The Ignorance of Humans Who Cast Off God’s Wisdom

19Wisdom is a strength to the wise man more than ten rulers who are in a city. 20Surely there is not a righteous man on earth, who does good and doesn’t sin. 21Also don’t take heed to all words that are spoken, lest you hear your servant curse you; 22for often your own heart knows that you yourself have likewise cursed others. 23All this I have proved in wisdom. I said, “I will be wise”; but it was far from me. 24That which is, is far off and exceedingly deep. Who can find it out? 25I turned around, and my heart sought to know and to search out, and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know that wickedness is stupidity, and that foolishness is madness. 26I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and traps, whose hands are chains. Whoever pleases God shall escape from her; but the sinner will be ensnared by her. 27“Behold, I have found this,” says the Preacher, “to one another, to find out the scheme; 28which my soul still seeks; but I have not found. I have found one man among a thousand; but I have not found a woman among all those. 29Behold, I have only found this: that God made man upright; but they search for many schemes.”

Every shop, whatever kind it is, has a smell of its own. One shop smells of perfume, another of cigarettes, and another gives off the smell of harsh chemicals. When the smell is too strong, you may frown and turn your head away, but unless you leave that shop, you cannot escape the smell.

There is only one way not to smell it: leave the place. If you have no intention of leaving, yet get angry because you dislike the smell or demand that it be taken away, no one could be more foolish. Just as every shop has its own smell, people too each have a scent of their own, depending on their temperament, their character and their circumstances. The years people have lived shape their character and temperament, so they cannot hide it even if they want to. That is why the scent a person gives off plays a very important part in showing what kind of person they are. What fragrance do you give off? With what fragrance do people remember you? Do people want to be near you because they like your fragrance? Or do they frown and walk away from you? If people dislike your fragrance, and you stop being stubborn and change the direction your life has taken until now, you can have a different fragrance.

If you say that you don’t care if people dislike you and will not turn your life around, you may have to take a long detour in life, and something may happen for which you have to repent before God in tears. Some people love to gossip about others, slander them, and live a life of constant complaint, and so they give off a repulsive smell. Of course, no one can be perfect, so we make mistakes, and sometimes we find ourselves talking about others without meaning to and then regret it. But if it is something that becomes sin, we must correct it and strive not to give off a bad smell.

Doing good must always rest on love, but some people do it out of duty rather than love. Love and duty may look like the same action from the outside, but the fragrance they give off is completely different, so the one on the receiving end can see through to the giver’s true heart. You may devote yourself because you truly love God, or work in order to be seen; you may sacrifice yourself because you truly love people, or do it out of duty. These may seem to be the same work, but they are not the same.

Solomon was a man around whom the fragrance of God-given wisdom filled the air. The wisdom he had was so precious that people gathered around him. God loved Solomon too, and so he filled him with wisdom and grace. Solomon knew that the wisdom God had given was wiser and mightier than ten rulers who are in a city, and so he promised to keep the law. But little by little he mistook God’s wisdom for his own righteousness, and so he began to give off the smell of pride, lust and sexual immorality.

Once he had great power by God’s help, he began to treat the people harshly, and he took foreign women as wives in order to gain more land. As he listened to flattery meant to please him, Solomon’s holy fragrance turned into the stench of the world. Just as even a diamond that looked perfect has flaws, Solomon realized that the years he thought he had lived wisely had been a crystal of defects, formed from human pride, corruption and sin.

He thought that people who slandered others, stirred up division and covered his eyes and ears were people he truly needed, and that those who flattered him to gain more power were loyal servants. But once he took their words to heart, the fragrance of wisdom vanished, and the stench of the world became his own smell. Only then did Solomon realize that the only people left around him were those who wanted to use him. Looking at himself like that, he realized he had lived a life of vanity.

Those who cast off God’s wisdom as easily as Solomon did are easily cast off in turn, because even to Satan they are of no use. Satan hinders people’s salvation while they believe in God well. That is why Satan pays no attention to those who have abandoned their faith of their own accord, for they already have no life. The fragrance that comes when God’s wisdom fills a person is a holy fragrance that even unbelieving people of the world like, so believers must go on living by the Word without wavering.

But the smell of rotting faith is more repulsive than the smell of the world. So people will no longer expect anything of such believers, and because of that they will mock them. For though they themselves have no faith, they want believers to keep theirs. Solomon’s wisdom was very precious, something no one could imitate. His wisdom was so outstanding that it was mightier than ten rulers who guard a city, so he could easily solve the people’s problems.

1 Kings 3 records the case of two women who came for judgment. Two women came to Solomon. Saying that the dead baby was the other woman’s and the living baby was her own, each asked for her son back. The two women had given birth three days before, and one of them, sleeping carelessly, lay on top of her three-day-old baby, and the baby died. Then she took her dead son to the other woman’s room and secretly swapped her own baby for the living one.

