about the consequences of sin, our desperate need of
this Redeemer. You know he told everybody he
could tell that, didn't he? How quickly did people forget
what Adam told them, so quickly. And the years rolled on. And
God called Abraham. He called Abraham out of the
Ur of Chaldees. He made Abram the first Jew, the first Israelite.
And God made a promise to Abraham. He said, Abraham, you're going
to have a son. That son, I'm going to bring forth from him
a great people. And I'm going to give to your
seed this land of Canaan. I'm promising it to you. That's
why we call it the promised land. I'm going to give it to your
seed. Even though you don't have a son right now, I'm going to
give this land to your seed. And God made promise again to
Abraham of the redeeming. Abraham the Redeemer is coming
from your seed. God's elect are going to be made
righteous in this redeeming. And Abraham believed God. And it was counted to him for
righteousness. He was made righteous in Christ
through faith in Christ. Hundreds and hundreds of years
before the law was given. The law didn't have anything
to do with Abraham being made righteous, did it? He believed God. It was
counted to him for righteousness. He was made righteous in Christ,
through faith in Christ. And Abraham told his sons about
this, didn't he? About how God talked to him,
how God promised him this Redeemer. He told his sons, he told his
descendants, he told his neighbors, he told anyone that would listen,
God sent him the Redeemer to put away our sin. and we're righteous,
we're made righteous through faith in Him. Abraham told him,
he said, I believe God. Now you believe Him, you look
to Christ, you look to the Christ who's coming, you believe Him.
He told everybody he could tell about righteousness through faith
in Christ. And everybody nearly forgot what
Abraham said, didn't they? And years and years and years
later, The descendants of Abraham thought they were righteous because
they were Abraham's seed, because they came descended from Abraham.
They thought that they would be made righteous through their
own obedience to the law. Not only did they would not hear
the message of righteousness through faith in Christ, they
despised it. They despised the message of
Abraham. Righteousness through faith in
Christ. And that went on for generations and generations and
generations. And it just looked to us like
the situation's getting worse and worse and worse and worse.
Israel's getting further and further and further away from
God. For hundreds of years, God didn't speak to Israel at all.
He'd spoken in the past, didn't he? But now for hundreds of years,
God hadn't spoken. It seems like all's lost. And suddenly, God's Redeemer
appeared. in Bethlehem, born of a virgin
in Bethlehem. God was born as a man. And now we see, Adam didn't fully
understand how God was gonna do this. Abraham didn't fully,
Abraham saw Christ's day and was glad, but he didn't fully
understand how this was gonna happen. And now God, God himself
is born as a man, laid as a baby in a manger in Bethlehem. Now
we see God's wisdom in redemption. God's wisdom in redemption is
seen in representation. There's a second representative
man. Adam plunged us into this mess we're in because he's a
representative man. Haven't we seen we can't get
ourselves out of it? We can't get ourselves out of
it by keeping the law. We can't get ourselves out of
it by being religious and going through religious ceremonies.
There's no way for us to work our way out of this mess Adam's
put us in. So God's in a second representative man. A perfect
man. He's perfectly righteous. Because
he's God, he's able to obey God's law in every jot and every tittle. And he didn't just obey it. He
obeyed it in such a way that he honored the law, magnified
the law. And his people, God's elect,
everyone that this man, the Lord Jesus Christ represented, we
did everything he did as a man. Just like we became sinners by
representation, by what Adam did. Sinners are made righteous. They're made not guilty by what
the Lord Jesus Christ did for us as our representatives. Now
that's wisdom, isn't it? What wisdom of God in making
his people righteous in his son, the second representative man.
And then that perfect holy man, the only holy man, the only righteous
man to ever live, the only man to ever live who did not ever,
not one time break God's law. He died. He died on a cross because
he was made sin for his people. He bore the sin of his people.
He was made, scripture says, to be the sin of his people.
The sin of God's elect was charged to him and the perfect holy son
of God was made guilty of that sin and God killed him for it.
He suffered everything that sin demanded. He suffered untold
agony, agony you and I can never understand. He suffered. And
he suffered in that agony until he died. because that's what
the law demands. The law demands death for sin.
That's why Christ died. And he died as the substitute
for his people. He died in our place. He suffered
that untold agony, so his people never suffered. He suffered and
satisfied the law and God's justice for his people, so his people
never died. He set his people in the wisdom
of God. God's people are set free from
the law. They're set free from sin. They're set free from death.
They're set free from Satan. That's the wisdom of God and
salvation through substitute. And this man who died, the Lord
Jesus, he's a poor man. He was a homeless man. He had
no place to lay his head, but now he became poor that ye through
his poverty might be made rich. You see God's wisdom and salvation? His wisdom is seen. God's wisdom
and salvation is seen in this poor man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that is a wise way to set
sinners free. God is so wise. He didn't save
his people by doing an end around the law or by ignoring the law.
