Ecclesiastes Lesson 19

Four “HVP Wisdom” Proverbs -7:1-7

This book is one of the strangest books in the entire canon of Scripture because this particular book was written by a person who was out of fellowship at the time he wrote it. The doctrine of inspiration of Scripture does not say the person has to be in fellowship with the Lord at the time of writing. The doctrine of inspiration only says that God the Holy Spirit so worked through human agencies to bring into history a verbal, correct exposition of the doctrines that God wanted to teach at that moment of time. So therefore we turn to Ecclesiastes to get some insight, some lessons, into how a person who is out of the will of God can function, how to live though dead.

In chapter 7 we come to a set of proverbs that Solomon is beginning. To understand these proverbs it will be necessary for us to go back into some Biblical principles of perception and to do this turn to Ephesians 4:17-19 where we have a principle that one’s perception spiritually is a function of his volition toward God. “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles are walking,” present tense, “in the vanity of their mind.” Now the word “vanity” is mataiotes, it’s the same word as “vanity” in the book of Ecclesiastes except in Ecclesiastes it’s written in Hebrew, habel, in the New Testament it’s in Greek and it’s mataiotes. Same word, same meaning, and it means emptiness or vapor. And it means something that appears to have structure to it but doesn’t. And therefore it doesn’t last, therefore it’s not really real. It has the appearance of reality but it isn’t reality. That’s what vanity means.

And what Paul is saying in verse 17 is that the Gentiles, the unbelieving world his day, operate as far as their mental attitude is concerned, with a content mentally of vanity. In other words, Gentile philosophy and thought is basically unreal, it is not connected solidly with reality. Why? Because they have rejected certain things that become obvious in verses 18-19. But the status of the unbelieving world of Paul’s day was that they were walking in the vanity of their mind, that means their mind’s thought, the content was empty and unreal. They had some ideas that were true but the overall framework was not true.

So in verse 18 he gives some reasons why this is so: “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart,” in other words, there’s a process of spiritual deterioration among the Gentiles at this time in history; namely that it began at the last part of verse 18. Causally this has to be interpreted from the end of verse 18 back toward the front of verse 18, on up unto verse 17. So actually the chain of cause effect is opposite to that which you see in the text. It starts with the blindness of their heart. The word “blindness” here is the word porosis and blindness means a judicial blindness by God upon these people. It is used in another point in the New Testament and here it’s very obvious what porosis refers to. This is very tricky to understand unless you understand why porosis occurs in history.

In Romans 11:7 Paul is trying to deal with an obvious problem, if the nation Israel had been into existence for fourteen centuries before Jesus Christ, why then is it true that the entire nation was not ready when Jesus Christ came? When Jesus Christ was incarnate and walked around why wasn’t He accepted by the majority of the nation Israel? So to explain this Paul pull in the doctrine of porosis in verse 17, “What then? Israel not attained that which he,” that’s collective singular, “which he,” the nation, “seeks for, but the election has obtained it, but the rest were blinded. [8] According as it is written, God has given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should see not, ears that they should hear not, unto this day.” And Paul explains the rejection of Jesus Christ in his generation by a blindness, a “spirit of slumber” that came upon them. Why is it that this came upon them? He says it came upon them because back in time, if we make a time line and this is the cross of Jesus Christ, we go back in history, back here they had Moses, they had the prophets, and a minimal amount of those people in that day responded to the then present revelation of God. At that point in history the revelation of God, say, was indicated by a small circle; by the time of the Lord Jesus Christ it was indicated by a large circle, the doctrine of progressive revelation. However, along this time, while the circle was expanding and the sphere of information about God was increasing, while this was occurring there was acceptance or rejection. People who would accept positively, people who would reject negatively, and by the time of the Lord Jesus Christ a majority of the nation had already rejected the revelation they had up to that point.

