Ecclesiastes Lesson 21

Explanation of HVP Wisdom: Be Middle-of-the Road – 7:15-25

We are in the last section of this portion of Ecclesiastes, because from chapters 5-7 Solomon is interested in giving us a presentation of his own philosophy of life, built from his own situations, lived apart from fellowship with God, lived outside of the divine viewpoint framework. And Solomon therefore through his negative volition has fallen away from the Lord with the result that mentally he falls away from the Lord and he must come up with a substitute and this substitute is explained. What Solomon has done is that he’s gone on negative volition; the Bible says when that happens you decrease your perception. There are certain things on the outside world that would refute your position and so you have blind spots toward these areas and you have, as Isaiah said, “eyes that cannot see, and ears that cannot hear,” and they have been judicially blinded by God, it’s part of a judicial blinding at His hands.

And in Solomon the human viewpoint model is that Solomon is being stretched in two ways, much like that rack of Medieval torture; the first is from his logic he would be driven into a despair, into chaos, but his experience, in the things of the real world he has to eat, he has to sleep, he has to drink, he has to get along with other people, he lives in a society, these things force him away from the logical conclusion of his position and so he comes up with these proverbs; proverbs basically are a summary, a set of summaries of real life, real experience and how to get along most successfully in life.

These proverbs were given to us in verses 1-17, there were seven of them and that’s why we call this a heptad. A heptad is a number of proverbs in one unit, the reason for seven being that the number seven in the Bible is the number of completion. When an author wanted to give you a complete presentation he usually did it by giving you seven statements, and so verses 1-14 are these seven statements.

In verse Solomon was saying that life is better behind you, “A good name is better than precious ointment;” is a classical proverb, and then he killed it by adding on “and the day of one’s death is better than the day of one’s birth.” And so he says life is fine, don’t get too excited about it however because death is better, then it’s all over. Now it’s not a total [can’t understand word] that Solomon has, it’s just that he’s trying to tone down the traditional outlooks that people of his day had in life that you could really be fulfilled, you could have a personal relationship with the Lord, you could have peace, you could have joy, you could have meaning, etc. all these things Solomon says are impossible so don’t hope for them, cut down your hope.

Then in verse 2, the second proverb, he says it’s better to go to a house of mourning than the house of feasting,” and his point was that life is short, so don’t get too excited about its length and trying to preserve its length, just remember that your life is short.

In verses 3-4, the third proverb, he said that when you really look at life it’s sad, and full of sorrow; he says sorrow, therefore, is better than laughter, he said you might as well be real, face the sorrow and the heartache and the tragedy and learn from it. In other words, don’t get too excited about finding pleasure throughout life.

Then the fourth proverb, verses 5-7 and his point was that it’s “better to hear the rebuke of the wise,” that was a classical proverb, and then he killed it in verses 6-7 by tacking on his little explanation, and he said yeah, that’s nice, except for the fact that even the wise men, even they are eventually destroyed and can be destroyed through bribery and other things. So you don’t have any real reliable authority in human life, including the wisdom teachers.

Then verses 8-10, here you have the fifth proverb and the point here was that life, basically, is monotonous, “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning therefore,” and he was saying that there is no progress in life, there is no decline in life, life just sort of stays the same day after day after day after day. That’s the theme of the introduction of the book of Ecclesiastes, and that’s why in verse 10 he says it’s silly to even ask the question, why are the former days better than these. In other words, don’t hope for the good old days because the good old days weren’t any better than today, they weren’t any worse than today, they weren’t any better, there’s no change, there’s just a dull monotony that goes on and on and on.

Then verses 11-12, his sixth proverb, he says in a very sarcastic reference in verse 11, “Wisdom is good with an inheritance,” and there’s one of his sarcastic endings that he tacks on, and by these endings that he conveniently tacks on to the he [can’t understand word], he says yeah, wisdom is find if you have a lot of money, the point being that wisdom really isn’t significant at all, it’s just when you have enough physical resources to enjoy it, such as he had, such as the gold and the great possessions of the Solomonic kingdom and the throne. When you have all those some wisdom is nice because then you have the resources to carry it out.

And then verses 13-14, the last proverb, “Consider the work of God; for who can make that straight, which He hath made crooked?” And he’s saying in verses 13-14 that the structure of the world, and your life, and all the situations in your personal life and in society around you, there is evil out there, there’s things that frustrate you, but you can’t overcome them; that’s the way it is, and so it’s foolish to go around trying to think you can change things because you can’t, it’s just an inherent part of what’s out there. And so in these seven proverbs he’s pretty well destroyed optimism as far as personal fulfillment in this life is concerned.

And so in verse 15 down through verse 25, to the end of the section, now he begins to explain a little bit more about his position. And scholars have called this the [not sure of phrase, sounds like: golden mean] section of the book of Ecclesiastes because Solomon here essentially is advocating a middle-of-the-road path, going right down the middle, going right in the main stream, avoiding all extremes of either good or evil but staying right in the middle. So it’s come to be known among expositors of the Word of God as the middle-of-the-road section of the book of Ecclesiastes.

