Fools Who Break Through Their Own Walls
5There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, the sort of error which proceeds from the ruler. 6Folly is set in great dignity, and the rich sit in a low place. 7I have seen servants on horses, and princes walking like servants on the earth. 8He who digs a pit may fall into it; and whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake. 9Whoever carves out stones may be injured by them. Whoever splits wood may be endangered thereby. 10If the ax is blunt, and one doesn’t sharpen the edge, then he must use more strength; but skill brings success. 11If the snake bites before it is charmed, then is there no profit for the charmer’s tongue.
The king who governs a nation is its highest ruler. The king holds not only every organ of the state, the legislature, the judiciary, the administration and the rest, but also supreme command of the army. Depending on the character and ability a king has, a nation may enjoy an age of peace and plenty or walk the road to ruin. Whatever his character, a king can use all power for the single reason that he is king. So people who hold great power or own much must make every effort to have a right faith and good character, and must keep away from sin. Otherwise their discernment will fail; they will cast off the wise, employ fools, and be unable to build the nation God wants. A king must always be careful, because if he lacks the wisdom to see the whole, he may commit the folly of listening to flatterers who say only what is pleasant to hear for the moment, and of keeping the wise at a distance.
Ecclesiastes 10:4-5
4If the spirit of the ruler rises up against you, don’t leave your place; for gentleness lays great offenses to rest. 5There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, the sort of error which proceeds from the ruler.
Here the ruler means the same as one’s superior: one who governs, one who rules over others. Seen spiritually, the ruler also points to God, who rules the whole universe. The world may suffer because of the offenses of foolish rulers, yet God has told us not to reject the ruler but to obey. There are two reasons for this: God reigns over the rulers of the world, and he set up such rulers to use them as tools to turn his people back from their sins. The Word says not to leave your place even if a king of the world rules unjustly. The reason is that, while God will surely call a king who has defied his word to account for that sin when the time comes, the repentance of God’s people comes first. From now on, everyone will do even more of what is right in their own eyes. So the world has no choice but to head toward the last day, and it is a place that cannot grow any brighter or cleaner.
Common sense, courtesy and morality will all disappear, and people with high position or great wealth will be concerned with using their social status and fame to raise themselves still higher. If the king is foolish, fools will gain high positions, and those who truly love the nation will suffer instead. Crafty servants will enjoy the glory of riding on horses, while loyal subjects may be branded as traitors and live as slaves leading the flatterers’ horses. Such unreasonable things happen, and the powerless have no choice but to suffer them. So we, God’s people, must pray that God will hear the prayers of the seven thousand he has reserved, and that people who have not yet awakened through the Word may come back. This is what God wants from his people, so as God’s people we must show him a faith that prays where we stand and lives out the Word. I hope you will use the wisdom you have received from God to judge and decide well, and live a wise life that leaves no blot on your life’s record.
Friends, a person’s folly is not something others expose. Proverbs 27:22 says that though you grind a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with grain, yet his foolishness will not be removed from him. It means that grain may be pounded into flour, but it is never easy for a foolish person to become wise. Fools reveal their own folly by what they say and do, and so their foolish acts pile up until their lives fall into the abyss.
The sad thing is that fools judge, decide, speak and act foolishly without ever realizing that they are foolish. If they knew that what they were saying and doing now was foolish, they could turn around at once and leave the place of folly, but their own feelings and interests come first, so they do not turn back. They say they have no choice but to live this way because their circumstances are bad, because of a certain person, or because of the ideology they hold. But that is putting the world ahead of the Word, so such people must strive to turn back to God.
When God saw Solomon’s folly and was angry, Solomon came to see himself as one who had wanted to be served more highly than God and to live in plenty in the world. Once he realized how great a sin that was, he repented earnestly, and through that repentance he was forgiven and received the blessing of passing from death to life. If Solomon had kept the statutes and ordinances and the law of Moses from the beginning, he would have left more psalms and proverbs overflowing with thanksgiving and praise, rather than an Ecclesiastes full of regret, and so would have lifted up God’s name. I hope you will keep the statutes and ordinances well and have a life without regret.
Sin that comes from a wrong choice is easy to commit, because all it takes is to act according to human nature. But repenting of a wrong choice and turning back takes that much more time and effort. So I hope you will judge and decide well within the Word now. If you live like David, yielding to the Word and living like one who dies daily, it may be hard and difficult at the time, because you must hold back your human righteousness and instincts. But only those who have lived by God’s will can know what it is to hope for heaven, and so they can grasp the depth of that grace and give thanks.
