Ecclesiastes 7:10-12 Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

¹¹ Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun.

¹² For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.

INTRODUCTION

Our final set of proverbs (for a while) gives us three significant sets of questions to consider.

If you could have been alive at any point in history, when would you choose and why? Or, when do you think was the best time to have lived?

When you are afraid, where do you go? Or, what provides you with the most (sense of) protection in life?

If there’s one thing you wish your parents would leave you with, what would it be? Or, if you could leave one thing behind for your kids—anything you want—what would you choose?

The Preacher’s proverbs in vs.10-12 point us to much of what our answers should be to those questions. Therefore, part of what it means to love God with all our minds includes considering them carefully.

To that end, we’ll carefully consider the wisdom of rejecting the myth of the glory days, of making use of the limited protection money and wisdom provide (out of order), and of getting above the sun and telling your kids what you see.

The big ideas of this passage are, once again, that God made the world to function in a certain way and, therefore, as we learn that way and conform to it, things tend to go better for us. Even as when we are ignorant of God’s ways or out of conformity with them, things tend to go worse. And the main takeaway is to order our lives according to God’s design and wisdom for His glory and our good.

THE PREACHER’S PROVERBS

Wisdom concerning the best days, the best protection, and the best inheritance. Let’s start at the beginning.

Reject the Myth of the Glory Days (10)

Again, if you could have been alive at any point in history, when would you choose and why?

We’ve all heard it. Most of us have said it. “When I was a kid, the music was better…the boys were tougher…the girls were girlier…politicians weren’t as divisive…schools actually taught us things…the fish and deer were bigger and more plentiful…kids respected their elders and people of authority…we weren’t drowning in debt…not everything caused cancer…people feared God more…etc. I wish we could go back to the good ‘ole days. Those days were better. Those were the glory days.”

In spite of the fact that as we age, we almost universally buy into the idea that the olden days were the glory days, it is a lie. It is a foolish notion. The Preacher tells us as much in v.10.

¹⁰ Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

But if it’s not true that the former days were better than these, why do we all move toward thinking that way?

For the most part, it often seems to simply be a matter of having a bad or selective memory. I tend to long for the time when our kids were little, but I do so mainly because I forget about the near constant questions and neediness and discipline and sleeplessness and non-silence of those times. My memory has filtered out the challenges and overemphasized the good parts.

In a similar way, it can seem like the former days were better simply because some things in our lives and culture were better and we tend to focus on those. We remember the simpler, humbler, and more godly aspects of it, while forgetting the different complexities, hardships, and sins. Wisdom recognizes this and refuses to be discouraged in the present due to a longing for a selective/misremembered past.

But if it is not from wisdom that we think of the past as the glory days, how does wisdom call us to think about it?

In the Preacher’s language, it means recognizing that “there is nothing new under the sun” (1:9). And in that way, the former days aren’t the glory days any more than any other days since everything that is, already was, and will be again (1:10). Everything under the sun, the Preacher observed, is cyclical.

That’s why Ecclesiastes is as relevant today as it was when it was written, 3000 years ago. We experience the same basic, under the sun joys as they did then. Good friends, fruitful work, simple pleasures like eating, drinking, and merry-making, loving marriage and plenty of obedient kids.

In the same way, the same things that were hard and confusing and frustrating then, are today as well. Their struggles are our struggles. Grief, loss, money problems, death, injustice, sin, confusion about what God’s doing in our circumstances, elusive satisfaction, etc.

In other words, it is not from wisdom that we say the former days were better than our days because they weren’t in any meaningful, under the sun way.

From a more above the sun perspective, the former days aren’t the glory days because as long as man’s sin and God’s common grace are a part of our world, there will be some bad and some good, some harder and some easier. The only thing that really changes is the proportion of each in any given culture at any given time.

Under God’s providential reign, this is how it will be until the day of the Lord. It is not until Jesus returns and makes all things right that this cycle will totally end and we’ll really experience the glory days.

Living in light of this wisdom means, therefore, not pining for the days of old, but working to make Christ known in greater measure today. It means not wishing our culture was more godly (as in the past), but obeying and teaching the world all that Christ has commanded today. It means not being in a perpetual, discouraging quest to find greener grass, but working to make the grass greener wherever God has you and entrusting the results to Him. It means believing with all you have that the situation you are in is God’s greatest good for you (better than any other time in history) if you love Him.

And living in light of this wisdom means cultivating a true hunger for the full measure of our salvation so we will long for the real glory days. Fill your mind with the truths of heaven revealed to us in God’s Word (Heaven by Randy Alcorn or the chapter on the new heavens and earth in Grudem’s Systematic Theology). Ask God to help you long for all things new, rather than old things reshuffled; for the true glory days, not a fuller glimpse of their shadow.

