Wisdom is Not Respected

Scripture Reading

Will you please turn with me and your Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter nine. Ecclesiastes chapter nine. We'll be finishing this chapter today. Ecclesiastes chapter nine verses 13 through 18. If you're using your pew Bibles, you'll find that on page 594. Ecclesiastes chapter nine. Beginning at verse 13, brothers and sisters, this is God's perfect word. Let's pay attention.

This wisdom I have also seen under the sun, and it seemed great to me. There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it, besieged it, and built great snares around it. Now there was found in it a poor wise man. and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that same poor man. Then I said, wisdom is better than strength. Nevertheless, the poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard. Words of the wise spoken quietly should be heard rather than shouts of a ruler of fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.

Prayer for Illumination

That ends this portion of the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Every jot, tittle, smallest stroke of the pen, breath, syllable is perfect, inspired by you. and given for us. So Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit would please take your word and bury it in our hearts. We pray that you would do heart surgery on us this morning. Where we need taught, we pray that you would give us doctrine. Where we need reproved and corrected, we pray that you would show us like a spotlight in our souls where there is cancer to be eradicated. And Lord, we pray that you would also teach us and train us that we may be equipped for every good work, for your glory and your kingdom. God, we need your spirit to help us. Please help me, Lord, to proclaim your word faithfully. May you receive all the glory. May your spirit help us, we pray in Jesus's name. Amen.

Sermon

Question to start us off as we look at this text, Solomon starts with this story of a city surrounded by a powerful king. And the question I have for you to start with is, a quiet wise man can save a city, but a loud fool can ruin it. And the question I have for you is, who are you listening to? Who are you listening to in your life? Everyone in this room is being formed by one of two voices, either the voice that is often quiet and softly spoken that comes through God's word, or the loud and bombastic voices of this world that are trying to capture your soul and teach you how to think. Who are you being discipled by? Who are you listening to? The folly of this age or the timeless truth of God?

Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verses 13 through 18 shows us who we should be following, who we ought to admire, and who we should neglect, what voices we should just turn down the volume on. So let's begin where Solomon starts with a city that's under siege, verse 13 through 15. There's a crisis and a deliverance.

This wisdom I have also seen under the sun, and it seemed good to me. And he gives a picture. Okay, here's where the picture starts. There's a little city. And there's few men in it. Right? This is a city that's small and seems insignificant. It seems weak. There aren't very many strong people in it. But then notice the problem in verse 14. And a great king came against it, besieged it, and built great snares around it. So you have a small, insignificant, tiny city with not very many strong people in it, and then what happens? There's a king who comes to conquer, and he's a strong king, he's a mighty king, he's a great king. He comes and he puts forces all around it. Besieging a city is the fact that what a king would do is they put their army all around the city walls and choke it out. Don't let anybody in or out, don't let any food in and out, don't let any water in and out, don't let any supplies in and out, and eventually what happens? The people starve. There's pictures of this in the scriptures, by the way. This is how the Babylonians captured Jerusalem. It became so bad that people were eating donkey heads, and it got so bad after that that women ate their own children. That's what the depths of just atrocities happen in besieging.

And this great king has enough power that he's able to sustain this attack for a long time. When Sennacherib surrounded Hezekiah in Jerusalem, there's a tablet that is in what was ancient day Babylonia, or Assyria, and it chronicled what this was like. And he says that he shut up the king of Jerusalem like a bird in a cage. That's this idea that verse 14 gets at, but builds great snares around it, like a bird that's about to step into a wrong place and get snatched up. This is a horrible, horrible plight in verse 14. It's a small city. There's fuming in it. There's not enough strength. There's not enough power. The odds are matched over it. The strong king has come to entrap them. Humanly speaking, it seems there's no chance of survival.

And yet, notice what happens in verse 15. Now there was found in it a poor wise man. This is not the hero story we expect. We expect, and yet they're found in it, one man of strength and courage who could rise up and rally the remaining troops. We want the Lord of the Rings story. But that's not it. It's a poor, wise man. And by his wisdom, delivered the city. Nussbaum doesn't go on. He doesn't tell us what this person did. how they successfully defeated the strong king. It doesn't give us any of those details, it just says that a wise man delivered over the city. A man who didn't have any rank, wealth, influence, prestige, nobility, there's no pedigree, there's no reason why it seems like people should have listened, but that's the point that Solomon is making here in the first part of verse 15 is that salvation comes from an unlikely source. It comes from a poor, wise man in the city. And he delivered the city.

