The God Who Rules over Satan
13I have also seen wisdom under the sun in this way, and it seemed great to me. 14There was a little city, and few men within it; and a great king came against it, besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it. 15Now a poor wise man was found in it, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man. 16Then I said, “Wisdom is better than strength.” Nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. 17The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the cry of him who rules among fools. 18Wisdom is better than weapons of war; but one sinner destroys much good.
In the world, evil seems to rule over good. The good that fears God takes care not to sin, but evil is not afraid of sinning, and so it looks as if evil is the one with power. Even when a technology that saves lives is developed with good intentions, it is sad to see evil people end up using it in places where it harms life. Sinning is far easier than living a good life by the Word. Helping someone repent of a sin and setting them upright in the truth takes much longer than committing the sin. To keep the eternal truth in a world ruled by Satan, we may even have to stake our lives. As the world has changed, people’s common sense and moral standards have decayed little by little, and now they no longer make any effort to pursue what is good.
The common sense that people ordinarily have, or ought to have, has collapsed. That is why many senseless things are happening now, done by people who cannot tell right from wrong. With the collapse of public education, the world has become a place where people cannot even claim the basic rights that rest on their humanity. It has become hard to find an adult who will rebuke children when they behave in ways that defy common sense. We ought to teach children to live as persons in their own right, but because we think it is enough for our own children to be well off, we can no longer look forward to the future. Distorted education policies have taken away teachers’ standing. Once their authority was gone, teachers could no longer work with a sense of responsibility and conviction. Unless character education grounded in morals and ethics is strengthened for children, we cannot look forward to any future for this nation.
Politicians show us quarreling rather than cooperation, the corrupt lives of celebrities are laid bare, and it looks as though being rich buys a pardon even for what is sin. That is why recovery is not easy. Only a right education gives children wisdom, knowledge and moral thinking, and children who have not had one behave rudely without even recognizing that they are doing wrong.
Parents, too, have grown numb to the corrupt world, so when they see such senseless behavior in their children, they neither teach them what is right nor rebuke them. People have thrown away the law of God, which exposes human sin and says that sin becomes the ground of judgment; that is why this is happening. Parents do not judge by the truth. They make excuses for their children, thinking that at least their own child is better than the corrupt world, and so they do not lead them onto the good path.
Some parents know that anyone who does not live by the truth cannot be saved, yet they measure their children against a corrupted world and say that their child is good enough, or that nothing can be done because that is how the world is. Saying this is evidence that the Word is not in those parents, for it is not something a believer who trusts in the eternally unchanging God would say. The law of the church has collapsed, and that is why the law of the world has collapsed. Believers have abandoned God, and that is why people are rushing headlong into evil. Recovery can come only when the church sets up a whole law and stands on the rock of the Word. Even so, God still shines a ray of good light on the people of faith and protects them even now so that their souls are not taken by Satan. That is why we can keep our faith.
Schemes and tricks that throw away honesty and morality to reach their goals may run rampant, yet here and there are wise people who solve problems with good wisdom, and so the world still keeps its balance. When poor wise people share good wisdom, the evil world does not listen, but God is using wise people who are poor and good to save souls. Among us, too, not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, and not many noble.
But God chose the foolish things of the world to put to shame those who are wise, and chose the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are strong. Satan knows about this good work of God too and tries to hinder it, but God makes the wise who are poor and powerless teach the mighty kings of the world. If you are good and wise, I hope you will understand this working of God and become a humble person who boasts of nothing before God. God in his love gave us grace in Jesus Christ, and that is why we have received wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption.
When Solomon realized that he was a great sinner, he came to know that at the end of a world where the wicked hold sway, the good and wise win. Look at David and Goliath, and it becomes easier to understand whom Solomon means by the poor wise man. When war breaks out between nations, people who are not well prepared become all the more confused and agitated. What is more, if a great king comes against a little city, builds bulwarks and declares war, it is not easy for the people inside the little city to judge rightly. A war like this, where a great king attacks a little city, comes from the judgment that the side with fewer people will lose without even a fight.
Israel, weak in military strength, and the strong Philistine army were camped facing each other across the Valley of Elah. For some forty days Goliath insulted God before Israel, but no one among Israel’s soldiers could face him. Goliath threatened that if someone fought him one on one and won, the Philistines would become Israel’s servants, but if Israel lost, Israel must become their servants. The spear and armor he carried were weapons that only a giant three meters tall could use, so Goliath’s height is thought to have been three meters, and there was no one who could step out before a man of such enormous build. Even King Saul was at a loss about what to do, and at that very time young David, who had come on an errand for his father, saw Goliath mocking Israel. Young as he was, David would have asked God for wisdom about how he should act so as to protect God’s people. He volunteered to King Saul to go out and fight Goliath. His older brothers, who could not step forward themselves in this situation, saw young David volunteer and rebuked him as proud.
