SERIES: Ecclesiastes
TEXT: Ecclesiastes 7:1-25
MESSAGE: “Living Unstuck”
Q: “Why do I keep falling into ___________?”
Q: How can we live unstuck?
TEXT: Ecclesiastes 7:1-25
In today’s text we learn three truths about getting unstuck in life…(1. Start with the end 2. Recognize the traps 3. Follow the trace)
1. Start with the end (v. 1-5)
“A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth. 2 It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. 3 Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. 4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. 5 It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools.”
“The sooner we come to terms with our death, the wiser our life has the chance to become.” — Zack Eswine
“Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is…But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.” — Psalm 39:4,7
“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” — Psalm 90:12
“Like the psalm, this passage has a positive result in view, which is clear from its insistence on the word better, and especially from the last part of verse 3, ‘.…the heart is made better‘? The thought of sadness being not only replaced by joy but being in itself a preparation for the truest form of it…” — Derek Kidner
2. Recognize the traps (v. 7-10;13)
“Surely oppression drives the wise into madness, and a bribe corrupts the heart. 8 Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. 9 Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. 10 Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this…13 Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?”
“Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation – when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself.” — Saint Augustine
“Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.” ― C.S. Lewis
3. Follow the trace (v. 20; 23-24, 29)
“Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins…23 All this I have tested by wisdom. I said, “I will be wise,” but it was far from me. 24 That which has been is far off, and deep, very deep; who can find it out?…29 See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.”
“…deep in the human heart there are these desires—to experience the supernatural, to escape death, to know love that we can never lose, to not age but live long enough to realize our creative dreams, to fly, to communicate with nonhuman beings, to triumph over evil. If the fantasy stories are well told, we find them incredibly moving and satisfying. Why? It is because, even though we know that factually the stories didn’t happen, our hearts long for these things, and a well-told story momentarily satisfies these desires, scratching the terrible itch. “Beauty and the Beast” tells us there’s a love that can break us out of the beastliness that we have created for ourselves. “Sleeping Beauty” tells us we are in a kind of sleeping enchantment and there is a noble prince who can come and destroy it. We hear these stories and they stir us, because deep inside our hearts believe, or want to believe, that these things are true. Death should not be the end. We should not lose our loved ones. Evil should not triumph. Our hearts sense that even though the stories themselves aren’t true, the underlying realities behind the stories are somehow true or ought to be…Then we come to the Christmas story. And at first glance it looks like the other legends. Here is a story about someone from a different world who breaks into ours and has miraculous powers, and can calm the storm and heal people and raise people from the dead. Then his enemies turn on him, and he is put to death, and it seems like all hope is over, but finally he rises from the dead and saves everyone. If (this) really happened, it means the whole human race has amnesia, but the tales we love most aren’t really just entertaining escapism. The Gospel, because it is a true story, means all the best stories will be proved, in the ultimate sense, true.” — Timothy Keller
TAKEAWAYS:
Are you stuck in life?
Are you following His leading?
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.” — 1 Peter 3:18