In verse 15 he says “All things have I seen in the days of my vanity;” and by “all things” here means basically the same thing he meant in the first part of the book, it means that he’s looked out at life, he’s seen everything, there’s nothing new to see, and judging from all the things that he has observed in his life and thought about, and then he says “in the days of my vanity,” instead of saying the days of his life, because to Solomon life is shadowy. The word “vanity” in the Hebrew means something that’s like a cloud, a vapor, it has substance to it but it’s not enduring substance and it passes away. So as far as Solomon is concerned your life has no real abiding significance, it’s just there and it’s gone, so there’s nothing there to really grasp, nothing to get your teeth into, so really on his basis all of his life is the days of his vanity. And throughout these days of his vanity he says I’ve looked around and I’ve thought about things.

And then he says there’s one thing that really bugs me; and that’s verse 15, you have two t-h-e-r-e’s in your English text but they should really be translated as pointing a finger, in other words he’s saying look, “over here I see a just man who is perishing in his righteousness,” we know this because in the Hebrew there were many tenses in the verb form and the tense form here is a participle and it means a continuous picture that’s going on in front of him, it’s as though he [can’t understand phrase] and he said come here, do you see that house down there, there’s a just man that lives in that house and right now, this moment, you can sit at this window and look down at his house and see he’s perishing. And do it’s a present example before his eyes, here is “a just man that is perishing with all his righteousness,” in spite of his righteousness, he perishes anyway. He’s a businessman that tries not to cut corners in his business, he may be a student who tries not to do things what would be classified as a violation of the will of God, he tries to do these things and yet he says big deal, what has it got him; all it got him is that he’s still perishing, he’s sitting there perishing in his righteousness.

And then he says look over here, “here is a wicked man that is prolonging his life in his wickedness,” and then he points out the fact that there’s a person over there that has no scruples in life at all, and it doesn’t make any difference. So the point of his observation in verse 15 is that due to the naturalistic point of view, apart from eternity, in other words, Solomon is looking at life now from “under the sun.” If you’ve experienced the same frustration over the same observed things in your life, just watch the basis on which Solomon is operating. Solomon is saying that life is just that, there’s nothing before us, there’s nothing afterwards, just that, “under the sun.” We would call it just phase two, no phase three, nothing out there in eternity, it just stops. He says given this situation, your life is just that; then he says this is terrifically frustrating because righteousness does not pay, good guys do not win is his point. And when considered in the normal aspect of the naturalistic framework, outside of the Bible, this is a perfectly valid observation, nice guys do not win. And that’s very right, IF though the Bible is wrong, because the Bible says that life just isn’t death, life goes on for eternity and it’s out here where the scales are balanced, and then the good guys do win, those being people who have received the grace of God.

And so the balancing thing is something that Solomon completely omits; he omits all reference to the continuing life when the scales of life are balanced up again. But he says looking at just this life, in my shortened perspective, my human viewpoint, then he says this stuff just doesn’t make sense. He says I can look out here, he says I could take you through the city of Jerusalem and show you one house after another where the righteousness man does everything he can and still he perishes, and here is a person that’s lives as an outright slob and nothing ever happens to them; how come? It’s not a very just situation.

And so his conclusion in verse 16; his conclusions in verses 16-17 are built up as his observation of verse 15 and these conclusions are in complete opposition to the rest of the Old Testament. The rest of the Old Testament says that God is judging and God will judge, and that you just go on obeying the Word of God and you go on adhering to these righteousness standards regardless because you have the empirical assurance that God is going to judge, and the empirical assurance that you have is that He has already judged in the past in these various items in the Old Testament. But Solomon ignores this, he just throws all the Bible out, much like Christians do when they come across a problem, why would God do this to me and all the rest of it. Every time someone asks why did God do this, or why did God let this happen to me, etc. they are basically starting to make the same error Solomon is making; they’re starting to erase all of your eternal life and saying my life just counts here and God had better give me a fair break in this life. God doesn’t have to give you a fair break in this life; He may not, He didn’t give Job a fair break but in the overall, considered in the light of eternity it turned out all right. But it’s only when you consider eternity that it turns out all right. If eternity isn’t there, and the scales aren’t correct in eternity, then you have every right in the world to be bitter and malicious about life and how it’s treated you, etc. just like this man.

In verse 16, “Be not righteous overmuch,” is his conclusion, in other words, it doesn’t pay, success visibly is not directly related to your personal righteousness and when you consider the will of God, don’t get too excited about it, “be not righteous overmuch,” and he says “don’t make yourself over wise,” why should you destroy yourself. In other words, it’s foolish to look to the minutia of the will of God in your life; it’s foolish to study the Bible too much, it’s foolish to apply these principles day by day in your business, on the athletic field, wherever you may be in life, it’s foolish to apply these principles he says because you don’t win, in the end you just don’t win.

You can take the storm we had in Lubbock, a lot of people have given thanks because a lot of things could have happened in that storm that didn’t, but still in the end the storm didn’t go around the various streets and knock out the business of the bad guys and keep the businesses of the good guys; the storm was not selective, it just went through and wiped out businesses regardless of whether the owner of that business happened to be good or whether the owner of that business happened to be bad in the Christian sense of the word. The storm was not selective and you could therefore argue just like with Solomon, I go downtown Lubbock and I drive around and I see the damage, the storm wasn’t selective, it didn’t pay those men to be righteous, not in this life… not in that situation. Ultimately we say yes, it would pay them but that is if the Bible is true, but if the Bible really isn’t true and these things are not true, and if God doesn’t have a plan for your life that encompasses all eternity and when you die that you have an eternity ahead of you, if that isn’t true, then it’s all right to go down there and as you go through the building, just say well you see, righteousness doesn’t really matter after all, so therefore why bother.

