Ecclesiastes Lesson 29

“Wise” Human Viewpoint – 10:8-20

It is sometime since we reviewed the prologue to this book, in verses 2-11 and I’d like to go back there because again I’d like to remind you of one of the unnoticed areas of human viewpoint. Remember this book is a book studying the qualities, the characteristics of human viewpoint, and in our day it’s absolutely essential that every believer be able handle himself, at least in the basics of human viewpoint. At any given moment you are thinking human viewpoint or you are thinking divine viewpoint; there’s no in between. You may be having partial[can’t understand word] but because they are framed inside a general philosophy of life that is unbiblical, this is human viewpoint. And Solomon takes this to the logical conclusion. And Solomon’s whole thrust in this book is to define a way which will make the maximum use of the limited knowledge of human viewpoint.

And so we might say that there are going to be three levels that you encounter again and again in this book and we have encountered them in the past. The man who walks with divine viewpoint, that’s one characteristic; the man who walks with human viewpoint but he walks at least using as much of the knowledge that he has available as possible. And finally the idiot, and he not only doesn’t have divine viewpoint but he doesn’t even pay attention to the knowledge he needs to make the other half. So basically there are three options: divine viewpoint, human viewpoint, or being an idiot, and today when we get over into chapter 10 we will see three areas defined.

But in verses 2-11 Solomon gives us a resume of his entire work, and it’s to define the word “vanity” of verse 2, “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” And the word habel is the word after whom the second member of the human race, Abel, Eve’s son, she named her son Abel, which is the Hebrew word “vanity” or vapor, and it means by the time she had her second son she realized that the world was a fallen creation and it had certain dull, frustrating, monotonous characteristics. And these monotonous characteristics Solomon very effectively presents at the beginning of verse 4, it’s far more effective in the original language, but he says in verse 4, if I can try to imitate the thrust of the original language, “one generation is passing away before my eyes, while another generation is coming, but the earth does continuously abide forever. [5] The sun has arisen, and the sun has gone down, but now it is hastening to its place, only to rise immediately. [6] The wind is going toward the south, it is turning about to the north; it whirls about continually, going all the time, and the wind returns again according to its circuits. [7] All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full. Unto the place whence the rivers are going, there they continue to go.”

Solomon’s point here is that there’s a lot of motion in life but it’s going nowhere, there’s no progress, and the motion that you see is accepted, it looks like there’s progress being made, for example when it says in verse 4, “a generation is passing away,” we’re going to have a new one, but Solomon says that’s great, this keeps on happening. One would say “the sun has arisen, and the sun is going down,” thinking there’s progression and Solomon says yes, but the sun tomorrow is going to do the same thing. You have motion but you have no progress. Verse 6, the wind shifts from the south to the north and the east, etc. The wind shifts but there’s no progress. Verse 7, the rivers are running, water is moving, but there’s no progress, it keeps on doing the same thing. And this basically is what he is saying with man because he says in verse 11, “There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall be hereafter.”

He’s saying that all human progress falls in the same category, there’s a lot of motion but there’s no progress, and this is frustrating. But these are the observations of a realist. You can accuse Solomon of many things but there’s one thing you can never accuse Solomon of and that is that he walks around with his eyes completely open. He was an empiricist and he believed, divorced from divine revelation and he was absolutely correct that there are only two ways of proceeding; the empirical route by studying your experience and the logical route by analyzing that experience I the light of principles. And those are the only two sources that Solomon had to build his life on, and if you use these two sources to the exclusion of an intensive in depth analysis of the Word of God, you too operate on the same framework as Solomon, namely, human viewpoint.

But in our day many people aren’t as honest as Solomon, and so what they like to do is pretend they are progressing. For example, this is one reason why evolutionary religion is so crucial and why it’s been passed off in our day as something scientific. It isn’t something scientific; it’s something very religious. The modern man needs it; he needs it because he needs a sense of progress, even if it’s not really there. He needs to believe it is, whether it’s there really or not. He can’t face verses 2-11. So this is you are faced with if you just refuse to submit to the Word of God, you are left with a machine that just keeps on going; the wind keeps blowing, there’s lots of motion, activity, but there’s no progress. And he says this is exactly the essence of human viewpoint.

