The Love of God Who Waited for Solomon
12I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under the sky. It is a heavy burden that God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with. 14I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. 15That which is crooked can’t be made straight; and that which is lacking can’t be counted. 16I said to myself, “Behold, I have obtained for myself great wisdom above all who were before me in Jerusalem. Yes, my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” 17I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also was a chasing after wind. 18For in much wisdom is much grief; and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
Luke 15 records the story of the prodigal son, who took the property he had begged from his father, went to a far country and wasted it all, and of the father who waited for him to the end. When the younger son asked for his share, the father asked him nothing at all and gave him his portion. Once the son had a great fortune, he went to a foreign country as far from his father as he could and squandered it all in riotous living. When he had spent all of it, he had no way to live, and just then a severe famine arose in that country, and his life became harder still. When he asked his father for his share, he had not foreseen any of this. The money was not something he had earned by his own effort, so he did not know that the world is not easy. While the younger son had plenty of money, people laughed along with him and praised him, trying by any means to win his favor.
Watching the people bow and scrape before him, the younger son did not see their cunning hearts and thought they did it because they truly liked him. Those people stayed by him only for his money, but he did not see through their designs on it. The foolish prodigal thought those days would last forever. But when the money ran out, the people’s attitude changed at once, and they began to treat the younger son like a worthless slave. When the money he had received from his father was all gone, the people left him. The people who had laughed with him and praised him never came looking for him again, and the prodigal, at a loss, thought first of all of his father.
It was only after people had cast him off that he remembered his father, who had always trusted him with unchanging love and had always forgiven him. The father he had never once thought of while he had money and people around him, he now missed with an aching heart, once he had sunk to the wretched state of being put in a pigsty. The prodigal missed even the nagging he had hated to hear from his father. He felt that if he could only see his father, who had always forgiven him even when he scolded him, he would have nothing more to wish for. He even resolved that if his father would only take him back, he would work hard like the servants who worked in his father’s fields.
Only then did he realize how good his father had been to him all along, and how safe it was to live under his father’s protection. Once the thought came to him that he must go back to his father, he could not delay. Even if his father got angry and drove him out, he had to receive his father’s forgiveness, and with that thought he headed home. But the father had not forgotten his prodigal son for a single moment. Even if the son had lost all his money and his health, the father was always ready to welcome him with joy, if only he would come back.
The son had wasted all his wealth, but when the father heard the news that he was coming back, he was so glad that he went out of the house and waited only for his son to come into view. Look at this father, who had already forgiven his son and was waiting for him. Then you see that the moment we who lived for the world think that we want to go back to God, God is ready to open his arms and embrace us. When the prodigal saw his father, who had seen him from far off, running toward him, he hesitated, ashamed, but the father took him fully into his arms. The son told his father, who did not rebuke him, that he need no longer be acknowledged as a son from now on, if only his father would forgive him.
Perhaps the father thought something like this. He would have been satisfied just that his younger son realized how foolish and lacking he had been to trust people and squander his money so recklessly. For he thought that if his son had experienced how different the embrace of God is from the embrace of the world, he could grow up stronger. Life does not hold only good things, nor only very bad things. Good and bad are mixed within a problem, so depending on how you look at it, you may grow or you may stand still. If the son could tell good from evil in the midst of hardship, he would have grown into a big-hearted person, rich in good experience, and nothing could be better than that.
The son came back having realized that his father’s fence was the safest place, and the father took off his clothes, soiled in the world, and dressed him in the best robe. The father put a gold ring on the hand of the son who had foolishly squandered his money on people’s praise, took off the dirty shoes he had worn in the world, and put new shoes on his feet. Who but a father would embrace a son who had lost all his money and become poor? No one but his father would take in the outcast prodigal. The prodigal had thought the grace and protection given him in abundance until then were only his due, so he did not thank his father. He did not think his father’s love was anything special, so he thought he could live well enough as long as he had money. The fence of protection surrounding him did not look great to him, so he naively thought that even if he went out into the world he could live just as well as his father, and he failed.
For once he actually went out into the world, it was nothing like what he had thought. The people who had flattered him as though they would be kind forever while he had money turned on him when it ran out, and poverty and want came at him like soldiers. Nowhere, and by no one, was he welcomed.
Can you feel the prodigal’s fear? Only when you can feel the heart of the prodigal, trembling with fear with nowhere to turn, can you understand the heart of Solomon as he writes Ecclesiastes.