When the woman who had been asleep got up and looked at the baby, it was already dead, and she realized it was not her son. The women argued, each insisting that the living baby was hers, and when they could not settle it, they came hoping that King Solomon would judge wisely. Solomon pondered who the baby’s mother was. Seeing that both women insisted the living baby was theirs, he chose, as the way to find the baby’s mother, the method of killing the baby.

When he ordered in a stern voice that the baby be killed, one woman wept and begged earnestly that they not kill the baby but give it to the other woman instead. But the other woman asked that the baby be cut in two, so that neither she nor the other would have it. This is the heart of Satan. For Satan and his forces know that they will fall into the lake of fire anyway, and since they can have nothing, they do evil, ruining the world and people.

Watching the two women, Solomon could tell which was the baby’s mother: the woman who pleaded for the baby’s life even if it went to the other woman, or the woman who asked that it be killed so that neither of them would have it. He gave judgment that the baby be given to the woman who had said she would give it up. This judgment has been handed down as Solomon’s famous verdict. The hearts of these two women are just like the hearts of Christ and of Satan. Satan tries by any means to lead the souls God loves into death, but Christ bore the agony of throwing his own life into the midst of death and saved the lives of sinners.

This judgment, in which Solomon used the baby’s life to find its mother, shows an astonishing wisdom that no one could easily have thought of. Because of his wise judgment, the people came to respect Solomon sincerely, but people’s praise made Solomon proud. What had made the nation rich and strong and given the people peace was God’s wisdom and grace. When Solomon forgot that, he ended up stealing God’s glory.

When a season of prosperity goes on, people think they are enjoying it because they are righteous, and they grow proud. Intent on exalting themselves and being served, they forget even that they are leaving the faith and heading down the road to destruction. That is a very unfortunate thing, because they turn the grace God gave into their own righteousness, pretend to be righteous, and in the end meet death. When someone becomes overly righteous like this, they forget what Isaiah said: that to God the nations are like a drop in a bucket, and are regarded as a speck of dust on a balance, and the islands are like dust that rises.

If before God the world is like a drop of water and a speck of dust on a balance, and even islands that look enormous are as insignificant as dust, then however much righteousness and knowledge a human being has, it is trivial. The moment we hold people’s praise in our hearts, grace cannot help but be pushed out. If our hearts are captured by such shallow words, we cannot help but grow proud. So we must form the habit of thinking more deeply before we act.

Romans 3:10 says that there is no one righteous, no, not one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks after God; they have all turned away; they have together become unprofitable; there is no one who does good, no, not so much as one. That is why salvation is God’s grace. Once people think they know a great deal, like experts, or become sure of their own opinions, they do not listen well to others. Refusing to listen even when someone gives counsel based on the Word is a very dangerous state.

If we do not cast off human righteousness, it is like Eve’s greed to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and become like God, and we may make a wrong judgment like Judas’s decision to betray Jesus. Casting off human righteousness is a decision as hard as losing oneself, but only those who have cast off their righteousness can know what amazing love God’s grace is.

Ecclesiastes 7:21

21Also don’t take heed to all words that are spoken, lest you hear your servant curse you;

People care a great deal about what others think of them. Of course, to get along in the world, there are certainly things we must pay attention to. But we must not take to heart what people say. If we pay too much attention, we will be bound by what others say and fall into a snare of our own making. Paying too little attention to others would also be a serious problem, but when we are bound by what others think, we become passive and our self-esteem falls.

We often feel sorrow when we see entertainers whose whole lives are shaken by comments posted online, and who take their own lives. Reading words that insult your character and judge you carelessly must be bewildering, frightening and painful, but not everything those people say is true. We must stand firm in the Word in everyday life, because the words of the people of the world are trivial things that simply vanish into the air. Cutting off at will the life God has given, because of what such people say, is a foolish choice.

James said that everyone stumbles in the course of life, but if anyone doesn’t stumble in word, that one is perfect. Satan’s aim is to oppose God. So you must keep a firm heart, look at life from a long view, and know how to judge. Look at Nehemiah, who came as governor of Judah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and you will see how great his faith in God was. Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem slandered Nehemiah fiercely to stop him from rebuilding the city wall.

They falsely accused Nehemiah of planning to make himself king once he had built the wall, but Nehemiah was not shaken by their words. Looking to God alone, he rebuilt the wall for Judah and its people.

