A Good Name Is Better than Fine Perfume
1A good name is better than fine perfume; and the day of death better than the day of one’s birth. 2It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men, and the living should take this to heart. 3Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the face the heart is made good. 4The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. 5It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools. 6For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool. This also is vanity. 7Surely extortion makes the wise man foolish; and a bribe destroys the understanding.
Because Joshua obeyed God’s word, he saw the miracle of the great walled city of Jericho brought down. It was a miracle that could never have happened without the grace of God, who used the faith of Joshua in his complete obedience. God had commanded them not to make a sound while they marched around Jericho, so they circled the city in complete silence. Then, when one last circuit remained, God commanded them to shout, and the people, Joshua among them, raised a great shout with all their strength. At that, the walls of Jericho collapsed as if they had no strength at all, almost too wondrous to believe.
Joshua and the people did nothing but obey the word, yet God blessed them with the conquest of mighty Jericho. He also made the fame of Joshua and Israel spread among the nations, so that now the nations knew the name of Joshua. In the same way, because God exalts the names of those who walk with him, the world remembers the names of people of faith. At such times people of faith must be humble so that Yahweh receives the glory.
What God desires is not that the nations should fear the name of Yahweh. His purpose is that those who see miracles will meet him, and so he wants his people to obey, so that he may always work miracles. From now on, when people hear the name Joshua, they will think of Israel’s leader and the victory at Jericho, and they will remember the man who stood beside Moses with a holy character, always obedient. The name Joshua holds his piety, his character, the years behind him, his experience, and his faith. When I think of your names too, what comes to mind is how you usually speak and act, what expressions you often wear, what work you do, and how deep your faith in Christ is.
In this way a name plays a very important role: it speaks for who we are.
When others call your name to mind, how do you think you appear to them? The picture others hold of us is not formed in a day or two, so we must always live with the same character and faith. To bring honor to our name, it seems to me, living honestly and uprightly matters a great deal.
Just as the name of Jesus carries the meaning that he will save his people from their sins, Jesus laid down his life to bear his people’s sins. To atone for sin he condemned sin in his own sinless flesh, and he overcame death; and Jesus Christ remains to this day the one most treasured in our hearts. The name of Jesus is more precious than anything in the world because he gave himself up and lived according to God’s will. Costly perfume gives off a rich fragrance for a while and delights people, but soon the fragrance fades away.
But the name of Jesus Christ is life itself, the life that saves people, so it is a name we can never forget. The name of Jesus, who is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega, is a name of surpassing beauty.
If you live according to God’s will, God will exalt your name and make it remain a glorious name, beyond comparison with anything in the world. Those who honor God can surely live glorious lives.
Ecclesiastes 7:2
2It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men, and the living should take this to heart.
Solomon calls a life without God vanity, even if every day were a feast, because the eating, drinking, and merriment of the house of feasting last only a moment, and in the end a life that does not hope for heaven ends in eternal punishment. When we go to a house of mourning, we find ourselves reflecting on our own lives without meaning to. We ask whether we have done anything for which God would rebuke us, should disaster strike us unawares. And so even when we go to a house of feasting, we try to keep ourselves in check and not lose a reverent bearing.
Since the purpose for which people are born into this world is to receive Christ and be saved, the death of one of God’s people who worshiped him is not a misfortune. It means they lived life well and entered heaven, so death too is a great blessing. Those who have not received Christ do not know that they are spiritually dead, and they may pity a child of God who lived and died poor. But someone who lived in poverty yet by faith and went to heaven is far more blessed than a rich man who feasts every day without God.
Only when we know that life is finite can we understand Solomon’s saying that going to a house of mourning is a greater blessing than going to a house of feasting. Only those who realize that the blessing is eternal life in a heaven beyond time will refuse to cling to eating and drinking here on earth, will examine themselves continually, and will live in readiness for death.
Even while Noah was building the ark, people mocked him and went on marrying and giving in marriage, lost in the pleasures of life. Because joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure never cease in this world, people go on living, rejoicing and raging, grieving and delighting, whether life has meaning or not. So in a life that turns like a treadmill, we receive eternal life only by holding a faith that sets its hope on heaven. To lay hold of salvation and be born again, we must keep away from the sin of living as our nature dictates.
When Solomon said that going to a house of mourning is better than going to a house of feasting, he was counseling us to see in the one who has died how short our allotted time is, and to live a little more truthfully, honestly, and wisely. To grasp the meaning, worth, and purpose of life and take it as a chance to pull ourselves together, he says, is a greater blessing than laughing and chattering at a feast. Today I see young people who, when hardship comes, do not endure even a little but despair and collapse on their own.
