Ecclesiastes 7:13-18 Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? 14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.
15 In my vain life I have seen everything. There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing. 16 Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? 17 Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? 18 It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.
INTRODUCTION
I know you’ve heard me say this before about other parts of Ecclesiastes, but I’m really, really thankful for this passage. It is so clear on something that that is often so fuzzy in our minds and so necessary for our lives.
The book as a whole is unflinchingly honest about matters of everyday life (which the Preacher, the author of Ecclesiastes calls “life under the sun”). Taken at face value, there are times in which the honesty might leave us feeling discouraged or even depressed. Other times, it’s definitely more encouraging. In every case, though, it’s a gift from God in that it cuts right through the lies that we hear so often from people who either don’t really know how things are or are purposely trying to deceive us about them.
Our passage for today is one of the most important lie-cutters in the entire book. We tend to believe that God is involved in the straight and prosperous aspects of our lives, but not in the crooked and adverse times. Likewise, we tend to think that living as God intends somehow necessitates a longer or “better” life under the sun than someone who is wicked. This passage explicitly corrects those mistaken lines of thinking. It also tells us what’s at stake if we continue to believe them and gives us (most of) the antidote for them.
The big idea of this passage and sermon is that God is sovereign over every aspect of our lives in such a way that we cannot predict how things will turn out or know precisely what God is doing in them. He is God of the crooked as well as the straight and the prosperous as well as the adverse. And each of those things are tools for His revelation of His glory, His judgment of His enemies, and His blessing of His people. The main takeaways are cultivating humility, the fear of God, and trust in God.
CONSIDER THE WORK OF GOD (13-14)
Have you ever wondered about God’s involvement in the harder things in your life? Losing your job? The unfaithfulness of a spouse? Bearing the brunt of someone else’s sin? Losing a loved one? Parenting a wayward child? The perennial loss of your favorite sports team in the most heart-breaking fashion possible? Financial troubles? Enduring a prolonged health struggle yourself or with someone you love?
When times are good, it’s easy to picture God as blessing you, but where is He when things are hard? Is He present and sad along with you? Is He absent and sad for you? Is He able to stop it, but chooses not to? Is He unable to stop it, but wishes He could? Is He off somewhere else entirely and is unaware of your situation? Or, is He somehow involved in the hard thing itself?
In the opening two verses of this next section, the Preacher commands his readers to consider something specific concerning God’s involvement in the events of our lives.
13 Consider the work of God…
“Consider the work of God,” is more than a suggestion. It is a command. And it is more than a simple charge to look around and make a few notes concerning God’s handiwork. It is a command to think carefully about how God is involved in your life. It is a command, as the next part of the verse makes clear, to consider the fact that God is actively and inexorably working in every everything you experience. The Preacher comes at that idea from two directions (one in v.13 and another in v.14), but his point is fundamentally the same in both.
God Makes Things Crooked (13)
The Preacher introduces the first aspect of God’s work—the work he commands us to consider—with a question.
13 Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?
When something is crooked, it is out of alignment. It has lost its original shape. This can refer to preferential crookedness (unmet desires or expectations), structural crookedness (missing a finger or a corrupted judicial system), and moral crookedness (lying or stealing). The Preacher has preferential and structural crookedness in mind here, but there are many biblical examples of God’s hand in all three.
To state it even more clearly: one of the key assumptions embedded in the Preacher’s question is that there are times in which God makes things crooked. That probably sounds a little funny. It should. We need to be careful here. To be crystal clear, God never does evil (Job 34:12) and God does not tempt people to evil (James 1:13). At the same time, as this verse makes unmistakable, there are times in which God does make things crooked.
When it comes to matters of preferential crookedness, it is clear that God called Moses to be His spokesman even though Moses really didn’t want to (Exodus 4:10-14). Likewise, even though Judas preferred that Mary’s expensive ointment be sold and the money given to the poor (really because he wanted the money for himself), it was God’s plan to use Mary’s lavish gesture to anoint Jesus for burial (John 12:1-8). While Moses and Judas would have called their circumstances crooked, it’s clear that both were brought about by the hand of God.
