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 tells the story of the prodigal son, who begged his father for his share of the property, carried it off to a far country, and squandered every bit of it, and of the father who waited for him to the very end. When the younger son asked for his share, the father questioned him about nothing and handed over his portion. Now that he had come into great wealth, the son went off to a foreign land as far from his father as he could get, and there he threw it all away in reckless living. When the money was gone, he had no idea how he would survive, and just then a severe famine struck the land and made his life harder still. When he had asked his father for his share, he never imagined he would end up like this. Because the money was not something he had worked for, he did not know how hard the world can be. While the younger son had plenty, people laughed along with him and praised him, trying by any means they could to win his favor.
Watching the people who bowed and scraped before him, the younger son never saw how false their hearts were; he thought they treated him this way because they genuinely liked him. They stayed at his side only for his money, but he failed to see through their designs on it. The foolish prodigal assumed those days would last forever. But when the money ran out, their attitude changed overnight, and they began to treat him like a worthless slave. Once all he had received from his father was spent, they abandoned him. When the people who had smiled at him and praised him so warmly never came looking for him again, the prodigal, at his wits’ end, thought first of his father.
Only after people had cast him off did he remember the father who had always trusted him with unchanging love and always forgiven him. While he had money and company, his father had never once crossed his mind; now, brought down to the misery of a pigsty, he missed him with an aching heart. He even missed the scolding he had once hated to hear. If only he could see his father again, the father who had always forgiven him even when he rebuked him, he felt he would want nothing more. He resolved that if his father would only take him back, he would work as hard as the servants who labored 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. The moment it dawned on him that he must go back, he could not delay. Though his father might angrily drive him away, he set out for home, convinced that he had to receive his father’s forgiveness. But the father had never for a moment forgotten his prodigal son. Even if the boy had lost all his money and his health besides, the father stood ready at all times to welcome him with joy, if only he would come home.
The son had squandered everything, but when the father heard he was on his way back, he was so overjoyed that he went outside the house and watched for the first sight of him. In this father, who had already forgiven his son and was waiting for him, we see that the moment we who lived for the world begin to long to return to God, God is ready to open his arms and embrace us. When the prodigal saw his father running toward him from far off, he hung back in shame, but his father gathered him into his arms. The father spoke no word of rebuke, and the son asked him to forgive him, even if he would no longer own him as his son.
Perhaps the father thought something like this. He would have been content simply that his younger son had realized how foolish and lacking he had been to trust people and throw his money away, for he believed that a son who had felt how different God’s embrace is from the world’s could grow up stronger. Life holds neither nothing but good things nor nothing but bad. Because every trouble has good and bad mixed within it, how we look at it decides whether we grow or stand still. If the son had learned to tell good from evil in the midst of his hardship, he would have grown into a person of real stature, enriched by what he had been through, and nothing could be better than that.
When the son came home, having learned that his father’s hedge of protection was the safest place of all, the father stripped off the clothes the world had soiled and dressed him in the best robe. On the hand of the son who had foolishly squandered his money for people’s praise he put a gold ring, and he took off the filthy shoes the boy had worn out in the world and put new sandals on his feet. Who but a father would embrace a son who had lost all his money and been reduced to poverty? No one but his father would take in the castoff prodigal. The prodigal had never thanked his father, because he took for granted the grace and protection so abundantly given him. Since he saw nothing special in his father’s love, he thought money was all he needed to live. Never seeing how great the hedge around him was, he naively assumed he could go out into the world and do just as well as his father had; and he failed.
For when he actually went out into the world, it was nothing like what he had imagined. People who had humored him as though their kindness would never end turned on him the moment his money ran out, and poverty and want came upon him like an army. Nowhere was he welcome, and no one received him.
Can you feel the prodigal’s fear? Only when you feel the heart of the prodigal, trembling with fear because he had 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 helpers in abundance. Once Solomon felt that he had more than anyone else, he, like the prodigal, began to think he could now manage on his own without God. Like the prodigal who went far from his father, he clung to the world and to idols so that God could not enter his life. He married the princesses of many nations to gain greater power, welcomed every foreign god, and built high places for them.