In other words, they were not yet ready for new revelation because they hadn’t responded properly to the revelation that was already in their hands. So you have a maximum number of people on negative signals toward the Old Testament, so therefore by the time Jesus Christ comes God says I will send a judicial blindness upon them and decrease their perception. They were responsible to the revelation they had in their hands, they rejected it, and so God says when you reject revelation that I have given you I judge you, and I begin to decrease the area of perception, so that although you have the organs of perception, the eyes in verse 8, the ears in verse 8, those eyes don’t see any longer and those ears don’t hear any longer; they’re unused because they have been used to reject reality and the real truth… and this by the way is one of the great things about Christianity, it’s not just acceptance of Christianity, Christianity claims to be THE truth and when a person goes against what is really there, goes against Reality with a capital “R”, then inside, in his soul, his perceptive capabilities begin to deteriorate and begin to atrophy, so here you have a decreased perception. Although revelation is increasing, those who have rejected the stream of revelation bear the judgment of God in verse 8. And so that is why as Isaiah predicted God sent them a spirit of slumber. God actually sent and caused blindness to happen on the nation because they had failed to respond to the revelation they had at that time.

Turn to Romans 1 you see the same process in action with respect to the Gentiles. Romans 11 dealt with Israel but the same thing can be said for the Gentiles because before God called forth the nation Israel, He had revelation to the Gentile nations. If you go back in history to the flood and after the flood, Genesis 10-11, you have available on a worldwide basis total revelation about God. It wasn’t as complete but it was universal throughout the human race. This was in the days when there was one language, before the tower of Babel, with one language you didn’t have cultural barriers, linguistic barriers to the gospel as it was known in that day. So therefore, these people had an opportunity to hear.

But in Romans 1 Paul takes up the problem of the Gentiles decreased perception. And he says in verse 18, “For the wrath of God is reveled in my gospel from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” And here he was saying that these people have picked certain things out of the Christian system, such as uniformity in the universe, such as rationality, etc. these things that men must have in order to live, the ideas of morality, the ideas of all these things that men like, these things, the pick and choose boys, and they pick these things out and they say we need these to live but we toss the rest of it into the wastepaper basket. This is how you study the Bible by the pick and choose method; pick that which pleases you and dump the rest; it’s a very dishonest system intellectually. Therefore in Romans 1 Paul says these people are holding the truth, they’re holding on to pieces of it, but they’re holding on with a defiant attitude. In other words, they’re holding only that truth that pleases them and rejecting the rest.

So therefore verses 19-20, Paul goes on to say how this came about, verse 20, “The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen,” “seen” is a present tense in the Greek, meaning continually seeing, “being understood by the things that are made,” or “through the things that are made.” In other words, looking out on the physical world man empirically cam come to an awareness of God through empirical perception. And the things that are visible this way are listed at the end of verse 20, “his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.” No man is ever going to be able to stand before the throne of God and say I didn’t have enough information. He is judged on the amount of information that was available to him and his reaction to that information.

Therefore in verse 21 Paul says, “For when they knew God,” it’s not a case that they didn’t know Him, they didn’t know Him personally in a saving sense, but they knew of Him, “For when they knew of Him, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain,” and there’s the word “vanity” again, “in their imaginations,” the “imaginations” are thought patterns in the mentality. So here you have a process that begins to set in just as it did with Israel. First you have God-consciousness; then you have negative volition toward that God-consciousness, stealing what pieces of it you like to get along with in life, and dumping the rest; then you have negative volition, the next thing that happens is verse 21, “they became vain in their imaginations.” It would be like a scientist who starts out and he has about 100 pieces of data; he does a research project, he has 100 pieces of data and he says now I don’t like some of this data and so I’m going to junk about 50% so I’ll just keep 50 pieces of data and try to erect a scientific theory on the basis of these 50 facts. Now, would his theory based on 50 facts be equal to his theory based on 100. No, it would be a “vain” theory because it is deliberately destroying and dumping out certain data, certain facts. Therefore he’s building on a partial base.

And that’s what Paul is saying here in verse 21, “they became vain” in their concepts, in their ways of thinking because of their rejection of things in the outside world that were offensive to them, not in man, particularly the scholar doesn’t like this, that the Bible says that a person’s spiritual attitude actually affects his intellectual perception. I’m not saying that a person with spirituality is more rational than someone else but it is saying that your very process of perception is deeply affected and influenced by your spiritual decisions.