Now turn to chapter 10; we come to what Solomon gives and offers us as the best you can do given human viewpoint. This is the best you can do. Remember the three categories of man; the man who walks with divine viewpoint, he lives in the Word; the man who lives in human viewpoint wisely, and then the idiot. There are three classes of men; Solomon is in class two, most unbelievers today are in class three, and 3% of the Christians are in class one. So this is the way we break down our section today, based on the concept of divine viewpoint, things that we get from the Word of God versus human viewpoint, things we pick up from our culture.

Solomon, beginning in chapter 9 had started a section on different proverbs, trying to summarize in pithy statements the best you can do. And last time we left at verse 7; today we pick the narrative up in verse 8 and continue through verse 14. Verses 8-9 are the third pair of proverbs. This pair of proverbs goes back to the theme, the overall theme. Solomon says look, if you are really honest, you can illustrate your limitations by a piece of paper. Take a piece of paper and we have all dealt with X and Y equations, [can’t understand words] in math, at least we hope so, they haven’t replaced math classes with sex education yet. So we have X and Y. Now let X be the space, there’s a dimension in space, and let Y be the dimension in time.

What Solomon says is that all human knowledge is limited to a square on that graph. No matter how brilliant you may be, you can never get outside of this square, because he says there are certain lower limitations which you can observe with your eyes, they’re about one millimeter in space, and there are certain upper limitations that you can observe in space and to go beyond that you need instruments, but eventually the instruments too fail. And so you’re limited. And in time you’re limited also. In time you’re limited by the eye to maybe one tenth of a second or something, but you can see, anything quicker than that you can’t see, you need high speed photography to catch it. Anything beyond your lifetime, say 70 years, you can’t see; we might add to that human history, say written history 4,000-6,000 years, but anything beyond that in time you cannot directly observe as a man. And so therefore as a man this is where you stand; you are limited to that box. And I don’t care how many instruments you have, I don’t care how brilliant you may be, you still are limited to the box and you don’t know for sure what’s outside. And that’s what Solomon says you’ve got to come to grips with, face to face with your own limitations. He is honest enough to say this. He is honest enough to say that given this, then what can we do.

All right, keep this graph in mind as we begin verses 8-9. In verses 8-9 the theme is human relations, and so he’s going to take one area of human relations and say now this is the best you can do and many of these are correct in the sense that they are not just completely wrong because it’s human viewpoint, often times you’ll notice there’s a truth in here with which we can agree, except we would phrase it a slightly different way. And in verses 8-9 in the area of human relationships you say there’s one thing you want to watch our for, and that is the problem of revenge tactics, always looking to get even with somebody. And he says people who always look to get even with somebody always get it dumped back on them.

Look at verse 8, “He that digs a pit,” now “he that digs” is a Hebrew participle, a participle, when it’s used as a verb, by the way, for those of you who have forgotten your English, a participle can be used two ways, as a noun or as a verb. When it is used as a verb it is a motion picture tense in the Hebrew, it means this is action is continually going on before your eyes. When it is used as a noun in the Hebrew it refers to the character of the person denoted by the participle. So we have the participle here used as a noun, “he that digs,” this means this person has as part of character continual revenge tactics, always trying to get back at somebody, not just once, not just twice, but continually; this is a rule of his life, always trying revenge, get back at somebody for something he imagines they have done.

To show you that this is not just a pit, digging, we have to always interpret the Bible in the light of the type of literature. This is a wisdom type literature, therefore we go to other areas of the Bible where there’s wisdom literature to learn what digging a pit means in the context. Turn to Psalm 7:15. A pit is a trap that hunters used in the ancient near east to trap animals and then it came to mean you dig a pit to trap the person that you want to get. And so “he that digs a pit” has the connotation of going out to get somebody. Psalm 7:15, David, speaking of his enemies, “He made a pit, and dug it, and has fallen into the ditch which he has made. [16] His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate.” See, there you have the context.