Did Solomon really not know that all this was sin? My own view is that he knew it was sin, but, unable to let go of his craving for power, he closed his heart to God himself. When people bowed low before the money and power God had given him, Solomon learned how much power money has. Knowing that, he ought to have recognized that everything he enjoyed belonged to God and served God all the more faithfully. But when he saw the people of the world serve him as a great king, fear him like a god, and bow to his will, he grew proud of himself, as mighty as if he were seated on the throne of God.
When Satan tempted Eve, he told her that if she ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, her eyes would be opened and she would know good and evil like God. Satan’s ultimate aim, then, is to fill people with the pride of counting themselves equal with God. So those whom Satan has deceived set themselves on a level with God and display the arrogance of believing they can live without him. Solomon had lived in just this way, exalting himself as though he were God, yet his soul found no peace, because he had to fight to hold on to his power, and it wore him down to live hemmed in by people who exploited his power and by those who sought his life.
When he lived by faith, God had protected his life without any effort on his part and supplied whatever he needed, but now he had to guard his own life and property. Because defending himself in spiritual warfare against evil spirits is no easy thing, he came to realize that simply to receive the grace of God is itself a blessing. When he saw that without that grace he was an empty shell, he was afraid.
Surrounded by people who sought to use his power and by the idols his wives had brought with them, Solomon was no different from the prodigal shut up in the pigsty. The rich food he had shared with his flatterers was as filthy and worthless as the pods the pigs ate. Solomon and his people worshiped idols of stone, wood, and jewels more than the invisible God. Their spirits grew ever drier, yet they did not even feel it; the hedge of God’s protection had been taken away, and they never knew.
Solomon’s heart was always taken up with women, his hands were full of gold, silver, and treasure, and people served him like a god, and all these things he could see made the grace of the invisible God seem worthless. Just as the prodigal regretted running from his father to a distant land, Solomon found it pitiful how far he had drifted from God. He came to see that people’s bowing had been a pretense to satisfy their own greed, and that the pride that had puffed him up as if he were a god was a tower of Babel he had built only to sin all the more. Sadly, by then he was already an old man. He had spent those long years with no regard for God, treating his grace as a trifle, but now at last he knew that the world, which had been everything to him, was vanity of vanities, and 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 the line of David. So he promised David that if Solomon sinned, he would chasten him with the rod of men and the stripes of the children of men, but would not take his loving kindness from him as he had taken it from Saul. God made this supreme promise because of the faithfulness David had shown him up to that time. Here we see what a great blessing it is to children and grandchildren when their parents hold a right faith.
The hardships we suffer on earth under the rod of men and the stripes of the children of men are the love of God, who means to establish us as his own. 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 understand that our repentance, too, is the grace of God. In Solomon we are watching a God who keeps his promise to the very end. God has promised eternal life to you as well. He will surely keep that promise; therefore, if you do your utmost to win the war against evil spirits, you can prevail in 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 life itself is painful, since the world is a place where we can live only by laboring to the point of death. However great someone’s wisdom, when they look back on life it is full of things crooked and lacking. You too may feel you have done your best to solve your problems, but when you look back after some time has passed, you will be able to see that life itself was not straight but bent and marred. In other words, no one has walked through life on level ground.
Even Solomon, king of the world, possessed of power, wealth, and wisdom, could not easily cross a valley of life filled with emptiness, could not climb over a mountain of sin, and could not make level the rough road of a life already bent. He wanted to straighten that crooked road, but he knew now that he could never go back, and for this reason he cried out that life is vanity of vanities. We think we have lived carefully, weighing our decisions with prudence for the sake of those we love, yet when we look back much remains that we wish had gone otherwise; that is life.