Until God rescues us from hardship, we need to keep growing, preparing, and enduring. But when they cannot see their future right away, they give up of their own accord, and that only delays the day. It may be true that they started later than others. Yet if God is at the center, then whatever our circumstances, we must hand our burdens to God and be ready to run at any moment. That is the posture of a child who believes in God.
Working hard is necessary, but what matters is living a life that fits the purpose for which God sent you to this earth; how much you possess will matter little after death. We must work with all our strength while we live and still keep a faith that prepares for what comes after; whether we look at the world or look only at the world, our lives will turn out entirely differently according to how we see. Those who know that they can take nothing of this world with them will care more about what follows death than about this life, and will live for eternal life.
The Pharisees always vouched for their own faith. To show people a flawless faith, they put on fine clothes and prayed in the synagogues and on the street corners, and people, unable to see through such pretense, would have praised them for their piety. God’s people make the same mistake: they put their devotion on display to win human praise and approval rather than God’s, and that is a foolish thing to do. Because their faith has nothing to do with Jesus, outwardly they appear to have served God all their lives, but sadly there is no fruit.
As Jesus carried the cross up the hill of Golgotha, a great many women beat their breasts and wept. Jesus turned to them and told them not to weep for him but for themselves and for their children. In the same way, we must mourn over our own sins and weep for souls not yet saved.
If we, who have received so precious a calling, fall to Satan’s temptation, become drunk on the world and drunk on the liquor that numbs reason, and defile the body that is meant to be a holy temple, we will gnash our teeth in bitterness like the rich man who fell into Hades. That rich man always dressed in purple and fine linen and held feasts to show that he had been blessed for his strong faith, so the thought that he might go to hell never even crossed his mind. What you own now is not what matters. Youth does not last forever, and death does not belong only to others. Time flies like an arrow; in the blink of an eye your last moment will come and ask you to account for the years you have lived. If, before you suddenly meet the last day of your life, you always prepare in faith and live out God’s will, then however fast the years fly, you will not fear death; instead you can live a mature life that even awaits it.
Ecclesiastes 7:3
3Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the face the heart is made good.
This verse means that those who grieve over the deaths of the unsaved will feel sorrow at the emptiness of life that death reveals, yet because they make that death an occasion to examine themselves, there is peace in their hearts. Worldly laughter, the loud laughter that comes with good fortune, vanishes as soon as hard times arrive.
Looking only at the two words, sorrow and laughter, you might think you should choose laughter, but you must consider carefully what lies behind the sorrow and the laughter. A sorrow that thanks the Holy Spirit for revealing the vanity of the world, and longs earnestly for the Savior who will fill that life with grace, is a blessing from God. We must be able to grieve over a life our own efforts cannot fill. Only when we can mourn over souls caught in Satan’s temptations can we pray for them, and smile a true smile when we see a soul saved.
Laughter born of worldly pleasure is like a mist that vanishes, so on the last day of life we cannot help but grieve to see ourselves without fruit. Only if we judge rightly what kind of faith we now have will we turn aside neither to the right nor to the left. If your name stands where the name of Jesus Christ is, nothing could be more glorious. Where Yahweh was, there was the name of Joshua; and where Gideon’s name was, Yahweh was always with him, and he exalted their names.
What name could be more blessed than that? Even if we grieve through the hardships of life, if we live as new people who take on the character of Christ, we will be able to laugh heartily with God in the eternal world.
Because God wants everyone to take on the character and nature of Christ and be born again, he raised up the wise and made them proclaim the word. The wise must lay aside human thinking, knowledge, and feeling and proclaim nothing but the word, for the salvation of the souls they love. The word opens our ears to wisdom and instruction and brings us to understand it. When the wise do their utmost to admonish us that we must practice wisdom, righteousness, justice, and equity, we need hearts holy enough to receive that admonition.
Because the word gives prudence to the simple and knowledge and discretion to the young, those who have wisdom grow wiser still when rebuked and show the discernment to gain even sound counsel. But the fool hates the rebuke of the wise and despises instruction, grows angry even after being counseled, and in the end meets with disaster. To stay proud even after hearing the words of the wise is possible only for someone who despises the wise and looks down on them. From this we can see what the saying that pride goes before destruction means: people act proudly because they look down on God and despise him, which is why they cannot escape the judgment of almighty God.