What preferences in your life are not being met in a frustrating way (which seem crooked to you)? Do you wish you were younger, smarter, stronger, or better looking? Would you prefer a different job? Or, maybe you’re OK with your job, but are frustrated by the pay or hours or expectations or misuse of your skills or the fact that you’re not yet able to retire? Was it your plan to already be married or have kids or have more kids or more obedient kids or have your kids out of the house by now?
And how do you process all of that preferential crookedness in relation to God?
When it comes to structural crookedness, we saw in John that there was a man born blind, so that Jesus would be glorified in his healing (John 9:3), and we saw Lazarus become sick and die, his sisters were overcome with grief, so that Jesus could raise him from the dead (John 11:6). Similarly, God used the bent systems of justice among the Romans and Jews to bring about the salvation of the world.
Are you dealing with a health or other issue in your body that just isn’t right? Is your home or work system bent in a frustrating way? Have you ever experienced injustice with your siblings, parents, friends, spouse, or within the judicial system? Can you feel the weight of the crookedness of the world around you?
Again, how do you understand God’s hand in those things, in relation to the structural crookedness that’s all around you?
The Preacher’s point is that the exact relationship between our unmet preferences, the failings of our bodies and culture, and God’s specific plan for those things in our lives is not usually very clear. But what is clear throughout the Bible in general, and in Ecc. 7:13 in particular, is that their crookedness is under the sovereign hand of God.
The main idea here is that God is working in the crooked things in our life as much as the straight things.
All by itself, we might not know what to do with that. The Preacher doesn’t say anything about God’s motives behind His involvement in crooked things. The gods of the nations were believed to be involved in everyday things, crooked and straight, but they were fickle gods. Their motives ranged from happiness to anger, from blessing to curse, and from intentional to flippant. Is that what the Preacher had in mind? He doesn’t say.
But where the Preacher is silent, the rest of God’s Word is loud and clear. God is working in all things, at all times, for the glory of His name and the good of His people (Romans 8:28-29).
There is genuine rest in this knowledge if we will receive it in faith. It frees us from making idols of our preferences, being crushed by our brokenness, and being trapped in bitterness over the sins of others.
The question, then, once again, is: Who can make straight what he has made crooked? If God makes something crooked—like our health or relationships—how do we get it straightened? How do we undo the difficulties we face at God’s hand. Or, rather, who can undo those difficulties?
There are two biblical answers to the Preacher’s question. The first, and the one the Preacher has in mind, is: No one! No one can undo that which God has determined to be. God alone is God. He has no equals. He does whatever He chooses (Psalm 115:3) and no one can stay His hand.
Isaiah 14 says, “24 The Lord of hosts has sworn: “As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand.” And, “27 For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?”
There is simply no question that no one can straighten that which God means to be crooked. That’s the Preacher’s main and emphatic point.
Grace, learn now, therefore, what the Preacher observed everywhere he looked: God does what He wants and any attempt to go against that is vanity of vanities. Things are as God means them to be and no one, not even all the children of Adam and all the hosts of heaven combined, can make anything the tiniest bit straighter or crookeder against God’s will. He is God and you are not, the Preacher saw.
The sooner we settle on that, the better off we will be.
But there’s another answer to the question as well. It’s not the point of this passage, so I’ll only briefly mention it. Faithful men and women of God can (and must) make straight that which God has made crooked. Of course, we can only do so according to the will of God, once God has determined that it ought to be made straight again, but God’s commands are everywhere for His people to straighten crooked things. In that way, much of what it means to follow Jesus, much of what it means to be a Christian, is seeking, in faith, to make crooked things straight.
That is why we take people to the doctor, bring food to the homeless, and adopt orphans. It’s also why we pray, share the gospel with unbelievers, walk with brothers and sisters in Christ through sin struggles, and practice the spiritual disciplines ourselves—because God has determined to use those things to make crooked things straight.
