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 this world, evil seems to rule over good. Goodness fears God and takes care not to sin, while evil has no fear of sinning, which is why it appears to hold all the power. It is painful to watch technology developed with good intentions, to save lives, end up in the hands of the wicked, who turn it to destroying life. Sinning is far easier than living a good life according to the word. Helping someone repent of a sin and setting them firmly in the truth takes much longer than the sin itself did. In a world ruled by Satan, holding on to eternal truth may even cost us our lives. As the world has shifted, people’s common sense and moral standards have slowly decayed, until now they no longer even strive after what is good.

Today the common sense that people ordinarily have, or ought to have, has collapsed, and senseless things happen everywhere because people can no longer tell right from wrong. With the collapse of public education, we have come to live in a world where people cannot even claim the basic rights grounded in our shared humanity. It is hard now to find an adult who will rebuke children when they behave in ways that defy all sense. We ought to teach children to live as persons in their own right; instead, we think it is enough if our own children live in comfort, and that way of thinking has left us with no future to hope for. Misguided education policies have stripped teachers of their standing. Once their authority was gone, teachers could no longer work with a sense of responsibility and conviction. Unless we strengthen the formation of character in our children, grounded in morality and ethics, this nation has no future to look forward to.

Politicians show us quarrels rather than cooperation, the corrupt lives of celebrities are laid bare, and wealth seems to buy a pardon even for what is plainly sin. With all this, recovery will not come easily. Only a sound education can give children wisdom, knowledge, and moral judgment, and those who lack it behave without any manners and still do not recognize that they have done wrong.

Numbed themselves by a corrupt world, parents watch this senseless behavior in their children and neither teach them what is right nor rebuke them. All this has come about because the law of God has been cast aside, the law that exposes human sin and declares that sin brings judgment. Rather than judging by the truth, parents excuse their children, reasoning that their own child is still better than the corrupt world around them, and as a result they fail to lead them in the way of goodness.

Parents know that those who do not live by the truth cannot be saved. But if they measure their children against a corrupted world and say that their child is fine as things go, or that nothing can be done, the world being what it is, it shows that the word is not in them, because no one who believes in the God who never changes would speak that way. The world’s law has collapsed because the church’s law collapsed first, and people are rushing headlong into evil because God’s people have forsaken him. Only when the church establishes a sound law and stands on the rock of the word can there be recovery. Even so, God still shines a ray of good light on his faithful people and protects them even now so that Satan cannot take their souls, and his protection is what enables us to stand firm in our faith.

Schemes and intrigues that throw off honesty and morality to reach their goals may run rampant, yet the world still keeps its balance, for here and there are wise people who solve problems with good wisdom. When a poor wise man offers good counsel, the evil world will not listen, but God uses the poor and the good who are wise to save souls. Among us, too, not many are wise according to the flesh, not many are mighty, and not many are noble.

But God chose the foolish things of the world to put to shame those who are wise, and he chose the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are strong. Satan knows of this good work of God and tries to obstruct it, but God makes the poor and powerless wise man teach the mighty kings of the world. If you are among the good and wise, I hope you will recognize this work of God and become humble, boasting of nothing before him. We have received wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and salvation because of the love of God, who has given us grace in Jesus Christ.

Once Solomon realized what a great sinner he was, he came to see that in a world where the wicked hold sway, the good and wise prevail in the end. To understand who this poor wise man is that Solomon is speaking of, it helps to look at David and Goliath. When war breaks out between nations, those who are not well prepared become all the more confused and agitated. And if a great king comes against a little city, builds bulwarks against it, and declares war, the people inside will find it hard to think clearly. In a war like that, where a great king attacks a little city, everyone judges that the side with fewer men will lose without even a fight.

Israel, weak in military strength, and the powerful Philistine army were encamped on either side of the valley of Elah. For some forty days Goliath hurled insults at God before Israel, yet not one soldier in Israel would face him. Goliath threatened them: if one of them fought him man to man and won, the Philistines would become their servants; but if they lost, they would become servants of the Philistines. His spear and armor were weapons only a giant three meters tall could wield, which is why Goliath’s height is reckoned at three meters, and no one dared to stand before such a towering man. Even King Saul was at a loss over what to do. At that moment young David, who had come on an errand for his father, saw Goliath taunting Israel. Young as he was, he would have asked God for wisdom about how he ought to act to protect God’s people. He volunteered to King Saul to go out and fight Goliath. His brothers, who themselves dared not step forward, rebuked him for his pride when their young brother volunteered.