Such is human weakness that no power in the world can straighten a crooked life or part a sea of surging troubles to bring out dry ground. The wisest choice is to rise at once from the place of sin, as the prodigal did, and return to the father’s house; and even if we have sinned as Solomon did, wisdom lies in repenting and turning back quickly. This alone can make level the crooked road of life with all its heights and depths. Those who feel regret yet cannot leave that place and commit the same sin again have not repented and have not obeyed the word of God. Failing to leave that place is merely human regret over one’s actions; it is not the faith that has returned 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 what human beings cannot do, Jesus Christ alone can. Since all flesh will see Christ when he comes again on the last day of this world, this word will surely be fulfilled. The human body looks beautiful, but it soon withers. God’s chosen people, then, must not cling to a life that withers like the grass but hold fast to the word of God, which stands forever.
Having grasped this, Solomon declared that while human wisdom and strength cannot straighten a crooked life, God has the almighty power to straighten crooked paths and fill in the valleys. Do you think you can buy eternal life with money? If you think you cannot give yourself to the Lord’s work or be recognized because you have no money, that is ignorance, and I hope you will repent of it. To think this way shows that you have not yet truly met the God who tells us that we must forsake the world in order to live.
Just as someone walking alone late at night becomes a target for crime, a soul that has left the Holy Spirit and stays in darkness becomes a target for Satan. Satan is watching for the spiritually lazy, like the five virgins who failed to fill with oil the lamps Christ had entrusted to them. What we must not forget is this: the world already belongs to Satan as his servant, just as we did before we received Christ; he has no need to attack its people spiritually.
Instead he works to bring down those of us who freely enjoy our liberty in grace. That is why we must always stay alert and abide in Christ. When we face the troubles of the world alone they seem to have no answer, but when we look at them together with God, we find that they are, in the end, Satan’s schemes to shake our faith. So each of us has to decide whether to go on living with that sin or lay it down at the foot of the cross and receive the grace of Christ. Only if our souls shine as bright as day can we make the right decision and walk by faith with the Holy Spirit.
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 quite different things, but when he stepped back from the world and looked at them with the wisdom of God, he saw that every one of them was a worldly matter with no solution. He had come to see that human wisdom and knowledge are like a futile heart going round and round in a maze with no way out. The wisdom and knowledge the world esteems bring greater grief, not less, the more one knows; they cling to narrow thoughts of their own making and shut out the higher knowledge of God, and in the end that is sin. People who have gathered a great deal of worldly knowledge and experience will not listen even when they are taught the word and wisdom of God. Because what they have experienced in the world, along with the world’s learning that has no answers, has become their standard for every judgment, they reject even the word of almighty God; for such a person all of it is a seed of misfortune.
Solomon left us the words of Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, and Psalms through the wisdom God gave him, yet his own life was hollow and empty. In the same way, a pastor may preach and teach from the Bible, but without true faith that pastor is, for all of it, no better than someone with no tie to Christ.
You must feel the emptiness Solomon felt. If even he, after enjoying a singular grace that no one else could enjoy, confessed to regret at the end of his life, then do not walk the road he walked. Solomon told us these things precisely so that we would not have the regrets he had. He grieved that he had not given his life to God, and he looked back with sorrow on the years he had failed to live for God. His was a life that could have brought glory to God in a hundred ways, and he was bitterly sorry that it had not.
If God has now granted you knowledge, ability, and wisdom, he is asking you to live as a witness of Christ. The prodigal did come back to his father, but having wasted so much time, he was ashamed of the choice he had made, and only regret remained. He had boasted that as long as he had money he had no need of his father, but when people mocked him and he could not even eat his fill of the pods in the pigsty, he finally understood how different God’s protection is from the world.
We must know who it is that is helping us at this very moment. Without knowing it we will leave God and be robbed of eternal life. By the time regret comes, we are already in the middle of the world and mocked by Satan, and it is not easy to return to the Father. Friends, you must leave the place of sin while Christ is still waiting for you. Any life lived as Satan wants becomes empty and can only leave regret behind; therefore, so that we never leave God, we need to win the spiritual war.
Solomon hoped that others would not live as foolishly as he had. In writing Ecclesiastes he laid bare all his shameful failings and, with a repentant heart, sought to lead his people to God. In hardship or in plenty, may you live as one who prays and praises so as never to let go of God’s hand, just as Solomon so earnestly longed.