And then begins the judgment, in verse 24, “God gave them up” and that is a judgment of God. For example, people look out upon the United States and they say look at what’s happening; if this society gets much worse God’s judgment is going to happen. That’s not a Scriptural statement, that’s not a Scriptural statement at all. What you should say is, on the basis of this verse, verse 24, is that when society begins to deteriorate it already shows the judgment of God is in operation. It’s not that it’s future; it could increase in the future, but the very fact that God is giving up means that God is already judging. Then in verse 26 you have the judgment repeated, “For this cause God gave them up,” then in verse 28 the phrase is repeated again, “they did not like to retain God, God gave them over to a reprobate mind,” it’s an action, the subject of these verbs is God, it is a divine judgment. And here you have the procedure of Ephesians 4.

Now let’s turn back to Ephesians 4 and we’ll continue the process of deteriorating of spiritual perception. “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God on account of the ignorance that is in them,” the word for “ignorance” in Ephesians 4:18 is the word which means a willful ignorance, a deliberate ignorance, brought about by a specific deep rooted decision to reject that part of reality that testifies to the existence and lordship of God. And because of this they have their understanding darkened. And now you read the verses backwards, you read verse 18 backwards and go back up into verse 17 and you have your process. Starting at the end of verse 18, working backwards through verse 18 on back to the main verb of verse 17 and there you have the process of intellectual perceptive deterioration in the individual soul.

Then in verse 19 the end result of it is that, “Who, being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness,” “being past feeling” is a perfect tense in the Greek which means an action in the past with results that continue, and they are “being past feeling” and they therefore “have given themselves over unto lasciviousness.” “Being past feeling” is a word that I could only translate by being anesthetized, in other words, you’re becoming sensitive to stimuli, and here is the point that the perception has gotten so bad, the sensitivity has gotten so callous, that now something else begins to come in, now they “give themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.”

The last word, “greediness” tells us a lot about the result for the word “greediness” means it’s a frantic rush to fill the spiritual vacuum on the inside. In other words, greediness doesn’t necessarily mean they deliberately consciously try to take you out, try to stab you in the back or something, rather the point is that these people are frantic to fill this vacuum on the inside and so they are grasping here, here, here, here, here, all over the place they’re grasping, grasping, grasping to fill the resultant vacuum in the soul that’s caused by this decreased perception. It’s like a blind man groping, all of a sudden he’s lost his sight and so now he desperately tries and the more he tries the worse his sight becomes. And it’s a vicious cycle.

This is what the Bible testifies goes on in the minds of men. Now a similar process goes on in believers and to see this again let’s turn back to Ecclesiastes 7. Solomon has gotten out of fellowship. Solomon has gotten out of fellowship. We don’t know when this happened, it evidently happened early in his career; this does not mean Solomon lost his salvation. Again going back to the diagram of the two circles, when we receive Jesus Christ, in the Old Testament when they believed in the gracious future provision of Jehovah, God the Holy Spirit puts them in union with the plan of salvation, in this age He puts us in union with Christ. Once that work has been finished it is irreversible. That is an irreversible act; God the Holy Spirit has put us in union with Christ. Now also down below we have the circle of our experience; at any given moment we are in the circle or out of the circle; you’re in fellowship with the Lord or out of fellowship with the Lord; that circle changes, you can get in, you can get out. But what doesn’t change is the top circle and Christians are always getting these two circles confused. But Solomon was out of the bottom one, he was still a child of God, he was still a believer but he was out of fellowship.

Now what happened in Solomon’s soul was that as a carnal believer this problem of judgment against his perception began to operate, and so Solomon, although he was a believer began to experience a decreased amount of spiritual perception the longer he stayed out of fellowship with the Lord, which is another argument for keeping short accounts with God. When you get out of fellowship, and we all do, but the longer we stay out the more we’re asking for deterioration in the life. Solomon has deteriorated; this man was one of the most brilliant men who ever lived and beginning with chapter 7 he sets forth a series of very pessimistic, very sarcastic proverbs. And these proverbs are designed to destroy; they’re designed to destroy the existing proverbial school of wisdom in his day and they are designed to show forth to the world the best system of living given the fact that you are partially blind. And the philosophy of Solomon in this book is eat, drink and enjoy yourself now. This makes sense if you have this spiritual blindness in your life like Solomon. And if a person is out of fellowship I would say this would be a very logical way of living, very logical because it fits the maximum number of facts that you accept in your conscious mind.