Psalm 9:15, again we have this phrase, “The heathen,” or the Gentiles “are sunk down in the pit that they made; in the net which they hid is their own foot taken,” again the imagery of hunting and these are the people that would go out and get somebody. Proverbs 26:27, see, you don’t live in the culture in which the Bible was originally written but if you’re going to learn the Bible and going to follow it, you’ve got to interpret it in the light of the culture in the time in which it was written. Prov. 26:27, “Whoso digs a pit shall fall therein, and he that rolls a stone, it will return upon him.” So you have the constant theme that revenge tactics don’t pay off. Revenge tactics always come back on your own head.

Ecclesiastes 10:8, “He that digs a pit shall fall into it, and whoso breaks an hedge, a serpent shall bite him.” Verse 9, “Whoso quarries stones shall be hurt therewith; and he that splits wood shall be endangered thereby.” Now the word “remove” stones literally is quarry, and it refers to building something. See in verse 8 it’s tearing down something; in verse 9 it’s building something, they’re quarrying stones, they cutting the lumber to build. No matter what they are doing, whether it’s an act of destroying what is there first or building a replacement, Solomon says they fail, because these people are idiots. These are class three, the three classes remember, divine viewpoint, human viewpoint and idiot, and he’s talking about the idiots, or the “fools” as the Hebrew says, but it would better be translated as idiots. The English word “idiot” tells it far better than fool, fool is too tame.

So the people of which Solomon speaks in this passage are these people who don’t even heed what they know of relative knowledge. In other words, given the fact that they are limited by that box, given the fact that they can’t know absolute truth, given the fact they’ve cut themselves off from the words of God, even then they’re idiotic because they don’t take advantage of what wisdom they could have available to them. And so I would say that Solomon’s observations in verse 8 and 9 can be seen in comments that have been made on the revolution. I read some of these statements to you, but I’ll read them again because in verses 8 and 9 the context demands them.

Lenin was supposed to have said from his death bed the following statement; remember this is a man who brought communism to Russia, but again, it’s foolish. Remember what Solomon said back in verses 6-7, he said what’s the wise thing to do if you’re an unbeliever, and you’re living in consistency with human viewpoint, or if you’re a carnal Christian and you’re living in human viewpoint, what is the most wise response to what you consider to be a bad political situation? He says nothing, just go along with it… just go along with it, because when you revolt and you smash the system the probability favors the fact that it’s going to be worse after you finish than before you began. And you find this amply illustrated in history.

Lenin said this: “I have made a great mistake; our main purpose was to give freedom to a multitude of oppressed people, but our method of action has created worse evils than horrible massacres. You know that my daily nightmare is to feel that I am lost in this ocean of blood.” So you have it from the mouth of Lenin, dedicated revolutionary; he wanted to change the structure of Russian society and after he looked upon his life and saw what he had done he realized that it was just a sea of blood he created, and it was worse off after than when he began.

We have a Harvard professor [can’t understand name] who said: the history of human progress is a history of incurable stupidity; in the course of human history several thousands of revolutions have been launched with a view to establish a paradise on earth. Practically none of them has ever achieved its purpose.

From the empirical point of view, Solomon in verses 8-9 is absolutely correct. This has a political connotation here; he just got through talking about a political situation, and in verse 8-9 he says don’t bother to fight the Christians because you’ll be crushed in it, or if you do break the system down, what you wind up is worse than you had before. You can find verse 8-9 apply on the individual level. McMillan in his book, None of These Diseases notes a study in which 96% of hospital patients in that particular hospital that he studied with colitis, 96 of them were in there and their chief personality trait, as he observed them, was in the area of vengeance, getting back at somebody, and with the result that they put themselves in the hospital, that’s all. So it’s just being an idiot to fight the system, Solomon says in verses 8-9. Now there are ways of doing it from the Christian, you get in the area of divine viewpoint, authorized by the Word of God through the Holy Spirit. There are those ways, but Solomon says to do it in the energy of the flesh is asking for trouble.