Those who know God’s will are not proud even when they have wealth and power, because they know it is not their own but has been entrusted to them by God. God sees that faith, and for the saving of souls he will entrust even more to them and use them as his tools. When you hold great power, do not become proud and foolish. Even if God were to set you up as a king of the world as he did Solomon, I hope you will be wise enough to realize that a life apart from God is vanity.
Judah had a king this foolish, and he was Hezekiah. When Hezekiah fell ill, he prayed earnestly to God and was given fifteen more years of life, and after that he fathered Manasseh, who rebelled against God. Hezekiah himself also went astray, so the fifteen years added to his life were filled with sin, and living those fifteen extra years was not a blessing. Long life is not the blessing; what matters is whether that time was filled with good faith or with sin.
Assyria had attacked northern Israel, and the people of Israel had been killed or dragged off as captives. So at the time Hezekiah reigned, the situation in southern Judah was in great turmoil. Having witnessed the fall of northern Israel, Hezekiah expected Assyria to march straight on Jerusalem and threaten them. After much agonizing, rather than resist Assyria by force, Hezekiah prayed earnestly for God’s protection, and astonishingly, he saw the miracle of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers dying in a single night. Hezekiah was just such a good king, one who looked to God alone.
Yet once this same man received fifteen years as a gift, he fathered Manasseh, the most wicked king of southern Judah, and even his own faith went astray. Hezekiah had received God’s great grace, for God drove back the Assyrian army and rescued him from a deadly illness, but he did not keep his holy faith for long. In hard times people rely on God alone, so they seem to have a steadfast faith; but once the suffering has passed, they forget to be thankful, and from then on they are shaken by their own righteousness and by Satan’s temptations.
The strange thing is that when comfortable times go on, people say their lives have no meaning; they say they do not know why they must live such a stifling life or what they should do, and they begin to wander in search of worldly things. They are no longer pressed by suffering, and that is why living by faith becomes hard. While they were suffering, they had no room to think of anything else, but once life becomes peaceful, they lose their bearings, as if they had to do something for God. That peace is not a grace they received for anything they did, yet they think they must give God something, and so they fail to keep their faith. In the end such people have chosen for themselves the road down into the valley of pain, and that is so sad to see.
When God grants a time of comfort, if we hold our place, set an example to others by our faith, and pray constantly to stay in close communion with God, we can go on receiving that blessing. When believers are poor, sick or struggling, Satan leaves them alone, since that in itself is painful; but once they come out of their suffering and let down their guard, Satan shakes them hard with pride, discontent and greed and makes them fall. Hezekiah was caught in this trap.
Look at 2 Chronicles 32:24-25. Hezekiah forgot that God had answered the prayer he had offered so earnestly, grew proud as if he had been healed because of his own godliness, and straightaway stole God’s glory. When believers live good lives and walk in their faith with godliness, God sees that faith and grants them the blessings of the world. God does not bless believers because they prayed earnestly; he blesses the heart that strives to live by his will. So we must be more careful after our prayers are answered than in times of suffering.
That is because once we forget God’s grace, from then on we fall into the pit of greed and craving dug by Satan and by ourselves. A God who answers as soon as people pray, a God who rescues them when they cling to him in tears, and a God they can forget once the problem is solved: this is the pit that foolish human beings dig. Hezekiah fell into this pit by his own doing.
Hezekiah put forward human righteousness, as though driving back Assyria and being healed were things he had achieved by his own godliness, and his judgment grew clouded. Satan easily recognized Hezekiah’s corrupted faith. If your faith goes bad, Satan will be the first to notice and draw near. So you must always keep your faith with a heart that says, if I perish, I perish. Satan sent crafty envoys from Babylon to Jerusalem, who pretended to honor Hezekiah by asking how he had come to work such a miracle. Hezekiah then opened up not only the temple but all his treasure houses to the Babylonian envoys and showed them every treasure he owned.
Friends, however wise someone is, if they cast off God’s grace, their judgment grows clouded, and like Hezekiah they come to be moved entirely by human thinking. It is like a person with poor eyesight taking off their glasses. Hezekiah felt no guilt even when he strayed from God’s statutes and ordinances, and he did not fear God even when he judged and acted as he himself saw fit.
Hezekiah shows us that sin is frightening the first time it is committed, but once it is repeated, the fear disappears.
Ecclesiastes 10:8
8He who digs a pit may fall into it; and whoever breaks through a wall may be bitten by a snake.