No, he saved his people through the law. He found a way in his
wisdom to pay the ransom and set the sinner free by satisfying
justice, by satisfying the law. Now that's wisdom. It's wisdom
you and I could never come up with. And every time we preach
the gospel, you know what we're doing? We're celebrating this
wonderful, wise redemption in Christ Jesus. That's what we're
doing. We're celebrating it, just like the people in this
little town celebrated after they were set free from that
mighty king. And you know, some people actually believe that
gospel. Some people, I'm looking at some
of them, you actually believe that gospel, salvation in Christ,
I just preached. You're objects of God's mercy.
Oh, not just his wisdom, but his mercy. You're beneficiaries
of God's wisdom and salvation. Aren't you thankful? Oh, I'm
so thankful. But here's my question. Will we forget? Can we possibly forget Christ,
the wisdom of God? Like the people of this little
city forgot that poor wise man? Can we? Will we, who have been
delivered through the wisdom of God and Christ our Savior,
can we forget our Redeemer? I'm not just talking about forgetting
those who preached him to us. I'm talking about, can we forget
him? Not only can we, but we will.
Even believers forget all the time. Solomon. Solomon's the best we got. Solomon's
the smartest you and I got as our race. Even Solomon forgot
that. Even Solomon put up with the
idolatry of his wives. God says in his word, his people
Israel often forgetting. And I'll give you a few examples
of how we forget. Every time it enters into our
mind, you know, I've done something I ought not have done. I said
something I ought not have said. And every time that I think,
you know, I better do something right. I better kind of straighten
myself up before God will bless me. You know what? I've forgotten. I've forgotten I'm accepted in
the beloved. Not in my works, but in Christ. Every time we think, you know,
there's some part of the law. I just better keep that, you
know, save people, keep that law. You know, I better live
what people call the Christian life, you know, in order to be
accepted. If I'm not doing that, God's
not going to accept me. God's not going to bless me. He's going
to do all these things to me. Every time we think that, we've
forgotten that we're redeemed, that we're made innocent through
Christ's obedience to the law. Brethren, we're free from the
law. If Christ has saved you, you
have no relationship to the law whatsoever. And every time we
look to the law for anything, we've forgotten Christ, that
we're innocent through his obedience to the law. Every time a problem
comes up and we think, oh boy, I better think about this and
devise some plan. How am I going to solve this
problem? And then we come up, we think
we come up with a solution. We think, all right, I got this.
Every time that we do that, and our very first reaction is not
to go to the Lord in prayer and say, God, help me. Show me. Give
me some wisdom. Give me some understanding. Open
the door for me to see what I'm supposed to do here. Every time
that's not our first reaction, we've forgotten our redemption.
We've forgotten the Lord will provide. We've forgotten that
Christ in His wisdom saved us. We're saved by looking to Him,
aren't we? We're forgotten we're to keep looking to Him. We're
to keep looking to Him to be our righteousness. We're to keep
looking to Him to be our wisdom. We're to keep looking to Him
to lead us as our shepherd. We're to trust Him and to follow
Him and to never lean to our own understanding. I told you
this last week, if we lean to our own understanding, we're
gonna do wrong, because our understanding is flawed. Just trust Christ,
trust Him to be your wisdom. Well, that's kind of depressing,
isn't it? To say, here's this Savior, and
we're gonna forget Him. Well, what'll protect us? What will protect us from forgetting? Well, you know, God knows our
frame, doesn't he? He remembers that we're dust.
We often forget that too. God doesn't. He remembers that
we're dust. So God sends us his servants to preach the gospel
to us, to constantly remind us of Christ. Look at verse 16 here
in our text, Ecclesiastes 9. Then said I, wisdom is better
than strength. Nevertheless, the poor man's
wisdom is despised and his words are not heard. The words of wise
men are heard in quiet, more than the cry of him that ruleth
among fools. Now the words of God's wisdom
in salvation, the gospel, is preached so that we're reminded
of Christ. So that we're reminded salvation
is not what we do. Salvation is what Christ has
already done for his people. Salvation. blessing from God. It's not in our mind. That's
not in our works. It's always in the wisdom and
grace and mercy of God. So when the gospel is preached,
it's preached to remind us of Christ because the gospel is
Christ. If we preach the gospel, we have
to be reminded of Christ because he is the gospel. When we observe
the Lord's table, what are we doing? We're reminded of Christ. Our Lord says, this do in remembrance
of me, so that we're reminded that our sin is paid for through
the broken body and the shed blood of Christ our Redeemer.
Every time we have a baptismal service, we're reminded of Christ,
aren't we? We're reminded of salvation through
his death, his burial, and his resurrection for his people.
And the brother or sister who's being baptized is confessing,
Christ is my Savior. He is all my salvation. He's
my hope. He's my representative. When
he died, I died in him. When Christ died, I died to the
law. When Christ died, I died to God's
justice. When Christ died, I died to sin.