In verses 10-11 we have another proverb. This is the second pair of human viewpoint proverbs that Solomon gives us. These concern obvious things, we won’t spend too much time except to straighten out the translation, but in verses 10-11 the theme simply is in dealing with God be prepared. In verse 10, “If the iron be blunt,” this was a tool that was used to cut with, actually we could say axe, “If the axe is blunt, and he does not sharpen the edge, then he must put more strength in the action, but wisdom” he says “is profitable for preparation.” What does he mean by this? He means that wisdom, and please remember that the word “wisdom” in Hebrew, chokmah, doesn’t mean wisdom like you are used to thinking. When I use the word “wise” or the word “wisdom” because you have been raised with the English language your mind starts thinking in terms of intellectual wisdom, but the Bible doesn’t think that way. In the Old Testament the word “wisdom” meant skill. It could be a talent, it could be any craft; a person who was skilled was a carpenter, a person who was skilled was called chokmah, or he had wisdom, he was wise. Then it came to mean he who is wise in skillful living, is wise; in other words, he had skill to use for situations in life. So he says that the wise person will prepare ahead.

Verse 11 is mistranslated, it should be, “If the serpent bite without enchantment,” or before an enchantment, “then the charmer has no profit.” The point he says here is that you consider the serpent, etc. a person doesn’t train a serpent and a serpent bites him obviously it’s kind of stupid to be worrying about the charm. In other words, use the wisdom that you have.

Now in verses 12-14 we have three verses devoted to a new set of proverbs. And in verses 12-13 the theme is to keep your big mouth shut if you don’t have anything to say; and that’s basically Solomon’s advice, because a person who is operating on human viewpoint has limited knowledge. Remember that square, you can’t know things outside of the square unless what we’re going to say at the end is true. But given the fact that you have human viewpoint your limited by the square, the best thing to do is speak proportionally to the amount of information you have and don’t exceed the bounds; therefore I would say that to summarize this in blunt language, what Solomon is saying is an idiot is one who can’t zip it up and keep his mouth shut, always blabbing all over the place, spilling out a lot of bologna, getting himself in trouble and everyone else. Every local church has two or three idiots in the congregation who specialize in making trouble for everyone else. Luckily Lubbock Bible Church has been very gracious and blessed of the Lord not to have such people.

But in verses 12-14 we have Solomon’s advice. Let’s look at it in detail. “The words of a wise man’s mouth are gracious, but the lips of a fool will swallow him up.” Now the words “the lips of a wise man are gracious” means that the person whose lips are gracious promotes peace, that’s what that idiom means. In other words, he doesn’t stir up trouble. Solomon says it isn’t worth it, life is too short, life is much to short to go around starting trouble so just forget it; if you can’t open your mouth and say something sane, just zip it up and keep it shut; that’s what he’s saying. And so in verse 12, “The words of a wise man’s mouth are gracious,” peace promoting literally. “But the lips of a fool will swallow up himself,” in other words, he will be trapped by his own words. Verse 13, “The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is an evil madness.” Now we want to study the word “foolishness” and “madness” to get the image that Solomon is saying. First, foolish, second madness. What do these two words mean? Each of them have separate a connotation.

To get this, turn to Isaiah 44:25, this is a classic illustration of how these words were used in the original, so you can get the nuance and the flow of thought. The thing you may get the impression that these proverbs are trivial. Let me warn you about something. The proverbs in both the book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and as they are embedded in the Psalms are never trivial. If you think this, the corrective action to take is just take two of them; just take two verses and write them out in your own words on a piece of paper and ask yourself, is this true or is it not true in the 24 hours in which I am now living. And you’ll begin to discover that these proverbs are tremendous and they have a lot of deep truth. I’ve gone through them quickly here but you can spend hours and hours thinking about them. In fact, the rabbi’s during the Middle Ages would take literally days working through one sentence of the proverb because they would meditate on how these proverbs link up with the 24 hours in which they were then living.