Hezekiah fell into the pit of destruction that he had carelessly dug. However wise human schemes may look, they end in ruin. People do not really grasp how great a power and protection God’s grace is, so they act proudly; but after they have lost everything, they realize that God protected them every moment, and they regret it. God sets up the fence of the Holy Spirit and protects us thoroughly from Satan, and he becomes our shield and blocks every arrow that flies at us from the world. Because of that, it seems, we do not realize how great that love is. If you do not forget this love but live humbly, always giving thanks, Satan will not be able to touch you.
Hezekiah broke down this wall of love himself. Drunk on his own power and glory, he paid no attention at all to what kind of character his son Manasseh had or what his faith was like. Manasseh, who never learned a whole faith from his father Hezekiah, broke through the wall of grace and made the people suffer from the snake, and he carved out the stones so that they could no longer be kept safe from outside.
Manasseh carried out the foolish policy of splitting wood and so tearing down his own shelter; he rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed, and he took in the abominable and lewd practices of foreign nations, bringing disorder to southern Judah. He cast off the covenant his forefathers had made with God and lived as a thoroughly wicked man. Look at Genesis 2:15. God took Adam and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it. But when Adam neglected that mission, Satan, that is, the snake, came in, tempted humankind to sin, and made them fall into eternal death.
You must not take lightly the mission God has entrusted to you. When you think lightly of your mission, the snake will easily approach you and try to kill you with its strong venom. But if you set up the boundary stone [a stone marking the edge of a piece of land] that was placed to mark the border between the kingdom of God and the world, you can be safe. Jesus said that one who doesn’t enter by the door into the sheep fold, but climbs up some other way, is a thief and a robber; and the snake is at work, climbing over the wall to get in and cut people off from God through death. In every circumstance you must build the wall strong, rely on Christ who is the door, fill in the pits that could lead you into danger, and remain in Christ. If you stay by faith inside the fence of the Holy Spirit, there is no hole for the snake to get in, so you need not worry about being bitten.
The Word says that whoever splits wood may be endangered thereby. This word can point to a shortage of food caused by splitting fruit trees, but thinking further, it can also be read as saying that whoever splits the cross will receive God’s wrath.
Have you ever thought about this? We give thanks as we think of Jesus hanging on the cross, but we do not think deeply about the tree that held him up. Out of truly countless trees, only one was chosen and made into that cross. As it grew, this tree may have hoped to become like the cedars that became pillars of the temple and were overlaid with gold, but it was made into a cross for hanging a condemned criminal. What is more, the other trees had only to hold up evildoers, but this one had to bear the persecution of people mocking Jesus and had to watch the tears of those who grieved over Jesus, so it would have endured a threefold suffering.
God is now asking you to become that tree and suffer together with Jesus. He is asking you to be faithful like that tree, which took into its whole body the pain of Jesus, who became the atoning sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. That is because this is true devotion, and this is the mark of one who has a right faith.
Ecclesiastes 10:10
10If the ax is blunt, and one doesn’t sharpen the edge, then he must use more strength; but skill brings success.
Just as an ax with a blunt edge can never fell a tree, you can stand against Satan only if you keep the edge of your wisdom sharpened. But you must know this: it is not only God and his people who sharpen the edge of the tool; Satan, too, is hard at work sharpening his. If your heart is stolen by the world and you grow lazy through complaints, discontent, temptation and greed, then even when you see evil growing thick, you will not be able to cut it down, and in the end your own roots will dry up and you will die.
Satan knows this well, and so he is working hard to sharpen his edge to cut off the shoots of faith. That is why, if only to fend off Satan’s attacks, you must sharpen the edge of your faith and cut down pride and greed so they cannot grow, and you must become a great tree with a thicker trunk. A great, thick tree may be left scarred when Satan attacks it, but it will never fall. Those scars will remain as the marks of a faith running toward Jesus, as glorious wounds taken in carrying out a mission.
When we are with Christ, we will not be fools who dig pits but people who fill in pits to save others’ lives. And instead of being fools who break through the wall, we can build the wall still stronger and save lives. Such wisdom can be had only when we are with Jesus Christ. Believers who have received God’s wisdom are harmless as doves and wise as serpents, so they will win in the world and become a mature people who carry out their mission for the kingdom of God.
Solomon came to realize that all who depart from God’s word and grace are fools. He realized deeply that he had been a wicked man who was not thankful for the blessings he had received and had betrayed God, and as he strove to turn back, he filled in the pits, rebuilt the walls he had broken through, and worked to provide food for his people. I hope you will not live a foolish life like the once-foolish Solomon, digging pits, breaking through walls and chopping down trees.
If you live out a life of thanksgiving, praise and prayer within the grace God has given and show him a faithfulness that does not change, God will hold you close with an even stronger arm. I hope you will always look at yourself beside Christ, who is the light, and be a victor of faith who walks the way of truth.