Let us consider, therefore, Grace Church, the fact that things are crooked because God sovereignly uses their crookedness for His glory and the good of His people. And they will remain, unchangeably crooked until God determines to make them straight again (often through the faithful obedience of His people).
God Makes Days of Adversity (14)
The second way the Preacher invites us to consider the work of God in our lives is to consider God’s work on opposite days—days of prosperity and adversity.
14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other…
Again, it’s easy for most people to recognize the goodness of God when things are going well; when our days are prosperous and joyful; when they are as we would like them to be. That fits well with our conception of God. That fits well with God’s nature. It is right to acknowledge that He is a God who loves to bless.
It is also right, therefore, to praise God when you are living in obedience to God and things are going well. Be joyful. Be merry. Refuse to feel guilty, to anxiously wait for things to take a downward turn, and to resist God’s gift. God has made your days of prosperity.
At the same time, as with the previous point, while it’s counterintuitive to think of God being just as good and just as sovereign over our days of adversity, the Preacher states, unequivocally, “God made the one as well as the other.”
Crooked and straight, prosperous and adverse; all are from the same hand of God.
In this way, Grace, we are right to thank God for our times of hardship, crookedness, and adversity as much as for our times of blessing, prosperity, and joy. His work is no less glorious and good in one or the other. By God’s design, we need one as much as the other.
Really practically, while it is usually right to work in faith to straighten crooked things—in our lives and the lives of others—there’s a distinctly Christian way to do so.
I once had a very discouraged young man tell me that he was reluctant to take his doctor’s advice and go on medication for it because he was afraid of losing any of the recognition of his dependence on God that his perpetual discouragement brought. If medicine would return him to a false sense of self-sufficiency, he didn’t want it. He preferred to stay crooked and aware of his dependence than to get straightened out and oblivious to his need for God.
That’s what it means to take the Preacher’s observations and live them out in light of the gospel.
If God has determined to glorify His name and sanctify His people through trial, oughtn’t we count the trial as joyful as the times of prosperity (James 1:2)?
The verse ends in a way that probably isn’t entirely clear. The Preacher says that the reason God makes days of prosperity and adversity is “So that man may not find out anything that will be after him.” But what does that mean?
As we saw in chapters 3(:22) and 6(:12), and as we’ll see again in chapter 10(:14), “that will be after him” is a common phrase for the Preacher. His point in using it is that because of the way God works in the world—using straight and crooked alike in unpredictable ways to accomplish His purposes—we cannot know with certainty what we’re going to experience later today, much less at some point in the future, much less after we’re dead.
God works in mysterious ways, in part, so that we will depend on Him and not ourselves or our wisdom.
Nearly every time I think I know what God’s up to, and can predict what’s next, He does something very different. I thought I was going to be a lawyer in Michigan, I’m a pastor in Minnesota. I thought I’d have one or maybe two kids, I have five. I thought I’d start in college ministry, I was a youth pastor (the one thing I didn’t want to do). I thought I’d be the pastor of discipleship at Grace for my whole time here, that only lasted five years and I’m coming up on fifteen as the preaching pastor. I thought it’d take weeks or months to raise the money we needed to buy and renovate the church, it took 48 hours. I thought I’d have a life-time of ministry alongside about a dozen people who are no longer here. I thought the Lions would win the Superbowl in my lifetime…
This is almost always the case for everyone by God’s design. God is at work in every aspect of our lives, it is always good, but His work takes different and usually unpredictable shapes. And part of the point of God’s working like this, the Preacher saw, was to keep us dependent on God.
Consider the whole spectrum of the works of God, Grace. As you do, consider what they reveal about your understanding of and need for God. That leads to the next, related section.
DO NOT DESTROY YOURSELF (15-18)
In language consistent with the rest of Ecclesiastes, the Precher declared…
15 In my vain life I have seen everything… Everything?! I love this. Who talks like that? The Preacher sure understood himself to have an exceptionally privilidged frame of reference.
The Preacher continues by recounting one of the “everythings” that he saw. He saw righteous people die young and wicked people live long.
15 … There is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evildoing.