When Solomon asked God for wisdom, God gave him not only wisdom but wealth, power and people to help him, in abundance. Once he thought he had more than other people, Solomon, like the prodigal, thought he could now live on his own without God. Like the prodigal who went far from his father’s side, he held on to the world and to idols so that God could not come into his life. To gain greater power he married the princesses of many nations, accepted all their foreign gods, and built high places.
Did Solomon really not know that what he was doing was sin? As I see it, Solomon knew it was sin, but he could not throw off his greed for power, so he shut his own heart toward God. When people bowed their heads before the money and power God had given him, Solomon learned the power of money. Knowing that, he should have understood that everything he was enjoying was God’s and served God all the better. But when he saw the people of the world serve him as a great king, fear him like a god, and bow down to him, he was proud of himself, holding power as though he sat on God’s throne.
When Satan tempted Eve, he said that if she ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, her eyes would be opened, and she would be like God, knowing good and evil. From that we see that Satan’s ultimate goal is to make people proud enough to regard themselves as equal with God. So people deceived by Satan put themselves on the same level as God and show the pride of thinking they can live without God. Solomon had lived like this, exalting himself as though he were God, but his soul had no peace. For he had to fight to keep his power, and it was very hard to live battered by people who used his power and sought his life.
When he lived by faith, God had protected his life without his having to try, and had supplied what he needed; now he had to guard his life and property by himself. Protecting himself in spiritual warfare against evil spirits was no easy thing, so he realized that receiving God’s grace is itself a blessing. When he realized that without that grace he was an empty shell, he was afraid.
Surrounded by people who tried to use his power and by the idols his wives had brought, Solomon was no different from the prodigal shut up in the pigsty. The rich food he had eaten with people who flattered him was as dirty and worthless as the husks that the pigs ate. Solomon and the people worshiped idols made of stone, wood and jewels more than the invisible God. Their hearts grew drier and drier, but they did not even feel it; God’s fence of protection was lifted, but they did not know it.
Women were always in Solomon’s heart, his hands were full of gold, silver and treasure, and people served him like a god, so the things that could be seen made the grace of the unseen God worthless to him. Just as the prodigal regretted running away from his father to a far country, Solomon was dismayed at his own state, having drifted so far from God. He realized that people’s bowing was a pretense to satisfy their own greed, and that the pride that had puffed him up as though he had become a god was a tower of Babel he had built himself to commit greater sin; but sadly, he was already an old man. He had lived all those long years without regard for God, treating God’s grace as trivial, but because he now knew, late as it was, that the world that had been everything to him was vanity of vanities, he thought he must return to God.
2 Samuel 7:13-15
13He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14I will be his father, and he will be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men; 15but my loving kindness will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away before you.
God had a plan to send the Messiah through David’s line. So he promised David that if Solomon sinned, he would chasten him with the rod of men and with the stripes of the children of men, but would not take his loving kindness from him as he had from Saul. Because of the loyalty David had offered him until then, God pledged this greatest of words. Look at this, and you see what a great blessing it is to their descendants when parents hold a right faith.
The hardships we suffer by the rod of men and the stripes of the children of men as we live in the world were God’s love, working to build us up as believers. Like the father who forgave the prodigal, God helped Solomon to repent in his old age in order to keep his promise to David. We must know that our repentance is God’s grace. We are now watching God keep his promise to Solomon to the end. God has promised to give eternal life to you as well. He will surely keep that promise. So if you do your best to win the war against evil spirits, you can win any battle.
Ecclesiastes 1:15
15That which is crooked can’t be made straight; and that which is lacking can’t be counted.
Solomon lamented that because the world is a place where one can live only by laboring to the point of death, life itself is a heavy burden. Even a person of the greatest wisdom, looking back on their life, finds it full of what is crooked and lacking. You too, even when you seem to have solved a problem with all your might, will probably see, looking back after some time, that life itself was not straight but crooked and bent. In other words, no one has lived a life that was smooth.
Even Solomon, a king in the world with power, wealth and wisdom, could not easily cross the valley of a life full of emptiness, could not get over sin as high as a mountain, and could not make level the rough road of a life that was already crooked. Now he knew that even if he wanted to straighten the crooked road, he could not go back to that time. That is why he lamented that life is vanity of vanities. We think we have lived carefully, always judging prudently for the sake of the people we love, yet when we look back, much regret remains. That is life.