And that’s Solomon’s conclusion in verse 16, why bother with it, it really doesn’t pay in the end. You could do the same thing in an athletic thing, the old struggle, the good guys come in second; this is the same sort of thing. Now of course it can be misapplied because oftentimes a person is too lazy to exercise and to discipline himself in an athletic endeavor and says well, I’m just trying to be a good guy or something like that and he doesn’t go out there to play to win, that’s different; I’m not talking about that. But the point is, when it gets into the area of playing dirty, etc. this kind of thing, just to accomplish a goal, just to win the game, at that point you have to say that the good guys do come in second because the good guys just couldn’t do that. And I don’t think this is evident in any other area more than the Christian businessman today, cutthroat competition in business is fantastic and it is getting progressively harder and harder and harder for a Christian businessman to make it in the business world and honor the Lord Jesus Christ. He is getting fantastic pressure put on him by all sorts of things, to cut corners, to lie, to misrepresent, to sign phony contracts, to engage in bribery, to get involved in every kind of underhanded attempts, it’s getting fantastic the pressure on the Christian businessman today. And here’s where the Christian businessman is facing the same kind of thing Solomon is saying and in the end if the Christian businessman is not fully convinced of the total plan of God and phase three included, that is from the time we receive Jesus Christ, phase two, to the time we die, phrase three out here in eternity, if he isn’t convinced the scores are going to be settled in eternity, then he is a most miserable individual or he might as well just hang it up and forget about being so scrupulous in his business and get on and be underhanded like everyone else in the cutthroat world.

So this is Solomon’s point here, he says it’s stupid to be righteous overmuch, you’re going to destroy yourself. He says Christian businessman, it’s stupid to be scrupulous in your business because in the end you’re going to get faked out anyway.

And then verse 17, “Be not overmuch wicked, either, neither be thou foolish. Why should you die before your time?” And Solomon here is going to the opposite extreme and saying you may temporarily conclude then the best thing to do is just go out and raise all the hell you want to. And Solomon says no, that doesn’t work either because in the end it can be shown from experience that this never works out. It’s just like every revolution in our time, the radicals who have tried to overthrow a society to bring in another one have always found that the society that comes in after that is worse than the one before. And so inexperience, it teaches that hell-raising doesn’t pay either. So therefore he says if you’re in between them both, and in verse 18 he ties this thing together and comes out with this statement of verse 18. This statement is not nonsense, verse 18 is very, very logical, IF the Word of God is not true.

Verse 18, “It is good that you should take hold of one,” not “this,” it would refer to verse 16, “It is good that you should take hold of one,” verse 16, the proposition of verse 16, “yea, also from the other withdraw not thine hand,” that’s verse 17; in other words, take these two maxims, don’t be righteous over much and also don’t be overly wicked, take those two things and put them together, and then he says, “for he that fears God,” that’s just a noun that Solomon is using, not the way we would use it but he’s just saying here’s a person who fears God, one who’s getting along, “shall come forth from them all.” But to understand the last part of verse 18 you have to understand that that is an idiom. In the original language it meant to leave behind or to accomplish, so the idiom really means “you will accomplish these things,” “to leave behind” means you can see from the past the mess that’s behind. And that’s how we got the idiom, “to accomplish,” and so he’s saying the modus operandi of human viewpoint in your behavior pattern would be verse 18; take these two maxims of verse 16 and 17, put them together and use them, draw a line right down the middle-of-the-road, don’t get too scrupulous about things, don’t adhere to God’s standards too much, on the other hand he says reality does teach you that if you get way out of line you usually get stomped on so don’t do that either. Just stay right down the middle, in other words, keep in the mainstream. And he says this is all we have left here, is verse 18, you have this middle-of-the-road philosophy of life.

Now he’s denying something that I have heard Christians in this congregation say to me, and this statement is wrong, and when I say this statement listen carefully because a lot of people say this and you think it’s true; it’s absolutely wrong! It goes like this: Christianity is the best life even if it’s false. The argument is that to live a Christian life gives you joy, peace, etc. and that is so fantastic that you might as well go ahead and live that, even though you’re not sure whether Christianity is true or not. In other words, Christian in experience is the most blessing, gives you the most peace, etc. of any other life. Now that is not true. You say I think it is true. Turn to 1 Cor. 15:19 for a moment. Here’s Paul’s answer to that problem. Paul wouldn’t have sat around and had Christians say oh Paul, this gospel you preach is so fantastic, why we’ll go ahead and believe it anyway because it works in life and it gives you such a wonderful peace and power, etc. that the Christian is so fantastic we’ll go ahead and live it even though it’s not true. And Paul says nonsense.