So Solomon begins to attack the proverbs of the other people in his day and he does this in a very clever way as we have seen again and again in this book. The method Solomon is using in chapter 7 is to quote a classic proverb, and then tack an explanation onto the end of it that completely ridicules it. You’ve probably seen this gimmick used in many cases where somebody says so and so is a brilliant person, and then you make some crack at the end of it, supposedly designed to amplify the statement, but it’s so sarcastic it destroys the statement. So and so has an open mind, every time he turns sideways you can see through him, etc. this kind of thing. Well, this is a way that you have of explaining a statement but in your explanation of the statement you destroy it.

Now that’s exactly what Solomon is doing, in verse 1 he begins a heptad, now we’re getting into proverbial literature and so therefore we ought to understand what a heptad is. A heptad is a set of seven proverbs in a line. This was a way in which the Old Testament was often written; in units of seven, seven being the number of completion. So these are seven proverbs arranged sequentially that all begin with tov in the Hebrew which equals good or better. The first proverb is verse 1; the second one is verse 2; the third one begins in verse 3; the fourth one begins in verse 5; the fifth one begins in verse 8; the sixth one begins in verse 11 and the seventh one begins in verse 14. You can’t see it too much from the English translation but in the Hebrew they all begin with tov except the last two and tov is inside the clause.

So you have this heptad, it’s seven proverbs and Solomon picks out some proverbs from his day, others he makes up, but he makes fun of them. And the first one, if you’re following this in the King James it says, “A good name is better than precious ointment;” after the word “ointment” you’ll see a semicolon, that’s the end of the classical proverb, that’s what he has quoted from his day, “A good name is better than precious ointment;” we know this is a classical proverb because it’s similar to Proverbs 22:1, where you have the idea of the name being very precious to an individual. But that is the end of the proverb. The rest of the sentence in verse 1 is a sarcastic amplification of that, so we have, “A good name,” or a good name means a reputation, “name” in the Hebrew always refers to reputation. So therefore he is arguing that as an ointment is sweet to the smell and that satisfies your lower instincts, your lower needs of satisfaction, your bodily affections, so a reputation satisfies the higher needs of a man, the need to be significant, the need to have something worthwhile in his life. So he says a precious ointment is fine, but it’s better to have a good reputation. And this he addresses to the person as he has a hierarchy of needs; the ointment satisfies the lower need, and the reputation satisfied the higher need. And this sounds good and this is a classical proverb.

Now Solomon completely kills it by what he adds in the rest of verse 1, “and the day of death, than the day of one’s birth.” He says yeah, a good reputation is fine, but I’d rather be dead than be starting all over again. Here you begin to see the pessimism of this man come out. He has destroyed the whole force of the proverb; the force of the proverb was to emphasize a person’s life and what he accomplishes. Remember a proverb could be defined as an observation of reality that is important for us to live by. It’s trying to relate reality. And so Solomon makes a lot of use of the proverb because he’s forcing reality onto the person. He says oh yeah, that’s great, and you can work your finger to the bone getting a good reputation and you can be educated and work your head off in the academic pipe getting all sorts of degrees and you can get involved in various businesses and build up a great firm with your name on it and you can have a wonderful unblemished reputation.

But he said I’ll tell you something better; it’s when you finally die and it’s all over. Now do you see what he’s done to the proverb? He’s destroyed the proverb, and this is a favorite tactic of Solomon throughout this whole thing because life to him isn’t that important. Life is interesting but remember, Solomon has had to say listen, there is absolutely no fulfillment; no fulfillment in an absolute sense in your life, you can’t find it he says, I can’t find it, so therefore you have to settle for relative fulfillment, and that’s why he says eat, drink and get what you can now because the next moment you don’t know what’s going on so the real, most realistic system of life is just to make it now while you can.

You say well, that’s kind of pessimistic and I don’t like that and besides, I’m a Christian so I don’t have to bother with it. Well, you should bother with it because when you see proverbs like this there’s one thing that should go through your mind; you should have the guts to say if Christianity is wrong then this is right, and you shouldn’t sit there with a nice comfortable feeling and say oh, that doesn’t bother me in the least, this man just woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day and if that’s the way he wants to be fine, it doesn’t bother me in the least. This man challenges you to this position: either Christianity is worth living moment by moment in fellowship with the Lord or this is the only other way to life and that’s it; and that’s what he’s saying to you. So this is why these proverbs are important, and he is challenging you to find a better way, and he’s laughing at a lot of people that we find in this part of the country and other parts of the country who would say it doesn’t matter about the details of Christianity, I don’t want to get involved in those but just have a nice morality, it doesn’t matter what you believe, it’s how you act.