Isaiah 44:25 is what God does to the enemy prophet in the days of the exile, or a prelude to the exile. “He is one who frustrates the tokens,” now the tokens were human viewpoint prophecies “of the liars, and makes diviners mad; who turn wise men backward, and make their knowledge foolish.” Now “making their knowledge foolish” is this word “foolishness.” How does turning a prophecy upside down make knowledge foolish? What Isaiah is saying, if you’re like this man, you make the prophecy; he says that Nebuchadnezzar is going to leave Israel alone; in 586 Nebuchadnezzar would moving in from the east with his armies. He had already struck in the northern kingdom, the northern kingdom had fallen earlier to the Assyrians, and when he got outside of Jerusalem, just to the east of the city Nebuchadnezzar decided well, I’m going to take a quiver of arrows, and this is an area of fortune telling you see here, spiritism and the occult coming in, Nebuchadnezzar took a quiver of arrows, he had marked arrows in this thing, and they way of ascertaining God’s will in that day was to take these arrows that had marks on them and throw them down on the grown and the one that got the furthest out with the mark on it, that was the thing to do. So evidently Nebuchadnezzar had two arrows in his quiver, one said you’re going to go east and clobber Jerusalem; the other one said you’re going to go southwest and clobber Pharaoh. And when Nebuchadnezzar took this thing and they threw it out on the ground the arrow said go to Jerusalem, so Nebuchadnezzar went to Jerusalem. And that’s how Nebuchadnezzar made his decision, he was a brilliant military genius but he made it on the basis of [can’t understand word] and superstition.

But what Isaiah is saying here is that you can take these pagan prophets and many of them have infiltrated Israel, just like today in the Christian church there are many non-Christians that have infiltrated and made their influence known and felt. And so here these men had infiltrated the nation and they were telling and advising the state department of the nation, look, there’s no problem, Nebuchadnezzar’s not going to come here, look it, he’s got Pharaoh down here, Pharaoh is down there and any man in his right mind is going to clobber Pharaoh first; what good would it do for Nebuchadnezzar to come to Jerusalem; clobber Jerusalem and he’s still got Pharaoh there. What he’s obviously going to do is go down and clobber Pharaoh. So therefore all of these people were advising, something like our state department, oh, you don’t have to worry about the aggressor, you don’t have to worry about Nebuchadnezzar, he’s rearming but you don’t have to worry about him, there’s not going to be a war so don’t get your liver in a quiver, etc. just relax, sit around and enjoy yourselves. So what happened? All of a sudden, bang, bang, and the at east gate of Jerusalem was guess who? Nebuchadnezzar. And so when God said I have made these people foolish, in other words, He had separated their words from reality and that’s what this means in verse 25; He frustrates the prophecy, it means He takes their words, their methods, and here’s reality, here’s what really happened, [can’t understand word] out here and He cuts between them, and that’s what foolishness means, it means that the thoughts and words of an individual don’t line up with what’s really there. That’s foolishness, and that is madness, and that’s the connotation in the Word of God for idiot or fool. It means that his thoughts and what he’s saying do not line up with what really happens in the end.

Now we’ve reached a very dangerous point in our country; we have reached a point where the liberals, operating on human viewpoint have descended to the idiot level. We have reached a point where instead of… before at least we had intelligent unbelievers who were operating on wise human viewpoint but we have reached a point in our nation where we are being bombarded with people who not only operate below divine viewpoint but they’re operating on the level of the idiot. I would rather have intelligent unbelievers run our country that some of the idiots that are now running it today, and some of these idiots, unfortunately, happen to be individually believers in Jesus Christ. The tragedy is that over the years of their Christian life they haven’t made an attempt to get into the Word of God systematically. So this is the idiot level; back to Solomon.

“The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is evil madness.” You see this on TV, the news commentators; if you don’t think the TV news commentators are bad, listen, I just got through reading some literature put out by the new left; they praise a certain prominent news commentator for all the help that he’s given them. Now that’s not some right wing operation, a publication of the John Birch Society or something; it didn’t come from the John Birch Society, it came straight from the horse’s mouth, the new left. They have a whole page of thanks, they were helped out tremendously and they’ve used the TV; they didn’t have to spend money or anything, just listen to the TV. So we have this in the area of the news. So you can see with the media under the control of idiots, with the government under the control of idiots, what are you going to have? Idiots! This is why people despise preaching the Word of God today because if you just use a four syllable word, I had a homiletics professor sit here that said you shouldn’t use those long words, people can’t follow those words, they have three syllables in them. Well, isn’t that tragic, what do you do with the long words in the Word of God? Big words are for big ideas, and if you want little words fine, stick with your little ideas, and that’s what I told him. How do you think without big words?