In 1 Cor. 15:19 he says, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” Now, what’s the point. The point is that if you look at life only from the naturalistic point of view, as from “under the sun,” inside these limits, from the time of your birth to the time of your death and that’s all your life, and you’re trying to take, say your average lifespan is 71 years; you’re going to be 71 years old, maybe you say we’ll take a person who is 35; okay, you’ve got 36 years left to live from this point on; 36 years and here’s the question: shall you go through the rest of your life those 36 years living as though Christianity is true and by that Paul doesn’t mean just the peace and the joy and the power, etc. he’s saying it’s more than that, the Christian life is a struggle, it’s a struggle to adhere to the standards of God when all the pressures of hell are against you and this goes in business, it goes in the home, it goes in personal relationships, it goes in school, it goes wherever you are, Christianity is not the best life on earth. That’s what Paul is saying, “if in this life only… then we are most miserable.” It is wrong to say Christianity gives you the best life even if it’s not true. If Christianity isn’t true you’ve got nothing beyond death and if I have nothing beyond death and if I have nothing beyond death then what do I do with all the times that I have tried to adhere to what God tells me is right, and I don’t get any benefit out of that, keep adhering and I still don’t get any benefit out it right now, I still adhere and I still don’t get any immediate benefit and I keep on adhering and I don’t get any immediate benefit and I go on and on day and day and still I don’t get any immediate benefit. And Paul says it’s miserable isn’t it? If you’re never going to get any reward for it, even in eternity, and there is no eternity, then forget it, you’re a most miserable individual. And this is what he says the Christian life is, it is a miserable life if you don’t get the big picture. We’ll apply that a little bit later but let’s turn back to Ecclesiastes 7.

Solomon launches into a second part of this explanation, beginning at verse 19 and running through verse 22. In verse 19 he quotes a classical proverb, he says “Wisdom strengthens the wise more than ten mighty men which are in the city,” “ten mighty men” referred to the city council of that day and he says that “wisdom strengthens the wise, more than ten mighty men who are in the city,” and the reason why he uses this contrast is that you have a city council and on the city council you have many different kinds of people and out of the group of people you have many ideas and it’s better to have ten men run the city than one in the sense that you get more creative thinking and you get more resource people, etc. When the tornado hit Lubbock the mayor and the city manager got other men around them, and a man who would be a specialist in the Red Cross, and a man would be a specialist over in this area, a man that would be a liaison with the Federal government, these resource individuals, and so the council, a group of men together gets your good resources, and out of that you have strength, you have additional data, you have additional creative thinking to analyze the material.

And so Solomon says just as it is better to have a council ruling in a city, so it’s better to have wisdom ruling with a man. Now that’s the proverb that he quotes; that proverb has similar quotations in Proverbs 21:22 and 34:5 so we know it’s a classical proverb but now Solomon kills it; he kills it by what he tacks onto the end of it; it’s just like somebody comes up to you and says you’re good, and then two seconds later, good for nothing. And that’s a sarcastic way of saying something and what you tack onto the end of the sentence destroys it all. Someone comes up and compliments you on something, you’re doing something better today than you did yesterday and then after they get through complimenting you they say anything would be an improvement. You see you kill, you kill the force of the whole compliment by what they tack on, the explanation.

And that’s Solomon’s technique here in verse 19, he’s quoting the proverb, now in verses 20-22 he’s going to mash it by his explanation. “For there is not a just man upon earth, that does good and sins not.” It seems like at the beginning when he starts in this that he’s justifying the proverb, in other words, yes, it’s better to have ten men in the city because you can’t find one man, but in the end what he’s saying is that you never can even find a wise man, so how are you going to get wisdom; that’s his point. In other words, wisdom in the Word of God is equated with righteousness; you have to make this equation; wisdom, knowledge of Bible doctrine is always related to righteousness, people who walk in fellowship with the Lord have maximum knowledge of Bible doctrine. That’s the equation, and so he says that, in verses 20-21, no man is perfect before God, therefore no man can be wise, therefore wisdom is beyond your attainment. That’s a simply argument.

Now I’ve heard Christians use verse 20 like Romans 8:23; I hope you notice that verse 20 in Ecclesiastes 7 is not being used like Romans 3:23, which says “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” is a declaration of man’s status before God and it’s declared in a context in which Paul then adds yes, but there’s a gracious solution. That’s not the way this verse is engineered. In verse 20 what Solomon is saying is “there’s not a just man upon earth, that does good and sins not.” And the context of that verse is complete different; the context of that verse is then there’s no hope for the man either, all have sinned, everybody has sinned, nobody can stop it, even God isn’t stopping it, God can’t stop it, and so therefore all men are sinners and therefore all men separate themselves from wisdom.

Verse 21, “And take no heed unto all the words that are spoken,” this is an imperative, in other words, since all men are sinners, since all men are fouled up in some areas, because of this equation: wisdom equals righteousness, if you knock out the right side of the equation you knock out the left side of the equation and he’s saying therefore since no man is righteousness no man can be perfectly wise; therefore he says in verse 21, don’t bother and listen to what people tell you. And so ultimately in his analogy of verse 19 he says it’s stupid to bring ten men in to try to rule a city. Why is it stupid? Because you’ve got ten people coming in and all they’re going to do is give you a lot of static. And they’re wrong because they’re on negative volition, they’re minus righteousness, minus righteousness, minus righteousness, have no perception of wisdom and so all you’re going to get is pooled ignorance. He says wisdom is just like that, he says I call ten idiots together and all you have is a group of ten idiots. You have wisdom, minus wisdom equals zero.