Use Wisdom and Money as Shields (12)

When you are afraid, where do you go? Or, what provides you with the most protection in life?

Because I’m going to spend the bulk of my time on v.11, I’m going to address v.12 first. The two are connected in a more direct way than the other proverbs of this section. In v.11, the Preacher asserts that a good inheritance includes both money and wisdom. In v.12, he asserts one of the below the sun reasons wisdom and money are best paired together (and, therefore, make the best in heritance); namely, because the combination of the two provides a kind of protection that is greater than either can provide by itself.

With that, look with me at v.12.

¹² For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.

In general, from an under the sun perspective, those with money tend to have more protection than those who do not. For instance, a big part of the Preacher’s perspective on life is that the poor are the most vulnerable to oppression since they lack the money needed to defend themselves.

Similarly, money is usually useful for providing protection in the form of walls, doors and locks, guards, and nicer neighborhoods to keep away those who would rob us.

And money can protect and preserve our lives in that it is necessary for insurance, doctors, hospitals, and medicines when we are hurt or sick.

And once again, those things are as true today as they were in the Preacher’s day. There is certainly a way in which money can provide protection and preservation for those who have it.

Likewise, with wisdom, we know to eat healthier, exercise, live within our means, save carefully, choose good friends, work and study hard, avoid fads, fear God, seek wise counsel, and think about and do things that matter—again, all things that help protect and preserve our lives by preventing many would-otherwise-be problems or better deal with them when they come.

Wisdom and money are alike in their ability to provide protection and preservation in a certain sense. All of this is fairly easy to see from an under the sun perspective.

At the same time, however, wisdom and money are also alike in their limited ability to protect and preserve; that is, they are limited in the adequacy of their ability to protect and preserve.

The Preacher made many observations concerning the fact that neither money nor wisdom are able to reliably protect or preserve us in even the most basic aspects of life. As we saw, at times they can and do to some degree, but never to the point that we can truly depend on them.

For instance, money and wisdom can be and often are lost in this life and so it’s foolish to set your hopes entirely on them. More than once, the Preacher observed people working hard all their lives, depriving themselves of pleasure for the sake of leaving an inheritance to their kids, only to have their kids act like fools or the inheritance end up in a stranger’s hands instead.

More significantly, an even more grievous observation of the Preacher, is the fact that the rich and wise always meet the same fate as the poor and foolish (death). No matter how much money and wisdom a person has, death comes for all. It’s inevitable.

And ultimately, money and wisdom are inadequate protections in the most significant way of all. Neither are able to protect a person from the most universal and greatest threat of all—the wages of sin. All of us are born into the sin of Adam and, consequently, all of us choose to sin like Adam. We are all, therefore, under the same condemnation as Adam—death.

No amount of money can hold back the wrath of God and no amount of wisdom is able to devise a way to get around it. In that way, all who hope in either their brain or their bank account to protect or preserve them will be terribly and eternally disappointed.

Living in light of this wisdom means working in such a way as to provide well for yourself and your family. We need to avoid adopting the wisdom of the world when it comes to defining what it means to provide well, and we need to avoid the trap of trusting in the money itself, but it has always been the case in the world God made that there is a kind of good protection and preservation that comes from having money set aside.

Even more significantly, living in light of this wisdom means ordering your life according to wisdom. Wisdom comes ultimately from God, for He alone is truly wise, but God often brings wisdom through certain, predictable means: age/experience, close relationships with wise people, and through reading the writings of wise people (especially those inspired with the wisdom of God—the Bible).

Practically, this means praying for wisdom (James 1:5), listening to your parents, sitting under the preached word each week, being in a DG with older, more experienced saints, learning to ask good questions of the right people and listening well to their answers, buying or borrowing good books (I’m still working on a list), and reading the Bible every day.

Most significantly of all, living in light of this wisdom means fixing your eyes on Jesus, the One and Only certain place of protection and preservation. He is our shield and we have no other. He uses means (like wisdom and money) at times, but Jesus alone can protect us from and preserve us through everything that would do us harm. His promises and power alone never fail.

And that leads to the final piece of wisdom that we’ll consider this morning.

Get Above the Sun and Tell Your Kids What You See (11)

If there’s one thing you wish your parents would leave you with, what would it be? Or, if you could leave one thing behind for your kids—anything you want—what would you choose?

In v.11, we get a simple, under the sun perspective on the combination of money and wisdom passed on.

¹¹ Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun.

The wisdom of this proverb is twofold. First, when wisdom is added to the money, there’s greater protection and preservation still. It’s one thing to have money to throw at a problem. It’s something altogether better to have the wisdom needed to avoid the problem in the first place or navigate it best when it comes.

And second, the Preacher means us to take everything from the previous section (v.12) and think not only of its significance for our own lives, or even for our own families during our lives (while we “see the sun”), but as something to pass on to our kids as an inheritance as well.