And Solomon says it’s absolute nonsense, everything depends on what you believe; everything! And if Christianity isn’t sure then you should have the guts to go this way. The trouble with it is that we have dishonest unbelievers who are not willing to take the rejection of Christianity out to its logical conclusion. We have an increasing percent; some of them we call “hippies.” Some of the hippies are not doing this, others are going further on down, but one thing you can say for them is that they are honest to their presuppositions. If Christianity isn’t right then there’s no sense in living for America or living for anybody else, living for your parents, where’d they get their authority from, the old question of authority. Parents don’t get their authority because it’s something in them, they get authority because of the framework of the Word of God and God says that they have authority. The national government doesn’t have authority because of who’s at the helm; it has authority because God says this is a divine institution and I demand you respect it. Now that’s the base of authority, and if God isn’t there then there’s no authority.

Verse 2, another proverb, here’s his second one. “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of feasting;” and there’s a semicolon, and that’s the end of the classical proverb. Originally that proverb mean this: it meant it was better spending your time comforting those people that had problems in their life than to waste and fritter away your time in feasting. In other words, there was a serious thing, that you could be of service to other people, “blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted,” etc. this is the concept in the classical school of wisdom in Israel, that it was better to spend your time helping others than just going out and having entertainment 100% of the time.

But now Solomon kills this proverb with the rest of it, “for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart.” In other words he’s saying yeah, go to the nearest funeral parlor and sit there all day because as the caskets roll in you can see that that’s where you’re going to be one day. In other words, it’s refreshing, he says, it’s real, this is what you’re really going to wind up in and you can sit there, and maybe there’s 20 caskets go through the reception hall and the funeral parlor so you just station you chair right in the middle of the aisle and as these caskets go by you kind of peak in and take a good look because that’s how you’re going to end up. It’s a real stimulating set of proverbs Solomon is giving you.

Then in verse 3 he starts out with another one and this is a very short proverb and it says: “Sorrow is better than laughter;” and that’s the end of the classical proverb, and obviously this was true in the Old Testament, in the book of Proverbs sorrow was better than laughter in one sense, in that it was a time when you could trust and rely upon the grace of God; this was the emphasis on these sorrow problems, it wasn’t that they were melancholic, it was rather the fact that these people would look upon sorrow and the calamities of life as opportunities to claim the promises of God, like Romans 8:28, etc. These promises could be pulled in in times of personal catastrophe and therefore sorrow was better in the sense that you could appropriate the grace of God.

However, Solomon kills this proverb by what he tacks onto the end of it, “for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.” Now to see this you have to go back to an expression that’s often used in the Hebrew for heart, “be made better.” That usually means to be made joyful, “heart be made better” means to make your heart joyful, rejoice, relax, and have a good time. That’s what it usually means. However, in this book Solomon shifts the meaning; when he says “the heart made better” he’s meaning am more accurate understanding of life. In other words, by sitting there in the funeral parlor and watching the caskets go by you come out of your cocoon of vanity and you begin to see more and more of the real horror and the real sorrow of life. And he’s saying if you’re going to be in this state that I am in, a carnal state, then you should have your nose rubbed in it and you should see that life isn’t this merry thing.

When we were out at the rock festival I was talking to one of these hippies and he was on this relativism, etc. and he was saying why we should love everybody, etc. and said listen, it’s not obvious that I should love everybody, in fact it’s a pain in the neck as far as I’m concerned, why should I love everybody, you show me why. And he couldn’t, there was no rational rhyme nor reason he could give me for loving everybody. Then he started in saying everything is so beautiful. I said what do you mean by that. He said well the sky is blue, now isn’t that a sweet way of living your life. I live my life and I love everybody because the sky is blue. That’s a real brilliant exposition of philosophy.

And this is what Solomon is saying; Solomon is more honest than that, he’s saying listen, that’s not the way it is, if you want to really find out the way it is, take your seat in a funeral parlor, that’s how to find out where it’s really at, and then you really see the sorrow and the heartache and the reality of life. And he says if you’re going to move in this direction then move all the way and be real.