Because see, wisdom is not tied to money. Wisdom's not tied to class. Wisdom's not tied to pedigree. Wisdom's not tied to how many square footage your house is. Wisdom isn't tied to how much chrome is on your vehicle. Wisdom isn't tied to how large your 401k is. Wisdom isn't tied to who you have influence with. It's not tied to the degrees or to how much capital you have. But here it's this poor man who yet is wise.

But there's a sad reality in the third part of verse 15. Did you see it? Yet no one remembered that same poor man. All right, again, this is old man Solomon. He's looking at the world and he's telling you how he's evaluated. I think he's talking about a real situation that he observed in surrounding kingdoms. And as he's looking at this, he's saying, look, I've seen this happen. I've seen one poor wise man able to defeat even a strong king besieging the city, but you know what? Nobody remembered that poor wise man. His legacy was forgotten. What he did to defeat the wise man, nobody knows. All we know is that that poor wise man defeated the strong king. He didn't get a promotion. He didn't get great wealth. He didn't get great influence after that. And that's one of the things that I hate to tell you is just the way this world operates sometimes. Sometimes it is the poor wise person in the corporation who's the backbone of a company And yet they don't get the promotion. They don't get the raise. They don't get all the glory that comes from the company doing well. There are people in the church who are backbones of the church, who if they left the congregation, it would most likely fall apart. And yet they don't get the glory.

This is the way things work in the army, in the military. I mean, I can't tell you how many people I worked for in the military that I thought, I don't know how you got your rank. I don't know how in the world you got the place and position of privilege that you have, while this guy down here knows the job 10 times better than you do. Because wisdom isn't always matched by promotion in this world. Wisdom often resides in the lowly and in the common. And even when they save others, the poor wise person is often forgotten in the shadows.

Now we may look at this and we may go, oh, come on, isn't that just like so sad? Well, that's Solomon's whole point here. I would rather the person tell me the truth than give me some type of make-believe story about what life could be. There's all sorts of pastors and all sorts of pulpits that will try to sell you if you just follow this type of wisdom, everything's gonna go well with your life, and Solomon's like, maybe it won't. It might not go well. You may still be the poor, wise person. Forgotten.

See, this world loves to listen to people who have power and money and influence. I was just listening the other week, there was a video I like watching where this guy interviews different kind of really influential people in society. And he was interviewing this man who's a multi-billionaire. And, I mean, this guy's on certain networks of business television shows all the time, And as this interviewer was asking him questions, they got into personal questions about family life and things like that. And he started talking to this man who, this guy in this interview talks about, well, I'm working with this senator because we need this law passed because of these tax regulations. And I'm working with this person who has influence with the president because we need him to sign this bill because this is really important for how trade is going to work.

And then they started talking about this guy's family. And he was saying, well, you know, yeah, I've had to kind of, separate my job from my wife's job and from our children's role. And so there's a certain amount of closeness that I should have with my children, but that's not my job. My job is to bring in the income for the family and to provide, and my wife's job is to provide the nurturing care for the children, and the children, I don't want them to be deadbeats, and so they don't have a trust fund. I've taught them how to work hard, and that's their job. I thought, man, this guy's... talking a lot like this is a business structure in his family. And then as he talks, he kind of let it slip a few minutes later, he doesn't live with his wife anymore. And didn't seem like his children had a great relationship with him either. And yet, the person interviewing is clearly asking questions of him because they thought he was going to be the person that they would receive good family advice from. And the guy is just smiling and writing down notes like crazy, and I was thinking, Brian, don't take notes about following this guy's path. Wealth does not equal wisdom.