The simple and straightforward wisdom of this verse, then, is that we ought to do our best to provide enough wisdom and money for the protection and preservation of our families now and when we can no longer see the sun. It is good to think towards the future.

Dads, on Father’s Day especially, this is a good reminder. Living in light of this wisdom means being an example of all of this to your kids. It means showing them how to pursue wisdom, take initiative, be productive, save responsibly, and generously look to the needs of others so they can continue doing so even after you are gone. That is the kind of under the sun inheritance they need most. That is the wisdom that the Preacher calls for and that is an important part of the kind of fatherhood that ought to be honored and deserves to be celebrated.

The Preacher says that wisdom, combined with resources, left as an inheritance, is an advantage to everyone who sees the sun.

At the same time, Dads, Grace Church, all of that by itself, at best, delays the inevitable. If that’s all we give our kids, it may be that they hold onto and even add to it for a while. It might even make its way down to their kids, kids, kids (your great, great grandkids).

But if that’s all they have, if that’s all we leave them with (under the sun wisdom and money), they will probably lose everything you leave them with before long and, far worse still, die in their sins. That’s the case with all the wisdom the Preacher has given us. By itself, everything the Preacher has said is a mist, a vapor, a puff of smoke. It’s armor for a moth heading toward a flame—useful to a point, but impotent against the real threat.

On top of that, none of the under the sun wisdom of the Preacher can find its fullest under the sun benefit apart from its place in the above the sun story. The Preacher helps us to understand and live consistently with the world as it is (under the sun), but fullness of life only comes when we see all of that from above the sun—from God’s perspective, as He’s revealed it to us in the whole counsel of His Word. In other words, there’s a greater wisdom in the Preacher’s wisdom for those who have a fuller understanding of what it means to see the sun.

I mean to close our time in the Preacher’s proverbs and admonish all the men on Father’s Day, by reminding you of the larger, above the sun story in which all of this finds its place; in which you, your kids, and all reality finds its place.

The larger story has four main movements, beginning with the creation of the world.

(I was particularly helped in initially coming to understand this story through a book by Trevin Wax called Counterfeit Gospels. I quote the book briefly in each of the four movements.)

Creation (Genesis 1-2)

God alone—Father, Son, and Spirit—has not been made. In the beginning, God made all that has been made—the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. And He did so, in love, for the glory of His name and the good of all His creation.

“The world was made for human flourishing, there we could live in joy in the presence of our Maker, worshiping God by loving Him and one another forever. Looking past all the galaxies and planets, looking through space and time, over and above the exotic creatures that filled the earth, God set His affection on us—His human image-bearers—whom He created to share in the joy of His love forever” (31).

This means that everything has been designed by God, defined by God, and belongs to God. Wisdom, therefore, is simply a matter of discovering how to live according to who God is and the way He made things (including ourselves). All wisdom begins and ends with God.

And that means everything the Preacher wrote concerning wisdom only finds its fullness in God. He gave proverbial wisdom concerning God’s sovereignty, the use of words, the length of days, the value of things, the need to think about important stuff, rebuke, flattery, laughter, oppression, anger, glory, inheritance, wisdom, and money. Once again, though, to really understand any of it, and to really live in light of any of it, always and inevitably sees it tied to the fact that God created everything, in love, for His glory and our good.

Fall (Genesis 3; Romans 3:9-20)

If all of that is true, and it is, why is life so difficult and mysterious (vanity)? Why is wisdom so hard to find and harder still to live out? And why does it seem like wisdom rarely holds?

The short answer, and the second movement in the larger story of the world, is the Fall of mankind. Although everything God created was “very good,” and although wisdom was free for all to find and follow…

“Adam and Eve rejected God’s rule over them. We refer to their rebellious choice as “the fall,” and because they represented all of humanity, their action affects us too…The fallout from our sin is devastating. First and foremost, we are guilty before God and alienated from Him. The perfect fellowship that Adam and Eve had with God in the garden of Eden has been broken. We are estranged from our Father. We have—through our attitudes and actions—declared ourselves to be God’s enemies. This rebellion results in physical and spiritual death” (33-34).

Worse still, not only did Adam and Eve fall, and with them, all of their descendants, their choice brought confusion, corruption, and death to all creation as well. That’s what the Preacher constantly (although seemingly without really understanding it) ran into. That’s why wisdom was so hard to find and inconsistent in its efficacy. That’s why the Preacher continually felt frustrated and futile in his pursuit of meaning, significance, and satisfaction in his life. That’s why so much of Ecclesiastes has the tone that it does—because the Preacher was exceptionally observant and honest about his observations of the fallen nature of the world he lived in.