His brothers had never once asked God for wisdom to save their nation, yet now that David meant to act in faith, they were committing the sin of trying to stop him. They were firmly convinced that what they could not do, no one else could do either, and that very attitude is sin before God. But whatever his brothers thought, David could not stand by while Goliath defied God and Israel.

In 1 Samuel 17:25, King Saul promised that the man who killed Goliath would be enriched with great riches, would become his son-in-law, and would have his father’s house made free in Israel. Here you must clearly understand why David wanted to fight Goliath. If you read David’s thoughts and judge rightly from what standpoint he made this choice, you can gain the wisdom to see every problem you meet in the world in the light of the truth.

David did not go out to Goliath to win Saul’s reward. When he saw Goliath defy God and the armies of Israel, he looked at the situation through the eyes of God, who was watching over Israel in its hour of danger. Had David fought Goliath for a reward from men, then even in victory he would have lost the battle as one of God’s people. But once he resolved to lay down his life for God and God’s army, the battle was no longer David’s; it became God’s.

Putting such faith into action is never easy, because even after we make a decision in faith, we fall back on the worldly methods we have grown used to as soon as a problem actually arises. You must turn human battles into battles of faith, battles in which God can intervene. Only then can you overcome a world as formidable as Goliath and drive back an enemy, however great a king he may be. When faith is shown in action, the blessings of the world follow naturally. If we strive to put God’s will ahead of our own thoughts and God’s work ahead of our own problems, we can receive true blessing.

David had no strength to defeat Goliath. With what strength could a shepherd boy overcome a giant Philistine warrior? Knowing he could not beat Goliath, David looked back on the life he had lived until then with God’s help. In the ordinary days of keeping his father’s sheep, he had never shirked his work. When a lion or a bear came to attack the flock, he caught it by its beard and fought it. With that faithfulness in his work and those prayers for God to keep the sheep alive behind him, David saw Goliath as nothing more than a beast that did not know God.

To David, Goliath was not a towering warrior but a beast like the bear or the lion, and he was already no one to fear. God uses every experience of life he gives you, just as he did with David, in the very place it is needed, and that is the reason you must accept his training faithfully at every moment. Had David been too afraid to resist when wild beasts came to carry off a lamb, 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 it was this knowledge that made him willing to take Goliath on.

Seen through human eyes, Goliath would have been terrifying; but seen through God’s eyes, he would have appeared as an evil spirit bent on destroying 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 an opportunity for blessing pass by without knowing it is an opportunity. What training have you been through? If God says he will use that experience, will you gladly give yourself to it?

Living by the word is a matter of real importance for us, because the experience of faith is itself courage and wisdom. To find courage as David did, we must live out a life of faith and have the wisdom to discern God’s work in what we go through. When Goliath defies God, we must feel the pain as though we ourselves had been insulted; when we see God’s army waver, we need to know how to pray for the nation and the church that are being torn apart. Only then can we repent when the church is mocked by the world, and mourn when we see God’s people grow as corrupt as the world. Believing that God would surely help him, David stood before Goliath. Goliath, seeing a small boy, so young and so good-looking, walk out toward him, probably laughed in disbelief. When David came out without weapons, Goliath asked whether David took him for a dog, coming at him with a stick, and he cursed David by his gods.

Because he believed his gods stood above God, he felt no fear in persecuting and mistreating God’s people. David, however, held an unshakable 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.”

He went on to answer that Yahweh would deliver Goliath into his hand that day, that through this all the earth would know there is a God in Israel, and that he would show them that battle and salvation belong not to sword and spear but to Yahweh. Just as David said, Goliath fell, and David displayed the glory of God. David could show such boldness before the giant because he had lived his life by faith and had therefore been given the wisdom of God.

The world thinks it has won when it has more than the other side. So people try to stand with the majority even if it belongs to the world, and they reach for power even when they know it is sin. David, like the poor in spirit in the Sermon on the Mount, did not give way to greed; like those who mourn, he loved life; and like the gentle, he gave freely of what was his.