And I think this is where we find Christ. In this typology, Jesus is a type of this poor man in the city who delivers the city, yet he was poor. It is Jesus who came lowly and he came to the poor. It was Jesus that when he finished reading in the synagogue and he said, today what we have read has been fulfilled in your hearing, and he closed the book, people started murmuring against Jesus because they knew, hold on, you're from Nazareth. We know your parents. Jesus was from a poor family. When they went to the temple to offer the sacrifice for him being the firstborn, the redemption sacrifice for the firstborn, they had to pay the cheapest sacrifice possible, just two birds. Why should they listen to him?

Isaiah tells us that Jesus came with no form or majesty. He didn't have any appearance that we should want to behold him and follow him. Yet he is the true wisdom of God who delivers the world, who's trapped under the strong man of sin and death. And so in this life, I want to encourage you to judge no one's wisdom by their economic place in life. When you listen to people, I don't want you to blindly follow those. I think the scriptures are clear. We don't want to just blindly follow the wise. Nor do we want to turn down the volume on those who are low estate. The rich may very well be fools. Instead, seek those who are godly. Maybe you need to go listen to the poor widow for a little while. Maybe you need to sit down with the elder who's more quiet. Maybe you need to go Listen to the man who doesn't have the degrees after his name or the job titles of CEO or CFO or COO, but instead go listen to the person who has been faithfully caring for his family and following the Lord for 50 years.

Live for what is wise. not for what's going to get you preferment in this world or preference in this world. I'm not saying it's wrong to go into politics or if you really want to go down the road of being an influencer, I'm not saying that that's abjectly sinful or anything like that. I'm not saying that having a certain amount of reputation in the community is a bad thing. That's not what I'm saying. But if that's your aim, to have influence and strength for strength or influence's sake, That's not wisdom.

Solomon doesn't want us to just live in a fairy tale. He actually interprets this parable for us. Look with me at verse 16. This is Solomon's evaluation. Then I said, again, this is his pondering in his heart. Then I said, wisdom is better than strength. That's his evaluation of what happened up above. Wisdom is better than strength. He's saying, okay, it's better to be wise than it is to be strong. This is his theological conclusion that he comes to from 13 through 15 in that whole story of the poor man saving the city, and yet he's not remembered. He says, that's better. The wise poor man defeated. or the wise poor man, even though he's forgotten, is better than to be a defeated strong king. Nevertheless, he goes on, the poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard. People don't always honor those who actually save and care for them. as we're going to find out in the next two verses. Most of the world honors those, holds in high esteem those who are strong, bombastic, charismatic, have wealth, confident, and are noisy. But this is something that

In verses 16 through 18, you notice if you're looking at the New King James Version, the typeset is a little bit different. It goes from just like the block quotes, or the block section in 13 through 15. Do you see that? How it's almost like a paragraph in 13 through 15? But 16 through 18, it almost looks like it's poetry lines. It's because Solomon does here switch to what's called parallelism. are taking one idea and lining it up with another idea. And Hebrew poetry loves to do this. Sometimes it does it because it's a compare and contrast. That's called antithetical parallelism. And sometimes it's one idea stacked on the other idea and they're meant to both point to the same truth. But here it's that antithetical parallelism.

So nevertheless, the poor man's wisdom is despised. And his words are not heard. That's that parallelism. They're pointing in the same direction. But it's antithesis is wisdom is better than strength. This is the pain of Ecclesiastes. What should be honored isn't honored. What is gold is seen as disposable. And what's fool's gold is often held up of the most value.

We're just used to this, right? Turn on the TV, or flick on the computer screen, and watch YouTube or something, and you'll find all sorts of people who are very charismatic. know how to really gain a following. They'll say bombastic things and they'll say outrageous things, controversial things, just to gain some type of audience, some type of influence. But it's really of no substance. And yet, you know where that wisdom often lies.

If we were watching this video the other day, the kids and I, this guy buys a dead YouTube channel. But by a dead YouTube channel, I mean it's a channel that has hundreds of thousands of followers. But he stopped posting on this channel for some reason, and so the guy says, let's see if we can revive this channel. And so he buys it from the person for like a thousand bucks or whatever, and then he says, here's my strategy for how I'm going to revive this channel. And he just looks online to find the most trending topics, and then he creates absolute junk 30 second videos, and he just puts them out on shorts, just trying to revive the channel. Because he knows he could get a lot of people watching, and a lot of people seeing this, if they'll just see a few seconds and get their ideas. But it's nothing.