This is human weakness: no power in the world can straighten a crooked life, nor split the problems that surge like the sea to bring out dry ground. The wisest choice is to spring up from the place of sin, like the prodigal, and come back to the father’s house; and even after sinning, as Solomon did, wisdom is to repent quickly and turn back. This alone is the way to make level a crooked road of life, a road of highs and lows. Someone who regrets yet cannot leave that place and commits the very same sin has not repented, and has not obeyed God’s word. Failing to leave that place is only human regret over one’s own actions, not a faith that has come back to God.
Isaiah 40:4-5
4Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The uneven shall be made level, and the rough places a plain. 5Yahweh’s glory shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken it.”
Isaiah is saying that human beings cannot do this, but Jesus Christ alone can. On the last day of the world all flesh will see Christ coming again, so this word will surely be fulfilled. The human body looks beautiful, but it soon withers. That is why God’s chosen people must not hold on to a life that withers like grass, but hold on to the word of God, which stands forever.
Solomon, having realized this, said that human wisdom or strength cannot straighten a crooked life, but that God has the almighty power to straighten crooked roads and fill in the valleys. Do you think you can buy eternal life with material things? If you have the thought that you cannot devote yourself and are not recognized because you have no money, that is ignorance, and I urge you to repent of it. If you think this way, it shows that you have not yet fully met God, who says that you must give up the world to live.
Just as a person walking alone late at night becomes a target for crime, a soul that has left the Holy Spirit and is in darkness becomes Satan’s target. Satan is lying in wait for people who are spiritually lazy, like the five virgins who did not fill with oil the lamps Christ had entrusted to them. What we must not forget is that the people of the world, as we were before we received Christ, are already Satan’s servants, so Satan does not attack them spiritually.
Satan is at work to bring down those of you who are freely enjoying liberty in grace, so you must always stay alert and remain in Christ. When you face the world’s problems alone, there seems to be no answer, but if you look at the problem together with God, you can see that it is in the end Satan’s scheme to shake your faith. So you must decide whether to live holding on to that sin or to lay it down at the foot of the cross and receive the grace of Christ. That is why our souls must shine as bright as day; then we can make the right decision and walk with the Holy Spirit by faith.
Ecclesiastes 1:17-18
17I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also was a chasing after wind. 18For in much wisdom is much grief; and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
Until then Solomon had thought that human wisdom and knowledge, madness and folly were all different things, but when he stepped back from the world and looked at them with God’s wisdom, he saw that they were all worldly matters with no solution. For he came to see that the wisdom and knowledge human beings have are like an empty mind going around in circles, like a maze with no exit. The more one knows of the wisdom and knowledge the world recognizes, the more sorrow it brings; it clings to the narrow thinking it has made for itself and blocks God’s higher knowledge from coming in, so in the end it is sin. People with much of the world’s miscellaneous knowledge and experience will not listen even when they are taught God’s word and wisdom. Their experience in the world and the world’s learning, which has no answers, have become the standard for all their judgments, so they reject even the word of Almighty God, and for them all of it is a seed of unhappiness.
With the wisdom God gave him, Solomon left behind the words of Proverbs, the Song of Songs and Psalms, yet his own life was hollow and empty. It is the same when pastors preach and teach from the Bible but do not hold true faith: they themselves have nothing to do with Christ.
You must feel the emptiness Solomon feels. If he enjoyed a special grace no one else could enjoy and still said at the end of his life that he regretted it, then you must not walk the road Solomon walked. For Solomon has told you so that you would not have the same regret he had. Solomon grieved that he had not given his life to God. And he regretted the time he had not lived for God. His was a life that could have given glory to God in every way, and he was bitterly sorry that he had failed to do so.
If God has now granted you knowledge, ability and wisdom, it is his way of asking you to live as a witness of Christ. The prodigal came back to his father, but he had wasted so much time that he was ashamed of the choice he had made, and only regret remained. He had boasted that as long as he had money he did not need his father, but when people mocked him and he could not even eat his fill of husks in the pigsty, only then did he know that God’s protection and the world are different.
You must know who it is that is helping you at this very moment. If you do not know that, you will leave God and be robbed of eternal life. By the time you feel regret, you are already being mocked by Satan in the middle of the world, so it is not easy to come back to the Father. You must leave the place of sin while Christ is waiting for you. Win the spiritual war so that you do not leave God, for if you live as Satan wants, any life becomes empty and can only leave regret.
Solomon hoped people would not live a foolish life as he had. In writing Ecclesiastes, he laid bare all his shameful secrets and, with a repentant heart, tried to lead the people to God. Whether your life is hard or prosperous, I hope that, as Solomon earnestly wished, you will live a life of prayer and praise so that you never let go of God’s hand.