When we hear what people say, we must first discern whether their words are meant to help us or are slander meant to discourage us. For if we cannot judge whether words are meant to help us live as believers, or are words that sound like praise but badly shake our faith, serious trouble follows. Everyone makes mistakes in life, so even if we hear that someone has spoken ill of us, we also need to be generous and understanding. For we too have sometimes criticized others. So when we hear that others have slandered us, we should treat them generously, and if we remember slandering someone ourselves, we must repent before God.

What Solomon wants to say through Ecclesiastes is that we must give up the thought that all our own decisions and judgments are righteous. When he looked back on his youth, Solomon realized that the years he had spent pretending to be righteous had meant little. That is why he says this. To mistake God’s wisdom for one’s own and misuse it is a sinful act that uses God. Solomon had lived trusting his own wisdom, but as the years went by he came to realize deeply that life is in God’s hands in the end, and that human beings can never find out the way God leads a life from the beginning even to the end.

Ecclesiastes 7:26

26I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and traps, whose hands are chains. Whoever pleases God shall escape from her; but the sinner will be ensnared by her.

When Solomon grew proud, he came to regard himself as righteous, and as a result he was bound fast in Satan’s snare. When pride and folly, greed and lust filled the place God’s wisdom had left, his judgment weakened and his discernment vanished. When the wisdom God gave, more precious than rubies, lost its light, he became greedy for power; because of that he took many queens and concubines, and then he served the idols they brought with them.

If Solomon had kept his wisdom, this could never have happened. For a man, finding a good wife may perhaps be the greatest of all blessings. In Proverbs Solomon said, “Who can find a worthy woman? For her price is far above rubies.” But he himself lived a failed life because of his wives. The hands of the women who enjoyed the king’s favor clouded Solomon’s wisdom like chains, and the debauched surroundings and pleasures of the flesh left his soul no choice but to leave God.

Solomon did not realize how worthless a man he had become because of the immoral women, but when the time of pleasure had passed, he realized too late that pride, Satan’s temptation and human righteousness had made him a fool. You must not make the same mistake as Solomon. Whoever pleases God can escape the wicked woman who is like chains, but foolish people who have cast off wisdom and grace will be ensnared by her and will come to great ruin. Satan makes the hearts of those without wisdom harder still and closes their ears, so that they cannot hear the advice of the wise.

Until then Solomon had dealt with the affairs of the world with understanding, by God’s wisdom. But once he fell into worshiping the idols brought by immoral and cunning women, he grew dull and could not deal well with Satan’s attacks. In verse 26 Solomon said that whoever pleases God can escape the wicked woman, and the sinner who has left God is ensnared by the evil woman without a struggle. This means that people escape the wicked not because they are wise, but because God protects them, so the wicked cannot cross the fence of the Holy Spirit.

The woman Solomon speaks of is the lustful foreign woman who worshiped idols, but from the standpoint of believers today, she may be wealth, human relationships, or human righteousness. We must remember that a life that does not entrust everything to God, but is lived as one pleases, can be caught in snares and traps and bound with Satan’s chains.

In verse 28 Solomon said that his soul still seeks but has not found; he has found one man among a thousand, but he has not found a woman among all those. Perhaps the one man he found among a thousand was himself, having come to see his sin. But among his thousand wives, and among the many people he met, there was no one who had received God. This shows that when human beings set their greed on the world, it is in the end a sin with no turning back.

When God created human beings and all creatures, he made them to obey him, the God of justice. That is why defying God’s will and living for one’s own greed is sin.

Ecclesiastes 7:29

29Behold, I have only found this: that God made man upright; but they search for many schemes.”

God made people upright, but when they searched out many schemes and sinned, they came to live under a curse. The God of justice created all things in the universe good in his sight, but Adam and Eve devised a scheme, defied the Word, and put all creation under a curse. Schemes here means plots and stratagems. Though God had made the best conditions and surroundings for human beings to live in, they defied the great God’s word in order to be exalted like God. People may think they have devised a clever scheme, but that scheme starts from a nature made of dust, so the outcome can only be bad. That is why you must strive to become a new creation. You who have received Christ, I hope you will not become fools who cast off God’s wisdom as Solomon did, but will offer the fragrance of Christ to God and receive the reward of heaven as his children.

If we try to turn back after many years have passed, it is too late, because few chances are left. When frost has settled on our hair and deep valleys have formed on our faces, we may by then have gained the wisdom to know what is good and what is vain, but there will be no chance left to turn back. So we must repent now, having heard the Word.

God wants us to recognize our ignorance, bow down humbly, seek his wisdom, and serve him. The depth of the riches of God’s wisdom and knowledge is beyond human measure, and God’s ways are a truth that fools can never trace out. When we stop chasing evil after our own desires and become good people, God will give us the riches of wisdom and knowledge in greater abundance, and will grant us co-workers in faith so that we can easily find his way.

I hope you will shake off the temptations of the world, be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and become the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.