And the guy, as he's typing up the scripts, he says, you know, these people's brains are 10% larger than everybody else on average. And on the video, he said, I don't know if that's true or not, but I think people will like it. So he knows the things that say that are going to make people want to watch a little bit more, watch a little bit more, even though they're totally false. And yet, how many times is it that I'm one of these people who likes to go to YouTube for tutorials, and when I have questions about things, it's the really boring videos that have like 100 views on it. Because somebody slowly walks through something without sensationalism and explains something in detail, and it's like, this is what I've been trying to figure out the whole time. Because it's, wisdom is often buried in the slow, quiet, patient voice. Not the one who's just trying to get the clicks. It's not always liked in the world, though. And again, our Savior knew that well. Jesus knew what it was like to even be sent by his Father to his own people, and yet his own did not receive him. Wasn't saying the things they wanted. He wasn't becoming the king that they anticipated. He was saying things that were offensive to the ways they thought the world should operate. He was messing up their profit structures. He was telling them that the ways that they interacted with their marriages was corrosive.

He would patiently and quietly and carefully care for the people. But when he told them, you're just coming for bread. I'm the bread that came down from heaven to feed you and you must eat my body and drink my blood. They said, whoa, whoa, whoa. And the thousands left him. Right, because people wanted right here, right now type wisdom, not wisdom from heaven.

I mean, literally, as we think about the quiet wisdom of Jesus, what Simon read for us in Colossians chapter two, just strikes us dead in the face. Jesus is the poor, wise man who delivered this city. and yet the city despised him. People thought of the cross as horrible and wicked and wrong and anyone who dies on the cross is accursed. And yet Jesus used what the world thought was foolishness to save us. The cross looked like weakness. But as we read the Gospels, we find that Jesus had the most strength possible by doing what the world thought was the most foolish thing imaginable. Jesus turned the world's value system upside down.

And so I beg you to stop being discipled by clickbait and charisma. This is why we used to be a country that when you read through the debates that happened in the 1800s and the early 1900s, they were long, boring debates because they actually had substance to them. It wasn't gotchas. It wasn't just little clips that people could show on the nighttime air, but people actually talked with and to each other. It wasn't about who had the most wealth or who could make the most noise or who can say the most outlandish things.

Solomon's telling us to hold on, slow down and listen. You cannot follow Christ and admire the world's values. And so I'm challenging you, I know that this may be somewhat rub against us a little bit the wrong way and I hope the Holy Spirit is challenging us here that we must teach ourselves, we must sit under God's word and be admonished and be taught that we honor those who are biblically wise and not those who are just getting the spotlight or appealing to what we want to hear.

Listen. to those who may be poor in this world and yet rich in the wisdom of God. Those without power or status may be those who have the most clear path forward. But also in your life, it's not just about who you listen to, but who will you be? Is wisdom noble enough for you to follow it principally? Do you succumb to the pressures of this world to just try to make the most outlandish statements to be the biggest personality possible so you can gain as much influence as you can? Or when the wisdom of God Goes against the ways of this world do we say, you know what? I'll follow the Lord instead of pragmatics.

We must follow God's wisdom regardless of whether or not it brings with it financial gain, prestige, or all the acclaim of the world. We may even be rejected. There may be people who look down their nose at you because you follow the wisdom of God's word. To God be the glory. They look down their nose at Christ too. So who do you follow? Who are you trying to bring glory to? Yourself for the Lord of heaven.

Solomon moves on. In our final point, verses 17 through 18, we find once again contrasted wisdom's quiet voice and folly's loud destruction. Look with me at verses 17 and 18. Words of the wise, spoken quietly, should be heard rather than the shouts of a ruler of fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.

See, in verse 17, it's saying that wisdom often speaks quietly. And quietness is not timidity. And quite the opposite in Scripture, when we read of somebody who is able to say something quietly, with calmness, it's often the person who has self-control, patience, principle, stability, godliness. Wise people don't need to shout because their words are rooted in truth rather than a force.