So in verse 4 he says “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” He’s saying if I’m going to be operating in this human viewpoint framework, in this human viewpoint muddle, then I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to be the most realistic piece of human viewpoint you ever saw, and I’m not going to delude myself by going into something and laughing it off to avoid facing the troubles of life. I am willing to take it all on the chin Solomon says.

Now verse 5, here’s his fourth proverb and this is a chiasm. A chiasm comes from the Greek letter chi, and a chiasm in literature is when you have this kind of a structure: A, B, C, D, you have various clauses, and the two inner ones, B and C are tired together so that A starts out with one subject, B starts with a second subject, C starts with a second subject, and D starts with one. So when you line them A, B, C, D, you get 1, 2, 2, 1, this kind of a thing. And that’s the way this things starts out and it’s very cleverly arranged and you want to see this because it will give you the key to what he’s saying here.

The first part of the chiasm is in verse 5, “It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.” Now the first part of the chiasm ends with “wise,” “It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise; than for a man to hear the song of fools,” so you have in verse 5, actually A. 5a is equal to A in that chiasm. 5b, “than for a man to hear the song of fools,” and 5b is related to element 2 in the chiasm. Then you have some related to this, you have element C in 6a and 6b. 6a, verse 6, “For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool,” now that, 6a and 6b is equal to element C. So these two are tied together, 5b, 6a and 6b. In other words, starting with verse 5, “than for a man to hear the song of fools, for as the crackling of thorns under a pot so is the laughter of the fool,” is all talking about the fool, that’s the subject content of that part of the chiasm. Now at the end of verse 6 you have a little piece tacked in there, “this also is vanity.” There’s a little phrase stuck in verse 6, that is part B of the chiasm, 6C and verse 7. So you have “this also is vanity, [7] For oppression makes a wise man mad, and a gift destroys the heart.”

Now I’ve gone through it very roughly first to give you the chiasm because this pulls out the interpretation of these three verses very well. Remember these two inner sections deal with the same subject, so let’s start the interpretation of verses 5-7. Verse 5 is the classical proverb, “it is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.” That is a classical proverb repeated at least six times in the book of proverbs. There’s nothing new, there’s nothing radical about that and it’s obvious common sense. The rebuke here means a wise man coming up to the person and saying look, this is the way life really is and that’s far better than to sit around and waste your time with a bunch of jokers.

But now in verse 6, here’s where he begins to shred the position. “For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool,” and the word “thorns” is a word which means these rushes, and it’s a play on words because thorns is sirim in the Hebrew, and the word for pot is sir, and it’s a little rhyme he’s got in here from the original language and what it says is: “For as the crackling of sirim under the sir, so is the laughter of the fool,” and the idea here is that these thorns weren’t used in the ancient world for cooking; firewood was used for cooking. And what is a thorn? Thorns snap and pop in the fire and make a big loud noise but they don’t accomplish anything, there’s no work reform here, so he says you can pack all these thorns and so on that you want to underneath the pot and it doesn’t make a very good campfire because there’s no pulp to the wood, it just sits and pops and so on and doesn’t really boil any water with it; it makes a lot of noise though, loud noise, while these thorns are popping you’d think you were having a regular ten course meal going on. Therefore we have the situation develop in verse 6, “the crackling of thorns under a pot,” means this idiot, and every time he opens his mouth is sounds like thorns, a lot of noise, a lot of action, but there’s nothing produced; “so is the laughter of the fool.”

Now, at the end of verse 6 we have this puzzling phrase, and you read the liberal and they will say this phrase was tucked in there by a redactor because they can’t explain it, and they have to say anything we can’t explain in Scripture a redactor must have done it. Somebody must have jockeyed with the text or something. But it fits in if you notice the chiasm of verses 5-7 because what he has done is say look, just look at verse 5 he says, here’s the typical proverb, “better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.” Now the rest of verse 6 is playing that proverb up, he’s leading you up the hill and he’s going to dump you right off the cliff. He’s building you up for the letdown and so he starts out in verse 6 agreeing with it, he says yes, yes, yes, that’s a wonderful proverb, it sure is true, the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools, I agree completely. And then at the last part of verse 6 he begins to drop the bomb, “this also is vanity.” “This” refers back to verse 5, this proverb also stinks he says, this isn’t real, this isn’t really true and here’s why, verse 7.