I have an uncle who made a similar observation years ago. He was in the middle of complaining about his doctor giving him a hard time about all his smoking and drinking and he blurted out, “I know a guy who never drank a day in his life and exercised constantly—he ran marathons—who dropped dead of a heart attack at 50.”
The Preacher’s point is largely the same as in the previous section, things in this life are often contrary to what we expect. Sometimes righteous men die early and the wickedness of wicked men prolong their lives. Both, the Preacher observed, were equally “made by God.”
Rather than offer any explanation for why God works like that, the Preacher moved straight to how we ought to live in light of that. We get the sense that he’s mainly given up attempting to understand why God does what He does and has turned his attention to a more attainable goal: figuring out what to do in light of the fact that He does.
From there, then, the Preacher concludes by explaining how and how not to respond to God’s unpredictable, mysterious ways. He tells us how to live in such a way that will destroy us in light of the providence of God and how to live in a way that makes sense in light of it.
Means of Destroying Yourself (16-17)
In light of having seen everything, of having seen that God makes straight and crooked things, prosperous and adverse things, in light of the fact that the righteous die young and the wicked die old at God’s hand, the Preacher noted four ways to make a wreck of our lives. He said…
16 Be not overly righteous, and do not make yourself too wise. Why should you destroy yourself? 17 Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time?
Those who are overly righteous, wise, wicked, and foolish destroy themselves and die early. There are two ways of interpreting these warnings, and scholars are fairly neatly divided between the two.
The first way takes this in a purely practical and highly skeptical way. The basic idea is that the Preacher is unconcerned with acting in ways that please God and is only concerned with how to live most comfortably in this vain world.
In that way, people who are particularly righteous tend to have a harder time because they are always swimming against the current. Which of the godly prophets wasn’t killed for their godly prophecy (Acts 7). No one likes someone who is really holy because it makes them feel guilty, so don’t try to be too righteous.
Likewise, most of the world prefers small doses of wisdom and large doses of folly. If you are too wise, therefore, you’re just going to be annoying. So, if you want to live in the world as it is, which isn’t as it seems like it should be by God’s design, get enough wisdom to be just a bit in front of others, but not too much.
The same thing holds true on the other side of the equation as well, under this first reading. No one likes a goody two-shoes or a smarty pants, so it’s good to have at least a little wickedness and folly in you. At the same time, though, no one wants to be around someone who is thoroughly wicked and foolish. Total wickedness is scary, total folly is annoying. So, even though the wicked and the foolish sometimes live longer than the rest in the world as God has made it, don’t be overly wicked or foolish because who cares if you live longer if you do so entirely despised by everyone around you.
That’s one possible reading of this passage. It’d certainly be consistent with some of the other things the Preacher wrote. And on a purely under the sun level, it’s certainly true.
But, as I said, there’s a second possible reading of the Preacher’s thoughts here—it’s the one I find more likely.
In the other reading, the basic idea is that because of who God is and how He works, living well in this world means not thinking of yourself as more righteous or wise than you really are. It means not relying on your own righteousness or wisdom. It means not being “overly righteous” and “too wise” in the sense of self-righteous and wise in your own eyes. It means recognizing that your best efforts still fall short of a God who is holy, holy, holy and your best wisdom is still folly compared to a God who knows all things.
Continuing with that notion, the Preacher’s admonition to not be “overly wicked” or foolish is not a prescription for a little wickedness or foolishness, it’s a warning against giving into wickedness or folly. The Preacher knows that everyone sins. He even knows (as we just read) that sometimes the wicked outlive the righteous. But both of those things are significantly different than giving entirely into sin, which is functionally asking to “die before your time.”
Once again, I think the best reading of this passage is probably a simple warning, flowing out of a lifetime of watching people suffer the consequences of not taking sin seriously; which is certainly just as much of a problem today as it was in the Preacher’s day
How many times have I heard people flippantly comment, “I don’t want there to be a god who allows the kind of evil and suffering that are in this world”? Or ask, “Why would I want to go to heaven when all my friends are in hell?” Or conclude of the Bible’s claims, “I can’t believe anyone actually believes this.”?