And so in verse 22 he says, “For oftentimes” and he draws from his own experience, “also thine own heart knows that you yourself have cursed others,” he says you yourself are no exception.

Now verses 23-25 he concludes this entire section. Next time after verse 25 we’ll be dealing with an entirely new section in this book. He concludes this section by saying this: “All this have I tested by wisdom,” in other words, everything that’s gone before this, chapter 5, chapter 6 and chapter 7, “all this have I tested by wisdom” and “by wisdom” means he’s gone out and tested it in his experience; he hasn’t sat in his armchair, he has gone out into the real world and tested this, and “I said,” this is the beginning, “I’m going to be a wise man,” “I will” is a volitional resolve, I resolve to be wise, “but” he says, afterwards I found I could not attain it, I could not attain perfect wisdom, “but it was far from me.”

“That which is far off,” now that has to be retranslated in verse 24, what it literally says is “that which has happened is far off,” in other words, go back in Solomon’s life t the time of chapter 2 when he decided he was going to launch out on a program of gaining wisdom. He says you can go back to that moment in time all the way down to this moment and that whole thing, everything that happened there, he says, is beyond me, it’s far off and I can’t understand it; “and exceedingly deep, who can find it out?” As we said last time, this is directly contrary to the Word of God for the Word of God says we can know, there is purpose in life and you can know it through the Word of God. But if you do not have the Word of God then you are shut up with verse 24; there are only two alternatives. Either it’s the Word of God or it’s ignorance.

Verse 25, “I applied my heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things, and to know” and that concluding statement in verse 25 is “to know that righteousness is folly, foolishness and madness,” literally the way it reads. He’s saying that I’ve learned that I can’t find wisdom, in other words, this is his meaning again, he’s taken righteousness, remember the equation, righteousness equals wisdom, same thing, it’s interchangeable, he says righteousness equals wisdom, I can’ find that, he says I go down here and I look at wickedness and that doesn’t satisfy either. So he says now what’s left? Middle-of-the-road. Now that’s the only thing that’s left if Solomon is right.

So now we come down to the last, as we always do and we like to discuss other portions of the Word of God that correct this. We never want to leave you with human viewpoint; we want to expose you to the human viewpoint of this book so you can appreciate the divine viewpoint framework of the Word of God. In Ecclesiastes 7 we are left in a dilemma and I want you to feel the force of this. If Christianity is not true, this is all you have; this is all you have! But in opposition to Solomon you can turn back to Deuteronomy 6. Let’s take Solomon’s behavior pattern, the middle of the road, and let’s work this backwards. What we want to do is apply the truth of the book of Ecclesiastes to our lives, but let’s do it backwards.

What we’re going to do is take Solomon’s behavior patterns in saying, now listen Solomon is wrong, isn’t he; we know Solomon’s out of it here, so what we should do is say if we as Christians show up in live with his (Solomon’s) behavior patterns, then what have we done; we’ve made an error somewhere along the line. What we have done is in the mentality of our souls we have taken in human viewpoint, and if our behavior pattern on the outside is this middle-of-the-road thing, and we are adhering to his proverbs in practice, we say well, God literally doesn’t mean for me to hold to this standard, God literally doesn’t mean for me to get too exercised about His Word; God literally doesn’t mean that I should spend every day studying the Word of God, God really does doesn’t mean that I should apply the Word of God in all areas of my life, including all areas of the academic field. Then if that is your pattern, you essentially are thinking exactly like Solomon… exactly like Solomon, that behavior pattern that you have shows you, shows me, and it shows the world how you’re thinking. It shows an inner thought pattern that basically there is no difference on the inside between you and Solomon, for a Christian should manifest a behavior pattern that is not middle-of-the-road, but one that is uncompromising toward the word.

In Deuteronomy 6:4-5 we have one of the most famous passages of the Old Testament, the famous shamah, or the famous slogan for Israel. “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD,” literally “the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” Verse 5, “Thou shalt love the LORD thy God, with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” And Solomon says that’s nonsense, it doesn’t pay off; it does not pay off to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might; it just doesn’t pay. No it doesn’t, in this life. And that’s a decision you have to make, am I going to bet on the fact that the Bible is true, that the reward comes after death, some of them come in this life, but the scales are settled up after death, do I bet that’s true, and if I bet it’s true then I’m going to live in a certain way. And if I’m not sure it’s true then I’m going to live Solomon’s way. And so verse 5 would be the absolute opposite to Solomon. And to live and to apply this [can’t understand word] to your life requires that you believe in a judgment after death.

To see this more clearly, let’s turn to one of the greatest Psalms, Psalm 22, the Psalm that the Lord Jesus Christ prayed when He was on the cross. Many of you have heard sermons on Easter about the last words of Christ on the cross. As you begin to read Psalm 22 those words in verse 1 should immediately hit you, and you should probably say as you look at verse 1, I’ve seen those words before, they are in the New Testament. And you did, because evidently from as far as we can determine the Lord Jesus Christ quoted from memory Psalm 22 on the cross, for as He was bearing your sins and mine on the cross, this Psalm was a prophecy of that very work. And as He hung there he repeated this, because this Psalm, the content of this Psalm describes the work of Jesus Christ on the cross and brings to focus Solomon’s problem.