“Surely oppression,” the word “surely” means for, it means because, it’s the particle of explanation, “For oppression makes a wise man mad, and a gift destroys the heart.” So what has he done? He starts out with a proverb, verse 5, “it’s better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools,” and he says yeah I agree with that, verse 6, and then he says but wait a minute, this whole thing is nonsense because even the wise man can be bribed into saying idiotic things. So really in the end there’s no authority whatever. He says even the most brilliant men can be duped, and it’s amazing how college professors can be twisted and turned by their salary. It’s amazing how philosophies and views change by who pays their salary. Now that’s not true always, but it’s very interesting; very interesting to watch how that happens. It’s interesting to watch some teachers how their salaries actually determine a lot of what they say in the classroom. And this is what he’s saying here, it’s very obvious, he says in verse 7, that you can take these wise men and it’s not always good to listen to their rebuke; suppose someone’s arm twisted them economically, then is it good to hear the rebuke of the wise? No, because they’re just a bunch of idiots like everyone else and they’ve been twisted and turned by gifts, by bribery he says.

So he says in verses 7 even the whole wisdom school doesn’t have authority, even these wise people can be bribed. He probably had some personal acquaintance with it because guess who was the biggest briber in Israel? Guess who had the most money? Solomon, and so it’s quite obvious that he probably tested it out, he was a man of experiments and I could just image Solomon saying here’s old doctor so and so with all his PhD’s, now I wonder if I went up to him and say, would you like to retire, and have all benefits, you could have a house near the Sea of Galilee some place, a summer home and three chariots, a Cadillac chariot to come down to Jerusalem in, and a few other things, wouldn’t you like that Professor so and so? Oh yes… well then Professor so and so let’s just shift the emphasis a little bit. And this can be accomplished. Now I imagine Solomon probably did it, so verse 7 reports back to us probably a very real thing.

Now to catch what he’s saying here, “oppression makes a wise man mad,” turn to Isaiah 44:25 and we’ll find out the use of that word “mad.” Let’s read verse 24 to get the immediate context. “Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, he that formed me from the womb, I am the LORD that makes all things, that stretches forth the heavens alone, that spreads abroad the earth by Myself. [25] That frustrates the tokens of the liars, and makes diviners mad, turns wise men backwards, and makes their knowledge foolish.” The word “mad” in that verse is the same word used back here in Ecclesiastes. And it doesn’t mean to go insane, that’s not the point. The word “mad” here is a word that means to become unreal. In other words, in verse 25 of Isaiah the diviner is mad; what does that mean? Why would you go to a diviner? Why would anybody go to a diviner? He would go to these occult teachers of Satan because they want to obtain information that they can’t otherwise attain. So therefore you go to a diviner to find out for sure what’s going on, what’s coming off. And what God is saying in verse 24, He says I am above the diviner, and when I hear that they have prophesied something, something that’s going to come pass, do you know what I’m going to do to spoil it? I’m going to make the opposite come to pass and I’m going to sit up in heaven and I’m going to look down on it and say ha-ha, you idiots. In other words He is going to render the words of a diviner as mad, meaning they will no longer correspond with what’s really there. It’s just a lot of vanity, the words are air, the words are descriptions that don’t fit reality because God has shifted reality on them. So that’s what it means to make mad.

Now back in Ecclesiastes 7 that’s what Solomon is saying; he’s saying that oppression, or extortion, the word “oppression” here means extortion, “makes a wise man’s words unreal,” they don’t fit any more. And so all human authority is uncertain. Now that, so far, is as far as we can get in the heptad but let’s go to the New Testament to find out how we as Christians can improve upon Solomon. Let’s turn to John 12; in John 12 we have the Lord Jesus Christ make a pronouncement upon the nation Israel, similar to the one you saw at the beginning of the lesson in Romans. In John 12:35 Jesus gives us the principle as believers. It was given to unbelievers at the time, the principle holds for believers.

“Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness come upon you; for he that walks in darkness knows not where he is going. [36] While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may be children of the light. These things spoke Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them.” At this point in the ministry of Jesus Christ He gave the last public invitation He gave ever gave, and He said I have told you, I have preached to you, I have taught the Word of God to you, I’ve done this, I’ve done that, and you haven’t received and I’m telling you one thing you’d better get straight and you’d better receive this teaching or just tune out and forget it because this is it; your time of opportunity to receive the teaching is decreasing. And in verse 36 John adds the editorial note that after Jesus made this last invitation He hid himself from them. From that point on in the Gospel Jesus never again addresses the public. It’s always working with His disciples. He completely shifts the tactics.