You think with words and never be afraid of big words; once you identify a word… for example, you get to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we should know the word propitiation, we use the King James Version of the Bible, it’s a legitimate translation of the Greek and what it means is that God has a righteousness and justice and it refers back to the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament where you have the cherubs above this ark and you have on this a mercy seat of gold, speaking of Jesus Christ, you have the high priest put blood on there and God righteousness and justice looks there and says I’m satisfied. Now that’s the concept, but why go through a five minute exposition of the background of when I use the word; you use the word because people understand, or should. So today in our time how do we educate our generation; we do not live in an educated generation, we live and a lot of people have a lot of words and a lot of ideas but they’re idiots because their ideas don’t correspond with reality, that’s the point. And until they do we do not have an educated system.

Verses 14, “A fool multiplies words. A man cannot tell what shall be; or what shall be after him, who can tell him?” Now in verse 14 is one of those sarcastic statements of Solomon. He’s doing this with sort of tongue in cheek. He starts off as a proverb, but then he stops. See, a proverb always has balance to it; a proverb will say one thing and then balance it with another, but if you look closer at this verse there’s no balance. He starts into the proverb, and then bang, he stops. He says “A fool multiplies words.” Now if you’re familiar with this kind of wisdom you would expect something else, a parallel or a contrast with that statement but there isn’t any here. It just says “a fool multiplies words,” and I were to translate this into contemporary translation I’d put a long dash after that, “A fool multiplies words— ” dash, interruption. And now in the end of verse 14 he returns to his old classic refrain, “Man cannot tell what shall be, and what shall be after him, who can say.”

Go back to the square again; here’s time and here’s space, no matter how brilliant you may be you are limited by this barrier; Solomon says as you move through time you can’t tell for sure what’s coming off ahead of you; one second from now you don’t know. So Solomon says, since you have this limitation, why multiply words and make plans. Why go to all these lengths to do this thing when you have this natural limitation.

Example from practical life: why go through and say after I graduate I’m going to do this; when my business gets built up to this point I’m going to do this; when I get so much money then I’m going to spend it over here before the IRS gets it, all planned out. There’s only one problem; you haven’t got a shred of a reason for making the plan because you don’t know for sure what’s coming off.

Let’s turn to the New Testament to see how this is handled. In James 4 we have James quote this concept and deal with it. James 4:13; James appears to say the same thing Solomon is saying except there’s something different, that’s hidden here and I want to bring it out. James appears to start off just like Solomon; now this is addressed to you as believers, this is a divine viewpoint of the situation. Given the limitations of knowledge, how do you live? James 4 starts out in the same [can’t understand words] verse 14, “Whereas ye know not what shall be morrow. For what is your life? It is a vapor,” this is the word translated “vanity” in the Old Testament. “It is a vanity,” or “a vapor that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away. [15] For what that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. [16] But now ye rejoice in your boastings; all such rejoicing is evil.” Now it appears that James is saying look, in view of the limited knowledge that you have, you’d better not make certain plans. Solomon has said the same thing, but there’s one problem that James deals with that Solomon never did.

We’ll return to James in a minute but turn to Luke 12:18, after you read Ecclesiastes and you understand what Solomon has said, you’ve understood carefully what Solomon is saying, all I have as an individual is this square, I’m limited by this box, I’m limited by my empirical observation and my logic and I have no other source of information. Limited with this, then the only logical thing for me to do is try to eek out what happiness I possibly can, hence Solomon’s advice, eat, drink and get as much happiness out of life as you can. Well, in Luke 12:18-21 Jesus Christ personally blasted Solomon right out of the tub. Jesus Christ quotes from the book of Ecclesiastes, and in verses 18-21 Jesus ends his position. This is the logical refutation of Solomon’s position.

Jesus says, speaking of the rich man, “I will pull down my barns, and build bigger ones;” I’ll expand my business, “and I will bestow all my crops and my goods, [19] And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years,” see now here he is exceeding the limits of his human viewpoint, here he’s making a plan for the future but he doesn’t know the future, but he’s saying let’s do this, let’s lay up these things. “And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease.” And He quotes Solomon, “Eat, drink and be merry.” Verse 20, “But God said unto him,” Jesus says, “Thou idiot [fool],” now Jesus calls that being an idiot, “this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?” Now first the word “fool” or “idiot” here that Jesus calls this man, go back to human viewpoint, divine viewpoint and idiot, that’s how Solomon classified the human race. Do you know how Jesus classifies it? Only two classes, the divine viewpoint or the wise, and all of these two classes are idiots; He classifies even Solomon as an idiot because this man was doing what Solomon told him to do, namely, do the best you can, make your plans, and enjoy yourself. And Jesus says there’s one thing that disturbs that whole position and can blow it right out of the tub.