It starts out, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Why art Thou so far from helping Me, and from the words of My roaring,” or in the Hebrew “the words of My screaming.” [2] “O my God, I cry in the daytime, but You hear not; in the night season I am not silent. [3] But you are holy, O Thou that inhabits the praises of Israel,” in other words, here in verses 1-2 he is saying that God has forsaken Him, He’s back in Solomon’s dilemma, and looked at from this standpoint of His life, between birth and death, the Lord Jesus Christ has been a righteous man, He has lived a perfect life. Now watch how the Lord Jesus’ life refutes Solomon’s position, but watch how close, on the other hand, Solomon comes to winning. Solomon’s almost right, if one little thing is not left out. Solomon is almost right, for the Lord Jesus Christ has lived a perfect life. Jesus Christ was the only man in history that could dare the people of His day to point out one flaw. In John 8 Jesus said I dare any one of you to point out some wrong in My life, some sin, I dare you, I challenge you, and not one person came forward.

Now the Lord Jesus Christ lived a perfect life and He went on and on and on and He got to the cross. Now at the cross, we know from the Gospel narratives that God the Father forsook Him. How do we know this? Because darkness descended. This is the first time in the life of Jesus of Nazareth that He had ever been separated from the Father. This is the first time in His humanity He had ever experienced sin, the separation, the lack of spiritual life, and that causes Him to scream out and He starts in to Psalm 22, and this is why He’s concerned, He has lived a perfect life up to this point, and it doesn’t pay off because on the cross God leaves Him. And this is the complaint of Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me?” And at this point the Lord Jesus Christ, in His humanity, faces a tremendous tension.

Too often I think that Christians fail to realize the tension in the humanity of Jesus Christ; they say well Jesus Christ is God, no problem; no problem! Jesus Christ had genuine humanity; Jesus Christ had limited intelligence, Jesus Christ didn’t even know when He was going to come again, Jesus Christ did not know in His humanity many things, and at this point on the cross for all He knew in His humanity, God might not help Him. You have to see this, there’s real tension that this man experienced on the cross. He had to live a life by faith, and you could say oh well, He had infinite access with the Father and all that; oh yes, but still the Lord Jesus Christ, it says in Hebrews 2, learned by obedience. He learned by obedience! This meant that in His humanity Jesus Christ went up to the cross and He didn’t just kind of waltz up there and say well no problem, another three hours and I’ll be off the cross, that is a complete distortion of what went on in the soul of Jesus Christ. When Jesus Christ got to that cross, for all He knew it was probable that the Father would help Him, but it wasn’t certain history yet, it hadn’t yet happened. And while He was hanging there He was in darkness, and at this point He prayed Psalm 22. And at this point in His life, as far as he knew in His humanity, the Father might not accomplish it.

Now of course the Lord Jesus Christ had perfect faith and so I’m not saying that He ever believed this, I’m saying that it was a temptation to His mind. Jesus Christ never yielded to the temptation but Jesus Christ had a struggle, when it says Jesus Christ had perfect faith and perfect obedience don’t think it was easy for Him. It wasn’t easy, He faced this genuine temptation, and the temptation on the cross was, am I ever going to get off of here, or am I going to just be here and all this great plan of God is going to come to a screaming halt because I’ve died on the cross. Now He didn’t yield to this, but I am sure Satan put this temptation in His mind. And the evidence is by His reaction in Psalm 22.

And so He comes, and then in verse 3 He says, “But You are holy, O You who inhabit the praises of Israel. [4] Our fathers trusted in You; they trusted, and You delivered them. [5] They cried unto You, and were delivered; they trusted in Thee, and were not confounded.” And He argues here in verses 4-5, He says the men of the past all have trusted in Jehovah, and they always were delivered. But then in verse 6 and following He says, “But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people. [7] All they that see me laugh me to scorn; they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, [8] He trusted in the LORD that He would deliver him; let Him deliver him, seeing He delighted in Him.”

And you see, as Jesus Christ was going through this fantastic tension, the crowd was laughing; you see, Satan was speaking through the crowd. This is a call to some of you who think the truth can be determined by majority vote; what was the majority in deciding whether Jesus was guilty or innocent? The majority decided He was guilty and the majority on the base of Satan. So truth is not determined by majority vote. This crowd, they were the ones that were articulating the satanic temptation, they said ha-ha, You lived a perfect life, God always delivered You, well let Him deliver You now, and this crowd externally bombarded Him with these scornful remarks, internally He was facing the temptation, maybe God might not, maybe God might not deliver Me from this. You have to see that Christ, if He did not experience these temptations, then Jesus Christ was an automaton and a robot. If Jesus Christ is a genuine man He had to face the same temptations and testings that you do and that I do. And when He got on that cross and the crowd started yelling at Him, as predicted in verse 8, “He trusted on the LORD that He would deliver Him” ha, “let Him deliver Him, seeing He delights in Him.” That was a genuine testing to the Lord.