That’s why we experience so much confusion, inefficiency, difficulty, suffering, and death. That’s why no matter how faithfully we apply the Preacher’s wisdom (or try to come up with our own), we just can’t quite do it and it never quite works when we do.

Redemption (Genesis 3:15, John 3:1-21)

Again, the Preacher so astutely observed the way things are, but seemingly without really understanding why they were that way. Even more absent his calculus, however, was an understanding of the next two movements of the Story.

The Preacher was largely right about how things were and what it meant to live in light of them, but we don’t find much in his writing about what God was doing about it. Thankfully, we have what the Preacher didn’t—the full revelation of God’s Wisdom. And from that we learn that…

“The loving Creator who rightly shows Himself to be wrathful toward our sin is determined to turn evil and suffering we have caused into good that will be to His ultimate glory. So the next movement shows God implementing a master plan for redeeming His world and rescuing fallen sinners. In the Person of Jesus Christ, God Himself comes to renew the world and restore His people. The grand narrative of Scripture climaxes with the death and resurrection of Jesus” (37).

In other words, we learn that although sin’s deadly, corrupting tentacles have spread throughout creation, God determined from the beginning to redeem that which has been lost through His only Son, Jesus Christ. What’s more, we gain access to that, not according to the wisdom of this world (which suggest we need to pay for our sins first or earn our redemption), but according to the plan of God (to redeem mankind by grace alone through faith alone in the sacrificial death and victorious resurrection of Christ alone).

There will come a time, then, that the Preacher’s wisdom (wisdom given to a fallen people living in a fallen world) will no longer hold, since God has redeemed and is redeeming it.

Even now there is a greater wisdom, an above the sun wisdom, a wisdom that unlocks much of the vanity (the mystery) the Preacher encountered. It seems foolish to those who are not looking to Jesus, but to those of us who are being redeemed, it is the power and glory of God.

The poor, mourning, meek, hungry, persecuted, and the reviled are blessed (Matthew 5:3-11)

The first are last and the last are first (Matthew 20:16).

The greatest are servants (Matthew 23:11).

Suffering is joyful gain (James 1:2).

We die to live (Galatians 2:20).

Death is gain (Philippians 1:21).

The Preacher observed a fallen world and under God’s inspiration, offered much wisdom to a fallen people concerning what that meant and how to live in light of it. But God’s redeeming grace in Jesus changes much and fills out all of it.

Restoration (2 Peter 3:1-13; Revelation 21-22)

Finally, the fourth movement of the grand story we’re all in is already here and not yet completed at the same time. As gracious and glorious as God’s redemption in Jesus is…

“The story doesn’t end with redemption. God has promised to renew the whole world, and the Bible gives us a peak into this glorious future… The restoration of the world has already begun, but has not yet fully taken place. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the life of heaven has invaded earth. The kingdom of God has begun to advance…The restoration of all things will take place in two ways. Christ will return to judge sin and evil, and He will usher in righteousness and peace. God will purge this world of evil once and for all” (38-39).

The Preachers wisdom assumed God’s creation, was primarily informed by the fall, was largely missing the idea of redemption, and was almost entirely ignorant of the promised restoration of God.

True wisdom, then, looks at all the Preacher concluded in light of the fact that in Jesus everything vain, crooked, and unjust in the world will be made clear, straight, and right. All that is broken will be fixed. All that is frustrated will find relief. All the good that is lacking will become abundant. All our sorrow will be turned into laughing and all our suffering into dancing.

The Preacher’s proverbs (along with all of Ecclesiastes) is a gift in that it accurately describes how best to live in a fallen, mysterious world. But it’s even more of a gift when seen in its proper place in the larger story of God. Living in light of this wisdom, then, Grace Church, means taking the Preacher’s words and shining the light of the promises of God in Christ upon them for fullness of meaning and blessing.

Living in light of this wisdom means focusing your best efforts on growing in your own understanding of the greatest story and to living out of it so that you can leave both to your kids as their greatest inheritance. It means getting above the sun and telling your kids about what you see.

CONCLUSION

God is sovereign (6:10), more words are worse (11), we are ignorant and our days are short (12), God establishes the value of things (7:1), mourning is better than feasting (2), sorrow is better than laughter (3), wise people think about things that matter (4), wise rebukes are better than foolish flattery (5), the laughter of a fool is empty (6), oppression and bribery are the tools of fools (7), pursue perseverance and patience (8), be slow to anger (9), reject the myth of the glory days (10), use wisdom and money as shields (12), and get above the sun and tell your kids what you see (11).

Fifteen pieces of divinely-inspired, (mostly)below the sun wisdom for living in this world as it truly is. All of which find their fulfillment only when seen in their proper place in God’s great story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

Having been redeemed by Jesus, in the Sprit’s power, let us order our lives, therefore, according to God’s design and wisdom for His glory and our good.