When he was buried, I was buried in him. And when he was resurrected,
I was resurrected in him. My hope of eternal life is Christ. Now that's the gospel. That's
what we're reminded of. And the gospel is to be heard
quiet words and quiet, orderly worship. You know, you can't
understand, you can't understand, you can't hear and comprehend
or remember what I'm saying if a lot of other stuff is going
on all at the same time. You know, I don't understand
how you can hardly even hear somebody sing when they've got
all these instruments and all these lights showing and all
this stuff to distract you. How can you remember what's going
on? You can't. They're doing all that to distract
you from what's going on. They don't want you to hear what
they're really saying. Paul told the church at Corinth,
when you come together, you let one preacher preach at a time
so people can hear him and consider what he's saying. Don't make
a big show of religious gifts. If you have them, don't make
a big show of them. Nobody can speak in tongues today,
but they could in that day. Well, Paul said, don't come and
speak in some unknown tongue, some language people can understand,
because you're not benefiting anybody. When I go to Mexico,
I might feel like I've got a message from the Lord. Well, if Cody's
not there to interpret for me, I'm going to keep it to myself.
What good does it do a group of Spanish-speaking people to
hear me speak? It doesn't help them at all.
I've got to have an interpreter. And if I don't, I just keep my
mouth shut until somebody speaks my language, you know. Let somebody
else speak to them in their language. It's a whole lot better for them
to hear three words about Christ in Spanish than a thousand words
about Christ in English, because they don't understand them. Paul
said, if somebody comes in there at church at Corinth, you've
got all this stuff going, you've got three or four people speaking
at once, and they're all speaking in tongues, nobody can understand.
Somebody might be impressed they're speaking in tongues, but nobody's
being blessed. Paul said even natural thinking thinks that's
foolish. He says if an unbeliever comes
in, he's gonna think you're mad. He's gonna think y'all done lost
your mind. Nobody can worship in that environment, can they?
Worship is done by preaching the gospel in quiet words, in
simple words that people can understand and comprehend. Worship, the worship of the Lord,
it's not done in the show of the flesh. Worship is an activity
of the heart. And these great shows of religion
we see in our day, you know them. I mean, it's a production, it's
a Broadway production what they're doing. You know what that is? It's a show done to impress the
flesh and it's the cry of fools. That goes on when a fool is ruling. It's the cry of the fool. It's
the cry of this foolish flesh. So verse 18, Solomon says, Wisdom
is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much
good. Now you do good to avoid using
the gospel as a weapon of war and use it for what God intended. Why did God give us the gospel?
What's the purpose of preaching the gospel? It's to reveal Christ. It's to reveal salvation in Him,
isn't it? We must attack Satan's stronghold. We must attack the
strongholds of the flesh. We've got to tear down those
strongholds, the stronghold of unbelief, the stronghold of wicked
heart that we have, the stronghold of darkness. We've got to tear
that down. We've got to attack it. But that must be done in
love for Christ. Not in a warlike attitude. It's
got to be done in love for Christ and love for sinners. I tell
you, somebody will be a whole lot more apt to listen to you
if they got some feeling at all you care about them. If you love
sinners, they might tend to listen to you preach the gospel. Could
be. You're not going to beat anybody
over the head with the gospel and beat them into faith in Christ.
You're not going to ridicule and mock them into faith in Christ. Just preach Christ. Preach Him so sinners will come
to Him and look to Him and see Him and believe on Him. And just
beware now, beware. One sinner can do a whole lot
of damage. Adam did, didn't he? By one sin,
look what he did. Just one, look what he did. And
you and I can too. We can do so much damage. You can do so much damage to
everybody that you know just by sin. And we'll destroy our
own soul with sin too. One sinner can cause much damage.
One sinner who gets in the pulpit preaching a lie can do a whole
lot of damage. One sinner can. He might even
make us forget. He might subtly lead us away
from Christ till we get to the point we despise the message
we once loved. That's scary, isn't it? Well,
let me leave you with this word of comfort and assurance. Look
in Isaiah chapter 49. Now it's true, we'll forget him,
but our comfort, our assurance is the Lord Jesus Christ, the
wise man. He'll never forget his people
and he'll never forsake them. Isaiah 49 verse 13. Isaiah says,
sing O heavens and be joyful O earth and break forth into
singing. O mountains, for the Lord hath comforted his people.
He'll have mercy upon his afflicted. But Zion said, the Lord hath
forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. It seems like that.
And God says, now can a woman forget her sucking child, that
she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? That's
unnatural, isn't it? Can somebody do that? Can a woman
do that? Yes, they may forget. Yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I've graven thee upon
the palms of my hands. Thy walls are continually before
me. And we'll forget that God helped
us not to. God helped us to always remember
him, to look to him, to trust him. There's no eternal life
without him. And this life that we're living,
is empty and vain without Him. God help us to look to Him and
to keep looking to Him and to find comfort in this, that when
we don't, He hadn't forgot us. He'll never forget His people.
All right, the Lord bless you.