If you share this tendency to think the way Solomon did, consider what Jesus says because this is a refutation of you as well as a refutation of Solomon. The refutation is this: Jesus says what if there’s a [can’t understand word] that happens tomorrow, just suppose there is, there might not be, but just suppose there and suppose that the universe is not like Solomon thought it was when he had a pragmatic morality. Remember Solomon had two kinds of morality, there’s an actual morality and then there’s this pragmatic thing, the pragmatic thing is what you see today, called the new morality. Right and wrong, there are no absolutes here, you just kind of play the averages; where as this is absolute rigid morality. Jesus says just suppose now that the universe is built differently than you think it is, because after all, remember your limitations, remember the universe out here, beyond the bounds of your knowledge out here may be factors that you don’t know and in particular, coming up there may be one thing called judgment that you don’t know about either, and just suppose all of a sudden you’re called upon to face that… just suppose! Now what happens. You see the whole position, you don’t have to say anything else; at the end of verse 20 nothing is said because everybody that heard the position saw that Jesus Christ personally destroyed it right here; it’s absolutely destroyed. And this is the classic argument against Solomon’s position.

Now let’s go to James and see how James gets around it. James starts out with Solomon, he starts out saying that, be careful about these things, take cognizance of your limited plan, but then James has an added factor and it appears in verse 15. It’s a little conditional clause, “If the Lord will,” and that makes all the difference in the world. When James approaches the problem he doesn’t approach it like Solomon. They both start at the same point, verse 14, in context, business arrangements, a man’s trying to run his business, it’s legitimate, nothing wrong with it, but Solomon would say plan as best you can, take it from there. James says no, that’s absolutely wrong, start your business plans with what God wills. How are you going to find out what God wills? That was Solomon’s problem, Solomon had cut himself off from the Bible; if you cut yourself off from the Bible how do you find out what God wills?

Let’s look again at verse 15, “If God wills,” how do you tell what God’s will is? If you don’t have the Bible how are you going to tell. Now some Christians say why, we have spiritual gifts today; that’s true, we do have spiritual gifts, but then they would add, we have spiritual gifts today and I can crawl in my closet and look at my navel for two hours every day and all of a sudden God is going to give me a vision, or I’m going to stand on my head and eat lettuce leaves or something and have this great religious experience and out of this experience is going to come all the knowledge, it’s going to fit together. Well God can give you a vision but I have news for you if you think that way you’re all wet. God gives visions through the Bible and the Bible alone. I’ll say that again: God gives visions through the Bible and the Bible alone, James 1:22, verse 17 to catch the context. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, nor shadow of turning.” “Shadow of turning” was their reference to an eclipse in that day and what he’s saying is the kind of truth that comes down from above, the good gifts that come down are constant, there’s no problem of putting all your eggs in a basket and then tomorrow the basket is gone. So what James says yes, you can if you can get the words from God, if you can get words from God then you can act, if God wills then we will do such and such, and you can do such and such because you know God’s will from the Word.

In verse 22 he says “But be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” And by the way, verse 23, gentlemen, is a slap at men, “For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man” and the word there in the Greek is the male, “who likes to look at his natural face in a mirror, [24] For he beholds himself, and goes his way, and immediately forgets what manner of man he was.” James is just taking a crack on the male [can’t understand words] that ignore the details of life, and they’ll just walk by and say oh, isn’t that interesting, and just pass one, and James uses the male characteristic here to be a reflection of the believer just not paying attention to the little things. And this is where men always seem to get in trouble with the women, they never mention the little things, and we find out it seems like the little things mean more to them, and the male tends to overlook, and so in verse 23 James is using that analogy.