His brothers had never once asked God for wisdom to save their nation, yet now that David was going to act in faith, they were sinning by trying to stop him. That was because they were firmly convinced that what they could not do, no one else could do either, and behavior like this is sin before God. But whatever his brothers thought, David could not stand by and watch Goliath insult God and Israel.
Look at 1 Samuel 17:25. King Saul promised that he would give great riches as a reward to the man who killed Goliath, make him his son-in-law, and make the father’s house of the one who killed Goliath free in Israel. Here you must clearly understand why David was going to fight Goliath. If you read David’s mind and judge rightly from what point of view he made this choice, you can gain the wisdom to see every problem you meet in the world within the truth.
David did not go out to Goliath to receive the reward Saul was offering. When he saw Goliath insulting God and the army of Israel, he saw the situation through the eyes of God, who was looking on Israel in its crisis. If David fought Goliath to receive a reward from a man, then even if he won, it would be a battle he lost as a believer. But if he had resolved to lay down his life for God and God’s army, then it was no longer David’s war but God’s war.
Showing this kind of faith in deeds is never easy. That is because even when we resolve in faith, the moment we actually meet a problem, we fall back on the worldly methods we have learned by habit. You must turn people’s wars into wars of faith in which God can step in. Only then can you overcome a world like Goliath and drive back your foe, however great a king they may be. When faith is shown in deeds, the blessings of the world follow naturally. If you make the effort to put God’s will ahead of your own thoughts and God’s work ahead of your own problems, you can receive true blessing.
David had no strength to defeat Goliath. By what strength could a shepherd defeat a giant Philistine champion? Knowing he could not defeat Goliath, David looked back on the life he had lived until then with God’s help. In ordinary times, when David kept his father’s sheep, he did not slack off. When a lion or a bear came to harm the sheep, he caught the beast by its beard and fought it. He was faithful in his work in this way and prayed that God would protect the lives of the sheep. Because of that, Goliath looked to him like nothing more than a beast that did not know God.
To David, Goliath looked not like a champion of enormous build but like a beast, a bear or a lion, so he was no longer a foe to be feared. Be faithful and train well in every moment, because God uses every life experience he has given you in the place where it is needed, as he did with David. If David had been afraid and had not stood against the beasts when they came to carry off the sheep, he could not have faced Goliath that day. He knew the presence of God, who had kept the flock from the mouths of beasts, and that is why he could gladly fight Goliath.
Had David looked at Goliath with human thinking, he would have been afraid, but when he looked through God’s eyes, he would have seen an evil spirit trying to bring down Israel and the people of God. If we do not rely on God, we may go through training without knowing it is training, and let a chance for blessing pass by without knowing it is a chance. What training have you received? If God says he will use that experience, can you gladly devote yourself?
Living by the Word is truly important, because the experience of faith is itself courage and wisdom. To take courage as David did, we must live out a life of faith, and we must have the wisdom to recognize God’s work in that experience. When Goliath insults God, you must know how to ache as though you yourself were being insulted, and when you see God’s army shaken, you must know how to pray for the nation and the church that are being divided. Only then can you repent when the church is mocked by the world, and mourn when you see God’s people become corrupt like the world. David believed that God would surely help him, so he stood before Goliath. But when a small boy, so young and good-looking, came walking out toward him, Goliath would have laughed in disbelief. When David came out without weapons, Goliath asked whether David took him for a dog, that he came to him with sticks, and he cursed David by the gods he believed in.
Goliath thought his god was above God, and that is why he was not afraid to persecute God’s people and treat them with contempt. But David had an absolute faith that because of God, even though he walked through the valley of the shadow of death, he would fear no evil. He said to Goliath, “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin; but I come to you in the name of Yahweh of Armies, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.”
David answered that Yahweh would deliver Goliath into his hand that day; through this event David would let all the earth know that there is a God in Israel, and he would show that salvation is not by sword and spear, and that the battle is Yahweh’s. Just as David said, Goliath fell, and David displayed the glory of God. David had lived his life by faith, and so he had received God’s wisdom; that is why he could show such boldness before the giant Goliath.