In verse 6 when it says “I am a worm,” again it’s a prophetic thing; the word used for “worm” was a word that the women used to get scarlet die in the ancient world and the prophetic picture here is fantastic. The picture here is of these big vats where the women would take… they had women that had evidently much easier, more settled stomachs than today, and they’d fill this vat up with the worms and the women would get in bare feet and tromp the worms down inside this pan, and as they tromped the worms down, of course it would crush them, and out would come this scarlet dye. Now it’s interesting because of what the women did with the dye. After they got the dye out of this they used it to die the robes that they would put over themselves and prophetically we have here a picture of the fact that Jesus Christ was a worm, He was crushed for our sakes and from Him, the blood, we have imputed righteousness credited to our account, just as the women in the ancient world would take that die and die their garments. So this word “worm” here, just the word “worm,” is a fantastic prophecy of the work of Christ.

And so he says in verses 3-5, his argument is this: why is it that every other great saint of the nation Israel trusted, and You always came to their aid, but then He says in verse 6 and following, he says: but look at Me, I’m involved in this testing and You haven’t come to My aid, I’m involved in one of the worst testings ever because I have obeyed You, verse 10, “I was cast upon Thee from the womb; Thou art my God from my mother’s body.” And all these things, and He says look what’s happened to Me, You haven’t come to My aid yet.

So in verse 11 He says, “Be not far from me,” this is His first request, “Be not far from me, for trouble is near; for there in none to help. [12] Many bulls have compassed me; strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. [13] They gaped upon me with their mouths, like a ravening and a roaring lion. [14] I am poured out like water,” and this is a prophecy now, sang one thousand years before the crucifixion of the crucifixion. People were not killed by crucifixion in David’s time, not until the time of Anthony, when he came down into Palestine in 63 BC, was crucifixion ever used in this area of the country. And so here is a complete prophecy of the crucifixion. In verse 14, “I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted within me. [15] My strength is dried up like a potsherd,” you say that Jesus had an easy time; here is His humanity, it wasn’t easy. In His humanity He faced a fantastic thing, “…and my tongue cleaves to My jaws; and Thou hast brought Me into the dust of death.” In other words, death is imminent.

Verse 16, “For dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me; they pierced my hands and my feet.” Again, a prophecy of the crucifixion, they didn’t pierce people’s hands and feet when they killed them in David’s day. When they killed people in David’s day they did it with rocks, or they did it with a sword, but they didn’t pierce the hands and the feet.

Verse 17, “I may count all my bones; they look and stare upon me.” And then verse 18, another prophecy, “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” And here again we have a beautiful prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. And then verse 19, “Be Thou not far from me, O LORD. O my strength, haste Thee to help me.” You have to see the tension, in His humanity Jesus Christ almost didn’t make it on the cross. And here He’s asking that the Father come to His aid, [20] “Deliver my soul from the sword; my only one from the power of the dog. [21] Save me from the lion’s mouth; for Thou hast heard me from the horns of the wild oxen.”

Now verse 21 sets up the answer, and from verse 21 on through the rest of Psalm 22 we have the answer that we can give to Solomon’s problem. Solomon would advise the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, well, too bad Jesus that you were overly righteous, it didn’t pay off did it, it got you crucified. It was kind of stupid wasn’t it; you should have taken the easy way, you should have taken the middle-of-the-road way and then you would never have ruffled feathers, you’d never have gotten yourself in the jam, it’s stupid, what did it pay off Jesus? This would have been the only counsel Solomon could have given, Jesus, you did it the wrong way, you’ve got yourself nailed to the cross, now what good did it do, you were “righteous overmuch.”

And so in the end, in verse 21 and following we have the answer. The Lord Jesus Christ depends upon the fact that God the Father at a future time will answer His request. Now when did God the Father answer His request? God the Father answered the request of this prayer three days and three nights later, after Jesus died, then He is risen from the dead. It was at that time, the resurrection, that we know the work of Christ on the cross was authenticated. You see, if Christ had died on the cross and not been raised, and NOT been raised, if He had just merely died on the cross we could never tell whether the atonement was acceptable in God’s sight. The only way you can tell that the atonement works was that God raised Him. And that’s why in the book of Acts in those first few sermons the emphasis is not on the cross, the emphasis is on the resurrection because the resurrection is the authentication to the world, the Father is saying to the world by the resurrection, yes, I have accepted the atonement of My son and to show you that I have accepted it, I have raised Him from the dead. The authentication came three days later, and so you have this situation, as far as Jesus’ earthly life goes it was ended, He had been “righteous overmuch” and it obviously, looked at from the naturalistic standpoint of “under the sun,” up to this point… up to this point… it didn’t pay off. When the payoff came was after death and then three days later the Father raised Him from the dead; that was the payoff. But the payoff came after death, and if the resurrection is not true, if there’s no afterlife, there is no payoff and you’re stupid to live a holy righteous life.

That’s why he says in verse 21, it’s what we call a shift in the Psalm, you can see this in many, many of the Psalms in this book, where you get this tremendous agony on the part of the Psalmist and then it gets worse and worse until it finally climaxes and then suddenly there’s release; you don’t know what happened, whether it was as the man wrote the Psalm or whether it’s an accounting of later but somewhere in the middle of verse 21 Jesus Christ had assurance that God the Father would answer His prayer. It’s agony all the way up to the last part of verse 21 and then in the Hebrew past tense, “for Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorn,” welcome to the throne room of God. And at this point He knows that the Father has heard His prayer and that’s all He has to know. He knows that God the Father has heard the prayer, He knows He’s got the answer, there’s no problem.