Why has He done this? Because He has tried to communicate the Word and they’ve gone on negative volition, negative volition, negative volition, and He says the light will be taken from you. Then in verse 37 John adds some more comments, “But though He had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on Him,” He gave them historical data, He gave them empirical evidences, but because their perception had been judged by God and decreased they could not believe. Verse 38, “That the saying of Isaiah, the prophet, might be fulfilled, which he spoke, Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? [39] Therefore, they could not believe, because that Isaiah said again, [40] He has blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.”

Now that sounds like a [can’t understand word] arbitrary hell-bent decision on the part of God but if you understand the principle that negative volition, these people had already rejected what light they had, God is no longer obligated to give any more light and He says I will give you darkness and you will be blind. And that’s what Jesus warned the people in His day, I am not going to sit around here year after year teaching you people, you accept now while you’ve got it or you forget it. In other words, perception in the Word of God is a function of your own spiritual attitude. You see this in a small way when you train your eyes to observe things. A person who doesn’t know how to observe things can’t make it; this is why many scientists are tremendously outstanding because they have the idea of observe, they have trained themselves to observe. A normal person would walk in and they would see absolutely nothing. In a similar way, though not exactly, it’s spiritually true. You have to train to observe.

For example, the study of the Bible, sooner or later we’re going to have a short course on how to study the Bible and you will find, as you begin to study the Bible for yourself as you should be doing, at the beginning you can read over a whole chapter and see nothing there or see one or two things. Later on you read over it and you see more things. Later on your powers of observation spiritually will be so highly developed that you can look in one verse for hours and never finish it because there will be so much in each verb. This means your perception is increasing. Now as you hear the Word of God, some people in this congregation get the tapes because they realize that the Word of God can’t come in one half hour a week and do anything, so they’re taking in Bible doctrine, taking in doctrine, taking in Bible doctrine and their perception is growing, and therefore their span of concentration is increasing and therefore it’s amazing how they can see things in their life, they can see how the Lord’s working in various areas; it’s amazing to watch this.

Others, because they have passively looked at the Word of God and not accurately received it and accepted it, the Christian life to them is dull, uninteresting, etc. Just like Solomon, Solomon is about the highest you can go. Why? It’s all perception; why is it all perception? Because there’s been no exercise. Hebrews 5 says spiritual discernment is increased by exercise, and what the Lord Jesus Christ is saying here is that these people did not respond positively to what they had, and therefore even what they had was taken away.

This is repeated again in John 7:17 where the Lord Jesus Christ offers a challenge in His day. This challenge, I’ve gone back to many, many times personally; it’s something you can fall back on in your Christian life, especially in the areas of divine guidance. Christians are always troubled, what is the Lord’s will for me, etc. But in John 7:17 you have a principle again referring by interpretation to unbelievers, by application to believers. “If any man will to do His will,” “His” there refers to God the Father, “If any man wills to do God’s will, He will know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” Jesus said simply this, you judge yourself by your own inner attitudes. He says if you can’t understand this doctrine there’s nothing wrong with the doctrine, the problem is in your own heart. And if a person wills, positively choose I want God’s will and I have the guts to take the consequences wherever it may lead, then you’ll know God’s will.

The trouble with it is some Christians get this idea, and it comes from Satan, well don’t know too much of God’s will because after all, you know what might happen, God might lead you out into the middle of the hotten-tots in the middle of Africa somewhere and you’ll have to quit college and you’ll have to quit your business and you’ll have to do all these things, God is such a meany He’d pick out the worst thing possible going for you and He’d deliberately lead you into that area. So you’d better not too seriously seek after God’s will because it might ruin your life. Now that is a satanic thought because what it is saying is that you cannot trust the character of God and it goes back to one of the most fundamental sins of Scripture, a rejection of God’s character, and you have to come to grips with it personally. Do I or do I not trust in God’s character to lead me? Am I willing to throw it all on His shoulders or not? It gets scary at times but it always pans out in the end. With our heads bowed.