The world thinks it has won if it has more than the other side. So people try to stand with the side that has greater numbers, even if that side belongs to the world, and they try to gain power even when they know it is sin. Like the poor in spirit in the Sermon on the Mount, David was not greedy; like those who mourn, he loved life; and like the gentle, he gave away what was his.
Like those who hunger and thirst after God’s righteousness, David longed for grace, and he lived with a merciful heart and a pure faith. And against those who blasphemed God, like Goliath, he fought for righteousness. His brothers reviled and persecuted David, who lived looking to God alone like this, but David took courage in faith for one purpose only: that God and Israel would not be mocked. This David is the poor wise man who kept the little city.
Ecclesiastes 9:15 says that the poor wise man delivered the city, yet because he was so poor, no one remembered him. In the same way, the young David who defeated Goliath would be forgotten by people. People are grateful only at first and do not keep up their gratitude, so they go back to the place of sin, and it is truly sad to see. Solomon saw such unreasonable things being taken for granted, and because he knew they would regret it later, he wanted to tell them that they must live within the truth.
In the world, the world itself is the standard for every judgment. So however abundantly someone has God’s wisdom, if they lack the qualifications the world wants, they are not recognized. Even when a poor wise man has saved a city in danger, people, sadly, praise the king who won the victory by listening to the wise man. But you must listen to what the poor wise man says and treasure him, and you must know how to give glory to God, who granted a life of victory. The poor wise are the very people God has chosen and set up. If the wise man had been the king of a nation or a very rich man, people would have made time to hear him and given money without holding back. Far from forgetting the wise man’s words, they would have tried hard to remember them as famous sayings. But then as now, no one spends time and means to hear what a poor wise man says, and no one tries hard to remember his words.
In Jesus’ day, too, the rich went to the synagogue each carrying a sack of money and gave offerings, but while Jesus, hungry, was plucking heads of grain to eat as he preached the truth, they did not take care of him in the least. This is the foolish faith that turns away from the truth yet still wants to be blessed by that very Word. Jesus, who is preaching the truth here, looks humble on the outside, but the government is on his shoulders, and his name is Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Jesus came to this earth to save lives within God’s will, so he always preached a word that was deep and full of grace, and people were amazed when they heard it. This amazed them because the people who had seen Jesus since he was a child saw him only as Joseph’s son and never thought of him as the Savior. But Jesus paid no attention to how people reacted and only preached the Word. When the gospel was proclaimed to their hearts, their sin was exposed, but instead of repenting, those who were cut to the heart plotted to kill Jesus.
When someone is cut to the heart by the Word, repenting and turning back is a blessing, but those people, gripped by an evil spirit, were not healed in the Word. The word of truth is still knocking on the hearts of all people on this earth, even now, and changing their hearts. Solomon saw that the poor man’s wisdom is despised and mocked by people. But he remembered that he himself had once ignored the counsel of the wise who exhorted him, because they were his servants and poor subjects, and that he had not changed his mind.
Every time Solomon went down a wrong path, poor wise people told him the wisdom of heaven, but he ended up angry at them for daring to advise him, the king. When people think they have more possessions and experience than the other person, they put forward their own righteousness and will not listen, even when the Word is truth and wisdom. But we must know that the world runs in balance not because of the strength and ability people have, but because of the wise whom God has set up.
The world has taken Satan as its father and its husband, so when people of the world look at God’s people, they would see them as orphans without a father and widows without a husband. That is why they do not listen, however earnestly these orphans and widows preach the truth. Once Solomon realized his own folly, he came to see how very many wise people had devoted themselves to the nation at his side. You must listen to the wise people beside you and live out what they say, because the world’s knowledge, wealth and talent can never surpass God’s wisdom and his work.
If there is someone beside you now who is telling you God’s will, I hope you will obey, whether that person is rich or poor, old or young. God’s wisdom cannot be seen or judged with the eyes of the flesh; it can be known only by living by faith.
I hope you too will go out into the world and become poor wise people. Whether people listen or not, acknowledge you or not, honor you or not, you must preach the truth. As you preach the truth, you can bring life to your nation, your church and your home. Then Jesus will commend you, who are faithful to death to pass on wisdom, and will give you a reward that no one can ever take from you.
The final destination of those who believe is heaven. So we must not be shaken when we see the world’s troubles, must not be swayed by our feelings, and must not collapse before greed. Finally, this is what I want to ask of you. The experience you have lived out by faith is the courage and the powerful weapon that can overcome the world. So I hope you will boldly preach the gospel to the souls that are heading toward eternal death.