When a foolish person hears rebuke and counsel, they judge it by their own thinking, so even when shown the right way they fail or take the long way around. God’s word is wisdom that surpasses human limits, and whoever cannot understand that wisdom falls, in the end, through their own wrong choices. Because human beings were made from dust, it is our nature to accept the world’s temptations easily and to act on the thoughts the world gives us.
For people with such a nature to live by God’s word, there must be resolve to shake off the world’s temptations, and a character able to refuse the thoughts the world offers.
I know how hard this resolve is, but we must carry it through. Satan will do anything at all if he can make even one soul stumble. The persistence of these powers is that of an evil that once set itself against God, so it exceeds human limits; unless we are in Christ, we cannot help but fall.
If only they can separate you from God, Satan and the world can easily make your name famous, make you revered as though you were a great figure, and even manufacture an honor that will vanish like mist. You must have the discernment of spirits to see through such wicked and cunning schemes of Satan.
When Satan approaches you with a false smile, it should make your skin crawl. Only if you can look into the heart of someone who shows you favor in order to cut you off from God will you avoid spiritual failure. The laughter of the wicked is like the crackling of thorns under a pot, flaring up loudly and burning out in an instant; this too, Solomon says, is vanity. Before Solomon’s power and wealth, how many people must have laughed false laughs and offered bribes! He should have heard that laughter as the crackling of burning thorns. Instead he heard it as praise that exalted him, and fearing that the laughter might stop, he abandoned God.
When Satan exalted him, Solomon was certainly happy, but when he looked back there was nothing left but ash, like what remains after a fire. Now, regret as he might, his youth was gone, and all that remained was a foolish old man. If you leave the word and cling to the world, after death you will see yourself burning like thorns. In that place there is no one to exalt you, no one to flatter you, no one to honor your name. You will only feel remorse for the life gone by, and know how many chances you missed and how you lived a life of vanity of vanities.
The wise man rebukes us for taking the long way around and warns us not to live like this. Those who receive his rebuke with gratitude will be blessed by God, but those who grumble at it and ignore it commit the sin of despising God and will be disciplined by God himself.
Ecclesiastes 7:7
7Surely extortion makes the wise man foolish; and a bribe destroys the understanding.
Even someone who is wise cannot be forgiven by God if they covet what belongs to others and seize what belongs to the weak and powerless. However long a person has given themselves to saving other people’s souls, if they now harbor greed, take bribes, and commit the sin of exalting themselves, then, sad to say, God will reject them. Seizing what belongs to others and taking bribes turns even the most discerning and wise into fools. You must never harbor greed or take bribes. Take a bribe once, then twice, grab what belongs to others with ease, and you will be rebuked by the God of justice; and though you may wish to turn back, you will not be able to, because you have learned an easy way to live.
Today many people practice extortion and defile their names with bribes. They will have had years of living diligently and honestly before they reached that position, yet unable to let go of greed, they have defiled even those honest years. Sin gives birth to more sin. If we firmly reject temptation when it comes, we can meet it even more firmly the second time; but once we sin, Satan seizes on that sin, clings to us relentlessly, and drives us into the mire. Extortion makes the wise man foolish, and a bribe destroys a person’s understanding.
Using God-given wisdom to seize what belongs to others is a sin that obstructs the work of the Holy Spirit, who labors for salvation; such a sin is hard to forgive. A pastor’s fall weighs more heavily than that of a church member, because it bears directly on the salvation of many more people. Pastors therefore must stay alert, since they never know what mask Satan will wear when he comes, and live honest lives in the truth.
In every situation we must not say whatever comes to mind or act on instinct, but must think deeply about why God has given us this problem. I hope you will live thinking carefully about how God will see and judge the words and actions with which you handle it. A single moment’s wrong judgment can bring down the faith of a lifetime.
Those who have run straight ahead to exalt God’s name will find their own names being called together with his. If we believe that the world is a place of vanity of vanities, let us live for God. That resolve will exalt our names and make our lives glorious.
The life of one who chooses God knows no regret. To be protected in this life is already something to be thankful for, and in heaven, which we enter after death, a great feast will be held to celebrate your labor, for you held fast to the faith. This is the true house of feasting. The most beautiful name on earth today is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Holy One who rescued you from sin, kept you from entering the pit of death, and became your shield against Satan’s attacks. May you also be people who use your names for good, for the sake of the name of Jesus Christ.