Like those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, he longed for grace, and he lived with a merciful heart and a pure faith. And against those who blasphemed God, as Goliath did, he fought for righteousness. His brothers reviled and mistreated David, who lived with his eyes on God alone, but David summoned the courage of faith for one purpose only: that God and Israel would not be mocked. This David is the poor wise man who defended the little city.

Ecclesiastes 9:15 says that a poor wise man delivered the city, yet no one remembered him because he was so poor; in the same way, the young David who defeated Goliath would be forgotten by the people. It is truly heartbreaking to see how people give thanks only at first, then fail to sustain their gratitude and return to the place of sin. Solomon watched such injustice come to be accepted as normal, and knowing they would one day regret it, he longed to tell them that they must live in the truth.

Because the world makes itself the standard of every judgment, no matter how richly someone possesses the wisdom of God, they are not recognized unless they meet the world’s conditions. Though a poor wise man saves a city in danger, people sadly praise the king who won the victory by heeding the wise man’s words. But you must listen to what the poor wise man says, treasure him, and know how to give glory to God, who has granted you a life of victory. The poor wise are the very people God has chosen and raised up. If the wise man had been the king of a nation or a man of great wealth, people would have made time to hear him and spent their money without hesitation. Far from forgetting his words, they would have labored to remember them as great sayings. But then as now, no one spends time or money to hear a poor wise man, and no one tries to remember what he said.

In Jesus’ day, too, the rich carried their money to the synagogue by the bagful and gave their offerings, yet while Jesus, so hungry that he plucked heads of grain to eat, was proclaiming the truth, they did nothing at all to care for him. This is the foolish faith that turns away from the truth while hoping to be blessed by that very word. Jesus, proclaiming the truth here, is humble in appearance, but the government rests on his shoulders, and his name is Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Because Jesus came to this earth to save lives within the will of God, the word he proclaimed was always deep and full of grace, and people were astonished when they heard it. Those who had known Jesus since he was a child saw him only as Joseph’s son and had never once thought of him as the Savior, and that was why they were astonished. But Jesus paid no attention to how people reacted and simply proclaimed the word. When the gospel was preached into their hearts, their sin was exposed; but though they were cut to the heart, instead of repenting they plotted to kill him.

When the word cuts us to the heart, it is a blessing to repent and turn back, but they were held captive by an evil spirit and found no healing in the word. Even now the word of truth knocks at the hearts of everyone on this earth and is changing them. Solomon saw the wisdom of the poor despised and mocked. And he recalled that he himself had once ignored the counsel of the wise men who advised him, simply because they were his servants and poor common people, and had refused to change his mind.

Each time he went the wrong way, the poor wise men had shown him the wisdom of heaven, but he had flown into a rage that they should presume to advise him, the king. When people think they possess more and have seen more than others, they put forward their own righteousness and will not listen, even if what is spoken is truth and wisdom. But we must understand that the world keeps its balance not because of human strength and ability but because of the wise whom God has raised up.

Because the world has taken Satan as its father and its husband, it will look upon God’s people as orphans with no father and widows with no husband. That is why it will not listen even when these orphans and widows earnestly proclaim the truth. Once Solomon recognized his own folly, he realized how many wise people had served the nation faithfully at his side. You must listen to the wise beside you and live out what they say, because the world’s knowledge, wealth, and talent can never surpass the wisdom and the work of God.

If there is someone near you now who shows you the will of God, I hope you will obey them, rich or poor, older or younger. The wisdom of God cannot be seen or judged with the eyes of the flesh; it can be known only by living by faith.

May you, too, go out into the world and become one of the poor wise. Whether people listen or not, whether they acknowledge you or not, whether they honor you or not, you must proclaim the truth. You who proclaim the truth can bring life back to the nation, the church, and the home. Then Jesus will commend you for being faithful to the point of death to spread his wisdom, and he will give you a reward that no one can ever take from you.

Because heaven is the final destination of God’s people, we must not be shaken by the troubles of the world, swayed by our emotions, or toppled by greed. My last request to you is that you boldly proclaim the gospel to souls on their way to eternal death, for the experience of having lived by faith is the courage and the mighty weapon that overcomes the world.