Then verse 22 is what He is going to do when the prayer is answered. “I will declare Thy name unto My brethren;” that is you and me, “My brethren, in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee. [23] Ye who fear the LORD, praise Him;” see the whole [can’t understand word] of the Psalm shifts, up to this point it’s been pleading, up to this point there’s been no answer, and now suddenly there’s an answer and there’s a complete shift. Verse 23, “Ye who fear the LORD, praise Him; all ye seed of Jacob, glorify Him; and fear Him, all ye, the seed of Israel. [24] For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither has He hidden his face from him; but when he cried unto him, He heard.” In other words, God vindicated, God answered that prayer; it wasn’t answered in this life, it was answered in the next. And then finally you have the rest of verses 26 and 31 where He relates what He’s going to do in the future.

Let’s turn back to 1 Corinthians 15 for our conclusion. Jesus Christ’s prayer was not answered on the cross, I want you to notice that. From the human viewpoint, from the naturalistic framework that prayer never was answered; that prayer was not answered in this life, as a professor of mine once said, it was answered in a better way at a better time, and the prayer was answered in eternity. Now that is the only solution out of the dilemma in which you find yourself and I find myself; when the pressures of life come in, and you begin to feel discouraged, and you begin to say it’s not worth it all, it’s just not worth it all. I fight in the classroom to maintain my intellectual integrity, I fight over here, I fight in the home to keep the media from smashing my family, I fight over here, I fight in this area, I fight continually; the Christian life is not a kind of zombaic existence of floating on cloud nine in perfect peace and joy. There is a peace and joy in the Christian life but it’s in the middle of a combat situation. And you have to see that in the Christian life; the Christian life is stupid if it isn’t true, absolutely stupid, you are asking for trouble, you are fighting all of society around you, you are literally taking on the world. Now it’s absolutely stupid to try it unless you’ve got a good reason for doing so.

And when we conclude in 1 Cor. 15 Paul applies it to the problem of death. Therefore in verse 12 he says, “Now if Christ be preached, that He rose from the dead, how do some say among you there is no resurrection of the dead.” In the Corinthian church had apostasy, you had a group of people going around, there’s no resurrection of the dead, that’s nonsense, there’s no such thing as resurrection of the dead. And of course if there’s no such as resurrection of the dead then the whole Christian life becomes absurd. He says you say there’s no such thing as resurrection of the dead. And then watch his logical conclusion. [13] “[But if there is no resurrection, then is Christ not risen, [14] and if Christ be not risen then our preaching is in vain, your faith is in vain. [15] Yea, we are found false witnesses of Christ because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He raised not up if so be the dead rise not.”

In other words, if there’s no resurrection from the dead the Bible is wrong and the apostles are liars; you can’t escape this by some sweet little allegorical interpretation, oh well, you see, the apostles never really meant to say that Jesus physically raised from the dead, what they meant to say was that His spirit comes to inspire mankind, a spiritual resurrection. Oh no, you can’t use that out, it’s cut off; the New Testament and this passage cuts you off. It says clearly here that Paul [can’t understand words] allegorical spiritual resurrection but a literal physical one.

And he said in verse 16, here’s where it applies to them personally, “If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised, [17] And if Christ be not raised your faith is in vain, you are yet in your sins.” That’s his first application, verse 17, “you are yet in your sins,” there is no salvation for you and you are back to Solomon in Ecclesiastes 7, right back where Solomon is. What is Solomon’s problem? There is no man on earth that does good and sins not; no man has purpose, no man we know is everything, no man has access, no man has wisdom, nothing, we’re left. And that’s what verse 17 says, you’re left there.

Verse 18, “Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ are perished,” what do you do about the dead ones? Don’t just think of yourself, what about your dead people? What about the people who went through all their life, some of them perhaps painfully, people, many Christians I have known the last years of their life have been lived in constant pain. The point is that Paul is saying in verse 18, what do you do about the dead people? What about those people who have lived all their life and have taught you, parents who have taught this generation to live by the Word of God, etc. what do you do about them; then all their life is a waste, isn’t that right? All their life is a total waste of time.

Then finally the third application, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” Just like Jesus would have been most miserable on the cross, as Psalm 22 says, very miserable, big deal, He lived a righteous moral life, taught all sorts of nice things, and what did it do, it got Him crucified; big deal! See life does not pay just dividends now, it is only if Christianity is right the scales are leveled out in the future. How are they leveled out? Simple, here is the cross of Christ, the time you receive Christ until the time you die, if you are a believer then you will face believer’s judgment of 2 Cor. 5, when your life will be evaluated, good and bad; those things which are done in the filling of the Holy Spirit will receive reward, those things that are human good will be burned. That’s explained in 1 Cor. 2. So your life will be evaluated and the things that really counted, the things where you produced under pressure, when all the things were against you, when all the circumstances were against you, when all the people were against you and everything came down on top of your head, and you produced because you were filled with the Spirit, that will receive a reward.

And then, of course the person who is not a believer, he also is evaluated; he’s evaluated in Revelation 20 at the Great White Throne and all of the good works in which he trusted, all of the things in which he trusted are going be destroyed and he’s going to go in the lake of fire. So things will be evened out in eternity, but only in eternity, not now.

With our heads bowed.