I was just listening yesterday and this morning to this guy who does evangelism going to abortion clinics, and it was amazing to me as he's going and sharing the gospel with people who are walking in, whether it's the husband or the wife or those people who are escorting people into the abortion clinics, his calmness as he goes, the gravity and severity of his heart. And as he speaks to them in love and in self-control, he hates the thing that's going on inside the building, and yet pleading with people, quietly loving them and caring for them, approaching them on the sidewalks and trying everything he can to see them turn from what they're about to do. And as of last week, he keeps a track of how many people have gotten a hold of him and have said, hey, you changed my mind. Or as they turn around, they leave 81 children saved since he's been doing this for the last couple years.

See, folly often shouts. Loudness, though, does not equal courage. And being bombastic does not always equal conviction. and posturing does not equate with principle. People will often listen to loud voices.

Even as I was praying through this passage, just being honest with the Lord about my own heart with this. I gotta tell you, as a pastor, there's a certain amount that You'll watch social media, and it's kind of curated, you know, because everything you watch online, they want to target you and put you in your own little silo of what they think you'll like. And so I often get a lot of preachers that I end up listening to.

One of the things that I found is the ones who get the most traction are the ones who are, they have no problem saying, you know what, I'm gonna touch on this hot topic, and this is the hot topic we're gonna talk on. And they just go from hot seat to hot seat to hot seat to hot seat. And it's really tempting, and I was confessing even in my own heart to the Lord that though I may not disagree with their positions on a number of things, yet I'll find myself like, oh, I want to be that person. Oh, if I could get those types of views, if I could do those things, and then I have to deal with passages like today.

And realize, hold on, what is the wisdom of God? No, no, the wisdom of God is that God's people are fed the whole counsel of the Lord. That I need to repent of my desire to be like one of those who just have a loud mouth Instead, I need to love my family well. Instead, I need to be one who has a good reputation in the community.

And I'm confessing this to the Jordan River, and as they cross over, they destroy the city, things are going good, and yet you have one fool, you have Achan, who steals some of the forbidden things, and the whole nation of Israel is thrown into turmoil and judgment.

You have one king, when Israel and Judah split, Jeroboam takes the northern 10 tribes, and in his own human wisdom, he's so concerned about power and people possibly going down to the temple in Jerusalem, that right on the border, there's a city between Israel and Judah called Bethel. And it's right there that he sets up one of his calves. In this human wisdom power play, he allows anybody they want to become a priest. He throws away all God's regulations on worship, and he sets up an idol. And he sets a course based on human wisdom, wanting his own power and strength, not wanting people to defect to Judah.

That time after time after time after time again, when you read through the histories, You find that the king was not able to stop the worship that was happening at Bethel and Dan.

How many churches have been destroyed, absolutely devastated because one fool creeps in with a loud mouth and tries to rip down everybody's reputation, tear apart the church. What's happening today, I've watched an almost three hour long podcast between these three dissidents who are hating everything that's happening in NAPARC churches because of churches like ours taking stances against the open racism that's creeping into our nation. And especially it's happening in corners even of the reformed world. And these three guys going on the offense and trying to rip apart the church, trying to say that elders are cowards and weaklings, trying to say, and building up this coalition of a bunch of loudmouths on social media that literally just yesterday my wife walked into the office and said, what are you doing? And I said, I'm watching this video because of this guy who's literally speaking bad about the RPCNA, saying that his elders were horribly wrong and unjust, and he's been excommunicated, and he's airing this.

for the whole world. And this isn't me just saying like, oh, the RPCNA is perfect, because I promise you it's not perfect. It's one of the things that I tell people as membership all the time. That's right, we love Presbyterianism, we'll talk about all the benefits of our plurality and our parity and of having courts of higher appeal, but you can't place implicit trust in the courts of the church. The RPCNA has been wrong before and I promise you will be wrong again. But there are people that their entire motive gets wrapped around being a loud mouth trying to tear down churches, rip apart congregations.

How much ear do we give to those who have loud microphones versus how much are we listening? Marriages get pulled apart by this. Workplaces get ripped apart by this. Church blitz are caused by loud foolish men and women. Businesses are destroyed by one reckless executive. Families are derailed by one member's impulsive folly. Friendships are shattered by one foolish person in a fit of anger.