But the big point is in verse 22, “doers of the word.” One simple question, how can you be “doers of the word” if you don’t know the Word? You can’t, and that’s the difference between James and Solomon. Solomon cut himself off from this, remember what he said? What’s the theme from Ecclesiastes, “under the sun.” That’s the top, Solomon lives in a universe with a ceiling, the sun, and there’s nothing higher than that, there’s no words of God coming through from above the sun, just “under the sun,” that’s all, that’s the area Solomon lived. And in practice isn’t that the way most Christians live, “under the sun,” utilizing only the information they can get from their school, only the information they have from their own personal life, but where is the information from the Word of God? Where’s that.

Let’s conclude by turning to John 3:31, how can you avoid Solomon’s dilemma. When you get involved with conversations, when you start making plans for life, when you as a believer begin to operate in God’s will, what is going to be the force of truth, just logic and just observation or something else. John, speaking of Jesus Christ, “He that comes from above is above all; he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaks of the earth; He that comes from heaven is above all.” He’s not just talking about the dimensions of motion here; “heaven” in the Bible carries also the connotation of secret unrevealed truth that is now being revealed and what he’s saying is that I, John the Baptist, I made use of what truth I had, I was taught out of the Old Testament, for remember no person in the Gospels of the Bible ever had access to what you have. Do you realize that you have in your lap something that John never had; John the Baptist did not have something that you have. John never knew the truths that you know.

And so John said all I can do is speak of the earth, speak of the things that are already known in history, but “He that comes from above,” Jesus Christ, is bringing new information; verse 32, “And what He has seen and what He has heard, that He testifies; and no man receives His testimony.” Have you ever thought of verse 32 and asked yourself the question, when, “He has seen and He has heard,” when did Jesus see, and when did Jesus hear what He told us when He was incarnate? It goes back to the doctrine of the incarnation. When that person, who most people consider a sweet nice little teacher from Galilee, when He tells these things, John is saying something, Jesus did not make this up, He heard it and He saw it. But when did Jesus see this? Doctrine or preincarnation, before the virgin birth Jesus Christ was with the Father, Jesus Christ was God the Son in preincarnate form and within the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they had a perfect fellowship together. The Father had perfect fellowship with the Son, the Son had perfect fellowship with the Holy Spirit, and at the end, Jesus Christ, God the Son, said yes, I will go to the cross, I will become incarnate. After he passed through his infancy, got into His teenage years, by the time He was twelve years old He understood the counsels of God, understood that He was God and man, Luke 2, and so thereupon Jesus Christ began to teach, teach, teach, teach, teach, and John says listen, Jesus Christ, what He taught He heard and He saw? When? He didn’t get it here; He heard and He saw it before He was a baby, when He was dwelling in all eternity with the Father He saw and He heard. And He became incarnate and then He broadcast and taught what He had learned in that intimate union of the Godhead.

So how precious does that make the New Testament. This is not just a random message cranked out for you or for your entertainment, or for a Bible is Literature course. This Bible reveals what the Trinity talked about before the incarnation, and that’s how crucial and how important it is. And don’t you ever take the truths of the Word of God lightly; the truths that are revealed, particularly in the New Testament are explicitly said in John chapter 3 to come from the counsel of the Trinity. And one of these things as far as we are concerned as believers is that there is available to you salvation in Jesus Christ.

We draw the top circle again which is simply the area of your legal position before God, and it means at the point of salvation God the Holy Spirit puts you in union with Christ; and it doesn’t mean that you have to be baptized in Lubbock Bible Church or any church, it means that at the point of believing in Christ God the Holy Spirit does many, many things, one of which, He puts you in union with Christ and you stay there forever. Then you have a bottom circle which every Christian is in to start with, and then you get out. And your problem is to stay in that bottom circle or stay out, and there’s a wonderful way of life ahead for you if you will just stay in that bottom circle. But to stay in the bottom circle means you have to know where the bottom circle is and you can’t know where the bottom circle is until you have divine viewpoint. Your bottom circle is different from mine; God is going to call you to do different things. If you are a believer this morning God has given you at least one spiritual gift, listed in Romans 12; 1 Cor. 12 and discussed in Ephesians 4. So God had given you a spiritual gift; this means that you have a fulltime ministry if you’re a housewife or if you’re on the job somewhere. Where you are, if you are in this bottom circle and you’ve gotten it from divine viewpoint from the Word, that is your fulltime Christian ministry. With our heads bowed.