Maybe even more egregious are Christians playing around with little bits of sin or fearlessly making peace with lots of sin. Almost no one says it out loud, but who among us hasn’t thought or functionally lived out the idea that it’s not that big of deal to watch a little sexual immorality or coarsely joke around once in a while or make light of the Lord’s Day by preferring your kids’ sports/other extracurricular activity or hunting or party prepping or simply sleeping? Likewise, everyone I’ve ever pastored through a more egregious sin has created a story to justify it in their own minds.
(Years ago, I heard this illustration from another pastor. I know I’ve shared it before, but I’ve still never come across a better one.) There was a shampoo company who filmed a commercial featuring a woman and a lion, both of whom had their hair washed by the shampoo. The key scene in the commercial was the woman sitting on the back of the lion with her hair mingling with the similarly colored and vibrant lion’s mane. As you might have guessed, although things went well initially, the lion eventually attacked the woman. Everyone involved made the mistake of believing they could truly domesticate one of the fiercest animal predators on earth. That’s what we constantly do with sin, the Preacher concluded. We may be able to play around with it for a time, but it will eventually turn on us with devastating consequences. The lion’s nature is to hunt, kill and eat. Sin’s nature is to corrupt and destroy.
Those who fail to take sin seriously will destroy themselves and the Preacher wondered why anyone would want to do that.
Means of Not Destroying Yourself (18)
That leads to one more question and our final verse for this morning. The question is: Given who God is (holy, holy, holy) and how God works in the world (in mysterious and unpredictable ways), how do we avoid the trap of not taking sin seriously enough? Or, how do we take sin seriously? The Preacher’s answer is in v.18.
18 It is good that you should take hold of this, and from that withhold not your hand, for the one who fears God shall come out from both of them.
The Preacher concluded that the ability to heed his wisdom comes from learning to fear God.
For every non-Christian, the continual fear of the Lord is the only right response to reality. The idea of the just wrath of the almighty God burning white hot against you, wrath so fierce, stored up for sin so foul, that eternity is needed to inflict it, wrath continually a mere second away, being held at bay by nothing other than the undeserved patience of God, the idea of that wrath ought to do one of two things.
It ought to either completely paralyze you in fear or it ought to cause you to throw yourself upon God for mercy. Nothing else makes sense. Any other response can only flow from ignorance or irrationality.
If that’s you, if your hope is not in God, if you do not know what it means to receive God’s mercy, the Preacher of Ecclesiastes and I invite you to learn the fear of the Lord, to cry out to God to teach you to learn to fear Him. And as you do, I invite you to turn in that fear to Jesus, who alone is sufficient to absorb God’s wrath on your behalf. That’s what He did on the cross for all who will hope in Him alone.
And if you are a Christian, a brief word on the nature and necessity of Christian fear of God from a pastor wiser than I.
“Philippians 2:12–13 [says]: ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.’ This is really interesting. You should fear and tremble because God is working to keep you. And I think it means the sheer awesome presence of God in our lives working for us, not against us, should produce trembling. That is amazing. So, the New Testament treats the fear of God as a motive for not turning away from him. We should fear in the sense that we seek refuge from God away from God’s terrible wrath. God’s grace in Christ is the refuge from God’s wrath outside Christ. There is terror outside of Christ, and there is a different kind of trembling inside of Christ.” The kind that motivates us to turn away from sin.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, things only look mysterious, unpredictable, and crooked for us. For God, it is all clear, purposeful, and straight. Under God’s sovereign reign, all things are moving with perfect efficiency, in the best way possible, toward the restoration of all things. Jesus’ death, resurrection, and reign made that certain.
Therefore, let us live by faith in the promises of God, come what may, in the certain knowledge that it is from the hand of God for glory and good. And let us, therefore, in the power of the Spirit and the company of God’s people, cultivate humility, the fear of God, and trust in God, in order that we might walk at all times and in all ways according to the way things are, by God’s design, for God’s glory, and for the good of all.