Thank the Lord that we have a model to follow and it's not that. Isaiah 42.2 tells us about Jesus Christ. It says, he will not cry aloud. I think about Jesus who went to the cross like a lamb led to the slaughter. He didn't raise his voice, but instead he submitted to his father's will. Jesus' ministry was not marked by political shouting and by trying to increase the volume. No, it was the crowds who were doing that. It was the Sanhedrin, it was the elders who were going amongst the people, rallying them up to shout, crucify him, crucify him. It was the crowd who embodies the sinner's folly. It was the loud voices of Caiaphas and Herod and Pilate who were trying to destroy. But it was only temporary.

But it's in Christ, the wisdom of God, revealed to us that was better than the weapons of war. Because the poor wise man who came from heaven, who did not consider it easy to be grasped, who he was in heaven in all his resplendent glory, who humbled himself into the likeness of man, and took on the form of flesh, and became a curse for us, and destroyed even sin and death itself.

So who will you be like? Who are you listening to? Tune your ears to the still and quiet voice of God's Word. Trying to encourage you, how you invest your time and who you listen to will have a profound impact in this life. But the question is, what impact are you trying to have? What are you chasing after? Are you chasing after the big house, the best car, the most influence, power, fame, spotlight, money, everything the world is trying to sell us as the good life? Or is your life wrapped around the gospel? Is your life seeking to do what the Lord has commanded of us, to live quiet and peaceable lives full of reverence?

Do we listen to the Lord or do we follow the shouting voices of the fools? In your ears are the celebrity pastors, political commentators, online influencers, angry pundits? Are they the ones who are guiding your soul? Or is the good shepherd? Is he the one leading you to the green pastures by the still waters? Is he showing you where you can lie down and have peace? Where you have true kingdom impact in your family, in your community, and in this world? Do you follow that which the world calls foolishness, laying down your life, living for your children, willing to take the lesser job so you can have more time for the least of these and for gospel influence?

What are the guardrails you put around your time and your attention and your influence to truly meditate on what the Lord has said? To that extent, practical application here in the church. Who do we vote for to be elders and deacons? Many churches look for who has the most prestige as the world calls it, and not the godliness as scripture demands of it. Do we seek to be those who are evaluating wisdom not according to outward appearance, but according to what wells up in a person's life by obedience to the word and love for the gospel?

Solomon ends with a stark warning. One sinner destroys much good. So I pray we're able to evaluate. Who's the fool? Who's the sinner? Who is it we're listening to? Who's trying to pull our hearts away from Christ?

The Holy Spirit inspired Solomon as he's an old man and he's looking and he's pondering things in his heart. And he just evaluates the world. The world forgets the wise. The world loves to put crowns of gold on foolish people's heads. The world despises those who walk with a humility and Christ-likeness. The world loves to follow bombastic strongmen. It loves to overlook the humble and the godly.

But Christ is our example we follow. We seek to walk in his footsteps. And if the world calls the wisdom of God folly, who cares? If the world says you're wasting your life for turning down the promotion so you could spend time with your family and invest in your children, let them think whatever they want. If the world thinks that you're following a dumb, principled end that doesn't have any pragmatic value because you're unwilling to vote for a certain person or go behind a certain initiative or do something political that you think, you know, that's not the way I think that the scriptures command, and they say you're a fool for going that way, so be it. May we follow the wisdom of God that we find in the scriptures revealed to us in the life of Christ.

And if the world counts us as fools, to God be the glory. Because he also counted Christ the great fool. May we find a glory when the world counts us as fools for the sake of Christ. And may the Holy Spirit lead us to know who we ought to listen to and the ways we ought to walk.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for giving us Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith. And God, we pray for your Holy Spirit to please show us the ways in which we ought to walk. Lord, give us your Holy Spirit and impart to us the wisdom that we find in your word, that we might know who we ought to listen to and who we should turn out.

Lord, we know that the wisdom of this world is trying to press upon our souls and teach us what we ought to love and think and do. Father, we pray that your word might be our guiding light. Please, Lord, teach us the path in which we ought to walk. May we live for your glory. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.